The Agnostic's Dilemma

[CartesianFart]

Well, in my view if people reach different results from me, they interpreted them wrong . . .

But that is just me saying, "my opinion is best".

Sounds like a solipsist position.I remember my conversation with Asperger awhile back on this subject and he said," it can't be refuted "and i said,"yes it can."

I am beginning to see a deadend and can't find a way out of my metaphysical underpinning.

 

[warpus]

Well, in my view if people reach different results from me, they interpreted them wrong . . .

But that is just me saying, "my opinion is best".

No chance you could be wrong?

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Sure, there is a chance. I just wouldn't recognize it if I am . . .

 

[WillJ]

FredLC, so you were using "first principles" as something similar to the "theory of everything" that theoretical physicists are searching for, not as a priori principles? In that case, I don't see how describing agnostics as people who think we can't find such a posteriori "first principles" is very accurate. Are there actually people who fit such a category? At any rate, the disagreement between Ayatollah So and myself and others is dealing with first principles in the more common philosophical sense---unless of course I've been horribly mistaken this whole time---and on that issue I agree with everything Gothmog said.

 

[Ayatollah So]

I agree with you that feeling the need to rule all out all non-X possibilities before being able to accept X, and vice versa, is having too high a standard---a practical person must realize that in some cases (make that all cases) he will have to act on X without being 100% sure of it. Now, what exactly does that have to do with first principles?

If your (too high) standards don't allow you to flat-out assert that X, they still allow you to say something like "If you accept the first principle that our senses are trustworthy, then X," or something like that. That seems like a way to be agnostic (technically) about X, and in general have extremely high standards for the acceptance of any proposition.

As for rationality and reliability, I agree that the accuracy of your senses doesn't have anything to do with the rationality of trusting them, but for different reasons, I think. Whether or not you have a basic faith in your senses is not a matter of rationality; it is a matter of what your first principles are, and rationality only deals with internal consistency (in the philosophical sense, anyway).

That's too narrow, unless you mean "consistency" to include considerations of elegance, explanatory power, coherence, etc. - the desiderata of non-deductive reasoning. But that's just a nitpick, because either way (whether you construe rationality to be purely deductive, or more broadly) it points out the flaw in the "beliefs resting on other beliefs" metaphor. Both deductive consistency and inductive support relationships are relationships of mutual support. If a set of beliefs are all mutually consistent, they collectively pass muster for deductive rationality. If a set of beliefs bear good explanatory coherence relationships to each other, they all receive the praise of inductive rationality. If beliefs are metaphorically subject to "gravity", it is a mutual gravitational attraction between the beliefs, rather than a uniform gravitational field with a definitive "bottom".

In the sense that social scientists use the word, you can't evaluate the "rationality" of your trust of your senses by looking to see if there are "signs in your experience which indicate that the accuracy is problematic," as that would be using your senses! This, of course, is why I call the general reliability of the senses a "first principle" in the first place.

Social scientists use the word "rationality" how - are we talking about maximizing expected utility? But that depends on "expectations", i.e. probabilities, which brings us right back to inductive reasoning.

It's quite possible to imagine scenarios in which using your senses would lead to the conclusion that you can't trust your senses. That's why I don't call the general reliability of the senses a "first principle".

 

[mdwh]

Excellent question. I believe the model of the creator(s) is strong because it offers an easily understandable explanation of the univers, as FredLC points out. To explain more fully:

As I say, it's only a made up story, which is very different from an _actual_ explanation.

Prevailing science does not even conjecture on what it is that created the universe.

Scientists have certainly conjectured on such things, although this assumes that something did create it.

Still, at some point, something had to be created from nothing. This is in direct contradiction to most scientific laws, specifically those of thermodynamics.

If something must have been created from nothing, then it follows that the law of conservation of energy does not always hold. So yes, the law of conservation of energy did not apply to the start of the universe. But that tells us not much else about what that start was.

Since I see no natural explanation for how the universe could have been formed, I think it is a logical conclusion to say that it was created.

This implies a creator(s). However, you seem to try to place attributes on my version of the creator(s) by indicating that I believe they are sentient or intelligent. I make no such claims! My creator(s) need not be sentient or intelligent.

Okay, so you're using the word "God" completely different to all religious people and religions I have come across. So when you say you believe in God, you are saying that the start of the universe was "supernatural"? In which case, how do you define natural and supernatural?

No compelling scientific explanation exists to explain how this could have occurred. That is why I believe in the creator(s).

That doesn't make sense to me. There are lots of things we don't know - are all those "supernatural" too?

Not true. As we've discussed at length, Newton's laws of motion are only applicable to macroscopic properties, but they are still taught and understood as truth.

Who teaches them and understands them as truth? This sounds more like a criticism of school teaching (which dumbs things down in all subjects) than science...

Thus, you see that we do retreat back to clinging onto falsified theories.

what theories? And did you mean unfalsifiable?

This indirect evidence for the existence of the atom is better than what we have for 96% of the universe!

I'm not sure what you're getting at with all this.

For dark matter we have evidence (yes evidence, not testimonies), though not conclusive (the alternative possibility is that our knowledge of gravity is wrong).

For dark energy we know even less about it.

So yes, early 21st century science doesn't know everything about the Universe. But no one is filling in the gaps with fairy tales.

Evidence, AFAIK, is defined as something that furnishes or tends to furnish proof. First, you tried to equate theories and testimony with evidence, but theories and testimony do not furnish or tend to furnish proof. Theories make predictions based on logical steps. Testimony is only considered evidence in a court of law. After that, you said that observations are separate from evidence, but observations surely furnish or tend to furnish proof. That is why I asked you to look up the word "evidence".

I know all this. Theories are based on evidence, and I'm not sure why we are talking about testimonies then if they are not relevant to science.

Beyond that, I do believe that the creator(s) exist based on the argument I made earlier in this post.

What is your definition of "the creator"? I didn't see your argument? (Unless you meant "A scientific law doesn't always hold, therefore science is wrong and this alternative unfalsifiable conjecture with no evidence is therefore right"?)

Furthermore, claims of the existence of dark energy are definitely unfalsifiable assertions. A brief skimming of even the wiki article you reference shows that attributes have not been assigned to dark energy, and that no predictions on the behavior of dark energy are made. You call the models of the creator(s) unfalsifiable for these very reasons.

Well, dark energy is a hypothesis. If you agree that "god" can be no more than a hypothesis, then that's fine.

However, there are some properties of dark energy - yet no one agrees on any common definition of God. Even something like being sentient which I thought was universal, you say I am wrong. In which case, we don't even get to the stage of falsifiability, because there is no claim being made other than "Something undefined made the universe".

First, it is important to realize that there is no evidence that a god did not create the universe.[/qoute]There is no evidence that wigglesplat didn't create the universe either. I'm not concerned with that, I'm concerned with what evidence we do have for things.

Many of the attributes given to God have been disproven. Indeed, the existence of many gods has been disproven, logically and empirically. Many once thought that rain was caused by gods, but now we understand, generally, how rain occurs. Thus far, virtually all of that which has traditionally been attributed to gods has been better explained by natural phenomena, except one - the creation of the universe. When the natural formation of the universe can be proven, then that would effectively disprove general models of the creator(s) (except, perhaps, in regards to the afterlife). Of course, it often takes a while, sometimes a long while, for new understanding to propagate amongst the masses.

But people could always say that it wasn't the real start - that some invisible supernatural God "made it happen".

Or they'll play word games and say that whatever was the start of the Universe _was_ God, because the definition of God shouldn't be constrained to what all the religions said...

As to you believing in the existence of the creator(s), I must question what it is that you believe formed the universe.

I have no beliefs on this matter, because I couldn't possibly have enough evidence or knowledge to know.

Thus far, in this thread, I have been relegated to defending my perfectly logical belief without anyone, other than, perhaps, innonimatu, offering a different explanation for the formation of the universe. What natural phenomena explains this more logically than the existence of the creator(s)?

There are lots of mysteries in this world - but that someone is not putting forward a solution does not suddenly mean that any made up story is true - especially when that doesn't actually answer anything (I mean, how did your god create the Universe? How did your god come into existence?)

C'mon! You are the one that called models of god "useless" and said that they, "tell us nothing about how the universe works or came to be." I'm not confusing anything! I was responding to your words. If you truly meant to say that those models do not give us information which is supported by evidence, then why did you not say it? If you meant to say that these models are explanations that are completely made up, then why did you not say that?

Because "explanation" usually - at least, in a scientific discussion - means one that has a certain level of truth, as opposed to an a made up story. I want an explanation, not a story.

This contradicts many basic laws of physics.

Then that law is wrong. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Your argument appears to be:

1. Law X says such-and-such.
2. I claim that Law X is not true in all situations.
3. Therefore my completely unrelated claim Y is true.

All 1. and 2. actually show is that the law of conservation of energy does not apply to the start of the Universe. This does not support your extra claim that the start of the Universe must have been "supernatural" (whatever that means).

This may not be positive evidence for the creator(s), but it is roughly equivalent to the logical argument by which we substantiate 74% of the universe (dark energy).

How so? What additional claim has been thrown in, comparable to your "supernatural" claim?

But the prevailing models of the universe fail to even conjecture at what it is that formed the universe. There is no evidence to explain this occurrence! When it comes to the very formation of the universe science offers no explanation, no evidence and no answers. The theories you allude to explain on a very small fraction (4%) of the universe.

Yes, and? Where did I say that science explains everything in existence?

Please tell me how it is that you know there was no creator(s).

Where did I say that?

I don't even know what you mean by "creator", since we're not talking about what I thought we were (i.e., a sentient being who made the Universe).

 

[warpus]

Since I see no natural explanation for how the universe could have been formed, I think it is a logical conclusion to say that it was created.

Or it always existed, of course... or it was created naturally, but we just don't know how

 

[Gothmog]

Ayatollah So wrote

It's quite possible to imagine scenarios in which using your senses would lead to the conclusion that you can't trust your senses. That's why I don't call the general reliability of the senses a "first principle".

Herein lies the crux of the problem.

We can only gain information about any external reality by interacting with it through our senses. Quite simply, there is no other way.

So the three first principles I list here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5127287&postcount=94) are necessary for science to be of any use and indeed to proceed through life with any of what I recognize as sanity.

If you reject these, it is you who is raising your standards to such a high level that you are paralyzed.

But notice that I didn't say 'general reliability' of the senses. I specifically addressed this point in that post.

As I say in that post, the one a priori that we cannot escape from is the question of origins.

The 'why me', or 'what's behind the I don't know'.

It is not as useful as the other three I address, and we can do quite well just putting it in the 'I don't know' category; but AFAIKT it is inescapable.

 

[CartesianFart]

Some people label me as an athiest and others sometimes infer that i am agnostic.I am neither of those two extremes.

To make the record known...I choose to ignore God.

Tell me,am I being athiestic or agnostic?

 

[Gothmog]

You are actually being deistic, I would say you can only ignore something you believe to exist.

Or did you mean you ignore the philosophical question of God?

In that case you are being agnostic.
There's probably another obscure name for it though.

I can't think of how an athiest would choose to ignore God.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

"[wiki]Apatheist[/wiki]" has been bandied about. If one ignores the question or thinks it irrelevant.

 

[CartesianFart]

"[wiki]Apatheist[/wiki]" has been bandied about. If one ignores the question or thinks it irrelevant.

Yeah,i forgot about this label.

It is hard to make a position and not be subjected to an already established label.

 

[Gothmog]

Heh, actually this made me think of the story of Jonah in the old testament.

He tried to ignore God, even though God was speaking right to him!

I still don't see how an athiest could choose to ignore God.

 

[CartesianFart]

I still don't see how an athiest could choose to ignore God.

Same here.-That is because if you ignore God and say "I am an atheist" then you have committed an error of the conventional meaning on how to define "atheism."

 

[Ayatollah So]

We can only gain information about any external reality by interacting with it through our senses. Quite simply, there is no other way.

So the three first principles I list here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5127287&postcount=94) are necessary for science to be of any use and indeed to proceed through life with any of what I recognize as sanity.

I like your version of the assumption about senses and reality, better than the claim that "the senses are generally reliable", as a candidate for an a priori truth. Although even with your version, I'm still undecided about its status. But if your main point is just that (a) there are some a priori truths, which (b) play a vital role in science, and which (c) may be revisable, at least in the sense that how to formulate these principles in not necessarily blindingly obvious - well then I concede that. Heck, the principles of logic qualify.

I just have a terminological quibble about using the word "first" for some of these principles. It seems to me that your three principles come relatively "late" in the game of understanding the world. I do recognize that you have reasonable historical grounds for using the term "first principles," but it just sounds funny to my ear.

 

[mdwh]

You are actually being deistic, I would say you can only ignore something you believe to exist.

Or did you mean you ignore the philosophical question of God?

In that case you are being agnostic.
There's probably another obscure name for it though.

Wouldn't be agnostic, but yes there is an obscure name for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism .

 

[WillJ]

If your (too high) standards don't allow you to flat-out assert that X, they still allow you to say something like "If you accept the first principle that our senses are trustworthy, then X," or something like that. That seems like a way to be agnostic (technically) about X, and in general have extremely high standards for the acceptance of any proposition.

Okay, I see what you're saying, but I don't consider this to be too high a standard, but simply the truth. Perhaps we disagree on what it means to "accept" something. At a practical level, I go around "accepting" just as many facts as any other normal person does.

That's too narrow, unless you mean "consistency" to include considerations of elegance, explanatory power, coherence, etc. - the desiderata of non-deductive reasoning. But that's just a nitpick, because either way (whether you construe rationality to be purely deductive, or more broadly) it points out the flaw in the "beliefs resting on other beliefs" metaphor. Both deductive consistency and inductive support relationships are relationships of mutual support. If a set of beliefs are all mutually consistent, they collectively pass muster for deductive rationality. If a set of beliefs bear good explanatory coherence relationships to each other, they all receive the praise of inductive rationality. If beliefs are metaphorically subject to "gravity", it is a mutual gravitational attraction between the beliefs, rather than a uniform gravitational field with a definitive "bottom".

Connections between beliefs aren't entirely linear (or anywhere near it), and yes, there's lots and lots of mutual support going on. But I still think there is a bottom.

Social scientists use the word "rationality" how - are we talking about maximizing expected utility? But that depends on "expectations", i.e. probabilities, which brings us right back to inductive reasoning.

It's quite possible to imagine scenarios in which using your senses would lead to the conclusion that you can't trust your senses. That's why I don't call the general reliability of the senses a "first principle".

W.r.t. social scientists, yep, that's what I meant, and yep, it deals with inductive reasoning, which I thought is why I mentioned it.

Now, maybe "general reliability" isn't a good phrase. It implies some sort of percentage or something, which isn't what I meant to say. Maybe a better way of saying it, closer to Gothmog's phrasing, would be simply that our senses connect us, to some non-zero degree, with reality. You obviously cannot check that principle using your senses.

I like your [Gothmog's] version of the assumption about senses and reality, better than the claim that "the senses are generally reliable", as a candidate for an a priori truth. Although even with your version, I'm still undecided about its status. But if your main point is just that (a) there are some a priori truths, which (b) play a vital role in science, and which (c) may be revisable, at least in the sense that how to formulate these principles in not necessarily blindingly obvious - well then I concede that. Heck, the principles of logic qualify.

I just have a terminological quibble about using the word "first" for some of these principles. It seems to me that your three principles come relatively "late" in the game of understanding the world. I do recognize that you have reasonable historical grounds for using the term "first principles," but it just sounds funny to my ear.

Well, whatever the good a priori principles are, they are "first" because a good, solid philosophy starts with them. Three-year-olds do not have good, solid philosophies.

 

[Ayatollah So]

Okay, I see what you're saying, but I don't consider this to be too high a standard, but simply the truth. Perhaps we disagree on what it means to "accept" something. At a practical level, I go around "accepting" just as many facts as any other normal person does.

Aha, you've got the disease! Why duplicate your cognitive efforts, maintaining a theoretical level and a practical level - why not just have the practical level? That's my approach, and it works great as long as you are willing to change your mind when you discover a mistake - which is going to happen anyway, whether you maintain a more careful theoretical level or not.

Now, maybe "general reliability" isn't a good phrase. It implies some sort of percentage or something, which isn't what I meant to say. Maybe a better way of saying it, closer to Gothmog's phrasing, would be simply that our senses connect us, to some non-zero degree, with reality. You obviously cannot check that principle using your senses.
[...]
Well, whatever the good a priori principles are, they are "first" because a good, solid philosophy starts with them. Three-year-olds do not have good, solid philosophies.

Considering, as a prime example, the move from your phrasing to Gothmog's phrasing of that "first principle", I'd say that a good solid philosophy ends with such principles, not starts with them. Or at least, closer to end than start.

 

[WillJ]

Aha, you've got the disease! Why duplicate your cognitive efforts, maintaining a theoretical level and a practical level - why not just have the practical level? That's my approach, and it works great as long as you are willing to change your mind when you discover a mistake - which is going to happen anyway, whether you maintain a more careful theoretical level or not.

I shouldn't have implied that I act on two separate levels. To rephrase what I said, in the experiment of life, I'm just as willing to submit the results for publishing as anyone else is, but I'll be honest with the number of significant digits. And I think someone who truly believes there are more significant digits will not be as willing to change his mind.

Considering, as a prime example, the move from your phrasing to Gothmog's phrasing of that "first principle", I'd say that a good solid philosophy ends with such principles, not starts with them. Or at least, closer to end than start.

Who ever said I had a good solid philosophy? Okay, you're right when it comes to "first" being a misnomer with regard to time. It still, though, makes sense to me to call axioms "first," even if they're not thought up first and even if their introduction doesn't lead to an entirely new philosophy (or anything near it). This "firstness" is equivalent to the gravitational "bottom," which again, I believe exists. Of course, the word choice doesn't really matter, so...