Truth

[Yuri]

If someone makes an assertion and you say that you do not believe what they assert then it must be concluded that you have beliefs based upon which you make such a denial. If you meet a stranger and they say their name is Peter you typically believe them because there is no reason not to. If they say that they are the president of the United States then since you know that there is only one president of the United States and you know who that is, then these beliefs give you good reasons not to believe their assertion. Atheism is no different.

Thanks MM. I think that this idea of mine that negative cognition being a fallacy is not quite right. I agree that atheism is no different from the example you give above, i.e. atheism is nothing but good reasons not to believe in god.

[mitchellmckain]

I don't buy your game of semantics and rhetoric to claim to be some homo-superior by calling your beliefs "knowledge" based on thinking while those who disagree with you have only beliefs based on "feeling". Your need to see something wrong with people who disagree with you makes the emotional basis of your perspective rather obvious.

In that case let's move on. When you are ready to give me examples of beliefs you have which are not formed from authority sources or knowledge you have which is not formed from logical processes then I will be ready to abandon the idea.

I am a pretty rational person -- some would say too rational. All of my beliefs come from either logical processes, first hand experience or both. Those arrived at by logic alone are typically more theoretical and their value lies in their explanatory power or some other functional role in my thinking and thus I do not call them knowledge. Those of which I have first hand experience of however go beyond mere theoretical function for they are the very substance of my existence. Thus I would say, for example, that I believe that life is a process of self organization. That is a theoretical conclusion that I come come to by a reasoning process on my own. There could be an "authority" that states this but I am not aware of it. But I would say that, I know that my wife exists and I know that God exists. For neither of these is something I can call theoretical. They are a matter of first hand experience. They are part of my life. However these two certainly began differently. My wife was never theoretical but entirely experiencial from the beginning. God however is bit less concrete and thus like many elements of physical theory began as a more theoretical idea before being experienced first hand, just as one might have a theoretical understanding of electricity before experiencing its effects for yourself.

That doesn't follow. As I explained before, logic is an equation that only takes us from premises to conclusions. It only leads to the same conclusions if you start with the same premises. It is purely delusional to claim that you don't start from any premises at all. It has been the general discovery of academia that the premises that a person's perspective is based upon are quite often buried and take considerable digging to uncover. And then quite a few people don't even want to do such digging, because they don't want the challenge of looking at the implications of their own premises and dealing with intellectual dissonance that this reveals and thus they prefer to pretend that there are no such premises -- but that only proves that the basis of their perspective is not logical thought but emotional.

If I understand your statement, you are asserting that even a logic-based reason process is rooted in subjective (emotional) premises, thus it is not possible to have a purely logical explanation for the existence of God.

Subjective does not equal emotional, and it is impossible to have a logical explanation of anything without starting with premises of some kind, because all that logic does is go from premises to conclusions. So without premises, logic gives you nothing at all. Our primary access to reality is completely subjective. The objective is an abstraction only. Now I certainly think that the way some of our scientific inquiries have defied our expections establishes rather firmly that there is objective aspect to reality out there. But that certainly doesn't prove that reality is exclusively objective.

My point is that nobody can provide a purely logical explanation for the existence of God precisely because there is no premise on which to base such an argument.

Then in that point you are completely and ridiculously wrong. People most certainly can make a explanation for the existence of God that is as logical as any other explanation/argument. There certainly are premises upon which to base such an argument. People can come up with premises from which to logically argue just about anything. What all arguments of the existence of God lack is not premises or logic but objective validity. They cannot convince the skeptic because the skeptic need not accept these premises. Objective validity is not an easy thing to achieve and science certainly does not do so in the way that you have been implying. Science certainly does rest upon premises that cannot be proven or even established by its own methodology. The objective nature of scientific inquiry comes from the fact that it supplies a written proceedure that people can follow regardless of what they believe or want and the laws of nature will guarantee that the results will be same. But however convenient you may find it to assume that everything is under these laws of nature and thus that what is discovered by science describes the limits of reality itself there is absolutely no objective means of establishing the truth of these assumptions. In any case, God is certainly not believed to be under the laws of nature and thus we can have no expectation that He can be objectively demonstrated as things are in science.

However, your assertion that all logical arguments are based on emotional perspective is wrong.

I made no such assertion. I state the simple fact that logic can do no more than derive conclusions from a set of premises.

The reason you can't provide the rational thought process to prove the existence of God that is not underpinned by emotion is that there is no rational thought process to prove the existence of God that is not underpinned by emotion.

Incorrect. I certainly can and there most certainly are. Your decision to label the basis of everything you disagree with as emotional amounts to nothing but empty semantics rhetoric. It is pure bull shit. And like I said, the rather obvious emotional basis of your use of this intolerant and prejudicial rhetoric, gives me no expectations that I can convince you to stop doing this any more than I would have been able to convince the terrorists on the planes of 9/11 to turn around and land. But the fact is that regardless of how lame your excuse is for rejecting the premises of such arguments, the simple fact is you that don't have to accept the premises. But I don't need to accept the premises of any argument that you make either, and thus you cannot prove anything to me by logic alone any more than I can. Take for example the proofs in mathematics. The meaningfullness of those proofs all rest on the assumption that the whole system of axioms on which mathematics is based is logically consitent. But unfortunately one of the few things that we can actually proves is that proof of the logical consistency of mathematics is itself impossible. Alas...

My second challenge (which you accepted) was to provide an explanation of free will with an omniscient God in a deterministic universe. If I may avoid quoting a large chunk of your post and instead summarize your answer in my own words, you say that you believe in free will, a non-deterministic universe, and a partially-sighted God with limited powers. These conclusions are based on physics and comply with certain logical limitations on omniscience and omnipotence. I hope I have understood it correctly.

No you apparently haven't understood very much of anything.

May I firstly congratulate you on an ingenious example of creative rationalization. You have taken three different jigsaw puzzles and managed to put them together to make one picture that fits your knowledge and beliefs. Outstanding - no wonder you are proud of your theological viewpoint. I am impressed.

Define rationalization. I was doing nothing more than stating a few facts - explaining some of the results of modern physics and explaining the theological position known as open theism in case you were not aware of it. What was I supposedly rationalizing? What jigsaw puzzle pieces are you talking about? What picture are you talking about and what knowledge and beliefs of mine are you talking about that I am fitting it to? I think you are imagining way too much about me when the fact is that you know practically nothing.

I congratulate you on your ability to make your contempt for the beliefs of others shine through everything you say. You are rather obviously proud of your intolerant attitudes that dimiss everyone who believes differently than you as defective. But I am not impressed.

Please help me understand your dismissal of determinism. Correct my simplistic understanding please: The universe consists of stuff which obeys laws of nature. No random interactions occur between the stuff, and no power outside the universe reaches in to affect those laws. Thus, as Laplace said,

“We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.”

Good lord, you take somthing that a mathematician and astronomer said in 1814 and think that proves something. Am I talking to someone from two centuries ago? I am as flabbergasted as when I spoke to someone from the Flat Earth Society. I must reconstruct all of the science from the last two centuries for you?

You have told me that Bell and others have given us certain models for QM that give us an incomplete picture of the laws of nature.

Incorrect. I said nothing of the kind. What Bell did was prove that any attempt to interpret Quantum Mechanics as a incomplete theory where their were unknown variables that determined the result of quantum measurements would make the measurement of certain correlations obey a certain mathematical relation known as Bell's inequality. So scientists performed the experiment to measure these correlations and found that the mathematical relation was not obeyed. This established once and for all that the hope of determinists that QM could be proven incomplete was a false hope. This is why the most research on this topic (do a google on the quote of Laplace you gave above) gives you statements like the following even in Wikipedia.

Due to its assumption of determinism, Laplace's thought experiment is inherently incompatible with quantum mechanical theories, where chance is an essential part of the world's unfolding. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, for example, states that exact measurements of positions and momentum may not be defined (and observed) together with more than a given precision.

However, those laws still exist, whether we know them or not.

LOL Interesting. A determinism of the gaps argument. Now I have seen everything!

No my friend. The laws which you have imagined and decided to believe in by blind faith and emotion have been conclusively proven not to exist.

Sorry.

In reality, there are no laws of nature that give random results for interactions between stuff. We just don't yet know what those laws are because we don't understand what stuff really is and how it interacts.

Incorrect. But there is probably no more hope of getting you to see that, than there is any hope of getting creationists to accept that the theory of evolution is an established scientific fact. Your belief vs. knowledge rhetoric does not look all that promising a framework to allow you to understand that your view of reality just doesn't agree with the discoveries of science. But we shall see. Perhaps you will a little research and discover that you have not understood the current state of scientific knowledge after all, and perhaps that will help you to be a little less quick at making your subjective beliefs the basis for judging other people to be brain damaged.

Assuming that you continue to defend your unscientific world view, I still have to thank you. You will have provided me a WONDERFUL example of an atheist that is just as out of touch with reality as any creationist. I am really most grateful. But in that case, there really is no point in continuing, for I could no longer have any faith that we can pursue this discussion on a rational basis.

[Yuri]

I know that my wife exists and I know that God exists. For neither of these is something I can call theoretical. They are a matter of first hand experience.

So you know God exists and you know your wife exists. Hmm... If you are using similar reasoning processes to come to these conclusions then frankly I doubt the existence of your wife. Come on MM, trying to equate your first-hand experience of your wife with your experience of God is too much of a stretch. That's just silly! Unless, of course, you have actually met God, hugged him, chatted with him, argued with him, felt his breath in your face and watched him do some of his superpowers - in which case I humbly apologize for misrepresenting your statement.

My point is that nobody can provide a purely logical explanation for the existence of God precisely because there is no valid objective premise on which to base such an argument.

Then in that point you are completely and ridiculously wrong. ... What all arguments of the existence of God lack is not premises or logic but objective validity.

So apart from your assertion that I am completely and ridiculously wrong, we appear to agree on this then. Good.

The notion that all observations are subjective and thus equally invalid is just as silly as the notion that your experience of god is as valid a proof of god's existence as your experience of your wife is of your wife's existence. If you really want to claim that no observation can be considered as a valid premise because it is inherently subjective then we all live in the matrix. This kind of philosophical dead-end, whilst it is an interesting idea to play with, is just whimsy. I know that reality exists and I am part of it and if I'm wrong then it really doesn't matter, does it?

You seem to be trying to convince me that logic-based reason is the same as value-based reason. Not an easy task since they are psychologically opposite kinds of mental process.

Your decision to label the basis of everything you disagree with as emotional amounts to nothing but empty semantics rhetoric. It is pure bull shit.

That should be simple for you to back up with an example. Just to be clear, it was you who brought the word "emotional" into this. I started off using the phrase "value-based reason" as an equivalent to Jung's "feeling" function. So, put your logic where your emotion is and prove I am talking "bull shit" by giving me an example of value-based reasoning from authority sources in which we can have the same confidence of its truthfulness as we can in a valid logical argument from sound premises.

This is the same type of question you have already dodged that I asked:
"Give me the rational thought process you have used that God exists, without any element of it coming from an assumption or authority source, and I shall know that God exists too!" To which you replied "That does not follow." What aspect of it does not follow? It can't "not follow", it doesn't have a sequence of deductions.

If you think that belief and knowledge are the same thing, it is a simple challenge. If, however, belief and knowledge are different kinds of information, then it is impossible - which is precisely why I ask you to do it, to illustrate that you are in error when you say belief and knowledge are the same.

My second challenge (which you accepted) was to provide an explanation of free will with an omniscient God in a deterministic universe. If I may avoid quoting a large chunk of your post and instead summarize your answer in my own words, you say that you believe in free will, a non-deterministic universe, and a partially-sighted God with limited powers. These conclusions are based on physics and comply with certain logical limitations on omniscience and omnipotence. I hope I have understood it correctly.

No you apparently haven't understood very much of anything.

Oh. I thought I had it about right. Shame you haven't told me what I got wrong. Look, let's make this simple:

1. You believe we have free will. Right or wrong?
2. You believe God is not omniscient. Right or wrong?
3. You believe God is not omnipotent. Right or wrong?

May I firstly congratulate you on an ingenious example of creative rationalization. You have taken three different jigsaw puzzles and managed to put them together to make one picture that fits your knowledge and beliefs. Outstanding - no wonder you are proud of your theological viewpoint. I am impressed.

Define rationalization.

Rationalization: a consonant cognition invented by the subject to enable conflicts between his knowledge and belief to be reconciled. E.g. The knowledge that logic precludes free will and an omniscient god is "rationalized" by inventing the consonant cognition that god is only omniscient when he chooses to be so. Thus, Rationalization is hanging on to beliefs by adjusting them slightly so they do not conflict with improvements in knowledge.

There are pitfalls with the use of rationalization, one of which is that it is a form of fabrication that disguises itself as deduction.

- explaining some of the results of modern physics and explaining the theological position known as open theism in case you were not aware of it. What was I supposedly rationalizing?

your belief with your knowledge.

What jigsaw puzzle pieces are you talking about?

The jigsaws are a metaphor for the conflicting beliefs and knowledge that you are rationalizing.

What picture are you talking about

Your theology

and what knowledge and beliefs of mine are you talking about that I am fitting it to?

your knowledge is your education in physics and maths and logic, and your belief is your belief in God.

I think you are imagining way too much about me when the fact is that you know practically nothing.

I hope you're right for your sake!

Good lord, you take somthing that a mathematician and astronomer said in 1814 and think that proves something. Am I talking to someone from two centuries ago? I am as flabbergasted as when I spoke to someone from the Flat Earth Society. I must reconstruct all of the science from the last two centuries for you?

(the bible is older!)

I didn't think science had really disproved Laplace's thought experiment. My logic was that we hadn't yet discovered the deterministic model for the interactions between stuff. However, you have given me good reason to know that science has discovered that the universe has an element of randomness which explains the possibility of free will. My knowledge on the subject is comparably incomplete and yours is more advanced than mine. Or as you put it,

The laws which you have imagined and decided to believe in by blind faith and emotion have been conclusively proven not to exist.

If it was blind faith and emotion, it would not be easy to abandon my "beliefs". However, like I said, I don't have beliefs in subjects that I know have an ultimate truth, only knowledge. You have given me new information that there is no complete law of nature (known or unknown) that determines interactions between stuff. I'm not taking your word for it; I'm gonna read up on it and try to understand it so I can know it for myself. Wrong knowledge, unlike wrong belief, is so easy to ditch in the light of better evidence. Thank you.

In his book, The Moral Landscape, author and neuroscientist Sam Harris mentions some ways that determinism and modern scientific understanding might challenge the idea of a contra-causal free will. He offers one thought experiment where a mad scientist represents determinism. In Harris' example, the mad scientist uses a machine to control all the desires, and thus all the behaviour, of a particular human. Harris believes that it is no longer as tempting, in this case, to say the victim has "free will". Harris says nothing changes if the machine controls desires at random - the victim still seems to lack free will. Harris then argues that we are also the victims of such unpredictable desires (but due to the unconscious machinations of our brain, rather than those of a mad scientist). Based on this introspection, he writes "This discloses the real mystery of free will: if our experience is compatible with its utter absence, how can we say that we see any evidence for it in the first place?" adding that "Whether they are predictable or not, we do not cause our causes." That is, he believes there is compelling evidence of absence of free will.

How would you respond to Harris?

[Keep The Reason]

[Moonwood the Hare]

Yuri - You have identified theory as one kind of knowing. Are the other kinds the things we know by direct experience, what Popper would call existential truth claims? Would you say all of these must be empirical?

I still think you have misunderstood Jung's concept of feeling and I suspect this is because you are a predominantly thinking type yourself and are assuming that feeling judgement is just an inferior way of doing what thinking judgement does that is discerning between true and false - hence you think beliefs are truth claims based on feeling. For Jung feeling is a kind of judgement but it is not trying to decide what is true but whether whether a thing is good or bad.

I do note that you have seen some of the ambivalence in Jung's claim to know there is a God. Jung saw himself as an empirical scientist and he follows Kant's distinction between noumena and phenomena. Hence when he claims to know there is a God he was almost certainly talking about a phenomena within the collective psyche of mankind and not a metaphysical entity. This is the point Richard Dawkins completely misses when having taken a load of people some of whom who plainly did have metaphysical God beliefs he says they were scientists and so cannot have really believed in God but then assumes that Jung must have had such beliefs because he also believed in poltergeist phenomena.

You'll get used to Mitch by the way. I agree with much of what he says but he trips so easily from passionate argument into something more like abuse.

[mitchellmckain]

So you know God exists and you know your wife exists. Hmm... If you are using similar reasoning processes to come to these conclusions then frankly I doubt the existence of your wife. Come on MM, trying to equate your first-hand experience of your wife with your experience of God is too much of a stretch. That's just silly! Unless, of course, you have actually met God, hugged him, chatted with him, argued with him, felt his breath in your face and watched him do some of his superpowers - in which case I humbly apologize for misrepresenting your statement.

LOL I haven't hugged electricity or felt the breath of galaxies on my face and yet I know that they exist. Electricity, galaxies and God are not human beings so of course you would not expect the same kind of interactions with them as with a human being let alone like my wife.

The notion that all observations are subjective and thus equally invalid is just as silly as your experience of god is as valid a proof of god's existence

I agree. I wonder where you came up with such notions then.

My experience of God and my wife is sufficient for MY own knowledge of them, but they certainly do not constitute anything like an objective proof.

What is absurd is your implicit premise that something is only sufficient for knowledge if it can be proven to other people. It seems to me that there are two obvious motivations for such a premise. One is cowardice and such a feeble hold on reality that one has to look for the agreement and confirmation of others before believing anything. The other is the delusion that all one ever believes is only what is proven which I think is connected to the intolerant practice of making ones own beliefs the standard by which to judge all of humanity -- imagining that any who disagree must be defective in some way.

If you really want to claim that no observation can be considered as a valid premise because it is inherently subjective then we all live in the matrix. This kind of philosophical dead-end, whilst it is an interesting idea to play with, is just whimsy. I know that reality exists and I am part of it and if I'm wrong then it really doesn't matter, does it?

No I don't make any such claim and I agree that the idea that we all live in the matrix is kind of a philosophical dead-end, BUT the fact is irrefutable that we cannot PROVE that we DON'T all live in the matrix. That is EXACTLY why it is delusional to imagine that one only believes what is proven. Solipsism (like determinism frankly) is a philosophical dead end because it is out of touch with the realitites of human existence and has no practical value for human life.

You seem to be trying to convince me that logic-based reason is the same as value-based reason. Not an easy task since they are psychologically opposite kinds of mental process.

You should do more reading of what I actually write instead of imagining things that you want me to be saying. No what I think our discussion is proving is that you have a very poor understanding of what logic actually is and thus it has become for you nothing more than a kind of magic word you use to imagine that your reasoning is better than that of those who disagree with you. Have you taken any classes in logic?

Logic is not a basis for reasoning but the methodology of reasoning. Values and desires are certainly the central basis of choices that people make because that is one of the most fundamental parts of being alive. It seems there are many irrational atheists today that like to imagine that they are only objective observers and their life is some kind of scientific inquiry. But this is just a fantasy that they indulge in. Not only are they not any kind of scientist, so they really haven't much of a clue as to what actually constitutes a scientific inquiry, but the truth is that life necessarily requires subjective participation in order to be life at all and simply cannot be restricted to objective observation. It is the very nature of the process of life itself that living things impose their own order upon the world -- taking in substance of the world and reorganizing it into their own structure. Thus to imagine that desires and values pay no role in ones perception of the world is just about the most unrealistic delusion that can be imagined.

So, put your logic where your emotion is and prove I am talking "bull shit" by giving me an example of value-based reasoning from authority sources in which we can have the same confidence of its truthfulness as we can in a valid logical argument from sound premises.

I am supposed to come up with examples to support your ridiculous straw men? My response is "burn baby burn". Burn your strawmen have your own self congratulating party to masterbate your ego and come back when you are ready to participate in a rational discussion with OTHER people.

This is the same type of question you have already dodged that I asked:
"Give me the rational thought process you have used that God exists, without any element of it coming from an assumption or authority source, and I shall know that God exists too!" To which you replied "That does not follow." What aspect of it does not follow? It can't "not follow", it doesn't have a sequence of deductions.

I explained that. It does not follow from giving a rational thought process that you will come to the same conclusion because logic only goes from premises to conclusions. Thus you only come to the same conclusions if you accept the same premises. I certainly don't accept more than half the preposterous premises that are implicit in your posts and so I would hardly expect that you are going to accept the premises of any rational thought process that leads to a belief in God -- especially when you are so obviously emotionally invested in the denial of God's existence that you declare that religous people must have brain damage.

If you think that belief and knowledge are the same thing, it is a simple challenge.

But I don't think that belief and knowledge are the same thing. You just don't listen (read or whatever). The set of integers is a subset of the set of real numbers. Does that mean that integers and real numbers are the same thing? No. It does mean that integers are real numbers. But there are real numbers that are not integers. You have used Venn diagrams so I hope that you actually understand what they mean. I said quite clearly that knowledge is a subset of belief and that does not mean that they are the same thing. It does mean that knowlege certainly consists of beliefs but not all beliefs are knowledge.

So I have given you an example already of my beliefs and my knowledge, but no I am not going to give examples to support your strawmen. I say to you again - burn baby burn - and come back with a smile on your face.

1. You believe we have free will. Right or wrong?
2. You believe God is not omniscient. Right or wrong?
3. You believe God is not omnipotent. Right or wrong?

right, wrong, wrong.
But your failure to understand goes far beyond your failure to understand these last two points. The summary you made is absurd and shows very little understanding of what I said. These three points are certainly not a summary of what I said either.

May I firstly congratulate you on an ingenious example of creative rationalization. You have taken three different jigsaw puzzles and managed to put them together to make one picture that fits your knowledge and beliefs. Outstanding - no wonder you are proud of your theological viewpoint. I am impressed.

Define rationalization.

Rationalization: a consonant cognition invented by the subject to enable conflicts between his knowledge and belief to be reconciled. E.g. The knowledge that logic precludes free will and an omniscient god is "rationalized" by inventing the consonant cognition that god is only omniscient when he chooses to be so. Thus, Rationalization is hanging on to beliefs by adjusting them slightly so they do not conflict with improvements in knowledge.

And as I expected, this renders your comment nonsensical. I was informing you of what Bell's inequality and open theism were about and I certainly did not invent either of them. You really should be more careful, just because you have never heard of a thing before does not mean that someone is making it up right there and then.

I think you are imagining way too much about me when the fact is that you know practically nothing.

I hope you're right for your sake!

Ah yes! because you are the judge of the world, little god.

However, like I said, I don't have beliefs in subjects that I know have an ultimate truth, only knowledge. You have given me new information that there is no complete law of nature (known or unknown) that determines interactions between stuff. I'm not taking your word for it; I'm gonna read up on it and try to understand it so I can know it for myself. Wrong knowledge, unlike wrong belief, is so easy to ditch in the light of better evidence. Thank you.

Shucks! There goes my hope that you were an example of an atheist that was as out of touch with reality as any creationist. I weep in disappointment -- of course, I am happy for your sake that you are not such an idiot but I was SO hoping.... it would have been SO fun to have such an excellent example... sigh... LOL

(the bible is older!)

In his book, The Moral Landscape, author and neuroscientist Sam Harris mentions some ways that determinism and modern scientific understanding might challenge the idea of a contra-causal free will. He offers one thought experiment where a mad scientist represents determinism. In Harris' example, the mad scientist uses a machine to control all the desires, and thus all the behaviour, of a particular human. Harris believes that it is no longer as tempting, in this case, to say the victim has "free will". Harris says nothing changes if the machine controls desires at random - the victim still seems to lack free will. Harris then argues that we are also the victims of such unpredictable desires (but due to the unconscious machinations of our brain, rather than those of a mad scientist). Based on this introspection, he writes "This discloses the real mystery of free will: if our experience is compatible with its utter absence, how can we say that we see any evidence for it in the first place?" adding that "Whether they are predictable or not, we do not cause our causes." That is, he believes there is compelling evidence of absence of free will.

Well good luck with your newer bibles by Laplace and Sam Harris.

How would you respond to Harris?

I would respond that on the issue of determinism he seems to be as out of touch with reality as you obviously were. I certainly think that the modern scientific understanding of the human brain has made rather outdated and untenable the old Christian ideas of connecting Descartes' mind-body dualism with their belief in a spiritual reality which envisions the spirit as some kind of puppet master controlling the body.

To his thought experiment, I would say, like I have said innumerable times to participants in this forum, before ever having heard Sam Harris' little parable, that I believe that our free will, like life itself, is a quantitative thing and neither absolute nor inviolable, but something that varies considerably -- depending on things like ones beliefs and ones awareness of the possibilites. And so our free will is something that can definitely be destroyed -- and I think has demonstrably been destroyed by such things as drugs -- just as Harris imagines his machine doing. No, I do not believe that free will is some magical quantity or guarantee that God added to "His design", but that it is part of the very function and purpose of life itself. Life is a process of self-organization and that is exactly where our free will is to be found. Living things are not products of design at all but participants in the process of their own creation making their own decisions to add incrementally to what they have inherited from those who have gone before. Thus our free will, to whatever degree we may have free will, does not consist of any power over reality to make things as we would like them to be, but only to decide what to do with what we have been given.

[Rian]

Y'know, Yuri sounds a lot like KTR - I mean a lot like KTR ... really a LOT like KTR ... and they even often post only about 30 minutes apart ... and Yuri joined Wednesday, and on Thursday and Friday KTR's posts dropped way off and Yuri has the same post rate those days that KTR had as an average ...

One of the few differences between KTR and Yuri that I DO know of is that Mitch has KTR on ignore ...

No what I think our discussion is proving is that you have a very poor understanding of what logic actually is and thus it has become for you nothing more than a kind of magic word you use to imagine that your reasoning is better than that of those who disagree with you.

Well said!

Enjoying yourself?

[Keep The Reason]

Y'know, Yuri sounds a lot like KTR - I mean a lot like KTR ... really a LOT like KTR ... and they even often post only about 30 minutes apart ... and Yuri joined Wednesday, and on Thursday and Friday KTR's posts dropped way off and Yuri has the same post rate those days that KTR had as an average ...

One of the few differences between KTR and Yuri that I DO know of is that Mitch has KTR on ignore ...

No what I think our discussion is proving is that you have a very poor understanding of what logic actually is and thus it has become for you nothing more than a kind of magic word you use to imagine that your reasoning is better than that of those who disagree with you.

Well said!

Enjoying yourself?

It's not me, Rian but thanks for your usual low opinion. I don't play that kind of bullshit game, and believe me, I am perfectly happy not interacting in anyway with mitchell. And I have literally no knowledge of the whole Myer's Brigs thing. Also, I think Yuri is British, which I most decidedly am not.

Both you and your accusation is just pathetic. But have your delusions. It's not your only one.

[mitchellmckain]

Y'know, Yuri sounds a lot like KTR - I mean a lot like KTR ... really a LOT like KTR ... and they even often post only about 30 minutes apart ... and Yuri joined Wednesday, and on Thursday and Friday KTR's posts dropped way off and Yuri has the same post rate those days that KTR had as an average ...

One of the few differences between KTR and Yuri that I DO know of is that Mitch has KTR on ignore ...

I don't see see the similarity -- not that it really matters all that much. If KTR really could behave like a different person would I have no problem talking to him. It is not a matter of holding a grudge but simply finding myself wishing over and over again that I had not wasted my time reading KTR's posts. I haven't had that reaction to Yuri at all. But really, I don't see any similarity - not in the way that they post and not in the way that they think and not in the way that they engage. I don't know that the differences are all that easy to describe, but I see them. But... take the observation you quoted for example. Not even bothering to use logic half the time is not quite the same thing as having a poor understanding of what it is. For example, one can know all the logical fallacies and yet commit those fallacies regularly or one can know nothing of them and yet not commit any of them even once. Abstract knowledge of logic and the practice of logic just aren't the same thing at all.

[Yuri]

Y'know, Yuri sounds a lot like KTR - I mean a lot like KTR ... really a LOT like KTR ... and they even often post only about 30 minutes apart ... and Yuri joined Wednesday, and on Thursday and Friday KTR's posts dropped way off and Yuri has the same post rate those days that KTR had as an average ...

An excellent moment to bring up conspiracy theories in general, and specifically the concept of "reliability". Rian has seen a pattern (pattern seeking is a skill that evolutionists claim must have been advantageous to the survival of our species) and made a false deduction from his observation. But - who else will fall for it based on his assertion? Who will erroneously assess him as a reliable source, and who will accurately discriminate against him and assess him as an unreliable source?

Reliability
Belief is composed of concepts that we take on trust from authority sources. If we fully understand a concept then it ceases to be belief and becomes part of our knowledge. If we are not in a position, for whatever reason, to fully understand a concept from first principles, and the whole concept or elements of it rely on authority sources, then we will naturally say that we "believe in" the topic. We ought to vet our sources for their reliability before accepting their propositions. Let’s say that I am a thrill seeker and I intend to bungee jump off a bridge. I might know nothing about bungee dynamics, harness design or karabiner safe working loads. I could go and study those things to make a knowledgeable assessment of the safety of the bungee jump. If my study is complete, I will say,
"The jump is safe." However, let’s say I’m on holiday and I have a short window of opportunity to make the jump. How now can I assess the safety of the jump? I must resort to value-based reasoning. I ask the operator,
“Is it safe?” He says,

“Yes.” 

“How do you know?” I ask.

“The bungee is less than a week old and has a working life of 3000 jumps, and a safe working load of 1000kg. The harness is the type used by electricity pylon engineers and miners and is a week old. I have personally checked all the components of the system this morning, and you are the 4th jumper of the day. The Australian rugby team all had a go yesterday.” No doubt I will cast my eye over the set-up to see if it looks like it matches his description. Again, I am relying on a subjective judgement. I may or may not trust the operator. I must make a judgement and part of that judgement is my assessment of the reliability of the source of the proposition that the bungee jump is safe. My wisdom in selecting my beliefs therefore depends upon my wisdom in assessing the reliability of my sources. In the case of a bungee jump, my life may depend upon my ability to discriminate between trustworthy and untrustworthy sources. If I assess the source to be reliable, and find no logical reason to doubt him, I will say "I believe the jump is safe."

I have argued that we ought not to hold beliefs on topics that we know must have an ultimate truth. Although it might be a good way to minimize our untrue beliefs, it is not a practical proposition. Life forces us to decide on many topics whether to believe or dismiss propositions for which we simply do not have the opportunity to test by logic-based reason. In order to ensure that our beliefs are likely to be true, we must become astute discriminators. We must have the courage to question the reliability of our sources and dismiss propositions from unreliable sources. If we do not develop the power to discriminate between reliable and unreliable sources, we are likely to be gullible sponges soaking up bad information as beliefs. Many of us know people who match this description; people who are taken in by the next fad, who fall for the most ridiculous conspiracy theories, who try weird and wonderful alternative medical treatments, who are unable to distinguish between sound authority and snake oil salesmen.

Is there a way we can improve our discriminatory effectiveness? Absolutely. We may have no choice but to make a value judgement on the topic itself by accepting an authority source, but that does not necessarily mean we have to make a value judgement on the reliability of that source. We can and should be as objective as possible in making that assessment.
 “How long have you been operating this bungee jump? May I see your operator’s license and insurance policy please? When was the last accident or incident at this installation?” None of these questions requires specialist knowledge of bungee jumps, but their answers are what will give you the knowledge to make an objective assessment of the reliability of your source. In extremis, you could go so far as to have your source explain his sources, hypotheses, experiments and conclusions, thus removing any need for your trust in his reliability or belief in his propositions, instead knowing for yourself the validity of his claims. Thus, beliefs formed from reliable authority sources may be considered to have sound premises and valid conclusions on the basis that the authority source has been objectively vetted for its reliability.

Why is it that most people who make a bungee jump don’t ask these questions? (My answer to this question in my next post, "reliability and risk management".)

Rian: are you a snake oil salesman by profession? You sound like a snake oil salesman. A lot like a snake oil salesman. I mean, a LOT like a snake oil salesman. My mum bought some snake oil off a bloke called "Rian", and he had no objective proof of the effectiveness of the snake oil, but he said he knew a woman who had arthritis who tried this snake oil and got better. He also said it even improved the efficiency of his car. And once you get suckered in... you will even see a supporting correlation in a piece of evidence that is circumstantial and irrelevant such as "Yuri joined on Wednesday and on Thursday KTR's posts dropped off"! The birth of Faith.

[mitchellmckain]

An excellent moment to bring up conspiracy theories in general, and specifically the concept of "reliability". Rian has seen a pattern (pattern seeking is a skill that evolutionists claim must have been advantageous to the survival of our species) and made a false deduction from his observation. But - who else will fall for it based on his assertion? Who will erroneously assess him as a reliable source, and who will accurately discriminate against him and assess him as an unreliable source?

To draw a tangent that connects to our discussion... This is related to a basic assumption of science, that nature, the evidence and the results of our experiments are not intentionally made to decieve us. Science assumes that there are no little demons our there planting false clues and feeding lies to our telescopes and microscopes in order to make us believe the lies that they want us to. It assumes that although the truth may be hard to see at times, there is nothing intentionally trying to decieve us, and thus we can take what nature and the evidence tells us at its word. It is at most uncaring but certainly not diabolical. If the world was created by a deity then it is a not a deity who wants us to remain in ignorance and so He did not intentionally design the world in order to keep us in the dark.

[Yuri]

Yuri - You have identified theory as one kind of knowing. Are the other kinds the things we know by direct experience, what Popper would call existential truth claims? Would you say all of these must be empirical?

There are other kinds of knowing. When we take in information we label it as knowledge, belief, fact, fiction, nonsense etc. My point is that we should be careful what we think or feel is true, and we should understand the bases of our assertions that information is true. By looking at the process backwards, i.e. by asking ourselves if we think we "know" something or if we feel we "believe" something, that should tell us what kind of reasoning process we went through to give the information that label. We can then review our reasoning process, audit it if you like, to ensure that we labeled our information correctly. The process we went through could be any number of specific things such as empirical processes or otherwise. I use logic and value-based reason to show the ends of the spectrum. Much of our information will have been formed by a variety of processes before we give it our label, which is why sometimes we say we believe and know something. In such a case, we probably have value and logical bases for the information. The important thing is to check our reasoning for validity. Just doing that ought to help us weed out tons of bad information from "belief" and "knowledge" and consign it to the recycle bin.

I still think you have misunderstood Jung's concept of feeling and I suspect this is because you are a predominantly thinking type yourself and are assuming that feeling judgement is just an inferior way of doing what thinking judgement does that is discerning between true and false - hence you think beliefs are truth claims based on feeling. For Jung feeling is a kind of judgement but it is not trying to decide what is true but whether whether a thing is good or bad.

Thanks, I will have to think about that. Good/bad vs true/false. Hmmm.

You have inspired me to read more about Jung (I only really knew about him through the work of Myers & Briggs), and I found something that raised my eyebrows. Jung's ideas about existentialism and anxiety: Jung saw anxiety as something useful in psychoanalysis because anxiety can be used as a motivational force to help someone improve their life. If you consider that another way, then something that removes anxiety could be considered harmful because it takes away that motivation. In my view, religion is like an anaesthetic to remove anxiety about death and other things. This has been a sticking point for me as to whether it is moral to lead people away from religion to what I think is the truth. Jung gives me moral support to carry on because although abandonment of religious ideology gives rise to anxiety about the finality of death, it has the benefit that it restores people's motivation to improve their lives rather than lie about in glassy-eyed ecstasy at the thought of the afterlife, wasting the only opportunity they have of existence.

[Yuri]

How would you respond to Harris?

I would respond that on the issue of determinism he seems to be as out of touch with reality as you obviously were.

I am delighted to hear that. Thank you.

I believe that our free will, like life itself, is a quantitative thing and neither absolute nor inviolable, but something that varies considerably -- depending on things like ones beliefs and ones awareness of the possibilites. And so our free will is something that can definitely be destroyed -- and I think has demonstrably been destroyed by such things as drugs -- just as Harris imagines his machine doing.

Sounds like you are saying that free will is determined by the environment of the brain. I couldn't agree more!

P.S.

My experience of .. my wife do[es] not constitute anything like an objective proof [of her existence]

You're not really married, are you...?!

[Keep The Reason]

For the record, my posts have dropped way off because there's little point in arguing these issues with the same 6 people until the crack of doom. I'm not really the type to say things like, "I'm done here" or anything dopey dramatic like that, nor are others (like tirtlegrrl, who just faded away, sadly), so there's nothing particularly noteworthy about this. But as I do wean myself away from this slice of internetiquity, it's disheartening to see the same repetitive patterns from the same people over and over, in particular mitch and Rian.

On the other hand, Rian, I take it as a compliment, back-handed as your Christian charity deems to offer it, in that you would compare me to Yuri. He's goddamned impressive, and I only wish I had his degree of knowledge of these belief/knowledge structures, and it's been a pleasure to read his posts and be enlightened a bit more. It's also delightful that he has rattled Mitchell's cage so effectively, and I had to chuckle when my private bet with myself, shared with Yuri alone, came to pass within about 2 hours of my making it. (This is all an inside joke that Yuri understands and you aren't worth the effort of me explaining, but no worries, you wouldn't be interested anyway).

I'm sure you think this is nothing more than me just clapping myself on the back, which I implore you to keep believing. Its a compliment to me, he doesn't seem the least bit insulted by it, and sin you must in order to make your god's self-sacrifice a worthwhile effort.

[Matt]

I would define truth as "that which corresponds to reality."

While there is an objective reality out there, no one has objective or flawless access to that reality. We are always limited by our senses and our biases. Truth claims always involve judgment--we judge something to be true or false. We judge things to be consistent with reality as we have experienced it.

While I don't think "belief" and "truth" are the same thing, neither do I think you can separate them into different categories--"these are matters of truth, and these are matters of faith and belief."