Is My Hypothesis Valid???

I don't think we're all talking about the same thing with the word "unknowable"...Way back in Message 220, I had this to say:

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Not RAZD's "inherently unknowable" deity.

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I'm not going to speak for RAZD, but the Diests' god is not "unknowable" in the sense that there is nothing empirical at all about it. A quick look at the wiki page on deism shows:

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Deism is a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme God created the universe, and that this and other religious truth can be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without the need for faith.

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bold added for emphasis

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What they mean by "unknowable" is to contrast it with theism which has a god that can be communicated with or "known".

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And in Message 218 I said:

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If you're defining it {"empirical"} as "able to be heard", then RAZD's deity is not inherantly non-empirical as there has to be something there to bring it up in the first place...

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Has RAZD explicitly stated that his diety is "inherantly unknowable" in the sense that you are using it?

Who knows what RAZD really means?What do you think he means?If something can be detected by means of our 5 senses can you explain to me how it can be immune from scientific investigation?Do you think RAZD is saying that gods might be explored one day if we can just invent the technology capable of doing so? Is that what you believe about your god? Are deities just ethereal "Higgs Bosons" waiting to be empirically discovered? Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

not true.what about the conscious, aware person who went for a walk in the woods and came back and told you what he experienced? this is subjective evidence. your original equation discounted it.(more coming after)

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- xongsmith

Scientific investigation relies on the control, repeatability, predictibility, etc of the experience so something simply being of our 5 senses doesn't necessitate that we can investigate it scientifically.Lets say that your on one side of a dark canyon with your team of scientists and I'm, unknowingly, on the other holding a laser pointer and a pair of night vision goggles. When you are looking, and no one else, I shine the laser in your direction so you can see it. When the scientists turn to look, I keep it off. The experience you had of the laser would be empirical but immune from scientific investigation because I have the ability to decide who gets to see it.Same scenario, but this time the laser has a faulty battery where it sparatically turns off and on. This time it would be immune from investigation because the results are not repeatable or predictable.Or how about if I can shine the laser directly into your eye and, perhaps because of the total lack of any dust, the scientist cannot see it at even the slightest angle.For a totally different scenario, think of something that happened only once, how about the Big Bang, we can't investigate that scientifcally. I believe that god is not a part of our universe, that he is "outside" of it, so I don't think we're going to see him from the inside, but I also believe he has the ability to effect the inside of our univers should he so desire. Maybe he is able to be sensed sometimes but not others, by design or by choice. Our lack of scientific evidence for him suggests that he just doesn't want to be detected, or is only detectible sparatically, just as much as it suggests that he doesn't exist at all.

RAZD is only saying that there are lots of levels of non-empirical or subjective evidence. he gave you the example - the man coming out of the woods and telling you what he experienced. this is second-hand. it is subjective testimony. it can form the beginning of a hypothesis which can be further investigated. if the man says he saw a squirrel or if he says he saw an IPU then we can assign some importance to the evidence. but we have crossed outside the Venn Diagram's boundary of Objective Evidence either way.to your equation{objective evidence} + {logic} => hypothesisand your associated question "Is this valid?"in a nutshell, he answers "No."couldnt this thread have just ended there?naw - we gotta do a complete autopsy.
he eventually came up with a simplification for you:{evidence} + {logic} => {hypothesis}however, after long re-considerations of re-considerations, i have come back to one my first conclusions about this thread. this isnt about your question at all. it's all about getting RAZD caught in a trap. you wanted to use this thread to get him to trip over some detail in a different subject/thread whatever. you are repeatedly trying to get him to make a mistake, to miss a freethrow. he has stated that he doesnt want to get into that stuff here. he has seen through your deceit and refuses to fall for it. you keep asking him to shoot 10,000 freethrows in the hopes that he will miss one and you can lick your lips and move in for the KILL!you have already acknowledged that certain types of non-empirical evidence can form an acceptable basis for a tentative hypothesis that needs further investigation. that was all he trying to get you to admit. but then you keep asking him to shoot freethrows.you may now effusively say that you just want to know what his position on that other issue is, but that is not what you really want. you want to trip him up. he has seen through your thinly veiled attempt. give up. he is not going to the line here.i am also having trouble trying to understand the others who seem to support you and your crusade.p.s. - we should change the example to a woman coming out of the woods. because, as we all know, a man alone in the woods is _still_ wrong.

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- xongsmith

The telling is subjective, but the beginning point was still objective. At the beginning of the chain is something objective and empirical, or at least possibly so. My interest in this thread, and I assume many others' as well, is that we find RAZD to be one of the best posters on this forum, effortlessly chopping creationists up with grace and skill. Yet he claims to believe in, which means asserts the actual existence of, a deity that is inherently unknowable. This seems very strange and I want to know where the disconnect is. How can he be such a rational, logical person when it comes to others' sincerely held beliefs, yet can't be so when it comes to his own? I find it perplexing, but I try and stay out of these conversations, to a degree, because I do respect that he doesn't want ot talk about it, as frustrating as that is.Edited by Perdition, : No reason given.

They expect a belief in god to be irrational and/or illogical.

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ABE:Just saw the post above mine after I submitted:

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How can he be such a rational, logical person when it comes to others' sincerely held beliefs, yet can't be so when it comes to his own?

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See? A belief in god couldn't possibly be rational or logical Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

I have yet to see a belief in god(s) based on sound logic. Faith, by its very definition as a belief that is not based on evidence, is irrational.

well yeah, but (Yabbet) it's still is outside of the Objective Evidence circle in your handy dandy Venn Diagram and the Objective Evidence circle is what is in Stragger's OP.the fact that Straggler himself allowed as to how such subjective evidence could be used to begin the formulation of a tentative hypothesis would mean that even he really didnt think the OP equation was a valid hypothesis.Edited by xongsmith, : typo

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- xongsmith

Hi Rahvin, I'll try to keep this brief ... I am interested in perceptions of reality, and what we can know. Personally I think any and all concepts can be tested against reality to see how they stack up, and readily discard any that are falsified.The issue I have with Straggler is that he keeps trying to divide evidence into two categories -- those he is comfortable with and those he is uncomfortable with -- and it seems he doesn't understand is that his bias can lead him to discard valid concepts.Curiously, I only need to keep the focus on very specific forms of experience to show that his attempts to divide evidence into different categories is doomed to failure.Xongsmith took him to the mat on subjective experience until Straggler was left with an impossible position: only the sensations of a person completely and totally unable to sense anything can be discarded as evidence of reality. Fascinatingly, I do not see that end of the spectrum as being heavily populated. Agreed. It is impossible to divide the evidence into what you think is good evidence and what you think is poor or impossible evidence, because it may be one or the other. Of course some worldviews are more rational than others, I've never disputed that, what I have suggested is that in the absence of any other evidence, in the absence of any contradictory evidence, that a majority of worldviews agreeing on a concept would indicate that such a view is rational, ... and possibly true.Certainly one should test (what one considers) the most probable answers first. All A is B, B!!! therefore A? (do I need the diagram?)We know that some concepts are made up, as for example the IPU, but we do not know that all concepts are made up. Check Message 1. Amazingly I have been saying that attempting to discuss this is inherently pointless, and have instead tried to focus on what we can know about reality by the use of our senses and testing of experiences. Unless you know everything. And you won't know if they are testable or not unless you try.Enjoy

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
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Hi xongsmith, And that would be applying your subjective interpretation to the matter. What you absolutely cannot do is tell if the experience is completely "empirical" completely "subjective" or somewhere in between. And curiously, his original OP (Message 1) had nothing to do with my beliefs, so yes that is off topic even if he started the thread. Interestingly he has not discussed the topic of the thread for a long time. And the experience of anyone NOT the totally insensate individual at the lonely end of the spectrum of experiences that ARE valid. Exactly. He has essentially admitted that any evidence can be a valid starting point for an hypothesis.Straggler's dichotomy only exists if he sits at the end of the spectrum with his special person, any evidence vs no evidence.pwndEnjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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In my first post in this thread, Message 198, I replied to Straggler:

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Straggler in msg 197 writes:

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In the case of inherently non-empirical concepts there is no possibility that the "evidence" in question can possibly be anything but "wholly subjective".

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If by inherently non-empirical concepts you mean that there is no possibility that the "evidence" in question can possibly be objective, then you’re just stating a tautology.

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His Message 197, subtitled: "Refutation: RAZD's "Perceptions of Reality" - RIP", was his "final refutation":

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RAZD writes:

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Premise 1: There is no way you can distinguish "objective" evidence from the "subjective interpretation of objective evidence" - for any single experience.

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This premise is false. In the case of inherently non-empirical concepts there is no possibility that the "evidence" in question can possibly be empirical and objective. Thus for those concepts which your thesis was specifically setup to consider, namely those unavailable to scientific investigation, the first premise of your theory is indisputably false.

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RAZD writes:

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Premise 2: There is no way you can determine - for a single subjective experience - whether it is a "subjective interpretation of objective evidence" or a "wholly subjective experience" - either by the person having the experience or by a later telling of the experience.

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This premise is also false. In the case of inherently non-empirical concepts there is no possibility that the "evidence" in question can possibly be anything but "wholly subjective". Thus for those concepts which your thesis was specifically setup to consider, namely those unavailable to scientific investigation, the second premise of your theory is also indisputably false.

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RAZD writes:

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Conclusion: There is no rational logical line between what is valid evidence of reality, and what is not -- when dealing with single experiences.

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Given that both your stated premises were false it is hardly surprising that your conclusion is also false. Where the concepts in question are inherently non-empirical in nature there is indeed a rational and logical distinction between what can be validly and objectively evidenced and what cannot. Where the concepts under consideration meet the criteria of being unavailable to scientific empirical investigation, i.e. the very concepts that you set out to explore, both your premises and your conclusion are therefore logically and indisputably false.

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We can clearly see that his refutation relies on the tautology that I originally suspected.

Hi Catholic Scientist, Indeed. But then it was a false argument from the start, because it relied totally on his made up concept of my argument rather than the real thing.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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Hi again Perdition, Thanks, however my arguments here are just another application of the same logic and, perhaps, dealing with similar false preconceptions, or the perception of them. Philosophically I can find no contradictory evidence, no refutation of the concept of gods, no need to not believe, so I don't see such belief as irrational. Unexplained possibly, but not irrational."Asserts" is a bit strong to me, as that would imply that I am telling you that what I believe is true, while just telling you that I am a deist is as much of a confirmed objective fact as that I am a liberal. Your "at least possibly so" is the key to why any such experience may be a valid experience of reality.Consider an analogy: the casting of nets into pools of water. The pools represent possible concepts, the nets represent testing of concepts, and the ideas caught in the nets are validated by a scientific process or similar validation of evidence (such as the mundane process used for common information)The fundamentalist will cast nets sporadically, inspect the results and cast out any that contradict their beliefs, thus leaving only concepts that fit within their worldview of reality.Then we have people that inspect the pools first and only cast nets in pools they think contain valid information. This is just as biased as the fundamentalist.And then there are people that cast their nets on any pool, if not on dry land, for they are not worried about the quality of the evidence, only about what is caught in the net of testing and validation.The sound you hear is the Flamingo Dancer stamping in the last nail in the coffin (I love mixed metaphors) of Straggler's attempts to bias the evidence by pre-selection.What you start with is not important, you can start with any concept, for what is important is what passes the testing and the validation and passes from the realm of conjecture into known (but tentative) fact.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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I readily confess that RAZD's beguiling use of terminology has led us all a merry dance. However the very simple basic problem with RAZD's position remains.If we all only accept that which can be observed by means of our 5 empirical senses as evidence then the Immaterial Pink Unicorn is simply unable to be evidenced by ANY "experience". Subjective or otherwise. And so are any other immaterial non-physical entities. Like gods.So all such immaterial gods and other supernatural entities are equally unevidenced. Exactly as I have been saying.Simple really.I know how much RAZD enjoys his dictionary definitions so here are some. Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.