Hi, Straggler
This has gone on long enough: we’ve both made our points, we both know what the other is saying, and neither of us is budging. I don’t want to be involved in a debate that turns us into enemies or me into RAZD, Jr (no offense, RAZD, since you're probably lurking here), so I’ll make a few summary responses to some of your points, and let you have the last word.
Straggler writes:
Has it even occurred to you that the requirement that a method of knowing produce results that are empirically verifiable before it can be rendered reliable is a practical consideration based on the limitation of only being able to perceive the world by means of our empirical senses?
It has occurred to me, yes.
But, how many non-empiricists agree with our viewpoint that empirical senses are the only means of perceiving the world?
If they held that view, surely they would be empiricists, wouldn’t they?
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Straggler writes:
You say I have attempted to polarise debate. But this is because I am attempting to show you that your superficially oh so moderate and reasonable claims of agnosticism are in fact a product of very contradictory thinking.
I prefer not to get emotionally attached to my arguments, but I am finding this harder to do when I’m debating things with you of late. It didn’t used to be this way, back when we were debating free will and foreknowledge.
[sigh] Where did we go wrong?
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Straggler writes:
On one hand you claim confidence in empirical conclusions but on the other you claim absolute agnosticism to completely contradictory conclusions. Purely on the basis that they are unfalsifiable and unknowable.
I only consider my confidence in empirical conclusions to be valid within an empirical frame of reference. As long as an empirical conclusion is prefaced (explicitly or implicitly) with the assumption of empiricism, then I will gladly say I have confidence in it. But, it is inappropriate to transport that confidence into an entirely different context.
Because my experience is my only basis I know how to use to try to make sense of my world, that’s the method of choice for me. I don't feel like I've yet succeeded in making sense of the world, but it seems I'm making progress through empiricism. But, in the society I live in, my experience is highly alien, and I also have the diagnoses of four different psychiatrists that confirm that my brain doesn’t work like everyone else’s does, so I’m fully accustomed to reminding to myself that my experience may not be the best way to judge the world. So, I have to keep an open mind as my only real gate into the reality outside of my own person.
Perhaps it’s low self-esteem or acute awareness of a long personal history of poor decision-making or the memory of the painful, messy divorce with my spiritual worldview that makes me hesitant to accept my own conclusions wholeheartedly. Whatever it is, I don't feel that I can honestly say I have confidence in my methodology of deriving confidence in things; and I've never been very good at deluding myself (hence my recent religious woes).
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Straggler writes:
For example how can you be confident that the Earth has existed for billions of years whilst simultaneously stating that you have absolutely no belief either way as to whether or not the Earth was omphamistically zapped into existence less than 10,000 years ago? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up.
I think it does add up. My confidence can only exist within a certain frame of reference. The possibility of omphalism effectively removes that frame of reference; so, when faced with the possibility of omphalism, all I can do is shrug and say, It doesn’t seem that way to me. And, I really can’t do any better than that.
I try to avoid beliefs where I can. I think I’ve explained this to you before: my belief system is a complex network of if, then statements, which works inside my robotic brain remarkably well.
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Straggler writes:
You, like others here, seem to have entrenched yourself into believing as an absolute and incontrovertible logical truth that if a specific claim is un-evidenced and un-falsifiable then the only option is complete and utter how can we ever have any idea at all agnosticism. You also seem to have fallen into the trap of assuming that anyone who challenges this inconvertible and self evident truth
must be doing so on the basis of a woefully imbecilic tautological argument. But the bottom line here is that under scrutiny it is your assumptions and your thinking that just do not add up.
No we cannot say with complete certainty that the world wasn’t omphamistically created Last Thursday. Or even 5 minutes ago. But so what? If we are agnostic towards everything where absolute certainty is impossible then there really isn’t much that we are not agnostic towards is there?
No, I suppose there isn’t.
That doesn’t really bother me, though: I don’t have such a negative view on agnosticism. I’ve found that I get along just fine without passionate belief in anything in particular, and I’ve done fairly well in the scientific world so far. We’ll see how good I feel about myself and my abilities after my big manuscript is reviewed in the coming months.
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Beyond this, I honestly don’t know what else I can say. There are a whole bunch of other pointed remarks you made that I very much want to respond to, but it came off as just venting frustrations, so I’ll just let you have it. It’s not important anyway.
Have a good day, Straggler.
-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.
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