Underlying Philosophy

Then have you considered the advantages of being right? No, of space. True, but your phrasing is equivocal. As I said, you might as well say that Vincent Van Gogh's father ejaculating caused a picture of sunflowers. It allows you to describe reality in such a way that it sounds implausible by missing out the chain of events in between. How much time do you spend looking at monkeys? If the answer is "none", then this is a scant concession to reality.In fact, according to a book I read on primatology (I've forgotten the name, but if you're interested it's somewhere in my bedroom, I could probably find it) chimps in the wild have been observed holding hands and watching the sun set. Sweet, eh? Apparently, we inherited it.

Your fantasies about me, while amusing, are irrelevant. Then you will find the phrase "the brain controls the actions of the brain" no more or less paradoxical. No, of course not. Again, could I draw your attention to the advantages of being right? A philosophical materialist would be someone who believes that he has proved a priori that nothing but material things exist. This would be an ontological position with which I would have no truck.A mental materialist such as myself would claim to have a posteriori evidence that mental processes are the result of material processes in the brain. I never said anything about control of the body. I specifically instanced mental processes such as short-term memory, a sense of morality, and the ability to recognize fruit. These, apparently, are things the brain does, not things the soul does.So I'll ask again --- what does the soul do. You say it "controls the brain", but in what way? Some forms of damage to the prefrontal cortex cause abulia, the inability to make a decision or exercise will. Damage to parts of the brain in the same area can deprive people of their moral or social sense. Oliver Sacks recounts a patient dying with a brain tumor who felt perfectly happy and content with everything, including dying --- because the tumor was in exactly the right spot. Here you can hear a neurologist talk about a man with a benign tumor which made him so sexually aroused by safety pins that he achieved orgasm by looking at them or even thinking about them: a condition which disappeared on removal of the tumor.So, I'll ask again: what is the soul doing? Apparently it is my brain that has the decision-making faculty, my brain which knows right from wrong, my brain that determines whether I feel good or bad about things, my brain that preserves my memories ...Even if souls did exist, I should still be more inclined to say that my brain was me, because apparently it instantiates everything about me, whereas the soul ... the soul doesn't seem to have anything to do with our mental states. What exactly is there left over for it to do?Put it this way. Suppose we unhooked our souls from our brains, and swapped them, so that your soul was attached to my brain and vice versa. What differences would we see? Apparently your soul would now be attached to my opinions (instantiated in the brain), my memories (instantiated in the brain), my sense of right and wrong (instantiated in the brain), my sexual preferences (instantiated in the brain) ... and so forth. Is there any meaningful sense, any observable sense, in which the metaphysical chimera produced by this operation would be you rather than me?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Only by a literate English-speaking person of normal mental capacity; not by illiterates, non-English speaking people, children, and fools.It appears that if I want to write something that you are guaranteed to understand, I shall have to confine myself to sentences such as "The cat sat on the mat". But suppose that that is not what I want to say?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No. So, like you then.Now, if your God hypothesis, as you now admit, does not guarantee your memories, then this leaves you in the same boat as the rest of us as regards the epistemology of memory. All you can say is that you think that your memory is reasonably reliable because when you test it against the facts it often turns out to be correct ... which is of course something that you think you know because you remember it happening. And you would be under the same impression if you were suffering from Korsakov's syndrome and your memories were confabulated.God, even if he exists, does not give us a magical sword to slay the Cartesian demon. It's instantiated in the brain, which is liable to numerous faults, which is finite, and which is the product of a ramshackle process of evolution which has had only a few million years to get us to where we are now from a creature which hardly had to remember anything except where the bananas are. I don't know that, as I had thought I'd made clear. And nor do you, as demonstrated by the existence of people who think it is when it isn't. Even if there is a god, then clearly he allows people to be in that position: so you don't know that you aren't currently in that position.As with the other subjects we've discussed, God gets you nowhere on this issue. Even if we grant you your unproven assumption of a God, then so long as you admit that this is compatible with memory being imperfect, that leaves you in the same epistemological boat as the rest of us --- and rowing in perfect circles like everyone else.

Well, let's think about my options here.To take a specific case, my memory tells me that down the passage and to the left there is a bathroom, and that I should go that way if I want a bathroom. And suppose I do want a bathroom.Now, there are two cases.(a) My memory is reliable. In that case, I should go down the passage and turn left.(b) My memory is unreliable. The room might be the place where I keep my man-eating tiger, and this fact might have slipped my memory. It might contain a pot of fairy gold which will vanish unless I claim it in the next five minutes, only I forgot. It might contain a mermaid taking a bath. And she might be the sort of mermaid who'd welcome the company (if you know what I mean) or she might be the prudish sort of mermaid who'd use her magical powers to strike me blind. I really don't remember. It might be that the room I'm currently in bursts into flames daily at 9 o'clock. I should have made a note of that. It might be that God himself has promised me that if I spend 24 hours without going into the bathroom he'll make me President of the world.In short, if my memory is fundamentally unreliable, then I have no basis for undertaking or abstaining from any given course of action, since I have no idea whether it might have good or bad consequences --- even whether it might be fatal or crucial to my survival.In which case I might as well go down the passage and turn left as not.In case (a) it's a good idea; and in case (b) it's a gamble in which I know neither the odds or the stakes involved in accepting or refusing it.So the payoff matrix looks like this: It is therefore rational to let my behavior be guided by my memory despite the theoretical possibility that it's wrong. (Of course, the case would be different if I had good reason to think that my memory was wrong in some specific way.)Note that I could use the same reasoning if it was not my memory but my rationality that was in question.Of course, I could also apply this same reasoning if, as a matter of fact, I was as crazy as a loon. This is exactly why we keep mad people away from sharp objects.---Now, do you have anything better to go on, if we grant you your unproven hypothesis that there exists a God who permits people to be amnesiac, confabulatory, delusional, psychotic, and just plain stupid? Does such a God grant you any more epistemological certainty than I have? If so, how?

Let me expand on my previous comment, which was the one word: "No".The fact is that it is impossible to really think about your argument, because your presuppositionalist method of apologetics prevents you from ever saying what your argument is.As you yourself have admitted, your method of witnessing for Jesus Christ does not consist of arguing for Jesus Christ, but rather of arguing against everything else ... presumably in the hope that if every other world-view fails, we'll adopt yours by default.Now, apart from the other problems that I have pointed out, there is also this:I have to try to guess what it is that you actually think about any philosophical question based only on your criticism of other people's philosophical positions.I don't know what your reasoning is, because your presuppositionalist doctrine says that you should never try to explain what your reasoning is. I can only guess what you think by observing which views you criticize in others.You won't explain your own reasoning, but you also wish to establish that it is superior to mine. So I have to guess at the ways in which it might be different from mine.Can you really blame me if I don't yet grasp your philosophy? Apparently, your philosophy tells you that you shouldn't tell me what your philosophy is.And yet you complain that I am misunderstanding your argument --- when you are apparently committed to never telling anyone what your argument actually is.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Many of the arguments of sac seem to come down to just one thing.That epistemology is based on circular reasoning.This, I admit, fully, freely, and quite possibly a decade before he became a presuppositionalist.Let me give some examples:* The proposition that my memory is somewhat reliable is based on my memory.* The proposition that I am capable of logical thought is based on me thinking about my thoughts and finding them to be logical.* The proposition that the scientific method is a good way of discovering facts is based on the fact that if we apply the scientific method to our methods of finding out about facts, that turns out to be a fact supported by the scientific method.* The reason that I think that my experiences reflect reality is that I judge what is real according to my experiences.All of this depends on what we might loosely describe as "circular reasoning".Now, sac wants to show us a way out. There is a God, and he is right about what we should remember and what our memories should tell us and the scientific method and what is and isn't logical and so forth. This, sac thinks, gives us a way out of this darn epistemological circle.But it doesn't. Because whether or not God exists, people suffer from strange perversions of memory, such as Alzheimer's disease and Korsakov's syndrome. Whether or not God exists, a majority of people make strange mistakes in logic. Whether or not God exists, people make a total mess of the scientific method and use it to draw utterly false conclusions. Whether or not God exists, people suffer from psychotic hallucinations.Whether or not God exists, people can be psychotic, stupid, illogical, delusional, hallucinatory, confabulatory ...So if sac offers us the existence of God as a means of solving epistemological questions, then this is completely worthless. Because even if God exists, that doesn't solve the problem, because if there is a God then he permits people to be insane. Which might include me And it might include you. And it might include sac.No appeal to the existence of God will evade these possibilities, since even if there is a God, he evidently permits some people to be insane.Sac has never even tried to answer this point, and I should like to see him or her try.

So, to summarize.I posted a fact so clear, simple, and obvious that the only person on this thread who can't understand it is you.You reply by posting a paragraph so utterly stupid, insane, and illogical that even you can see that there's something wrong with it.And somehow you think that that makes us quits.That is so sweet. But unfortunately there is no way that I can pat you on the head and ruffle your boyish hair using standard TCP/IP. I can only point out that the grown-ups are trying to have a serious discussion --- and appeal to a emotional and intellectual maturity that you do not yet possess.

Well, now I'd like to talk to you like a Dutch Uncle.You write: That is, we ought to excuse you for being wrong because you acknowledged that you're wrong.(1) Well, in the first place, why not try to be right about what scientists say? I am baffled by this. Why not just tell the truth?Perhaps (as you believe) evolutionists are crazy and wrong about everything. Well, if this is true, then you could as well demonstrate this by talking about what scientists actually say, instead of making stuff up in your head and attributing it to them.(2) You call it "rhetoric". You seem to excuse it because we all know that what you're saying isn't true. Will you promise in the sight of God that you will never ever use this "rhetoric" when you're talking to people who might be fooled --- a Sunday School class for example?If you use this "rhetoric" in the sight of well-educated people such as me, then we realize what facts you are lying about and distorting --- we try to overlook that, and try to think about the actual substance of your argument. If you said the same thing to young children, then they would not know that, and your "rhetoric" would be a lie.(3) You have already screwed up on point (2). You should realize that a whole lot more people read these debates than participate on them. So you have told a whole bunch of strangers false things about the biography of Newton, false things about evolution, false things about the beliefs of Hitler, false things about the theory of gravity ... all because you couldn't be bothered to find out what was true before you posted.That is disgusting. We all make mistakes, but you did't try to be right.(4) It may become a habit. Suggestions can become memories. Well then, if you spend the next ten years explaining how biologists say that mammals evolved from turtles, then you may end up believing that it's true, and that this is really what biologists say. You in may the end forget that this started out as "rhetoric", and believe that the falsehood that you invented is a fact.To tell falsehoods, and defend your telling of falsehoods, is a pernicious habit. In the end you will have no idea of the difference between truth and falsehood or right and wrong --- you will only know what serves your agenda and you will believe that that is what God wants.---If you go on using "rhetoric" as an excuse then you will end up unable to distinguish between truth and falsehood.The following is a real story:I had met evangelical Christians before. Indeed, I had become an evangelical Christian.Then some preacher came up to me in the street. He asked me if I believed in evolution. Of course I said "yes".He then explained to me that the theory of evolution said that pigs would grow wings and fly away, and that since no-one had ever observed this the theory of evolution must be bunk.No, that's not the punch-line. That's fairly stupid, but wait a minute.He seemed to have so little of a grasp on the theory of evolution that I told him to sit down next to me. I could spend five minutes explaining it to him so that he could make his own mind up. There's mutation, and there's natural selction, and ...... at which point he exploded.Guess why?Because I was patronizing him by explaining to him what the theory of evolution actually said, which he knew. As soon as I started explaining why the theory of evolution doesn't say that pigs can grow wings and fly away, he got all offended and started to tell me how of course he knew that and that I was stereotyping all Christians as stupid by thinking that I needed to explain it to him.One minute: "The theory of evolution says that pigs will grow wings."The next minute: "You are being offensive to my religion to say that I believe what I just said."That is your "rhetoric". Creationists talk shit until they get caught, and when they get caught they get all offended at the suggestion that they were being sincere.Oh no no no, of course they didn't sincerely believe what they actually said, it was just "rhetoric".Tell the truth dammit.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No, and since I (and apparently everyone else on this thread) understood my simple and obvious point, you have no chance of deceiving me by saying so.You might, of course, succeed in deceiving yourself, but surely further effort in that direction is superfluous. No.If you are too dumb to tell the difference, that is of course no reflection on what I posted. Wow, all this just because you were unable to understand one simple logical proposition.One wonders how many hysterical lies I'd have elicited if I'd posted something that was genuinely hard to understand.If you had a nicer personality I'd feel sorry for you.

Not noticeably. But even granted this premise, we should note that epistemology deals with the nature of knowledge.It would seem advisable, therefore, to gain some knowledge about knowledge itself before trying to gain knowledge about anything else, especially such subtle and abstruse things as "the nature of reality". Without an epistemological program, you have no means of searching for such knowledge, nor indeed of identifying it if by accident you stumbled across it. To be more accurate, you're placing your unfounded beliefs about something you call "the nature of reality" before epistemology.Reality and your unfounded beliefs about the "nature of reality" are two different things. Or not, depending on whether your metaphysics is just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo.To find that out, you'd need to know how to find things out, which is the subject matter of, remind me? ... oh yes, epistemology.

But you haven't produced any actual ontology. That would involve you saying what it means to say "X exists", for general X. Questioned on this subject, you just said that God exists, which is not ontology any more than saying that aardvarks exist. Or unicorns, to use an analogy that might be more accurate. Apart from the fact that merely asserting the existence of God isn't metaphysics, you have not placed your religious beliefs before epistemology, just next to it. That is, you haven't shown how any epistemological conclusions can be drawn from your theistic assumption that I can't draw without it.

And nor, of course, do you. Your unevidenced assumption that there is an invisible man in the sky with an objective knowledge of right and wrong does not in any way imply that we have such knowledge, and in point of fact we do not. This is a strange claim. Could you expand on it? It seems to me that a thing either is or isn't true independent of whether anyone knows of a good reason why it's true.In your opinion, did the sun not shine before the discovery of nuclear fission? If you think about it, he could answer any such question in at least as much detail as you could. Presumably your answer would be "God did it by a miracle"; whereas he could just as easily say "it was produced by the operation of natural forces without any magic being involved in any way".Such an answer is, as I say, as detailed as anything you could come up with. It is also superior to it in a number of respects:* There is abundant evidence that the forces of nature exist.* On the other hand, there is no evidence for the existence of God (I presume even you must be aware of this --- if you thought there was evidence for the existence of God you'd have presented it by now.)* The proposition that things happen because of non-magical causes is borne out by every observation and is therefore the best-evidenced statement there is.* Such an answer is parsimonious, since it doesn't require us to postulate the existence of an unevidenced entity.* Your hypothesis involve perfection creating imperfection, a flaw which you then have to explain away with further ad hoc hypotheses. Holes which you apparently have filled with made-up stuff. Huntard's confession of ignorance makes him rather wiser than you are in pretending to knowledge which you do not in fact have.

I meant "the nature of reality" in the sense of scientific knowledge, not your fumbling attempts at ontology.For example, although William of Occam liked parsimony, he didn't realize that a single theory would explain why an apple fell down and the moon stayed up. It wasn't that he didn't understand how his principle would have applied to Newton's parsimonious explanation, it's that Newton hadn't thought of it yet. Most of it hasn't been published yet, and how many people have read any of it?I think it's going too far to call him a "renowned theologian", when then fact is that his theology was secret during his lifetime, that hundreds of years after his death most people don't think of him as a theologian at all, and that of those of us who are aware of how much time he wasted on theology the great majority can't be bothered to read it. This does not answer my actual point, which is that you were claiming the God hypothesis to be parsimonious by invoking him as an explanation for an observation which has not been made. And it is vain to do with more what can be done with less.I might add that your explanation of why we have a moral sense involves our existence, just like mine would. But it also involves the unevidenced entity known as "God". It is therefore less parsimonious.What you mean by "arbitrary and complex" you do not explain; and you also do not explain who "the atheist" is. I am an atheist, and my explanation is very simple and non-arbitrary --- and does not involve invoking the existence of entities for which there is no evidence.

Philosophy is "the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct.". So your philosophy with regards to being, knowledge, and conduct etc., does not include God, so that it would be proper for us to say "the starting point of your philosophy is that there is no God".

Your philosophy with regards to being, knowledge, and conduct etc., does not include unicorns. Would be proper for us to say "the starting point of your philosophy is that there are no unicorns"?

It would be improper, however, for me to say that atheism was the foundation of your thinking. It would be more proper for me to say that naturalism, or materialism, or atomism is the foundation of your philosophical thought.

More proper, perhaps, but still wrong.

But they aren't exactly fundamental reasons. My challenge to your anecdote would go something like this: how do you know that eating will satisfy your hunger? And if you say "because of past experience", then I would ask "how do you know that your memory is reliable?". But we won't go there now, so there is no need in answering those questions, as similar ones have already been asked.

And answered.

I didn't claim that atheists can't use logic, just that atheists have no good reason for believing that the laws of logic are reliable.

You did, in fact, claim that in so many words.If you now instead wish to claim that "atheists have no good reason for believing that the laws of logic are reliable", you're wrong about that too. I've given mine.

All these things function in such a way that we would refer to them as orderly, and since I believe that God has created them, then obviously God must be an orderly God to have created all these things.

Are earthquakes and tsunamis also orderly? Only they do seem to make such a mess .

I've never had the problem of arguing with someone who told me that I had no arguments.

I didn't; I said you had no evidence for the existence of God. You have plenty of arguments . They just seem to be unfounded on anything that I can go and look at.If you wanted to argue in favor of the existence of a real thing such as a giraffe, you would not need to commit a string of naive philosophical blunders, you'd just show me evidence of a giraffe.

Which worldview makes sense of the laws of logic? ​ Which worldview makes sense of the uniformity of nature? ​ Which worldview makes sense of morals/morality? ​ Which worldview makes sense of the reliability of our memory?

Mine. Since you ask.

And my favorite; which worldview makes sense of universals?

What does that even mean?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.