If we accept that we can hold 3 attitudes towards a proposition, P, we can assent to P, reject P (assent to ~P) and withhold assent from both P and ~P, where does the agnostic theist sit in relation to the proposition?

P. There is a god

The atheist can either assent to

~P. There is no God

Or withhold assent from both P and ~P.

Agnostic atheism I get, it would seem to correlate with withholding assent from both but I'm less sure that agnostic theism makes sense. Can I define (a)gnosticism in terms of

P1. It is possible to know P.

With the gnostic assenting to P1 and the agnostic either rejecting or withholding assent. If I am not making a mistake here it seems the agnostic theist has to at least withhold assent from P1.

Is it rational to be able to assent to P while withholding assent or denying P1.

Am I taking agnostic out of normal usage and instead when people claim agnostic theism they are making a claim about what they know rather than about what is knowable. Is the agnostic theist bound to assent to P, can they instead withhold assent from P while assenting to some other proposition such as "I believe there is a god?"

One of the ways agnosticism is defined is in relation to whether P is knowable at all, rather than in terms of whether or not one claims knowledge of P.

That is the context in which I think agnostic theism makes sense. An agnostic theist believes in God but does not believe that knowledge of God is possible.

Yes, that's how I framed P1.

I'm only entertaining the less restrictive interpretation of agnosticism as personal knowledge in case (y)our definition is deemed too restrictive. However I disagree that it's in that context that agnostic theism makes sense.

On your account the agnostic theist has to agree that

~P1. It is not possible to know there is a god
P. There is a god.

Mine is slightly weaker in that I may grant that the agnostic theist can suspend judgement on

P1. It is possible to know there is a god

But it still raises questions about what the agnostic theists attitude towards P should be given that they can't assent to P1. Just to be clear I'm not sure of this at all but I am interested in what the appropriate agnostic atheist attitude should be towards the two propositions, if indeed there is one.

P. There is a god
P1. It is possible to know P.

Ah I did misread your first post a bit. Sorry. No caffeine yet :P

I think the normal definitions require an epistemology that distinguishes clearly between belief and knowledge, which makes it at least not immediately irrational to believe that P while denying that knowledge of P is possible.

No worries, is there a difference in assenting to P and believing in P? Does the epistemology require more than 3 propositional attitudes towards P?

I get that I may be granting too much weight to assent and that it falls short of saying that P is true relevant.

I think "assenting" to P may just be synonymous with believing that P. For example the wiki on epistemology says that "to believe is to accept as true".

I've been reading some of Gregory of Nyssa's work lately, a 4th century Christian theologian who (along with his brother Basil and Gregory Nazianzen) was heavily involved in the development of trinitarian theology in Christianity.

His epistemology mostly deals with "knowledge" and "faith", and not really any exact third category at all. I think the greek verb πιστευω can be translated as either "having faith in" or "believing in", and I think the distinction he is uses is fairly closely in line with classical epistemology, flavored by the neo-platonic influences of that time.

I believe he could be described as an agnostic theist, and the epistemological basis of his ideas rests somewhat inextricably on other assumptions:

- That God cannot be comprehended by the mind (dianoia). Not that therefore no discursive or dialectical propositions can be made about God, but that any such proposition is necessarily incomplete and does not reach to the essence of what God is.

- That an experience of God is reached "in the Divine Darkness" where the senses and intellect do not reach, but it is an experience of a different faculty, which is referred to by faith, the word being used in that context not just as an epistemological category but as designating a spiritual capacity beyond sense perception (aesthesis) and intellectual intuition (noesis). It may be worth pointing out that Gregory's distinction between sense perception and the intellect is heavily influenced by platonism. Gregory uses a metaphor wherein the mind can enter the Divine Darkness, but there it sees nothing and has no knowledge. Yet the Divine presence leaves (as it were) dew drops on the surface of the mind, which afterwards the Spirit distills into thoughts and mental reflections on the Divine.

The reason for getting into the non-epistemological details is that I think for many naturalists the distinction between "belief" and "knowledge" is really something like a degree of certainty, where the process and the kind of evidence admitted is the same, and just some things are better evidenced than others. Evidence is the testimony of sense perception qualified by rational processes of thinking (mainly induction and deduction).

If so, it would make sense to ask whether it was reasonable to believe that P while denying that knowledge of P were possible, because both belief in P and knowledge of P are premised on the same evidence, if they are rational.

But a classical agnostic theist like Gregory not only views the distinctions between belief and knowledge differently but evaluates justification of belief differently

Heh, that's twice my edit was slow ponied. I'm editing to make the points I want to respond to but that's a very good post that.

I should possibly distinguish between asserting and assenting. It may be that I'm asking too much of assent. But if I consider assenting equivalent to stating that a proposition is true we're left with on your account

It is true that it is not possible to know there is a god, it is true there is a god.

I get that you deal with this below and I'll return to that.

I think this is right and I think the conclusion follows and this is maybe where I am with asking the question.

This is instructive certainly but to what extent do you think this approach to belief and knowledge informs the perspectives of those that would claim agnostic theism. And without a distinct epistemology to what extent do your run of the mill agnostic theists run into irrationality.

This may not be the best place to ask this as most of the theists here have much greater claims to rationality than I do and I'm really challenging the agnostic theism I defended up till recently.

4) We can also assert that P is not a well formed proposition.

Can we hold that attitude towards a proposition? By saying it's not a well formed proposition it seems we are saying it isn't one.

In any case I'm not sure that either of the propositions put forward are really subject to that charge.

I don't see the problem of agnostic theism. You believe in some form of deity, but admit you do not know it or have ways of attaining said knowledge.

This strikes me as sensible (pun intended) reasoning, depending of course on what you derive from said belief. If you suddenly decide you can't turn left because God instructed his prophets so, then it would seem to me you have implicitly contradicted yourself.

As to the first, I don't know. I think there's a fairly wide range of sophistication in the views of people who claim to be agnostic but also believe in a God. I am sure that sometimes their views are arguably irrational. I say arguably because I expect often they are not fully fleshed out. I'm sure there are areas where I have self-contradictory beliefs and I expect it mostly amounts to not having thought about those things enough to notice the problem. But I don't have any idea to what extent this affects others really

That said, I think on the general subject of rationality, knowledge, and religious views, there's an angle that's often missed in discussing the "evidence" for God. When the question is posed in that way, or in terms of justification of belief, the underlying assumption is that objective rationality is the ultimate arbiter of justification. The testimony of the senses is required for "evidence", but in order for that testimony to count as evidence it must be rationally qualified. The pattern of thinking is one in which the subject stands aloof from the question, which is put in brackets, and attempts to reach an objective conclusion by sifting the available data through this intellectual filter, in order to determine whether or not assent should be granted.

It's worth observing that this mindset makes Reason itself the ultimate frame of reference for everything, but it may be argued that this is not the mindset from which theism proceeds. Especially monotheism in which it is God, and not Reason, which must occupy that place, or else it is already not monotheism. In the past of course the existence of gods was taken as a given. It was obvious that all things are full of gods, as Thales put it. But even so, many traditional religions proclaim (in various ways) that God is invisible, and that only the pure in heart may see God.

What is implied by this is that the path to faith in God is not one of objective intellectual evaluation, but it is a path of purification and transformation of a person's whole being, and that it requires participation and action from the whole person. It cannot be reduced to an intellectual question. If you read much older Christian writing, these kinds of themes are very prominent. "What should I do to be saved?" is a question whose answer involves loving others, showing mercy, giving alms, denying oneself. That these things are what leads one to "knowledge" of God. The greek word for repentence is "meta-noia", which quite literally means to change one's mind. Or even to go beyond the mind? In that regard an aphophatic theology (and I think agnostic theism is essentially an appeal to apophatism) does not necessarily aim for strict rationality, even if it tries to avoid irrationality. Reason is not the ultimate principle for such a theist. But rather when they asked Jesus where he was living, he said "Come and see!"

Actually I disagree. Regardless...

One of the terms used in P might not be well enough defined for a true or false statement to be made.

This is a variant on

4a) I don't understand what P means.

If you read a mathematical book on foundations of logic it will always include the extra qualification "well formed" in describing its propositions.

I think the concept of agnosticism is kind of meaningless. Knowledge of something may not be possible (at the current time and with the current technology) but to hold the belief that knowledge of something (whatever it is) will never be possible is hedging on a possibility itself.

On what basis can one choose the possibility that something will never be knowable? If history has shown us anything, its that things previously thought to be unknowable, have indeed become known through the aid of various technologies. To hold the view that something is forever unknowable is to make an assumption, an assumption that contradicts everything we've come to know throughout the entire history of human inquiry.

Everything is knowable, some things just aren't knowable currently. To that extent, the concept of agnosticism may be meaningful but even then, it assumes that with all the knowledge we have available we can't deduce any preliminary conclusions.

This is actually quite a claim. I don't think technology can just solve this for you.

Technology is not the only thing I have behind this claim. I also have the entire history of human inquiry behind this claim. Over a long enough time-span everything is possible - including the knowledge of everything.

I don't deny that this is just a possibility either. It just seems like a more likely possibility given the extraordinary leaps and bounds that technology has taken us in terms of learning about the previously 'unknowable'.

The bold is simply wrong.

Did you read the rest of the post?

I'm interested in how you can conclude that some things are forever unknowable (if that is what you're implying)?

Processes that require more memory than the available universe number of states that could represent it and process it, cannot be known within our universe it would seem. (eg pick any large enough number and do things with all the prior primes etc). And then you have the mathematical Godel type thing which is interesting however how they actually relate if ever to real Physics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6...eness_theorems


I also happen to believe that a megaverse theory is falsifiable even if they think it isnt (speaking on what can be known etc type things). If such theory is designed trying to explain our universe and then it predicts all other kinds of things and processes, and because of such processes in the megaverse, properties of our own universe are determined, we can simply look at what that prediction of that theory would be for our own universe based on what else it has as properties (which we cant check directly) and if it magically fits what we didnt already know about our universe but eg things we find afterwards (novel unanticipated prediction), then suddenly you have used the megaverse theory in principle not accessible to you, according to some, in order to predict properties of your own world you didnt know yet. If that were to happen it would be a remarkable evidence that the magaverse broader theory (that describes all possible universes) is testable in a way that it can fail or pass for now with remarkable sudden boosting of its merit (even if we stillcant probe the other universes say to test it there). I do however think we may still find this is the only world that could ever exist.

I don't know what you are actually disagreeing with but from SEP

If you don't mind I'll run with the SEP definition and swerve continuing with this

Possibly it's just that there wasn't a lot of sophistication in mine and I'm just projecting but I'm still not sure what the appropriate attitude towards the proposition P and P1 are for the agnostic theist.

I'm not really concerned with evidence at this point I take a much wider range of experience as evidence. Put simpler is the theist bound to assent to

P. There is a god.

I'm also think it may be necessary to drop knowledge as opposed to justified belief but I think the issue remains if we consider the agnostic lacking internal justification but holding P and ~P1.

I think agnosticism often collapses into skepticism and I wonder how they reconcile outside of those agnostic theists like Gregory.

So, a super-advanced AI that's had at least three billion years of computation and that's capable of generating its own universes theoretically would still be incapable of finding answers to certain questions? And you can say this for certain? Are you assuming that the AI could not find a way to break free of the laws of physics (i.e., processes that require more memory than is available)? or do you know this for certain?

Please be more elementary in your conversation with me if you can. Treat me like a child because a lot of the time I don't quite understand what you're referring to.

You seem to be suggesting you are certain it will be capable of such.

How does this super computer answer questions about the past? Do you expect it to be able to run the film backwards? How is this AI going to answer questions about what is in the minds of other people, whether current or historic?

Well imagine this for example before we go into complex things; (which i will agree we cant necessarily bound using current laws because we may discover unreal breakthrough possibilities - but its not wise to speculate that way without some evidence of the possibility opening up)

Lets say i ask you to tell me all the digits of the sum of all primes up to 10^(10^(10^(10^100))). That is massively larger than any information size this universe has available in all dimensions for trillions of years even. Basically without this being the full answer, if the universe has 10^80 particles what do you do if i ask you to tell me properties of the first 10^80 prime numbers? I would have to represent each prime number by a particle. That would look real tough even if particles were all composite ala string theory and even deeper than that.


The simple example is if i ask you to calculate something that requires more paper than you have available how will you do it without recording it somewhere if your calculation requires to store data up to that point in order to do the next step etc? (but of course a high technology system doesnt use paper it uses eg our digital memory technology at even quantum level of storage that is more efficient but ultimately any technology is bounded by the degrees of freedom a physical system allows you to have ie the total number of all states possible in that system). So the paper analogue works for any civilization unless something remarkable opens up to allow us to have unbounded storage that we can keep increasing indefinitely. But even then that civilization needing "time" to process something still would be unable to process the problem and have its answer available fast enough.

If in any case lets say the space you can store data in a super advanced civilization is S bits. What happens if i ask you a problem that requires S^S bits space in order to be solved?


And of course we can even start asking things like predict me what is the spin of the next 10^9 decayed particles a detector will get one by one (where QM says its random eg like coin flips). You cant know this until it happens it seems. So you can construct questions that always require the future etc.

I'm not sure that agnosticism about God collapses into a general skepticism. Well, I can believe that it might for a certain class of agnostic theist but they may be the ones who are more likely to use agnostic in the sense of lacking personal knowledge rather than positing the fundamental unknowability of God.

But apophatic theology treats God as sui generis, and really defines God in a way that emphasizes this, without necessarily treating other realities in the same way at all. I think this flows both from an experience of ineffability and the subsequent extrapolation from personal ignorance to theoretical unknowability, but it also reflects the long religious traditions about the transcendence of the Divine. The source of Being is beyond Being, it neither is nor is not.

Another possible answer is something like Divine Illumination theories of mind, although that would require a lot of qualification.

Re: the "extrapolation" from experience, and with veeddzz posts in mind, I don't think the agnostic theist can claim to have knowledge (in the sense of rationally justified belief) that God is unknowable. I think earlier I referred to it as a presupposition, and saying that God is defined as such is probably saying the same thing.

I intended to get back to this, I think if we understand skepticism in terms of pyrrhonian skepticism then the theist collapses into skepticism if they suspend judgement on the claim

P1. It is possible to know there is a god.

Denying the claim and assenting to

~P1. It is not possible to know there is a God is a knowledge claim but it's not one that holds up particularly well for the theist. It would undermine the case for god previously made by means of revelation. If it is possible for God to reveal himself it seems we are committed to assenting to P1 denying ~P1.