It depends on how you interpret this statement.

For example, I hold the definition of "n is an even integer" as meaning "2|n in \Z." That statement taken in isolation is independent of any assumptions about God.

However, the understanding of the logical framework in which this is understood falls under the system of beliefs that includes the rationality of the universe, which falls under beliefs about God.

So it depends on how you're looking at the statement.

You're confusing the existence of an intersection of beliefs with the independence of beliefs from other beliefs.

The bolded doesn't really make sense. Can you rephrase your objection?

Pick up a book on systematic theology.

Again, this doesn't really make sense.

Are you sure you understand what coherence means?

So there are two claims we can possibly include in our worldviews. First, that the universe can be rationally undertook; second, that a deity exists. We agree on the inclusion of the former and disagree on the inclusion of the latter. And absolutely my belief in the former could be understood in precisely the kind of coherence framework you established. Now, let us consider whether these two claims are coherent. One direction is relatively simple. Namely, it is quite reasonable to believe that the Christian deity would create a rationally understandable universe and hence one gets coherence. However, the other direction is much harder. Namely, can we use our appeals to evidence, to logic, and to rational justifications, to provide precisely such a justification for a deity? As in, can we provide empirical evidence of a deity? A rational argument for a deity? And so on. I submit this is a test that the theist has miserably failed despite millenia of attempts.

Now take some peice of the deity puzzle, if you will. The question I consistently challenge the theist is to provide the evidence or rational argument to support it. You can say that you believe the puzzle peice because it is consistent with the larger deity picture, and you can add that a rational universe is consistent with the deity picture too, but that doesn't mean you have managed to give some rational justification for the puzzle peice. As in, independent of the assumption that a deity exists, and by just using the other parts of your worldview that we agree on (the value of evidence and logic, and the like) and you support your puzzle peice?

Or let me put it like this. I would find it a very poor coherence (perhaps so poor as to not justify the term at all) to say that a puzzle piece is consistent with values of evidence and logic through the roundabout way of saying that the puzzle peice is first coherent with the idea of a deity, and that this is in turn coherent with the idea of valuing evidence and logic. The kind of coherence that I would be impressed with, is one where you can directly demonstrate the veracity of the puzzle peice using evidence and logic. Do that, and I can include the puzzle peice in MY framework. But if you can only get this coherence by working through the assumption that a deity exists, you really have not accomplished anything but dressing up a pretty blatant circular justification.

Good thing I haven't done that then, isn't it? I said that the 'human' approach to the jigsaw puzzle problem you laid out can be codified into a computer algorithm. This is not debatable. Therefore you are mistaken to make the argument that your puzzle analogy refutes the relationship between problem-solving methodology and problem-solving algorithms.

I am NOT making the argument that everything can be codified as an algorithm, or making hard claims about the feasability of advanced AI (lolwut?) just pointing out to well named that there isn't a sharp distinction between a "way of knowing" a "path to knowing" and "epistemic methodology" or "epistemic algorithm". They all involves a series of steps and a result. And as I said to WN, the comparison to algorithms is not an important part of this thread.

I think it's debatable that what the computer algorithms do are really codifying how humans solve jigsaw puzzles. I would say that this is how humans would program a machine to solve a jigsaw puzzle. (But this is also very interesting research that I didn't know existed.)

I would suggest that the latter two imply a much more well-defined process. It's kind of like the use of "error bars" in conversations in which the size of the errors are not known or not measurable in a useful way. But this isn't important, and you've been clear that you're not interested in getting bogged down in those details. If we understand all of the phrases as "a series of steps and a result" without requiring higher forms of specificity, it's not a problem.

Ummmmmm... yeah. You have no idea what's going on. You should probably read some anthropology or sociology or something and become informed as to what you're talking about. You should also read some more about coherence.

As best as I can tell, it sounds like you're basically trying to argue that a worldview should be deconstructable into independent parts which can then be used to reconstitute entire the worldview. To the best of my knowledge, there are exactly zero anthropologists or sociologists who understand worldview in this manner.

You are putting the words in the wrong order. It's not that the computer is codifying human jigsaw-solving processes. It's humans codifying the processes (as you did in your original long post!), and running them on computers. So your second sentence is fine, but it's the same thing I've asserted all along.

I agree that the latter two (especially 'algorithm') often imply a better defined process, but the source of this diversion was WN claiming both that 1) there is no "methodology" for knowing religious truth but 2) there is a "way" of knowing religious truth. I have demonstrated that the two are synonyms in the dictionary, so there is no need for theists ITT to feel wary of the scientific connotations of the word.

LOL -- Whoops. This is what I meant to say.

While it is kind of disappointing, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by now that you would so entirely miss my point. It is quite simple, so let me repeat:

Given that (presumably) on your "list" of things to cohere to, as you put it, are valuing things like empirical evidence, logic, rational justifications, and the like. Elsewhere on your list is beliefs about God. So the challenge for you is can you give any empirical evidence, any rational argument, etc, for any component or puzzle piece that has to do with deities? This has been the test that the theist has categorically failed for millenia with you very much included. In fact, your idea of trying to show some coherence between these different things is not to provide any empirical evidence etc, but to go the round about route directly through the assumption of a deity that a puzzle piece is consistent with a deity, and a deity is consistent with a rational universe, but can't actually provide any direct coherence between all the deity parts of your framework and the appeals to logic and reason and evidence. I don't ask that you need to entirely reconstitute your entire worldview absent any assumption about god, this would be very, very strong and you have yet to demonstrate even the weakest of correspondences. But as long as you are unable to provide any form of evidence or logical argument, it is putting lipstick on pig to suggest that you have this amazing correspondence in your worldview. As far as what you have demonstrated to be able to present on this forum, you have nothing but the most vacuous of circular reasoning and are dressing it up as a sophisticated epistemology that you simply been unable to demonstrate.

The failure to understand worldview is confirmed. (And while the failure to understand coherence is not confirmed, it's strongly suggested.)

Lol. Is it not true that, as part of your worldview, you strongly value evidence and logical reasoning? Yet you seem unable to use these components of your worldview to touch on the deity parts of your worldview. I mean go ahead apologize away for your inability to provide any evidence or rational justification, but don't pretend like you have some big coherence between your deistic views, and these parts of your worldview, when you cannot even begin to talk about the one in terms of the other. Instead of coherence, it seems you have a gigantic schism in your worldview whose only connection is "deity puzzle peices fit into the deity big picture, and the deity would create a rational universe, so la tee da I have zero need to try and actually show any evidence or logical reason for these puzzle peices despite believing in the value of evidence and reason"

Cute, though. Very cute.

Your ability to characterize how worldview works rivals your ability to characterize Goddidit.

Your basic lexicon is broken so that the comments you make are rather meaningless. The objection you think you're raising doesn't mean anything like what you think it does.

Edit: I'm reminded of conversations I've had with my sociologist colleague. Students show up to a class in sociology with pre-conceived notions about how things work. And many students struggle because they are unable to bridge the gap between how they understand things and how the larger body of academics and academic literature understand things. In this case, you have not yet demonstrated that you have a functional knowledge of how worldview is understood, let alone what coherence means as it relates to truth and understanding. This is fixable, but it would require you to actually learn something new, rather than pretending like your current state of knowledge is sufficient.

So explain it. Explain this coherence between a worldview that ostensibly values reason and evidence, yet feels zero need to provide any shred of reason or evidence for anything deistic in your worldview. So far you only challenge to this rather gaping schism seems to be "you don't understand lalalalalalala"

On a side note, I am about 80% through marking 784 linear algebra midterms in one day so my eyes are a bit cross eyed ATM.

First, coherence is not what you think it is. You're going to have to abandon whatever it is you think it is (which appears to be something like a biconditional relationship between statements, which is evidenced in your "other direction" comment in Post #52). Coherence at the level necessary for talking about worldview issues is primarily about non-contradiction (technically, includes entailment conditions as well, but that's much harder to consider in worldview discussions).

Second, you need to not pretend like what is being presented is somehow different because it's religion. What I've described is a model for worldview reconciliation (the reconciliation between beliefs, information, and experiences) that happens with all areas of worldview perspective. The fact that you might hold particular values in a way that is different from how I hold them does not actually imply anything in particular about how well my beliefs hang together. Remember that what is rational is a function of what is assumed, and so if you have different assumptions (which includes basic life experiences) it is possible to reach different conclusions.

Third, your definitions of "evidence" and "reason" almost certainly differ from mine. As with many worldview issues, it's not about logical entailment. Life experiences, for example, are irrational in the sense that they are not necessarily tied to any particular claim about anything. Stuff just happens. And then the role of worldview is to make sense of it. This is not a process of logical entailment. There's no necessary logical conclusion to be derived from the experience. It is not necessarily viewed as "evidence" to support a belief, or to reject a belief. And the experience is not necessarily logically derivable from the existing worldview beliefs. The role of reason is to see whether the experience coheres with the existing beliefs, and then to determine how to proceed if it does not. (Using the puzzle analogy, this often means simply putting the puzzle piece in the pile with similarly colored tiles. The determination that it's "like one of these other things" is a sufficient use of reason.)

As an explicit example of a belief, I believe it is important to take care of the poor. This is not grounded in "reason" or "evidence" yet it is a belief that I hold. And I don't need to provide evidence or reason in order to hold this belief as a central value in my worldview.

However, this does not mean that this is an "unreasonable" belief to hold. One can come up with many reasons why taking care of the poor is a "reasonable" thing to do. For example, it aligns with various moral or ethical principles. But this is not deriving the belief using reason. It's using reason to affirm that the belief coheres with the larger system of beliefs.

Similarly, one can use "evidence" to point to the value of taking care of the poor, but that doesn't mean that the belief that it's important to care for the poor is derived from evidence. Even if it were shown that somehow *NOT* taking care of the poor is good in some way (perhaps from an economic point of view, it might be determined that the strain of expenses providing for the poor can be minimized by killing them off), it would not on its own be evidence to sway the belief. So even though there is evidence available that pushes back against the belief that it's important to take care of the poor, the evidence does not remove the belief because of its strong coherence with the worldview perspective.

What would it take to sway the belief? It depends on how strongly the beliefs cohere with the worldview. For ancillary beliefs (lone puzzle pieces that haven't really been connected to anything), it doesn't take much. It took very little for me to believe that the Higgs boson was found. I saw it in an article, and I believed it. But beliefs about the Higgs boson are not connected to anything in particular. In order for me to believe that killing the poor is "reasonable" I would need to remove the whole collection of beliefs that are tied to that belief (because of the strong coherence). Perhaps I would replace ethical altruism with ethical egoism. But then I would have to abandon anything that I believe that is strongly tied to ethical altruism in order to maintain coherence.

Notice that the centrality of ethical altruism makes it a more stable belief in the system. Because there are many things that are tied to ethical altruism, a change of that belief will be a significant change in the overall structure of the beliefs. And because of that, there would need to be a significant catalyst to drive the removal of that cluster. For example, being a math professor at a public college instead of pursuing a job in the private sector that would likely pay at least twice as much is tied to my beliefs about education, which is tied to ethical altruism. I work at an institution in an under-educated region that served under-represented minorities and primarily first-generation students because I believe that education is an equalizer (financial and otherwise) in modern society, and a means through which structural/institutional injustices can be righted.

The particular feature to notice about this example is how the system of beliefs is constructed. I feel the need to repeatedly re-emphasize that this is not logical entailment because that seems to be the location of your error. For example, it would be possible for me to have taken a private sector position and still find ways to express ethical altruism through the support of education with a focus on structural/institutional injustice. It would just look different. So ethical altruism does not entail anything in particular. Also, it would be possible for me to be a professor in the position that I'm in without even considering structural/institutional injustice as a factor in my decision.

But it should be clear from this example that the ideas cohere with each other without requiring any logical entailment.

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So given this understanding of "coherence", and this understanding of the role of "evidence" and "reason" in worldview reconciliation -- What is your question? If you cannot ask the question in a way that seems to reflect a meaningful understanding of the terms provided, then you should not expect an answer.

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That's based on experience of conversations with you. It has been repeatedly shown that you don't understand things. But on the back end of that, you've also shown yourself unwilling to learn. You would rather create ad hoc explanations (see the "Goddidit" link above) to further justify yourself rather than adjust your beliefs to the available information.

If I'm going to spend my time with a brick wall, I'd much rather throw eggs at it and laugh than reason with it.

Ahh I see. The case of Elijah vs the prophets of Baal springs to mind. Of course, this all presupposes the historicity of the Bible, which is understandably questionable.

Hear, hear.

Much like your previous exposition on a coherence framework, I don't disagree with much of it outside of nitpicks here and there. I think it is reasonably close to how I go about things as well (and in particular did not contradict any earlier understanding I had). However, I think you are more or less ignoring the problem I articulated (which doesn't manifest in my similarly constructed worldview because I don't add the unjustified assumptions of a deity)

Let's use this example. You believe a truth statement about the nature of the universe, namely that education has value as a financial and social equalizer. We agree. You take this believe about the world, couple it with a moral beliefs, and choose an action as a result. But why do you believe that statement? I submit the reason we both believe it is that we have both seen a relatively wide range of evidence and can offer a wide range of rational justifications for why it is that education is indeed precisely the kind of equalizer that you suggest. Setting aside moral claims, when it comes to this belief about the universe, we use an evidence and reason based approach to ascertain that it is true.

This is probably true of the vast majority of truth claims about the universe that you hold as true, whether it is general relativity or infinite number of primes or who the POTUS is or whatever else. You believe them because there is some good evidence or logical argument or the like to believe in them. Or at least I assume the above is all true.

Now why do I, or you, value evidence and reason so highly? The answer, for me at least, is because of precisely the kinds of coherence model you have articulated. Namely, the consistency that seems to come from applying these processes demonstrates not just noncontradictions but a considerable cohesion in my understanding of the world that lets me put widely disperse experiences together into a common framework.

So my challenge is this: If you share - more or less, don't worry about minor nitpicks or we will never move forward - the broad spirit of the above, ought not you at least attempt to apply the value of using evidence and reason to things in the deistic part of your worldview? Ought not you have even the most rudimentary of attempts to find such evidence or provide such arguments? Otherwise, one has the component of your worldview that you apply extensively throughout your life, but then the deistic part is put off in this untouchable bubble where not only do you not apply the same things you do to everything else to it, you openly apologize for not having to do so.

In fact, if you could provide such evidence and reason for your deistic belief then they would be the type of things that *I* would accept and would thus have a strong coherence with my worldview.

So at the end of the day, you have this assumption about god, you interpret anything you can in terms of this assumption, and become unsurprisingly convinced in the truth of god. And then despite outside of this desitic stuff you strongly value reason in evidence for most things of your life, you have convinced yourself that there is no need to even bother attempting to provide any reason or evidence for any of the truth claims made in your deistic world. It is just all so very vacuous.

I think you are probably underselling this. As in, the reason you can so quickly defer to scientific authority and thus believe in the higgs boson, is likely because you highly value scientific authority. This is justified in at least my worldview where modern scientific methodologies are consistently able to consistently deduce things whose appearance of truth is strongly coherent. In fact, this basis on evidence and reasoning is so foundational that we can put effectively zero of our own mental effort into the process simply trusting that the use of evidence and logic from others, like the physicists working on the Higgs Boson, will likely result in a true statement. For example, if a madman raving nonsense on the street happened to assert along the way that the Higgs Boson did indeed exist, this certainly would not be remotely enough. Indeed, the discovery of the Higgs Boson has been one of the greatest tour de force's of scientific prowess combining thousands of brilliant minds and billions in investment over years to achieve this result. So when you spend 20 seconds convincing yourself that it is true based on skimming an article, it is hardly as trivial as it may seem as you are effectively giving a judgement on the monumental success of this underlining work that is being done. Yet despite this high if understated opinion, you don't seem to find any need to demonstrate any evidence for anything deistic the way you do for the higgs boson.

If the mods are feeling generous, perhaps moving this latest interminable aaron vs uke exchange to it's own thread would be cool.

Why? Heck it is more on topic than several of your posts spawning from the same Aaron post which was explicitly an attempt to answer the question of the OP. Best to leave it where it is.

1) It's not on topic (this isn't "defend your methodology")
2) You and Aaron tend to argue on for literally hundreds of posts in a way that effectively shuts out other voices.
3) It's my partythread and I'll crycomplain about derails if I want to.

It hardly shuts out other voices, they are more than able to continue talking about whatver they want. Heck few probably read the exchanges and provide a few extra scrolls at most. Comment on whatever you want - such as your very much not on topic exchanges - and ignore those you don't care about. Micromanaging and splitting threads every time a discussion changes course doesn't help anything.

Besides, as soon as one expresses a methodology in answer to the OP, it is entirely natural to expect challenges to those professed methodology and if you think "defend your methodology" is not relevant to the OP, then your scope of what a thread is allowed to contain is ridiculous narrow.

I'm not very familiar with "coherence" as a more formal framework, although I think I understand the basic idea. But as a "methodology for distinguishing true claims from false claims", does it implicitly present the idea of truth as being relative? i.e relative to your world view? I mean I guess the answer might be "it depends". If you encounter something that doesn't cohere, you have the option of either disregarding the non-cohering thing, or of attempting to modify other parts of your world view in some way to resolve the apparent conflict. I understand how the "relative importance" of various parts of that world view would impact how likely you are to undertake such a course, but it seems to lead towards some kind of relativism in the extreme case where there are certain parts of a world view which simply can't be overturned once accepted

I don't propose splitting threads for every diversion, but you and Aaron become very boorish when you knock heads, and it's tiresome for everyone else. I'm not the only person to comment on this.

Anyway, If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad will go to the mountain, so consider the issue solved as of now (for me, anyway)

*click*
*click*

Different people could presumably have worldviews that understand "truth" either in absolute terms or in relative terms. As in, what a person claims is true undoubtedly depends on their worldview, but a particular person espousing a truth claim could claim this in an entirely absolute way.

It is kind of like how different people can have different moral systems, but that doesn't mean that all moral systems are relative because someone can certainly claim an absolute moral system that binds everybody.

[QUOTE=zumby;37226837]I don't propose splitting threads for every diversion, but you and Aaron become very boorish when you knock heads, and it's tiresome for everyone else. I'm not the only person to comment on this. /QUOTE]Ah so your proposal is to split every thread where us two particular people discuss something, thus repeatedly cluttering up the main forum index?

I don't know what this means.

Yes, but with nuance. For example, I take the claim of God's existence to be understood through a coherence framework, but that it also does correspond to reality. (That is, I believe God actually exists in reality, and the existence of God fits coherently within the broader system of beliefs that I hold.)

I think that there are many parts of worldview which are nearly impossible to overturn. There are huge chunks of our beliefs about the "self" which are deeply embedded into how we understand and perceive the world around us. For example, consider the statement "This is my body." What would it take for your worldview to be overturned in such a way that you would start to believe that the thing that you think of as "your body" is no longer "your body"?

Part of this fits at the level of the primacy of experience. There are things that you experience which feed your worldview which basically cannot be overturned because of your experience of them. These experiences fit both correspondence (you actually experienced these things in reality) as well as coherence (what you experienced coheres with your framework of how you understand your experiences).

I will agree that it is possible to end up in a place where coherent beliefs do not correspond to reality. Just think of the numerous types of conspiratorial beliefs that exist out there. So it's important to understand both the coherence and the correspondence frameworks, and have the means of approaching information from both perspectives. Correspondence is narrower, but has access to more precise forms, whereas coherence is much broader and drives a lot more of our behaviors and core beliefs.