gogogogogogogogogogogogogogog....

Did you completely ignore what I said in the previous posts? Science cannot prove or disprove things, that's not its goal. But can science be used to search for arguments one way or another? Of course, why not? If there is empirical evidence that can contribute to a debate, is it smart to just ignore it? Doesn't that become just wishful thinking?

The problem of fitting data is something completely different. It is a problem, I definitely agree. But it stems mostly from poorly defined theories. So it's not the definition of evidence what fails, but the vagueness of certain theories.

By the way, saying "This doesn't work." is pretty weird, given that this is EXACTLY how evidence works. You have two rival theories. You find an observation which is compatible with both theories, and from that you can draw no conclusion to disambiguate which theory is better. Then you find an observation which is compatible with one of the theories and incompatible with the other one, and now you have found evidence in favor of the first and against the second. That is how science works, that is how theories have gained and lost credibility.

What I tried to explain is that it is not me who has driven the conversation to a dead end, but the proponents of a theory which DOES NOT ACCEPT empirical evidence for its support. It is their fault for advancing such views. And trying to push the burden of proof to the opposite side is ridiculous.

First of all, you were talking about proving and disproving, and now you presented "evidence" which does not disprove the existence of Santa. If there were any Santa proponents here, they would be accusing you of the same things you are accusing me of (about the standards of acceptance/rejection of the existence of Santa). One could argue that the poem you're referring to was inspired by the real Santa, so just because you've traced the origins of the concept, doesn't mean you have disproved anything. And if you want to be intellectually honest, you should acknowledge this.

Let's focus on your "evidence" for a moment, since it just so happens that we can apply the same type to the ID movement. During the Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District trial it became apparent how the term "intelligent design" originated. People from the Discovery Institute are all Christians. They were trying to push the very unscientific idea of creationism first, but saw that it's not going to work, and then renamed it to ID, this time claiming that it is actually a scientific theory, not a religious view. In the book Of Pandas and People, it turned out that they were using the terms "creation", "creator", "creationism" in the early drafts, but changed all of them to ID derivatives in order to push the concept as scientific. In some copies there were even typos of half-corrected words like "creaintelligent design" (I don't remember the exact examples, but you get the idea; they were hilarious).

So, using your "method" of disproving things, we can safely conclude that ID is just a religious view masked as scientific, and it requires to take things on faith, not evidence.


Hmm... Now that I read this, I don't think this is something that can be resolved in short paragraphs in this thread. I couldn't disagree more with your definition of evidence. The first part is good (which is just repeating my definition with different words), but then you say you don't have necessary standards for repeatability and falsifiability? Then how do you know that the information really points in the direction you think it points at? Can't it be a random coincidence? Can't it be a bias in the person who is proposing it? Can't it be a fraud? The requirements for replication and falsification (among other requirements) were not made up by smart asses in order to make it difficult for good people to support their views. They emerged as a necessity to make logically valid conclusions from the "information" to the view that needs to be supported.


Two things:

1. I didn't make such a big deal about it, it was only one of the MANY criticisms I expressed against Craig. You were the one who made a big deal about it by focusing on it so much, completely ignoring all the other fallacies Craig made I pointed to (why?).

2. When you say "philosophical issues cannot be resolved scientifically" you are implicitly appealing to authorities too. You are either saying "philosophers are holding the position that philosophical issues cannot be addressed scientifically" or you are appealing to yourself as authority. If you presented an actual argument why those questions cannot be addressed empirically, I completely missed it. So, by saying that contemporary philosophers (and not only contemporary) disagree with you, I was criticizing your argument.

Again, two things:

1. Accusing me of Ad hominem is funny, because basically that is what you were doing all the time in the previous threads. And I think you are kind of trying to do the same thing in this thread (although I have to admit that your tone here is a lot better; I appreciate it). You leave the impression that you don't care so much about the truth of my arguments but care a lot more about "defeating me". Indications of this come from the fact that you start attacking me without even fully reading what I wrote, you accuse me of things without knowing whether you are justified to or not. For example, you claim that Craig never said his arguments support a personal God, while in fact he did say exactly that; and then you just said "oh well..." To which I didn't say anything, it's not the biggest problem of the world that you made a mistake. But if our roles were reversed, I would have gotten another post starting with "Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh, la6ki, you are talking out of your ass. AGAIN."

2. It is not true that I can't produce a positive argument for my position. If you are going to categorically reject empirical evidence as not being a positive argument, there is nothing I can do about it.

I guess I should have said "many" instead of "most", since I don't have the full population of philosopher at hand. My mistake.

Do you realize the straw man fallacy you're engaged in? I probably said it only about 10^10000 times that I am not claiming free will is being disproved by those studies. Only that the studies present arguments against free will. Does it mean free will is impossible, given those results? No!

Again, this is just blank accusations. I can easily announce that you don't understand the nature of evidence (which I really kind of think is the case) and declare you unable to have a meaningful conversation at this level. But it's my opinion and I don't serve it as a fact. Isn't it funny that just a few lines ago you accused me of Ad hominem and now you are doing the very same thing? Are you going to display intellectual honesty and acknowledge this apparent contradiction?

<sigh>

This is what I mean. By this type of reasoning, science does not "prove" the existence of gravity. It does not "prove" that objects fall when dropped. Depending on your view of mathematics (which many people consider to be a science), we can't "prove" that there are infinitely many primes. You're playing around with shifty definitions in order to preserve your conclusion, but it's as if you haven't thought through the consequences of making this arbitrary distinction.

Your definition is not robust enough. As I've pointed out before, and will probably be the recurring theme for this thread, you've given yourself a particularly narrow epistemological standard, but you're trying to claim that this epistemological standard is broad enough to answer questions that it logically cannot address.

Here's what you're saying:
1) I define knowledge narrowly.
2) You define knowledge broadly.
3) It's your fault because your definition of knowledge does not conform to mine.

If you want to have an honest conversation, and your definition of knowledge does not admit what they are considering, then *YOU* need to have the conversation on their terms or stay out of it. This is what happened with the theology conversations in previous threads.

If I see a car driving down the street, that is sufficient evidence for me to believe that there is a car driving down the street and I should wait before going. I don't need to take pictures, or somehow try to test it in order for me to take it as evidence.

This is where your narrow epistemology is coming into play.

Because your accusation was wrong. It was a perfectly acceptable use of authority, yet you tried very hard to argue that your accusation was correct. Now we have a very obviously unacceptable use of authority, and you're going to use it to bolster your argument?

(Edit: Again, what do you want me to say about the accusations that you made that might have been correct? It once again sounds like you're looking for some sort of positive affirmation, an "atta-boy" because you've managed to find a mistake.)

The distinction here is definitional. I'm basically drawing a line in the sand. You are using a different definition of the terms than I am. Your position is outside of the norm. I'm insisting on the common terminology, and if you want to play your own word game then you're going to have to work hard to justify that the distinctions you are drawing actually make sense when applied as broadly as you want them to be. (In particular, see the first paragraph.)

I care about the truth of your arguments, it's just that many times they don't contain truth. In your previous threads, it was all about defending your "position", at whatever cost. In the first case, it came at the cost of the actual argument (your "position" didn't change, but you tried 3-4 failed arguments to prove it, while insisting that you had not changed anything), and in the second case it came at the cost of basically abandoning the original position.

<sigh> Your weakness in philosophy is showing again. You're not even challenging the right concept.

What do you mean by "many"? I want to know where it is that you got this particular idea, and how you have come to accept that "many" contemporary philosophers hold this position. Are you really going to tell me that you think the question of physicalism is going to be answered by empirical observation?

The closest statement that might be true that I can think of is that "Many contemporary philosophers are not interested in questions that cannot be resolved by science." And I don't even know if this is true.

You used ad hominem in order to make an argument. I'm just talking trash. There's an important distinction there. Ad hominem is more than just talking down at the opposition, but it's the use of that in an argument. That you don't recognize this is another sign of your philosophical weaknesses.

Did I say gravity is proven? Did I say anything is proven? Why put words in my mouth again?

FYP.

But don't you get it that what you have just described is exactly the evidence I am talking about? The brain in a way uses the scientific method to draw conclusions from observations. It will be a huge derail if I started to explain (biologically) in detail how the brain's learning mechanisms work, but if I have to give a short abstract explanation, the neural networks create schemata based on many many observations of phenomena by making generalizations. Many times when a particular pattern of photons with particular wave lengths has fallen on your retinal receptors, that information has been further processed both in the retina itself and in further neural pathways and associated with other neural patterns of activation. That is to say, many times when you have "seen" "a car driving down the street", this was associated with a car driving down the street (the principle of replication).

On the other hand, when you drive a car on a hot day, you "see" (have the visual experience of) wetness on the road a couple of hundred meters away from you, but you know that there isn't actually water on the road, because you know it's a visual illusion. Is it possible that there is nevertheless real water on the road? Of course. But this has not been replicated in your experience often enough for you to conclude that whenever you visually perceive water on the road while driving there really IS water on the road (whereas the absence of water HAS been replicated).

(I hope you are familiar with the illusion I am talking about here).

Now, does the brain use all the scientific principles we talked about earlier? No. But that is why humans are so prone to fallacious reasoning and illusions: visual, auditory, haptic, and so on. Among those are also illusory religious experiences.

I already explained that this was not my goal at all. It's just weird why you would focus on 10% of the fallacies which may or may not be true fallacies and ignore the rest of the 90% which are true fallacies. This further confirms my suspicions that you don't really care about whether the arguments I'm making are correct, but your only goal is to find every possible mistake in my posts.

This does not address the quote from my post you cited AT ALL.


I agree about the second thread. I did indeed start with a stronger position than I could defend. As for the first one, I didn't change my position at all. I was just stating the same thing with different words, but you focused on that difference, rather than on the meaning behind the words and created the appearance that I am changing my position. Please don't have the illusion that you "won" that argument by showing that it's perfectly rational for Christians to play 2p2 poker.

Coming back to what you said: the point is not whether I make mistakes or not. You also make mistakes. The point is whether your sole purpose in commenting under my threads is to point at those mistakes and declare victory when you manage to find some, or whether you actually care about the points being made. You say you do, but it's extremely nonconvincing. You aren't even commenting on my main question in the OP, completely ignored it. You found something (the argument from authority) that you thought could be attacked and decided to go with it. Deep inside you might care about the truth of my arguments, but it's not showing.

I don't know the answer to that question. My intuition tells me "yes" but it's only my intuition, I don't want to bother people with my personal opinions in a thread which is not about personal opinions. What I would claim, however, is that empirical observation is the best method we have for answering ANY KINDS OF questions. So, if some things cannot be answered empirically (which seems to be your claim) then those things cannot be answered at all.

Yes, obviously. I thought that was implied. If it wasn't, let me confirm it.

Where did I use it in an argument? I was also talking trash. That you aren't acknowledging this is a sign that you use similar to Craig's intellectually dishonest rhetorical techniques to "win" your arguments.

---------------------------------------------------------------

One important thing which you (for some reason) didn't address from my previous post is:

Defend your definition of evidence, as well as your requirements for fair standards for rejecting/accepting a particular view (spare me the evaluations of my philosophical skills please; if you aren't able to address this, just say so).

I never said that this is what you've said. But when you start throwing around terms like "100% certainty" (as if that's meaningful) and "science does not prove anything" it's not hard to figure out what positions must be taken in order to preserve logical consistency. It's just that I'm not sure whether you can actually accept those consequences.

The most obvious place where you're going to have issues is the relationship between mathematics (logic and abstract concepts) and the rest of the sciences (empirical observations). Do you believe that proofs in math are not 100% certain? Do you think that it's possible for there to only be finitely many primes? Do we need to make an empirical observation to convince us that there do exist infinitely many primes?

Yeah... no. Your definition of knowledge, given your definition of evidence, is not equivalent to JTB. Sorry.

LOL.

1) This construction of knowledge is the rejection of a priori knowledge. It doesn't "prove" anything, but over 70% of philosophers believe a priori knowledge exists.
2) Rationalism vs. empiricism is far from a resolved philosophical issue.
3) It's not "exactly the evidence you are talking about."

This is not replication in the scientific sense. The problem is that *NONE* of those observations are independently (or directly) confirmed. I see a car. I see another car. Then I see another car. But there is no test of "car-ness" going on unless I actually walk and get hit by the car. Otherwise, I just "see cars" (like I might "see dead people").

I don't care whether the arguments you're making are correct because I find mistakes in them? Are you seriously taking this as your final answer? Again, you sound like you're BEGGING for a pat on the back.

It does. You just don't know it. I'm not going to chase down a protracted conversation as to why your understanding of knowledge is narrow and short-sighted, and probably not even robust enough to explain most common experiential phenomena.

I never said you did. In fact, I said that you didn't!

As for the rest, LOL. You still haven't even reached level 0 of understanding what happened in that thread if you are saying

---

I've addressed it. I've pointed out that you are showing a strong intellectual bias in believing that the other side is somehow a much more logically tight presentation. Both sides rest upon positions of intuitive plausibility. Whether you think something is intuitively plausible does not add to its ACTUAL truth value. You reject the things that the theists take to be intuitively plausible, and the theists reject the things you take to be intuitively plausible. That's how those debates work!

You believe these things, and that's good for you. Welcome to your narrow epistemology (that I've been telling you about for the last few posts -- I'm glad that you've finally caught up).

Now, tell me whether mathematical knowledge is even possible.

This is NOT what you implied, and you're once again falling down the path of shifting positions while pretending like it never changed. If you don't see the gap between

and

then you would not pass an introductory philosophy class.

Please, confirm. Provide some sort of empirical observation that actually confirms this claim. Something other than your "intuition." I've provided actual data that runs contrary to your "intuition." Whose position is more likely to be true?

No, you made it a part of your argument:

This is an ad hominem ARGUMENT. The *REASON* that people believe X is *BECAUSE* of ad hominem.

Compare this to me:

Which just means LOL.

Sure.

According to you, prove/disprove are impossible standards. Therefore, there's nothing more to say.

This is yet another broad topic. Is math science? I really don't think this is the place to discuss this. Mathematical questions are qualitatively different from theological questions. You said it yourself: formal deductive arguments are not legitimate arguments for the existence of God. Whereas, the fact that the number of prime numbers is infinite is proven by formal deductive arguments.

Oh, it is. But if mine isn't, then yours is even further away from that definition.

Oh man... I really don't feel like explaining to you the grounding of concepts into sensory-motor processes. If you say I suck at philosophy, you suck at cognitive science even more. What you said in the last two sentences is so wrong that I don't know where to begin in addressing it.

Whatever.

Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you.

---

Lol. You addressed it? How? By making an assertion that I challenged many times. You couldn't find 10 minutes to watch a small part of the debate to back up your blank statements. Show me how "the other side" uses fallacies if you are so sure about that.

Just because your "epistemology" is wider, doesn't mean the additional parts make any sense. We obviously need constraints when searching for the truths about the world. It is understandable though why you don't like those constraints...

Lol. Okay.


Oh, now you suddenly LOVE empirical data. I am basing my recent claim exactly on the survey you linked to.

"The reason" has nothing to do with my actual argument. I was talking about why philosophical questions should be addressed empirically. The psychology of the people who oppose this is absolutely irrelevant to my argument.

Oh wow. This dodging of the question was too audacious even for you. Lol. You like pointing to other people's inconsistencies. But when you yourself are busted in a huge inconsistency and intellectual dishonesty... You just flee. Good job.

It stands as a direct refutation of your epistemological claims. If you accept the position that all knowledge is ultimately empirical and proving/disproving is impossible, then mathematical knowledge is not knowledge at all. I suppose you *CAN* reject mathematical knowledge, but I think that undermines much of what you would accept to be science.

But I also think, given your position here, that this is way over your head.

That's fine. The discussion here philosophical, and not about cognitive science.

At no point did I reject empirical data. It's quite clearly included in my definition for evidence. However, your intuition is not included in your standard of evidence, so you've provided me no reason to believe that "many" philosophers share your view. And it seems that you can't even justify that statement to yourself.

Easy game.

Is that going to be your standard of argument now? Let's see what your argument boils down to then:

Now let's get rid of the stuff that is "not an argument" as you've described it.

Good argument!

You've DECLARED the impossibility of proving/disproving, and then you've challenged me to "disprove" Santa Claus. "It's not my fault" that you've erected an impossible standard for me to reach. I can tell when the game is rigged. (Edit: Just because I think you would miss it -- I'm arguing on *YOUR* terms, not mine. Why? Because I gave you the evidence for falsification of an actual "Santa Claus" on my terms and you've rejected it. This seems to imply that you want me to argue on your terms.)

As I said, this is a topic for another discussion. And yes, I don't think that the mathematical knowledge has the same definition as scientific knowledge (justified true belief).

It's not necessarily only philosophical. The example you gave requires not just philosophical knowledge. You need to understand how the learning in the brain works. It's not a magical process how you know something you saw is a car, and the processes by which you attain that knowledge are very similar to the methodology used by scientists in attaining knowledge about the world. If you say that it's fine you don't know these things, and yet you want to argue that your position is true, the conversation is once again dead.

Is your argument for why philosophical questions CANNOT be studied empirically any better?

No, no, no... You accused me of not opening the door for creationists to support their view. I said that it's just a position which is unsupportable and the nature of that position is not my fault.

You said this:

Then you also said this:

And to show you that the problem is not in me, but in the theory presented, I asked you to tell me what standards would you have for accepting the existence of Santa? Let's compare the two views:

1. Person X makes the positive claim that Santa exists.
Behe makes the positive claim that some life forms began to exist abruptly, created by an intelligent designer.

2. Aaron challenges X, saying "there is no evidence Santa exists".
Evolutionists/atheists/naturalists challenge Behe, saying "there is no evidence for anything being created by an intelligent designer."

3. X objects: "Yes, there is. The evidence is the fact that the concept of Santa exists in the first place. Where would it come from, if Santa is imaginary?"
Behe objects: "Yes, there is. The bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex, so it couldn't have evolved. If you remove one part of the motor, it no longer has the same function. So, it couldn't have evolved gradually. How would it exist then, if it's not created by an intelligent designer?"

4. Aaron says: "But that is not evidence! People could have totally made it up. In fact, I can even trace its origin to a poem. Not to mention that you are simply using the argument from personal incredulity."
E/a/n say: "But that is not evidence. It is true that when you remove a part from the motor it no longer has the same function, but nobody said it should! In fact, there are other bacteria which lack some of the proteins from the bacterial flagellum and the same structure serves a completely different purpose. Not to mention that you are simply using the argument from personal incredulity."

5. X covers his ears and starts repeating "I don't care what you say, Santa is real!"
Behe completely ignores all criticism that has been raised and keeps repeating his first argument like a parrot, making no sense whatsoever.

...

And after some time when the issue is brought up, both person X and Michael Behe accuse you and me, respectively, of arranging impossible standards for their side. Well, the standard is the same for everybody! Bring up evidence from which your position logically follows!

And one last thing: EVEN IF I accept that some philosophical issues cannot be resolved scientifically, the people from the Discovery Institute claim that ID is a scientific theory, not a philosophical position. That was their main argument for why it should be taught in schools (even they agreed with that standard!). Therefore, they have to use empirical evidence to support it. Your "narrow epistemology" argument fails here ingloriously.

That's not a scientific definition of knowledge. Sorry. Let me help:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kn...-analysis/#JTB

But this is NOT what is meant by "repetition" when it comes to the question of scientific observations! Seeing something many times is not sufficient qualification for a scientific observation. Otherwise, people who see ghosts have science to support them. Unless, of course, you would accept someone's claim of seeing ghosts because they had seen multiple ones throughout their life. But then you've got other issues.

Is math ultimately an empirical subject, or not? Your answer to this dictates the argument.

If math is ultimately empirical, then you have something to say about how it is that we can conclude "there exist infinitely many primes" since there is no empirical accounting for "infinitely many primes."

If not, then it's clear that there exist areas of knowledge which are not ultimately empirical. And since this is the case, then philosophy, being even less quantitative than math, can reasonably be seen to have questions that are not ultimately empirical.

Why are you asking me to defend Behe? At what point did I say anything in support of his positions? At least when I put words into your mouth, they are reasonable conjectures of what you might say based on the given information. What affirming statements have I said that support ID as a field of scientific inquiry?

I don't know how to break this to you, but this doesn't reflect the scenario that was presented.

You said:

This is not "Person X makes a positive claim that Santa exists." This is "Person X asks for evidence that might qualify to falsify the existence of Santa."

No, this is not what I presented.

For all the atheist-talk about how what atheism is, I'm surprised that you bumbled this one so badly. I'm presenting evidence that Santa Claus doesn't exist, but you're saying that there is an absence of evidence for the existence of Santa Claus. It's not the same thing.

The rest is a yawn. It doesn't reflect anything like the conversation that actually transpired. It's no surprise that you fail at properly characterizing my argument given that you fail to characterize your own so regularly.

It's not just seeing! Many times you have confirmation of what you see from other modalities. It's really hard to argue about this when your background is so poor. I feel like I'm trying to explain derivatives to somebody who doesn't know what a function is.

Math is not ultimately empirical. But philosophy is more similar to science than to math. I already said that the mathematical knowledge is different than the scientific knowledge. It doesn't teach us new things about the universe. Whereas both philosophy and science attempt to learn new things about the universe. And if you want to do that, you have to get out of your own head and turn to empirical evidence.


This is just an analogy. The way ID is presented is very similar to the way X presents Santa. I know this is slightly different from the question I first asked you about Santa, but I wanted to make the base and the target of the analogy more isomorphic.

In any way, your positive evidence for Santa's nonexistence failed the first time. If you still want your evidence to work, then you should also admit that ID is rejected too, because I gave you the same kind of story for its origin.

It's possible to explain derivatives to people who don't know formal definitions of functions, but that's beside the point.

What I'm trying to point out to you is that the particulars of the mechanisms involved in the interpretation of human sensory input are not on their own sufficient to be considered "empirical observations" in a scientific sense. They may mirror aspects of scientific methodology, but it's not actually scientific methodology. Seeing something many times is not "the principle of replication."

You're trying to simultaneously define your epistemology as broad and narrow, and that's never a good thing when it comes to creating a clear and coherent concept.

I suspect you will find that most mathematicians and philosophers disagree with that statement. The methods of philosophical research do not look anything like the methods of scientific research, but do look like the methods of mathematical research. It's a lot of working with careful definitions, and constructing arguments based on those definitions, and looking for internal coherence of positions.

Once again, I'm going to ask you to produce *SOMETHING* to support your claim.

Good luck finding anything remotely resembling a consensus in favor of either of these statements. In fact, I strongly suspect you will find a consensus against them.

Again, you speak as if you've resolved the issue of empiricism vs. rationalism. LOL.

Is it an analogy when there's nothing similar about the two situations? You asked me to do X, and I did X, and now you're trying to argue that I did Y. It just doesn't make any sense.

Why do you think I'm going to defend ID? How long are you going to keep assigning positions to me that I don't actually hold?

Yes, correct. I didn't say they were sufficient (in the sense that one can never be sure if what they're seeing is really a car; that gives rise to gedankenexperiments like "brain in a vat"). But neither is empirical data sufficient to draw certain scientific conclusions. Nevertheless, with some basic assumptions, one can use the same methodology both as a scientist and as a biological organism. You are misrepresenting the nature of making conclusions from empirical observations in that you are trying to claim that if you don't use the same rigorous methods EVERY TIME you encounter something, you aren't really using the scientific method. See below.

What's happening with your car example essentially is something like this:

1. Children ask their parents or other adults about what certain objects are. They see a car and the adults say "this is a car". The particular pattern produced in the brain by the light reflected from the car is encoded AND associated with the information they received from the adults.
2. The child can also see a truck and say "car?", to which the adult will reply "no, this is a truck".
3. Continuing with this process, the child learns which features or combination of features are indicative of cars and which features are present in other objects as well. A little more formally, this is done by weakening and strengthening of the connections between units in a neural network so that patterns can be correctly associated in the future (i.e., the visual pattern of a car should produce the "concept" of a car).

And of course the knowledge about a car is a lot richer than just the visual patterns associated with it, since the child is also hearing, touching, riding in cars, etc.

When you're a grown man, the neural nets in your brain responsible for object recognition are already tuned. So, when you see a car driving down the street, relying on principles in visual perception like size, color, shape constancy, you successfully "know" that this is a car driving down the street.

Look what I said:

Also, does the brain use the principles as strictly as scientists? Again, no. But so what? The point you were trying to make back than was that you don't always need empirical evidence to know something:

And what I am arguing is that you HAVE used empirical data in the past. Obviously, you don't have to conduct (even in the lay sense) empirical studies for everything from scratch if you have conducted such in the past. But neither do scientists. For example, they study the effects of a virus on the organism in order to know its effects, but later when the tests reveal that a particular person is infected with that virus, they don't start conducting the same experiments again, they use the knowledge they already have. You are doing the same thing when you see a car and know that there is a car.

What I said was that philosophy and science are both interested in truths about the world, whereas math is not. That is why we don't have the same requirements for mathematical knowledge as we do for philosophical and scientific knowledge.

You can argue that some philosophical knowledge is not interested in the external world (maybe you can give examples?) but I would say that philosophical questions regarding such "knowledge" are pretty meaningless. Also, the philosophical question from which this whole argument started (free will) is not one of those questions! It should and is addressed empirically.

Can you give examples of your own, without invoking the "consensus" among philosophers? What mathematical knowledge has taught us something new about the universe?

Then what in the world were you defending in the first place? I'm super confused. You're the one who seems like changing positions now.

Weren't we talking about intelligent, purposeful design here?

Your sense of knowing is utterly inconsistent. On the one hand, you want to define the narrow epistemology provided by the strict scientific methodology, but on the other hand you're allowing for something that is equivalent to "indoctrination" (being told something repeatedly, and being corrected when deviating from that) as knowledge. (Imagine a child being told "these are signs from God" repeatedly. Is it now knowledge?)

Again, these are the sorts of things that makes it freakishly frustrating to try to have a conversation with you. You are literally don't know what you're saying.

It's very simple. You're DEFINING yourself a specific class of "knowledge" and not deviating from it. That's fine. But then there's NO CONVERSATION that can be had. This is just like when you told me that "prove/disprove" is impossible in one sentence, and in the next told me to disprove something. There's nothing to say.

Oh no... you're going to redefine "universe" now, aren't you... Because I'm about to bring up the group theoretic and linear algebra principles that are applied to quantum mechanics, and point out the fact that calculus was developed in order to address physics, and that the intuition, principles, and language of differential geometry guided the development of general relativity, and so forth.

And I have no doubt that you're going to tell me I'm wrong, probably because those things are somehow "not math" but perhaps something like "applications of math" and that somehow this distinction makes them not a part of the "universe" which will require you to say something like "the universe consists of only the physical stuff" to which I'll say that "logic" is non-physical, but a central part of how philosophy works (and not merely an "application" of an abstract concept), and we'll continue to go in circles.

How is this "defending" something? It's a question that's designed to get you to rethink your views. If you have no idea what it would be like to "see evidence" for something, or what it would take to convince you of the opposite view, then it's very hard to have a conversation *ON YOUR TERMS* about the "evidence" for something. Because what this means is that there is no standard that must be reached, and you can stubbornly refuse to accept anything. Call it "unfalsifiability" if you want.

If you can't even imagine what "evidence" for something would look like, then if you want to have a conversation, you need to have it on the other persons' terms. And you must either admit that their understanding is coherent, but you reject it, or find some internal contradiction or nonsense logical consequences of it. (Again, your weakness in philosophy is showing. This is basic philosophy.)

OMF, I didn't say it's real knowledge. Pay attention that I put it in "" so many times when referring to lay scientific knowledge (or what you are calling "knowledge").

And by the way it's not the same as simply repeating something like "these are the signs of God", because in your example the child does not get any confirmation for this statement, whereas the child DOES get a confirmation for the things he/she sees (in relation to their existence). There is nothing empirical in the example you gave. Twisting my words, as usual. Your "rhetorical" techniques are becoming more and more ridiculous.

Okay, this is too much. In every thread I open, at some point you appear and completely destroy the discussion. Notice that from the moment you come, the number of people writing progressively diminishes.

I had decided to not say this, but you're just becoming a huge pain in the ass. I have received some PMs about you, here's one of them (I am going to keep the identity of the poster hidden):

The reason many people avoid talking to you is obvious. And you get the illusion that it's actually because they all agree with you. Most of them just think it's pointless to try to reason with you. I thought this thread was going to be different, since you entered the discussion with a very polite tone, but then you just had to start with your stupid "LOL, you suck at philosophy" crap. I will probably soon be joining the people who simply ignore you, maybe that way the threads I start will remain focused on their original topic.

I am not defining anything, I am sticking to the definition I started with: justified true belief. Mathematical knowledge does not go in that category, because it is not a belief. Since things are proved using formal deductive arguments, you are basically forced to accept the truth of the theorems and the other stuff. No room for belief.


Yes, but those things were used simply as tools for addressing those issues. Derivatives and integrals (in Newton's case) were invented specifically as tools. When you "learn" the properties of some mathematical concept, you are learning nothing new about the world we live in. This is the fine distinction that you seem unable to grasp.

So now we have all sorts of categories that you're playing around with. We've got "real knowledge" which is different from "lay scientific knowledge" which is presumably different from "normal scientific knowledge" which is clearly distinct from "mathematical knowledge" and on and on and on.

Think about the "confirmation" that would be received. Let's take a very specific example: "The sun in the morning is a sign that God still loves us." You tell this to a kid every morning, and he gets confirmation because the sun does indeed rise. He sees it. The sun is clearly rising every morning. The association of that concept ("God still loves us") with the empirical experience of the sun rising is NO DIFFERENT than the association of the concept "car" and the empirical experience of seeing it on the street driving towards you.

A lot of that has to do with the longevity of the discussions.

I'm well aware that there are people who avoid me. That's fine. But you continue to engage in the discussion, so I continue to converse with you.

I like how you try to mind read and fail every single time.

That's because you suddenly went very sideways with your ideas. It's the exact same pattern in every single thread. The increase of belligerence follows the increase in incoherence of your position. Most of the time, it happens at the point where you establish some bizarre standard that you cling to.

In the theist-poker thread, it was the idea that your theological views were the only appropriate theological views, and that no other views are actually Christian. Original Position spent a lot of time trying to explain that one to you.

In the child-abuse thread, it wasn't until you finally abandoned your "Is there anything other than religion that's massive child abuse? I think not." and took the more sane position of "some religious teaching which are traditionally thought to not be harmful are harmful." that the conversation died down.

Here, you've brought up an impossible standard, but you don't seem to see it. On the one hand, you've brought up a scientific empiricism as the best standard (and perhaps the only way) of knowing. But then you've also said that theists must argue in such a way that does not invoke science, since science is subject to change. So there's no logical possibility in your mind about the existence of God.

And I've been showing you how you're continuing in that pattern regarding your views of "evidence." Although it's possible for someone to present a piece of information for you and for you to consent "this *IS* evidence of intelligent design" it is far more likely the case that NOTHING will ever satisfy your undefined standard of "evidence" and therefore it will never be possible for you to be convinced of intelligent design if it were real.

I would also say that it's a reflection of the same intellectual biases you have when listening to these debates, and similar to your theist-poker thread. You've already determined what conclusion you will have, and everything is about fighting to maintain that conclusion.

You're welcome to do this, as there's nothing I can do to stop you.

I you cannot see the contradiction in this sentence, I don't know what to do.

This is not "belief" in JTB. I don't even think this concept of belief matches any standard philosophical usage.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/

---

You say it's a distinction that I seem unable to grasp, yet I just explained the position that you were about to take perfectly.

---

So when we accept the premise that gravity is approximately constant over small changes of altitude, and conclude (via mathematics) that this would cause projectiles to take parabolic paths, is the fact that we have now learned that projectiles will take parabolic paths something "new" about the universe that we did not know before?

la6ki -

A more precise diagnosis of Aaron W.'s posting style would be: nihilistic. Despite his protestations, he obviously has no interest in philosophy (e.g. here he concedes he can't even name one good living philosopher, and---in a truly staggering display of provincialism---claims that less than 5% of professional scientists have heard of Noam Chomsky.) Rather, his rhetoric seems an attempt to justify some sort of involuntary contempt(!) for the human condition: If one caricatures every serious attempt at expression as perversely imprecise or illogical, surely one is justified in feeling contempt?

It is true that I have no interest in academic philosophy. But philosophy as the almost necessary aspect of human thought is unavoidable, and I take great interest in working to think coherently.

As a professional mathematician, I do not expect students to take the same level of interest in the depths of mathematical sophistication that I do. But I think it's of great value for kids to learn how to play (and learn to win at) nim (even though it's a completely solved game, and there's no direct added value to the mathematical community for their engagement in the activity).

In fact, I think it is better for them to play and try to learn through the struggles than it is for them to pick up a book and read about the solution.

What work is the 'academic' qualifier doing in that sentence? (Are we meant to infer that professional philosophers aren't doing philosophy?!)

This is like saying: "It is true I have no interest in the work of great writers. But writing is an almost necessary aspect of human life, and I take great interest in working to write well."

How would you even know what good writing is without reading great authors? How can you recognize "coherent thinking" without studying the work of people who are, you know, actual philosophers?

They are doing a subset of philosophy. That's usually how adjectives generally work.

It depends on the end goal of the writing. One can aspire to write awesome grants, but there is no necessary requirement to have contemplated Walt Whitman's poetry to achieve this (nor is it clear that time reflecting on it will have any benefit).

Philosophers are not the only great thinkers (at least as we have classified them today). Formerly, theologians were considered in the same arena as philosophers, as were scientists. The distinction that you are drawing is arbitrary.

Um, yes. And what exactly is this "subset"? What is the community of professional philosophers---which you admittedly have no knowledge of whatsoever---leaving out?

Can you please adumbrate the divisions of philosophy, and point out which are omitted by professional philosophers? (Again, I understand this will be hard for you, since you know nothing about the work of actual philosophers, but I'll be patient.)

What arbitrary distinction am I drawing?! What are you even talking about?

Perhaps when you typed, "...philosophy as the almost necessary aspect of human thought is unavoidable (sic)", you didn't mean 'philosophy' under any recognizable use of the term?

I already know the classifications that you tend to use, and you tend to be an all-or-nothing sort of person. I disagree fundamentally with that.

The question of "What am *I* doing with my life?" (where the *I* is specific to whoever is asking the question) is a philosophical question that is not addressed by professional philosophers.

You may disagree with either the classification (that's not a philosophical question) or the breadth (philosophers address this through the study of values, etc.), and that's fine with me.

I don't expect that you would recognize it, but that's related to your particular understanding. You probably still think that the Max Planck Society are the correct arbiters to the question of "What is good music?"

I would say that college students sitting around, late at night, half-stoned and half-drunk, contemplating the world inside their heads and the world around them, are doing philosophy. (In the same way, I think that a kid making arrangements of his toys is doing math.)

Um...the entire Existentialist program? WTF are you talking about?

Please, dispense with the silliness here; we've already established that you have exactly zero familiarity with even the modern philosophical canon. You said that professional philosophers do only a subset of philosophy. Did you actually mean anything by this?

The scientific community has the richest exposition of the concept 'good music', yes. That should be obvious, since nobody else is even trying to make such a concept precise.

Not sure what this has to do with my questions.

I have no idea how you can simultaneously admit you know nothing about philosophy and claim that professional philosophers are ignoring (large, important?) portions of it. Bizarre.

This is different, of course, than just acknowledging you don't care about philosophy. Period.

I'm talking about the thing that you did not quote.

---

Your reference to the "modern philosophical canon" indicates what you view to be philosophy (and hence, things that are not philosophy).

Yes. I meant that there exist philosophical thoughts that are not considered by academic philosophers in the process of contemplating their academic philosophy. In particular, the question of "What is Aaron W. doing with his life?" is not being contemplated (in that form) by academic philosophers in the context of their academic work.

Your claim of obviousness represents the fact that you have no argument. Rather, you believe that this conclusion follows immediately from your definitions or other basic concepts. It's just that we don't share the same set of definitions, so we don't reach the same conclusion.

Do you think that they are doing philosophy?

There is a distinction that you do not recognize, either willfully or unwittingly. You are defining philosophy as that which academic philosophers do. If you think I'm wrong in characterizing your position in this way, then state an area of philosophy which academic philosophers do NOT do.

However, I'm saying that the things that academic philosophers do is a subset of philosophy. I view philosophy as a broader category of thoughts pertaining to all sorts of aspects of human existence. In particular, it includes personal thoughts and reflections that may or may not have any bearing beyond the person thinking it.

It's the definitional game I've explained above. Period.