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Originally Posted by Aaron W.
When you say "contemporary philosophy" about what time frame are you thinking?
Since Kripke's
Naming and Necessity, so the early seventies.
A while ago I had a row with tame_deuces and All-in Flynn on the proper distinction between agnosticism and weak/strong atheism. I haven't fully worked through my own views yet, but I suspect that the view held by most people on this forum about the meaning of "atheism" is incoherent. However, I wasn't able to convince anyone else, so you should take what I say with a grain of salt.
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Also, the idea of agnostic that I'm referring to is what is commonly used in gathering demographic information, which may be inconsistent with the contemporary philosophical notion, but is not a notion that is totally ungrounded in the use of the word.
The problem is that the word is often misused because people don't distinguish correctly between belief and knowledge. This makes it impossible to make sense of the ordinary usage of the term. Of course, we can understand what people are trying to say--similar to how we can understand what causes people to make common mathematical or logical errors. But that doesn't change the fact that what they are saying doesn't make sense.
Notice how the wikipedia entry illustrates this error. What it calls the "Agnosticist" position makes no reference to
knowledge, but rather is a pure description of what beliefs we hold. Thus, we would say that anyone who does not have a belief about god's existence or non-existence is an "agnosticist" according to this definition. This is what most here refer to as "weak atheism." An example: I am agnosticist about whether there is an even number of stars because I do not have any beliefs about whether there is or is not an even number of stars.
However, the definition of both weak and strong agnosticism refer to our ability to currently
know that god exists or does not exist. However, we can believe that p while admitting that we do not know that p. Thus, neither weak nor strong agnosticism imply "agnosticistism," and "agnosticistism" doesn't imply either weak or strong agnosticism. However, since most people conflate these two categories, the ordinary usage of "agnosticism" is incorrect.
Last edited by Original Position; 08-20-2010 at 02:14 AM.
Reason: added link