It's too bad. Because your unwillingness to address your own biases and preconceived notions is exactly why no progress is made.

Then what does it mean for something to be true? When you say it's "true" that 1+1=2, then what are you actually saying?

What about Newton's laws of motion? Would force no longer be mass times acceleration? Would there be no such thing as "force" or "mass" or "acceleration" because there are no human minds to think about those concepts?

Then you simply don't understand either one.

No. You don't know what you're talking about here.

Have you ever used logic before?

This shows that you don't really understand theism, either. Your mind is a cluttered mess of misinformation. *NOBODY* calls theism "a way of acquiring knowledge."

But if you're not listening, then that's an accurate reflection of the state of the conversation.

Yes, you could try to strawman me. But that's not what I'm doing to you. I'm literally putting your own words back at you and you're twisting them so that you don't have to confront the depth of your own misunderstandings.

Because it's not about my position. You seem to be under the strange impression that I'm trying to convince you to be a theist. Instead, I'm trying to get you to be a better and deeper thinker.

You believe that there is no God. You believe that the statement "there is no God" is true. You are convinced enough that at every turn of this conversation you are defending yourself against such a claim. You are more interested in appearing to not be wrong (by understating your beliefs) than you are about actually being wrong (examining your beliefs).

1+1=2 is a contingent truth. What else is there to say about it. Is the FSM real simply because I can imagine it? If not, why not?

The physical laws of the universe would exist without or without a human to perceive them, they describe the properties and behaviour of the physical. Maths would not, it's a purely abstract thing that exists only in our minds which is a physical process occurring in our physical, material brain.


I guess you mean *nobody else* since I do, and even then it's somewhat lazy phrasing by your standards. Theism is a paradigm like any other, it assumes god and that assumption determines what questions are relevant and what answers are meaningful. and that's where it fails for me because it simply isn't useful in explaining anything at all. Claim - God exists. Ok, what predictions can we make from that? None. How can we correct and improve on that explanation? We can't. How can we check that it's true? We can't. Can we test for it, and repeat that test to be sure of our results? No. Is it in any way useful in explaining what we observe? No, not in my opinion.

Science is also a paradigm, a way of acquiring and interpreting knowledge, and in the strictest application of Philosophical Naturalism (IMO, the only valid application) it doesn't accept supernatural explanations. Questions about god are irrelevant in that paradigm, because god is supernatural. I find it the most useful for explaining what we observe.


I see it as that I have no good reasons to accept that there are any gods. I'm still waiting for you to give me some? Something better than 'you just don't get it dude, and worse, you don't even get what you don't get'. Ok, educate me by telling me what it is that I don't get rather than referring to it.

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

Anyway, what do you think of the argument for determinism I posted in my OP? Wouldn't it undermine an argument made for god's existence based on 'efficient cause'?

(P1) Every human choice or action is an event
(P2) Every event has an explanatory efficient cause

... (C1) Therefore, every human choice or action has its explanatory efficient cause

(P3) Every human choice or action has its explanatory efficient cause
(P4) To have explanatory efficient cause is not to be free

... (C2) Therefore, human choice or action is not free.

I stopped reading after your first sentence.

1+1=2 is NOT a CONTINGENT truth.

Why do you use words when you literally have no idea what they mean?

Thanks for pointing out my error, I meant that it's a necessary truth. However, that's not really the point.

If you stopped reading after the first sentence, I can only imagine its because the error was so horrendous, so indicative of a lack of intelligence and/or knowledge on my part, that reading my posts would be a total waste of time.

So, feel free to live up to that standard, or don't say pointless things like that. If I think you're not reading my posts, exchanges between will be short-lived, that I can tell you.


Not sure how this is incompatible with what I said about science which deals only with the physical, material universe (unless you're a theist attempting to reconcile your personal belief with the scientific method and using a corrupted version of Philosophical Naturalism. I'm assuming you got far enough down this reply to read this part.

I'm not sure if you know what you're saying. Is it possible that 1+1=2 could be false?

Edit: Just saw your response to lagtight. If it's a NECESSARY truth then how would it depend on humans?

But are they themselves (the physical laws) physical or material objects?

This should cause you pause to consider the possibility that you don't actually understand what you're talking about, and that you're likely using words in ways that misrepresent others.

No. Science does not parse between natural and supernatural. The methods of science would still work as a means of acquiring knowledge if the entirety of the universe were "supernatural."

You are distorting ideas to fit your preconceived notions.


Not really. That you think you would undermine God's existence through an argument that doesn't actually invoke God is similar to how you think that somehow the argument that there could exist something immaterial is somehow some sort or argument for God. It's like you don't actually understand the arguments you're creating.

You sort of remind me of two things here

1) The first part (being wary of abstruse concenpts) is a kind of restatement of the principle of parsimony? It makes sense, I think. I remember being surprised to learn that so many mathematicians favored some kind of platonism about mathematical objects. But then I guess maybe computer programmers are naturally drawn to logicism.

2) Pascal's "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and not the God of the philosophers!" I think you're definitely right about the latter, but I'm not sure most theists have such complex views?

FWIW I think this is another example of confusing materialism with naturalism.

I guess I don't know what contingent truth means either. You can easily construct models of the integers where 1+1 does not equal 2 is a theorem. The easiest example would be the set of axioms 1&2 taken together called L:

L:
1. All the axioms of Peano Arithmetic
2. The axioms of Peano Arithmetic are inconsistent.

L must be consistent (if PA itself is consistent) and they will form a model where you can prove 1+1>2. You are of course free to reject my L integers for not being intuitive and or having the properties you want in a system of counting. But that doesn't mean your regular integers are the only game in town. I've just shown you another.

A statement is a contingent truth if there exist possible universes in which the statement is false. It is contingent upon (for example) the facts of the given universe.

A statement is a necessary truth if it is true in all possible worlds.

Using the framework of asserting axioms creates the question of what it means to be a "possible" universe. Does there exist a universe in which circles are squares (where these terms are the terms we've adopted in this universe, not that there is a possible universe in which the words "circle" and "square" represent the same concept)

Hi MB,

I normally read your posts in their entirety, but it is frustrating for me ( a failing on.my part, I admit) to see you frequently using terms that you have no idea what they mean.

For example, I'd bet real money that you don't know what "Philosophical Naturalism" means.

Actually, I don't know what it means either. I DO know what "Metaphysical Naturalism" means. Is that what you mean? Do YOU even know what you mean?

You can search the forum for other posts he's made on the topic. For example:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...m#post53512487

Look up and down to get the context and see how the conversation went.

It's somewhat related to parsimony. If you ask mathematicians about the continuum hypothesis, the ones who favor true likely believe in kind of a neat,orderly universe. I'm not a logician, but I would tend to favor false.

I think mathematicians were sort of dragged into a weak form of Platonism kicking and screaming. The dream initially for guys like Russell and Hilbert was to write down a set of intuitive axioms that describe all of math that could also prove their own consistency. Any different system you tried to come up with would simply be inconsistent and could be rejected on that basis. The only island in the vast ocean of possible math, so to speak.

Godel basically blew that up and said "give me any set of consistent axioms you think describe all the intuitive math you want to be true, and I can create a new system that also must be consistent but can also prove all sorts of nonsense". Basically Islands everywhere, but most you never explore.

Whats the rational for only caring about the intuitive consistent portions of math and basically ignoring all the equally consistent by highly non intuitive math? Platonism provides one way to elevate normal math over highly counter intuitive but consistent math nobody really wants to study.

I'm not sure what you mean by logicism. Maybe formalism? I think it's fine to be a Platonist sometimes and a formalist other times. It's sort of like interpretations of quantum mechanics. Switch back and forth all you want, just don't make a mistake when you calculate something observable.

I think in many ways the language of logic/math isn't what we should be using. I find most forms of modern theism(including christianity/islam etc) to be largely bath faith goal post shifts. That god cannot be studied by naturalistic methods is only accepted by theists BECAUSE they no longer want to defend angels, demons or voices from god and all the other crap that science largely eliminated in the modern world. It's not a deep fact about the nature of god. It's simply a means to avoid constantly having to admit error as knowledge progresses. Science is better at dealing with outright bad faith. In math, there are really no good faith arguments that the Riemann hypothesis is false, but it's still an open problem. If a physics theory depended on the Riemann hypothesis being true, it would be considered valid already.

Will do. Thanks.

How did you get on with the rest of the podcast? I'm especially interested in what you thought about Ian's fiery summary of apologetics at the end!

I thought I'd leave it a couple of days before asking, since it is a pretty scathing analysis of content that was important to you, and could be worldview altering, to some degree.

If you see it as a significant challenge to some aspects of your worldview, I think that would be interesting to hear about - but perhaps that is getting too personal to follow in real time.


(by worldview altering, I'm talking about how you view certain kinds of apologetics, I'm not suggesting you'd question your underlying faith! At least, not today, lol)

Haven't listened any more yet. Will do so this week. I'm in the process of relocating.

I saw an interesting video by a Baptist pastor called "Why Christian Apologetics is Stupid.". Overall I thought it was good.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Philosophical_naturalism

For the purposes of this discussion, all I'm focussing on is that materialism and naturalism are not spiritualism, the immaterial or the supernatural.

I guess my argument against maths proving the immaterial is that I consider maths, and any other thought processes to be material. With science, I take a scientific method based on a pure version naturalism that ignores th e supernatural, as the most effective means of understanding what we observe.

Is there anything wrong with that?

Naturalism excludes "the supernatural", but not necessarily the immaterial.

Materialism excludes both.

Circular Reasoning Fallacy. DUCY?

Edit:Also called Begging the Question Fallacy.

And that's why rationalwiki should be used even less often than wikipedia. An article that itself claims to be poorly sourced and needs work should not be considered a useful place to point to for information. It looks like something that someone wrote in less than 30 minutes of work.

There are only two references. One of which points to SEP, which does *NOT* cohere with the presented definition of "philosophical naturalism" in its article. Here is the only time "philosophical naturalism" appears in the body of the text:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/

The second reference is to an article that was published in a defunct secular humanist journal, and the thesis appears circular on first reading. Admittedly I didn't read the whole thing, and there may be more there than I give it credit for. The bolded definition below in the definition of "reasonable" is where I think it goes sideways, and it's precisely the same reason I think your perspective is circular. You've defined yourself a limited set of tools with which to draw conclusions about the universe, and so when you are unable to detect things that your tool is unable to detect, you simply assume it away.

https://infidels.org/library/modern/...aturalism.html

You might also want to notice that the definition presented in the original article actually affirms what I've been telling you, which is that you are defining yourself out of the conversation insofar as the "supernatural" is concerned:

Another way of saying this is that philosophical naturalism just labels everything as natural and so the whole term becomes essentially meaningless.

You need to try to do better in your reasoning. Taking shortcuts by just posting the first (and only?) link you can find isn't going to help you.

Blurring the lines between these things is causing you immense difficulty in your ability to accurately communicate your ideas. Pretending like it's not a problem for you to intermix the terms this way does not help your cause.

I get that. I suggested that's what you were doing in an earlier post. That's fine, but I think mixing up the terms is probably causing some confusion. If it were just a question of picking a word to use then it obviously doesn't matter too much, as long as everyone understands. But I don't think you're really giving anything up by allowing for the distinction, and there's a lot to be gained in conceptual flexibility.

Ok. I went ahead and created a new thread on the topic, perhaps you can give your thoughts once you've had a chance to think it over. I think it's an important topic to think about, whereas I have little interest in where this thread has gone.

I will endeavor to listen to the podcast in its entirety and give you my opinion.

Quote I heard over 40 years ago, and still one of my favorites:

Everybody's entitled to my opinion.

lol, yes I can see how it looks like that and I'm well aware of the fallacy, you don't need to spell it out.

My reasoning isn't circular though. I have no reason to accept that immaterial is a thing, so I believe that thoughts have a material cause, and that includes maths. So, maths does not prove the immaterial, it's just a material thought like any other.


Well, there lies some of the confusion. Naturalism does not include the supernatural, hence the phrases being virtually interchangeable for me for the purposes of this discussion.

Naturalism - "the philosophical belief that everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted."