The Internal Experience of the Holy Spirit
Scripture tells us, and Christians commonly concur, that there is an internal experience of the Holy Spirit that assures us of God’s reality in our lives. It is not the only way we know God is real, but it is an important one.
Paul asked yesterday,
Could you describe in positive terms what this direct perception of God or the Holy Spirit is like?
Christians reading here, could you help by writing in your answer to Paul’s question, or direct us to other sources that speak of this? (I should think that hymns and poetry would be great sources.)
I have much I could say about this myself. For me it began when I first realized God was trustworthy; or more likely it was the other way around: I realized God was trustworthy once he began this work in me. Now, I had also been prepared for this realization by study of evidences for Christianity; but there was a time of massively deepening conviction of the truth then.
For weeks following that, there was a literal experience (I know it’s hackneyed but it’s still true) of the sky being brighter, the grass greener, the air smelling more fresh and clean, and the like. I apologize for the clichés; if I were a poet I could say it better. It really happened, even if I can’t speak it in the language it deserves. It was as if scales had dropped off my eyes, off my whole spirit in fact. I don’t think that heightened awareness of life has gone away, although I have become accustomed to it, adapted to it, so that it no longer seems so extraordinary all the time.
There was also an uncanny light and joy and brightness in reading the Bible, especially in discussions with others. I heard myself saying again and again, “I had no idea this was so alive, so relevant, so life-giving.”
There was an immediate sense of overall personal freedom that continues to this day. It’s of this sort: I don’t have to fight to be the person I ought to be, I need only be who I am, and trust God to lead me to the next steps. (There is a kind of personal discipline I must exercise in the process, but it’s discipline within freedom.)
I had been much frustrated for years by a certain personal inconsistency, an area of my life in which I did not live up to my own expectations for myself. Upon trusting Christ, the temptation to that sin (as I now called it) disappeared. It wasn’t a case of, “Now I’m a Christian, I have to fight this off!” Rather it just went away, taken from me by God’s grace, for well over a year. It did come back: I believe God wanted me eventually to deal with it as a matter of character growth and not just have the easy way out. It has proved to be just that, a source of much growth in many ways, not limited to just one issue in my life. But that extended period of freedom, provided through no effort of my own, was confirmatory.
God instilled in me a new sense of love and care for others. My self-centeredness at the time was typical for a musician. Hours in the practice room alone, building my skill and my art, were fine with me. Who needed other people? But God changed that in me.
There was an immediate bonding with other believers. I have seen extraordinary instances of that bonding with Blacks in South Africa, with former U.S. enemies like Vietnamese and Russians, with Cubans, Koreans, and members of many more nationalities, in their own countries where I have been a guest. I have had frequent fellowship lately with African-Americans, experiencing a truly sweet unity in Christ.
I state all of the above in terms of what it was like when it was new and fresh, when the contrast with my prior experience was most salient. Other than the one thing just mentioned, the same experience continues.
So my answer to Paul is, this is not a one-dimensional experience. It is a relational experience with God. Some of it plays out in other kinds of perceptions. Some of it is probably incommunicable, like describing Dvořák or Miles Davis to a deaf person, or blue to a blind person. Before God made his move into my heart, I believe my apparatus of divine awareness was not alive yet; or at least it was seriously clouded. To say that I can now experience God is still of no personal credit to me. I had no ability to wake it up in me. It was God’s doing.
Tom, thanks very much for your answer to my question.
Your response strikes me as answering a slightly different question. I think that your response answers the question of “What was your reaction to having experienced God or the Holy Spirit?” This is not the same as “What was the direct experience like?” That is, my reaction to having eaten Thanksgiving dinner was to feel full and want to go to sleep at about 8:30 last night. ; ) But the direct experience of eating the dinner was very different. I didn’t want to go to sleep; rather I had the sensation of deliciousness, etc.
So, Tom, I think you’re describing your reaction, not the original experience nor the original perception, and that’s what I’m actually interested in. Can you elucidate?
I don’t think I can do more than that, Paul, for the reasons I named in my closing paragraph.
The invitation is still open for others to try.
Tom, I could very well talk to a deaf person about my direct experience of Miles Davis: “Kind of Blue” sounds like a light, cool breeze on a cloudy day; or, one of my favorites, quoted from a liner note from a later album, a six-year old knew that it was Miles she was hearing because, she said, “he sounds like a little boy who’s been locked out and wants to get in.”
I cannot transmit that direct experience, and the other cannot experience it through my description, but I can certainly describe it in words and the other can certainly get some idea through evocative words, analogies, etc.
My relationship with other people is certainly not one-dimensional either, and I can go on for hours talking about those relationships. The fact that they are multi-dimensional makes it *more* likely, not less, that I am discuss it. I note that you aren’t saying that you can’t only make me feel what you feel, you’re saying that you can’t even talk about the actual, primary experience *at all.* Not one description, evocation, not nothing; only how, after the primary experience, you respond to that experience. That should legitimately give one great skepticism. There is no facet of my entire experience as a human being that in which I would be similarly hamstrung (can’t even discuss the primary experience in the slightest) as you claim you are in this regard.
Exactly. And I could say that the direct experience of God is like seeing the grass greener than ever before. It’s the same quality of metaphor as that which you have spoken with regard to Miles Davis.
Which I have said already. It’s the best I can expect to do. Maybe someone else can do better.
And I could go on for hours about what it’s like to be a Christian. I’ve been doing that from time to time. See the articles in “The Core” on the Beauty of Christ and etc., or the series on “What Is Christianity?”
You and I can both talk about effects, analogies, relationships, and much more regarding the things we sense in the world. But you still cannot tell a blind man what blue is, and you still can’t tell a profoundly deaf person what Miles Davis sounds like in terms of the actual sense perception. You are in fact hamstrung in that situation as badly as I am in the one you have asked me about.
Tom, I still think that you did not answer the question I originally asked, you answered a different question. You were talking about your responses to the direct experience of God, not the direct experience itself. But now, in your last response, you imply something actually about the direct experience of God. Are you saying now that “the direct experience of God is like seeing the grass greener than ever before?”
Yikes! I really got in trouble for that one. I’m not sure why…
Paul, I answered. I said, in the last paragraph, that it is in some senses incommunicable, like explaining blue to a blind person. I also described some things that you later, correctly, termed as effects or impressions that accompany such a perception.
You responded by saying that you too have the ability to describe to a sensory-impaired person some of the effects or impressions that accompany a perception. You did not claim that you can actually describe the perception to a person who lacks that particular sensory capacity. We’re in the same boat here.
What’s the problem?? Did I fail that badly in communicating this so far?
Paul,
I think you’re starting to color whatever original request you made as meaningless. That is, you’re starting to give the impression that there’s no possible answer that you’re willing to accept for it. Are you asking honestly, or as some sort of obnoxious “gotcha”?
As you said, you can describe hearing Miles Davis to a deaf person, but you have to acknowledge that, if that person was born deaf, you’ll never be able to make them understand what it is to hear. I think the “blue to the blind” analogy is the most apt. Tell me how you’d describe what it’s like to apprehend “blue-ness” to a blind man, and see if it fits whatever criteria you’re asking for.
Tom made an effort to describe his experience; this, for him was very much apprehended in the effect it had on him. He describes this apprehension, in part, as the continuing effect that this interaction has on him. If he left anything out, it might be the explicit statement that the continuance of the experience has a sense of “otherness” to it – a sureness that the changes are constantly being caused by something separate from himself. I’m not sure, but I caught that subtext in his explanation.
What’s wrong with apprehending something through its effect on us? We apprehend gravity by the feeling of our limbs being drawn downwards. We note that it’s external to us. We describe emotions that way, don’t we? Fear makes your heart race, your skin prickle, and it gives you that “blood-draining” feeling in your legs. Is that an invalid description of what it is to apprehend “fear”, just because it’s focused on the effects the emotion has on a person?
What do you want? Fireworks, explosions, a John Williams soundtrack? Before you start getting all “yea or nay” about the specifics of Tom’s experience, why don’t you try pointing some of that hard-nosed insistence at the question you’re asking. What exactly are you expecting, and how is it possible to meet that expectation?
OK, guys, I’ll take a deep breath and step back.
I still think there is an important issue. Tom, when you say
this still obscures the important distinction that I originally made, the one between describing the experience itself (the taste of the food) and the results of the experience (feeling full after eating a meal).
Tom, I only hear two things from you, please correct me if you’ve said something different above: 1) *some* of the direct experience of God is impossible to describe, and 2) some of it is like the experience of seen grass as incredibly green. My thoughts about these:
1) is it some or all of the direct experience of God that is impossible to describe? You keep on saying “some,” so what about the rest which would be possible to describe (beyond the green grass idea, which I take to be a direct answer to my question).
Furthermore, I’m suspicious about the actual impossibility of description. As I said before, I can’t imagine any experience in my life that is actually impossible to say any words about, directly *trying* to describe it. Coming close is OK (in fact, I can never describe anything to the extent that you know *exactly* what it was like for me. So the response that a description is going to fall short would mean that we would never communicate with each other, because all descriptions fall short.
2) When you say that the direct experience of God is like experiencing grass being incredibly green, is it God that is playing the role of the grass in this analogy, so experiencing him is a very intense experience, or is it something else that is playing the role of grass and God’s presence intensifies the experience of that other thing?
Ultimately, what I’m looking for is something like this: “When I experienced God, I felt an overwhelming sense of calm and peace. I saw a brilliant light that filled my entire field of vision. I heard, no, I felt a voice somehow that was God’s, and he told me etc. etc.”
MM, I wouldn’t say I’m expecting a certain answer, but I am expecting a direct answer to my question.
Paul,
No one’s disagreeing that imperfect descriptions are the best we can expect. In this case, no answer is ever really going to come close, since it’s very much like a totally different sense.
Your example answer mentioned calm and peace – didn’t you already disqualify effects as acceptable descriptions? If there was no visible light or audible words, are you going to reject the description? Or, are you going to look for some “gotcha” exploit in the necessarily approximate language?
Your pressing of the “green grass” issue looks like just that. Just how specific do you expect this description to be? A “direct” answer might not be a very satisfying one, any more than a “direct” description of “apprehending the color blue” might not be very satisfying to a man born blind.
I’m just a little skeptical of what you constitute as a valid (or “direct”) answer, and your motivations for asking…especially when you start getting so adamant about the minutiae.
Paul,
FWIW, I’ve been asked this question before, once or twice, and I think it’s a valid one. I’d certainly be willing to give my own answer…but as I said, I have some doubts about whether or not there’d be a point in doing so.
Hi Paul,
I wrote this to myself last year.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2007
The Day God Spoke To Me
I have just finished reading Dr. Beauregard’s book with Denyse O’Leary, The Spiritual Brain, in which he outlines some of the empirical evidence around the case of RSMEs (religious/spiritual/mystical experience).
I am also arguing some of these ideas on Tom’s blog (arguments with Paul about mirages, hallucinations, trusting one’s perceptions, etc. and with doctor(logic) about everything else).
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/tgilblog/E20071021221714/
When I was in college I had what I now would call an RSME although I didn’t know a thing about them or their nature at the time (or until very recently).
I was at a restaurant talking with a troubled and depressed friend about a woman he loved and was giving him what I thought was my sagest advice. I had a bit of an ego when it came to my young man’s self-assured grasp of how the world worked. Suddenly I felt a presence, a reassurance and peace come over me. It entered, or encountered, my body at the top of my head and washed over me, or through me, all the way down to my feet. I can’t describe it as having temperature, or pressure or anything like that, but I felt it in some physical way. I knew the answer I had given my friend (the content of which I do not recall) was correct and that the reassurance I was trying to relay to him was real, but that I was to be reassured as well. The answer was not phony bluster.
The sense was definitely of God, and I knew at the moment that God was speaking to me and that I was in His presence. The experience included in that moment the awareness that it was an encounter with God and this was not a later conclusion.
That’s it. No vision, no voice, no advice for the future, no stock tips – just awareness of His presence – and His love. In fact, even in secret to myself, I’ve hardly allowed myself to say “God spoke to me” because there were no words and no voice – just a knowing.
I have since had many answered prayers, a “sign” or two, and several experiences from meditations and prayers of a kind of altered state. But nothing like this. Nothing that was just a normal, real apprehension of God.
That weekend I returned to church for the first time in about a decade. I had quit going when I came to believe that I could be a Christian on my own and forge my relationship with God my own way. Really, I think I quit going out of laziness, although there was some vague and unspoken accusation in my mind that a lot of the people at my church were hypocrites (as if I could know that).
But, upon examination, those excuses were insufficient to keep me away. So I went to the neighborhood Church of God.
The sermon that Sunday was on hearing God’s voice, being open to it, and training yourself to listen for it.
When I met the pastor’s wife (I later found out that they were co-pastors) on my way out the door she shook my hand and asked what I felt about the sermon. I told her that I felt it was very appropriate for me that day. I felt at the time that I was meant to hear it.
I don’t recall that I’ve ever told anybody this (although I may have alluded to it on a blog once) as I know it is absolutely unconvincing and useless as an apologetic. As is apparent from my account above, there is no real way to describe it. And trying to reduce it to words almost feels like it cheapens the experience and makes it, by force of language, into something it was not.
Over the years I had even talked myself into believing that, because it couldn’t be described, the experience was actually too vague to be God, too easily chalked up to coincidence. But I have never again felt that particular sense of peace descend upon me. Nor have I needed it in that same way.
Reading about such RSMEs I now believe that this experience is basically what most “mystics” are talking about when they are in the presence or awareness of the transcendent.
What I knew in the moment to be God communicating with me conforms as much as I can know to the experiences that Beauregard studies and which he says are exactly consistent with the subject encountering an object outside of themselves.
This does not convince me because I already knew (although trivialized) that this was what had happened to me. Unfortunately, over the years, I had succumbed to a bit of subjectivist/relativistic thinking whereby I was saying to myself, to some degree, that this was my way of experiencing God. That this was “true” for me, and that that made it true enough – that God had let me be influenced by this unique event in perhaps some providential manner, even if He was not actually involved. That is the sheer rationalization and dismissal of a person who considers himself completely grounded, pragmatic, skeptical (yes, Christians are skeptics as well) and reality-based. Although I’ve been a Christian almost all my life I was the kind who considered anybody whose faith was even a little more obvious than my own to be superstitious, phony, or addled.
The ego can do strange things to your sense of reality and the obstacles you erect between you and God.
I didn’t disqualify anything in particular, I only restricted the answer to the experience itself – what happens during the experience – and not the result of the experience after the experience is over.
I already said that the green grass issue answers my question just fine.
Charlie’s post is the kind of thing I was looking for.
I would say it’s just like falling in love. When you begin to love, trust and rely on someone. Realizing they will be around forever and you are totally taken care of. You have a new life. A new start. A new way…everything is changed.
This is probably why it can be annoying when people first discover God in such an intimate way. When you walk around on cloud nine people would rather you pay attention to the road!
My two cent. Thanks.
Sorry to join the fray so late…
I was going to talk about love first, but Kelly beat me to it.
Kelly is right. Tom’s description of the world being brighter and more vivid is very much how people feel when they fall in love.
Suppose I fall in love with person X. I feel all sorts of nice feelings, wonder, etc. What do these feelings signify or measure? Are they measuring some cosmic force? Am I discovering the DL-X force? There’s a problem with this. Person X may not even have noticed my existence. Instead, I am measuring my own bias towards liking person X. I’m measuring my own desires and predispositions with respect to person X.
Consider the alternate theory that person X is capable of bewitching me, and causing all these effects in me. In that case, we might imagine that our feelings are measurements of this “power of bewitchment”. I think some folk have believed this in the past, but why is this theory regarded as nonsense by rational people today? It’s regarded as nonsense because there’s no signal in the noise. If we can regularly feel the power of bewitchment even when our persons X don’t know we exist, we ought to conclude that our natural bias or predisposition for feeling a power of bewitchment is at least as large as any bewitching force that might be out there. In other words, the signal to noise ratio is far too low to make the feeling trustworthy. If we reject this, then we have to return to a magical world in which we are incapable of any biases whatsoever, and in which we attribute every feeling or personal change to the deliberate act of some external agent (or agents).
Tom is proposing that a certain feeling (a feeling most of us have had on one context or another) is a sign of “bewitchment” by God. The difference between God and person X is that God is both invisible and postulated to have the power of bewitchment. The problem with this idea is that it’s not a test of whether God actually exists. It’s not a test because we would feel this way anyway if we fell in love with an invisible, aesthetically charming, but non-existent person.
I’m not doubting any of your experiences, Tom. I’m doubting their import. Paul talks about certain feelings of his appreciation of music. I have certain special feelings when I learn something new and amazing about the universe, or when I fall in love. I have transcendent feelings too. However, I don’t attribute those feelings to an external agency because I have no rational reason to do so. Everyone feels those things about something in their lives. I’m sure that people in other religions feel the same way about their gods. It’s just not a valid test of the agency of the gods because the feelings would be there in any case.
Before the responses to DL’s post immediately above go too far, I’d like to remind everyone about a distinction that I think is important: whether there is sufficient reasons inherent in the experience itself of perceiving God to believe that it was God that was perceived, or whether the sufficient reasons come from outside of the direct perception itself (the Bible, etc.), and the direct experience is confirmatory.
Tom (or anyone), would you say that the direct experience of God or the Holy Spirit is sufficient or not to justify belief in God?
I would say there are sufficient reasons for concluding a perception is of God, just as there are sufficient reasons for concluding the perception of your thoughts are actually YOUR thoughts.
We all know various things via perception without knowing the methodology behind how it is we know. I know torturing babies for fun is immoral. I don’t know how it is that I know that. I’ve never personally experienced that truth, nor have I seen it being done to someone else’s baby, but I know it to be true nonetheless.
Yes. I believed in God before I believed in the reasoned truths of Christianity. Probably because of that direct experience you mentioned. The Bible talks about that in Psalm 19.
Interesting that you should bring this up as I recently came across this interesting news story.
SteveK, there is a crucial difference between the perception of one’s own thoughts and the perception of God. God has a reality outside of oneself, but one’s thoughts are totally within oneself. We can use Descarte’s cogito to prove the existence of one’s own thoughts (but only to oneself!), but not the factual content of the thought. And that’s crucial: when you perceive God in your own head and claim that God exists, you are, in effect, making a claim that God exists outside of yourself, which is not what you claim for proving that your own thoughts exist (but you can’t assume that the content of your thoughts is automatically true like the mere existence of your thought). When I think that trees are blue, I can show that I had that thought, but I can’t show that just because I thought it, that trees are blue.
But the claim that God exists is attached to the factual content of your thought/perception of God, not just the mere existence of a thought. You’re perceiving and thinking *about* God, and that word *about* defines the factual content of the thought.
Now, we certainly think about trees when we perceive trees, but the tree is external to our heads, and, if I’m understanding things correctly, the perception of God is *not* external to one’s head, it occurs within one’s thoughts.
That’s why you can’t use the logic that one’s own thoughts exist to prove that God exists because he appears in your head. There may be other ways to prove that God exists, but I don’t think this can be one of them.
Hi Paul,
Is anybody going to convince you through argument that God exists?
Charlie, I’m not quite sure how to take your question, I’ll try a few possible implications.
1. I have come to a conclusion (God doesn’t exist), trying to evaluate the evidence and logic of the question. If someone can show me how my evaluation of the evidence and logic is flawed, I’d very much want to hear it, because it would mean that I’ve been wrong-headed. But my failure to agree with those who’d say my evaluation of the evidence and logic is flawed isn’t necessarily proof of my failure to listen to their side, it might also mean that my opinion about how I’ve evaluated the evidence and logic is actually superior.
2. Do you mean through argument alone, as opposed to evidence? I’d take evidence as part of an argument, in addition to the purely argumentative (logical) aspects of the question.
3. If you’re a bit frustrated that we still disagree, so am I.
Thanks Paul.
Do you think you’re going to convince any of us?
Paul,
Just a note: watch your direction with this line of thought:
The ‘perception’ of the tree is ‘inside your head’ as well. The tree is external, but the way in which your “self” perceives is internal, in the sense that it’s being discussed here. It’s fine to argue that internal thoughts or perceptions are not sufficient evidence in themselves to prove anything’s existence, but this…
…could invite a slide into solipsism. That which we perceive either can or cannot be a reflection of reality. Since arguing that it can’t is dialogue-defeating (solipsism), you cannot completely dismiss a person’s perception of God as evidence of His existence. You can argue that it’s insufficient to be sure that He exists, but be careful not to dismiss it entirely.
Paul,
Two people can see the same evidence, use the same logic, be judicious and reasonable in method of evaluation, and still come to distinct conclusions – particularly when, frankly, the evidence is inconclusive, and by the nature of the question will likely remain so for all time. If that’s frustrating, that’s something to get past – the problem isn’t necessarily that either of the two people are making an obvious error.
It’s also a mistake to believe anyone can ‘prove’ God exists, even if God certainly does exist. At most, someone can have reasons, evidence, arguments, experience – usually a combination – that can make their belief reasonable. Luckily those are available in abundance to people who study the question.
MM, I’m not trying to dismiss it necessarily, but I’m trying to establish something, and then let implications, dismissing or not, follow as appropriate. That is, as I understood it, when one perceives God, it is not the same type of situation as when one perceives a tree in that, with a tree, there is something external to the person that is plainly there, for lack of a better word. But God certainly is not there in the same way that a tree is. God, not the perception of God, is somehow merely inside one’s head. Charlie mentions “a presence.” That’s not a tree, not a breeze, not even a photon. That presence is only within Charlie’s head, unless you’re saying that anyone standing right next to Charlie at the time would have felt God’s presence as well. To that extent, God is “in Charlie’s head” and not external in the way that a tree is. That’s not as well-stated as it could be, perhaps, but I hope you get the point.
Charlie, it’s partially a hope to convince and partially a check on myself to make sure I haven’t missed anything. It’s an attempt to reconcile, to resolve something that seems like it should be resolvable yet is intransigent.
Paul,
You and I have discussed all this before at length so I’m hesitant to get into this too deeply. You say you can know your thoughts exist, but that you can’t assume the content of your thoughts is true. Question: Can you know if the content of the thought “You can know your thoughts exist inside your head” is true? You’ve already answered ‘yes’ so there is no assumption of truth there. You know this, not by reasoning nor by the 5 senses, but by direct exposure to the reality of your thoughts. I’m arguing that the same is true for God – that I can know God exists outside myself because I’ve been exposed to the reality of God.
SteveK, when you say
are you saying that you know that God exists *merely* because you’ve had an experience that you claim is God? I interpret your last post to mean that, but I want to check if that’s what you meant.
Just because we can affirm that the content of the thought “we can know that our thoughts exist inside our heads” is true doesn’t mean that *any* thought that occurs in our heads is true. There must still be some basis on which we evaluate the content of our thoughts in our heads: it must either be through logic (for instance, the cogito), or evidence (I think trees are green, and lo and behold, that is confirmed by examination), or something else (I’m not sure what, but I’m open). We affirm the content of the thought “we can know that our thoughts exist inside our heads” through logic. How can it be that we wouldn’t know that thoughts that we think are the thoughts that we think? Fine, logic establishes that. But that’s on the basis of logic. Are you saying that, somehow, merely because we *think* that we have experienced God, that *logic* requires that the content of that thought is actually true? What is that logic? I’d love to hear it.
Hi Paul,
Why would you want to convince others of the veracity of your claims (when they don’t reduce, as they always do, to knowing nothing at all and being unable to affirm the most basic of truths) and why would you want to convince yourself that your position is right?
Paul,
I never said *any* thought is true. Only the thoughts I know to be true are true. If there are good reasons to think they are false then perhaps that new knowledge will change my thinking. Until that time, my true thoughts remain true.
There is some basis, but I don’t think the methodology must be known in all cases to have actual knowledge. That kind of thinking gets you stuck in an infinite regress where you attempt to know the methodology of knowing the methodology of knowing the methodology…..of knowing that we can know that our thoughts exist inside our heads.
I don’t think logic *alone* can determine the truth value of that statement. Logic alone can’t tell you if the thoughts are your thoughts, and not someone else’s. It’s logically possible that they aren’t your thoughts so how do you rule this out? You rule it out by adopting the knowledge you have that says, yes, they are your thoughts. There’s no logic involved in obtaining that knowledge, it is just known by direct perception.
The logic is that our sense of perception must be considered reliable and trustworthy until it is known that it is not to be trusted in certain situations. Even so, this does not mean your thought is *actually* true. You could be mistaken, however, it remains true until knowledge comes forth that says your thought is actually false. In other words, why should you think your thoughts are false if you think they are true? The answer is, you shouldn’t.
SteveK, let me back up a second. Is it something about the experience of perceiving God that convinces us that it is truly God, or is it something else that merely confirms that it really was God that we perceived? That is, is the experience of perceiving God sufficient, because of the nature of the experience, to then conclude that it really was God, or not?
You said:
Doesn’t “exposed to the reality of God” to mean “perceived God,” You’re saying that, if you have the experience of perceiving God, then it was God that you perceived. So *anything* that we say we experience, that’s what it was. But we surely know that’s not the case. Sometimes we get it wrong.
I think we’re talking past each other somehow, but I don’t now how.
Good morning, Paul.
What do you do with an experience such as that of Mr. Gilbreath, a friend of this blog?
http://www.novascotiascott.com/about/how-the-lord-made-me-a-christian/
It seems obvious to me that you are precommitted to his being either deluded or a liar.
But maybe you can surprise me.
Paul,
I’m having a difficult time understanding the question and how it is relevant.
I addressed this in my earlier comment. You would never think an experience wasn’t what it was, unless you were given a good reason to think that. In addition, your thought/belief about an experience doesn’t necessarily make it true (belief doesn’t create reality).
I see this as one of your major stumbling blocks considering how often you mention it. Of course we sometimes get it wrong, but we don’t know a particular thought/belief is wrong until we know it’s wrong.
If your stance is that you can’t know if X is true because we sometimes get it wrong, then that statement itself must be subject to the same criteria – which means you can’t know that you can’t know if X is true because we sometimes get it wrong. It’s self-defeating.
Good last point, Steve.
I was headed there myself.
Charlie,
This is a good example to use. He didn’t have a good reason to think his experience was something other than what it was, so he was forced to believe it was true. We call that intellectual honesty.
He could have used Paul’s excuse that “sometimes we get it wrong”, but that general truth has no bearing on this specific experience.
(great story, by the way)
Charlie wrote:
You know I can’t resist such a kind invitation.
How shall we distinguish between whether I am precommitted to his being a liar or deluded, and whether I conclude the same without being precommitted to it? Merely because I conclude that he is either a liar or deluded? I think that’s what you’re saying,, which boils down to the boring fact that you and I disagree about God, it’s just that you’ve found a new way to wrap up and present that disagreement. I’d rather keep on digging into the substance of the disagreement.
He either hallucinated or has constructed a false memory. I think more highly of God than He would have to resort to a cheap parlor trick (the old face in the mirror gag). If that’s all it takes for you to convert, there’s something inside you you may not even be aware of that is pushing you there anyway. A God worthy of the name would act far differently.
Nice try, but I was talking not about X, about anything we know, but about a perception. Your logic above doesn’t hold when X is just a perception.
No wonder we disagree so much, you think a conclusion is innocent until proven guilty. Admirable stance for our legal system, but for epistemology it’s backwards. We must remain agnostic about a conclusion until we can confirm it. Otherwise, we grasp at straws, we would take that bridge they’re trying to sell us. Appearances can be deceiving, not everything is what it seems, geez, do I have to go on?
A better statement of gullibility I couldn’t find. With this approach, you’ll be easy to fool. What about maintaining skepticism until something can be confirmed either way?
This begs the question, Paul. Surely you can see that. Wouldn’t it be better to accept the experience at face value rather than say something that you know nothing about like “I think more highly of God than He would have to resort to a cheap parlor trick (the old face in the mirror gag)”?
Unless, of course you know this statement to be true (he wouldn’t resort to a face in the mirror), but that requires a knowledge source – a perceived experience of some kind. If God revealed this to you via some perceived experience then you have your proof that he exists. If the knowledge came from elsewhere then please tell us.
Hi Paul,
Precommitted? Evidenced. You have not explored Scott’s story. You haven’t interviewed him or his wife. You have not looked into the issue at all. But you know God doesn’t exist, therefore, Scott has had a false memory or was deluded. And one who believes him? Why, a better example of gullibility cannot be found.
Precommitted, as I suspected.
Interesting point on gullibility – you do realize that Christianity is a fine inoculation against gullibility, do you not? Non-believers are far more likely to be taken in by astrology, ghosts, big foot and UFOs. In a recent study (Dutch?) the religious were more apt than atheists and agnostics to see patterns in images. I know that’s just as you’d expect – except that the patterns actually existed and they were the ones seeing clearly.
You do not have facts on your side when you discuss the religious in terms of gullibility.
So, Gilbreath had an experience of God. He saw an image and then was convicted in his heart. But even this you dismiss as nothing but illusion – all the while claiming you just want to know what the experiences are like.
As you say here, and in the thread I linked, your acceptance of evidence, your train of thought and your conclusions are determined beforehand by your disbelief in God. You say the same of me, based upon my belief in God. Granting a degree of truth to this assessment we demonstrate here why we may already believe in God, even before the logical necessity is demonstrated persuasively by philosophy, cosmology, teleology, morality,consciousness, reason, etc.
Apprehension of the numinous is a recognized phenomena across cultures and eras – don’t you ever stop to think that it might just be your perception, and, therefore, your preconceptions, which are faulty? You are skeptical to the nth degree of perceptions, thoughts, memories, etc., but not of your own?
As I alluded to above, you cannot be convinced by man. You are impervious. The best arguments you dismiss as being acceptable or not based upon prior belief in God. The reasons for such a prior belief you dismiss as illusions and preying upon gullibility.
And while you claim that you can’t affirm your existence, your non-envattedness and your profession you have such a complete knowledge of the universe and its many realms that those who experience God must be creating false memories. They are crying on the floor in submission to the Creator because they misremembered an image in a picture.
At the same time you claim to be providing a check upon your logic. But you are not examining your logic – you reiterate your a priori commitment.
On that note, have you read, referenced here many times, Antony Flew’s book about his re-examination of his thinking? Have you read N.T. Wright or W.L. Craig on historical evidences for the Resurrection? Have you read a single book referenced, cited or reviewed here in the years you have been participating? Have you done anything to test your beliefs, as you said above, other than gainsay?
Because I think not I will continue with what I started to ask you a few days ago. Whom are you trying to convince and why are you not more fully examining the question? It is obviously important enough that you have spent years here potshotting at Tom’s posts. Your claims to be testing your logic do not seem accurate and neither have you had a whit of success at convincing anybody here, or even making a logical dent. So what has been your point? Honestly. It looks to me that you are merely trying to justify your disbelief and ensure yourself that you can ramp up the skeptical metre high enough to deny anything you hear about God. Why is this important to you?
And again, why would you want your position to be the case? And why would you want to bring anybody else over to your world of relative morality, ungrounded logic, and an epistemology which can’t even affirm the cogito ergo sum?
Does misery truly love company?
Paul,
It’s gullible to think a perception was as it was perceived if there is no reason to think otherwise?? That makes no sense. Your perception is that you exist. Do you have a good reason to think you don’t exist? Of course not. What you’re saying here is that you should maintain skepticism until your existence can be confirmed. Okay, tell me how you do that because I guarantee you that your confirmation will be another perception with no good reason to think it untrue.
Are you required to confirm the original confirmation, and then that one, and the next? Obviously not. If you can stop after 5, 10 or 1000 confirmations without confirming the last one then you are admitting that your IMMEDIATE perception DOESN’T have to be confirmed to be believed as perceived. Or are you gullible enough to believe your immediate perception that you ACTUALLY went through 1000 confirmations? You better confirm that.
Paul,
It’s worse. There is along list of cognitive biases at Wikipedia. It’s also well known that people delude themselves all the time. But Christians consistently either 1) ignore this blatant evidence that people are biased, or 2) pretend that bias is insurmountable so they might as well succumb. Hence, for Christians, their sense of God has to be true unless proven otherwise.
That story at NovaScotiaScott is a very sad one. Yes, he’s a poor dupe!! He either imagined the picture, or he’s been had.
Of course, there IS a way to overcome bias. It’s called science and dispassionate analysis. That’s anathema to Christianity which relies on inspiring passion and amplifying bias of its adherents at every turn.
What’s the Christian response? They’ll say that, if we rely on scientific techniques that look for God’s signal beyond the noise of our bias, then we won’t rationally be able to see a God who only intervenes at the level of our biases. Well, DUUUH!
Science doesn’t make it impossible to see God. We could easily see God scientifically if he weren’t hiding from us. Christians are just making excuses for wallowing in their own personal biases.
Scott’s vision was confirmed. He had a life-changing experience and came to know God based upon it. From the moment he saw the image – this false memory – he was tormented by it until his heart was convicted. The Holy Spirit is never finished with the believer and is constantly bringing about changes and conforming his will to God’s will.
It appears misery does indeed love company.
“delude, sad, dupe, pretend, succumb, anathema, excuses, wallowing …”
Ah yes, the return of the purportedly unbiased doctor of dispassion.
A conclusion rigorously derived straight out of a test tube, no doubt.
doctor(logic), I was about to respond to you but Charlie beat me to it.
I wish you would read Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief, but I doubt you ever would.
SteveK, you’re pulling the *one* unique example (perception of oneself) and trying to shoehorn it’s obviousness into all other perceptions. Perceiving oneself is the one perception that is not about something external to oneself, and is therefore a special case. In every other case, for something external to oneself, including God, it very much is true that one is gullible if one takes things at face value.
Note that taking something at face value is not the same at all as relying on previous conclusions about perceptions that prove true time after time. I don’t have to test my brakes every time I get in my car because someone else has already tested them, and I have successfully relied on their testing many times over. So when I trust that my brakes will work, I’m not taking that on face value, I’m relying on a previous, repeated experimental test.
Regarding confirmation, as I’m fond of quoting Popper on this one, we only have to make sure that the piling are driven down deep enough into the swamp in order to support the structure that we are building on top of them, they don’t have to be driven down into bedrock.
So you provide me with a link to Scott’s writing about his experience, I do what I’m told to do, and then you criticize me because I didn’t call him on the phone!? Whew, this is a tough room!
Perhaps Christians use up a lot of gullibility with Christianity and don’t have any left over for other things? Just a thought.
Nothing contradictory there. If an experience was related to me about something seeing God that could actually be believed, that’d do it for me (He missed another chance for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade just recently, huh?). But someone hallucinating or deluding themselves? Happens *every* day, just look at Congress and the bailout plan.
Sure I do. What makes you think I don’t? Just because I disagree? Or because I didn’t call Scott?
I’ve tested them here. Evidence of my sincerity might be seen in the number of times I’ve admitted I was wrong about, admittedly, minor points, not the biggest one. I admit I haven’t read Flew’s or other books, but I’ve certainly heard about his and many other Christian’s ideas on this blog, gaining great exposure to them. Sorry I haven’t done the specific homework you want me to. Homework of the gaps?
Denigration noted.
Because of a little thing I like to call reality.
One more thought about the face in the mirror. How ludicrous that scenario is! Here we have the most far-reaching, important, all-encompassing fact a human could ever know – that God existed – something that will reach into every single corner of one’s existence, behavior, and thought, something that has implications for every single thing one does, and all God does is to show his face!? He can’t even discuss this with Scott?! People have conversations about the Cleveland Browns, for crying out loud, something of such little importance (sigh), and they’ll go on for hours and hours, but for the most incredible and important thing ever, God can’t even talk!? All he can muster is a cheap magic trick!?
Words fail me.
Paul,
Likewise, when I trust that my immediate perception is trustworthy, I’m not taking that on face value, I’m relying on previous, repeated experimental tests of my immediate perception.
You might recognize that I said the same thing this way before, “You would never think an experience wasn’t what it was, unless you were given a good reason to think that”, only you scoffed at this and said it was gullible. Is my statement above gullible or is it reasonable?
I should be obvious the above statement holds true for perceptions of external things as well as internal things.
No it’s not. It’s a refutation of your stance that you concluded after investigation rather than entered with a preconception that such a story had to be a delusion or a lie.
That sounds like a slight but you’ll have to sharpen its point a little if it is meant to inflict. Right now it just mushes sour grapes on my forehead.
Because you are precommitted to his being the one deluded by false perceptions and false memories. You, being in the vast minority, might just be the one with the flawed sensory equipment.
You have not tested your logic here, you have gainsayed, obfuscated and skated away merrily calling over your shoulder “more later”. You have not come here to test your logic or work on your own preconceptions. Real research would evidence that. Reading the Bible would also help.
I have read the opposite view from my own as represented by Dawkins, Gould, Harris, Russell, Morris, Davies, etc., since I ventured in here. And Tom has done much more than I have to test his positions.
Your claim does not ring true.
You don;t know if you represent reality or not because you are njot testing your preconceptions. Worse, the positions you take force you to deny all basis for apprehending reality. You have no access to reality. You are a brain in a vat.
But I’ve asked bigger questions. Are you considering them?
Paul,
I get the analogy, or is it a metaphor? My question is are you gullible or reasonable to think your immediate perception that you’ve driven down the pilings far enough is just that, without having to confirm that perception once more?
To the person who has spent a lifetime “driving down the pilings” on their immediate perceptions far enough to know when they can be trusted and when they cannot, is it gullible or reasonable to think a trusted perception is just that, trustworthy, without having to confirm it once more?
Paul (and Dr. Logic),
Just so you know I guess I’d happily throw myself in with your miserable lot. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, I guess.
I glanced over most of this post. Tom, I know this won’t change things, but I have to mention again that if Paul or Dr. Logic or I disparaged one of you the way Charlie does Paul here I imagine we’d get a warning or be tossed out.
Along that line, and to this post’s topic, I have to say that it seems clear to me that both parties to this debate have reasonably intelligent people. I think what distinguishes the two sides, more than ever, is the approach that Paul mentions above — one side wants to believe and looks for evidence that supports it, the other side wants to be convinced (is skeptical), and holds out for compelling evidence.
I’ve decided to start collecting the most egregious examples of the first one — the willingness to accept shabby evidence without a reasonable degree of skepticism, what to look for, etc.
If anyone’s interested, it’s here: http://badapologia.blogspot.com/
doctor(logic) did disparage us that way, Tony.
But not for that particular event, just for your perception in general. But DL’s link above shows how perception is fraught is error. In order to accept perception at face value without confirmation of specific perceptions beforehand, you’re ignoring the frequency of cognitive error. How long a list of how our perceptions are in error, in many different ways (physiologically as well as cognitively, at a conceptual level) would you need?
Paul,
Must I be the one to point out the obvious – again? Your confirmations beforehand exist in the form of your immediate perception that a) you did prior confirmations and b) you confirmed the same thing each time. You are selectively ignoring the frequency of cognitive error and that list you mentioned. Why?
SteveK, your last post is an argument against any type of testing or confirmation of a conclusion. You’re saying that we can confirm nothing, which leads to the idea that we should just accept *anything* we might claim for a perception.
To your way of thinking, in what case might we be skeptical of a conclusion based on a perception? Secondly, will that case survive the critique you offer above?
Again, all our confirmations do not rest on bedrock, but are merely good enough to work and be useful for us. But that doesn’t mean that you can make things up, either, or take your first impression, or not subject things to a critical look, or to not attempt confirmation at all.
Furthermore, the more you confirm, as you have to check your confirmation of checking your confirmation of checking your confirmation, etc., etc., you increase the *odds* (note that word carefully) that you have not confirmed/confirmed/confirmed the wrong thing, but that the pilings are driven deep enough into the swamp. Again, that is much different that merely taking one’s first impression without attempting any confirmation, critical look, etc.
Paul, having read this thread, I can see that there is nothing anyone can say to persuade you that I am not deluded, but the story posted at my blog is definitely not a false memory. My wife Judy, with whom I have now enjoyed 26 years of marriage, saw my reaction when she told me the face I had seen on her wall was never there, and she heard me call her on the phone when I first believed.
Likewise, several of my family members and co-workers at the time can confirm that, in the days immediately following my conversion on 6 June 1982, I spoke with them about my experience in exactly the same way that I wrote in my testimony.
So, it can’t be a false memory.
Here we have the most far-reaching, important, all-encompassing fact a human could ever know – that God existed – something that will reach into every single corner of one’s existence, behavior, and thought, something that has implications for every single thing one does, and all God does is to show his face!? He can’t even discuss this with Scott?
As a matter of fact, God did discuss my situation with me many times over many years, using his people to do that. I mentioned in my testimony that Judy’s brother Gord told me about his faith, but I refused to listen. He was far from the first Christian to try to talk to me about God, but I always refused to listen. Indeed, I was often dismissive and sometimes downright unpleasant about it. (I mention my spiritual close-mindedness in the third paragraph of my testimony.) I was so obstinate in my unbelief that he had to resort to a 2-by-4 across the back of my head, so to speak.
Furthermore, even in the circumstances of my conversion, showing his face was by no means all that God did. As I said, ‘a verse from the Bible came into my mind [...] “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength”.’ That was a key moment in my conversion. Without that, I think I could have been left scratching my head over what I had seen.
I now know that it was the Holy Spirit who brought that Scripture verse from my youth back to my mind at just the right second. That was the moment I was convicted of my sin and it all made sense.
I used to think just like you. As I wrote, “I would not have believed it if it hadn’t happened to me”. I can’t explain it, I can only describe what happened.
Paul,
I’m arguing FOR something, not against. I’m arguing FOR the idea that you consider as reliable, memories that you think are reliable until you have good reason to think otherwise. I’m arguing FOR the idea that you consider as veridical and lucid, perceptions that you think are veridical and lucid until you have good reason to think otherwise. Telling me that cognitive errors and misperceptions occur frequently doesn’t change what I know about my memory and my perception. My knowledge of the event remains valid. Additional confirmation can be helpful but it’s not required.
I’m guessing that 99% of your life remains unconfirmed in the sense that you mean it here. Does that fact mean the knowledge you have of your life is somehow invalid – that it’s not genuine knowledge of a life that actually happened the way you remember it? That is, until you have good reason to think otherwise.
Hi Tony,
Again I feel that your lack of knowledge of the things Paul has previously argued/concluded and of which I am reminding him, and perhaps a lack of objectivity, have made you misread my “tone”.
I have reread my comments to Paul and see nothing disparaging. I see an evidential challenge to his claims, reminders of his previous positions and an honest inquiry into his current goals.
No, Steve. What we’re talking about is intuitive belief versus rational belief. Intuitive beliefs are not always wrong, but they’re not always right either. So the way we get to rational belief is by a series of tests.
* Questioning whether the belief could be false.
* Checking consistency with other beliefs.
* Imagining what experiences would be different if the claim were false. If there’s nothing that would be different then the belief is not justifiable, and probably meaningless.
* Considering alternatives.
* Accounting for personal bias.
So if you intuitively believe you are sitting down, you can check that easily. By the definition of sitting down, your torso is more vertical than not, and you are supported by pressure on your bum. If you were not seated, things would be different. Belief confirmed. In fact, it’s rather trivial. But it would be foolish to think that every belief is equally trivial.
Mundane beliefs, the kind that have been verified reliably in the past are more likely to be reliable in the future.
However, beliefs that mirrors transmogrify into paintings is not a mundane belief. It’s the kind of belief that’s peculiar. How many times has that happened to you? Nothing like that has ever happened to me. I’ve had double-takes where I’ve thought I saw something peculiar, but then looked again and saw something mundane.
Extraordinary beliefs need extraordinary justification.
No, I don’t believe Scott’s story is materially true. I don’t doubt he believes it, but people believe a lot of strange things, especially when they’re under stress or emotional pressure. Just consider his reaction to his thoughts that day. Scott ended up crying and crawling on his hands and knees. That’s not indifference or calm reflection. That’s a portrait of deep emotional disturbance. It probably had something to do with the uncertainties in his life about work, housing and relationships, which most people would have in his circumstances.
Is Scott’s story unique? Not at all. Some details are unique, but the passion is commonplace. Look at folks in Benny Hinn’s audience. They’re being duped into thinking they’re witnessing miracles. That doesn’t stop them from having life-changing experiences.
Suppose you delude yourself into believing there is a god who wants X. By the nature of the belief, it will change your life, because you will try to achieve X. So the life-changing nature of having a belief isn’t proof that the belief is true. It’s not as if God changed Scott’s life. Scott changed Scott’s life, not God. Scott is quite capable of doing that on his own. Every day, many thousands of people change their lives.
Your God acts so subtly that you can never know whether you did something or God did it.
So your entire belief system fails a key test. What would be different if your claim was false? Answer: nothing at all. It’s a self-fulfilling belief because the main thing it changes is the way you sample the world. That’s why God never shows up in scientific testing.
Scott, thanks for commenting here. Just to show the Christians here that we skeptics are actually paying attention to the evidence and can evaluate it sanely, your evidence that your wife and family members recall the incident as you do argues for it not being a false memory.
So what are we left with? A hallucination, or what? I would suggest the following, based on the distinction that I thought was so important before: between what we can conclude based on the experience of a perception itself, and what we can conclude after that perception is over, which includes interpreting the perception. And this distinction is crucial in your case.
At the time of your perception, you did not believe that this was a sign from God, you merely thought it was a striking picture. It was only days later that you interpreted the perception as a religious experience. Admittedly, this was based on the reality-shaking information that there had been no picture there, only a mirror. That type of realization could well be profound, I might have reacted initially the same way you did, wondering whether I could trust my own eyes. You had your sense of reality shaken (“My head started spinning.” “I managed to pull myself together . . . .” ).
But:
1. This is not the circumstance in which we are likely to a cold, unbiased judgment. This was a period of some emotional upheaval, I hope it is fair to say. This fact is not determinative, but it does give one legitimate pause.
2. The way you made your ultimate conclusion about the meaning of your seeing the picture of Jesus doesn’t reveal anything about *why* you made the conclusion you did:
The only thing *from your original perception* (of the picture of Jesus) that I can glean was that the picture was of Jesus, and this led you to conclude that it was a message from God. The only thing *from your later interpretation* of your original perception of the picture of Jesus that I can glean that led to you conclude that it was a message from God was that a feeling overwhlemed you.
From this we should make the most important conclusion ever about the objective reality of God? I don’t think so. Such important matters should not be made in such a period of emotional upheaval, when we are especially liable to all sorts of errors, confirmation bias, etc.
If the decision to believe in God is the most important thing anyone could ever do, it would reasonably be accomplished through a sober, calm, and deliberate process. A god that would seek to have someone believe in him by shaking his faith in reality, as you claim, would contradict the reasonable approach. The process you describe is actually irresponsible: it describes a God that seeks to *shock* you into the most important decision of your life.
Regarding God talking to you: what I mean by that phrase is not what you took it to mean. I don’t mean God talking to you through other people; I mean, very specifically, God, as a being, talking to you. It’s *this* lack that strikes me as ludicrous.
Questioning your opponent’s motives in an argument is the last refuge.
Charlie, I have no confidence that you would ever call my investigations into Scott’s experience complete unless I wound up agreeing with you, because you provided the link to Scott’s web page; I read it but still disagreed with you; you still claimed that I wasn’t doing enough, even though I did just what you had initially laid out for me. You’ll keep on moving the goalposts.
There’s actual content there, actually. Read it again.
Says you. ; )
That’s why what I’m really committed to is evidence and logic, and not daydreams, hallucinations, bias, wishful thinking, etc. To make sure I’m not making a mistake, as best I can.
You’re seeking to win your argument by homework assignment. Try logic in an argument that you actually make, instead.
If you set up a standard for me that you know I haven’t achieved, you’re guaranteed of being right.
Straw man. You continually misrepresent the nuance and context of my position on this. But entangling that will take more time than I have. Don’t take the fact that I have a life outside of this blog, despite appearances, make you think that I’m not sincere.
Charlie, your frustration is not letting you give me the benefit of the doubt regarding my sincerity.
DL,
So there’s nothing rational about believing your memory is working properly and your perceptions are lucid after you’ve gone through a mental and sensory checklist of sorts? That’s an odd comment to make, DL. Sounds totally rational to me.
Did that. Check.
Must my memory and perceptions be just like everyone else’s? I don’t think it must.
If my memory and perceptions weren’t working properly then I suppose anything and everything could be different.
The alternative is that my memory is bad and/or my perceptions are not lucid. I can rub my eyes, look away and refocus, move around to get different views, run through a mental checklist to check my sanity and my memory, etc. These are all rational processes.
In everyday life situations you can’t totally account for this, but we should try to do our best.
I agree.
I agree.
So crying on your hands and knees means you are emotionally disturbed? Come on, DL! Tell that to someone who recently experienced something so emotionally moving that it brought them to their knees. I’m sure you’ve seen people in hospitals or in war ravaged communities do this. Emotionally disturbed people right, DL? Geez what a creep! (I’m allowed to say creep, right Tom?)
Or it might have something to do with the image of Christ that so moved him emotionally that he wept and fell to his knees.
No, no, wait a minute. You probably know better than Scott because you don’t know anything about his life so I’m going with your theory. I bet he got into an emotional fight with his mom and didn’t remember that. [/sarcasm off]
Okay…when Scott has completed your checklist and he has concluded that his belief is rationally justified what should he do – think of himself as a deluded religious fool or a person with a rationally justified belief?
What should you and I do considering we don’t know Scott from Adam and we weren’t there to experience what he claims – call him a deluded religious fool because everyone knows God isn’t real?
Hi Paul,
There are no goal posts. I suspected you would have a commitment to dismiss Scott’s account and it looks as though you did. Again, as you said, the disagreement comes down to whether or not one already believes in God. I think you knew before you clicked that link that Gilbreath never experienced God and that he was either wrong or lying.
I didn’t say you didn’t do enough. I said you already knew what you would conclude. I stand by that, even if you won’t admit it. You’re after-the-fact rationalizations to Scott reinforce this (think of the “shock” you would feel if you got the evidence you demand of God’s existence…).
You have not been given a homework assignment. I suggested a very obvious way to measure whether or not a person who has been involved in these questions for years and years, who has seen countless references to various materials, would evidence that he was truly doing as you say – sincerely looking for answers and testing his positions. If you were truly doing as you say I expect you would have done some research.
Nonetheless, you are answering the wrong question. The logic has been laid out for you dozens of times and the arguments made. They stand as written and are there for you or anyone else to see. I linked to one upthread. You are not compelled by the logic or the arguments. That is your prerogative. But in answering me you presented as your goal, at least as a main goal, to test your conclusions and verify the validity of your reasoning. But you are not testing it. You are not doing anything differently with it, you are not turning it upside down. You are raising the same objections that you have previously and you are treating the answers the same way as you have. If you were satisfied with your logic and reasoning last year, the year before, and the year before that and nothing has changed then you are not testing anything. On this site you do what I just said you do – you gainsay, obfuscate and walk away from the questions when your logic has been pushed too far. This is not denigration but a recitation of history.
Further evidence of your desire to test your positions as you say you are doing would be your looking at the sources and reading the arguments. C.S. Lewis has been cited countless times, along with many others. Speaking of Lewis, for instance, he was pursued by God and was convicted largely on the basis of his copious reading, philosophical inquiry and search for truth. Antony Flew likewise came to accept that there exists an omniscient, omnipotent, designing personal God on the basis of his studies. But you aren’t actually investigating as they did, nor even investigating what they have had to say.
Repeatedly you ask the same questions of the same blog host and participants and treat the answers the same way time and again. My question, as before, is “why”? You know this blog’s position. You’ve seen Tom’s answers. You don’t find them compelling, for whatever reason (you suggest it is because Tom and the rest of us believe in God and you don’t), but you keep asking the same questions, raising the same objections and receiving the same answers. You know what the answers from this blog are and we know your position and have answered your questions and countered your logic. In arguing your position you have had to take up some very interesting positions, as noted above.
I’m not asking you to stop or saying you have no right to do this. My question continues to be, are you being honest about your purpose? Are you really looking inside yourself at your motivation?
You say that my questioning your motives is a last resort, and you just might be right. Right now I am not interested in again chasing you around and around the logic trails and countering your objections but have instead, as a first/last resort, asked you a new set of questions.
I suspect your answers and have tried to inspire you to look differently at them and yourself.
We have argued enough over the last several years that you certainly must know I am not afraid of your argumentation, style, expertise or knowledge – nor am I hiding from your presentations. I am trying a new approach – yes, maybe a last resort.
You set a standard by claiming that you are honestly seeking truth and testing your position. The fact that you do not follow up on the issues and merely return with the same objections post after post, year after year, demonstrates that you probably are not really seeking as you may think you are.
I doubt you have looked yet into the cosmological argument, from which you walked away at least two years ago, and which I reminded you about at least a year ago. I bet you have not turned a skeptical eye on Skeptical Inquirer like you said you would a year ago. I bet you’ve never read Lewis’ Miracles for the Argument From Reason, nor Reppert’s defence of it, nor Plantinga’s version.
This is not a strawman and whatever nuance you think coloured your positions changes nothing. In defence of your taking these positions (when you last called my reminder of them a strawman) you said “well sure, that’s where you end up if you follow my claims to their logical conclusion”.
Well sure! That’s what you have to do. That’s why we discuss these matters and explore them beyond their superficialities – the logic has to hold all the way down – swamp pilings will not do with ultimate questions. Ultimately, your epistemology and denial of God has you unable to say you know you are not a brain in a vat, unable to affirm your profession, and unable to even agree, beyond saying “it sure seems like I must” , that you can know that you exist.
And yet, with this as your epistemological position you are trying to convince others of your take on reality, you (pre)determine that all experiences of God are false and you dictate, as above to Scott, just what a real God would reasonably do and how He would really act – such that Scott’s experience must not be of or from God.
On that note one would become curious as to what theology and apologetics you have studied from which you have drawn your conclusions about how God ought to behave. My guess, again, is that you have studied nothing of the matter.
Two things:
1) I am not frustrated (at this point) in the least. I have a feeling you have a good heart and a serious question.
2) I do not give you the benefit of the doubt. I am questioning your sincerity with all vigour.
I do not believe you are being honest with me, my questions or, likely, with yourself.
I am trying to evoke a real exchange, not win another argument. I think there is a much greater reason that you continue as you do and I wonder if I can’t help to expose it.
Call that arrogant or denigrating if you wish. I might be wrong, but I’m going to give it a try anyway.
And, for the record, our experiences of God are not meant to convince you – if they were they would have been given to you. What they do is they speak to us. I would go into your response to Scott about his “concluding” that God exists when in “emotional upheaval” and how this demonstrates that you aren’t really thinking very well about the issue, but perhaps somebody else will take that up.
Paul,
You’re right that there is a distinction between my original perception of a striking picture, being told weeks later that the picture was never there, and still later realising that God had caused me to see the picture. From a human perspective, it could only have been a visual hallucination.
But I have to say you’re misinterpreting when you suggest this was “a period of some emotional upheaval”. Emotion only entered when I was convicted of my sin before God; before that, I would characterise it as a time of intellectual upheaval. I was puzzled, I was baffled at seeing something that wasn’t there. As I wrote,
My mind was going around in circles: Had I seen something that wasn’t there? How could that happen? It just did not make any sense.
You are right to say that, at the moment the puzzle was resolved, a feeling overwhelmed me. I would say the Holy Spirit informed me (I say “informed” advisedly in that he conveyed information to me but, no, he did not speak in an audible voice) that I was a rebellious sinner before God and that God had caused me to see something that wasn’t there to make me aware of that fundamental fact which I had managed to avoid facing all my life.
The feeling that overwhelmed me encompassed shame, guilt, remorse, and sorrow. Being remorseful and sorrowful, I wept. True, it was emotional, but I think that one can understand and appreciate that people who feel guilty and sorrowful tend to become emotional and cry.
If I may, I must also question your insistence that a decision to believe in God should always be made soberly, calmly, and deliberately. Sometimes a commitment to Christ is made that way but, in my experience, that is not often the case. Since my conversion, I have spoken to hundreds of Christians about their faith journeys. Anecdotally, I would say that about two-thirds were raised in Christian homes and do not remember a time when they did not believe; about one-third do remember such a time and can describe a process or event as a result of which they consciously accepted a call from God to become disciples of Christ.
Very few of the latter were calm and deliberate. One man told me he was overcome with a sense of God’s presence while driving down a Vancouver street when Kris Kristofferson’s song “Why Me Lord” was played on the car radio. He had to pull over and stop because his eyes filled with tears. He had heard the song before but had no inkling of the reaction he experienced that particular time. A woman told me she had a vision of Christ much less subtle than mine: She saw him in a blinding white light in front of her in her home.
Others described more “rational” types of conversions, through reading the Bible or other Christian literature. Some became interested in Christianity and even converted through seeing Christians selflessly serving and loving other people.
Other stories of Christian conversion are on the public record. The late Canadian philosopher George Parkin Grant (a man whose thought has influenced me) was an unbeliever as a student at Oxford during World War II. He says that he was riding his bicycle in the countryside one day when he came to a gate blocking his path. He got off the bicycle to open the gate and, when he got back on his bike to ride through, he “just knew that God exists and that there is moral order in the universe”.
C.S. Lewis wrote about being a determined atheist as a young man, but God dragged him kicking and screaming into the kingdom of God, “the most reluctant convert in all of Christendom”.
Please pardon my indulgence with those stories, but the point is that God makes himself known to people through all our faculties, not always or only through our reason.
Related to that, I also puzzled by your insistence that God should have spoken to me in an audible voice. Why would you find an auditory hallucination more persuasive than a visual one?
Briefly, regarding DoctorLogic’s suggestion [#62]:
It probably had something to do with the uncertainties in his life about work, housing and relationships, which most people would have in his circumstances.
Work: I was on top of the world, actually. I had graduated with an MA in Economics and found a high-paying job as a management trainee with one of Canada’s big five banks. Housing: I was looking for an apartment to rent, not considering purchase of a million-dollar mansion. It was a bit of a challenge, but I did not find it stressful. In the event, I found a place to my liking with minimal difficulty. Relationships: Well, I was a single guy on the prowl, but I was not anxious or obsessed about it. When I found out that Judy was a Christian, I didn’t even want to go out with her.
I think it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that someone saw something that wasn’t there solely because of a few garden-variety everyday problems, but perhaps one could insist that I’m not impartial.
I apologise for the length of this comment. I hope it’s helpful.
Charlie:
Yes you did, rhetorically:
1:10 pm, 4 December, 2008 _.
Moving on.
It would not be a shock at all if it was built up clamly and deliberatively. The christian god would not doubt be competent enough to craft the process without shocking someone. Fortunately, we don’t use free will to be shocked or not, so this is something that the Christian god could do without any philosophical problems,
Absolutely wrong. The other conclusion that fits the facts perfectly well is that my original conclusion has withstood a rigorous test.
Perhaps, Charlie, it’s not my purpose or my intent that should be called into question (literally, as you do in the quote directly above), but my judgment. Perhaps it’s just an error on my part that I think that logic and argument should be able to win the day. I guess I’m totally committed to that, maybe unreasonably so and in the face of all evidence. But I told you that earlier.
Turnabout is fair play, though. Now we might question why you continue to question my intent and purpose. I can think of several unflattering and critical reasons why you might do this. But I don’t like what’s at the end of this whole path.
Different people may have different ways to the truth. Do I have to follow a reading list in order to have proper intent? Can’t I just talk with people? Especially if they present the arguments in those books!?
Why not set up a standard that says “to really, truly be able to understand all the arguments, one needs to go to school and study these issues, and *then* you truly are conversant. *That* would be dedication to the truth. If you haven’t done that, I question how committed you are to the truth.” Maybe you didn’t mean to move the goalposts, but your complaint does it.
Do you really want to argue now, in this thread, the substance of the brain-in-the-vat issue, etc.? That’s where your points are leading, if I were to respond properly.
We disagree about that, too. If the universe is such that only swamp pilings are possible, then that’s too bad that they may be inadequate for ultimate questions. Maybe we don’t get to have absolute answers to ultiimate questions.
Please discuss the substance of those books as you understand them. That’s what I’m here for. You make it sound unreasonable that I come onto a blog and want a discussion, not homework. This is a blog! I don’t think issue is about me, actually, at all.
I didn’t say you were. There’s still a point in what I did say.
They are not unalterably opposed. It’s a bit like taking a sportsman-like approach to a game. One can simultaneously play hard just like winning was the only thing, but do so within the rules, with respect for your opponent, and also understanding that larger purpose of playing a game in the first place that has nothing to do with winning.
There is a danger with that. I played on a softball team and we had great fun and played hard. But everyone once in a while someone might get carried away and forget that we were there just for fun, and take things too seriously. I acknowledge the danger here of arguing just to win the next point without regard for the larger purpose. I try not to do that.
Then what was the ultimate purpose, in the context of this thread, for you to say
If everything you say about the Christian god is true, then you should be trying to convince me.
Scott, forgive my interpretation of what you wrote. I don’t think my interpretation (about your emotional state) was unreasonable given what you wrote, but I accept your correction of it.
I was talking about what *should* happen logically, and you go on to talk about what *does* happen. And that is why I suspect that what people are saying happens to them is not what is really happening.
The larger issue, though, is that it is going to be difficult to really accept or deny your claims about your experience. How do we tease out whether you claim about it is right or wrong? Such an important question should not be taken lightly. I think SteveK’s approach would be to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I disagree with that.
I don’t think I can see a way that we can come to a supportable conclusion about what happened to you. I know you certainly have your opinion, but there are all sorts of problems (that DL linked to above) that must be dealt with before *others*, at least, would come to the same conclusion as you did.
Hi Paul,
I’m going to step over, but not without mention, obviously, your self-congratulations and get right to this issue:
Yes, do turn it about. I have examined my motivations and will clearly and honestly enunciate them for you.
Why do I argue these issues? I like to demonstrate to non-believers who have accepted that disbelief is a mark of intellect that there is much reason, rationale, evidence and logic on the side of Christian belief. When the have misapprehensions of history or logic that I can clear up I like to do so. I hope to do some part to correct misconceptions out there and remove some of the stigma that I see wrongly attached to the intellect of the believer – this is in large part selfish and self-gratifying.
I enjoy playing with words and I like defeating arguments.
I have thoroughly enjoyed and am thankful to God for the learning experience, the epiphanies and the increase in my faith that has resulted from my investigations.
I want other readers, especially young people, to see that the so-called defeaters for Christianity are nothing of the sort and that those, such as yourself, who claim logic, reason and science alone backstop their disbelief are mistaken. I think this is good for my faith, their faith and the disbeliever’s view of reality.
I am morally obligated by my Creator and Father to give a defence of what I believe to be true and to share it.
I am hopeful that God might work through this process to change the hearts of some of His elect who are not yet convicted. I am weak in ministry, to be sure, but perhaps God is using me in a small way here.
Why do I specifically question your motivations? Because I doubt them specifically, do not find your actions to match your claims and hope that God is moving in your life.
It demonstrates your lack of motivation and indicates that you are not doing what you say.
We’ve argued it. I haven’t laid the groundwork for years and recorded our conversations because I want to do it again. You can go back to those threads if you like and amend your statements, as I have done for you in the past, and I will follow you there to comment.
You’re very confident about what can and cannot exist and how people’s experiences are best explained (away) and just what God should and shouldn’t do in a universe overwhelmingly unexplored, made up of, by current(?) guess, 95% unknown matter/energy, which may now be surrounded by a mysterious and unknown (unknowable?) dark force, which may or may not be uniform, of which we may or may not be at the centre, whose secrets we have yet to even begin to fathom by your methods, in which you cannot affirm any knowledge on your view, etc.. You see no disconnect?
Sweet.
Just what I said and asked in my very first question to you. No man can convince you. I was demonstrating that you will deny any and all experiences of God, that you are precommitted to doing so, and the very point that I make here again – that sharing them is not intended to convince you.
Not so. Again, you do not know what Christianity states. I am not the judge or prosecutor, but a witness. I can tell you what has happened to me, how God has acted in my life and how He has changed me. I can even try to answer your objections which are artificial and unnecessary stumbling blocks. But I can’t force you to remove them and only God can convince you. He is sovereign.
And once again, I certainly do hope that people will come to believe as I do. Science demonstrates that they live longer, happier, healthier, more fulfilling lives, on average, have longer and better marriages, raise more emotionally secure children and see the world more clearly as it is.
When I asked why you want people to join you in your relativistic view, where all the answers to the ultimate questions are ad hoc and where you have to deny all knowledge to avoid God, your only offering was that is “reality” – but you have admitted over and over no access to reality on your view.
Then, of course, there is the heavenly reward, hoped for but not seen, of our eternal lives spent in worship, joy and the presence of our Lord, the Creator of the universe and of our very souls, for Whose purposes we were made. And there is the foretaste of living in accord with His will and the ultimate reality of our world.
Most of the above should describe my motivation.
Plus, I like being right. What can I say, I’m a sinner.
Dear Mr. Gilbreath,
Thank you for answering here. I read your testimony a couple of years ago, have shared it with friends and family, and take great encouragement from it.
I am sorry for dragging you into this and I hope I have not exploited your experience.
Thank you again for your witness.
Only if you imagine that your reading list is the only way to the truth. As I’ve thought about your comment, I realized that I *have* read from both sides on this debate, not just on this blog, and not just on blogs. Just because I haven’t read the books you have doesn’t mean that I haven’t read, and that my motivation is suspect.
You see no word “maybe” in my statement? Does that show my absolute confidence? Furthermore, being vigorous in debate, and being consistent in debate (if you will grant me that in at least a few cases, for the sake of argument) doesn’t necessarily mean that one is taking an absolute position. I will be happy to potentially modify anything I’ve written to include a qualification or a lessening of an absolute stance, given a specific example.
And why should you do that? You’re being disingenuous, I think. Of course our final purpose here is to convince each other, in the best sense of the word.
Convincing isn’t forcing, especially if we have free will.
Once again, you’ve offered a caricature of my position.
Hi Paul,
A caricature, you say?
Let us check that and perhaps clarify or amend my take on your positions as it is relevant to the discussion you were having with Steve anyway.
Do you accept that we canknow something even if we can not test and verify it empirically?
Do you now affirm that you can know that you exist?
Do you know that you are not a brain in a vat even though you can not test or verify it?
Do you maintain that Popper’s claim was that we can know nothing and do you contend that this supports your epistemology?
When you first tried, and failed, to prove that the laws of logic had to be empirically verified to be known you switched to saying that the laws were not known. Today, do you know that the Law Of Noncontradiction is true and holds?
Can you know something that you cannot prove?
Do tell, as there are several blog threads which could use an update if I have, indeed, been misrepresenting you.
Paul,
I do prefer to give Scott the benefit of doubt. I’d give a Hindu, an atheist and a Muslim the same benefit under similar circumstances. I don’t know them personally and I wasn’t there to experience what they experienced. Even if I was there, there is no guarantee that I would experience what was meant to be a subjective, but no less real, experience.
What I find strange is the armchair quarterbacking from people that neither know Scott, nor were there to experience what he claims. My discussion with you was about knowing what you perceive. Epistemology. How you can know what Scott perceived better than Scott himself is baffling to me. Do you do this with other people – tell them what they *probably* did last week, and what they *probably* felt?
You and I don’t have to believe Scott’s story – or any similar story – but for you and DL to say he *probably* really didn’t experience what he claimed – and here’s what he *probably* really was going through – is, as I said, baffling.
How can you even say probably? Based on what, your opinion of how reality ought to present itself? OK, opinion noted, but I prefer to let reality come to me (us) and not straightjacket reality into being presented in some limited way.
While there is but one reality that we all share, there is nothing that says it must be experienced in a certain way to all people. Only an a priori committment to materialism, or something similar, says it must be that way. But we know that a priori committment to be wrong.
The key point to learn from all of this is that we should pay attention to our collective subjective experiences as much as our collective objective experiences. Reality might be trying to tell us something about Himself.
An exchange with Paul on this subject earlier this year.
http://www.thinkingchristian.net/2008/03/language-log-the-functional-neuroanatomy-of-science-journalism/#comment-2315
Doubt my analysis of Paul’s position and our history? Interested in the nuance? Try the entire thread, beginning here, for just one example.
http://www.thinkingchristian.net/2008/03/language-log-the-functional-neuroanatomy-of-science-journalism/#comment-2315
Paul,
Regarding the first sentence, I take your point, but I do think, as I indicated in my previous comment, there is a potentially serious problem with limiting perception of God to the purely logical. Genuine conversion is always fundamentally an act of God, who can and does do as he wishes when he wishes. As I said, God engages all our faculties, not only or always our reason. If you are seeking some kind of ideal, purely logical, way of understanding conversion or other perceptions of God, I’m afraid you are bound to be disappointed.
Regarding the second sentence, I don’t think I understand your point. In fact, it seems to me a non sequitur. What “really” happened to me is as I said. I awoke the morning of 6 June 1982 a convinced unbeliever (as I had been all my life) with some troubling questions about a picture I thought I had seen but apparently was never there. By the end of the day, through the events I described, I believed the gospel. As John Newton put it, “I was blind but now I see”. I guess I don’t see the point of debating what “really” happened.
Tom started this thread in response to your question,
Charlie cited my testimony in that context, as a description of a direct perception of God. And now you want to question what “really” happened because, I assume, you do not accept my presentation of what “really” happened. As I said earlier, “I can’t explain it, I can only describe what happened.”
I hope that doesn’t sound too presumptuous. My testimony is what it is; as a record of historical events that happened to me, it can hardly be altered; it’s just there. Take it or leave it. I understand if you do the latter; as I said, I would have done just that myself.
I agree with you there: “We” cannot come to a common conclusion, “supportable” or otherwise. You do not accept my interpretation of what happened to me, you apparently have another, contradictory interpretation. We’ll just have to agree to disagree.
If I may, I’d like to say a bit more about my testimony as an example of a direct perception of God. With that in mind, I would say that seeing the picture of Jesus on the wall of Judy’s apartment was not my direct perception of God. I would say that happened later, when I was convicted of sin and brought to belief. Of course, as I said, God caused me to see his face there but, without any connection between that picture and my standing before God, it was just a puzzle, a head-scratcher, an intellectual problem. The Holy Spirit made that connection for me, at once completing and solving the puzzle.
When the Scripture verse came to my mind and I was convicted of my sin—that was my direct perception of God. Without that, I would have been left scratching my head: the puzzle of the picture would never have been solved.
True, the face that wasn’t there makes for a striking testimony but, by itself, it carries no lasting significance.
Are you familiar with the story of the rich man and Lazarus that Jesus told in St Matthew’s Gospel? (If not, you can read it here.) At the end, Abraham says, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” Spectacular “miracles” prove nothing to those who will not receive God’s message.
I did not see this at the time, but now I understand my testimony in light of that teaching. By itself, seeing something that wasn’t there proved nothing; it was the message of God imparted to me by the Holy Spirit that was decisive. Without that, I would still be an unbeliever–a puzzled one, perhaps, but still an unbeliever.
Charlie,
In response to your comment here:
First of all, please call me Scott. For the rest, no need for apologies. You have not exploited my experience. It’s been on the net for years and I have heard far worse criticisms of my intelligence, my motivation, my integrity, than appear on this thread. I enjoy engaging in civil discussions of my testimony and that, in my view, is what we have here. (Kudos to Tom for hosting and running such fine discussions.)
I am glad you are encouraged by what happened to me. I look forward to meeting you face to face around the Lamb’s great banquet table.
Steve,
By checking beliefs, I don’t mean checking your belief that you experienced something. That was never in doubt. It was never really in doubt that Scott believes he saw a picture versus a mirror. The question is whether there actually was a picture versus a mirror.
If there had been a picture versus a mirror, why was Scott the only one who noticed it? Does this normally happen to people? No. Does it normally happen to Scott? No. So why should Scott believe it himself? Isn’t it more likely that he saw a picture of Jesus in or on one of the books, and confused this with the mirror? Of course it is.
The elephant in the room is that you think no belief or recollection is too far-fetched to doubt. And the only reason you believe this nonsense is to preserve your faith.
Let’s put it in general terms. The laws of physics are highly predictive and reliable, and we all think it very foolish to bet against physics (e.g., jumping off a building and expecting to live). We think this because physical laws have been observed countless times. Suppose Alf sees phenomenon X just once. Phenomenon X violates the known laws of physics. Alf must believe he saw X, but should Alf believe X actually happened?
This question is rationally answerable, and it’s not a matter of opinion. Alf needs to compare the probability that a person misinterprets sensory inputs or falsely remembers certain facts, with the probability that the laws in question would be broken. It’s very VERY simple.
People misremember facts, selectively sample facts, have visual and auditory hallucinations, double-takes, deja vu, and many other failures of cognition and memory. This happens more commonly than laws of physics are violated. Do you deny this? Have you yourself never done a double-take or misremembered a fact?
I would estimate that I mispercieve something or misremember something about once a month. Usually about small stuff. I misplace an item and have to search for it. Or maybe I think I’ve emailed a reply to a query, but actually only imagined what my reply would be. I’m not particularly absent minded, but these things happen.
Furthermore, there are well documented cases in psychology in which subjects display denial, delusion, and false beliefs when those beliefs challenge their worldviews or when they are under emotional stress. Do you deny that psychology has documented these cases in a significant percentage of the population (e.g., say, >0.01%, and probably more than 5%)?
What does this mean? It means that if I observe an event that violates known laws of physics (not just unusual applications of known laws), then I ought to be skeptical when those laws are known to better than about 1 part in 10000. At that point, I ought to suspect that I made a mistake. It happens, and there’s no need to feel bad about making a mistake. And this doesn’t mean I shouldn’t investigate the peculiarity further. Even if nothing bizarre happened, it would be interesting to know why I thought something did.
But look at Scott’s case. He sees an event that violates reliable laws of physics. FAPP, transmogrification doesn’t happen. The event is so peculiar, it’s more likely he’s misremembered something, especially given the length of time between seeing the picture and seeing the mirror. So Scott needs to verify his belief. But when he asks Judy what happened, she doesn’t tell a transmogrification story. She tells a story about how there never was a picture. Her response is inconsistent with his experience. Moreover, this is a ONE-TIME event. It cannot be tested.*
This is what I mean by testing and questioning your intuitions. If you have a belief that the picture became a mirror, how would you confirm it? Suppose this is a court case. What evidence would work if you were a juror trying to confirm your story? That’s what impartiality is about. It’s about being a juror to your own experiences, and not the defendant. You have to be your own juror. If you’re going to believe everything that you as defendant says, then you as jury are going to be extremely gullible. But because it’s a one-time event that leaves no trace, and all the physical evidence (about transmogrifying) is against you, you would be foolish to believe your memory was what it seemed to be.
My reply will have to wait, Charlie, as I have a concert tonight and preparations are extensive.
Break a leg, Paul.
My hands are sore already anyway, and I have to play this weekend as well – slightly different venue, of course.
Doctor Logic,
I have stated that I saw a picture that wasn’t there—that God caused me to see it—so I don’t think there’s a question about what was “actually” there. Neither Judy nor Gord, who were both in the room at the time, saw the picture. In terms of physical reality, there was no picture. Nevertheless, I saw it. So, Judy’s response is not inconsistent with my experience. She did not see the picture, I did.
Should I have questioned my perception? Of course, and I did. That’s why I was so puzzled. How could I have seen something that wasn’t there? But I couldn’t just shrug it off because I was utterly convinced that I had seen it. I took it for granted at the time I encountered it and was shaken to learn otherwise.
Maybe I’m being picky, but talking about “a belief that the picture became a mirror”, to me, doesn’t fit the circumstances. The mirror did not “become” anything; I just didn’t see it there. Instead, I saw the picture that, in fact, was not there. The two did not even match, size-wise. The mirror was much larger—about two feet wide and four feet tall, while the picture was 8-by-10 inches.
As I said, there is no issue of mistaken memory. In the days immediately following my conversion, I told the story to family, friends, and co-workers.
Your analogy about a court case is, I think, misplaced. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything. I am simply describing what happened to me. I don’t necessarily expect anyone to believe it. If it hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t have believed it.
Scott,
What you mean is
As I said to Steve, it’s a question of the odds. If you see something that violates laws of physics that are reliable and confirmed by mountains of evidence, then you need statistical leverage to overcome those odds. But our own one-time experiences lack that leverage. You have to be your own impartial jury.
Suppose I click my fingers, and the weather clouds up and starts to snow. The ability to control weather violates the laws of physics. It’s incredibly unlikely that my finger snap caused the snow. Perhaps it was coincidence, or I experienced a cognitive failure of some kind. Speaking as juror, I would not believe I caused the snow, even if I did. It would be irrational for anyone to believe I caused the snow, even if I did. However, if I did cause the snow, the truth can be rescued. I just need to do it again. And again. And again and again. At some point, the leverage of repetition and statistics overturns the original belief that weather is controlled (er, described) by the laws of physics instead of being controlled my will. But if it happens only once, there’s no way I can rationally be convinced that I was the cause of the snow.
Your complaint is that, if we rely on rational thinking as above, then we can’t see a God who interacts with us at a level lower than rational thinking will deem worthy of belief. We can’t trust one-off events that lack confirmatory evidence. Well, whose problem is that? I think it’s God’s problem.
Let me put it this way. Is it possible for God (or aliens, for that matter) to intervene visibly in the physical world, yet hide in the shadows to the point where you can’t rationally see him as accountable for the interventions? If so, there must be some ‘obscurity cutoff’ with respect to rational belief.
I just read your latest reply in which you say:
Ah, but there is someone you need to convince. Yourself! You have to be your own juror. And here, you are saying that your impartial juror self does not believe the story either. Which is good, because you lack sufficient evidence to convince even yourself.
DL,
Not entirely true. I have plenty of doubts about my own experiences and the experiences of others. But what I know to be true, I know. I know that I’ve written comments on this blog today and I know that with absolute certainty – and, contra Paul, I don’t even have to go back to verify/confirm that I did in fact write other comments today.
I even know some of the content, not verbatim, but I know it generally speaking. I’d be willing to die for that belief as silly as that may sound. The point is I know it to be true with utmost certainty – and all from memory.
I also know that the law of physics is an observed physical phenomenon and that, all things being equal, it will continue as we know it. I know, from logic no less, that if all things cease to be equal, it may not continue as we know it. The only way I’d have reason to think such an event occured is through personal experience or the testimony of others. Maybe Scott’s experience is one of those times where things ceased being equal, if only for a moment.
For me, the elephant in the room is that you hold the cognitive dissonant postion of BOTH fervently denying such an event DID occur – because the laws create reality rather than reflect it – and admitting that logically it CAN occur. You claim to know the odds of which one will occur, and when, but somehow I doubt it.
How so? He didn’t have any trouble convincing Scott, did he? I mean, where’s God’s actual problem here?
I do wish you would read Warranted Christian Belief, doctor(logic). I said that a day or two ago and I’ll say it again. This time it’s because of that word “rational.” Plantinga explores what it means with respect to belief God, and convincingly shows that charges of irrationality are usually either too vague to have any real meaning, or if not that, then quite often the charges are simply wrong. Why is it irrational to believe in what one perceives, especially since, as in the case of Christianity, there is considerable supporting evidence? (But you must read Plantinga.)
Huh? Is that what you said, Scott?
Speaking of elephants, did you notice that Scott believed he saw that picture before he had a faith to preserve?
Your conception of faith is awry here anyway. My faith is not a concoction of things I feel I must believe. My faith is that which I do believe; i.e., that which I actually consider to be true, well established, factual, etc. The reason I believe what I believe is not because I’m afraid I’ll lose my faith otherwise. My faith is what I believe.
DL
Telling me that statistics should dictate what I know to have experienced is one of the most ridiculous thing I have heard. I know what I experienced, but you can only use statistics as a guide to GUESS what I experienced. I could be mistaken about my experience, but I don’t know that I am. Neither do you know that I’m mistaken. Statistics don’t give you knowledge, they give you statistics.
Doctor Logic,
I do find it annoying when people put words in my mouth, as you did:
I used the word “logical” in response to Paul, who had said:
Did Paul use the wrong word when he said “logically”? In any case, please don’t put words in my mouth.
As Tom suggested, this is nonsense:
I said no such thing. I didn’t convince myself of anything: God convinced me.
In an earlier comment, you said:
FAPP, for all practical purposes. That could be seen as a very apt phrase in this context. Would it help if you consider my testimony an impractical purpose?
I’m sorry, but I think this is completely wrongheaded:
To the best of my knowledge, I have made no complaints. Your use of the words “we” and “us” indicates, to me, a misunderstanding of the function of my testimony. It happened to me and me alone. I do not suggest anyone else can or should expect that or something similar to happen to them. I certainly do not suggest that my story can or should persuade anyone to believe in Christ.
It was a one-time, non-generalisable, non-replicable event, and so cannot be confirmed or even analysed scientifically. It was offered as a description of a direct perception of God, not as a scientific experiment or thought problem or even an exercise in Christian apologetics. To treat it as such is, in my view, a category mistake.
I’m sure it must be frustrating for a skeptic to try to get one’s head around it, so to speak. I sympathise—I’ve been there—but my testimony stands.
Steve,
I’m not saying the statistics change your experience. In fact, I would agree that it is impossible for that to happen. What it changes are the beliefs stemming from those experiences. Do you see the distinction?
If I look outside and see Bigfoot in my back yard, my experience is unassailable. I saw something that looked like Bigfoot in my back yard. It is a fact that has to be explained. But the theory that Bigfoot was actually in my backyard is just one theory of many.
The Christians here are describing one-time, unrepeatable experiences, and then saying that they derived (unverifiable) beliefs from those experiences. That’s not rational for the reasons I have described because other reasons for those experiences are more likely.
Scott, a question for you if you don’t mind. Did you derive your beliefs completely (as doctorlogic suggests) from a one-time, unrepeatable experience? Did you derive (unverifiable) beliefs from just that experience?
Scott,
Sigh. God didn’t convince you. That’s your conclusion, not the process. You’re making a circular argument.
Besides I was talking about what you ought to do. Here’s what you wrote:
You are admitting here that if someone else told you this story, you would not believe it. Why? It’s not because you think they’re lying. You would still find the witness unreliable even if he passed a lie-detector test. It’s because the likelihood that they were mistaken is greater than the likelihood that they were telling the truth (because that would entail violations of the laws of physics).
So why are you so special? Why are you skeptical of others experiences and not your own?
As I just explained to Steve, I’m not saying you should doubt your experiences. A rational man should not doubt his experiences qua experiences. What he should doubt is the belief he infers from his experiences.
You had some experience of remembering a photo where others deny it being. I’m confident you experienced this. That doesn’t make your inference a valid one. You are first assuming that a God exists with the ability to appeal to you through one-time unverifiable events, and you are using this to “explain” a one-time unverifiable event. It’s a trap of logic. Suppose God did not exist, and all there is is physics. Is it impossible for you to have the experiences you had? No, it’s not impossible. But you persist in inferring from your experience that God is talking to you. Why would you do that?
Here’s an analogy. Suppose I go to start my car, and it fails to start. I go back to the trunk to find a flare, and discover yesterday’s newspaper. I remove the paper and flare, and give the engine one more turn. It starts. Should I conclude that the newspaper was preventing my engine from starting, but only this once (i.e., newspapers will not prevent cars from starting in the future)? No. Why? Because the same event could occur even if the newspaper was not the cause of the engine behavior.
However, if newspapers were reliably affecting engines, we could confirm it through scientific testing. But that’s not what you’re saying. You’re saying God did what he did, uniquely, just this one time. Why is that supposed to be reasonable?
I do see it. You are saying statistics are used to change the belief I have about my believed experiences. Okay, but I have beliefs stemming from my experience with statistics.
I believe statistics can tell me something about reality but that’s just an intuitive belief that must be confirmed. I might be mistaken about that intuitive belief. According to you and Paul, I really don’t know that it can tell me anything. I must confirm that it can, and what, if anything, it can tell me about my experiences.
So, what do I use to change the belief I have about my believed experience with respect to statistics?
One more thing…
I also have beliefs stemming from confirming experiences. My intuitive belief is that I know what a confirming experience actually is, and that the experience can tell me something about reality. I could be wrong about all of that. What do I use to change the belief I have about my believed experience with respect to confirmations?
Tom,
As a child, my parents gave me many kids’ books, including a few with Bible stories, but I don’t remember my parents ever reading to me from them. As I learned to read, I read them on my own. My parents never taught me anything in particular about religion and, as I grew, I soon came to know that they had no religious beliefs and did not consider religion important or worth knowing about or talking about. But I had a kids’ book or two to read.
I also remember when I was in Grade 5, every student in the grade was given a New Testament and Psalms from the Gideons. That was a long time ago, it must have been 1959. I remember leafing through it and reading snippets, but it made no particular impression on me.
Oh yes (and this is probably totally irrelevant), when I was 17, I briefly dated a girl who was a Christian. Infatuated with her, I attended a few meetings of a Christian youth group she belonged to, but I never fit in. They talked about stuff I didn’t understand or believe, and I wasn’t interested in the music and books that they liked. Also, the leaders, two young men in their early 20s, acted as if they detested me and my relationship with the girl. (Or maybe I was just paranoid.) Anyway, she tried to witness to me on a couple of occasions, but I wasn’t interested. She invited me to attend church with her; I hemmed and hawed, not wanting to offend her, but I finally refused to go. The relationship soon ended acrimoniously.
As I grew to adulthood, I came in contact with Christians who talked about Jesus and his death on the cross, supposedly for my sake, but I never understood that.
As I said in my testimony, at the time of my conversion, a Bible verse came to my mind, a verse that I had heard or read as a child. I don’t remember exactly when I’d heard it, but I recognised it as such. I also remember understanding it instantly, whereas before I had not. I also understood Christ’s death for my sake, for my sins.
So, the things I believed at my conversion were not new or novel to me. I had been aware of them as Christian ideas or teaching in some vague sense away in my past, but I had never before grasped their significance to me personally. But those ideas hadn’t entered my mind for many years. I had never considered them seriously or even wondered about them.
Doctor Logic,
Sorry if you find me exasperating, that’s not my intention.
I guess I don’t understand this conclusion-vs-process thing. What process? I saw a picture. Later, I was told there was no picture. It didn’t make sense until I was convicted of my sin and brought to faith.
The picture was like any object one perceives through sight. I entered the room, I looked around, I saw a bookcase/entertainment unit, I saw the picture and looked right at it, I looked around some more, I saw books, chairs, a couch, tables, windows, curtains, etc. I saw Judy and Gord. These were all sensory impressions that appeared to me equally real. Later, however, I found that one of them was not.
And I maintain that God did convince me. I’m not making any kind of argument, I am merely recounting what happened to me. It’s a record of events, not an argument—in the sense of a reasoned or logical series of sequential statements intended to persuade. Perhaps you are using “argument” in some other sense?
My experience is special (to me, anyway) because it happened to me. I am (sometimes, but not always) skeptical of others’ experiences because I did not experience them.
I didn’t infer anything. As I wrote earlier in this thread,
This knowledge was given to me, I did not infer it. It made sense to me, I accepted it immediately, but it was not a product of my own reasoning process.
My testimony is a description of events that happened to me. You don’t have to find it reasonable. I have no problem if you don’t.
I thought the above was interesting, especially since it describes quite accurately a few ‘peak experiences’ I’ve had after meditation and yoga, one of which lasted for around 3 months (the first one was only for about 3-4 days), as well as a handful of shorter term minor experiences.
Scott,
I am confused. You seem to have several beliefs:
1) You saw a picture and then didn’t see it, and your friends claimed the picture did not initially exist. (This I stipulate as certainly true.)
2) The picture actually did exist when you initially saw it.
3) God exists.
4) God created the picture in (2).
My question is about the connections between these beliefs.
It makes some sense to infer (2) from (1). We normally infer the existence of things we see at the time we see them. Maybe someone later hid the photo or forgot they had posted it. It’s also possible such an inference would be mistaken, e.g., if you confused memories of two different incidents (e.g., seeing that picture in someone else’s home).
However, you are saying there was no inference in this process. You are saying that you did not infer (3) and (4) from (1) and (2). If this is true, then why are (1) and (2) even relevant to your belief?
Implicitly, you’re saying that (1) and (2) could have happened without (3) and (4). We know that (2) is far from certain, and (1) could just as easily have happened without (2), (3) and (4).
You say
I will remind you that you have belief and not knowledge. Knowledge must be justified, and you don’t have justification.
Returning to Paul’s question… the feelings you describe appear to be a reaction to the belief. You didn’t break down and cry as part of the sensus divinitatis, but as a consequence of it. Is that right?
Doctor Logic,
We seem to be quibbling about words again. A few comments ago, you said I wrote “logically” in error; I should have said “reasonable”. Now you object to my use of the word “knowledge”, maintaining I should have said “belief”.
Well, sorry, but I do not accept your correction. My Collins English Dictionary (1st Canadian edition) has as the first of its five definitions of “knowledge”: “the facts or experiences known to a person or group of people”. Works for me.
Now to your four-point analytical framework:
Point 1 I’ll pass over because there seems to be no disagreement on that.
I think we need to be as clear as possible about what “actually did exist” means here. The picture existed in my mind, but not in physical reality. When I first saw it, on 30 April 1982, I took for granted that it did physically exist where I saw it. It was as real to me as any piece of furniture in the apartment. On 5 June, Judy informed that it had never been there, physically. From her demeanour and reaction to my question (as described in my testimony), “So, what happened to the picture of Jesus that was there before?”, I believed her when she said no picture had ever been on that wall.
I immediately concluded that, on 30 April, I had seen something that did not physically exist. My eyes had deceived me—I had experienced a visual hallucination that appeared undeniably real to me—and I didn’t understand how that could have happened. That was the dilemma.
There’s more to it than that: On the evening of 6 June, I came to believe that the gospel is true: Jesus Christ, God’s son, lived on earth as a man, died, and rose again to take away my sins; he still lives today; and he wants me to know that. He cares about me even though I had never cared about him. If that is understood as encapsulated in “God exists”, that’s fine by me, although I would prefer to state it as “3) The gospel is true”.
Yes, God somehow caused me to perceive the picture as I described above under point 2.
True: I did not infer (3) and (4) from (1) and (2). Now that I have come to believe (3) and (4), (1) and (2) don’t really matter any more. Indeed, I would go further and say (4) is not a key belief, either. (3) was the point all along. That was what God wanted me to know as essential. (4) is a demonstration to me of God’s power, but it was merely his means to get to (3). The rest, as I said earlier in this thread, was a 2-by-4 across the back of my head. It’s as if God was saying to me: “LISTEN UP, GILBREATH!”
Could have, but didn’t.
In fact, (1) could have happened—or, at least, the first part “You saw a picture” that wasn’t physically there—and I never would known but for an unlikely series of events. For me to find out that the picture I had seen was never physically there, these had to happen soon enough after 30 April that I didn’t forget all about Judy: (i) I had to be interested in asking her for a date, which I initially was not; (ii) She had be interested in dating me, which she initially was not; (iii) After our first date on 4 June, I had to want to go out with her again, the sooner the better; (iv) After our first date on 4 June, she had want to go out with me again, the sooner the better. If any of those conditions failed to obtain—if, for any reason, I didn’t get back inside Judy’s apartment and ask her about the picture—I never would have found out about that it had never been on her wall.
Finally, regarding Paul’s question: Yes, I broke down as a consequence of what I had been given to believe. I felt guilt, shame, and remorse as a result of learning those things, and I cried.
Charlie, I’m going to respond to the first of your questions above, and I invite you to work through that single issue with me before going onto the others.
Yes and no. Yes in the more causal, everyday sense with subjective, internal things such as qualia, etc.
However, I would say we can’t know anything *absolutely* in an ultimate sense because of the danger of not knowing what we don’t know, because if there is something that we don’t know, we don’t know if that would change what we think we know. Whew, I hope you can understand that sentence. This would apply to even such elemental things as the Law of Non-Contradiction. It would even apply to this idea itself. We would be skeptical about skepticism, and then skeptical about our skepticism of skepticism, etc., etc., etc. But this is only in the largest, most absolute sense. For anything short of that, we cannot even have a conversation with the Law of Non-Contradiction, so we can accept it as true even if the pilings that support it don’t go all the way down into bedrock.
Hi Paul,
Good concert?
Sorry, your answer does not clarify whether or not I have been, as you repeatedly charge, misrepresenting you and creating a strawman of your positions.
“Yes and no” is not much help. What is the difference between ultimate knowledge and everyday knowledge? Is one knowledge and the other not, or are they both knowledge?
Can you only know internal subjective things like qualia with your so-called everyday knowledge or can you know other things as well?
You again confirm here that we cannot know that the Law Of Noncontradiction holds. This means you say we do not know that A cannot also be not A and that a proposition and its opposite cannot be both true. This means we can have no knowledge whatsoever. Do you agree with this or not?
Since you accused me of misrepresenting you I’d rather hope you do not dwell too long on one aspect only of your point but confirm or deny the positions you’ve taken previously and to which I have provided links.
Here’s the straw man, then.
This caricature of my position does so by stating my position in absolute terms, when it is not an absolute position, in the sense that my position distinguishes between ultimate and everyday senses of the knowledge. I certainly don’t live my life as if I’m a brain in a vat even though I can not, in the most ultimate terms, prove that I am not. That does not say that I believe that I am a brain in a vat, and is thus contrary to your caricature.
So, for some purposes, it is OK to assume the everyday sense of knowledge and truth, even though they do not hold for the most ultimate terms. And for those most ultimate terms, I am a skeptic.
Hi Paul,
Whether or not you can live a life consistent with your beliefs is not really the point, I don’t think – at least for the purposes of this conversation – even though it’s certainly a serious mark against them.
The point is, if you don’t know you aren’t a brain in a vat you don’t know if you have any apprehension of reality.
That’s what I say above and that’s what I still contend. Show me how it is a strawman and not the honest result of your view.
Just because Richard Dawkins acts, on a day to day basis, as though he has free will doesn’t mean he thinks he does, or that he does in actuality. Just because Ruse acts as though his consciousness is real and not an illusion on a day to day basis doesn’t mean it is real. And just because you act as though you know things, and you hate having it pointed out that you have claimed otherwise, doesn’t mean that you’ve erased the fact that you can’t know, by your claims, that you are not a brain in a vat.
Or are you now claiming that you can have knowledge without absolute certainty?
Steve will rather enjoy hearing that, I think.
Please, let me know for real what your position is.
You wrote, at 11:48 pm, 4 December, 2008 р.
You are saying, directly above, that my position is that I am a brain in a vat. My position, however, is that I don’t think there is a way to show that I am not a brain in a vat. *Huge* difference.
That’s the caricature and the straw man.
Scott,
You’re thinking in a circle. You’re saying knowledge is what you know. But what does it mean to know versus believe?
A belief isn’t knowledge just because it’s true. A person can have a belief that turns out to be true by accident. So belief and knowledge are different. That’s why knowledge is considered “justified true belief”, or something along those lines. In other words, knowledge requires rational justification – it requires reasons to believe that fit in with one’s other knowledge. You lack rational justification for your belief. You have unjustified belief.
Do you play poker?
Suppose I shuffle the cards and deal you 5 cards. You get Ace of spades, 3 of diamonds, 5 of diamonds, Jack of clubs and 7 of hearts. What are the odds of drawing these cards in this order? About 311 million to 1, IIRC. Would you fall out of your chair in shock at getting such a rare combination of cards?
I expect you would not, because every permutation of cards is equally rare, and if you shuffle a deck randomly, the top 5 cards are going to be one of these rare permutations.
Now suppose that later in the evening, we’re playing 5 card draw. I deal you 3, 4, 5, 6, Jack in mixed suits. You elect to draw a card to replace the Jack in the hopes of completing your straight (you need a 2 or 7 in any suit). You draw a 2 of spades. What are the odds of getting these particular starting cards (not just the partial straight, but these cards in this order and suit), and what are the odds of drawing the 2 of spades to fill out the straight?
Well, the odds of drawing exactly what you started with in that order is 311 million to one. Then, the odds of drawing that 2 of spades is around 1 in 47. Combined that’s 14.6 billion to 1. So why did you even TRY to complete the inside straight? The odds were hopeless, no?
No, the odds were not hopeless. They were not hopeless because the odds of drawing the initial hand in its initial order are irrelevant. What matters is the odds of filling out the straight, which is 8 in 47 (you don’t care which end of the straight you fill out, nor with which suit).
Your argument here is to point out how unlikely it was for certain specific but irrelevant events to have transpired. But what is the analogue of completing the straight in your case? The analogue is going to a particular location for a second time. That’s not a rare event for anyone.
What I am saying is that we can always point to any situation and find something rare and unusual about it. History is like that, but we can’t go assigning arbitrary significance to randomness. That’s a cognitive bias that has been proven to be untrustworthy.
It doesn’t really matter if you further constrain the relevant details of the case because you’re sampling selectively. This is bad!
Suppose this event occurred at the car service facility. You thought there was a calendar featuring topless girls on the wall, but on your second visit, you see a calendar featuring sports cars. The proprietor says there never was a topless girls calendar. In this case, since car service is of no personal significance to you, you put the initial memory of the topless calendar down to error. You probably saw the topless calendar down at the boxing gym, or in a friend’s garage. It’s a scientific fact that this kind of thing happens to everyone because we’re all human and have imperfect memories.
The difference in this case is that you made this error at a time and place of great significance to you. You made this error when you were anxiously courting a girl who claimed she would only date Christians, and the picture in question was a religious symbol. It’s not as if you’ve never seen a picture of Jesus before this event. I quite expect you did see that picture Jesus, but somewhere else.
I realize you’re not trying to persuade me. But I am saying you don’t have the evidence to persuade yourself rationally. You are being irrational in your belief. You may not care about that either, but that’s the conclusion that’s relevant to the debate here. You don’t have reasons to believe. You just have belief. There’s a difference.
Paul,
I agree. But we can go further. What does it mean to be a brain in a vat? It means the world isn’t “real”. But what is the definition of real? Real means consistent with past and future experience. Reality is defined in terms of experience. If experience is a dream, then reality IS the dream. We would have no basis to talk about what isn’t the dream.
Doctor Logic,
I’m not trained in philosophy, logic, or epistemology, so your distinctions between “knowledge” and “belief” are, I’m sorry to say, not that interesting to me. I quoted my dictionary’s definition, and you accuse me “thinking in a circle”. You insist that
Unfortunately, none of the six definitions of “knowledge” in my dictionary says anything like that.
I understand your poker analogy. (By the by, you wrote “inside straight”, but it was really an outside straight.) That a series of unlikely events transpired after I saw the picture on 30 April doesn’t prove anything.
Again, I don’t understand your use of the word “argument”. I made no argument, I was not trying to persuade you of anything, I was just mentioning some of the possibilities inherent in the events recounted in my testimony.
At the time the error occurred, there was no significance at all. When I saw the picture that later proved not to be there, I was looking for an apartment to rent. I just wanted to take a walk-through to decide if I might want to live in a similar apartment elsewhere in the building. I did that, then left; I doubt I spent more than ten minutes in Judy’s place. I had never met and had no interest in the young woman who lived there, I did even not know she was a Christian, I did not know that her brother who had brought me there was a Christian. It was because I saw the picture that I first became aware that she was a Christian. That was the first personal fact I learned about her, beyond that she was Gord’s sister.
No, I made the error before it ever occurred to me that I might even want to date her. When I walked into Judy’s apartment on 30 April, I had no anxiety about anything related to her. Also, as I stated in my testimony, I did not find out that she was unwilling to date Christians until after my conversion on 6 June.
Let me repeat here some of what I wrote in my testimony with some words emphasised:
Yes, I had seen pictures of Jesus before, many pictures—but not that one. I had never seen it before and I have never seen it since.
At the time, beyond its striking attractiveness, it carried no special significance for me because I did not believe that Jesus was a special person. I was not even persuaded that such a man had ever existed as a historical figure. I did not believe in the supernatural, so I certainly did not believe in divine intervention. As for the picture being “a religious symbol”, the only thing it symbolised to me was the woman who lived there apparently subscribed to beliefs that I considered, to be blunt, foolish and ridiculous. Any religious import of the person in the picture meant nothing to me and did not affect my perception of the picture.
If it were just a run-of-the-mill topless calendar, sure. If, however, there had been something unusual or memorable about the topless calendar, say, the girl I had seen had a gross disfigurement, say, one of her breasts was three times as large as the other, causing me to take a good long look at her, then I would have cause to remember seeing the calendar there and perhaps even to ask where it had gone were I to return and see something else in its place.
The picture of Jesus was so attractive and beautiful that I noticed and remembered specific details about it.
Your talk about me persuading myself is, to me, nonsensical. I did not persuade myself of anything. I also accept that, to you—indeed, to every person in the world except me—my testimony is irrational. That seems to me unavoidable by the very nature of what I have testified to: a supernatural occurrence in apparent violation of the laws of nature. It’s illogical, it’s unreasonable, it violates every tenet of sound thinking, some would even consider it insane. Of course, I don’t like to be thought of as illogical, etc., but, with respect to the events that I have recounted, it’s unavoidable.
Scott,
You had an experience that many other people have, specifically, you remembered something the way it wasn’t. After a short while, you spontaneously believed in the gospels. But beyond this, you don’t question your belief at all, nor do you supply any arguments to support your belief. So, yes, that’s irrational.
Suppose I strike it big in the casino. After a few hours, I spontaneously come to believe that my race is factually superior to all others. I neither try to falsify my belief, nor provide rational arguments for it. This belief becomes life-changing because I consequently devote my life to ensuring that my race reaches its rightful place of dominion over other races by any means possible.
By your standards, my actions would be commendable because I would be following my gut.
Your view is rather postmodern. Logic and consistency don’t matter to you where facts are concerned.
Fred thinks 1+1=7? He came to believe it spontaneously, so we should leave it at that. We might think he’s nuts, but Fred had no choice but to ignore rational thinking and change his belief. Or did he have a choice?
Bob believes the Holocaust never happened. But it’s all okay… the belief came to Bob in a flash, so Bob is exempt from reflection, evidence, logic or challenging his bias. Is he exempt?
By now you get my drift. If you knew the difference between belief and knowledge, between fact and opinion, you would seek the truth by casting off your spontaneous and irrational belief in favor of rational analysis. At least Tom, Charlie, and Steve want to obtain beliefs rationally, even if we don’t agree on whether they are succeeding.
Hi Paul,
I get you now. The strawman, the caricature of your position, was in my obviously rhetorical statement.
You quoted me:
Still true.
The logical result of your position.
Not true. My apologies. I would have thought it apparent that I don’t actually think you are, nor is anybody else, actually a brain in a vat. I don’t think there is such a thing.
I don’t even think you think that you are a brain in a vat.
Of course my real take on your position, as offered by you, linked by me, and as subsequently stated, is this:
So, is this a strawman?
And, as I asked in that comment:
You left some questions on the table before to tell me “yes and no” (we can/cannot have knowledge which is not verified and empirically tested) but have not answered the follow-ups nor clarified if the knowledge indicated by “yes” is actually knowledge.
Would you care to do so?
Or is the only strawman and misrepresentation the flourish I committed by implying that, in reality, you are a brain in a vat?
Sorry I didn’t take your statement rhetorically, Charlie. That’s what caused at least some of my caricature complaint.
But for the time being, let’s be very careful and specific and not rhetorical, because I think we still have some very tricky issues to work through. Forgive me if I start the ball rolling by looking carefully at what you’ve already said.
I take issue with the word “all.” I can apprehend reality enough to function day to day (the pilings are driven down into the swamp deeply enough), if not to provide absolute, rigorous philosophical proof of reality.
Correct.
What’s the context for this one? What does it mean?
Do you mean in ultimate terms, or in everyday terms?
Guilty as charged. I will follow logic and evidence wherever they lead, as best I can.
The point is, if you don’t know you aren’t a brain in a vat you don’t know if you have any apprehension of reality.See DL’s comment above. The brain in the vat thing is actually meaningless, because there’s no way we could ever tell if we were or if we weren’t.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for trying to work through this.
I accept your claim to have believed that I thought you were a brain in a vat.
Your last sentence undercuts all of the attempts you make in the first half of your post, your distinctions between “everyday” and “ultimate” so I will (mostly) ignore the first half and jump to the end.
It is not meaningless. If you do not know that you are not a brian in a vat then you don’t know if your experiences are of reality. If you are a brain in a vat you are not describing reality at all when you talk of observations, evidences and even logic. If you don’t know that you are not such a brain you don’t know if anything you say about reality is true – you don’t know anything.
You don’t know anything about functioning day to day if you are a brain in a vat and this claim, in fact, is what would be meaningless.
The same holds true with regard to your position on the LNC.
More double-jointed back-patting, but logic and evidence have destroyed the very basis for your position. And this is the position you want to convince others to accept.
DL says belief must be justified before it can become knowledge. He also says we can’t be our own judge and jury in these matters.
Paul, how would you respond to DL here – what is the justification for your belief that you are not a brain in a vat?
I accept with Plantinga that knowledge is justified true belief.
I agree with him as well that direct experience can be such a justification.
Steve,
That’s not what I said. What I said was that we ought to be more like impartial jurors in our own thinking.
Suppose a jury listens to a witness’s testimony while the witness is connected to a lie detector. The lie detector can tell when the witness is outright lying, but cannot detect cases where the witness is lying to himself or misremembering. Even give this setup, the jury will no believe everything the witness says, right?
Even if the witness remembers experiencing a thing, and the jury knows the witness remembers that experience, the jury may still not believe the witness. There will be cases in which the claim of the witness is so preposterous or in which the claim is in conflict with so many facts that it is more likely the witness has made an error than that his claim is true.
Consequently, if I believe that an impartial jury with a lie detector would not believe my experience were true, then I ought not believe it either! To do otherwise is to pretend that I’m not human, that bias (or gravity, for that matter) doesn’t apply to me.
Christians here will complain that this prevents us from accepting miracles that we ourselves witness. Well, gee, that’s too bad, but that’s what being rational requires of us. If God really wanted to communicate with us rational folk, he needs to act with regularity and without being so capricious.
Charlie, I mean that, if you assume with me for the sake of argument that it is impossible to tell if we are brains in vats, it therefore becomes meaningless because *everything* would be exactly the same whether we are or are not. If everything wasn’t exactly the same, we could tell the difference, and it wouldn’t be impossible. But if it is impossible, we can’t tell the difference, so it’s meaningless.
Admittedly, you have to assume that it’s impossible for the sake of argument, but at least that gets our disagreement down to “Is it impossible, or is it possible, to tell the difference if we are brains in vats or not.”
Charlie, I’m saying something pretty similar to what DL said earlier about Scott’s experience:
SteveK said:
As I said above, I believe that I can’t tell for sure whether I am a brain in a vat or not, so I don’t know what to do with your question, but, in general, I agree with what DL is saying in this thread.
Dl said:
DL, I’d say it like this: If God really wanted to communicate with Scott in a reasonable manner, and in a manner that a communication about a serious subject like belief in God reasonably requires, he would have at the very least (but not limited to) *personally* (not through others) had a conversation with Scott. I mean “reasonable” in the regular (human) sense of the word.
Wow. The only way God can be reasonable, as God, is to do things the human way.
I wonder if he knew that?
DL:
Can a man know if *he* murdered his wife, or not, before going to trial? Are you saying the rational thing for him to do is wait to hear what an impartial jury says about his guilt?
Tom, the only way God can be reasonable, as God, is to do things reasonably. We humans understand, generally, what reasonable is (reasonable in the sense of rational), so there’s no reason why we can’t estimate whether some behavior is reasonable or rational.
Your only hope is to say that God is acting irrationally or unreasonably (even if you might ultimately justify God acting so on some other basis), or to somehow claim that if a human did the same behavior, it would not be irrational or unreasonable.
I don’t see any other option.
Hi Paul,
That takes quite the assumption. And yet, it is still not meaningless – it is exactly as meaningful as I have tried to impress upon you. That is, if it is impossible to tell a vat world from a non-vat world and if everything would be exactly the same then, on that view, it is impossible to have knowledge.
Lets take it down a notch and have a look at your logic.
Say you are kept in a sealed and windowless room and have no contact with the outside world but through one person. And this person comes in and regularly regales you with tales from the outside. He tells you about the amazing glass dome over the city, the talking cows, the rock-chewing mutants and the poisonous air which would kill you were you ever to leave. There is no way to tell the world you know is out there from the world you don’t know is out there – you apprehend reality just fine to function just fine on a “day to day” basis. From your perspective nothing would be different about your life if he were telling the truth or not but you have no apprehension of any reality out there. Everything you know about it is wrong.
So the question is not meaningless. If you can’t know that you are not such a person in such a room then you know nothing about the outside world. Even if your beliefs accidentally match the facts of the outside world, the very fact that you don’t know if your facts do so negates your claim to any knowledge.
That aside, there is no reason to accept that one can’t tell they are not in a vat world. I happen to know I’m not. You don’t know this about yourself so you don’t know anything about the world. You might as well be the brain in the vat, given your epistemological stance.
This logical positivistic hangover talk of meaningless will not help your case and is doing nothing to expose my so-called strawman – nor answer the questions.
So we continue with you telling us what logic and reasonableness and evidence demand when you can’t apprehend any of them – by your claims, not mine.
Steve,
Hmm. Did you read what I wrote?
Recall, the jury which a man should imagine being part of has the same information that he has. Legal juries generally do not have access to all the information, but only to the information the lawyers choose (or are allowed) to present.
Let’s suppose that you wake up one morning, and recall levitating across town under your own power, breaking to a sealed penthouse apartment, melting the a steel safe with your hand, and stealing the diamonds inside. You recall placing the diamonds into the hands of a notorious jewel thief.
Now imagine you are a juror at your own trial. The only evidence presented is your accurate signed confession. Will you find yourself guilty or not guilty? You will find yourself not guilty because the acts you remember are virtually impossible. It’s more likely you had a dream than that the memories are true.
What if you did commit the crime? In that case, there will be bizarre things at the crime scene consistent with your memories, and you will know you are impervious to fire, can fly, etc.
But if the building and jewel safe are in good condition, and only the diamonds are missing, you (the juror) will again find you (the defendant) not guilty.
Meanwhile, Scott is in the position in which the diamonds aren’t even missing.
Charlie, I generally prefer to answer points as directly as I can, but I’m having trouble teasing apart how your last post above approaches this issue, so I’ll have to try another way.
If we are brains in a vat, we still have knowledge that works – we may call it knowledge about reality, but “in reality” (the supra-reality of knowing that we are brains in a vat), it’s really knowledge about how the vat is programmed. If we are not brains in a vat, we have knowledge about reality. In both cases, our knowledge works exactly as well in each case. That’s another reason why I’ve said occasionally that knowledge is only that which works, it’s not Knowledge in some absolute sense. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, things go on, our knowledge works or not, equally in both cases. It’s not at all a question of our knowledge accidentally matching up with how the world works, our vat-knowledge is not accidental, we learn vat-knowledge by testing vat-evidence, vat-conclusions, etc. In each case, we test (vat-)evidence, (vat-)conclusions, etc.
When you say “Everything you know about [the outside] is wrong,” that can make no difference in my life at all. I don’t know it, nor does it have any effect (otherwise, your analogy wouldn’t hold). Sure, if we’re brains in a vat and we don’t know it, we think we’re not brains in a vat (the person who comes into the room tells us falsehoods), and that’s wrong in some not-this-existence-sense, but it still can’t make any difference to the lives we are condemned (?) to lead.
Do you know the expression “a distinction without a difference.” I think it applies here. yes, in some supra-existence mode, we would be brains in a vat, but by definition, we can never have access to, or learn about, that supra- mode, so, for all intents and purposes, it doesn’t exist for us. It’s an existence without a difference. That’s what I mean by saying it’s meaningless. It can make no difference, by definition (by how my scenario and position is laid out).
I don’t think I’ve found quite the right way to frame this, but let’s keep trying.
Hi Paul,
As it does for the guy locked in the room.
If and when you’ve said this you’ve clearly contradicted your position that knowledge is only that which can be empirically tested and verified. Lot’s of knowledge works, like adherence to LNC, which can not be so-verified. You’ve also then come up against your main quote-man, Popper – who did not ascribe to any such utilitarian view of knowledge.
You also said something like this one day and backtracked just as quick as a wink when I pointed out that belief in God “works”, ie. it has a positive statistical correlation with happiness, longevity, emotional stability, rationality, wedded bliss, healthy behaviour, etc.
Yeah, that’s the point I made.
You’ve completely understood the analogy. This much is good.
I’ve said it to you half a dozen times or so. I dig it as well, but I don’t see its application here.
But it does make a difference: it cuts knowledge off at the knees. You have no pilings and you have no swamp. The guy in the room knows nothing about the outside world.
The guy who doesn’t know he’s not the guy in the room doesn’t know anything either, because he doesn’t know if he’s the guy who doesn’t know or not.
That guy is you.
Now, regardless of how you think this will play out and how long you drag it out I’d really like you to admit that I am fairly representing you when I say that by your stance you do not know you are not a brain in a vat, cannot know that you exist, and cannot know that you are a jazz musician.
Whatever nuance you think your position carries you either hold this position or not.
By your continued argument here, and your return to using qualifiers in lieu of explanations, it is apparent that you cannot deny the above.
If you do deny it then please tell us how it is you have such knowledge which is not verified empirically and how you can have knowledge without absolute certainty so that we can apply this new admission to the old threads and to your arguments about what is and is not reasonable for God to do and for one to know about God.
DL,
I did, however I see now that I wasn’t being clear. In my comment I put the man being charged on the witness stand. He is the witness in your example. Can he know, or must he be given the same facts that the impartial jury gets before he can know?
Paul,
But your “knowledge that works” is false at every turn. You believe it’s true, but none of it is true. This isn’t knowledge about how the vat is programmed either because you have no knowledge of a vat or a program – remember?
Everything you claim to know while in the vat is false. Everything you have knowledge of doesn’t exist. You quite literally know nothing.
Maybe this will make it more clear… can Christian’s have knowledge of a God that doesn’t exist? No.
I second that request!
I can’t stand it anymore. Paul could not be more patient or clear about his position. The rebuttals read like some Babylonian blood feud related to angels on pins.
What is so hard about this? If the vat controls what the brain can sense, then the brain’s knowledge is not absolute but it is everyday — it works, and it works well enough that there doesn’t seem to be any benefit to the brain to classifying it as absolute. The vat must be consistent or the brain’s everyday knowledge wouldn’t work. Like God’s existence, the possibility of the vat can’t be disproven. Paul’s position is an interesting philosophical cul de sac, but, but as he points out it really doesn’t have any practical effect, except to deny claims of apprehending absolute knowledge.
There’s an easy way to refute Paul’s position — prove that, contrary to his assertion, you have access to absolute knowledge. I might be wrong, but I think that one’s been considered a logical impossibility for a long, long time.
Steve,
I am talking about an imaginary jury that has access to precisely the same facts as the witness. The imaginary jury has access only to the witness’s complete and sincere testimony and to background knowledge. If an imaginary jury would not believe the witness, then the witness should not believe his own testimony either.
But in the case of a realistic jury, such a jury does not get the complete and sincere testimony from the witness, and the jury also gets other evidence that even the witness may not have.
So, imagine Bob is the witness and defendant. Bob remembers mundane facts about his alibi. In Bob’s head, he imagines a jury who hears and sees his complete and sincere memories. His imaginary jury would believe his story because the likelihood of his memory being so faulty is small compared to the likelihood that his alibi is correct (because his alibi is mundane).
However, a jury of the court, not having access to Bob’s sincere and complete memories, and being presented with other evidence by defense and prosecution may conclude that Bob is guilty.
I hope that explains it better. I am saying that if an imaginary impartial jury would find your sincere and complete memories unbelievable, then so ought you.
One more way of putting it. Isn’t it possible that you could have a memory or an experience so fantastical, that you would doubt the experience was real?
Suppose your answer is yes. In that case, you ought to be able to set some limit on how fantastical something can be before you’ll dismiss the experience as unreliable, a trick of the light, deja vu, crossed memory, etc. This limit can be set by assuming you’re a regular human, and looking at rates of waking dreams, dementia, delusion, error, bias, illusion, etc. in the general population.
(Note: There will always be things that you can know as a a witness that others cannot because they cannot see your memories, but that doesn’t mean that everything you see has to be true or is rational to believe.)
However, if you claim that you have to believe everything you think you see, then you’re saying you’re a very special person. You’re saying you’re immune from the delusion, illusion or human bias that afflicts every other living person.
In most cases, this isn’t a problem. If I see something odd, I can do other tests to confirm my experience. With enough testing, I can convince myself I did experience something real, even if, at first, I ought not believe it. But with one-time miracles, you don’t get that option. Yet you are saying you ought to believe super-fantastical things anyway.
Hi Tony,
I understand and you’ve restated Paul’s position just fine. But I am discussing with him what it means.
That is not correct at all. The brain’s everyday knowledge can be changed everyday by the vat to whatever the vat wants and the consistency can be false memories programmed at any time.
The inconsistencies can be masked any number of ways and the brain’s so-called knowledge can be made to “work” regardless.
The only way it could have no practical effects is if you know it is a false position.
Since Paul won’t answer and you’ve picked up his lingo I’ll ask you – are both absolute knowledge and everyday knowledge actually knowledge?
Can you have knowledge without certainty?
I don’t have to prove him wrong. Maybe you can’t stand my Babylonian blood feud because you don’t know what is going on. I am showing him what the consequence of his being right would be.
I, on the other, do know that I exist, that I live in a universe that is real and is to some degree accessible to my sense and intellect, where science, therefore, is both possble and meaningful, and that I am not a brain in a vat.
I have a justified true belief about the above even though I can’t, or may not, be able to, prove it, even though it is not empirically testable and verifiable, and even though there exists some kind of logical possibility that I might be wrong.
When Paul tries to tell me what reality is and what is reasonable and what his everyday experience tells him he does not only fail to grasp ultimate truth, but he can’t confidently tell me the day to day truth because he doesn’t know he is not a brain in a vat and he doesn’t know what his day to day knowledge is – he doesn’t even know what a day is.
Does the guy in the room have any knowledge, day to day or otherwise, about reality out side of his room?
I don’t see what’s so hard either.
Charlie, what Tony said.
Also, I can’t respond in depth to you post because I’m now unclear about your analogy. Are you saying that the guy in the room is like us in the universe according to my position? Please clarify by pairing up the elements in your analogy with the elements of my position, because I’m not clear at all how that would go.
Please define your context. If you talking about this in ultimate terms, then yes, I believe that we cannot know those things. If you are talking about everyday, living in the world terms, then I believe that we can know those things in a more casual, less ultimate sense.
SteveK, whether I am in a vat or not, when I go to my car, I “know” that when I put the key in the ignition, the car will start (given some assumed pre-conditions) because it works. That’s what “true” ultimately (hah!) means. My car is starting whether the vat has fooled my brain into thinking I’m in a car or whether I’m really in a car. Either way, I can’t tell the difference because, to me, my car starts.
Hi Paul,
Yeah, Tony repeated what you’ve said. I am rebutting what the both of you have said.
You got it just fine before. Yes, the guy in the room is the brain in the vat. If you want more clarity please be specific.
More of your objective/subjective word play, I see.
You tell me – is knowledge knowledge? Is more casual, less ultimate knowledge actually knowledge? Or is it not knowledge? Can we know, in one sense or the other, things about the world outside our own minds without empirical tests and verification or not?
You said before that we can’t. Can we, or can’t we?
Charlie, this is not the brain in the vat thought experiment that I was working with. In the version of it that I mean, the vat reproduces for the brain *exactly* everything about reality if reality really was reality. Only, in some “super-real” sense, there’s not a person going through reality, it’s just a brain in a vat. That’s the scenario in which I say that it is impossible to tell whether we are a brain in that vat or not. It is also, I think, the classic, standard formulation of the thought experiment.
Yesterday maybe the car blew up when you turned your key. And tomorrow maybe you’ll start it with a rubber chicken, just like your memory tells you always works. Or maybe it won’t start and you’ll have to take it to a mechanic and he will send you on your way with a nice $1000 receipt, Mr. Truman.
Hi Paul,
Well beg the question why don’t you?
Sure, if it tells you exactly what reality is then your apprehensions of reality are exactly of reality. Then the guy in the room knows everything about the outside world because his informer is absolutely honest, unbiased and thorough.
But you can’t stipulate what the vat tells you if you don;t know you aren’t a brain in a vat.
I don’t there is any such requirement and I don’t see how it is possible to impose it. If you are a brain in a vat reality is exactly what reality would be if reality existed to you because that is what the experiment provides you.
Charlie,
Your objections ignore the durability of Paul’s philosophical position; you are treating Paul’s argument as if it obviously fallacious when it has proved (annoyingly to many) to be an obstacle that no philosopher has yet demolished.
I can appreciate the fact that you don’t like or don’t “get” Paul’s point. But the argument is a valid one, and there are lots of discussions of it online.
At this point all I can offer is that you try one more time to consider the argument in the spirit of a thought experiment. Also, along the lines of the argumentum ad ignorantium, please don’t consider the BIV argument as being some sort of prooft that we are brains in a vat (I don’t think Paul or anyone else prefers this version of a potential reality), but an interesting caution that we can’t rule it out. At least that’s all that appears to be to me.
Dismissive tone noted.
Your questions about what I think knowledge is conflate issues that are crucial to my position. I’ve already given to you the answers anyway at 12:09 pm, 8 December, 2008 р.
For empirical questions, such as how many apples are in the bag, or whether there is a God or not, we need verification and testing. For logical statements, as 1+1=2 and A=A, such statements are based on assumptions, so it depends on whether your definition of knowledge would include conclusions based on assumptions (maybe postulate is a better word than assumption?).
Hi Tony,
You misappreciate.
I do get Paul’s point and I can fade into skeptical solipsism just as easily.
You don’t get that I am not trying to demolish anything but expose its consequences. Especially to someone who thinks he is rationally and logically apprehending reality such that he can tell others what their experiences most probably are.
I know the thought experiment. I am the only one playing it out.
As I clarified to Paul – I do not think he is a brain in a vat. I do not think he thinks he is a brain in a vat. I don’t think anyone honestly thinks they are a brian in a vat. I don’t think we can prove, or that anyone wants to prove that we are brains in vats. I don’t care to prove I am not a brain in a vat.
But I know I’m not nonetheless. And, knowing this, I can know other things.
The person who does not know this cannot.
Hi Paul,
Yet another notation noted.
Paul, I am asking for YOUR definition of knowledge.
You said on the other thread that your definition of knowledge necessarily included testability and verification.
Does it still?
I think not, because I tweaked out of you that we can have knowledge as above (based upon axioms, postulates and other unprovens (which you said were not, themselves, known)). But you balked at committing to this when I tried to get you to admit that this special knowledge, this different knowledge, was actually knowledge.
You are still doing it. You are refusing to say whether this “everyday” knowledge is actually knowledge – do you know these everyday things, these things about which you cannot be certain, and which rely upon your unknown ultimate conditions or not? Is it knowledge?
Yes, I remember. And I asked you what you meant, as I have above, and above, and on previous threads, and which obfuscation I am accused of being “dismissive” for pointing out.
Is your everyday, casual knowledge actually knowledge, even though it has not ultimate foundation?
Who says that the question of God’s existence is necessarily an empirical one? Once again you beg the question and determine what kinds of things can be determined in what kinds of ways.With one fell swoop you hope to wipe the question off the table as you tried with your eleventh hour patch on the brain in the vat question. But you yourself make many claims of logic and reason against God’s existence and, contrarily, many brilliant philosophers and theologians have shown, and you’ve been made privy to the arguments, why God is a logical and philosophical necessity. This means that the question is not merely one of empirics.
Charlie, you keep wanting me to ignore the distinction that I think is crucial to the whole question, the distinction between ultimate knowledge and knowledge-that-is-good-enough-to-work.
So why do you insist I ignore the distinction crucial to my point? You need to understand that position *requires* this distinction.
Paul, you wrote,
Suppose a person wanted to communicate through some method that had no obvious connection to logic or reason. Would that be possible?
By the way, how did your concert go the other night?
Is it a distinction or a difference, Paul?
Does your distinction mean one is known and the other not?
Or not?
Charlie,
You wrote:
Okay, but do you get that you’re assuming a line of argument called the fallacy of final consequences?
Then you take on the responsibility of proving this argument — that you are not a brain in a vat.
Hi Tony,
Exposing the final consequence of the argument is not an appeal to that consequence. It is a demonstration of why Paul has constructed an epistemology from which he has no right to tell others what logic, reason, and reality entail.
As to the fallacy, if the final consequence is false then appealing to it is not a fallacy.
But, again, I am not appealing to it to demonstrate that we are not brains in vats – I already know I am not.
I don’t have to prove this and I don’t have to make the argument because not all knowledge needs to be proven or argued for – that’s the point (although I do have an argument for it, it just isn’t necessary. I think it is Craig who says there is a difference between knowing it and showing it).
You guys don’t know you aren’t brains in vats – fine. You also, then, do not know anything about ultimate reality , or even day to day reality.
Tony and Paul,
Paul’s distinction between everyday and ultimate knowledge says to me that Christians can rationally *know* that God exists in the everyday sense, just not the ultimate sense. We know God exists because that knowledge “works”, just as Paul knows he’s not a brain in a vat because it “works”. The justification for both our belief is “it works”.
Would you agree? If not, why not?
Unbelievable! Yes, SteveK, I agree! (emphasis on the word “can” in “Christian can rationally . . .”
I have an issue with what we mean when we say something “works,” but let’s save that for later.
Charlie, how do you know that you are not a brain in a vat? I didn’t use the word “prove,” by the way, if that makes a difference.
Charlie, are you going in the following direction? “Some things are immediately obvious, like Descartes’ cogito. There is no conceivable way that the cogito isn’t true, therefore it is absolutely true. Similarly, there is no conceivable way that I am a brain in a vat, therefore, I am not a brain in a vat.”
I don’t want to put words in your mouth, I’m not trying to, I’m trying to see if I’ve got your position correctly.
Paul,
I hope I’m not putting words in your mouth, but why then do you say Scott is being irrational and that Christianity in general is irrational? I think DL would not agree with what I said – maybe Tony too – but you do. Puzzling.
Tom wrote:
Possible, obviously. Preferable? Reasonable? For one of, if not the, most important issue in the entire universe for humans? Not likely.
About as planned, which is to say it was a success. A good time was was had by all.
SteveK, I meant that it was *possible* for Christians to know, in principle, that God exists in a non-absolute sense. Whether it is *legitimate,* or *correct* for that is another question.
Charlie, when you say
you should mean “Paul has constructed an epistemology from which he has no right to tell others what logic, reason, and reality entail in ultimate terms, but certainly so in everyday terms.”
It will do no good to continually misrepresent my position by not distinguishing between the ultimate and the everday.
Paul,
With respect to everyday knowledge you now bring up something new – possibly know versus do know. Previously you agreed that you have everyday rational knowledge that you’re not a brain in a vat *because* that knowledge “works”. Are you saying you possibly know this, or that you do know this? Why?
I want to clarify that you agree with my earlier statement that the entire justification for your belief is “it works”.
Hi Paul,
Some things are immediately obvious. Descarte’s cogito is not one of them – it is a logical demonstration.
My not being a brian in a vat is both immediately obvious and logically necessary.
I laid out the rationale once before.
There are several lines of thought which justify my true belief – by which I can show what I know about my non-envattedness – none of which interested you very much last time around.
However, because knowledge does not rely upon methodism for its justification and we can know – and know we know – without knowing how we know, I believe I will leave it at that for now.
If you are interested later I can resurrect my demonstrations.
Neither relies upon conceivability. For one, I am not a brain in a vat because a brain in a vat cannot truthfully say “I am a brain in a vat”.
I should not mean that. If you can’t affirm your own existence or non-vattiness you have no access to knowledge about the day-to-day, either.
You cannot defend this charge of so-called misrepresentation and, until you do, honesty would require you quit making it.
Just because you throw the qualifiers around doesn’t mean that they are significant of anything, especially when you can’t take even the tiniest of baby steps without them.
Paul,
For instance …. Were you a brain in a vat all of your memories would be false. By what right then do you critique anybody’s acceptance of their own experience as being suspect because of possible false memories? As you don’t know that you have a single real memory
there is no justification for claiming one to be false.
Likewise, all of your perceptions are of things which do not exist if you are a brain in a vat. And if you don’t know that you aren’t then you are in no position to rule on the probability of another person’s accuracy in perceiving events. In a vat, all perceptions are equally false and equally probable or improbable.
Without the knowledge of so-called ultimate things you have no knowledge of everyday things. I said what I should have and your distinctions provide no useful differences.
I wrote to Paul earlier, and he answered,
Now, Paul, was there anything communicated through the music you played that night? As a musician myself, I have to think there was…
Edit it, then, to say “. . . tell others what vat-logic, vat-reason, and vat-reality entail . . .” I thought that would have to be assumed, in the case that we are brains in vat, but I’m OK to make it explicit, too.
The misrepresentation issue has now boiled down to just the substantive disagreement, so I’m not inclined to duplicate efforts.
I don’t recall your earlier demonstration of why you are not a brain in a vat. Can you bring it up again?
I think you mean “false” beyond the vat. So, if I recall listening to a song, and I’m just a brain in a vat, I didn’t “really” hear the song (that is, I didn’t hear the song as an actual person, and not as a brain in a vat), but my memory of it would be exactly the same as if I had heard the song as a real person (because that’s what the vat does – it exactly duplicates for the brain the experiences of being a real person). The memory would be false in ultimate terms (beyond the vat), but the memory itself would be the same. The vat would have played the song for the brain to produce the exact same memory. So if the memory is the same, there’s no way to tell from the memory whether the memory was produced by the vat or by a real person’s experience. Multiply that for every single experience, memory, perception, thought, etc., and you see that there is no way to tell whether any of it (= all of it) is a real person’s memory or the workings of the vat.
So, when I critique other’s memories or experiences, it has to be with the implicit idea that even if we are brains in a vat everything fits together and works and behaves like we’re not brains in vats. If the vat has someone (this imaginary, vat-person) tell me they can leap off a tall building and fly unaided, I can correctly predict they will meet the vat-pavement quickly and vat-die, just as if it was real life and not vat-life, because, by definition of how the vat thought experiment is constructed, the vat reproduces everything, including how other people behave, the law of physics, etc. for the brain exactly like real life would be.
So the same laws of evidence, logic, etc., that I hold as a real person (some of which you disagree with) also, by definition of the thought experiment, hold if I am a brain in a vat.
This is going to be an easy one, Tom, and I have a vague sense of where you’re going, too. So, my answer is that it is hard to tell because music has no semantic meaning which allows for reference to something external to itself (yikes, shades of objectivity and subjectivity!), so everyone can make it mean what they want it to mean (or feel might be a better word than mean).
But are you going to work a discussion about what music means or feels like back around to the unreasonableness of God not having a conversation?
By the way, do you know Carol Pratt’s great line, “Music sounds the way emotions feel.”
Charlie,
I would be interested in reading the argument that proves we cannot be brains in a vat. Is there a link to a post on this blog, or a version of the argument online that you can reference me to?
Hi Paul,
You sure would like to be my speech-writer, wouldn’t you?
No, I mean false. In the vat everything is artificial so there is no truth or falsity.
You don’t know this. If you recall listening to a song you are wrong because you didn’t listen to a song. You can’t have any idea nor stipulate whether or not the memory is exactly like that of one who listened to a song – there is no reference. The vat does not exactly duplicate the experiences, it exactly implants your experiences and you believe you are having them. In fact, there is no way, not knowing you are not in a vat, that you can know whether or not your “memories” have been implanted this past second.
Maybe it did and maybe it didn’t. Maybe it told you have a memory of a song but that song was never played.
Exactly!!
Please listen to your own words.
You bemoan the possibility of a capricious God and you have given yourself over to having nothing but false memories and false memories of false memories. Not one thing is perceived and every false memory of a perception has been manipulated.
And from here you claim that you are personally demanded to follow logic, reason and evidence.
No, by definition of the thought experiment you have no access to what a real person would experience in terms of evidence, logic, etc., so you do not know if these are the same. You do not know what evidence and logic are because they can be altered at any time with you being none the wiser in the vat, and Rekall can come in and erase every anomaly as required.
Not only have you no access to reality you have no reason to suspect you have access to the very order that reason, logic and evidence require.
Hi Tony,
Me too. I don’t claim one exists.
I don’t know of one and I’m not really interested in adding another layer to the arguments here (the validity of arguments against the BIV hypothesis).
My point has been to accept the very point of the BIV hypothesis and then to apply it:
1. If you know that P, then you know that you are not a brain in a vat.
2. You do not know that you are not a brain in a vat. So,
3. You do not know that P.
As you can see, Paul confirms 2 and, therefore, confirms 3. Paul does not know anything.
I do.
ps.
That formulation is from the Stanford page which discusses Putnam’s semantic argument against the vat. This is similar to what I had provided Paul with previously.
I found this version this time by Googling “philosophy argument against brain in vat”, if you are interested.
http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/brain-vat/
OK, Charlie, I think I may have a way for us to begin to see eye to eye.
My position does not *necessarily* allow for unqualified, pure, and actual knowledge; that is, knowledge, period. In my scenario, we could be brains in vats, and so we would only have vat-knowledge (but see below). I would agree with you on that. If we were not brains in vats (which my position allows), then we’d have actual knowledge. By vat knowledge, I mean we are able to predict how the vat will fools us (even though we don’t know we are being fooled and that the vat is doing the fooling, see below also.
The crucial point isn’t whether we, in the vat, know if these are the same, but, by definition of the thought experiment, they *are* the same; that is, when a real person puts his hand in a flame, he experiences pain and his skin burns; when I, as a brain in a vat, get sent signals from the vat that fool me into thinking that I have put my hand in a flame, the vat also fools me into thinking that my hand is burned and makes me feel pain. My experience, as qualia, of the real pain and the vat-pain, as a purely internal, mental experience, is exactly the same under the definition that I understand of the thought experiment.
Paul,
I’d appreciate a response to my comment here when you have the chance.
SteveK, I’m sorry that I missed replying to you. You wrote:
I hope I didn’t say that I know I’m not a brain in a vat because I have everyday rational knowledge that works. Perhaps what I really meant by the sentence that you took to mean that was that, if I am I brain in a vat, I would still have vat-knowledge that works within my vat-universe.
Hey Charlie,
I’m sorry that this side issue is distracting us. I think Paul’s impulse – that the distinction he was making is practically meaningless – is the right course to follow. This post has promise, and I hate to see it sidetracked over old disputes.
I read the link you referred to on the Stanford site yesterday (among others) – I was curious if there were other, better sources, hence my question. It will still take a few more readings, and another couple of days to sink in, but I think it’s fair to say at this point that the argument is interesting but it doesn’t demolish the BIV argument. More than the part of the argument based on non-contradiction (which read to me like a word game), I am more vulnerable to the arguments based on metaphysical realism. In short, despite your disclaimer that no such argument exists, I think that a fuller version of that line of argument bears promise to destroying the BIV argument. Like I said, though, I want more time to digest it and read some more criticism.
I do want to point out, however, that I think until the BIV argument is demolished you are checked by the same problems as Paul; until you disprove it, the BIV isn’t just Paul’s problem – we’re all constrained by logic.
You wrote:
As I said above, logic doesn’t discriminate; what holds for reality about Paul holds for you as well. Either you and Paul don’t know anything together (because either the BIV is a fallacy for both of you), or you and Paul know something together (likewise).
Originally you wrote:
Upon reading that, I said that I would love to read the argument proving that we could not be B’sIV (btw, I really did enjoy reading the article, and some criticisms as well), you wrote:
Well, I did notice in your cited quote above that you claimed it exists (and I now think it might). But maybe more importantly I’d like to remark that if it does, it applies equally to all of us.
Hi Tony,
Thanks for a very reasonable comment.
It might exist – I just don’t claim it.
Yes, I was sloppy there. I expected that one ought to know I didn’t mean that I had in my possession a logical proof since that sentence was preceded and followed by:
As alluded to above, one of those lines of thought is the semantic one, as well as the argument from reasons as causing thoughts. I don’t declare these to be proofs. I declare them, although not necessary, as justifications of my true belief. Another justification is my knowledge of God and His Word.
I agree that logic and reality apply to both Paul and myself and even, perhaps, to brian in a vat.
What I don’t agree with is that I need to defeat the BIV, nor that the BIV needs be defeated, in order to have knowledge. Sheer logical possibility does not defeat knowledge and does not take me outside of reality. It does Paul.
It’s logically possible that gravity might fail any minute now and I will be flung into space – but I know this will not happen.
Knowledge and the ability to reason are defeater enough against the vat’s sheer possibility.
Logic doesn’t demand that we are brains in vats and neither does it make it irrational not to accept that we are brains in vats, or even that we might be.
In fact, here’s one of my own arguments: the very fact that the vat makes reason and logic null and void makes acceptance of the vat a non-rational if not irrational position. Since we cannot know and cannot reason if the vat is real, and we can know and reason, axiomatically, the vat must not be real. This is not, by the way, an appeal to consequences, but more a reverse syllogism. Once we put ourselves outside of reason we can’t reason our way back in, and, likewise, once we put ourselves in a vat we can’t reason our way back out.
The real question remains, whether I accept your limits or not – is everyday knowledge, which is not ultimate knowledge, actually knowledge? Because you and Paul do not know that you are not brains in vats do you accept, as the formulation demands, that you can not know anything?
—
Paul,
As I said to Tony I will continue to ask you …
Is everyday knowledge knowledge?
Since I know I am not a brain in a vat I say I can know things. Since you can’t know you are not a brain in a vat do you admit you cannot know things?
You suggest that we might see eye to eye and then offer this:
Too may qualifiers for me, sorry.
A better question is this: do you agree that your position allow for *no* actual knowledge? I say it does. I say it demands it, but what is your response?
With the potential of false memories this is a condition you cannot impose. You have no way to stipulate that you can predict how you are being fooled as that fooling can change every minute and you would have no idea.
This doesn’t work either, since you can’t know if you are a brain in a vat you don’t know if you have vat knowledge (non-knowledge) or real knowledge. Since you can’t know this you can’t know what you say you know. That is the first conclusion of the problem.
Only if you are not a brain in a vat, and only if you know you aren’t a brain in a vat, can you have knowledge.
Your understanding of the experiment is off and the exact sameness of the experience is irrelevant. With no reference it is, as you say, meaningless whether or not the mental experience is exactly the same. The mental experience in the vat is just as it is outside the vat in that it is all you have, regardless of what it is and how the two may or may not match.
But since you’ve now chosen how you are going to dig in to deny the inevitable let’s provide the very easy fix to it.
There is a logical possibility that we are brains in vats experiencing stimuli which seem to us exactly like what we would experience if we were not brains in vats. We would have no way of knowing we were brains in vats. For all we know, and for all we can possibly know by any formulation of the BIV, these experiences are exactly the same as if we were real people. But, of course, there is no possible way to determine this with no reference – which is necessarily beyond our reach – so it is also logically possible that these stimuli are not exactly what a non-vat person would experience. Your everyday vat experience still works, you can still think you are making a fulfilling predictions and you still have no idea and no way of knowing you are not a brain in a vat – either kind of vat.
Now, tell me this:
Since you cannot test this empirically, nor verify it experimentally, can you know you are not a brain in this not-exactly-the-same -qualia- vat? (of course, it’s the same vat as in the formulation you would like to claim you’ve been discussing, as there is no way to differentiate).
If you can know you are not a brain in this vat please tell me how.
If you can’t know then let us drop the distinction without a difference between the two vats and face the consequences.
Hey Tony,
I just reread your comment and forgot to make my point on this:
This is only true to a certain extent.
If we actually are (we’re not) brains in vats, then neither Paul nor I know anything.
On the other hand, it is still true that I can have knowledge and Paul cannot. This is the case because we are not brains in vats and I know it. There does not need to be a proof against BIV and it need not be proven false to be false or for me to know it’s false – and I do.
Paul does not know this.
Therefore, Paul does not know if he knows anything, therefore, he doesn’t.
Charlie,
You don’t know that you have knowledge and reason. You assume you do. There’s a huge difference.
If you assume you can reason and that you live in a world that is reasonable, then you are implicitly assuming you’re not a BIV because that would contradict your assumption. (Actually, I think a subset of BIV’s are compatible with rational assumptions, but let’s ignore those for now.)
Maybe you can tell us precisely what assumptions you are making. My guess is that they are
1) You can think logically about a somewhat logical world, i.e., the LNC is productive.
2) Your experiences are true experiences, even if you can sometimes be mistaken in your model of what is causing those experiences.
3) Past thoughts and experience are a guides to future thoughts and experience.
No one can know these things are true, but every rational person assumes them to be true.
If I understand Paul, he is saying that he assumes he is not a BIV so that his reason and logic work. Why is that so different from your position?
You are arguing that there are certain things we just know. I am saying that is imprecise. We don’t just know our foundations, we assume our foundations. Proper knowledge requires justification. All knowledge is conditional on certain axioms or foundations.
When you say you know God exists at a basic level, you are being imprecise. You are actually assuming God exists at a basic level as a matter of blind faith in the same way we take it on blind faith that logic is a good thing to apply.
If there was significant evidence for God’s existence, you could dispense with the assumption God exists, and instead infer his existence from the assumptions of rational thinking. But since that evidence does not exist, you rely on the pure assumption that God exists.
Hi DL,
That’s what Paul is saying as well. You guys are mistaken – you don’t know this to be true. Philosophy does not tell us what we can and can not know. It merely tries to formulate an umbrella covering for what we know we know. It has yet to find a way to include all knowledge and exclude all non-knowledge.
Paul tried this last time out – calling it an assumption does not remove it from the realm of knowledge.
Do you know this? Why do you assume my assumptions are not justified?
Let us agree with the foundation aspect. If the axiom is not true and known to be true then the knowledge upon which it is built is not knowledge. Fine by me. Join Paul where you can know nothing and admit as much – but then perhaps you can withdraw your truth claims. I say that knowledge of the axioms and foundations is justified. My position is highly rational and allows me, over and against Paul and other methodists, verificationists, etc., to actually know things. It puts me in much better stead than those of you who tell us we can’t know and act like this is something you know.
We don’t take it on blind faith that logic is a good thing to apply. I went through a long demonstration of the LNC with Paul as to why my true belief in it is justified.
No I don’t. But I never get enough of your question-begging and your telling me how I think and reason. Welcome back from your self-imposed exile.
DL
This seems to be one of the major sticking points and I agree with what Charlie said. The justification for the belief that the axioms are true is that our rational sense* tells us they are true.
Where you and Paul veer off into the ditch is when you start narrowing the definition of “justification” to some sort of external methodology. You didn’t rely on this methodology for the foundation of ALL your knowledge (you can’t) – all it took was your rational sense – but for some reason that isn’t good enough when it comes to knowing God. You say you’ve got to justify that belief with some external methodology.
Logical positivism is your external methodology of choice, but what is the justification for the belief that that methodology, and that ALONE, is the only means to know God? You’re hamstrung by your own requirements. You’re in a self-made prison and the only way to get out is to jettison your requirement for an external methodology.
* Edited to add… I think some argue that it’s not our rational sense that tells us the axioms are true, rather that it’s a non-rational sense that we somehow have. A sixth sense if you will. Regardless, nobody that I can think of says it’s irrational.
SteveK,
Assuming that God is axiomatic gets us… where?
Assume existence. Assume logic. All kinds of things can be predicted from there.
I don’t assume (a theistic) God because of Occam’s razor – belief in that God doesn’t explain anything nor predict anything.
You wrote:
Are there other ways to have knowledge of God besides rationally? Either show us how we can know God rationally, or show us an alternative methodology that works. Until then, I reserve the right to remain skeptical.
Hi Tony,
Knowing God gets us to truth. Knowing God gives us access to reality.
Does all knowledge have to be predictive?
Has anybody denied you your right to remain skeptical?
As you are merely skeptical and not convinced have you looked into the explanations that only God provides – like access to reality?
Charlie,
I don’t want to have to ask you how God gets us to truth and gives us access to reality, but that is the (unresolved) problem. There seems to be no other way to confirm a knowledge of God independently.
Regarding my right to remain skeptical, SteveK’s language has said rational requirements are a self-made prison that hamstrings us — this sounds like a threat to my skepticism. It sounds like someone wants to “free me” from it. (Kidding, mostly — “right to remain” was the wrong wording.)
I don’t think that personal belief in God provides any greater access to reality. I can’t think of any examples for that.
Thanks Tony,
1. If God exists and is real then knowledge of Him is reality.
If you are merely skeptical and not convinced then you must admit that this is a possibility (among others, like vat-brains, of course) and so you are aware at least potentially of how knowing God gets us to truth.
2. Denial of God has caused Paul to create an epistemology in which he cannot apprehend reality. I don’t quite know yet where you stand on knowledge and apprehension of reality – are you with Paul, as you’ve implied? Paul said (but seems to have changed his mind without acknowledgment) that all knowledge must be predictive and empirically verified (cutting off huge swaths of knowledge). You have offered a positivist’s rationale in your previous comment so do you cut off other knowledge as well?
3. Knowledge of God allows me to say I can apprehend truth, know I exist, know logical axioms and know I am not a BIV. Unlike the denier of these truths I have accessible to me truth and knowledge.
Charlie,
Suppose you assume that the local supermarket has a good price on peas. So you set off in your car for the supermarket. Does your driving to the supermarket on the assumption that the supermarket has a good price on peas equate to your knowledge that the supermarket has a good price on peas?
According to what you are saying, you know that the supermarket has a good price on peas, simply because you are acting as if you know it.
Because any justification you use will rely on the axioms of rationality, and will, therefore, be circular.
If the axioms (=assumptions) of rational thinking appear necessary to knowledge of any kind. But I cannot rationally conclude from this that the assumptions are true because that would mean using the rational foundations to prove the rational foundations.
On to foundations…
Suppose Bob assumes that his race is superior to all others, and any evidence to the contrary simply reflects the negative influence of other races on his own race. Suppose this idea just seems natural to Bob in the sense that this belief naturally pops into Bob’s head. Bob assumes it is true, and acts as if it is true. Does that mean that Bob knows his race is superior?
Suppose it naturally occurs to me (and, consequently, I believe) that Def Leppard is the greatest band ever. This is a belief that isn’t rationally justified, and probably cannot be rationally justified. However, I act as if Def Leppard is the greatest band ever. Suppose that I want to make this a foundational assumption. Do I then know that Def Leppard is the greatest band ever? If so, is there anything wrong with me importing a million other naturally-occurring, unjustifiable beliefs as foundational assumptions (as long as no two beliefs contradict each other)?
Steve,
By definition, a rational person is a person who assumes the rational axioms. The issue at stake here is whether anyone can justify the assumption of the rational axioms. Obviously, they cannot rationally do so without circularity. They can only assume the axioms are correct.
But God is different. What will happen if you don’t assume God exists? Nothing. Evidently, the world looks the same.
The assumption of God’s existence is comparable to the assumption that I ought to have as much pleasure as possible. Nothing can possibly disprove my moral claim, and the assumption that I ought to be a hedonist has all sorts of implications.
So if you are allowed to take God as a foundational assumption, why can’t I take hedonism as a foundational assumption? If hedonism feels right to me, does that mean I know it to be true? Does its feeling right convert it from assumption to knowledge?
I won’t be responding for a while, life is intervening.
DL
Not true. They only look the same because you rationalized a way so that they look the same. Specifically, you purposely veered into the ditch and erected a methodology for knowing, and that self-imposed method forced you to this conclusion.
To me things look quite different with God, namely morality has a grounding source that goes beyond my option or the world’s opinion. Torturing babies for fun is immoral even if every worldly opinion says it isn’t. I think most rational people would agree that that is true, don’t you think?
That rationale is, to use your language, the equivalent of me driving to the store to confirm that peas are on sale. This is not a feeling as I see you are purposely calling it now in order to dismiss it. I know the difference between a feeling and a non-feeling because I can know I’m in love. Knowing is separate from the feeling of love I experience.
Try assuming you are a BIV and grapple with the same question: What will happen if I don’t assume I exist as a non-BIV? Nothing. Evidently, the world looks the same. Nothing can possibly disprove your assumption except a self-imposed methodology that forces you into the ditch.
Tony,
I don’t think it does either for the simple reason that reality doesn’t depend on my beliefs. My beliefs are either in agreement with reality, or not. If you let reality come to you and impress itself upon your physical senses and your mind you will get an accurate picture of the truth of reality. It’s only when you self-impose some method for knowing reality that you get into trouble and rationalize your way toward untruth.
Charlie asked, does all knowledge have to be predictive? I don’t see that it must. It must only if you require it must and my experience has been that it doesn’t.
I will add, does reality have to be experienced obectively by everyone and everything? I know of no such requirement that came out of the Big Bang Event that says reality can’t be experienced subjectively and yet remain real. DL’s self-imposed methodology rules this possibility out because it isn’t predictive, but his experience tells him otherwise.
Steve,
It doesn’t look different in any sensory way. It only has different consequences for what you ought to do. But that’s not the same thing.
The only reason you think torturing babies is wrong is because it feels wrong. But if morality is relative, you could still feel this way.
You keep complaining about prediction, but this is precisely what prediction is for. If I believe X, and X predicts Y more than Z, then I am saying that the world would look different if X is true. Specifically, I am saying that the world would look more like Y than Z if X is true.
But morality is not predictive, as you already admit. It doesn’t matter if one person or a majority of persons think X is morally correct. It doesn’t matter if persons are punished by an authority for committing acts of X. It doesn’t matter what the predicted consequences are of X. None of these things have any bearing on whether X is true.
“Lack of prediction” = “world would not look any different”
Note one distinction. Your belief in X will have a prediction. If Bob believes that torturing babies is a good moral imperative, that predicts Bob will torture babies. However, the consequences of Bob’s moral belief have no bearing on whether his moral belief is true.
So, in light of this, tell me why the world would look different if morality is grounded absolutely when that grounding predicts nothing I will ever experience?
It is nothing like it. Your belief that the supermarket has a low price on peas makes a prediction.
Explain, please. If you are in love, what does that predict?
Steve,
Huh? Equivocation. The word “objective” in the first sentence means something different than the opposite of the word “subjective” in the second sentence.
Steve,
Does the BIV assumption contradict the rules of rationality? If so, then I am already assuming non-BIV by assuming the rules of rationality.
On the other hand, if I assume that I live in a Matrix world (which is a kind of predictable BIV), then nothing changes relative to non-BIV, and there are no predictions.
Thus, you are making my point for me. Why assume something that makes no predictions, even if there are no contradictions? Sure, I could assume I live in a Matrix world, and my belief in the Matrix world might have consequences for me. But the Matrix world theory itself has no predictable consequences.
Your belief in God is like a belief you are living in a Matrix world. Your believing it has predictable consequences for you, but the theory you are believing does not. You have no more justification for taking God’s existence as a foundational assumption than I have for taking Matrix world as a foundational assumption.
SteveK,
You wrote:
This sounds like the Theory of the Blank Slate. It is one of the most discredited theories in psychology – I don’t know of anyone, except for a few crazy Marxists and radical professors, who thinks that it is actually true.
I have to ask how your experience could show you that knowledge isn’t derived from an epistemological cycle. (I could agree in a priori knowledge and axioms, but experience showing that knowledge isn’t derived epistemologically?
Doctor Logic already beat me to your last paragraph. I concur with him there.
Hi DL,
I don’t see the connection. According to what I am saying here I not only have the awareness but can also justify the object of that awareness, if so required.
1. Your answer missed the question a little. How do you know that knowledge requires justification?
2. You’ve now said axioms are not known and that relying upon them is circular. I don’t agree. Axioms themselves, while unproven and underived, can be justified as knowledge as well. I justified my true belief in Reason to you and in the LNC to Paul, for instance.
As I said, this is fine by me. Just admit then that you can’t know anything whatsoever and quit making truth claims – quit telling us what knowledge is, what rationality entails, what the universe is like, etc.
I’ll not, as I have knowledge.
ps.
Your acceptance of the Matrix does not admit rationality and knowledge anymore than the regular BIV. You may assume that life in the Matrix requires rationality but in contemplation of such a life or acceptance of its possibility you let slip that requirement. As with any other BIV, life in the Matrix is not real, your perceptions are false, your awareness is false, and your rationale is false. There is no knowledge in the Matrix anymore than in BIV and by admitting you might be in the Matrix you wash out rationality.
Then again, have you not already washed it out with your acceptance of axioms that you cannot know?
===
Hey Paul,
Sorry to see you go so soon.
Have a very Merry Christmas.
Charlie,
It’s by definition. Otherwise, there’s no difference between knowledge and assumption, or knowledge and gut intuition. The difference is in justification.
Circularity, big time.
One can know something conditionally upon assumptions.
We’ve been through this before.
1. Suppose all mice are immortal
2. Suppose Mickey is a mouse,
3. Therefore, Mickey is immortal
Do we know (3) is true? We do, and we can justify it. Are mice actually immortal outside the scope of this syllogism? Probably not, and we certainly don’t know it. So how do you square this with the fact that we know (3) follows from (1) and (2)?
How about this. Suppose algebra, x=5, x+y=7. Conclusion: y = 2. Do you know y=2? Yes. Is this conclusion based on assumptions? Yes – the assumptions of the axioms of algebra and the assumption of x=5 and the assumption that x+y=7.
In your response to me, you are denying that any conclusion based on assumptions is knowledge, and that’s false, as I just demonstrated.
You are trying to brush the circularity of your claim under the rug, and it ain’t goin’ under.
As far as I can tell, your logic is like this:
1) Assume the axioms of rationality are false.
2) If the axioms of rationality are false, then something absurd is true.
3) Therefore, the axioms of rationality are true.
But as soon as you assume (1) you can’t get to (2) or (3) because getting through those steps requires rational inferences or deductions which you assumed to be improper in step (1).
Steve’s logic works like this:
1) We all act as if rational axioms are true.
2) We cannot prove they are true.
3) Therefore, we must just know they are true without proof.
which is a non sequitur. You don’t need to know something to act as if it is true.
DL,
So your justification of this claim is that it is so-defined. Then you don’t know it, because, by definition, your knowledge is circular and you aren’t actually stating anything with any content. If you can then know this you can know axioms.
Defend this assertion, please.
This means you don;t know anything. If you don’t know your assumptions are correct then you don’t know that which is based upon them.
You do not know (3) is true because you do not know (1) is true. It is the difference between validity and soundness. Validity does not equate to knowledge. If the statement is not true it is not knowledge – by definition.
No you didn’t. You used specious examples and failed to carry your burden. If you have false premises you have a false conclusion – no knowledge.
If you don’t know your premises aren’t false you don’t know your conclusion isn’t false – no knowledge.
My logic goes like this:
1) We can have knowledge if and only if the LNC is true.
2) We have knowledge.
3) The LNC is true.
1) We can discuss topics if and only if the axioms of logic are true.
2) We can discuss topics.
3) The axioms of logic are true.
These are both valid – justified, by your claim above – and sound. Therefore, my true belief in the LNC is justified, therefore, it is known.
Also, the opposite of the statement “the LNC is true” is self-defeating. Since “the LNC is not true” is defeated the LNC is true.
My knowledge of the LNC is both true and justified.
Want a real non sequitur? Axioms cannot be known.
DL,
Maybe it wasn’t clear, but I meant the entire human experience would look different without God, not just the outward physical appearance – but more on that next.
It’s important to note that both of us beg the question that it would look the same or different UNLESS we were somehow informed of the truth behind the “looks the same” question. It is impossible for you to know the truth behind the question so you definitely are begging the question that everything would look the same without God. Maybe there would be nothing without God. You can’t possibly know the answer one way or the other. However, if God exists as I think he does, then it’s at least possible that I know the truth here (actually not just me could know).
I don’t know, really. Is it suppose to predict something?
Yeah, I might have misused a word there. My point is there’s nothing preventing reality from being experienced individually, which is subjectively. The LNC still holds here BTW.
I don’t know what you mean by ‘contradict the rules of rationality’. You lost me.
Tony
I had to look that up because I wasn’t familiar with it. I don’t believe in this theory at all, Tony. I believe we come ‘preloaded’ with a spiritual nature – the image of God – a soul.
All,
Sorry to say that this time of year work either peters down or picks up and it’s the latter — I haven’t had a chance to catch up yet. I have a couple of comments I could throw in there right now but I’d probably be better off waiting. Anyway, I’m just running slow (er than normal), that’s all.
Charlie,
You wrote:
And if God does not exist then knowledge of him is not reality. So it comes to a question of existence. It looks to me that instead of arguing to prove God’s existence you’re arguing that God’s existence is a necessary premise. But it is a premise without consequence.
An aside: Of course, I admit that God is possible. The extent to which God can be “known” or understood is something that I’ve always had trouble getting my head around – how do we, confined to a natural reality, understand something that is by definition supernatural? And if we come to know a rational part of God, isn’t that the same thing as saying that we come to know a part of reality? How can natural creatures come to know something that is supernatural? Etc.
From what I’ve read here I believe that Paul’s and (DL’s) understanding of how we understand reality to be the same as mine. (I think they’re just ahead of me on most of this, btw – I doubt that I’ve thought a lot of this through as well as they have.) I would say that my view of reality would best be described as logical positivism.
To my reading it appears that Paul (and DL and myself) are constructing a version of reality in which we have used Occam’s razor when it comes to adding God’s existence to our understanding of reality. I don’t think that you or SteveK are demonstrating how adding “all directed by a Theistic God” to rationality adds anything to our understanding.
Let me try and say this another way. You say that because skeptics concede the possibility of the BIV scenario they can know nothing. (I don’t think this is true, as Paul points out with his post swamp analogy, and as we skeptics behave everyday – none of us seem to be hindered by our “knowing nothing” compared to our theistic friends. We don’t jump off buildings, etc.) So, “skeptics know nothing because they don’t know that they’re not a BIV” doesn’t seem true. If it was true, we wouldn’t make it one hour in a world where knowledge of reality is essential to our preservation, for instance.
Regarding the BIV I want to point out again that this dilemma is not a state of mind; it is a logical dilemma. If we (including you) can’t find a way to thoroughly demolish it, you are contained by the same. That is, you can’t just push aside the BIV and claim it doesn’t affect you because it doesn’t affect you. (I’d only say, “Come join us where Absolute Knowledge and everyday knowledge share a difference without a distinction! It’s exactly like the world you now live in!”)
It sounds like you’re saying that “God is involved in reality” [my wording] can be safely assumed like other axioms, but why am I compelled to do this? (I’d prefer not to argue over morality right now because I think it’s another long topic and it won’t close the loop on what you’re saying here. Also, I’ll happily concede that events like the Big Bang support the idea of a Deistic God. But I’m talking about the Theistic God here.) In other words, is there one instance where “God is involved in reality” helps us better understand reality? And I don’t mean give us a feeling or emotion about reality – I mean practically understand it, as in predict and explain.
Last try: how is your addition of the axiom of a theistic god’s existence different than “everything looks blue when I put on blue sunglasses?” This statement is innocuous enough to me, but I think your stance is more combative — it sounds like “you don’t see the world in it’s true reality if you’re not wearing blue sunglasses.” I don’t mean to offend — if the sunglasses references seems like a bad analogy, I think you can go with “completely clear glasses.”
SteveK,
You wrote:
I think that you’re arguing that because we have souls, we can only come to understand reality by acknowledging (your) God’s existence in every aspect of reality. The only problem here is that I still don’t see any evidence that this is true. What part of reality am I missing right now (not an emotion or a feeling) because I am somehow not allowing reality to impress itself upon my physical senses and mind?
Hi Tony,
You guys always want so much from one discussion. It always comes down to the fact that we have to prove that God exists. But that argument is made countless other places and countless other ways.
But you are right – if God doesn’t exist then I am not embracing truth when I believe in His existence. On the other hand, if He doesn’t exist then none of us has knowledge of reality.
God is Truth and all truth is God’s and it is unified and coherent. Without Him, not so much.
By His revelation witness and testimony.
Your view is best described then as having died the death of a thousand qualifications.
Even DL has had to abandon his claim to this view. His problem is that those who killed it didn;t apply the fixes that he would have liked to have seen. Unfortunately, as is the case here, his fixes undermine the case from its inception.
The good WIlliam of Okcham’s principle was that we ought not multiply agencies beyond necessity. He would not advocate slicing away the necessary and parsimony not only doesn;t demand this but can’t allow for it.
I do. (you meant Steve). For one, as demonstrated amply, it allows us to have understanding
But knowledge of our world is NOT necessary to our survival in a BIV. You implicitly admit that we are not BIV when you continually claim this position. But by accepting the possibility of BIV you have already conceded that you don;t know if knowledge is necessary for survival. KNowledge is a game and can be anything the vat says it is – as is survival. This is the entire point of the BIV argument and it is odd that you guys accept the argument but not what it set out to demonstrate. The position lacks coherence.
.
You are still mistaken. The question is about knowledge. In order to maintain skepticism and to demarcate what can and can not be considered knowledge the skeptic says we can’t even know we are not BIV. This undercuts and, as you wish, utterly demolishes all right – but what it demolishes is knowledge.
Luckily, I know (as do you, in all reality) that I am not a BIV. But then you positivists, verificationists, methodists must ask yourselves HOW you KNOW this, given your claimed epistemology. Demolished then is that epistemology, and the skeptic’s stance against knowledge of God.
You don’t know what world we live in so you don’t know what compares to it.
Neither you nor Paul nor DL has answered this without qualification:
Is this so-called everyday knowledge actually KNOWLEDGE? You say it is distinct but not differetn from ultimate knowledge; Paul balked. Do you agree that this ungrounded, unverified knowledge, based upon assumptions which cannot be proven and may be wrong, which you say is not different from the ultimate knowledge which is beyond our access, is KNOWLEDGE? If so, you make my point and demolish the skeptic’s argument against our knowledge and experiences.
Rather, I’d ask you to join me in the Truth and the Light and embrace the knwoledge of the only true Reality.
You aren’t. Only God can compel you. But a better question is “why do avoid the obvious and what compels you to deny God?”
This is very gracious of you (honestly, no sarcasm). I’ve not met a critic yet who can allow that support and evidence for God exist without fearing he has given away the whole store and without fallaciously conflating “support” with “proof”. Kudos to you on this.
But a deistic God who brought the universe into being and ordered it IS a theistic God. He is necessarily omnipotent and omniscient, at least, and personal at that. A God so evidenced must have had a reason for bringing a universe into being and it would behoove us to wonder about that reason. Such a God might even want to share that reason with us through His various revelations.
Then again, you also have the witness of history and the Incarnation, death and Resurrection of Christ which supports the truth of Christianity itself.
Of course!
Why is there someting rather than nothing?
Why does the universe exhibit the fine-tuning it does?
Why is life so grandly accommodated in our solar system and on our planet?
Whence life itself?
Whence the information stored in the DNA and the ordering of life?
Whence the human dilemma?
What is our purpose? What is the purpose of anything?
Why do we have moral inclinations and norms?
Why do most of us experience the numinous?
Why do fMRIs indicate that people having spiritual experiences are going through brain states consistent with encountering objective reality?
Why do NDEs exist?
Pace Einstein, why is the universe logical and intelligible?
Why does our theoretic thinking so often come to be found as a description of a perviously unknown aspect of reality?
Why does consciousness and volition appear to be a fundamental force in the universe?
What is the solution to our problems?
Why do believers live longer, happier, healthier, saner lives than skeptics?
What is the source of our longings and desires beyond this “reality”? Why do we crave love that humans cannot fulfill and utter, full-knowing acceptance that no creature can give us?
Why do we know we are not brains in vats?
I know you think you have answers for many if not most of these, and will deny the existence of some of my premises, but notice this; God is the single, unified and coherent answer to all of them. On positivism you have no answers in many cases, and where you do they are an ad hoc disconnected patchwork. In a UNIverse such as this, that doesn’t seem probable.
C.S. Lewis said he knew Christianity was true in the way that he knew the sun had risen – not because he saw it, but because BY IT he saw everything. You guys keep acting as though we find ourselves in a perfectly rational world that answers its own questions and then along come Christians and tack God on superficially. This is not the case. I have never had a moment in my memory when I was not aware of God and didn’t know He was both out there and here with me. Children are born knowing that order does not come from disorder and that the world and nature exhibits design.
Please, I didn’t just say that makes it right – I am demonstrating that God is not an after-the-fact addition – God is a priori. He elects US. He impresses Himself upon our natures from the beginning.
Man sees God through HIs revelation in nature and always has. It is only by force that he can concoct theories and methods by which to deny God.
One such show of mis-applied force is the epistemology grasped at throughout this discussion.
Paul and DL refuse to look.
Will you look?
I waited too long to edit.
Sorry about the typos.
I also wanted to preface my answer to this question:
The very fact that God is involved in reality justifies our attempts to understand it in the first place. As we discussed against your preconceptions previously, it was the Christian conception of God that birthed and nurtured real science.
You rightly state that the argument about morality will be long and involved. So was our argument about Reason. So is the argument from cosmology and the one from teleology.
To underscore my previous points, all of these arguments are long and involved, from epistemology to ontology, and the best, strongest and most coherent answer is always God.
Further to Tony’s question about how we can know God. Of course, we can not know everything about Him. We are limited and, as everyone has heard said, see through the glass darkly. The day will come when we will see perfectly.
How do we, limited to a natural world, know anything about the supernatural world? Primarily by God’s condescending to interact with us. He loves us so much that He is not willing any of us be lost, and He has done everything necessary to welcome us back into the family. Like the father of the prodigal son He is running to us with arms wide open. He satisfied His own justice, defeated evil forever and reconciled us to Him through the crucifixion and Resurrection of the Son. We have this knowledge handed down to us through history.
And sometimes God allows the supernatural to break through to help us along the way and condition our hearts; for instance, He showed Scott an image of His Son. He answers people’s prayers, He changes their hearts and their lives and He tells them The story of reality.
He has also given us the gift of his revealed Word for those of us who actually seek to know Him. This week I read the books of Esther and Job again, learned more about God and heard His voice (not a literal voice) speaking to me. I heard HIm symbolically telling us, through historical events, about what He had planned from the beginning and how we are redeemed through His Son’s intercession.
Internet access restored…
Charlie,
I said that justification is the difference between intuitive belief and knowledge and between assumption and knowledge. Your response was to say that:
If I assume X in a context, then my knowledge of X in that context is justified by my assumption.
Is this really like your “knowledge” that God exists? If you assume God exists in some context, then your knowledge of God’s existence in that context is justified by your assumption. However, I expect you think that God exists, whether or not you assume he exists. So we’re talking about something different.
Maybe you can answer me more explicitly. Are you saying that knowledge = assumption and knowledge = belief?
Suppose I have an opaque jar containing an unknown number of jelly beans. I guess that there are 12 beans in the jar. Then, I play psychological tricks on myself for a few hours until I come to actually believe that there are 12 beans in the jar. The jar is opened, and there happen to be 12 beans in the jar. Did I know that there were 12 beans in the jar, or did I just believe it? Or is there no difference?
Or do I not know the answer to any counterfactual conditional?
How about this:
If there are 4 beans in the red jar and 6 beans in the blue jar, then there would be 10 beans in both jars combined.
Seems like you’re saying I don’t know this if I don’t know how many beans there are in each jar.
“If and only if X, Y” means “If X then Y, If ~X then ~Y.”
But if ~LNC, then… nothing. You can’t make inferences. So you can’t say If and only if LNC because it’s nonsensical.
Furthermore, where does (2) come from? You assume you have knowledge. You haven’t proven it.
Again, your position is utterly hopeless. You cannot prove the fundamental axioms of logic and rational thinking with a logical proof. As soon as you make the smallest logical step in your proof, you will be assuming the rules of logic are true.
It’s self-defeating according to what? The laws of logic?
Hi DL,
Aside from the variety of other ways your appeal to a definition is circular there is the very obvious – in order to “justify” knowledge you must rely upon knowledge. With your criterion there is no way you will ever escape the same circularity you will charge the theist with.
Of course not. But just because you call an “axiom” (somehting which is known without demonstration or verification) an “assumption” (somethng which is not know) doesn’t mean you’ve ruled it out as knowledge. I can justify my knowledge of axioms but you call this circular – of course, it is no more circular than anything you will rely upon – like saying knowledge is justified true belief.
Seems like you are including the condition you left out earlier and trying to hide it.
What you left out in your precious interation : “IF” there are …
Yes, IF there are such and such, IF x=5, etc.. If and when the premises are true then the conclusion is true. If they are not true then the conclusion is not true, and if they are not known to be true then the conclusion is not known.
In your epistemology all premises are ultimately unknown, therefore, there is no knowledge.
This sophistry will not float. You do not know how many beans there are in total if you don’t know how many beans are in each. This doesn’t mean you don’t know how to do math or that the rules of math become obscured. The rules of mathematics are not dependent upon how many beans are in each jar. How many beans there are in total, of course, is.
If you can’t accept the known truth of the LNC, and you can’t accept this plain and obvious justification then you can’t know anything – including that knowledge requires justification.
Nice try. Yes, it is hopeless given your epistemology – but then under that condition ALL knowledge is hopeless. My point holds and all you’re left is skepticism.
. So you’ve defeated all knowledge by your claims – knowing where you stand we can disregard your claims about how the universe is and what knowledge entails.
Indeed.
Try it without calling it a rule of logic.
A statement can not be both true and false at the same time in the same way.
A statement to the contrary, if true, is also false and is, therefore, self-defeating.
Therefore, the original is affirmed.
Did this include the use of logic? Of course it did. But it didn’t prove “logic”, as “logic” is not a thing to be proven.
On the other hand, the circularity of claiming that you know that knowledge requires justification (known reasons) is even more obvious and less escapable.
Wow. I am just the king of typos.
Ignoring some of the less interesting ones let me correct “precious interation” to “previous iteration” .
Steve,
Sorry, I don’t know what you’re saying here.
I’ll reiterate. If you can’t tell me what your claim predicts (not even hypothetically), then even you won’t recognize evidence for your claim.
Er, yes. It’s supposed to predict something that you will see when you are in love, but that you won’t see when you are not in love. You just got through telling me you would know the difference. Now you’re saying it doesn’t predict any difference.
Charlie,
Every rational person has assumptions they start from. The LNC is one of such assumption. But you do not know the LNC is true beyond your assumption of its truth. You believe it’s true, but that’s not knowledge.
You keep insisting that there’s no such thing as contingent knowledge. Ask anyone in any philosophy department. They’ll explain to you that you are wrong. I can know that IF certain premises are true, certain conclusions WOULD follow. It doesn’t matter whether the premises are actually true. I KNOW that if they were true, the conclusion WOULD follow.
You have some sort of psychological block that prevents you accepting uncertainty. I guess we all do, but there’s no significant uncertainty here. For all practical (rational) purposes, the LNC is true. It’s part of the definition of rational thinking. It doesn’t matter that it is only an assumption and not absolutely justified knowledge. It makes no practical difference to rational thinking.
You keep insisting that if we don’t know the LNC is true (instead of merely assuming it) we cannot distinguish justified from unjustified belief. As I explained above, there are things we can know conditionally. If the LNC (and the other axioms) are assumed true, then we can know all sorts of things by justification.
You haven’t justified it your belief in the LNC because your argument IS circular. You have not even disputed its circularity.
In contrast, you are claiming that my reliance on definitions is circular. Well, it isn’t because I’m not trying to prove my definitions using my definitions. I’m assuming my definitions, not trying to prove them.
I’m defining (and philosophy defines) knowledge as “justified true belief”. It’s a definition. It’s a convention. I’m not using this definition to prove the definition. I’m telling you what the consequences of the assumption are. If knowledge is JTB, then the LNC isn’t knowledge, but assumption.
So you’re saying I do not now know that If there were 6 beans in one jar and IF there were 4 beans in the other, THEN there would be 10 beans in the two jars total? I only know in the case that there are ACTUALLY 6 in one and 4 in the other?
Hmmm. If, hypothetically, you give me $100 and I give you $10, you don’t know (actually) you would, hypothetically, be out $90. Tell you what, let’s actually do the transaction, and then you would finally find out whether you would be out $90.
No, you’re wrong again. I don’t need to know the LNC is true. I just have to assume I am in a context where it is true. Once I make the assumption, I can use the assumption as justification in that context. If I assume the LNC is true, then there is this thing I call “knowledge” contingent upon the assumption of the LNC.
I hereby assume the LNC is true.
The LNC is logic, and yet you say that logic is not a thing to be proven.
A definition doesn’t need to be proven. A definition is assumed by convention. Definitions are not true in and of themselves. They are true by assumption when the definition is made in the context of that assumption.
If you want to say knowledge is something other than JTB, be my guest. For all I know, your definition of knowledge could mean “implicit assumption.” You might have been saying the same thing as me all along! But if so, why are you trying to justify your belief in the LNC? If you don’t think knowledge is defined as “justified true belief”, why bother with justification?
Hi DL,
By your definition your assertion is false – I am justified in my belief.
You keep insisting the wrong thing and ignoring the context. IF you don’t know your premises then you don’t know your resulting conclusion. As I said, a sound argument is not necessarily a valid one. That is the point and knowing things which are not dependent upon the premises has nothing to do with the question. You have established a position whereby you cannot know any premises. Therefore, you cannot know any conclusions derived from these.
Your contingent examples actually rely upon premises you are hiding. IF … WOULD does not depend on the certain premises you refer to, but rather, upon the justification of the laws of logic. About the following, the knowledge that YOU KNOW that the conclusion WOULD follow, actually has the hidden premise that deduction is valid, that the LNC holds, that conclusions follow premises, etc. You do not know this in your epistemology – you know nothing. You are skating on the surface of this with your thinking safely ensconced in jargon but remaining irrelevant to the question at hand.
Forget my psychological block. You say that FAP purposes it is true, it doesn’t matter if its absolutely justified or not , etc. …
Now you are with Tony, saying that there is no difference in the distinction between everyday (practical) knowledge and ultimate (absolutely justified) knowledge.
So, is it knowledge? With more qualifications you say LNC is true and you say that it is true, and you know it is true, without justification.
So … what’s up?
Are you admitting finally that this assumption is known? If so, by what justification?
If not, what are you saying?
Do you now want to claim some kind of knowledge badly enough to throw out the demarcations proffered previously?
Your explanation is pointless. If we can’t know the conditions are true we can’t know the conditional knowledge is true. We cannot know this if the LNC is not known to be true. Don’t tell IF…WOULD again – it is not a solution.
If its circular I’ve defeated the import of the charge because my belief in the LNC is certainly justified. You can’t even make the charge, let alone deny the truth of the LNC, without justifying my knowledge of it.
Actually, rather than demonstrate the circularity of deriving your knowledge from the definition of the word (not the thing) I took a much more direct root – I showed the circularity of your claiming to know that knowledge is justified true belief rests upon the fact that “justified” relies upon “knowledge”.
It’s circular. You avoided the point.
False. LNC is justified. Apparently an assumption can be knowledge.
You know this. IF and THEN are based upon a premise you are hiding – the validity of the laws of addition and of logic.
You are neither funny nor facing the issue. You don’t know there are 10 IF you don’t know THAT there are 6 and 4 and, as to whether or not there ARE 10 it doesn’t matter that you know THAT IF there were 6 and 4 there WOULD be 10.
As for your 90 from 100, IF there’s no 100 and there’s no 10 then you don’t know if there’s 90. IF there really are 100 and 10 then there really is 90. You can know this during the transaction if you know the previous sums exist and you know you aren;t a brain in a vat … but you can’t know that either.
And if it is not true then this thing you call “knowledge” is not “knowledge”. If you don’t know whether or not it is true you don’t know whether or not you have knowledge – therefore, you don’t.
re: context and conditionals:
1If there is a bridge up ahead I know I can cross the river.
2)I don’t know if there is a bridge up ahead.
3) I don’t know I can cross the river.
1) If there’s a real universe outside of my head it is possible that I can have knowledge of it.
2) I don’t know if there is such a universe.
3) I have no knowledge of such a universe.
Assumptions aren’t knowledge so you have no knowledge. You keep moving the IF out of sight.
No it’s not. “Logic” is a study, science or a system … the LNC is one of the rules in this system.
1) You are claiming justification is defeated by circularity.
2) Your claim that you know that knowledge requires justification is circular – therefore, you do not know that knowledge requires justification.
Therefore, you have no position from which to tell anybody what knowledge does or does not require.
I agreed that knowledge is justified true belief. In so doing I demonstrate that some circularity involved in justification is not necessarily a defeater of it. But I am not trying to justify my knowledge of LNC. I am showing you that it is justified, even though it is axiomatic or, as you like to say, “assumed”. It is justified in a way you can not countenance although, as always, you plead a special case for your own justifications. This demonstrates that we can know that which is necessarily true or self-evident. It shows that we can immediately apprehend truth and that we can have knowledge without verification or empirical evidence. As I’ve said countless times, I know the LNC is true without a method. But I can use the method to justify that knowledge if I so choose.
Imagine how fast you’d defend the justification of LNC if I said it wasn’t “predictive”.
And another thing…
I got “sound” and “valid” reversed above.
So let’s eliminate the beans in the jar and the magic billfold to see what’s really going on here with this so-called conditional knowledge.
Eliminating the hypotheticals, which inaccurately give the project a sense of real-world information-gathering, what is actually being said is the equivalent of:
1) if A =B
2) and B=C
3) then A=C.
Here, of course, nothing is known whatsoever about A, B and C except what is already given to be known by the problem itself. That is, we know how they are being defined and our knowledge of them is already accounted for in the construction of the question. IF A, B etc.
This is exactly the same as saying IF x=5 or IF the number of beans in the jar is 4, etc.
Therefore, we can see that nothing is known about any of these symbols beyond the definition. We do not, in fact, know that A=C unless we know that A=B and B=C, that is, the knowledge of the equivalence is absolutely contingent upon the knowledge of the premises.
Calling this conditional knowledge merely obscures the fact that no knowledge is actually possessed here without sure knowledge of the premises.
What we are actually claiming to know when we say “we know that A-C” (or “there are ten jelly beans”) is that we know that we can know that “A=C if A=B and B=C”.
But without surety of the premises upon upon which this so-called conditional knowledge is built we do not know that we can know this, and, therefore, we cannot know even this.
This is akin to trying to prove mathematics empirically by counting apples in bags as
the actual claim here is “we know that the laws of mathematics hold or we know that the laws of logic are true”.
If we do not, in fact, know these things, then we do not know that we can know that A=C, even if A=B and B=C, therefore, we do not know that A=C.
What is being hidden is the true nature of the IF/THEN statements.
1) IF the associative/commutative laws of mathematics are true
2) AND/OR we know that logical deduction applies
3) THEN we can know that …. 1a) IF A=B, etc.
But we do not know these premises, according to the skeptic or the potential BIV.
Conditional knowledge is defeated along with all other knowledge if axioms are not known.
Hey Tom,
Is there a 200 comment limit?
Have I broken your blog?
Charlie,
I don’t think we’ll ultimately agree, but let’s try to spell out precisely what the disagreement is.
Pure logic does not deal with beliefs. It deals with propositions. Propositions are true or false (not degrees of confidence in truth or falsehood).
Take the Socrates syllogism:
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
We both agree that this is logically valid.
The essential function of logic is consistency. When we deduce that Socrates is a man, we are merely stripping away the inconsistent propositions. The proposition that Socrates is not mortal is inconsistent with the other two propositions.
In pure logic, I can also do the following:
All mice are invisible.
Mickey is a mouse.
Therefore, Mickey is invisible.
Again, deduction is a process of stripping away the inconsistency. This is logically valid.
However, we would probably say that it isn’t sound. We say it isn’t sound because we don’t believe that the premise is true.
My argument is that every logical argument relies in implicit premises, e.g.,
[The LNC is true]
[The theorems of logic]
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
If I treat the LNC and its theorems as propositions and not beliefs, then this is valid at the very least.
The issue here is whether the argument is sound. You are saying that if the LNC is not known to be true, then no logical argument is sound because at least one of its premises is not known to be true.
The problem with this is that you don’t know the LNC to be true. You only believe it. You cannot have a rational argument for the truth of the assumptions rationality. I don’t know why you are ignoring this.
So what is the practical benefit of soundness of an argument? Well, it tells us when we ought to believe the conclusion of an argument instead of just acknowledging its validity. Do you think soundness has any other function?
So, let’s assume knowledge is “justified true belief”. Then knowledge will be a belief justified by foundational beliefs. Foundational beliefs cannot be justified by foundational beliefs without circularity.
There’s no circularity in my definition of knowledge because I’m not proving my definition. I’m just proving what counts as knowledge according to my definition. It’s a theorem of my definition, if you like.
In essence, you are disputing my definition of knowledge. You are saying that foundational beliefs can’t be mere assumptions because you require soundness to be based on truth, and not on justified belief.
But lacking any proof of the LNC, you want to convert your belief in the LNC into certain knowledge, so that you can say that your arguments are sound (by your definition). So you assume the LNC is knowledge. In the same way I assume it isn’t.
And since you assume you can just know certain things intuitively, you know God exists by the same assumption.
You’re simply not aware of your own assumptions. The things you consider self-evident truths are not truths. They are assumed truths. You cannot prove them. The reason you stick to them like glue is that you think there will be no such thing as knowledge otherwise. But that’s not a proof. Things aren’t proved by our desire for their consequences.
The same goes for God. It’s an assumption you make because you’re attached to the consequences of the assumption. It’s just that you add one more layer of indirection. You don’t say you “assume God” or “assume the LNC”. You say you “assume God is self evident knowledge” or assume the LNC is self-evident knowledge.” There’s no difference.
Morning DL,
You had me up to this assertion:
Demonstrating that LNC and the theorems of logic are held premises in every argument, and that arguments based upon them are not sound if they are not true and known to be true exactly agrees with what I am saying.
I’m not. I’ve repeatedly said that this condition does not apply. You cannot charge me with irrationality when your very case defeats rationality. I CAN know that the LNC is true, and I do. And I know that I am not a brain in a vat.
I know these even if they can’t be verified or empirically tested.
You, on the other hand, cannot know that knowledge requires justification or that I need a rational argument for the truth of the assumptions because of the very conditions you’ve set. Your position is self-defeating from the onset. The criteria you use to defeat my knowledge of the LNC defeats, not the least, your very demand for justification in knowledge.
Knowledge cannot, in fact, be defined – it, too, can only be self-evident.
You have to start somewhere or you can get nowhere.
Very good. The whole discussion is about what we ought to believe (a moral question, by the way, and useless without truth).
There is circularity because “justified” is based upon knowledge. You cannot define a thing by reference to itself. I don’t know why you are ignoring this.
Second, defining knowledge, the word, does not tell us what knowledge is. This is like saying “swans are white waterfowl with long necks”. By definition, there are no black swans. But that is not the case. You do not know there are no black swans by saying “it is so-defined”, just as you don’t know that we cannot know anything that is not justified true belief – forget the fact that you can’t define knowledge in the first place.
And you can’t tell me what justification is. You have come close with reference to soundness, where you say “what we ought to believe”. We certainly ought to believe the LNC is true, and I have given you ample justification for instance – its negation is impossible.
Even by definition knowledge is not justified belief but justified TRUE belief.
And, the entire point of the exercise is to show that by assuming that it isn’t you have devoured all knowledge – you have assumed you can’t know anything. Such skepticism does not appeal to me, being that I know God and His truth.
Worse than this, you claim to know things based on assumptions which you can’t even know intuitively.
Of course I am. I am the only one here who is aware of assumptions. You are so unaware of your assumptions that you claim to know things and presume to tell people what reality is like when you have to take everything on unknown, unknowable assumptions.
Truths (like knowledge exists) do not require proof. This is your hangover from your logical positivism and your denial of the fact that philosophy does not tell us what we can and cannot know – it merely tries to figure out how we know what we do know.
You can’t prove anything about knowledge, for instance, by your criteria and yet you argue about it as though you know something about it.
We certainly ought to believe them, however, if their consequences are not merely unpleasant but impossible.
Assertion assertion.
I don’t assume God exists. I trust my real experiences (which a potential BIV can’t) and am bolstered by the fact that all of logic, rationality and reality comport to, and make sense only in light of, this experience. You, on the other hand, have no access to such a reality and have cut logic and rationality off from the beginning.
No limit, but with WordPress 2.7 I now have it set to split the comments into multiple pages, with a maximum of 50 per page. There’s a link for “older comments” at the bottom now. Does that help?
Hi Tom,
When I click the latest comments I get only those submitted after 200, and they are numbered now from 1.
When I click older comments on the sidebar nothing happens.
Is there something about me and my Mac that will keep me from viewing those first 200 comments – that you know of? Any setting I need to change?
Oh noes! What happened to all the comments?
Edit: Okay, now I see the link to the older comments. Different way of doing things.
I think I’m just going to turn this feature off for now. I’ll try it again some time when we don’t have such a long discussion in process.
See here regarding the way comments show up on the page.
DL,
I agree with what Charlie said here, DL. You can’t assume the premise, assume something called the rules of logic, assume that the conclusion would follow, assume the LNC holds – and then presto chango, declare that you have knowledge. Your knowledge rests firmly planted in midair. It’s relativistic.
Charlie & Steve,
You hold that this is valid?
The premises aren’t hidden; Dr. Logic has painstakingly shown how they exist as assumptions in logical arguments. We are making arguments (all of us) based on those logical premises. It goes beyond reason to say that your premises are valid because you imagine them to be true, but our same premises are not available to us because we don’t make your assumption about ultimate knowledge.
In other words, what’s the point of having this discussion if everything Dr. Logic, Paul and I say is invalidated by your claim that we are not capable of argument?
Hi Tony,
Yes, my point is valid.
You didn’t follow.
DL claimed that we could KNOW that Mickey Mouse was immortal, conditionally, based upon his premise that mice are immortal. I demonstrated that this was not true, that it was based upon faulty premises, and that, therefore, it is not knowledge.
So he used mathematics to try to demonstrate conditionals. IF there are 4 and IF there are 6 beans THEN there are 10 beans. He claimed that we KNOW, from the above that, conditionally, there are 10 beans. What he hid is that we know nothing about how many beans there are from these premises (unless IF is satisfied) but that what knowledge he was claiming was that we can know that we can know this – this is based upon the premises of math and logic and, therefore, not on the IFs he offered. We can only conclude IF/THEN iff we already know the hidden premises (which you and he want to call assumptions) are true. IF they are not, then we cannot know that THEN follows IF. In other words, the conditional was not demonstrated.
No it doesn’t, but notice that you have joined the crowd telling me what is and is not rational while denying reason itself.
The only way out of this is for each of you to admit what you know to be true – that we can know the axioms and that we know that we know, even without empirical or methodological verification. You can finally answer what none of you has answered any of the half-dozen or so times I have asked it – is your everyday, non-ultimate knowledge actually knowledge? Is there a difference hidden in your distinction or not? DL says that FAPP there is not but won’t take the last step and tell us what that finally means. Paul has left without answering. What say ye? Will you smoke ‘em or not?
Hi again,
Did you add this in edit?
My point exactly!
What is the point of having a discussion when you have created an epistemology from which you cannot access reality and have destroyed logic and reason?
What is the point of telling me I can’t know my own experiences if you have to destroy all knowledge to do it? What is the point of telling me what knowledge entails when to deny my knowledge of the LNC you have to destroy the knowledge of knowledge?
When I asked Paul this, and showed him that there was no point to his trying to tell others what is and is not real or rational, based upon his past statements and his epistemology, you thought I was maligning him by exposing his position to this thread. You have all now affirmed his position as your own as well. But this position is so repugnant that you thought I was disparaging Paul when I outlined it previously.
Really, the biggest question is exactly what I asked Paul from the beginning – what is your point at all?
Tony,
Doesn’t this remind you of our discussions about moral relativism? It does to me. The relativist says there is subjective, personal morality (everyday morality), but there is not objective morality (ultimate morality). Here you are doing the same thing only with respect to knowledge.
The moral relativist affirms a personal morality but then says others OUGHT to agree with it. But why? You, Paul and DL affirm an everyday knowledge, but why OUGHT I accept your knowledge as true unless it somehow transcends the three of you? If it transcends the three of you then it sounds more like ultimate knowledge than everyday knowledge
Charlie,
It’s not impossible, Charlie. Even if your argument wasn’t circular, it still does not conclude impossibility. If the LNC is false, then there’s no such thing as logic or knowledge, and the alternative is incomprehensible. Incomprehensible isn’t impossibility.
One of your premises is that we have foundational knowledge. That’s an assumption, but you pretend it isn’t.
You are arguing backwards. You know the answer, and you’ll write down whatever reasons you can to get to your desired answer (circularity notwithstanding).
You tell me and Tony that we have no knowledge because we start from foundational assumptions and not foundational knowledge. But it is you who makes a mockery or reasoning and debate. You are saying you know what you know. You don’t have to have justification for your belief that something is “knowledge”. It just is. You believe you know the conclusion and you bluff your way through the reasons for your belief. You are rationalizing, not reasoning. Your epistemology has no hope of self-correction because the conclusion is always the starting point. Well why are you here, Charlie? Why bother with reason at all? You just know what you know. There’s no arguing with views like that. Maybe this dogma is implicit to your fundamentalism.
Moreover, you still don’t understand conditional knowledge.
You keep saying I have implicit IFs in my argument. But I have EXPLICIT IFs in my argument. Suppose that we know the LNC (and, hence, logical theorems) is true. If there are 6 beans in one jar and 4 beans in the other, then there would be 10 beans in total. I can say this whether there are 6 beans in one of the jars or not. I don’t have to know the actual fact to know the conclusion is true about a counterfactual situation. Indeed, suppose I know there are 3 beans in each jar. My counterfactual claim is still known. I still know that if there were (counterfactually) 6 beans in one jar and (counterfactually) 4 beans in the other then there would be (counterfactually) 10 beans in total. This knowledge has nothing to do with how many beans there actually are in the jar.
If Charlie were a licensed doctor, then he would know how to use a stethoscope. This is true whether or not you are a doctor.
This means I can have knowledge about counterfactuals. Knowledge that is true conditional upon certain premises being true.
All I’m doing is saying that the LNC can be one of those premises assumed to be true.
Sure I can. Justification is a conscious reflection on the truth a belief, specifically:
1) Question whether the belief is true or not. In other words, you must challenge your belief, to see whether it might be mistaken.
2) Check the consistency of your belief (or its negation) against other beliefs.
3) Ask what experiences would have been (or will be) different if the belief were false.
4) Look for alternatives (beware false dichotomies).
5) Account for personal bias.
Let’s apply these to the LNC… If the LNC is false, we can conclude nothing because inference relies on the LNC. All beliefs and knowledge implicitly assume the LNC. If the LNC is false we can conclude nothing, so we cannot say what experiences would be different. I can’t think of any alternatives that wouldn’t assume the LNC. Personal bias is a concept that assumes the LNC.
In other words, rational justification assumes the LNC. I can’t justify a belief in the LNC without first assuming it true which defeats the point of rational justification. Makes sense because rational thinking (and definitions in general) assumes the LNC.
As an aside, let’s look at how you and Steve think:
1) Don’t question your belief. You know what you know. Safeguard the belief at all costs.
“Truths (like knowledge exists) do not require proof.”
2) Check consistency, but circular arguments are allowed.
3) Don’t ask what experiences would be difference because that won’t work (per Steve’s last reply)
4) Don’t look at alternatives. The Christian God who creates the world we see is the only kind of God we can conceive of.
5) Ignore (indeed, maximize!) personal bias because otherwise we can’t see miracles, can’t get subtle God communication, and our beliefs would be threatened.
Wow. Never wrote it in those terms before. You guys do the exact opposite of rational thinking. You maximize your bias and amplify your preconceptions to the maximum degree.
Steve,
As Charlie says, rationality is a moral choice. So it will be relative. But it is irrelevant.
Suppose you’re commuting on the train, and the guy sitting next to you says he is a Coldplay fan. You strike up a conversation because you also like Coldplay, and love their style and sound. He tells you that he too likes their style and sound. He also tells you that Coldplay just came out with a new album, and he likes it for the same reasons he liked their previous albums.
What is your reaction?
Is it:
a) You totally ignore what he says. Liking music is subjective, and not absolute. Why should you care about someone else’s subjective opinion?
b) You take your existing subjective belief that Coldplay has a good style and sound. You add your belief that this person is truthful and claims the new album has the same style and sound. You conclude that you will like the new album. You decide to buy it.
Do you see my analogy? The belief that you should assume the LNC is analogous a belief in the coolness of Coldplay. In order to convince you of my arguments, all I have to do is appeal to your belief that you ought to assume the LNC. If we share that belief, persuasion follows.
Charlie,
You brought it up so I have to respond:
You wrote:
Contrary to what you say above, I responded to your ad hominems on Paul, not your linking to past comments. Specifically, you wrote all these in reference to Paul before my first comment here:
As I pointed out to Tom, those are all ad hominems. I don’t really mind them per se, I’ve just seen other people kicked out for the same and thought it might be productive if I pointed that out — goose, gander, and all that.
You also wrote:
I think we keep saying that we can access reality, whether it be the reality we assume we share or a vat is distinction that we keep saying is meaningless to our discussion of reality. I don’t understand why you keep on repeating this charge.
Paul, Dr. Logic and I have all tried to apply logic and reason here. I think you’re the only one saying (with SteveK echoing support) that we are not able to do so and that are arguments are therefore meaningless until we concede what we think is a faulty premise on your part.
Your argument seems to boil down to an assertion that if logic (and reality and morality etc.) isn’t tied to the creator of the universe then it cannot exist or it can’t be apprehended or applied. As much as you keep on saying that you’re shown us why this must be so I don’t see anything beyond an argument from final consequences, and I don’t find that compelling.
DL,
1) I question my beliefs all the time. Daily.
2) Not sure what you’re talking about here.
3) When did I say this?
4) See #1
5) See #1
DL,
To clarify, are you saying knowledge is a social contract of sorts that can change depending on the situation or the people involved? That one group knows the LNC to be true because they happen to share the same belief, while another group knows the LNC to be false because they share the opposite belief?
Hi DL,
Nope, if the LNC is false there is no such thing as discussion or thoughts – which position would be falsified right here.
Actually, I tell you that you have no knowledge because you contend that your foundational assumptions cannot be known.
I have justification – it just doesn’t fit your requirements when it is mine instead of yours.
I already told Paul why I am here. And yes, there are things we just know that we know – we are conscious, we have knowledge, we exist, the axioms of reasoning, etc.
Do demonstrate.
Your EXPLICIT IFs are not the issue.
Right again. You know nothing about beans at all, but you know about math and logic. The IFs that you make EXPLICIT are not an issue because they create the presumption of truth … IF this, THEN that – of course. The IFs are defined in the premises as true and when they are not true, ie. IF NOT, then the conclusion does not follow.
What you are not doing is demonstrating that you know that THEN follows IF unless you also assume the LNC and the laws of math – the only knowledge you are actually claiming depends upon these.
I outlined this perfectly well with A=B=C.
Exactly right again – you know that math and logic work (assumed) and you know nothing about beans in jars. If the premise is false (which it is not, because it is EXPLICITLY true when you conclude based upon IF) then the conclusion is false or unknown. This is exactly what the case is when you assume and do not know that the LNC is true. Your counterfactuals and conditionals do not demonstrate that unknown premises produce knowledge and they do not support your claim to knowledge based upon an assumption of an unknown LNC.
That said, do tell me that you have real knowledge, not qualified knowledge, which is based upon an assumption of the LNC, which is based upon an unverified, untestable, non-empirical and unjustified premise. Tell me that that is KNOWLEDGE and be the first to step up to the plate.
Still making my point. If the premises are true you have knowledge. If they are not, you do not. You know that the whole thing holds together not based upon conditionals or the argument but only based upon the logic. But the rules of logic then become the assumed premise and you do not have knowledge about your counterfactual because the syllogism then falls apart.
ALL knowledge, every bit of knowledge we have, depends upon the LNC? And we have knowledge, right? Whether we call it everyday, good enough, knowledge or ultimate, absolute knowledge, all our knowledge is predicated upon the assumed and not justified LNC?
There is no safeguarding.It is exactly in the questioning that one realizes that certain knowledge cannot be proven and is still knowledge.
Arguments are not necessary but there are times where if one is attempted, as in your knowledge about knowledge and justification, there is unavoidable circularity.
This question has been asked. In the case of LNC no knowledge, no inferences, no statements and no propositions can exist. This is impossible, not incoherent.
Bogus assertion. You haven’t a clue what kind of God I have investigated and conceived of.
Bias is neither ignored nor maximized. Bias is unavoidable is on flagrant display in your posts – starting with your attack on wallowing Christians, your biased and unexamined charge against Bush within hours of charging Christians with bias, and your assertions in the comment to which I am responding. If anyone trades on bias it is the “objective” skeptic.
Wow. When you don’t talk about reality you can conclude anything.
Hi Tony,
I’m not going to argue the difference between addressing a person’s positions in a line of thought in which I am specifically asking for his motivations and desires and real ad hominems nor the difference between references to the person and his motivation and the “disparagement” you charged, etc.
I will point out, however, while you are on about geese and ganders that you explicitly ignored such disparagement by one of your compatriots immediately before your commenting and I will contest that you have seen anyone booted for comments similar to mine. If I was out of line to question Paul’s motivation and his goals he could have told me that such a discussion did not interest him and that he didn’t feel like sharing.
It was and is a discussion I very much am interested in having and pursuing.
Because it is not the least bit meaningless. You admit on one hand that you don’t know if you are merely assuming a reality, and that it might just as well be a non-existent reality at that, and claim that you are discussing and accessing reality on the other. Of course your admission is that you have no idea if you are accessing reality or not. That’s why I keep repeating it – because truth is important.
So then perhaps you wish to step up with DL and admit that everyday knowledge based upon ungrounded, assumed, unjustified assumptions actually is knowledge and admit that whatever distinction you put between this and ultimate knowledge does not amount to a difference. But there will be epistemological consequences if you declare the entire raison d’être behind the BIV is false.
Does my argument seem to boil down to this or have I actually continually claimed to have shown it?
And it is not an argument from consequences when you show that the negation of a proposition is self defeating and necessarily false.
On the other hand, what I’ve really been arguing is that you guys have created an epistemology where you can’t actually know anything and, beyond qualified denials without details, I have seen no refutation of this point.
Charlie,
You wrote this:
Either this is a typo or you’re not reading / comprehending what Paul and I have been saying (implicitly and explicitly) all along. I (I don’t want to speak for Paul) have been trying to argue that the the distinction I’ve been trying to draw between everyday and ultimate knowledge is without a difference, and I thought you were saying that the distinction makes my knowledge meaningless.
Lot more I could respond to here, including your last to DL, but no time.
Hi Tony,
Yes, this certainly is implicit in all claims Paul and you have made. I want it explicit. Paul, after saying that, by his definition, knowledge is only that which can be empirically tested and verified as much as admitted what you say is implied, but rejected the offer to make it explicit. Countless times on this thread alone I have asked each of the three of you if this is your explicit position, as well as being implied by everything you say.
If it is merely a distinction and not a difference – as I noted you saying earlier, and as you now make explicit on your own- then the distinctions in the methodology and justification of each “kind” of knowledge (you are acknowledging that there really is only one kind of knowledge, of course) do not amount to a difference and do not remove from the field of “knowledge” one set of beliefs as opposed to another.
If it is truly merely a distinction and not a difference then, with regards to warrant, it is the distinction which is meaningless.
I will take your denigration of my reading/comprehension as your vote that knowledge based upon unknown, unproven, unjustified assumptions is, indeed, knowledge.
Are we agreed?
As I asked of Paul on one of many occasions when he insisted that the distinction between the two was crucial to his point.
http://www.thinkingchristian.net/2008/11/the-internal-experience-of-the-holy-spirit/#comment-10449
And soon after asked the both of you:
And then to you in particular:
So what’s off here, my reading or my comprehension?
Life events are still unfolding for me, but I hope an answer to this question might break a logjam or lead to a more fruitful place.
Charlie wrote
How is that done?
Charlie,
We all have an intuitive sense of what it means to know something. Most people don’t have a formal definition. For some people, knowledge is nothing more than a high-confidence belief. Some people have high confidence that they can read minds or that their race is superior.
The point of rational inquiry is to eliminate beliefs that are inconsistent, and to distinguish between fact and mere prejudice.
For you (and by your definitions), it is intuitive that any conclusion following from a syllogism is only knowledge if all the premises are known to be true. This is an implicit (if not explicit) premise in your arguments. It is also intuitive to you that you know some things through inference. You conclude from this that there must be foundational knowledge, not just foundational assumptions.
For me (and by my definitions), it is intuitive that conditional knowledge exists. If I make certain assumptions, I can use those assumptions to justify a conditional conclusion. For example, the axioms of mathematics are not known. You can have two different mathematical systems with contradictory axioms, but that doesn’t invalidate either system, nor does it mean we don’t know their respective theorems. The axioms of Euclidean geometry are not true. They are assumed. But that doesn’t mean we don’t know the Pythagorean theorem is true conditional upon those axioms. If I chose a different set of geometric axioms, the theorem would not hold, but others might. If you reject this idea of conditional knowledge, then you are saying there is no such thing as mathematical knowledge.
And, perhaps, by your definition, there is no mathematical knowledge. That’s not necessarily unreasonable, although it’s very unconventional.
If one accepts that there is conditional knowledge, then formally defining knowledge as justified belief is perfectly sensible and not problematic. Knowledge is justified by assumed axioms, just like in mathematics. If we take this route, the question becomes “what axioms ought we accept?”
Suppose that I am a racist, and I believe that my race is superior. Can I justify this by making it axiomatic that my race is superior? Do I thereby convert my belief into knowledge?
I would say not. I would say that one ought to restrict oneself to the bare minimum of axioms. The bare minimum of axioms are:
1) The LNC and its theorems.
2) That our raw experiences constitute axioms of their own.
3) That induction works, whether we are making inferences about physical or mental experiences.
[You might see (2) as relating to BIV's, but even a BIV might ultimately have to explain why the vat generated his vat experiences.]
Anyway, if you start from this bare minimum of axioms, you get naturalism and science.
Now, I could do basically the same thing if I accept your definition and say that mathematical knowledge does not exist. I could say that the (1) (2) and (3) above are not just assumed axioms, but known axioms. In that case, I would still be a scientific naturalist, just a scientific naturalist with a peculiar definition of knowledge.
But you’re not content with only these axioms. The axioms above are perfectly adequate for acquiring a belief in a present and reliable God, but you want additional axioms that will support belief in a hidden God.
Your extra axioms include the fact that God exists and God is directly responsible for various experiences that wouldn’t show up in a scientific experiment that accounts for biases. Your axioms also include the claim that miracles need to be believable, and that conceptions of right and wrong are absolutes, and that the logical complement of determinism isn’t randomness (this latter belief is utterly incoherent). Etc.
Remember the OP. It’s about whether we ought to believe that certain experiences are direct contact from God. You accept this as axiomatic because you need it to be. You assume that if you can know (1), (2), and (3), why not add more stuff to the collection of known axioms?
As I demonstrated here, even if I accepted that my foundations were known and not just assumed, you would still be in hot water. You have to justify why you are clinging to so much convenient foundational knowledge when that knowledge isn’t necessary. God is not necessary to reason or life or the world. You’re adding in the foundational knowledge for the purpose of supporting your Christian faith.
In contrast, Paul, Tony and I are not excluding foundational knowledge (or assumptions) for the purpose of not seeing God. If God exists, he doesn’t have to communicate with us at the level of bias. He can communicate with us at levels that scientists can see. That way, we will know that we’re not deluding ourselves.
Hi Paul,
I thought you were probably still here.
Logjam?
I don’t see a logjam.
I think we are about to come to an all ’round position as DL and Tony look about ready to agree that we can have knowledge which is founded and dependent upon unknown, unproven and unjustified assumptions – the way you did once but have been unable to affirm again.
So you aren’t the last left outside the smoking lounge you could do so now and confirm, without equivocation or qualification, whether or not knowledge based upon unknown, unproven, unjustified axioms (assumptions, or even postulates, to you and DL) can be had. Do you still think, and define as such, that all knowledge must be empirically tested and verified (with the exception of qualia and some unspecified things mysteriously like qualia)?
Alternatively, does your crucial distinction between good enough for day to day vs. ultimate knowledge entail an actual difference, contra Tony? Is one type of knowledge actual knowledge while the other isn’t?
As to your question, I doubt my response would do much here, since I’ve given my position unbidden several times (you remember – you may even be able to rehearse it) and reject your criteria for knowledge; “how” is the wrong question and only leads to the kind of skepticism you find yourself being sucked into. On the other hand, I have also told you many times some ways that knowledge of the LNC can be justified – after the fact of actually knowing it. As I said, I don’t subscribe to the methodism that you guys would like to apply to other people’s knowledge claims.
Hi DL,
You have constructed a pretty decent comment there that makes a lot of sense until you go off the rails in the second half with your unfounded and false presumptions.
I definitely made this explicit. It follows naturally from the idea that knowledge must be a true belief.
Conditional knowledge does exist. It just doesn’t support the claim for which you tried to enlist it.
I believe completely in mathematics and, although not a mathematician, I dispute this assertion. I believe that the axioms are true within a certain space. As they are confined to that space they are true and known to be.
But that is neither here nor there as this is where Paul last left the subject. Here we have an instance of what you guys will call unproven, unknown axioms resulting in true knowledge. Paul even claimed they were arbitrary postulates, but that we still could have knowledge based upon them.
So here you lose the skeptical ground upon which you would say “we can’t trust our raw experiences or our perceptions”. Not only can we take them as axiomatic, according to you, but even if our knowledge of God is reliant upon unproven and unjustified axioms you have lost your defeater to this knowledge – unproven and unjustified axioms can be the foundation to true knowledge, and this includes even knowledge that the skeptic would like to dismiss somehow.
No, it is still circular and knowledge still defies definition.
The axioms you list are pretty good for me but I reject this naked assertion of naturalism. Each of your accepted can and will lead directly away from naturalism for one embracing the truth and following evidence and logic.
There is nothing about their being axioms that makes them assumed and not known.
Here you start your typical faltering. First, I do not believe in a hidden God. I believe in a present and reliable God and I do agree with you that these axioms are enough for one and all to admit knowledge Him. You were even so kind as to include as axiomatic one’s raw experiences. The problem that follows is that you have pre-determined, based upon your own biases and prejudices, what counts as a raw experience and you explain away, without evidence or justification, the experiences of others.
There is nothing axiomatic about how and where God will show up. And God’s existence as truth occurs only as you’ve already accounted for in your own list of axioms – as a logical necessity, as both/either a raw experience or as the result of an inductive explanation.
I’m glad you see the incoherence because I don’t know what you are trying to say. What do you mean that miracles need to be believable? What is that stuff about determinism and randomness? Conceptions of right and wrong are not absolutes. Conceptions are just that and do not impact the truth of absolute morality.
I don’t know about your psychoanalysis, but your own list of axioms demands that there will be a growing list of axioms as experiences multiply.
Regardless of whetehr you allow that your foundations are known or not, your demonstration makes my exact point quite nicely. I’ve appreciated your efforts here, even though you can’t avoid such blatant biases.
You have to demonstrate, rather than assert out of bias, that I have convenient foundational knowledge and, moreover, that it is unnecessary.
Induction and the laws of logic say He is, regardless of your assertions.
And on top of that, raw experience tells me that He exists and the testimony of history supports this knowledge.
He has. Ask the scientists who have found God through their explorations of His natural wonders. Or ask the nearly half of all scientists who believe in a God who does communicate with them and answer their prayers.
Shutting your eyes to the truth is every bit as delusional as believing in untruths.
Charlie,
I see that DL beat me to the punch here.
I think that I am slow to understand what you are driving at here. I thought you were asserting that skeptics cannot “know” anything because they accept the BIV to be unresolvable, making an argument that only if we deny the possibility of the BIV can we make an argument (or something like that). I thought that assertion (that we skeptics cannot have knowledge of anything) was what you were driving at when Paul and I explicitly said that the BIV dilemma introduced a distinction without a difference. But I think I see what you’re driving at now. (I wasn’t trying to be coy before, I think I just misunderstood where you were going with this.)
It looks like you want me to agree that “knowledge based upon unknown, unproven, unjustified assumptions is, indeed, knowledge.”
I think that DL has done a great job of explaining the conditional nature of logic and the role of axioms and parsimony. So, to answer your question, IF you call axioms like the LNC an “unknown, unproven, and unjustified assumption” then yes, I agree.
I’m not philosophically or logically well-educated. (You asked before why we come here. My answer would be that I find the subjects stimulating, it gives me insight into other people’s worldviews, but mostly because it compels me to look up all this stuff I never knew much about. I don’t know why, but I enjoy it.) But I’d say that my rule of thumb for axioms would be their productivity.
Is the LNC unknown, unproven, and unjustified? It’s an interesting question, but I distinguish it as valid because it’s so productive. I would lean, in an uneducated way (that’s surely going to be shoved back in my big fat face because of whatever I didn’t foresee), toward adopting any axiom that is productive. What follows from adopting that axiom is knowledge based on the condition of the axiom’s validity.
I think you’re saying that God is axiomatic. The problem there is that when accept that and give it a test run, where does it get me? “It is what it is” can be added to my list of axioms in the same way. And it gets me…what exactly.
I’ll give you that you have what you believe is a sensory awareness of God. I’ll grant that others have the same belief. But to be crude, what does that do for me?
To try and bring this thing around, let me try this analogy. You and others go into a cave everyday and drink magical tea. You all have similar experiences of fulfillment, understanding, peace, etc. You all emerge and give me a drink of the tea. I have no such feelings. But when I walk into the cave, I drink no tea, but I have the same experiences you all describe. I conclude that something in the cave is the thing, the axiom, etc. So, I ask, why drink the tea?
Hi Tony,
Yes, see there are two points.
If you don’t know you aren’t a BIV then, as per the BIV, you don’t know anything.
Therefore, it is rather pointless for you (generic “you”, not you, Tony Hoffman) to be arguing about reality with people and telling them what can and cannot exist in this reality.
On the flipside, of course you know you aren’t a BIV. There are countless things you know even if, contra the unbeliever’s clams, you cannot prove them and even though methodism fails.
The point is that Paul has claimed that he is a methodist but, of course, the infinite regress catches him and pushes him to his uber-skepticism in which he cannot claim to know he is in reality, that he exists, etc..
It is a twofold problem for the denier of God.
As you can see from DL’s latest, it seems most often to be a hedge against being “deluded” into believing in God. As I said there, you do as much harm in general by disbelieving true things as you do by believing falsehoods. In the case of God, you do ultimate harm by disbelieving the only truth.
I’m glad you appreciate his efforts. I think he has tried really hard as well.
Thanks also for answering. So yes, we have KNOWLEDGE without having complete justification for our assumed and unproven axioms. So the skeptic’s posturing, “how do you know you can trust your experiences?”, “how do you know you aren’t a BIV?”, “how do you know there is a God?” are toothless. We all know without knowing how we know and we all know based upon the same grounds.
We are, after all, designed the same way and function the same way, everyday, don’t we?
It is just that you lack the experiences and the perceptions that we, by the grace of God, have.
Utilitarianism is no better or more justified than general methodism – it still leaves you without justification for your foundations and it still admits God – until you employ Paul’s special plea against this utility.
It also questions its own use as a starting point; is utilitarianism productive? You can never get off the ground with these kinds of justifications -you either know some things or you don’t.
Skeptic’s and their labels are not very interesting to me.
Is God axiomatic? I guess so, sometimes. For those whom God has spoken to directly of His presence and love, in whose heart He has planted knowledge of Himself, that seems axiomatic? But does that make your parents axiomatic? It is a relationship with a person, so I’m not sure.
Then again, knowledge of God can be derived from the first principles as well, so I don’t know if you would have to call this knowledge axiomatic.
Better questions than these in-principle denials and attempts to find general ways, which always fail, to deny the believer’s knowledge, would be to simply ask, is it true? Does God really exist and really love me? Has He really planned my salvation and the solution to the human condition? There are many, many ways to arrive at this knowledge and to affirm these truths. The very fact that you are bothered by the questions and seek resolution make me think God is working to bring you to this knowledge. That is my hope, anyway. Otherwise you could have just been apathetic about the whole thing. The fact that you are so emotionally-tied to the question suggests a passion that belies the dispassionate, unbiased, claims. This goes for all of you. DL’s emotional outbursts here are plenty evidenced, for instance and are indication of far more than he will let o