tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post6225848842591901095..comments2023-09-25T04:26:51.568-06:00Comments on The Barefoot Bum: Consensus, truth and realityLarry Hamelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-1334625884463608462008-06-22T15:40:00.000-06:002008-06-22T15:40:00.000-06:00"Your conclusion does not follow from your premise..."Your conclusion does not follow from your premise."<BR/><BR/>I suppose your right. <BR/><BR/>All I'm suggesting is that our knowledge of the world is relative to our sensations of it. And, that our sensations (in this case) do not necessarily mirror the world as it is. I'm simply following Kant here.<BR/><BR/>Considering a hammer as an outside reality is useful to a cause, and so is considering God as an outside reality. My point here doesn’t necessitate that both objects in question exist in objective reality and that they can be proven on sight. What matters is that they are both, before they are anything, concepts for approaching a particularly human issue. <BR/> - Belief in a reality out there is useful at best, but not right necessarily. <BR/><BR/>Occam's razor? I'm not convinced there is a simple answer. But touché.<BR/><BR/>P.S.<BR/>I’m not defending belief in God. I don’t believe in God and as a matter of fact, I don’t really know what I believe.Andrew Louishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18204999524677028033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-67797055275698982022008-06-22T14:15:00.000-06:002008-06-22T14:15:00.000-06:00Regardless of the reality that's out there/that mi...<I>Regardless of the reality that's out there/that might be out there, it can't be known outside the construction of our own minds. So the beliefe that there is a world out there can be stretched to a beliefe in God.</I><BR/><BR/>Your conclusion does not follow from your premise.<BR/><BR/>That all our knowledge is mental is uncontroversial: We know things with our minds. But just because we know things with our minds does not by itself mean that we can't know <I>about</I> things outside our minds.<BR/><BR/>To conclude that belief about an external, objective reality can be stretched to belief about God entails that there is no substantive, essential difference between the justification between the two sorts of belief. And to say that there is no essential difference is to say that relative complexity is not an essential part of specifically epistemic belief.<BR/><BR/>It's really important to understand that while we take belief in objective, external reality for granted, simply taking a belief for granted does not entail that the belief is specifically metaphysical. Belief in objective reality is justifiable using the scientific method applied only to the facts of our own purely subjective beliefs while remaining metaphysically agnostic about objective reality. <BR/><BR/>It's doubly important to note that beliefs about God <I>cannot</I> be justified using the same methodology.<BR/><BR/>One is, of course, metaphysically "free" in some sense to refuse to consider relative complexity as essential to epistemology. However, this approach makes it difficult to distinguish between the infinity of possible explanations that form our epistemic candidates.<BR/><BR/>Even theists typically adhere to Occam's razor, albeit implicitly and perhaps subconsciously; I've yet to find anyone who pushes the rejection of Occam's razor to its logical conclusion.Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-71694867492801304892008-06-22T12:47:00.000-06:002008-06-22T12:47:00.000-06:00I think part of the problem is in assuming that ou...I think part of the problem is in assuming that our conclusions are valid and somewhat atemporal, as apposed to something that simply works for now. <BR/><BR/>But I'm somewhat of a pragmatist, so my approach is biased in that regard. <BR/><BR/>Regardless of the reality that's out there/that might be out there, it can't be known outside the construction of our own minds. So the beliefe that there is a world out there can be stretched to a beliefe in God.Andrew Louishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18204999524677028033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-76621601889916712432008-06-21T18:49:00.000-06:002008-06-21T18:49:00.000-06:00Would it be fair to suggest that perhaps truth, (a...<I>Would it be fair to suggest that perhaps truth, (as it is happened upon through discovery and invention) is not a revelation regarding the function of the world in itself, but perhaps the revelation of universal human experience as it relates to it?</I><BR/><BR/>Could be; that's not a bad idea. But how can we tell the difference at a fundamental level?<BR/><BR/>At any given time, we know only what we <I>think</I> is truly universal. We believe (for good reasons) that our ancestors, were they in the same circumstances, would have the same experiences that we do, and they would draw the same conclusions. Their seemingly valid scientific conclusions are overturned not by virtue of having <I>different</I> experiences, but by virtue of our having <I>more</I> experiences.<BR/><BR/>But whose to say that in the future that our descendants will not have even more experiences, which will overturn our own seemingly valid conclusions.<BR/><BR/>All we can do is look at some universal experience, and posit some <I>cause</I> for that consensus. In many cases, we cannot explain the consensus by virtue of pure social construction: no one has told you or anyone else the <A HREF="http://picasaweb.google.com/lrhamelin/Miscellaneous/photo?authkey=-CN422aaJ-c#5189822026514747794" REL="nofollow">color of this apple</A>, and yet most of us will agree what it is.<BR/><BR/>The simplest way to explain such agreement is by hypothesizing that there is some <B>reality</B> "out there", outside our minds, which impinges on all (or most) minds in a consistent manner.Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-50849866936023786532008-06-21T11:46:00.000-06:002008-06-21T11:46:00.000-06:00Would it be fair to suggest that perhaps truth, (a...Would it be fair to suggest that perhaps truth, (as it is happened upon through discovery and invention) is not a revelation regarding the function of the world in itself, but perhaps the revelation of universal human experience as it relates to it?<BR/><BR/>The fact that the earth was thought to be flat is an expression of universal experience of a particular phenomenon(which can be said to be true in this case). In other words, truth does not relate to reality (where reality is things in themselves), it relates to experience. <BR/><BR/>We might find that Mr. E's physics are wrong some day, but that doesn't invalidate our experience of what he said. It wouldn't invalidate what Einstein said when he stated, "put your finger on a hot stove for a minute, and it feels like an hour. Sit with that special someone for an hour and it feels like a minute. Thats relativity."<BR/><BR/>Our experience need not necessarily reflect what's true about the world, only what's true about us.Andrew Louishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18204999524677028033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-80965611709961786182008-06-19T11:04:00.000-06:002008-06-19T11:04:00.000-06:00I also had trouble with the vagueness of Pierce's ...I also had trouble with the vagueness of Pierce's definition of truth: "The opinion which is fated to by all who investigate is what we mean by truth and the object represented by this opinion is the real."<BR/><BR/>What if the investigators are a minority of the population, as scientists are now? That's a consensus of experts, not the "everyone" that some were talking about on Law's blog. And if we're talking about a consensus, whether of a small group of experts or the population at large, "everyone" doesn't sound like a consensus; that's a unanimity.<BR/><BR/>I admit I'm predisposed to accepting the scientific paradigm of contingent knowledge, so I'm strongly agnostic about any "final truths" that may be available to human beings at any time in the future. That aspect of implied perfection in Pierce's truth seems Platonic to me. I just don't see how we can ever know when we're all done with shadow puppets, and have <EM>really</EM> gotten out of the cave this time.<BR/><BR/>BTW, excellent explanation in your post on how consensus implies <EM>some</EM> truth, though not necessarily that of the object of said consensus.Steelmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09612062887585525213noreply@blogger.com