At what point will one wager that a phenomenon is a miracle, a privileged observation, or some yet-to-be-determined natural mechanism?
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Miracle or Privileged Observation?
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Category Archives: Philosophy
Reality and realism
Let’s have a new topic, preferably one that is not Christian apologetics.
This is mostly intended as a response to a comment by KN, but I think it deserves its own thread.
There’s a recent blog post elsewhere that is related:
- Knowledge and Reality (by Dan Kaufman)
Personally, I think of myself as a realist. But I agree with some of Dan Kaufman’s criticisms of traditional views of reality.
Now my response to KN. The quotes will all be from KN’s comment (linked above). Continue reading
A=A
and always = A and only a TSZ “nihilist” .would deny it, says Barry Arrington.
A=A is infallibly, necessarily true
What does this claim even mean? That something denoted by A is identical to something else also denoted by A? Clearly not.
That if we devise a system of logic in which we declare that A always equals A , A must always equal A? Well, duh.
That the only possible logic system is one in which A is always equal to A? Well, no – fuzzy logic is a very useful logic system, and A is sometimes only approximately equal to A, or may equal A if it passes some threshold of probability of being A.
So what does he even mean? Is his claim even coherent?
Knowledge Sucks!
We don’t know what it is or what it is not.
We don’t know when we have it or when we don’t have it.
So who needs it.
Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR)
The Principle of Sufficient Reason is a powerful and controversial philosophical principle stipulating that everything must have a reason or cause. This simple demand for thoroughgoing intelligibility yields some of the boldest and most challenging theses in the history of metaphysics and epistemology. In this entry we begin with explaining the Principle, and then turn to the history of the debates around it.
Postlude to Philosophy
What is Philosophy?
Is it “unintelligible answers to insoluble problems”? (Henry Adams)
Is a philosopher “a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there”? (Lord Bowen)
Is philosophy “a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing”? (Ambrose Bierce)
The Cosmological Argument
I am currently working my way through the book A Natural History of Natural Theology: The Cognitive Science of Theology and Philosophy of Religion.
There is already a thread here dedicated to the book, but I decided to separate the thesis of the book from the actual natural theological arguments themselves. The evidence that the premises upon which these natural theological arguments rest are natural and intuitive are the subject of that thread.
In this thread I’d like to explore how the cosmological argument for the existence of God is presented in the book and provide a place where these cosmological arguments can be examined and criticized.
Park Your Priors Not Your Principles
Thomas Reid, in 1763, wrote, “For before men can reason together, they must agree in first principles; and it is impossible to reason with a man who has no principles…”
Bad Dogs and Defective Triangles
Is a dog with three legs a bad dog? Is a triangle with two sides still a triangle or is it a defective triangle? Perhaps if we just expand the definition of triangle a bit we can have square triangles.
There is a point of view that holds that to define something we must say something definitive about it and that to say that we are expanding or changing a definition makes no sense if we don’t know what it is that is being changed.
There is no positive case for ID or Special Creation
I’m an IDist and professing Young Earth Creationist, but I argue IDists and creationists should not make the claim there is a positive case or direct evidence for ID. I said as much in an radio interview long ago, and I say it even more forcefully today.
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Dimensionless units, RDFish is a Genius
It’s been really fun arguing with Keiths recently about dimensionless units. I can’t get enough of the guy lately. I’ve certainly learned a lot in the process.
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KN’s new book — a discussion thread
Someone suggested a discussion thread for KN’s new book:
So I’m starting such a thread. My Kindle copy arrived shortly after the turn of the month to November. According to Kindle, I have read 5%. The readability is pretty good (but I already have disagreements).
Open for comments.
Amie Thomasson on nonreductive physicalism
Let’s discuss Amie Thomasson’s paper A Nonreductivist Solution to Mental Causation. I’ll save my thoughts for the comment thread.
Michael Graziano: Are We Really Conscious?
He raises the question in the New York Times Sunday Review:
I believe a major change in our perspective on consciousness may be necessary, a shift from a credulous and egocentric viewpoint to a skeptical and slightly disconcerting one: namely, that we don’t actually have inner feelings in the way most of us think we do…
How does the brain go beyond processing information to become subjectively aware of information? The answer is: It doesn’t. The brain has arrived at a conclusion that is not correct. When we introspect and seem to find that ghostly thing — awareness, consciousness, the way green looks or pain feels — our cognitive machinery is accessing internal models and those models are providing information that is wrong…
Mathematics and logic
Question for discussion:
Is mathematics more fundamental than logic, or vice-versa? Neither? Or is it more complicated?
Feser’s First Way: an argument proving God’s existence?
This post arises out of an exchange between me and one Matt Sheean at Ed Feser’s blog. I got involved there because there have been some exchanges, at times quite amusing and colourful, between Feser (assisted by some of his regular commenters) and Vincent Torley, well known to UD readers as perhaps the less unacceptable face of ID, in that he comes across as a nice guy on a personal level. Both Feser and Torley are both staunch Catholics, a religion that I find pretty objectionable (above all for it’s interference in private life and thought, the readiness of its leaders to tell others how to behave, oppression of women and minorities.. but I digress). In an earlier post at Uncommon Descent, Vincent Torley kindly transcribed some of Feser’s presentation (admittedly to a young, lay audience) of his version of Aquinus’ “First Way”. I was asked to summarise my impression of the video and agreed. Hence this post. Continue reading
Language evolution
Many times discussing here at TSZ I was told that evolution of language was an prooved example of darwinistic evolution. What do you think about this article?
http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00401/full
Quine, Alston and Hall On What There Is
As we have been discussing ontology as it refers to hidden variables and multiple worlds, I thought there might be some interest in this excerpt from my Hall book, The Roots of Representationism. It focuses on a shift in Quine’s position subsequent to “On What There Is,” but I think it touches on some of the broader questions of ontology and how one ought to investigate it as well. Continue reading
Stuck between a rock and an immaterial place
Kairosfocus has a new OP at UD entitled Putting the mind back on the table for discussion. His argument begins thus:
Starting with the principle that rocks have no dreams:
Reciprocating Bill points out that since KF denies physicalism, he has no principled basis for denying the consciousness of rocks:
If the physical states exhibited by brains, but absent in rocks, don’t account for human dreams (contemplation, etc.) then you’ve no basis for claiming rocks are devoid of dreams – at least not on the basis of the physical states present in brains and absent in rocks. Given that, on what basis do you claim that rocks don’t dream?
Needless to say, KF is squirming to avoid the question.
I’ve got popcorn in the microwave. Pull up a chair.