In another thread, WJM writes:
Also, when I say I must accept such a prioris in order to even hope to deliberately establish a rational worldview, that means that without such premises, reason (logic) itself breaks down into nonsense.
WJM is laying out the case for rationalism. Typically, rationalism is described as assuming innate knowledge. However, some instead assume a priori knowledge. Thanks to WJM, I now have an inkling on what might be intended by “a priori knowledge.”
The opposing philosophical position is that of empiricism, that knowledge comes through the senses. Most of those posting here (self included) seem to be empiricists, while WJM is clearly standing for some version of rationalism.
This is intended as a stub topic, to allow comments specifically addressing the rationalism vs. empiricism debate.
Then don’t talk to me.
Except, of course, for your epistemological assumptions, correct? How do you discern the epistemological “sense” from the “nonsense” without using logic? Rhetoric? Force? Flipping a coin? Do you really think that is a valid means of making a case for something – anything?
Just for the record.
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To which I get,
Okay.
Once again, I would like to point out that all posts which seek to make the case that my views, statements, arguments or premises are erroneous or false themselves operate from the de facto position that truth exists and that we can deliberately discern true statements from false.
IOW, to argue that my argument is faulty or false requires that my argument (that logic can be used to discern true statements from false) be true (or else one cannot logically figure out if my statements are true or not), except if one admits that their argument against my argument is nothing but rhetoric.
An interesting side note: if logic doesn’t discern true statements from false, I guess the statement “there is no evidence for god” or “there is no god” or “belief in god is irrational” are not rational claims derived from a logical examination of the facts, but rather are simply non-rational, rhetorical claims – nothing but bald, unsupported assertions.
I can see now why so many here mistake logical premises for assertions; they eschew logic, and so the concept of a premise – much less a necessary premise – is lost on them.
People discern, though not always correctly. Logic has no ability to discern.
Most scientists have never studied epistemology. Yet they do very well.
We don’t need epistemology. It can be dumped into the dustbin of history. It is mostly an intellectual word game played by philosophers and theologians.
When I speak of logic discerning true statements, of course I mean humans employing logic. And, you didn’t answer the question.
Rhetoric isn’t much of an argument.
But, that is NOT what you claimed! You claimed that logic could prove a factual claim about the state of the world. With all due respect, gibberish! It is impossible for logic alone to establish the truth of a factual claim about some state of the world.
You fail to distinguish between validity, a claim about argument structure, and truth. In fact, they are not even related. Any given argument may be valid (or invalid), but this has absolutely nothing whatever to do with whether its conclusions are true or false.
Further, a claim can only be said to be true or false with respect to some system. In other words, there is no guarantee whatsoever that a claim validated in one system would necessarily be validated in any other.
Reading these comments. I have the impression that there are different usages in play of words like ‘truth’, ‘premise’ and ‘assertion’. Perhaps it would help if participants explained or re-stated what these words mean to each of them.
Seversky,
That is easily demonstrated. Mr. Murray simply has to come up with a valid counterexample to Hume’s Fork. In other words, he has to come up with a way of determining the truth of some factual claim without reference to any a posteriori evidence. Do you know of such a counterexample? Because I sure as hell don’t.
Then provide the full quote where I said that.
It’s a good thing I didn’t make this claim. I may have said that only logic can establish truthful statements about the world, but I don’t think I ever said that logic was sufficient in itself. One can hardly discern a truthful statement about a world they cannot sense.
Why should I have to do that? A posteriori epistemology still requires logic to reason to truthful conclusions about the world. Only logic can make truthful statements concerning experiential information – unless one wants to claim that non-rational methods can make truthful statements about observations.
My argument here is that logic is required to discern truthful statements about observations – not to make truthful observations, but to make truthful statements about observations. Empirical observations in and of themselves, without being arbited by an objective standard like logic, can be arranged and interpreted however one wishes.
This means logic must be held as the regulator of interpretation of empirical observation.
Which, of course, is all lost on those who do not accept that logic discerns true statements, but then argue as if logic can discern true statements.
A valid logical argument can yield a conclusion which we label as ‘true’ but that usage of ‘true’ is not the same as for example the correspondence theory in which the truth of a statement about the world can only be established by empirical observations.
In another post I gave an example of a valid logical argument which was nonetheless complete nonsense. Given that, how can we rely on logic to discern true statements?
While no one denies its value as a tooI for scientific research or more generally as a means of making sense of the world in what sense do you mean that logic can discern true statements?
All observations are is raw data which means nothing until it is interpreted according to a heuristic. One either interprets that data according to principles of logic (rationally), or they interpret it however they wish.
Proper use of logic never leads to a false statement in relation to the accepted premises. Improper inferences and fallacies can lead to non-truthful statements concerning the premises.
You seem to be mistaking a truthful logical statement for a truthful statement about the world. If one has untrue premises, they can lead to a statement that is true logically (concerning/derived from the premises), but is not true in what it says about the world. In such a case the logic isn’t wrong; the premise is. It is because we expect logic to make true statements that we know if a logically sound statement about the world appears to be incorrect, that something must be wrong with the premises or the observation.
For example, they recently collected data that indicates faster-than-light travel; the researchers assumed their observations or interpretations of the data were wrong, and posted their research data for public scrutiny so that the assumed error can be more easily found. If observation was sufficient to make true statements about the world, then why are they assuming their observations are mistaken?
Why do we say that the inference is wrong if it doesn’t comport with observation? It could be that the observation is wrong – in fact, observations are known to be wrong a lot of the time. Physical, investigatory research that collects empirical data can be gamed unconsciously by improper protocols. People can be biased. Since observation is known to be problematical and imperfect, it must be arbited by a logical and, in science, a precise methodology that included peer review and experimental confirmation.
When logical conclusions disagree with observation, one must check their logic, their premises, their system of observation and how they are interpreting the data. How do they do this? Again, they do so logically, via deductive processes, working through all the junctures where error might have entered the process.
Empiricism is either governed by logic, or it can lead to any non-rational conclusions one wishes.
But that is what I and others here have been telling you over and over.
It is your premises you have to defend.
I only have to defend my premises if they produce irrational logical conclusions or if they produce demonstrably false statements about the world. They do not.
On the other hand, non-theistic premises do lead to irrational conclusions and demonstrably false statements about the world.
How do you arrive at a rational logical conclusion to test against the result of your premises and logic, before you actually perform your logic?
If you have a conclusion already, why even bother performing your logic at all?
You’ve basically said that if you don’t like the output you get, you’ll just change the input.
Toronto,
What I “like” is entirely irrelevant to the matter.
William J Murray,
Such as? What “demonstrably false” statements are you talking about?
So far, all I’ve seen is a bunch of nonsense about the classical notion that knowledge is derivable using reason alone. Not to put too fine a point on it, bullshit! The classicists’ insistence on reason alone is why they were so good at maths but so utterly useless at science. What is that old saw? “Proof is for maths and alcohol”. Says it all really. It is simply not possible to demonstrate the truth of any existential claim with complete certainty. The best we can do is to gather and analyse evidence using some appropriate modelling framework.
Perhaps you should address this post, then, to those that have claimed that knowledge is derivable using reason alone. I certainly haven’t made that claim that I know of. I claimed that reason was necessary; I did not claim it was sufficient.
What you claimed was that logic could demonstrate the truth of an existential claim. Once again, nonsense! There is no such logical system and there never has been. Give me a counterexample!
Logic, if it’s anything at all, is simply a tool humans use to systematise knowledge; i.e., to put that knowledge on a formal footing. In and of itself, it is quite incapable of generating knowledge about the world. That is the essence of the empiricists’ claim that “knowledge is derived from sense impressions”; i.e., without sense impressions, knowledge is impossible.
James Bannon,
Logic makes it possible to analyze relationships among statements. It cannot evaluate the statements themselves and determine their truth or correctness.
Don’t most logical statements take the form of If…Then? Sometimes the If is omitted, but that that seems to lead to pointless arguments. One must agree on premises before reasoning.
Typically, a system that most closely resembles the aspect of the system under consideration. You can make this rigorous through statistics, but when counting sheep, natural numbers seem to work just fine. It’s a practical standard. It works even if you are a brain in a vat.
“Justifies one’s confidence” simply pushes off the answer.
Sure you did. You said, “I believe logic is a valid, objective means of discerning true statements about the universe.” What true statements?
None of those are irrational in the sense of violating the laws of logic. They are just detached from common experience.
If you are discerning them, then you are deriving them from experience, just as you argued against.
Petrushka,
I agree Petruska, but the real agenda here is for the religionists to say that knowledge of their particular god is possible. Since their god is noncorporeal then, by definition one cannot gain knowledge of the entity through the senses. This only leaves reason as a possible source for a religious epistemology, assuming we’re not going to descend into complete absurdity by admitting personal revelation as a possible source.
The sky is blue.
No, I didn’t, and your quote doesn’t imply otherwise. That quote doesn’t even imply that logic is necessary, much less sufficient.
No, I didn’t.
Are statements about such reliability either true or false?
The direct reading is that logic is {at least one of an unstated number of} valid, objective means of discerning true statements about the universe. Not sure how else to read it.
What true statements?
James Bannon,
All the arguments I’ve seen to support the existence of God rely on axiomatic statements that I don’t accept. The usual and customary one is that “everything that begins to exist requires a cause.”
That is so transparent, It makes me weep with laughter.
I have a scenario. Let us suppose someone, say me, claims some kind of extraordinary ability, say telekinesis. I choose this because it’s not so far beyond the bounds of possibility, since action at a distance is known to occur in nature. Further, suppose I am able to demonstrate this ability, say by moving pebbles around without relying on trickery. The question I would like to ask is this. What can we know about such an ability without relying on some a priori model of how it might work?
I’m not sure what you are looking for.
Obviously, one needs to do some testing of this ability before drawing conclusions.
James Bannon,
I’m not sure where this is going. The concept of telekinesis requires a lot of knowledge about how the world works, and what can be expected and not expected.
That is learned by experience. I don’t think we can even talk about concepts like cause and effect without experience.
Consider, for example, the act of catching a baseball, something most kids can do. It requires an internalization of Newton’s laws, but is done without computation. We do not instinctively know how to do it. It takes learning.
Contrast this with the problem of understanding quantum physics, which is invisible to sensory experience, and which exists only on mathematical formulas. Even intelligent people take years to become proficient.
Quantum theory is also based on experience, but of a different kind. Humans have extended their sensory world with instruments and abstractions. But it still boils down to experience. Everything we care about and talk about is rooted in experience.
Your reading is correct. Your reading doesn’t claim that logic is sufficient, and I never implied it was.
All true statements require logic as far as I know or can imagine. Without the principle of identity and non-contradiction, the concept of a “true” statement about anything collapses into meaninglessness.
The point is simple enough. Given some weird phenomenon, telekinesis in this case, what can we do to gain some knowledge about it, even if we don’t possess a theoretical framework? For example, we might ask if the effect of the ability depends on the object’s size. We might also ask if placing something between myself and the object reduces the effect in some way. Perhaps it obeys some kind of inverse square law. There are a whole series of questions we can ask that are amenable to ordinary investigation. Thus, we can gain useful knowledge about this weird phenomenon through simple experiment or trial and error, suitably repeated of course. None of this knowledge is gained, or is even accessible, through pure reason from a priori first principles.
Of course, our ordinary experiments wouldn’t help us fully understand the phenomenon; for that a deeper analysis would be needed. Perhaps some quantum physicist could come up with a plausible model couched in terms of particle interactions, just as they do with electro-magnetism for instance.
“All true statements require logic as far as I know or can imagine. Without the principle of identity and non-contradiction, the concept of a “true” statement about anything collapses into meaninglessness.”
Tomorrow is Friday.
Without a prioris and rational groundings, there is no reason to think that tomorrow “will be” (not “is”, since a future event cannot be an “is”) Friday.
Because you don’t think of the necessary a prioris and logical grounding doesn’t mean they are not necessary to to make truthful statements.
You don’t seem to be interested in clarifying your ideas, suggesting you don’t think they are worth conveying. If you say that ‘logic is a means of discerning,’ that implies that if you have logic you can discern. Perhaps you mean you have to add fuel (experience) to your logic to arrive at new truths, but it can’t be that hard for you to simply clarify your views.
Og looks into the sky and utters “Blue!” He looks into Ogle’s eyes and whispers “Blue!” Perhaps you think Og is being “logical,” but that rather stretches the term.
How can I be be more clear than my direct statements that logic is necessary but not sufficient to discern true statements?
We’ll ignore your previous construct, then. We also assume you mean true statements about the universe. Is that correct?
One can have two views of logic; that it is a human invention – it means whatever humans decide it means; or that it is a discovery. Logic is either subjective, or it is objective. If logic is subjective, then it is really only a rhetorical device one uses to convince others of whatever they want to convince them of.
However, if logic, like the theory of gravity, is a discovered description of some fundamental aspect of existence; if the principle of identity is a true aspect of existence, the principle of non-contradiction, the principle of the excluded middle, etc;., then like gravity, whether or not one realizes they are employing gravitational theory or logical theory, they are – to whatever degree of success they accomplish.
IF A=A, and A cannot be both A and NOT-A at the same time in the same place, then calling something “blue” means something, because without the principle of identity, the sky can be blue, and black, and purple at the same time. Without the assumption (even unspoken and unrealized) that Ogel and Og share the same objective reality and perceive colors the same way; without the term “blue” meaning a certain color and not other colors, or not meaning color and a taste and a rock all at the same time, the utterance has no meaning or value, and there is no reason to make such an utterance in the first place.
Because one doesn’t realize all of the assumptions and logical axioms one utilizes in just pointing at the sky and uttering “blue” as a descriptor, doesn’t mean they are not being employed; they just aren’t being recognized as such.
William J Murray,
Nonsense! All that is required is that today is Thursday! Besides, logic cannot determine the truth of the original statement because it is non-analytic.
Today = Thursday is a form of logic based on the principle of identity and non-contradiction.
“However, if logic, like the theory of gravity, is a discovered description of some fundamental aspect of existence; if the principle of identity is a true aspect of existence, the principle of non-contradiction, the principle of the excluded middle, etc;., then like gravity, whether or not one realizes they are employing gravitational theory or logical theory, they are – to whatever degree of success they accomplish.”
Take a look at what you’ve said here again. The “theory of gravity” (and there are several competing theories, none of which explain the phenomenon fully) is not a “fact about the world”. It is a theory used by humans to model a particular phenomenon; i.e., it is an abstraction! Next you’ll be telling us that things like numbers have a concrete existence or that there are such things as Euclidean triangles. Methinks you’ve been reading too much Platinga!
Also, please note that your comment of “nonsense” and your argument that I am wrong is itself an attempt at a logical refutation of my statements, as if logic can discern true statements from false. How can one determine if a statement makes sense, or is nonsense, unless they evaluate it logically?
While one might hold the intellectual position that logic is subjective and cannot discern true statements from false; one cannot live (or argue) as if that belief actually true – demonstrated here in this very thread, where people argue against logic as an objective arbiter of true statements by employing logic (such as it is) in the attempt to demonstrate my statements to be false.
IOW, their own practical, applied arguments contradict their stated position. Without logic, all one can do is make assertions and resort to rhetorical hand-waving against my statements.
Holding beliefs one cannot live as if true is irrational.
This is the problem I think many atheists and determinists/materialists have; they are entirely unaware of the axiomatic premises their views must refer to (whether they admit it or not), and have no idea what the necessary ramifications of those premises are. Their philosophy begins “in the middle” of empiricism, without any understanding of warrant or grounding, and so they must “steal concepts” from theistic and dualistic worldviews, even though they are unaware that they are doing so.
You’re STILL avoiding the issue! “Tomorrow is Friday” is non-analytic! It’s truth CANNOT be determined by the application of logic. (And don’t say “will be” to me again. Any competent speaker of the language recognises that “tomorrow is Friday” is a perfectly valid phrase).
As I’ve said before, rhetoric isn’t a rebuttal.
I didn’t claim that the theory of gravity was a fact about the world; I said it describes a fact about the world. Whether the description is accurate or not doesn’t impact the fact it attempts to describe.
The principles of logic form a theory that is either a description of a fact about the world (A=A, A cannot be both A and NOT-A at the same time and place) or it is just subjectively-generated rules that may or may not work in various applications, and only works to the degree anyone happens to think it works.
As with geometry, there is more than one system of logic.
Good example. The Theory of Gravity is a human abstraction. At best, it approximates some aspect of the world.
Except that Ogle’s eyes aren’t really the exact color of the sky. They are bluish. Og sees the color of the sky in Ogle’s eyes. It’s true to a degree.
Again, if you are simply treating “true” is a logical particle, then your position is unarguable, but vacuous. If you are referring to discerning various things about the universe, then simply looking up at the sky can do that.