A few times I’ve referred to my view about “the God question” as “radical agnosticism.” I thought it might be fun to work through what this means.
For the purposes of this discussion, by “God” I shall mean follow Hart’s definition of God as “the one infinite source of all that is: eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, uncreated, uncaused, perfectly transcendent of all things and for that very reason absolutely immanent to all things” (The Experience of God, p. 30).
Next, I shall stipulate that our assertions about the world fall into two classes: those that take a truth-value in all possible worlds and those that take a truth-value only in the actual world. This is a contemporary version of “Hume’s Fork”: there are “relations of ideas”, “truths of reason”, analytic a priori claims and then there are “matters of fact”, “truths of fact,” synthetic a posteriori claims. (There are some reasons to be skeptical of this neat distinction but I’ll leave that aside for now.)
Whether or not God exists would therefore seem to be either a “truth of fact” or a “truth of reason”. I shall therefore now argue that it cannot be either.
Truths of fact are either directly observable phenomena or they are posited phenomena. (Though the boundary is strictly methodological and shifts over time.) But there are many presumptive truths of fact — claims with truth-value about the actual world — which we know have turned out to be false. And we know that because of empirical inquiry, and in particular, in the collection of techniques of inquiry called “science”. (I shall not insult anyone’s intelligence by assuming that there is a single thing called “the scientific method”).
Central to disciplined empirical inquiry, including and especially the sciences, is the act of measurement: intersubjectively verifiable assignments of quantitative variation across some interval of spatio-temporal locations. (It might be said that “the Scientific Revolution” is the historical period during which measurement slowly becomes the dominant conception of objectivity.)
But with that notion in place, it is perfectly clear that it is not even possible to take measurements of a perfectly transcendent being. A being that transcends all of space and time cannot be measured, which means that no claims about Him can be subjected to the tribunal of scientific inquiry. And hence no matters of fact about God can be verified one way or the other. That is to say that all claims about God that are restricted to the actual world have an indeterminate truth-value: they cannot be determined to be true or false
The epistemic situation is no better when we turn from a posteriori to a priori claims. In a priori claims, the tribunal is not science but logic, and the central epistemic concept is not measurability but provability. Can the existence of God be proven? Many have thought so!
But here two things must be pointed out: a proof, to be deductively valid, consists of re-organizing the information contained in the initial assumptions. One can generate a logically valid proof of the existence of God. (Gödel, for example, has a logically valid version of the Ontological Argument.) The process of proof-construction is not going to give you more information in the conclusion than was present in the premises.
Logic is limited in another important way: there are multiple logics. What can proved in one logic can be disproven in a different logic. It depends on the choice of logical system. Once you’ve chosen a logical system, and you’ve chosen some premises, then of course one can prove that God exists. But neither the premises nor the rules are “self-evident”, inscribed on the very face of reason or of reality, etc.
Hence we cannot determine that God exists or does not exist on the basis of logic alone, since provability is no more reliable here than measurability is.
On this basis, I conclude that it is not even possible for beings such as ourselves to assign any truth-value at all to the assertion that God exists. This yields a radical agnosticism. Whereas the moderate agnostic can accept the logical possibility of some future evidence or reasoning that would resolve the issue, the radical agnostic insists that beings with minds like ours are completely unable to resolve the issue at all.
Radical agnosticism is at the same time compatible with either utter indifference to the question of the existence of God (“apatheism”) or some quite definite stance (ranging from theism to pantheism to deism to atheism). All that radical agnosticism insists on here is that all definite stances on the God-question are leaps of faith — no matter what direction.
It is amusing to me that those who believe in perfect revelation from a perfect being a) are so wrong about so many things and b) never seem to have any insights into anything amazingly practical. Newton and Einstein, for example, never claimed to get their insights about the workings of the universe from “revelation”. Yet FMM, who claims a perfect god can reveal perfect things to him, has nothing revolutionary to offer on quantum mechanics, investing, food production and distribution, lottery winning, or even pizza making.
Says something about the validity of this alleged “revelation”…
ETA: And just in case FMM doesn’t personally find the above items particularly practical, why hasn’t your god revealed a cure for cancer? Or better, how about giving you perfect instructions for being more persuasive concerning the claims about said god…
You understand, FMM’s god has a very long history of NEVER telling anyone anything they didn’t already believe before they asked. Most of which was wrong.
As you are so fond of noting, FMM, it’s not about you. The vast majority of the world has determined that your hypothesis has been falsified. And we’re good with that. Our hypothesis is far more effective, practical, insightful, and simply useful. That you don’t don’t think it presents a cogent, consistent justification for knowledge sans some invisible pink unicorn simple means that you won’t be contributing anything of any value to humanity. No one else is obligated to be hindered by your falsified perspective however.
Oh indeed!
If you were familiar with them, your treatment of the topic would be completely different. You would have understood the objection in my first post.
The definition says “the one infinite source of all that is… transcendent of all things”. Do “all things” include “the one infinite source”? Can you search around and spot the infinite source of everything among the things of the universe? You think you can.
Your post rests on this ludicrous premise. If you were really familiar with any of the theologians you mention, you would have foreseen this objection before beginning to type.
Let’s see. The statement is “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” Does this statement have any evidence standing for it? What’s the evidence? If there is none, then by its own standard the statement can be dismissed without evidence.
Obviously, the crux of the matter is the concept of “evidence”. As long as this concept is not defined, the statement is meaningless, but after the concept has defined, the statement requires some evidence, as defined, to stand.
Theologians can masturbate in public, but the founders of the major religions — say Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Joseph Smith, Ron Hubbard — all had conceptions of evidence that ordinary people can understand. As did the writers of the testaments. They were not ethereal philosophers. They understood that evidence is something that could be presented in court.
The mystical religions do not require evidence, because they do not assert the existence of a deity.
I have browsed these threads for a couple of years without seeing anyone posit just what the eff is the value added by defining god as truth. So what?
What follows?
In general, the people who espouse this are clueless about the way things work, and assert all kinds of nonsense.
You do realize, Erik, that you’re not the first person with empty claims to try this shtick, right? Here’s the catch though: Hitchen’s Razor isn’t an assertion. D’oh!
No. The crux of the matter is that those who present empty assertions should not be surprised when the vast majority of people go, “HAHAHAHAHAHA!” That’s really the crux of the matter. It’s simply unreasonable (and thus outright dismissed) for someone to have to disprove gods or claims about gods. Those who make such claims have the burden to support the claims if they want the claims taken seriously by those who don’t simply accept them at face value. Otherwise, those making such claims should not be surprised when the courts, educators, scientists, rational people, etc simply laugh at them and dismiss the claims as absurd.
I’m sure you realize that you are not the first person to try the “Hitchen’s Razor isn’t an assertion” shtick.
No. The crux of the matter is that everybody rightly goes either “HAHAHA!” or “neener neener!” as long as you issue empty assertions, i.e. statements with undefined concepts. Hitchen’s Razor is like that. As long as its central concept is undefined, the statement says absolutely nothing.
And you have certainly familiarized yourself concerning how theologians historically argue their cases, right? You know very well and you can tell me what they call evidence, right?
By looking in the wrong place you positively guarantee that you will never see. You will find no experts here worthy of consultation in those matters.
That seems to be the answer to everything. The all purpose retort to anyone who doesn’t see the emperor’s clothes.
I understand perfectly well what you’re saying. The ground of being itself is not a thing in the sense of any thing that exists. But it’s complete garbage to attach the classical definition that KN chose to the likes of Kierkegaard and Tillich. They wouldn’t have accepted it. If you’d understood my challenge to formalize the definition, then you’d have realized that I was channeling Tillich without mentioning his name.
Having seen KN’s attempts to formalize scholastic arguments, I can say that I understand the challenge and I cannot accept it, because the formalization acceptable to you would not be the argument its author made.
The issue here is this: KN picked the definition to deal with. Let him deal with it.
Well, you’re welcome to try to demonstrate how it meets the definition. Simply claiming it is an assertion doesn’t mean much to me.
I’ll simply note that Wikipedia (as well as other wikis and dictionaries) simply disagree with you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_%28philosophy%29
Hey…if you wish to dismiss all of philosophy and science out of ignorance, that’s your right I suppose. But I don’t see a good reason to climb on that wagon…
Is God part of “all that is” or God simply “isn’t”?
There’s no reason why one couldn’t find an infinite source of being. What makes God unverifiable in principle is that it’s defined as transcendent
You don’t get to just make shit up and expect people to take you seriously (at least you shouldn’t be able to). That’s what “Hitchen’s Razor” is about–and, not incidentally, it’s an ancient principle in jurisprudence.
I can’t see anything wrong with it, either. To be fair, it was originally meant more for pragmatic matters, and it’s not so simple to use when, say, mathematics (axioms) is at issue. Logic and philosophy are often about matters that aren’t exactly simple matters of evidence, although I’d maintain that they’re really only proper subjects when they are in fact complex matters of evidence and what results from that.
With FMM’s position, it’s really a non-starter because it is presuppositionalism. FMM would complain if he were tried via someone else’s presuppositions, but we’re supposed to discuss trite fallacies like they might be deep wisdom? No, it doesn’t work, mainly because just making shit up isn’t good enough. There’s never been anything to discuss, and, basically, we’re fair to consider his claims to be falsified when he claims that there are no atheists (people who rationally conclude that there is no good evidence for god(s)–we don’t need any equivocations about whether or not they may have some superstitions or what-not). So his claims had nothing to begin with, then revealed themselves to be wrong by making untrue claims about reality, most notably that there are no atheists.
Glen Davidson
If it’s an empirical claim that all assertions are either logical truths or empirical claims, then that claim would be refuted with sufficient evidence that there are assertions that are neither logical truths nor empirical claims. Then it would be an empirical claim that all assertions are logical truths, empirical claims, or synthetic a priori claims.
Maybe I’m just being dense, but I don’t see why that’s a problematic position.
Likewise, the old Popperian complaint that verificationism is self-refuting doesn’t seem right to me. The verificationist principle of meaning is supposed to divide all assertions (statements, Satzen) into two kinds.
But the principle is a proposal or rule, not an assertion about what is the case. Now, if the logical positivists lack a semantics of normativity (as is indeed the case!), that would be the right way to go about attacking verificationism — not pointing out that it is self-refuting.
🙂 🙂
It doesn’t help to deny that it’s an assertion, I don’t think. If one side can play around that way, so can the other. What it’s not is an “empirical assertion”–but neither is a bunch of the stuff he criticizes. One can take it as a suggestion as a sensible way to engage in conversation, but, as Erik says, how sensible it is depends on what is meant by “evidence.”
Actually the definition says” the one infinite source of all that is: eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, uncreated, uncaused, perfectly transcendent of all things and for that very reason absolutely immanent to all things”
The use of the colon to me indicates the following are attributes of the source: Uncaused ,Uncreated. From the definition of source one can assume that ” all that is” is created by the source, therefore the source( uncreated) is not included in the class ” all there is”.
Then it would follow that transcendent of all things would also follow the same construction.
Maybe this should be a cautionary tale that the use of … can lead to confusion.
What is asserted as evidence without evidence can be dismissed as evidence without evidence.
Again, what would/could count as evidence that some assertion was neither empirical nor analytic? You’ve said: production of some synthetic apriori assertion. But Hume’s Fork says those don’t exist! If you find one, you’ve contradicted the fork. I know that that’s all that’s being sought is an empirical DISconfirmation, but one wants to know what (from the point of view of one who thinks there IS such a fork) might constitute a disconfirmatory entity. If we can’t even describe such an entity–how can the fork claim be empirical? But if fork claim analytic, why isn’t it obvious?
I think that defense is a quibble. If the claim that meaning isn’t verification isn’t an assertion, the Hume’s Fork isn’t an assertion either. But it’s precisely the sort of thing that those who don’t believe that Hume’s Fork is correct would call something that is neither factual nor analytic. That is, if it doesn’t take care of stuff like Hume’s Fork itself, then it has little philosophical interest.
And simply saying that it’s not an assertion doesn’t mean much to me. So we are even. By the way, I didn’t say it was an assertion. I said it’s a statement. But for you probably it’s not a statement either. If so, then we can safely disregard the whole nonsense.
You have taught Robin well.
Seriously, to have a rule that states “All statements must be so-and-so” while the rule itself is supposedly not a statement, this is called special pleading. The fallacy is so transparent that it should make you skeptical or agnostic or something. But no such luck.
I agree. (And agreeing with you is not among my favored activities).
I’m agnostic about that. 😉
You said earlier that the Fork was a “categorial commitment.”. The Wikipedia article on Hall (which you wrote, as I recall) says:
“In metaphilosophy, Hall held that there could be no empirical or deductive proofs of the superiority of one basic philosophy over another (say, of realism over phenomenalism), because he took preference of one or the other to be a function of acceptance of the view’s basic categories, an attitude he called “categorial commitment”. We are all, he claimed, trapped within a “categorio-centric predicament”, since we cannot step outside of all categorial frameworks and determine which is best from some preferable outside footing. All we can do is try to determine which is most consonant with both common sense and modern science”.
But if we adjust our categorial commitments to stay aligned with science, aren’t they then at least indirectly empirical?
By the way, Hall’s approach does seem similar to ideas in Putnam’s conceptual frameworks, which are also indirectly empirical, although in a different way, I believe.
Right–that there’s SOME connection with the empirical world shows they aren’t analytic. What the connection is, precisely, is hard to say. (Consider “There’s a world external to my sensory inputs” or “Some events have already happened.”) They’re not strictly verifiable or disconfirmable, but they’re not simply true by virtue of the meanings of their terms. They have to relied on for there even to BE such things as empirical evidence. The very idea of such categories is inconsistent with positivism….and Hume’s Fork too.
That is the corner of presuppositionism at which I agree with Fifth. He just thinks that things follow from it that don’t.
Well, not really since I’m not the one trying to convince (or “hypothesize”) either myself or others of some foundational proposition. If you’re wrong, I’m perfectly happy; if I’m wrong, it makes no difference. You (and your ilk) are the only ones arguing (or “hypothesizing”) a necessary position that people have to adopt.
So I pass. See how easy that was?
You’re still left with an assertion without evidence that I (and the vast majority) reject.
How’s that working out? If you say “fine”, why are you posting on message boards like TSZ?
Well, you indicated it was essentially both:
What exactly were you getting if you weren’t relating the two terms?
Actually it is statement concerning the philosophy of the validity (and acceptance) of claims. I don’t dispute that in the least.
Except that isn’t the situation here. We aren’t referring to all statements; we are discussing a particular class of statement. In this case, an assertion about some kind of object (and a supposed entity to boot). And we are further discussing why anyone would think that those giving said assertion – without any sort of supporting evidence – should expect others who are skeptical to disprove the assertion.
Talk about special pleading…
I wonder if perhaps a few of you are under the impression that I endorse Hume’s Fork. In fact I do not. I wrote the OP to show that radical agnosticism follows from Hume’s Fork (as indeed he himself recognized), and that we can appreciate what is right about Hume’s argument without involving any of Hume’s flawed semantics or facultative psychology.
(I do find it interesting, however, that C. I. Lewis, who was deeply Kantian in many respects, nevertheless accepted the Fork.)
The deepest problem with the Fork is that Kant is right: there are synthetic a priori assertions. The difficulty is how to identity them and how to understand what they are. I do think that there are “categories,” in something like Hall’s sense, though I side with Dewey and with Sellars in thinking that all categories are in principle revisable — even if in practice we revise them slightly and seldom.
can you provide a link to an example of that?
peace
What? you are going to have to unpack that for me. Revelation and personal conviction are not functionally equivalent in fact they are functionally opposite.
One is all about you the other all about someone else
No folks like me who don’t claim to be the official decider were persecuted by folks like you who do think they are qualified to rule about things beyond their authority based on their own inflated opinions of their “rational” powers.
So it was, so it is still, nothing really changes
peace
Do you have any evidence this is true?
peace
Don’t remember Hall saying anything about categories being unrevisable. I think Hall’s main difference from Sellars, as we’ve discussed before, regarded Sellars’ view that the manifest image would be superceded by a scientific image. Also some complicated differences regarding intentionality and sensation. Sellars’ paper on Hall is very good.
I haven’t read much Dewey. Maybe some day.
Sure, empirical evidence says empiricism has piled up an humongous amount of knowledge. Evidence also says presuppositionalism can’t settle a single argument. One can therefore, tentatively, affirm that claims about reality that are not supported by compelling evidence should be dismissed without giving it a second thought
Ontologically, yes — but from the subjective perspective of the person who is experiencing those states, they are indistinguishable.
Suppose Sarah and Philip are both experiencing what they take to be divine revelation. Now suppose Sarah is right — she is. But Philip is mistaken — he’s just having an epileptic seizure. Are there any differences internal to Sarah’s evidence or Philip’s evidence that shows that one of them is right and the other is wrong? Are there any claims that Sarah could make about her experience that Philip could not also make?
If divine revelation and epileptic seizure are epistemically indistinguishable, then how can divine revelation provide any epistemic foundation for anything? Would you trust a seizure as the foundation of your worldview?
My own view is that the scientific image will explain why we have the manifest image that we have — not supersede it. I think that Sellars’s arguments for the replacement of the manifest image by the scientific image are really quite untenable.
Exactly. Very nicely put.
It’s here where FMM turns to arguments, mostly to the effect that if anybody knows anything, he must be right–i.e. Not having a siezure. But none of it works. That predicament, is the human condition and ‘revelation’ is no help for it, for precisely the reason you give.
Just gotta have heart!
You have a strange idea of what revelation is like.
I know people who are epileptic and who also know stuff. Knowing stuff does not in anyway feel like an epileptic seizure. Knowing stuff simply feels like believing something that is true. An epileptic seizure not so much
peace
Yes Sarah could claim that her experience was not at all like a seizure and if she chose to she could map the synoptic response in Philip’s brain when he learned something new and could compare it to when he was having a seizure.
Revelation does not require some sort of altered brain state and the presence of such a state would tend to suggest a different thing is happening than revelation
I suppose It’s possible that during a seizure Philip could learn something. Perhaps he could discover his medicine was not working but he could learn the same thing by listening to what bystanders had to say after the event.
But the experience of learning is not like the experience of seizing so in this case the revelation would be in spite of the brain state and not because of it.
Any way there is nothing about revelation that requires any brain state whatsoever.
It’s about God it’s not about me
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
You’ve missed kN’s point (which doesn’t require a siezure or anything like it). You can pick whatever qualitative aspects you like.
How do you know that?
revelation.
An omnipotent God could reveal something with out altering the recipients brain state if he chose to
peace
Of course. That’s the kewl thing about being omnipotent – you can create a rock so heavy you can’t lift it, AND you can lift it. You are unconstrained by physics, by logic, by time or by internal consistency. You are playing tennis with the net down – and with imaginary rackets and balls and no rules. It’s good to be omnipotent.
No I got his point. I only had a minute and just wanted to point out his apparently skewed idea of what revelation is.
I’ll address his point now
According to your worldview is there any difference in the internal evidence between knowing the truth and believing a falsehood?
If so please describe the difference and how we can know by only looking at internal evidence whether a belief is false
Knowledge and false belief are epistemically distinguishable. The difference is in the truth of the object of the belief not in the internal state of the believer.
peace
of course you know that you are incorrect. An omnipotent being can’t do something against his own nature.
Which means in the case of God he can’t do what is logically impossible
peace
Precisely. That’s why we can’t be sure whether an apparent revelation is a real revelation.
sure we can if this is revealed to us.
That is the same way we know anything.
Again it’s not about me or my internal evidence. It’s about God who reveals.
on the other hand
In your worldview can you ever be sure whether an apparent truth is a real truth?
If you say no does that mean that you are not justified in believing anything?
peace
So you’re saying your god is ALMOST omnipotent, which is kind of like being ALMOST unique. But it’s nice of you to start a list of all the things an omnipotent god CANNOT do. Keep going…
So the way to be absolutely sure you have the Truth, you need to (1) sincerely believe you have a hotline to someone who knows it, and (2) ask for and receive it. And presto, no more doubts.
I actually believe you think revelation is the only way to know anything, as opposed to, like, observation and test. It shows, know what I mean?
And Observation and Test are so much better because you say so?