Kantian Naturalist and I have been hopscotching from thread to thread, discussing the nature of religious language. The main point of contention is the assertoric/disclosive distinction: When is religious language assertoric — that is, when does it make claims about reality — and when is it merely disclosive, revealing attitude and affect without making actual claims?
I’ve created this thread as a permanent home for this otherwise nomadic discussion.
It may also be a good place for an ongoing discussion of another form of religious language — scripture. For believers who take scripture to be divinely inspired, the question is when it should be taken literally, when it should be taken figuratively or metaphorically, and whether there are consistent and justifiable criteria for drawing that distinction.
Why? You made a statement that I disagreed with.
I asked if you could possibly be inclined to change your mind if you could be shown to be wrong.
You answered no way, your mind was closed on the matter. And now you’ve confirmed it.
Are you saying that because I failed to quote your reasons for your closed-mindedness that it somehow makes a difference?
How have I possibly misrepresented your position?
Based on your posts here, Gregory, I’m guessing that’s the sum and substance of your book right there–plus some insults, of course. Pigeon hole stuff.
I need to have a pretty good reason to pay .50 a page for a book. =P
Now this
king’skink’s name wasMidasMung and everything he touched turned togoldreligious mush.Mung,
Yeah, they did that, not me 😉 Book #2 is in press now, it’ll go for less. You should contact me privately if interested.
hotshoe_,
Yes, he does. No, you won’t get it.
Quote mining is not against the rules here. Suggesting that someone is not posting in good faith when they repeatedly quote mine is against the rules. I’m looking forward to keiths’ upcoming (hopefully) post touching on that topic.
DNA_Jock,
Indeed. Unfortunately, there are so many different varieties of fundamentalist claims that it’s necessary to get clarity before addressing them. It’s too easy to expend effort refuting nonsense only to have the person making the original assertion retreat to “Oh, that’s not the exact nonsense I was claiming.”
I concur. Erik, please either directly answer the very straightforward question that has been posed or retract your claim about the historicity of the biblical flood.
BruceS,
They go unfortunately interesting places in terms of politics, particularly in the U.S. That’s why, as DNA_Jock has pointed out, it is important to rebut those claims when they are made.
Some here are just trying to find out whether they’re talking with “such people” or not. That, when asked, others here refuse to say whether they are or not is evidence, I guess, but there’s what I take to be a sensible reluctance to impute silly beliefs to people based on that sort of evidence alone.
I hear this one actually names names and points out views Gregory takes not only to be wrong but mis-classified! Not only that, certain views are called out as philosophist, atheist, and grannyish!
You won’t want to miss it…..at ANY price!
And I don’t see that as at all deep. It’s a “mystery” that philosophy has created for itself with its excessive emphasis on language and representations.
Maybe so, Neil. Maybe so.
FWIW, I was thinking about this post.
Now it may be I was reading something you did not intend; I’ve tried to grapple with some anti-realist posts about the past at another forum and maybe the language simply reminded me of things they said there.
Yes, it is one of my many admirable specialities. Which I chose not to display at that moment in its full glory to Mung the scum-monger.
But I’ll be happy to show you, Gregory, if you just ask nicely. Beg a little, if you really want me to show you the good stuff.
I was thinking more of this kind of stuff.
I agree the consciousness is more of a mystery. But I can wrap my head around the analytic philosophy I read on consciousness. ( I am not sure that consciousness and (original) intentionality, are necessarily linked though)
But the stuff posted by the anti-realists in the linked thread (eg the guy named after a Star Episode TOS catch phrase) baffles me. But in a good way. As in: I am sure there is something to what he is saying, but I don’t get much out of it Reminds me of one of your interlocutors at TSZ. Not Fifth.
Heh. I’ve already seen that I won’t get any apology from Mung about this.
I’m content with letting it go now.
I’m quite hopeful that keiths will not grace us with a post or comment on the topic. 🙂
I agree that some of the emotion at TSZ is US politics in disguise. But I an not an American!
hotshoe_,
Is that legal in your jurisdiction?
BruceS,
I’m sorry for your situation. Do you need liberating?
I’m not an American either, but I think that, whatever your nationality, the prospect of theocrats getting their hands on nuclear or biological weapons is somewhat disconcerting.
Yes, they are discussing the same sort of issue.
Many people talk of the past as if something like an unchangeable platonic entity. Maybe it is congenial to think of it that way, but it really is an inference from evidence available in the present.
A scientist does need something similar to the consensus view of the past. But I’m not sure we should be so critical of creationists for having a different view of the past. The problem with creationism is not what it believes about the past. Rather, it is what it tries to do in the present (such as with politics and school curricula).
No connection between the two?
But I suppose if they disagree with you about the present, that’s really beyond the pale. Seems to be the common view among the privileged, at least.
Never mind that now, though, I guess we could just make up the past from now on. I thought that earth science, paleontology, and evolutionary science were triumphs precisely because they got rid of much of the guesswork, but we could substitute myths and relativism because the past is a matter of “inference.” For myself, it is primarily about defending science and its methods against presumptions that one method is as good as another.
Glen Davidson
I think of consciousness and original intentionality as distinct (but not separate) issues. I think I have a pretty good story on original intentionality. I’m not sure what to say about consciousness, in part because there are good and bad ways of understanding what it means to say that consciousness is a “mystery”.
On the best reading I can come up, consciousness is a “mystery” in that we don’t know how to synthesize, into a single coherent picture, the subjective experience of ourselves as beings in the world (the phenomenological side) with the objective explanations of objects in space and time (the scientific side). And perhaps such a synthesis will forever elude our grasp. It is possible that there could be a science of consciousness but I am pessimistic.
Yes — the real problem is the epistemological relativism that results when we start saying that creationism and evolution interpret the same evidence with different assumptions.
The crux of the matter is whether one’s present assumptions have themselves been informed by past discoveries and whether one is willing to admit that present and future discoveries can lead to different and better assumptions, or whether one’s assumptions are forever fixed and immutable.
In other words, it is the contrast between pragmatism and dogmatism that matters.
Nuclear weapons are scary. No matter who has them.
But still, Pakistan is very scary. Iran less so IMHO. Israel teeters on the edge of theocracy but is not as scary as Russia and what it did to Poland in some recent internal Russian war games (nuked it).
ETA: North Korea is not a theocracy and is not that scary, unless you live in Seoul (but plain artillery would still be pretty scary in that case).
But maybe by theocracy you are referring to a future Republican government in the US?
Politics is important and interesting. Debate about how all those animals fit on ark of so many cubits is not.
Although I understand the latest explanation says that it was only quantum information about the animals that was saved and cubits is a copyist’s error for qubits.
Nah. But we appreciate you taking Ted Cruz off our hands.
Why? It’s the same information on the phenomenological side as on the “objective” side. That’s why there’s no strict divide.
Consciousness likely is just what is really happening in the conscious regions of the mind, while the view from the “outside” is the abstraction that can never be “like” the reality, and should never be expected to be like it.
Glen Davidson
Well, p-zombies, and Mary colour scientist, and the explanatory gap say that won’t cut it. And McGinn the Mysterian says humans cannot create an explanation to bridge the subjective and objective.
But, then again, maybe McGinn should have been more mysterious in the emails he sent to female students.
Now I am optimistic that an explanation will be found and accepted by the scientific community.
But I suspect I personally will not have any qualia about the solution (because I won’t have any qualia about anything by the time we solve it, unless uploaded intelligences have qualia, but then that supposes a solution, I guess!).
Did you notice the exchange in Minds Online about the pragmatic approach tointentional contents. It is short but interesting, although Egan’s final comment on Neander’s paper seems to indicate it was a bit of a tempest in a tea cup.
I agree. I see the issues with the analysis of the past as variations on the themes of the discussions on internal realism and scientific realism in that other thread.
I also agree that the danger (in the US) from creationists occurs when they try to force their views through politics into public policy. I think those views must be fought politically and on their merits, not by ridiculing religion.
For me, as a Canadian, that US fight is more of a spectator sport. We are closer to Europe than to the US in terms of the lack of influence of religious dogma on our politics. For example, gay and married politicians are not controversial. But politicians who come out against evolution are told to shut up by their own party.
In Canada, politicians who come out of the closet are elected and politicians who come out as anti-evolution are closeted for a stern talking to by their elders.
BruceS,
The problem is that the fundamentalists in the U.S. push their agenda based on their view that the Bible myths like the Garden of Eden and the Flood are historical events. The best response is to show that those stories are unsupported by the available evidence and, in fact, fly in the face of that evidence.
When Erik makes the claim that the biblical flood actually happened, that can be justifiably challenged. When he evades answering, that can be justifiably pointed out. If you and Kantian Naturalist don’t find that discussion interesting, that’s fine. Just don’t try to make excuses for intellectual dishonesty.
Erik, you have still not answered the question. Here it is again for your convenience.
Now, the Bible does say that only eight people survived the flood. Do you believe that to be true in reality? Note that I am not asking about what the text says — that’s very clear. Do you contend, as part of your claim that the flood was an historical event, that in reality those eight people were at one point in time the only living humans on the planet?
A simple yes or no will do.
That’s a fair request.
I myself think that Erik simply made a mistake in inferring from “many different ancient civilizations have a flood myth” to “there was probably a single, more-or-less global flood”. The more parsimonious explanation is that each civilization has its own flood myth because those civilizations were located near rivers, which are prone to periodic flooding. Certainly the end of the last major glaciation seems like an inauspicious beginning for the idea that the Flood was real.
Beyond that, there’s a much deeper problem in making sense of the Flood as a historical event. We have good reasons, based on Biblical and other sources, that the ancient Israelite cosmology conceived of the terrestrial world as suspended between two great bodies of water — the upper waters (the sky) and the lower waters (beneath the earth, of which the ocean is the visible portion). Given that cosmology, the Flood make sense — if God were to destroy the world, He would do so by removing the separation between the upper and lower waters. Hence, rain.
In other words, the Flood makes perfect sense within ancient Israelite cosmology. But since that cosmology is not ours (and indeed, is also completely false), no one who accepts the epistemic authority of modern science should believe that there really such any such thing. The Young-Earth Creationists who are most consistent on this point are willing to say that they are putting their trust in the Bible over science itself.
The problem that they then face is this: if the Biblical cosmology were right, then satellites should be impossible. GPS and cell-phones could not work, if the ancient Israelites were right about the nature of the physical universe.
Needless to say, I do not think appreciating any of the ethical and spiritual truths expressed in Torah or the Prophets requires accepting the ancient Israelite cosmology.
Wow, you have married politicians up there!? Holy shit!
Seriously, there’s not much party discipline here. In Mass. unenrolled voters (independents) can vote in any party primary they like.
There’s no minority representation either. It’s not really a democracy: I’m not sure what to call it.
The thought that spiritual truths depend on a literal reading of Scripture, and accordingly endorsing the ancient Israelite cosmology, reminds me of Quine’s lovely bit of doggerel:
“The unrefined and sluggish mind
Of Homo Javinensis
Could only treat of things concrete
And present to the senses”
It takes a mind capable of abstraction to see that a text can be literally false and yet contain spiritual truth. Given Erik’s own professed rationalism and criticisms of empiricism, I think he would be better served to sidestep any claims about what parts of Scripture can and can’t be empirically confirmed.
I don’t get this reasoning at all. How are small local floods more parsimonious than a bigger regional or even global one? And how do you get from the yearly flooding of rivers to a flood myth where mankind is drowned in unstoppable rain? Where’s the parsimony?
I don’t get this either. How is the fact that their flood story matches with their cosmology a deeper problem? A cosmology that science has not disproven. At best science has not confirmed it.
Satellites are possible because the water fell down.
Literalists have noted also another thing. Prior to the flood, ages of patriarchs are around thousand years. After the flood it rapidly declined and settled around a hundred. Guess why.
You did not address my claims concerning the flood. Others are doing your job now.
GET A NEW LAWYER!!
KN said:
But then, I’m not the one handing out moral proclamations as if someone else should consider them valid, now am I?
Well, we know that rivers are prone to flooding during massive storms. It’s more consistent with what we know about the actual world to think that different civilizations encountered different regional floods than to think that all civilizations experienced a single flood.
Are you saying that modern cosmology has not disconfirmed ancient Israelite cosmology? Would you say that modern cosmology has also not disconfirmed the belief that the Earth rests on the back of a giant turtle?
I am beginning to suspect that you’re having a good bit of fun with me.
I can’t imagine.
And follow the cop’s advice (which applies even in nations which don’t have an equivalent to Miranda warning) that anything you say, can and will be used against you. So DON’T SAY NUFFINK!
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Dawg, I’m laughing so hard at Erik exposing his silliness that I can hardly type. I’m laughing so hard I’m tempted to say literally ROFLMAO, Except I don’t like that spelling, and given this thread, I want to stay away from “literally”. 🙂
Dawg, how can any one person be so brainy, so linguistically competent, and so dumb at the same time.
Well, that’s one possible explanation for Erik’s dingbat comment. 🙁
The first question asks (if I’m reading right) if “making sense of the world” occurs according preconceptions and predilections of those who are trying to make sense of the world? Of course, but not only according to their preconceptions and predilections. You see, they are trying to make sense of the world, trying to learn something new, but they can only do it according to their capability of learning. It’s not straightforwardly so that wherever they look, they can make sense of things, and it’s also not the opposite – that because they have preconceptions, they would only get more confused. Neither extreme is correct. “Making sense” is a step by step cognitive process, not a matter of input-output of data.
Then, what do you mean by “the issue of realism”?
“…we can only answer questions of what is real after we pick out the sense in which the audience understands the text for its particular purpose.”
If I’m reading this right, you mean to ask if we (here and now) should first understand the text’s sense (meaning, context) according to its purpose (genre) before asking whether the text is about reality or not. Well, of course. Ancient people perceived the world differently. The things they took seriously were different and their sense of humour was different. The text was composed by people who saw the world differently. To determine how much of our own world we can find there we have to first understand what is being told – in terms of the text’s own merits – and then compare it to our understanding of reality, if that’s possible. It won’t do any good to project our presuppositions all over the place, as if everybody everywhere should follow our understanding of the world.
At the same time, biologists think it’s parsimonious to suppose that all life forms came from a few initial ones. Yet the civilisations are supposed to always have been separate, and there could not have been a flood that affected entire humanity, when humanity was compact enough to have a single early civilization? I don’t see how your use of the word “parsimony” is applicable at all.
The turtle was not part of the cosmology. Waters separated from waters were. And no, I don’t know of any scientist who demonstrated that there could not have been waters around the planet. If you don’t know either, then this settles it.
Think naturalistically and you will see why.
Except that, to take up a lesson or two from Gadamer, we have to both use our own presuppositions in order to make sense of a text at all to begin with and be willing to partially suspend our presuppositions in order to allow the presuppositions informing the text to come to light. The fusion of horizons, as he called it, arises through that dialogue.
But do you know which presuppositions to use and which to suspend? Experts may have acquired a proper balance with practice, but with hitherto unseen things also they are at loss.
The more presuppositions you manage to drop, the more genuine will be the impression from the text. Then again, far from every text is worth it.
I might be wrong about this, but my understanding from archaeology is that humanity has never been compact enough to have a single early civilization.
Instead, agriculture and civilization emerged independently at different times in the Fertile Crescent (11,000 years ago), the Yangtze and Yellow River basins (9000 years ago), the New Guinea Highlands (9000–6000 years ago), Central Mexico (5000–4000 years ago), Northern South America (5000–4000 years ago), sub-Saharan Africa (5000–4000 years ago), and the eastern USA (4000–3000 years ago). [All dates and places taken from Wikipedia.]
It’s just not the case that civilization began in one place and spread out from there; different Neolithic societies made the transition to agriculture and settlement at different times and places.
It would be a relatively simple matter of doing the math: how much water would it take, in cubic meters, to cover the highest mountains on the planet? And where did that water come from? From space?
If you want to go with Magical Space Water in order to rescue the idea that there could have been a single global flood, all I can say is, go for it — I’m not going to stop you there.
The answer is impossible when you don’t trust the cosmology. Not so difficult when you trust it.
To say the least, Hebrews knew how to make things match.
I don’t presuppose that there was a single global flood. Of course there have been many smaller ones. But there has also been at least one such that people universally felt their species was in danger. Otherwise they would not be talking about it, not globally anyway. I’m just trying to see what justifications you think you have to take this lightly.
Well, what are we talking about here? Are we talking about whether the Flood described in Genesis made sense in terms of ancient Israelite cosmology? (This could be because they developed their cosmology to make sense of a flood-type event that we today would explain quite differently.) Or are we talking about whether the Flood described in Genesis makes sense in terms of our current cosmology? Or are we talking about whether we have reasons for accepting ancient Israelite cosmology in lieu of the one supported by best available data in 2015?
I don’t see how the occurrence of flood myths in different civilizations warrants the inference that there has been a single flood such “people universally felt their species was in danger”. For one thing, I simply do not know if every civilization has a flood myth. We do know that there are flood myths from different civilizations; we don’t know that there was a single flood for all of them.
For the curious, there’s a nice overview of different possible causes of flood myths here.
All that, and also about lack of solid data on how the planet has changed between now and then. I am well aware what modern scientists think. I am also well aware how little they know about the past or about planets nearby.
Simply, because that’s what the stories are about – it came as a punishment with the purpose to wipe out mankind. I know at least Gilgamesh, Noah, Mayan, and the tales of Siberian animists. Popol Vuh says, “This was to punish them because they had not thought of their mother, nor their father, the Heart of Heaven, called Huracán. And for this reason the face of the earth was darkened and a black rain began to fall, by day and by night… So was the ruin of the men who had been created and formed, the men made to be destroyed and annihilated.”
Coincidence of course.
That’s the point – we know so little and at the same time are quick to dismiss, not to listen. This ensures we will not know. Mission accomplished.
But we do know how. After all, we successfully do it.
What we don’t have is a formal predictive mechanistic account. And there’s no reason that we should be able to have such an account. There’s a “hard problem” because people are seeking the wrong kind of explanation.
Coincidence would be the more parsimonious explanation. 😉