5 posts were split to a new topic: +/-=+/- on atheistic dominated forums
Jupiter wants to have a conversation about moral nihilism vs. absolutism and atheism and science and how it cognitively biases metaphysical conclusions and people need to understand how. Even if he wonāt say this in English, it may be an important topic to discuss, but I donāt care right now because it has absolutely nothing to do with my thread, which is strictly about epistemology and whether we can logically derive a priori truths by analyzing the concept of knowledge (and as a side-issue, whether extreme scepticism and relativism can cause mental health problems). This is a conversation he is not capable of participating in, because he seems to be far too stuck in his metaphysical paradigm (involving what God and science have both proved with 100% certainty about the fundamentality of magnets and how electromagnetism interacts with our souls) - that he DID NOT GIVE REASONS FOR, despite me inviting him to - to take a serious interest in epistemologyā¦ or philosophy of scienceā¦ or philosophy of mind.
I do take things far more seriously than you do Josh.Clearly.
When it comes to the philosophy of science and psychology you canāt guess.
You do.
You guess that good is bad and bad is good and therefore no moral absolutes exist.Atheistic scientists also guess that attractive and repulsive electromagnetic forces cancel out.They donāt.
The world knows what the cognitively biased atheistic guesses are.
Itās common knowledge which has no scientific justification to back it up.
I have not made any moral claims. This is an epistemology thread. Youāre making me start to sound like a broken record Jupiter. What does analyzing the concept of knowledge for a priori truths have to do with morals?
Of course you have if you are an atheists.You donāt believe in moral absolutes.Why start a thread off with a guess? You have a religious bias Josh.It always comes back to this point.There is no getting away from it.
Yeah, ok. Think what you want. Iām an atheist and I eat babies. I really donāt give a shit anymore. You donāt even try to listen.
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I do listen Josh.Its you that isnāt listening.
Then why are you still calling him an atheist even after he pointed out that heās made no claims, positive or negative, about his stance on theism at all? If you were truly listening, youād stop that.
I think ethics is built on a foundation of epistemology, logic, and metaphysics. If you donāt have epistemology and logic you canāt know anything about ethics. And if you donāt have some metaphysical conclusions then you canāt even say we are moral agents because you have no theory of what exists and what doesnāt.
Thatās why my first post is about epistemology. Not ethics. Not religion. What I am saying has nothing whatsoever to do with these topics.
Jupiter is saying I have some moral and religious stance that dictates how I do logic. But what stance could I have that motivates me to say things like āSomething existsā and āSomething is trueā? How does that imply atheism? Itās more fundamental than even the existence of religion.
Does Jupiter actually do anything to contribute to the forum in a positive way? Or do you kinda just let him go until he breaks enough rules to justify suspending him? These are rhetorical questions, you donāt have to answer them.
Is this directed at me??
In future please highlight part of your interlocutorās text and hit āquoteā. That way you will be alerting your response to the person you are responding to and it will be clear to whom you are directing your post.
Ah , yes one of my favourite dichotomies; knoweldge and belief.
I like to claim that I believe nothing, but seek always to know what and where I can.
Thus the claims I like to make, I hope, at least where possible, can be backed up with matrix of other concepts and observations of knowledge.
Belief, on the other hand is where reason goes to die. The moment you have committed to a belief then you have lost the plot, you has stepped off the road of knowledge and enquiry and are siiting in the wilderness of faith.
This method is all contingent on the acceptance that knoweldge is wholly reliant on those things upon which it is constructed and should those conditions change then the pathway must also change to accomodate the new information.
Belief, is characterised by a resistance to any change.
Faith is for the feckless.
Nihil crede; sapere aude.
There is but one exception to this , and that is in the realm of aspiriations.
I ābeleiveā that we are born free.
Such statements are without basis, but are things I wish to be the case. The difference between myself and the feckelss faithfuls is that they beleive is to be true.
Nah.
It is based upon the passions of the human āsoulā. Thought I do not accept the claim that there is such a thing. It might be said to be the emotional grounding of the animal kingdom, especially mammals, all of whom can be shown to express concern for their fellow creatures. This is a fully embodied aspect iof the brain-body connection. Not to be confused with the āhigherā conceptualisations and rationalisations of the same.
Imagine what āethicsā would look like were we completely emotionless and wholly untilitarian. For anyone with feelings - it would be a living hell.
Actually it might be a wholly static society devoid of any aims or purposes.
Ethics when rationalised is an overlay of the emotional nature of the human conditions. And often the rationalisation can fly in the face of many of our finer instincts.
Slavery has been widely justified on ethical grounds from the earliest moments of so-called civilisation, until the early 19thC when British moralists decided to draft laws to limit it.
Dearest Josh,
There is always one arse on every Forum. I am sorry you have encounerted this one so soon.
Jusst ignore him and he will go away.
Welcome to the Forum..
This is a perfect example of faith and belief being places where reason goes to die.
It sounds like you are interpreting these things through an anthropological and biological context. Which is a valuable thing to do.
I am interpreting them entirely in terms of a conceptual tree of concepts. From that perspective, you donāt get the concept āhumanā unless you have other concepts, such as āspeciesā, and you donāt get that unless you have other concepts, such as āorganismā. So this story relies on biological knowledge. And, on the topic of skepticism, it is possible to doubt that story (though probably not very plausibly).
So we are coming at the question from different angles. You from the context of the human condition, and me from conceptual abstract relations between ideas. I am not thinking of āknowledgeā or ātruthā as things made up by humans, but as things more like Plato would regard the forms, as having an abstract existence in a world of ideas - which have certain logical relations to one another, even if there are no humans to think about them.
It is just like mathematics in that sense. ā7 + 2 = 9ā is an abstract logical proposition which may contain a truth-value. When I say this, I am not really thinking about anthropology or sociology or biology or history or science or even a particular theory of mind or soul or self. It just seems apparent that there is something to this proposition, in a purely conceptual way.
I am attempting to talk about knowledge and truth and how they relate to each other and what we can infer about it in exactly the same purely conceptual manner, abstracted from emotion or humanity or historical context or anything like that.
Whether it is a good idea for me to do this is, I suppose, up for debate.
True.
I studied both, and archaeology.
But I also owe this POV to David Hume, who considered that āthe passionsā were the grounding for all we do. Why else would we get up in the morning or care about anything at all.
That would make you a realist, whereas I would be characterised as an Idealist.
Your problem is that you, like Plato have no account fo where these forms originate. Plato would say, it pressed āthe godsā, but I do not think that can be your answer.
For my money all concepts are all too human.
Purely circular.
Integers do not exist in nature.
Neither do circle, flat planes, irrational numbers and many other contrivances of the human imagination by which we attempt to map and describe the world.
Yes, I suppose my whole approach is implicitly assuming realism about abstract objects, like numbers, concepts, and properties. Moreover, I do not think the proof for such things is supposed to be found in the physical world, or ānatureā. I am more or less happy to grant that we can know these things by direct insightā¦ at least for the time being, while Iām studying epistemology. When I seriously study metaphysics, I will then consider the arguments for either side, and be open to changing my mind.
Absolutely not Sculptor.
The physical is ordered and structured and has meaning to it.
It adopts attractive and repulsive electromagnetic forces in its construction and operation.
Forces that interact in such a way that all matter is not only held together but binary code is created from the vibration that results.
Vibration which is regulated by the spin speed of the particles which make up the matter.
Because he is an atheists Flannel or heās a theistās,what does it matter anyway?