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Philosophy of Knowledge - Page 10

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ceaRshaf
Profile Joined August 2009
Romania4926 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-07-01 11:13:33
July 01 2011 11:13 GMT
#181
something you can not prove does not exist


Stop saying this If you don't have evidence of something means you don't have evidence. No further conclusions.For all we know pink unicorns that fart rainbows can exist and maybe we need to search harder. There is no reason to believe so however, and that's what we should talk. What reasons do we have to believe in God, not what evidence.

Mess with the best, die like the rest.
koreasilver
Profile Blog Joined June 2008
9109 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-07-01 12:45:57
July 01 2011 12:25 GMT
#182
On July 01 2011 16:57 deathly rat wrote:
Whilst i agree that the early thinking that went into the formation of a scientific method was a philosophical exercise, I think it is clear that Science and Philosophy have taken 2 different paths. One on an empirical evidence based path and another on a path stemming from many leaps of internal logic and debate.

It is possible that you could call the whole of science a branch of philosophy, in that the formation of it's principles were rooted in philosophy, however it is clearly now a distictly different animal with not only differences in methodology and ideas, but also in society, conventions and institutions. To call philosophy and science the same thing, is to say that people are the same as fish.

This is also the reason scientists are no longer commonly philosophers and vica versa.

Again, philosophy is not just about throwing truisms and speculative metaphysics. The whole empirical based system of the natural sciences in itself is rooted in an internal logical system that is open to debate because it revolves around axioms that are not self-evident. I never said that science and philosophy are the same thing. Again, you are missing the entire point. As philosophy is, fundamentally, an inquiry into a question, the roots of science are open to philosophical inquiry. This is not to say that science should abandon its empirical based roots, because there is a good reason as to why they should adhere to it, but the model is not self-evident.

I suggest you try reading some Kuhn. He was a physicist and a philosopher of science. It's basically pointless trying to talk to someone about philosophy when they are ignorant of the entire field. My main interest doesn't lay in the Anglo-Analytic philosophical tradition either, so when it comes to the more direct connection between modern philosophy and modern natural science the other two guys in here will be more help in the long run.
koreasilver
Profile Blog Joined June 2008
9109 Posts
July 01 2011 12:29 GMT
#183
On July 01 2011 20:13 ceaRshaf wrote:
Show nested quote +
something you can not prove does not exist


Stop saying this If you don't have evidence of something means you don't have evidence. No further conclusions.For all we know pink unicorns that fart rainbows can exist and maybe we need to search harder. There is no reason to believe so however, and that's what we should talk. What reasons do we have to believe in God, not what evidence.

If you don't have evidence, then you don't have evidence. If the lack of evidence is supposed to mean something other than the lack of evidence, then you are just engaging in wholesale double talk; 2 + 2 != 4. This is nonsense.
ceaRshaf
Profile Joined August 2009
Romania4926 Posts
July 01 2011 12:30 GMT
#184
He pretends that something without evidence = it doesn't exist.
Mess with the best, die like the rest.
koreasilver
Profile Blog Joined June 2008
9109 Posts
July 01 2011 12:48 GMT
#185
Then you argue why that argument has a flaw instead of saying something like no evidence != no evidence, which borders on schizophrenia.
ceaRshaf
Profile Joined August 2009
Romania4926 Posts
July 01 2011 14:15 GMT
#186
The argument is the statement itself that doesn't make sense. Maybe my English made me phrase that wrong.

A detective that arrives at a murder scene doesn't say "there is no evidence, let's go home, there is no criminal".
Mess with the best, die like the rest.
Kukaracha
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
France1954 Posts
July 01 2011 15:49 GMT
#187
In this example there's a murder, that's the difference!

I'd rather say that it's like a detective being told that someone was threatened in some place, without knowing who it was or where it was. Does it mean it didn't happen? No, but can't be sure it happened neither.


On a more serious note, I'd simply repeat what I said earlier about Karl Popper: if something cannot be verified, then it has nothing to do with science. A deist God has nothing to do with science, and it's a fallacy to apply scientific methods to verify its existance. Because even if there was a God, it couldn't be proven. The method used here to disprove the existence of God requires the possibility to observe the phenomenon in question. Would

The fallacy here is to apply science - a rigorous way of thinking - in a context where there is no rigor, no definition. Almost no context, actually.

About the EEG, an EEG is a tool, not a method (even though a method is a basic tool). You see to misunderstand the way I use the word "method". Refer to koreasilver's posts. Methods are different way to proceed that have been thought about and agreed upon in the pas by groups of thinkers, who work with different axioms depending on the ground of research. Even quantum and relative physics don't share the same axioms, I believe.

And no, I wasn't talking about singularities. I was talking about illogical statements. The way our logic works, I can't say I'm *here* and *there* at the same time. It does not make sense! Can you imagine an infinite space? Can you imagine nothingness? If so, you don't have a human mind. And a black screen isn't nothiness, since your conscience is observing it it. Nothingness is no object nor subject.


And there is no blind faith or far-seeing faith or well-lit faith. There is just faith, predicting something even though it is mereley a prediction.

If you weren't faithful, you wouldn't say that science will do it, you'll say that science could maybe do it, since the odds are hard to pin down on such questions. Even going as far as saying that science can probably do it is taking a big leap, a faithful leap if it wasn't after a deep historic study of how humans perceived the mysteries of the past.

Did they seem deeply illogical? Was having a blue sky as hard to imagine as the course of an object travelling towards the limits of space? If an object reaches the outer limits, where will it be? Why would it be in this place and not another? This is where the problem resides.
Le long pour l'un pour l'autre est court (le mot-à-mot du mot "amour").
Sotamursu
Profile Joined June 2010
Finland612 Posts
July 01 2011 17:04 GMT
#188
I think its more like a detective arriving at a place where he heard alien creatures were eating people, only to find that the place is empty with no evidence of anything happening. He still doesn't give up and asks around and searches more for some evidence. Then by the combination of the claim being ridiculous and the complete lack of evidence, he concludes that it was all bullshit and goes away.

Tell me what other way you can use to verify the existence of something. How would you ever get anything out of a claim that can't be verified? It's like if I said gravity was actually tiny pink undetectable monkeys pulling stuff towards big objects. How does that change anything?

If a thing leaves any evidence in the universe, science can be applied to study it. If it doesn't leave any evidence, it might as well not exist, since you can never hear or see or feel anything the thing causes. Even if the scientific method can't prove things that can't be proven, it can still be used to determine whether falsifiable things are true or not. A god effecting our universe is falsifiable.

The only way science would not work would be if there were no natural laws of any kind. There would be no cause and effect, everything would be purely random and chaotic. Then you could not test anything. All observations would be meaningless and no results could be reproduced. Or if the place/thing/whatever did not exist, in which case all of the above would also be impossible.

If something has absolutely any effect on us we can study it. If it doesn't why would we even care or waste any thought on it? Why are you even arguing about science not being able to prove something that can never be proven to exist? What conclusion are you trying to reach? Because I don't really see how this affects anything in our actual reality.

I don't really know what the unveiled mysteries of our universe that science can't reveal you are talking about and it's impossible for me to argue against that, because you'll just add another one every time I told you how something could in theory be tested.

I'm so sick and tired of talking about faith, I hear about it from creationists all the time and they don't understand my position at all. I'm not sure what your definition of faith is, but I would define it as believing in something with no evidence or even when theres evidence against it. This is not the case now.

When you sit on your chair which you use everyday, are you scared that it'll collapse? No? Do you know how you came to that conclusion? You sit on it every day and it never shows any signs of breaking down any time soon. Now if I ask you will the chair collapse when you sit on it, you would say no like any sane person in a real life situation. Did you have faith in the chair? No you did not. You used past observations and testin(sitting on the chair) and gained some information and you used basic science to do so. Do you not understand that you can use past events to predict the future somewhat accurately?

When it comes to studying stuff out in the real world, no other method except the scientific method has been proven to determine facts. Even if we found a new and improved method, science itself would be used to test the new method. Now how can you say I am not basing my prediction on anything?

Your last paragraph doesn't make much sense. It depends on what they thought a blue sky was. Thinking that there are gods out there instead of stars seems deeply illogical to me. What does it matter if its hard to imagine what happens to an object when it reaches the edge of space? When and if we get to that point with a spaceship, we'll find out. It has nothing to do with imagination. We might not even have to travel there, some other discovery might show what is out there.

ceaRshaf
Profile Joined August 2009
Romania4926 Posts
July 01 2011 17:26 GMT
#189
It's like talking to a wall.

My analogy with the detective is correct, and the only mistake i made was use the words "crime scene" instead to a "death scene". Please use your full neural capacity and understand the analogy.

Does a detective know it's a crime until he finds evidence of that? What if there are no evidences of a crime but the detective still BELIEVES it was and actually proves it. Why would he believe that if no evidences show it? Because we are humans, and belief is a characteristic.

Also, people had absolutley no reason to think the world is not flat. All they saw was flat land, how could they have seen the bigger picture. Yet here we are with the truth.

Belief leads to evidence.
Mess with the best, die like the rest.
deathly rat
Profile Blog Joined October 2010
United Kingdom911 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-07-02 00:23:38
July 02 2011 00:22 GMT
#190
On July 01 2011 21:25 koreasilver wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 01 2011 16:57 deathly rat wrote:
Whilst i agree that the early thinking that went into the formation of a scientific method was a philosophical exercise, I think it is clear that Science and Philosophy have taken 2 different paths. One on an empirical evidence based path and another on a path stemming from many leaps of internal logic and debate.

It is possible that you could call the whole of science a branch of philosophy, in that the formation of it's principles were rooted in philosophy, however it is clearly now a distictly different animal with not only differences in methodology and ideas, but also in society, conventions and institutions. To call philosophy and science the same thing, is to say that people are the same as fish.

This is also the reason scientists are no longer commonly philosophers and vica versa.

Again, philosophy is not just about throwing truisms and speculative metaphysics. The whole empirical based system of the natural sciences in itself is rooted in an internal logical system that is open to debate because it revolves around axioms that are not self-evident. I never said that science and philosophy are the same thing. Again, you are missing the entire point. As philosophy is, fundamentally, an inquiry into a question, the roots of science are open to philosophical inquiry. This is not to say that science should abandon its empirical based roots, because there is a good reason as to why they should adhere to it, but the model is not self-evident.

I suggest you try reading some Kuhn. He was a physicist and a philosopher of science. It's basically pointless trying to talk to someone about philosophy when they are ignorant of the entire field. My main interest doesn't lay in the Anglo-Analytic philosophical tradition either, so when it comes to the more direct connection between modern philosophy and modern natural science the other two guys in here will be more help in the long run.


So, we have determined that science is an empirical evidence based pursuit, but although you have claimed what philosophy isn't, you've made no attempt to describe what it is and why it's methods are any better than observing and testing in a scientific way. I postulated that philosophy could be defined as making many leaps of internal logic to speculate on topics that are either without a definative answer or cannot currently be answered with any certainty at that point in time. Why do you think this postulation is wrong, and what would be your description of how philosophy is carried out?

Do not continue to tell me what philosophy isn't, and that scientific methods have inherent flaws (without properly discussing these, I read up a bit about Kuhn, and his ideas about the impossiblity of objectivity in science are easily countered)

I have often read some philosophy on this or that when people have tried to justify their points with authoratative references, but I have never read anything that has caused me to think that anything but a purely scientific analysis of a problem is the best way to derive conclusions. Every statement in a philosophical discourse which is stated without emprical evidence offends my every fibre.

You tell me I am ignorant of your sacred texts as a preacher claims my ignorance of biblical minutia, but I don't need to be expert in these things to maintain my view and argument because I reject the fundamental process by which you are deriving conclusions.
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koreasilver
Profile Blog Joined June 2008
9109 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-07-02 00:57:22
July 02 2011 00:48 GMT
#191
I and other posters in this thread have already answered your questions multiple times, and at this point it's just utterly pointless to continue a discussion with you. I imagine it is as fruitless an endeavor for theoretical physicist to talk about string theory with someone who hasn't put any effort into becoming acquainted with at least the basics of the discipline.

As for your positivism, I'll just simplify the main reason why logical positivism is dead. As you say:

The only meaningful (or in your case, "offensive) statements are empirically verifiable.

However, the statement "the only meaningful (inoffensive) statement is empirically verifiable" cannot be empirically verified. Therefore, the statement "the only meaningful (inoffensive) statement is empirically verifiable" is not meaningful and is, under your own method, offensive.

This is not to say that verifiable statements aren't meaningful, but you can't say only empirically verifiable statements are meaningful. There can be meaningful statements beyond the what is empirically verifiable. This is a very simplicated version of the argument.

Your attitude to the discipline just kinda shows why people need to actually read more instead of claiming they know better when they don't have a goddamned clue about what they're talking about. I don't really find it any different from when a creationist would go about "disproving" evolution when they don't even understand the basics of it. It's sad, and after some time, it doesn't even really deserve our patience.
koreasilver
Profile Blog Joined June 2008
9109 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-07-02 01:06:18
July 02 2011 01:04 GMT
#192
Kukaracha
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
France1954 Posts
July 02 2011 01:06 GMT
#193
We're going around in circles, so from now let's stick to the main points.


1) You believe I'm a male, I could be a female. The way I write is not proof, it's a clue. Belief is as simple as that.
Now, the definition of faith is "a confident belief". We could say that you have faith in science, and faith in your own opinion since you're declaring being able to predict the future even though I seriously doubt that you put the necessary effort and have the necessary hisorical knowledge to really examinate and compare past and present interrogations. You're assuming things despite your position as a defender of the universal scientific method (again, what is precisely that method? Is it induction, or deduction, or abduction? Is it exmerimental verification?).


2) Again, a god affecting our universe is in theory falsiable (and I am NOT talking about a theist God but since you bring the subject back...). However, it requires observation, which some scientists do, and this is a constant struggle between the religious crowds who brings "proofs" and the scientific crowd who disproves them. We can therefore assume that theist Gods don't exist. But as long as the religious crowd claims to hold proofs, the debate and the research remain open.


3) So we seem to agree, if something cannot be proven nor disproven empirically (a deist God exists, or "I am happy"), NOT believing it AND believing it are both beliefs, since based on no evidence whatsoever.
What does this conclusion affect? Well, it underlines how passionate and irrational you are, ironically. You have said many irrigorous statements in this debate while trying to defend a strictly rational position, now the aliens, the spaceship going to outer space, or the "extraordinary proof".

But more importantly, it shows that people have faith in science like they had faith in religion in the past. Most of the scientific topics are quite abstruse for the public, and even though they understand very little of it, they trust it with their life. This is faith! Driven by ignorance with no evidence whatsoever. You know, people assuming things. This doesn't even have anything to do with sience itself, but rather with the image people have of it.


4) You have a rather intriguing definition of science. Believing that I have a solid chair is just logic, not science. And I don't know that it won't break, I assume it won't. Sometimes I'm wrong and I hurt my butt.
Basing yourself on something doesn't mean anything. Magicians used to predict the future, based on intestines or birds. It's not that different from you basing yourself on a vague knowledge (unless you have a PhD in epistemology and history). You're using intuition and rumors, which don't seem to fit your "scientific method".


5) It's not hard to imagine the universe, it's impossible the way our brain functions. But if you think I'm wrong, you can just draw a picture and post it!



To conclude, I'd say that my goal is just to unveil that science is not a monolithic movement that holds the power to attain absolute truth. And while doing that, I just wanted to show how some people "follow" "science" much like people followed prophets, with little actual precise knowledge about epistemology or science history, and even with little knowledge about science itself.
In short, how people have faith not only in Jesus, but also in science, to a certain extent.

The fact that I see no difference between your vague, passionate and stubborn attitude and the behaviour of religious people is quite significant in the first place.
Le long pour l'un pour l'autre est court (le mot-à-mot du mot "amour").
Kukaracha
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
France1954 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-07-02 06:05:01
July 02 2011 01:25 GMT
#194
I also just thought about a fun game we can do together to illustrate koreasilver's point.

I know that something exists.
I know, that I, as an undefined being, exist.

Anything else is fundamentally a belief and cannot be empirically verified!
What am I? A human being? What is a human being, where does my being start and where does it end? What is my conscience? How can I be sure that others perceive the world the way I do? How can I be sure that there are others similar to me in the first place?
This was the funny conspiracy part.


However, solipsism (basically being doubtful about the existance of anything outside of you own conscience) does raise some interesting points.
Let's observate and run a few experiments!
Let's sleep,
Take a dose of LSD,
Take a dose of Salvinorin A,
Let's enter a coma,
Let's become schyzophrenic.

Such experiences are very interesting as they usually change the world and its logic as a whole. You can dream of living in a V-shaped world with colors that don't exist and a made up past, not realizing that you are dreaming. Sometimes, you can even dream that you dream, yo dawg!

The question is: if the world can change altogether while you become absolutely certain that it has been that way forever and that everything is normal... then how can you be empirically sure of anything apart from existing?


Of course, this doesn't go very far, but it does show that we base everything we think and everything we know on a few fundamental axioms: I exist as a human being among other human beings who share this reality with me, there are dreams and there is a real world, and this is the real world! The world you're in, awake or sleeping or tripping, is always reality, after all. When you wake up, you consider your past state as unreal, just like you do when you fall asleep (even though the latter cas is pretty rare I believe!).

Just to put things into perspective while underlining the omnipresence of axioms in our thinking process.

Edit: grammar.
Le long pour l'un pour l'autre est court (le mot-à-mot du mot "amour").
Pyrrhuloxia
Profile Blog Joined May 2008
United States6700 Posts
July 02 2011 05:23 GMT
#195
Here's how I see it:

A. God does exist. B. The Son of Man is not mortal. C. Life has inherent meaning.

You are right that a leap of faith is required. Either follow Nietzsche and make up your own "truth" or try to inform your conscience until you find the Truth.
Pyrrhuloxia
Profile Blog Joined May 2008
United States6700 Posts
July 02 2011 05:26 GMT
#196
On July 02 2011 10:25 Kukaracha wrote:
I also just thought about a fun game we can do together to illustrate koreasilver's point.

I know that something exists.
I know, that I, as an undefined being, exist.

Anything else is fundamentally a belief and cannot be empirically verified!
What am I? A human being? What is a human being, where does my being start and when does it end? What is my conscience? How can I be sure that others perceive the world the way I do? How can I be sure that there are others similar to me in the first place?
This was the funny conspiracy part.


However, solipsism (basically being doubtful about the existance of anything outside of you own conscience) does raise some interesting points.
Let's observate and run a few experiments!
Let's sleep,
Take a dose of LSD,
Take a dose of Salvinorin A,
Let's enter a coma,
Let's become schyzophrenic.

Such experiences are very interesting as they usually change the world and its logic as a whole. You can dream of living in a V-shaped world with colors that don't exist and a made up past, not realizing that you are dreaming. Sometimes, you can even dream that you dream, yo dawg!

The question is: if the world can change altogether while you become absolutely certain that it has been that way forever and that everything is normal... then how can you be empirically sure of anything apart from existing?


Of course, this doesn't go very far, but it does show that we base everything we think and everything we know on a few fundamental axioms: I exists as a human being among other human beings who share this reality with me, there are dreams and there is a real world, and this is the real world! The world you're in, awake or sleeping or tripping, is always reality, after all. When you wake up, you consider your past state as unreal, just like you do when you fall asleep (even though the latter cas is pretty rare I believe!).

Just to put things into perspective while underlining the omnipresence of axioms in our thinking process.

Mmhmm this is why the Good is more True than empiricism. Faith is inevitable so interpretation of all perception is an ethical question.
Sotamursu
Profile Joined June 2010
Finland612 Posts
July 02 2011 11:00 GMT
#197
1. Then everyone has faith in everything, except their own existance, since nothing can not be known for sure. I would assume you are male because an overwhelming majority in this site is male. If there was a box with a hundred balls and they were all white except for a single black one and you asked me which color ball you were going to take at random I would say most probably the white one. This is the point where you start screaming that I'm an irrational retard as you are doing now.

Do I wear a bulletproof vest everytime I go outside incase someone shoots me? No I don't, because it's so unlikely to happen it would be dumb for me to waste any energy on that happening. I only ever claimed science is the most likely candidate at this very moment and since you haven't answered to this except by telling me it's an assumption all the time. I know it's not completely certain and that does not matter. You know one of the first steps in the scientific method is to make a hypothesis which is basically an educated guess and after that you test it how it works.

You still don't understand the scientific method at all. It's not a single method, why is it supposed to be one? It's just a term used for describing a number of methods for investigating and getting as close as possible to the truth and it works.

2. No one is putting any serious effort to the existance of god anymore, because all the proofs scientists are offered is basically the same old shit over and over again.

3. Yes now I understand I've been trusting in science even when it hasn't achieved anything. The scientific method has not achieved absolutely anything in this world and scientists are actually NWO overlords who abuse the unknowing publics faith in science.

Are you telling me you don't trust anything the scientific community has made?

Do you know that you can go study science, if you want to and challenge any claim any scientist makes? New discoveries are rewarded. The whole point of peer review is getting reliable information. If you have a way that produces more results than any other way we have thought of, then why the fuck should we not use the way that gives the best results? And if you say that there is a better way to investigate things in nature than the scientific method, then please share this great discovery with the rest of the world and advance humanity.

Should you trust science blindly? No. Do I trust in science blindly? No I don't. You are basing your whole faith arguement in your own strawman. I said that it's more likely science will gives us answers rather than belief in god, because when you believe in god you already stop looking for answers. Now you took this and twisted it into "Science will answer even the things that can not be answered. All hail Einstein."

4. You finally said it. It's just logic. How do you think the scientific method works? Science is basically using logic. And why do you assume the chair doesn't break? Because it's reasonable to do so and guessing based on evidence is not the same as guessing without anything. Very rarely will the chair break and by looking at the evidence you save yourself the trouble of checking the chair thoroughly every time before you sit on it.

The reason why we use science for predicting things instead pig intestines is because it is more reliable. It is not perfect, but it does give better results. Just look at meteorologists predicting weather, they mostly get it right and the prediction is more reliable when it's on a shorter time frame. What do you think they are using to make those predictions? You could just guess at random what the weather will be tomorrow and it'll be correct at sometimes, does this mean we should change to guessing at random, because science is not always certain?

5. I don't understand what you're trying to prove here. I can't imagine the shape of the universe so science is wrong? Or that because we can't imagine the shape of the universe so we can never find out what it's shape truly is?

To conclude, I'd say that my goal is just to unveil that science is not a monolithic movement that holds the power to attain absolute truth. And while doing that, I just wanted to show how some people "follow" "science" much like people followed prophets, with little actual precise knowledge about epistemology or science history, and even with little knowledge about science itself.
In short, how people have faith not only in Jesus, but also in science, to a certain extent.

Science can not reach absolute truth and neither can we, because it's impossible to be sure of your surroundings. I have never claimed that science isn't completely infallible. Holy fuck this is so frustrating to try and explain to you that trusting in something that gives better results over anything else we have would be the smartest thing to do. What is your obsession with something either having to give the absolute truth or else it is as worthless as religion?

Sotamursu
Profile Joined June 2010
Finland612 Posts
July 02 2011 11:10 GMT
#198
On July 02 2011 10:25 Kukaracha wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +
I also just thought about a fun game we can do together to illustrate koreasilver's point.

I know that something exists.
I know, that I, as an undefined being, exist.

Anything else is fundamentally a belief and cannot be empirically verified!
What am I? A human being? What is a human being, where does my being start and where does it end? What is my conscience? How can I be sure that others perceive the world the way I do? How can I be sure that there are others similar to me in the first place?
This was the funny conspiracy part.


However, solipsism (basically being doubtful about the existance of anything outside of you own conscience) does raise some interesting points.
Let's observate and run a few experiments!
Let's sleep,
Take a dose of LSD,
Take a dose of Salvinorin A,
Let's enter a coma,
Let's become schyzophrenic.

Such experiences are very interesting as they usually change the world and its logic as a whole. You can dream of living in a V-shaped world with colors that don't exist and a made up past, not realizing that you are dreaming. Sometimes, you can even dream that you dream, yo dawg!

The question is: if the world can change altogether while you become absolutely certain that it has been that way forever and that everything is normal... then how can you be empirically sure of anything apart from existing?


Of course, this doesn't go very far, but it does show that we base everything we think and everything we know on a few fundamental axioms: I exist as a human being among other human beings who share this reality with me, there are dreams and there is a real world, and this is the real world! The world you're in, awake or sleeping or tripping, is always reality, after all. When you wake up, you consider your past state as unreal, just like you do when you fall asleep (even though the latter cas is pretty rare I believe!).

Just to put things into perspective while underlining the omnipresence of axioms in our thinking process.

Edit: grammar.

You can be empirically sure of what you are seeing, even if it is an illusion. Will you ever know that you are not actually in the matrix? Nope.
So when you have two choices
a) worry about reality being fake and do nothing, since you will never be able to know.
b) live your life as you would if you were sure the world is real, you might as well, because you can never know if the world is real or not.

You can talk to other human beings and establish things that you all perceive. Now that you've established some things and discovered some causes and effects, you can start manipulating the world around you to do stuff you want. As long as there is causality and the laws of logic apply to the illusionary world, you can still use the scientific method there.
deathly rat
Profile Blog Joined October 2010
United Kingdom911 Posts
July 02 2011 11:13 GMT
#199
On July 02 2011 09:48 koreasilver wrote:
I and other posters in this thread have already answered your questions multiple times, and at this point it's just utterly pointless to continue a discussion with you. I imagine it is as fruitless an endeavor for theoretical physicist to talk about string theory with someone who hasn't put any effort into becoming acquainted with at least the basics of the discipline.

As for your positivism, I'll just simplify the main reason why logical positivism is dead. As you say:

The only meaningful (or in your case, "offensive) statements are empirically verifiable.

However, the statement "the only meaningful (inoffensive) statement is empirically verifiable" cannot be empirically verified. Therefore, the statement "the only meaningful (inoffensive) statement is empirically verifiable" is not meaningful and is, under your own method, offensive.

This is not to say that verifiable statements aren't meaningful, but you can't say only empirically verifiable statements are meaningful. There can be meaningful statements beyond the what is empirically verifiable. This is a very simplicated version of the argument.

Your attitude to the discipline just kinda shows why people need to actually read more instead of claiming they know better when they don't have a goddamned clue about what they're talking about. I don't really find it any different from when a creationist would go about "disproving" evolution when they don't even understand the basics of it. It's sad, and after some time, it doesn't even really deserve our patience.


You have not addressed the direct question that I asked, which was for you to explain a method of deriving meaningful conclusions about the world which is not based upon empirical evidence. If you have please simply quote it for my stupid ignorance.

As for your haughty reliance on authoratative references and your own sacred texts, I find it pathetic and reductive. Speak and think for yourself. If this is beyond you, or I'm just too stupid to be engaged in this debate then just go back to playing some SC2.

Your modus operandi seems merely to try and undermine and spread doubt at any possible point, which I find unilluminating.
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Probe1
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
United States17920 Posts
July 02 2011 12:27 GMT
#200
It's extremely underwhelming to read tedious arguments about I believe in this and you're wrong and here's 8 paragraphs why without actually addressing what you said directly. It's better to write one line and argue what you intend then fourteen pages of fluff.



Addressing the original post: Many philosophical musings, theories or idealogys have conclusions. I'm unsure what that was supposed to mean. But if you can't find a conclusion in a philosophical argument then you should make you're own that suits you.

the only logical conclusions are thus: A. God does not exist. B. Man is mortal. C. Life has no inherent meaning.


There's nothing wrong with this statement. It is factual and unbias'd. It is evidenced by emperical data and cannot be refuted by faith arguments. While it is certainly nicer for the faith communities to have a preset goal by someone wiser than them, I prefer to set my own. It doesn't bother me that I am not born with purpose. I choose my own.

I choose to reproduce and continue our species. I choose to contribute and improve our civilisation. No one else, even inherent biological wiring decides that for me. Though ... damn, I just realized I was trying to think around point C and I can't.

Life does have an inherent meaning. We are to reproduce. It's in our genetics to do so. If you can think of nothing further, then at least accept that the survival of our species is our purpose. Or reduced:

Life's purpose is to survive.
우정호 KT_VIOLET 1988 - 2012 While we are postponing, life speeds by
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