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On February 19 2013 16:18 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 16:13 FunkyLich wrote:On February 19 2013 16:07 sam!zdat wrote:
Err, your assumption that religious beliefs are conjunctions of propositions. not question. Okay first of all, what's is a conjunction? In logic, it's two or more propositions tied together by an 'and'. So you're use of the word belief indicates that it's a proposition, and your plural usage indicates that we are conjoining them. Now maybe there are disjunctions too (or's), but I'm trying not to rock the boat. I'm not worried about the conjunction, unless you really want to argue about what a conjunction is and then I'll put some thought into it. I'm worried about your notion that religious beliefs are propositions. I don't believe this is the case, because propositions tell me about states of the world, and I don't really see how Christianity is a belief about states of the world - except possibly for the existence of the historical Jesus, and I don't think anybody really seriously doubts that. Whether or not he's God the Son? idk man. @Birdie: you've lured me onto thin sophistic ice, I'm going to have to concede defeat. I'm still not entirely sure what "time" is, but perhaps the argument doesn't depend on it.
"For if eternity and time are rightly distinguished by this, that time does not exist without some movement and transition, while in eternity there is no change, who does not see that there could have been no time had not some creature been made, which by some motion could give birth to change,—the various parts of which motion and change, as they cannot be simultaneous, succeed one another,—and thus, in these shorter or longer intervals of duration, time would begin? Since then, God, in whose eternity is no change at all, is the Creator and Ordainer of time, I do not see how He can be said to have created the world after spaces of time had elapsed, unless it be said that prior to the world there was some creature by whose movement time could pass. And if the sacred and infallible Scriptures say that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, in order that it may be understood that He had made nothing previously,—for if He had made anything before the rest, this thing would rather be said to have been made “in the beginning,”—then assuredly the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time. For that which is made in time is made both after and before some time,—after that which is past, before that which is future. But none could then be past, for there was no creature by whose movements its duration could be measured. But simultaneously with time the world was made, if in the world’s creation change and motion were created, as seems evident from the order of the first six or seven days. For in these days the morning and evening are counted, until, on the sixth day, all things which God then made were finished, and on the seventh the rest of God was mysteriously and sublimely signalized. What kind of days these were it is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say!"
Augustine, City of God Book 6.
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Here's what I want to know. Why are the constants the constants they are?
edit:@above: there, Augustine is just talking about the existence of God outside of time, though, that's not important to our question.
and all of you people who think that religion is stupid and has only ever done bad things for people should please note what a clever philosophical point our dear old Auggie has here
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On February 19 2013 16:18 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 16:13 FunkyLich wrote:On February 19 2013 16:07 sam!zdat wrote:
Err, your assumption that religious beliefs are conjunctions of propositions. not question. Okay first of all, what's is a conjunction? In logic, it's two or more propositions tied together by an 'and'. So you're use of the word belief indicates that it's a proposition, and your plural usage indicates that we are conjoining them. Now maybe there are disjunctions too (or's), but I'm trying not to rock the boat. I'm not worried about the conjunction, unless you really want to argue about what a conjunction is and then I'll put some thought into it. I'm worried about your notion that religious beliefs are propositions. I don't believe this is the case, because propositions tell me about states of the world, and I don't really see how Christianity is a belief about states of the world - except possibly for the existence of the historical Jesus, and I don't think anybody really seriously doubts that. Whether or not he's God the Son? idk man. I just don't see that as a valid proposition in first-order predicate logic. @Birdie: you've lured me onto thin sophistic ice, I'm going to have to concede defeat. I'm still not entirely sure what "time" is, but perhaps the argument doesn't depend on it.
Okay I gave you a wiki link in a previous post about this. Here it is again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition
It has nothing to do with states of the world. Propositions are basically just declarative sentences, or more atomically, subject-predicate combinations.
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Assume I've taken upper-division philosophy courses about possible world semantics, and I know what a proposition is.
"that painting is pretty." is that a proposition? it's a declarative sentence.
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Well you just demonstrated that you don't. Propositions have nothing to do with states of the world. I would expect anyone with a background in analytic philosophy to realize that when they use definitions utterly counter from their colloquial meanings, they would have the good grace to explain themselves. I can't read your mind.
edit: yes, it's both.
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On February 19 2013 16:35 FunkyLich wrote:
Propositions have nothing to do with states of the world. I would expect anyone with a background in analytic philosophy to realize that when they use definitions utterly counter from their colloquial meanings, they would have the good grace to explain themselves.
a "proposition" is not a colloquial word, it is a term from analytic philosophy. any "colloquial" meaning is just people using it wrong. don't use the word if you don't mean it in the correct sense.
If you want to claim that "X or not X" is a tautology, now you are invoking a set-theoretical notion and I think that obligates you to a certain precision.
edit: hmm. So if I disagreed about the prettiness of the painting, you would hold me to be incorrect in a matter of truth and falsity? I suppose that's one aesthetic theory, but it leaves me unsatisfied
edit: what is the logical structure of what you mean as a "proposition"?
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On February 19 2013 16:24 sam!zdat wrote:
Here's what I want to know. Why are the constants the constants they are?
edit:@above: there, Augustine is just talking about the existence of God outside of time, though, that's not important to our question.
No, he's talking about time and the creation of the world. In the latter part at least.
Now I'm confused as to what we were talking about, because you weren't stating your case directly but were implying it. Or maybe I was inferring something that you weren't implying ;o If you just wanted to know how long an hour is, that's different.
Time and constants are based on perception of movement. Because the rotation of the earth is (relatively) constant, human perception of time can't distort the length of an hour, which is 1/24th of the amount of time it takes for the earth to rotate. The reason a day is the amount of time it takes for the earth to rotate fully once is because that's what God decided it would be.
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Okay, you got me there. I should have said "correct", "recognized". Again, your use of the word deviates from these.
X or not X. X is some proposition. Fill it in with an proposition you can think of. You do not need set theory to understand this very basic thing.
The logical structure of propositions? I don't even know what you're looking for here. We don't need to turn this into a meaning of meaning conversation. We're talking about pascal's wager.
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On February 19 2013 16:42 Birdie wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 16:24 sam!zdat wrote:
Here's what I want to know. Why are the constants the constants they are?
edit:@above: there, Augustine is just talking about the existence of God outside of time, though, that's not important to our question. No, he's talking about time and the creation of the world. In the latter part at least.
right, because time must have come into existence with the world, therefore God, who created the world, must exist out of time. The bit about the days of creation at the end is just to prove that time must have come into existence with the world, and not at some point during the days of creation, because the days of creation are measured in days themselves, and so time couldn't have been created at some time during days of creation themselves. Then at the end he mentions briefly that these days of creation might not have been our ordinary days, because that seems more plausible to him.
Now I'm confused as to what we were talking about, because you weren't stating your case directly but were implying it. Or maybe I was inferring something that you weren't implying ;o If you just wanted to know how long an hour is, that's different.
Time and constants are based on perception of movement. Because the rotation of the earth is (relatively) constant, human perception of time can't distort the length of an hour, which is 1/24th of the amount of time it takes for the earth to rotate. The reason a day is the amount of time it takes for the earth to rotate fully once is because that's what God decided it would be.
But the problem is, what units did God decide it would be that much in? that's sort of the angle I was pursuing, but I don't know how far I can really press the point, because it would be some number of plank units, at which point the question just reduces to why God made the constants the constants he made them, and would therefore cease to be interesting on its own merits.
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Hmmm, I'm thinking you're trying to tell me that religious beliefs don't have cognitive meaning? Is that right?
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whoa... you're gonna tell me only propositions have "cognitive meaning"? we're in for a long night.
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On February 19 2013 16:43 FunkyLich wrote:
X or not X. X is some proposition. Fill it in with an proposition you can think of. You do not need set theory to understand this very basic thing.
Yeah, you need set theory to understand that it's not as basic as you think. This argument might have gotten too technical though, I can let it drop. The point might only be amusing to me.
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No I'm asking you if you think religious beliefs have no cognitive meaning... That means religious beliefs don't have confirmation conditions.
edit: I'm not gonna humor you all night sorry.
edit: We can drop it if you don't think you can explain.
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What discipline are you drawing your terminology from?
edit: the point is, I could be a Christian and also hold that nothing at all would be different within the world whether or not God existed. At that point, my belief in Christianity simply cannot be considered to be a proposition within either Russell's formulation of objects and properties or Wittgenstein's of sets of possible worlds in which the proposition matches up to some state of affairs. As far as I can see, anyhow. At which point, we need to explain what other sort of thing that belief is, and then we need to decide whether the axiom of the excluded middle holds in that system. It's just all an open question, as far as I'm concerned.
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On February 19 2013 16:04 FunkyLich wrote:
uhhh, before I go on, what is the precedence of this?
1/∞-1
negative odds don't exist. You gotta keep it between 0 and 1.
Okay good:
1/(∞-1)
Now here's the funny thing about accepting tautologies. They establish nothing. They do not give you any new information. In this case, the tautology he's providing is the dilemma, the wager. It's not performing any argumentative work. So basically, if you accept that it's a tautology, that really only means you understand the wager. You understand why it's a wager, and why you have no choice in the matter. I grant you that the odds could be 1/∞, but you have yet to show that that is the case. could be.
edit: whoops. I should just quote everything.
It seems like every time you post you retreat from a now-untenable position, to a new one that you think is better.
With regards to the proof that "what could be" is. We have established that there are infinite possibilities. We have established that there is no evidence. Therefore, without evidence, every possibility is equally likely. You're basically reducing this to the age-old conversation where someone says "prove there is god" and someone else says "prove that there isn't." We are incapable of proving either. All we can know (due to the lack of evidence) is what I said above. Therefore, what could be, is, until we have evidence to believe otherwise.
Generally the burden of proof is placed upon the person making the non-null claim. In this case, if you believe that the possibilities are not infinite (or that they are not all equally likely), you must explain why (based on some evidence).
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Either a unicorn exists or it does not.
So the chances are 50/50
But why should only one unicorn exist? Why not 20 why not 30?
Why stop at unicorns? Why not dragons, and trolls, and umpa lumpas?
So it is basically a 1/ infinity chance that imaginary things don't exist. Since that is essentially 0, those things must exit.
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On February 20 2013 06:12 Smancer wrote:
Either a unicorn exists or it does not.
So the chances are 50/50
No. Either there exists something that is a unicorn, or it is not the case that there exists something that is a unicorn. If you assign a chance of 50/50, then you have just said that you know something about it, when in fact you know nothing about it. You don't know what the chances are of there existing something that is a unicorn - you have no clue. Don't go around pretending that you know there's a 50 percent chance.
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On February 20 2013 06:17 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2013 06:12 Smancer wrote:
Either a unicorn exists or it does not.
So the chances are 50/50
No. Either there exists something that is a unicorn, or it is not the case that there exists something that is a unicorn. If you assign a chance of 50/50, then you have just said that you know something about it, when in fact you know nothing about it. You don't know what the chances are of there existing something that is a unicorn - you have no clue. Don't go around pretending that you know there's a 50 percent chance.
So what do you think of the OPs argument?
On February 19 2013 07:01 HardlyNever wrote:
The reality is there are actually infinite possible answers to this question (as we have no solid evidence for any one answer being true, all answers are possible).
Does this mean there are infinite answers to the question "Do unicorns exist?" Since we have no solid evidence for any one of the answers being true.
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it means you don't have any clue about unicorns, and you can't even begin constructing a disjunction of possibilities which would allow you to start assigning probabilities in any meaningful fashion.
edit: a total absence of information does not imply that something is 50/50. A total absence of information implies a total absence of information.
edit: that only implies in game-theoretical situations in which you have constructed the situation yourself. Since you didn't make reality, your knowledge about reality doesn't work like that.
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On February 20 2013 06:30 sam!zdat wrote:
it means you don't have any clue about unicorns, and you can't even begin constructing a disjunction of possibilities which would allow you to start assigning probabilities in any meaningful fashion.
So we are in agreement, you have no clue about gods, and assigning probabilities in the way the OP did was meaningless.
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EPT
