Christoffer
507
↪Frank Apisa


The claim "there are no gods" is an unfalsifiable claim upon an unfalsifiable idea. The claim "there is a god" or "there are gods" must first be made before someone can claim "there are no gods". A child born in isolation and who knows nothing of religion will not claim "there are no gods". Burden of proof applies to the initial claim. By saying that burden of proof applies to "there are no gods", you are ignoring Russel's whole logic, simple as that. Read Russel. — Christoffer

Fuck Russel.

ANYONE making an assertion of fact...(like, there are no gods)...incurs a burden of proof obligation.

If you want to think otherwise...fine with me. But there is not a logician in the world who would agree with you.

It may well be, but you still haven't shown this, and you still have the burden of doing so. — S

It is just as good an inference to say that conscious life was guided into being by another consciousness than to say it occurred spontaneously and accidentally. In fact, it seems to be in better line with Occam's razor than to say that some complex mechanism is occuring that causes inanimate matter to become conscious. Even if some such mechanism is at work, it is not contradictory to science to say that, for example, the universe was created by other beings in another universe (higher consciousness). As I said, I never claimed to know the nature of said consciousness.

I already have. Just retrace my replies. That's not difficult. — S

No, you haven't. You made bald assertions.

You still don't seem to understand how philosophy works. You don't get to just assert that the alternative possibility is just as good an inference. You don't get to just spurt out how something seems to you. You don't get to just assert that something is not contradictory to science. You don't get to just assume that there's a consciousness about which you say you do not know the nature of.

That's not doing philosophy. I have zero reason to believe any of these claims. They require support. It's on you to support these assertions.

And also, there's another fallacy known as a false dilemma. You'll be committing that fallacy if you suggest that, "We don't know", is not a possible answer.

No, you haven't. You made bald assertions. — Noah Te Stroete

I think my head just exploded because the irony of what you just said is through the roof.

You still don't seem to understand how philosophy works. You don't get to just assert that the alternative possibility is just as good an inference. You don't get to just spurt out how something seems to you. You don't get to just assert that something is not contradictory to science. You don't get to just assume that there's a consciousness about which you say you do not know the nature of.

That's not doing philosophy. I have zero reason to believe any of these claims. They require support. It's on you to support these assertions. — S

I gave reasons. Whether you thought they were bad reasons is your preference because you haven't addressed my reasons. You just said I was wrong.

I think my head just exploded because the irony of what you just said is through the roof. — S

You constantly edit your posts after I've read them. You can't expect me to go back and see if you've edited all of your posts. Why do you do that?

What is a good reason for believing that conscious life spontaneously and accidentally came into being?

I gave reasons. Whether you thought they were bad reasons is your preference because you haven't addressed my reasons. You just said I was wrong. — Noah Te Stroete

You're lying. I accurately identified a fallacy in your argument. I also pointed out that you have a burden of proof, and that you've failed to meet it. If you think that you've met it, then show me where. You made the false suggestion that this is a matter of preference. I've dealt with that by saying, in effect, speak for yourself, and by showing how it's trivial if you just turn up to a philosophical discussion to say something like, "I like cheese!". We don't care about your preference, we're here to be reasonable.

You're lying. I accurately identified a fallacy in your argument. I also pointed out that you have a burden of proof, and that you've failed to meet it. — S

There IS NO BURDEN OF PROOF in abductive reasoning. That's the nature of abductive reasoning! :lol:

You constantly edit your posts after I've read them. You can't expect me to go back and see if you've edited all of your posts. Why do you do that? — Noah Te Stroete

Lol, sorry. I submit comments too soon, then think of something I should've added.

For nearly 50 years I didn't understand that I was being held in existence. Your belief it in any way is trivial or not a matter of discussion here is beyond my belief. I can't believe you believe what you wrote to me.

There IS NO BURDEN OF PROOF in abductive reasoning. That's the nature of abductive reasoning! :lol: — Noah Te Stroete

You don't know what you're talking about. Don't put too much into the "proof" part. Think of it as a burden of justification or a request to show your reasoning, if you even have anything to show.

For nearly 50 years I didn't understand that I was being held in existence. Your belief it in any way is trivial or not a matter of discussion here is beyond my belief. I can't believe you believe what you wrote to me. — Daniel Cox

I can't believe you managed to misinterpret it so badly. What you said had no philosophical value. It was just bare assertion. Are you two going to start doing philosophy any time soon?

You don't know what you're talking about. Don't put too much into the "proof" part. Think of it as a burden of justification or a request to show your reasoning. — S

I gave my reasoning in my seven-point argument. You said I wasn't justified in saying that conscious life spontaneously and accidentally came into being was less likely than that it was guided by a higher consciousness. I think instead of "less likely" I could just as well have said "less elegant". I explained to Terrapin that I wasn't using "likelihood" in the statistical sense. It is used in the Occam's razor, better, more realistic, less baffling sense. ***How would one even explain conscious life coming into existence from inanimate matter spontaneously and accidentally?*** At least my explanation makes intuitve sense. The alternative does not.

Acknowledging the fact God is holding us in existence has millions of times more value than everything you've ever written or said combined!

Do you know how many hundreds of thousands of hours of real world experience it took to arrive at that? No, you don't. I'm the only one who comments here daily who knows the difference between formal and instrumental signification; the distinctions between 1st-, second-, & 3rd-person experience; the difference between the two main theories of truth; & the separation of modern analytic logic/philosophy from Intentional Aristotelian logic/philosophy.

My methods of learning are unlike everyone else's here. "What you said has no philosophical value." Come on, you got to be kidding me.

Unless you have a history of mental illness accompanied by severe delusions, or you've been taking some serious drugs, it's pretty safe to say the fridge is real. This is the problem with philosophy and those indoctrinated into it, there's always some lame excuse for everything, some fire escape out of reality, it's no more than mythology with pathologically specialized language.

It's belief, or it's knowledge, or it's a reference to nothing by someone who doesn't exist.

Here's something you can add as point 8 thru 15 or so.

_The first facility of the noetic subsystem is awareness._ Our awareness is neither totally random, or totally determined by external stimuli. Rather, it is determined, at least in part, by our mental states. Thus, _the second facility of the noetic subsystem is the ability to direct awareness._ In large measure, we can control contents to which we attend. Implicit in our capacity to direct attention is a _value system,_ for attention values its objects. Therefore, _the third facility of the noetic subsystem is the generation of value._ Finally, in implementing our desire to pay attention we activate selected contents. This establishes the last facility to be addressed, _the ability to direct, to some extent, the neural subsystem's response, initiating chains of events incarnating our values._ This is confirmed by experiments falsifying causal closure (p. 125). Since all these facilities involve the ability to direct awareness and are responses to the contents of which we are aware, they fall appropriately within the bounds of a single subsystem. In sum, the function of the noetic subsystem is supervisory and evaluative.

God, Science & Mind: The Irrationality of Naturalism by Dennis F. Polis, Ph.D.

I read or skimmed your proof. You're absolutely right, we direct our awareness each moment, it's the proof of God's existence and the eternal demise of "naturalism/atheism."

But you have a preference for physicalism. Perhaps I’m not using “likelihood” in abductive inference the same way I would use “likelihood” in statistics. — Noah Te Stroete

It's not a preference, it's knowledge--a justified, true belief, based on evidence.

If I were doing ontology based on preferences, the world would have things like ghosts in it.

it's knowledge--a justified, true belief, based on evidence. — Terrapin Station

I very much doubt that.

t's not a preference, it's knowledge--a justified, true belief, based on evidence.

If I were doing ontology based on preferences, the world would have things like ghosts in it. — Terrapin Station

I would be interested to hear how you explain consciousness using the physicalist model.

Funny how you made the argument Appeal to the Fridge.

Intentionality?

In The Intentional Stance, Daniel Dennett offers a third-person account of intentionality. He discussed the difficulties in attributing a belief to an individual by interpreting behavior and suggests:

it is quite plausible to suppose that in principle (if not yet in practice) it would be possible to confirm these simple, objective belief attributions _by finding something in the believers head_ -- by finding the beliefs themselves, in effect.... If you do believe [there is milk in the refrigerator] that's a perfectly objective fact about you, and it must come down in the end to your brain's being in some particular physical state. If we know more about the physiological psychology, we could in principle determine the facts about your brain state and determine whether or not you believe there is milk in the fridge even if you were determined to be silent or disingenuous about the topic. - Dennett (1987), p. 14.

Naturalists often wave their hands dramatically at crucial points expecting assent. In fact, Dennett's claim is quasi-fact. It is physically impossible to have detailed knowledge of brain states Dennett's supposition requires (p. 11). Even if we did, how would we identify a belief? - God, Science & Mind: The Irrationality of Naturalism by Dennis F. Polis.

I'm on the side of the smart guy.

JUSTIFIED TRUE BELIEF?
Contemporary philosophers generally define knowledge to be justified true belief. That means that knowledge is a kind of belief to them, however we will see that this is an indefensible position. That knowledge is not a species of belief can be seen by examining their contraries. Red is a species of light, the contrary of light, darkness, involves the exclusion of red. If knowledge were a species of belief then the contrary of belief which is doubt would exclude knowledge. But it clearly is not the case.

When Descartes wrote on methodological doubt he knew that he was sitting in his room writing, yet he chose to doubt it. Since he could both know and doubt that he was in his room at the same time doubt does not exclude knowledge and knowledge is therefore a not a species of belief.

Again, let's look at the contraries of knowledge and of belief. The contrary of knowledge is ignorance, the contrary of belief is doubt. In order to doubt some proposition I have to consider the proposition but in order to be ignorant of a proposition no consideration is necessary. Therefore the contraries of knowledge and of belief don't have the same relationship to each other so knowledge is not a form of belief. A consequence of this is that Cartesian doubt calls belief into question, but it doesn't call knowledge into question because doubt is refusing to commit to a proposition even if we know it is true. So Cartesian doubt doesn't call knowledge into question it merely suspends our commitment to what we know.

Dfpolis #37 Knowledge & Belief
The difference between knowledge and belief. Knowledge is not justified true belief because it is not any kind of belief. Knowledge requires an awareness of reality, while belief is commitment with or without awareness of the reality of what is being committed to. Replacing the probability of a proposition with prioritized commitment.

As long as you're the only one on the rules committee between us, you'll always be right. Isn't that funny?

I gave my reasoning in my seven-point argument. You said I wasn't justified in saying that conscious life spontaneously and accidentally came into being was less likely than that it was guided by a higher consciousness. I think instead of "less likely" I could just as well have said "less elegant". I explained to Terrapin that I wasn't using "likelihood" in the statistical sense. It is used in the Occam's razor, better, more realistic, less baffling sense. ***How would one even explain conscious life coming into existence from inanimate matter spontaneously and accidentally?*** At least my explanation makes intuitve sense. The alternative does not. — Noah Te Stroete

Like I said, an argument from incredulity. Your incredulity, or bafflement, isn't reasonable grounds to reach your conclusions. You must argue the point. I see no reason whatsoever to believe that your preferred possibility is more realistic or less baffling or more in line with Occam's razor. And no explanation is always better than a god of the gaps. There's a reason why I haven't concluded that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world and intervenes to maintain order in an invisible and undetectable manner. And it has nothing to do with preference. I quite like the idea of that, but I'm not an idiot.

Like I said, an argument from incredulity. Your incredulity, or bafflement, isn't reasonable grounds to reach your conclusions. — S

Is it a false dichotomy then? Is there another explanation that I missed? No explanation is NOT in line with Occam's razor. And yes, when one of two alternatives doesn't make sense, I choose the better of the two.

Is it a false dichotomy then? Is there another explanation that I missed? No explanation is NOT in line with Occam's razor. And yes, when one of two alternatives doesn't make sense, I choose the better of the two. — Noah Te Stroete

Yes, the explanation that we don't know enough to reach a conclusion. That beats a bad explanation.

How is my explanation "bad"? Furthermore, what do you mean by:

Yes, the explanation that we don't know enough to reach a conclusion. — S

How does one explain something by not reaching a conclusion?

Acknowledging the fact God is holding us in existence has millions of times more value than everything you've ever written or said combined! — Daniel Cox

Calling something as controversial as that "a fact" has no philosophical value. Anyone can do that, and it doesn't mean a thing. I can do that by acknowledging that the fact that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is under your bed right now has a trillion times the value of your belief in God.

Do you know how many hundreds of thousands of hours of real world experience it took to arrive at that? No, you don't. I'm the only one who comments here daily who knows the difference between formal and instrumental signification; the distinctions between 1st-, second-, & 3rd-person experience; the difference between the two main theories of truth; & the separation of modern analytic logic/philosophy from Intentional Aristotelian logic/philosophy.

My methods of learning are unlike everyone else's here. "What you said has no philosophical value." Come on, you got to be kidding me. — Daniel Cox

Quit trying to bamboozle or impress me with philosophical jargon. It has the opposite effect. Cut to the chase. You assert that the existence of God is a fact. Simply tell us why we should believe that.

Fuck Russel. — Frank Apisa

Really? You're pretty insignificant compared to his contribution to philosophy and you pretty much ignore him just because it's convenient for you. If that's the level you want to hold the discussion, then goodbye.

I'm out the door to donate blood for the 14th time, so I only have a second.

Being held in existence is not up for debate because the alternative is not only unintelligible, it's downright insane. Think of the philosophical contrary and the square of opposition.

Give me enough time and an open mind and I will turn the person around.

Why? Because we're being held in existence, and only One entity exists as an intrinsic necessity performing that ongoing fact. If something else besides God is holding you in being and THAT Supreme Being is going to have you cease to exist then it's not much of a holder now!