What are you thinking "metaphysical" refers to?

Of course, God as conceived in the Western, Judeo-Christian scheme of things, made the world separate from himself. — Bitter Crank

Then God can't be omnipresent.

If we can only conceive of abstract concepts and not objects, and seemingly, this must be so because we cannot fit objects into our mind, but only our conceptions of them, either objects do not exist in the actualized sense of the word, or they are at the same time both objects and concepts. — TheGreatArcanum

(1) If conceiving of an object is identical to the object literally being present, then what work is the word "conceiving" doing there anyway? In other words, if a conception of an object is identical to the object, then the word "conception" appears to be completely empty and unnecessary semantically. This is especially curious given that we'd be saying that some noun and some action, some verb, performed with respect to the very same noun are supposedly identical.

Otherwise "conceiving an object" isn't actually the same thing as the object itself. A conception of an object would be something different than the object. So the fact that a conception of an object doesn't entail the object literally being present wouldn't negate that there is a conception of an object.

(There might be ways to make sense out of saying that "conceiving an object" is identical to "object" by the way--perhaps akin to my ontology of time compared to some conventional utterances about time, but you'd need to be able to explain the apparent conflicts there.)

(2) Given the above, the fact that conceiving an object has to be different than the object itself if we're not simply adding superfluous, empty words to our utterances, the fact that our conceptions aren't identical to what they're conceptions of doesn't tell us anything about the objects themselves.

Any assertion made that at least one god exists...or that no gods exist...

...IS NOTHING BUT A BLIND GUESS. — Frank Apisa

Must. Repeat. The. Mantra.

If ethical existence is represented by a circle, individual morality would be represented by a dot in the center. — Merkwurdichliebe

I'm not even sure what "ethical existence" would refer to. If it's "where ethics exists" then the circle would be a small one inside a much larger "individual" circle, but you must have something else in mind. How would you define "ethical existence"?

So in my view, morality works the same way.

Thanks for answering. I'm wondering why you think that you can't know that I'm picturing something if you think that you can know that I'm thinking something then. (And personally, I'd say that picturing something is a type of thinking, but maybe you use the word "thinking" differently than I do.)

At any rate, you don't think the fact that thinking is "of" each individual implies that my thinking is somehow internal to you, do you?

Just in case you don't know, I'm an atheist, so I'm not commenting on the following to try to convince anyone that God exists. I'm just addressing the argument as you're presenting it.

You're conflating a couple different arguments in your comments. It's beneficial to separate them.

One, you seem to be arguing that it's not plausible to say that x existed prior to relatively recent human knowledge of x. But as has been pointed out, that argument would have to go just as well for any scientific phenomena that we've figured out so far--that things are composed of atoms, for example. Or plate tectonics. Or any and everything else (since science, period, is a relatively recent development in human history).

Two, you seem to be arguing that if something exists, we should be able to demonstrate to everyone (at least ideally, barring folks with mental problems, etc.) that it exists. This is a different argument than the previous paragraph, and it doesn't work to try to combine the two. This second argument ignores the fact that religions posit that deities are not (at least not usually) directly observable in the manner that, ducks (to use an example from earlier in the thread) are, and that this is intentionally the case, because faith is supposed to be an important element of religious belief.

Some things are neither external nor internal. — creativesoul

I know I shouldn't address this, because you'll probably just ignore the other question, but that is incoherent, because the dichotomy exhausts every possible location.

Do you think that every single mental thing that goes on in the mind of another is something you can directly apprehend? — Terrapin Station


No.

you can't know that I pictured something? — Terrapin Station


I can't — Merkwurdichliebe

What would be an example of something mental, that you don't directly apprehend, that you can know (propositionally)?

"Blind guess"implies it is not based on any unambiguous evidence or reasoning. — Frank Apisa

"Blind guess" implies it's not based on any evidence or reasoning period.

"Ambiguous"/"unambiguous" is relative/subjective. It depends on the meaning, if any, an individual assigns any evidence or reasoning.

It is blind guess...no matter what. — Frank Apisa

No, it isn't. "Blind guess" implies that it's not based on any evidence or reasoning.

In a philosophy forum...one expects greater care with wording. — Frank Apisa

It's not a lack of care with wording. You can't parse speech like a robot. You won't understand a huge percentage of what people say if you do that.

No they are not. They are making a totally blind guess... — Frank Apisa

If they say, "Flowers are evidence that God exists. Flowers couldn't be as they are without there being a God," then that's not a blind guess. It's based on evidence. If an assertion is based on evidence, it's not a blind guess.

Look at it this way. When a baseball player says to himself, "If I don't chew my gum exactly nine times between pitches, I'm not going to be able to get a hit," they're not making a blind guess about whether they're going to be able to get a hit. They're basing their belief on a correlation they're making between gum-chewing and getting a hit. We might not think that the evidential basis of their belief has any merit, we might claim that if they'd test the theory more rigorously they'd probably see that it's false (though many factors go into this, including that very superstitious players can basically sabotage themselves when they don't follow a particular practice), but that's irrelevant to whether it's a blind guess. If it's based on some sort of evidence, it's not a blind guess. Blind guesses are characterized by being based on nothing other than making a guess a la throwing mental dice so to speak.

Your wording is careless. Are you actually saying you don't think people often make blind guesses...or are you actually saying you think people do not often make blind guesses. — Frank Apisa

It's not careless if you're used to conventional conversational English. The two are saying the same thing.

Every person on this planet who has ever made a statement like, "There is a GOD" or "There are no gods"...

...IS MAKING A BLIND GUESS. — Frank Apisa

No, they're not. Almost everyone is basing that on some sort of evidence, some sort of intuition or feeling that isn't identical to the claim, some sort of reasoning, etc. Almost no one actually makes a blind guess about it.

Whether you think the evidence, the reasoning, etc. is quality, is apt, etc. is another issue. That's irrelevant to whether it's a blind guess.

To someone considering questions about the true nature of the REALITY of existence..."beliefs" based on what essentially are coin tosses...ARE NOT MEANINGFUL. — Frank Apisa

If someone assigns meaning to something, it's meaningful to them.

"Meaningful" is always to an individual.

Re the other part, what does it conventionally imply (in a philosophical context) if something is incoherent?

But often we are not. — Pattern-chaser

I don't think that people often make blind guesses about things. And when they do, they usually announce it; often they're rather apologetic about it.

That doesn't imply that someone else is going to think that the empirical stuff, the rationality behind an assertion that's not a blind guess is "quality," but that's a very different issue.

Because a guess that is not "meaningful" is pretty much a blind one. — Frank Apisa

Unless you're using "meaning" in some very odd manner, why couldn't a blind guess be meaningful to someone?

My answer would be: I do not know. It certainly is possible. — Frank Apisa

If the very notion of nonphysicality is incoherent, you can know.

I'm figuring this, because if there is no way for me to apprehend the morals of others, how can I claim, with any reasonability, that they actually have morals too. And even if there was something in another, something that I could not deny, there still remains no way to determine that it is morality. — Merkwurdichliebe

Do you think that every single mental thing that goes on in the mind of another is something you can directly apprehend? For example, if I picture a creature that I imagined just now, without drawing it, etc. do you think you can somehow directly apprehend my picturing, or otherwise you can't know that I pictured something?

Saying that nominalism is about identicality just is saying that identity is, for nominalists, about identicality, — Janus

No, that's not correct given the distinction as it's been made.

What would you claim are the bases of inferences that others have moral feelings, thoughts and dispositions, and that their behavior is morally motivated? — Janus

It would be a huge discussion to get into because there isn't just one way that we do this, and it's not something simple in any case. We probably don't need to get into any discussion about it, because the point was simply that I'm not saying anything at all like "We can't know that others make moral judgments." If someone else believes that just in case we can't directly access something, then we can't have knowledge of it or can't say it exists, that's their problem. I'd not at all agree with them. Maybe it would be worth starting a different thread about how indirect knowledge works, but there's not really any need to get into that in this thread, because I'm not saying anything like "We can have no knowledge of others making moral judgments." I only wanted to correct that misconception. I'd rather we try to stay somewhat focused.

And by the way, the whole "internalize" thing wasn't my doing. Someone else brought the idea up. I only had issues with it because of what it implies, per the normal connotations of "internalize," especially keeping in mind various other statements made in this thread, with respect to the ontology or morals/morality. It turned out that "habitualize" was closer to what was being said.

Who knows why you're arguing with me? :wink:

I was simply explaining that nominalism is about indenticality, and there are people who claim identicality over multiple instantiations. If you do not, then you're actually on the nominalist side of things, at least for this issue.

Just what I explicitly typed. The short version was the first sentence: "In general, there's no requirement that you directly experience something (and so know it by acquaintance) to know it in the propositional sense."

The analogy didn't say anything about predictions. That's not what it was about.

Not that it's true that you can't make predictions with respect to others mental content.

If you can't internalize the meaning of moral statements or moral behaviors, then how could you know they are statements with moral meaning, — Janus

In general, there's no requirement that you directly experience something (and so know it by acquaintance) to know it in the propositional sense. For example, it's impossible for us to directly experience neutrinos, but we know they exist via indirect evidence, via inferential reasoning, analogical reasoning, abduction, etc. We know that others have minds, make moral judgments, and so in this way.

Yes, but this is in response to your passage quoted above where you say that people claim that a thing's identity is dependent on it being numerically identical in the way you have defined it. — Janus

The passage you quoted there does not use the word "identity," it's not saying anything about identity (per the distinction between identity and identicality as we've been employing it), and I'd not say that identity (again, per the distinction as we've been using it) hinges on something being numerically identical. I was pointing out that nominalism is about identicality per the distinction we're using, not identity.

If you say there can be no morals (no moral behavior, thoughts, attitudes or whatever) external to your mind then how would that not be solipsistic? — Janus

First off, the world isn't solely comprised of morals. That's all I'm talking about there--morals.

Secondly, even if we were saying that it's "solipsistic about morality," I'm not actually saying anything solipsistic about morality. I'm neither saying that no morality other than one's own exists nor that one can only know that only one's own morality exists.

What do you think "that' refers to in the passage below — Janus

"Numerically identical." You preceded "if you define that . . ." with "Numerically identical," followed by a colon, because that's what I had just explained.

If morals/morality is only internal to individuals, then my morals/morality are internal to me, Joe's is internal to Joe, yours are internal to you, etc.

But you somehow took this to imply "So then, your morals, and praxis' morals are internal to me." So I'm asking you to explain how you're figuring this.

If you say that nothing external to the mind/body can be internalized — Janus

I said nothing even remotely resembling that. Not that it has anything to do with the conventional definition of solipsism.

then you could have no contact with the external world, — Janus

That doesn't follow from "nothing external to the mind/body can be internalized." Again, not that I'm claiming anything like "nothing external to the mind/body can be internalized," but nevertheless, "then you could have no contact with the external world" doesn't follow from it.

"You could have no contact with the external world" would be (epistemological) solipsism, but "thinking in terms of internal and external" certainly wouldn't be and wouldn't imply solipsism.

I'm not saying anything like "You could have no contact with the external world" in general, by the way.

No, fuckwit, it only "defines it (identity) away" for those who accept that definition of identity, such as yourself. — Janus

You're calling me a fuckwit and you still can't even get straight if we're talking about identicality or identity per the distinction you introduced earlier.

But you're using the term in some mysterious, unconventional way.

How about just explaining how you think it would imply that you somehow have my morality?

Via saying that a simple description of identicality being multiply instantiated "defines it away" so that no one would hold the view.

The "misconceived ontology" at work here is your facile solipsistic thinking in terms of <internal > and <external>. — Janus

Learn what "solipsistic" conventionally refers to.

If morals are only internal, and have no external analogue, then what I said follows. No ifs, ands, or buts. — Merkwurdichliebe

If morals are only internal, then you internally possess my morals because?

Try that with something else that is internal to individuals. If desires are only internal, then you possess my desires because?

Where have I said that people do "universally deny identicality multiply instantiated". — Janus

"if you define that as meaning that an entity is absolutely unchanging from one moment to the next then you have defined away the possibility that any entity could be the same entity throughout its life"

There is absolutely nothing upon which you can make a meaningful guess regarding the existence or non-existence of gods. — Frank Apisa

I don't know why you're changing to a focus on "meaningful."

At any rate, one example of something you can base an assertion on is whether nonphysical existents are coherent.

For one, not understanding that people don't universally deny identicality multiply instantiated.

Such as understanding what the different sides of what the nominalism versus realism debate are even claiming.