Are you saying that it's not logically possible that we do know that god, unspecified, doesn't exist?

Logical possibility is sufficient to justify the stance that we don't know that god, unspecified, doesn't exist. — S

Then logical possibility is sufficient to justify the stance that we do know that god, unspecified, doesn't exist.

In other words, logical possibility would have to be sufficient to justify contradictory claims.

His point was that it's possible that a god exists, and that, given that we can conceive of an undetectable god, we don't know that god, unspecified, doesn't exist. — S

We can say that it's possible that a god exists and is undetectable. It's also possible that no god exists and that any existent god would be detectable. Possibility isn't enough then, is it?

Yeah, it makes sense to say that P is true or false, but P has to be a proposition. It needs to claim something. And then it's the claim that's true or false. "This statement" doesn't claim anything.

So I think you are suggesting that BECAUSE lives were worse (more difficult, etc) in the past, art may have been inspired by these difficulties? — ZhouBoTong

Well, and if art/entertainment is as good as ever, what would any of that matter, anyway?

I'm pretty sure it is. — YuZhonglu

Is there a way we could know?

I didn't. — Frank Apisa

Then why did you bring it up when I was talking about evidence?

It's quite deeper than that. The majority may believe that some specific thing is going to happen at some point in time, and to them it would be truth. If they end up agreeing later on that what they predicted would happen didn't happen, they would agree that their belief was false, and they would adopt another common belief as a result, a different truth. The only thing that made their old truth not truth, is that they replaced it with another one. Had they kept the old one, their old belief would still be truth. — leo

?? Nothing "deeper" about any of that. It's simply an argumentum ad populum that something is correct just because it's agreed upon.

I'm not saying that people don't accept whatever they accept as true or false. And someone could accept something as true or false because they're influenced by the crowd. But that has no bearing on any facts aside from the fact that they agree with each other, the fact that they assign "T" or "F" to whatever they do.

It's my opinion that it's my opinion. — YuZhonglu

So it might not be your opinion?

Sure we're getting there. So the question again is why you were going with "There are some things that are in principle not detectable" over the other possibility. We straightened out that they're both epistemic possibilities. Why are you going with one epistemic possibility over the other?

It's not a fact that it's your opinion?

The possibilities of both exist, Terrapin. — Frank Apisa

Yeah, that's what I said. "Both are epistemically possible."

But only one can be actualized, because they're logically contradictory.

Are you saying one is impossible? — Frank Apisa

Both are epistemically possible, but if one is ontologically actual, the other is ontologically impossible by virtue of being a contradiction of the other. One has to be ontologically actual.

Can you prove that an empirical claim was made? — Harry Hindu

No, you can't. And yes, that's an empirical claim. Since you can't prove empirical claims, you can't prove that an empirical claim was made.

Again, the take-away should be: "Don't worry about proof. Worry about the reasons there are for believing P versus ~P."

world exists objectively, independently of the ways we think about it or describe it
our thoughts and claims are about that world — Pattern-chaser

I would change the second line to "A lot of our thoughts and claims are about that world." Certainly not all of them are. (Well, and the first claim should be "Much of the world exists objectively . . .")

I wouldn't worry about proving it. We can't prove empirical claims period. It's just a matter of whether there are good reasons to believe one option over the contradictory option there.

They are not mutually exclusive...you realize? — Frank Apisa

Sure they are. It's a simple contradiction. If there's an x that's undetectable in principle, then it can not be the case that there is no x that's undetectable in principle. Again, both are possible.

You suggested that there's an x that's undetectable in principle. You didn't suggest that there's no x that's undetectable in principle. Why? Did you flip a coin?

It becomes a matter of objective fact if people agree that the rocket fails to launch, or that the bridge collapses, or that the patient dies, it is the agreement that leads us to view it as objective fact, as truth. — leo

The problem with this is that there's a name for it: it's the argumentum ad populum fallacy.

The only thing that's the case due to agreement is the fact that there was an agreement.

Further to this:

Is it simply that the words are used that way. — Banno

Words are used all sorts of ways, by all sorts of people. There might be an individual who uses "cat" to only refer to what most of us call "dogs," for example. Saying that the most common way to use a term is somehow "true" (or correct, etc.) by virtue of that fact is the argumentum ad populum fallacy.

People will constantly try to squeeze their conformist leanings in the back door when we're talking about this stuff, but that's all it is. When you realize that's all it is, you need to be constantly on guard about them trying to sneak that stuff in. It's never a fact that one should jump off of a bridge just because everyone else is. It's only a fact that everyone else is jumping off the bridge. That doesn't determine what you should or should not do.

To understand why I say that truth is subjective, one needs to understand how I define the subjective/objective distinction, and then understand my analysis of truth, which is based initially on standard notions of what truth is in analytic philosophy, and then understand my more controversial ontological analysis with respect to those standard analytic philosophy notions. A lot of people on the board aren't going to bother with all of that, because unfortunately we're often just not that interested in understanding others' views as their views--or "simply for the sake of understanding their views."

It certainly is POSSIBLE that there is an "X" that is undetectable in principle. — Frank Apisa

Sure, it's possible that there's an x undetectable in principle, and it's possible that there is no x undetectable in principle. Which one do we go with and why?

Do you insist that every sentence has an implied perspective? — Banno

Every proposition has a mental perspective because propositions are meanings and meaning is a mental phenomenon.

Here's a simple test you might use to check if some fact is objective or subjective. Ask if it can be said in the first person.

"Banno prefers vanilla ice to chocolate"; "This text is in English." — Banno

The simple test is whether we're talking about mental phenomena or not.

Re your test, we can just say, "Banno conceptualizes this text as English" or "Banno parses this text as English."

When we focus on whether something is a mental phenomenon, the text isn't, and we can simply point out that certain sets of marks are to be labeled "English," where we could fairly easily get a computer to detect what sorts of marks we have, etc.

That this text is written in English is not dependent on my own taste or feelings. Hence it is an objective truth. — Banno

Truth there can't have the property of being objective because the relation in question only obtains via an evaluation that an individual makes, based on how they assign meanings to the words/sentence in question, relative to what they're making the judgment with respect to--that is, a judgment about that meaning and its relationship to something else. Those are mental events, and hence on the definition of subjective as mental phenomena, we're talking about a subjective property, not an objective property.

So there's a distinction to be had here:

(1) X is undetectable in principle. In other words, no matter what we ever do, no matter what we ever know, we will never be able to detect x, because there's something about x that makes it inherently outside the realm of any possible interactive experience, even indirectly.

(2) We haven't detected x yet, maybe because we simply haven't yet looked in the right place, or in the right way yet, or maybe there's something we're yet to discover, but that we eventually will discover, that will enable us to detect x.

"Subjective" refers to mental phenomena per se. "Objective" things obtain independently of mental phenomena. The distinction isn't limited to the like/dislike sense of "opinion" or limited to feelings/emotions per se, or limited to propositional attitudes. There are a lot of mental phenomena other than opinions in that sense, feelings/emotions and propositional attitudes.

"Truth" isn't the same thing as "fact" or "state of affairs." Truth is a property of propositions. Propositions are the meanings of statements. All three previous sentences are standard in analytic philosophy. (Which of course doesn't have to amount to anything, but a lot of people here are very concerned with consensus standards, so those folks can't consistently ignore something that's a widespread standard in the field we're supposedly dealing with.)

More controversially, meaning isn't objective. Meaning is a mental phenomenon. So propositions aren't objective. And as an upshot of this, the truth relation isn't objective, either. There are no truths that aren't believed, but truth isn't coextensive with belief--many beliefs have nothing to do with the truth relation.

There isn't, maybe there was before humanity. — lucafrei

So what is the worry with it?

So you're not proposing something undetectable in principle? Just something we haven't detected yet?

If you are asking me about something I wrote...quote what I wrote. I will flesh it out my words if that is what you are asking. — Frank Apisa

I'm asking you about this:

"...and YOU still come up with "If humans cannot detect it...it does not exist"...which is absurd."

How are you getting to "there are things that are undetectable in principle"

I do not do "believing." — Frank Apisa

Yeah, you do. Everyone does. The word(s) you use for it are irrelevant.

So what would be the basis for the notion of some things being undetectable in principle?

I don't know what sort of therapy you're dealing with. If it's physical therapy because of some major medical issue, then that's going to be difficult to just ignore, obviously. Normally, I'm an advocate of people making major changes if they're unhappy with the way things are going. You can change careers--and you can radically do that, change where you're living, change who you're living with, change the way that you're living--you could be a wanderer rather than settling in just one place, you could live much more cheaply than however you're living now, etc. There are all sorts of options available. People often get trapped into thinking that they need to approach things in some conventional way. You do not need to do that. You can do things that are very unconventional. You can do things that people don't at all expect of you, things that don't go along with the self-identity you fashioned in the past. If people are going to be negatively judgmental about that, distance yourself from those people and make new friends.

But if you're tied down to needing physical therapy or something like that, then that can be more difficult to make major changes with.

Ah, well, I have no idea why one might think that entertainment is damaging. To me that seems like a weird thing to think.

Also, not sure how we'd "not look for opinions only" on this. There aren't going to be facts whether something is "too distracting" etc.

...and YOU still come up with "If humans cannot detect it...it does not exist"...which is absurd. — Frank Apisa

So, you're believing first off that some things are not going to be detectable in principle, right?

Well, it's not even limited to sense. At least not directly. It includes any sort of evidential detection from any instrument, too. For example, something like a spectrometer, or an oscilloscope, or a neutrino detector--any sort of instrument we can imagine (and that we have reason to believe is responding to some objective phenomenon as a means of detection).

If you want to think that because you see no gods on your desk or on the street in front of your apartment is evidence that no gods exist...

...then it is also evidence that nothing that you are not able to see on your desk or on the street in front of your apartment is also evidence that nothing else exists. — Frank Apisa

Again, it's not just about seeing. Can we get that straight first? Let's see if we can settle anything.

None of that is evidence that no gods exist. — Frank Apisa

Yes it is. The only way it wouldn't be is if god is supposed to be located someplace where we haven't even checked. In lieu of specifying a location, or in a situation where god is supposed to be omnipresent, the more places we search but come up empty is the more evidence that there is no such thing as a god.

Hence, are you suggesting locations that we haven't checked yet?

The fact that no human can "check" and find something is NOT evidence that a thing does not exist. It is merely evidence that we humans cannot detect it. — Frank Apisa

There would need to be some plausible reason why it's not detectable. What's the plausible reason?

That doesn't just go for gods, it goes for everything.

There's no reason to believe that anything exists if there's no evidence for it, and there's reason to believe that it doesn't exist if searches do not turn it up. We'd need a plausible reason to believe that something isn't detectable in order to believe that.

Damaging how?

YOU are the one claiming there is evidence that there are no gods — Frank Apisa

Correct. There is evidence that there are no gods. Everywhere we check--no evidence of any gods. That's evidence that there are none. That's evidence that something doesn't exist. You suggested that maybe we're looking in the wrong place. So I'm asking you to suggest where the right place to look might be.

From what I gather...you are suggesting that since you cannot see any gods on on your desk, on the sidewalk in front of your apartment... — Frank Apisa

Not seeing, per se. No evidence of them.

Ideas aren't located on desks. They're brain phenomena. There's plenty of evidence that they're brain phenomena.

Maybe you'd want to suggest an alternate place to look for evidence of god phenomena?

I asked you to furnish the single most important piece of evidence that shows that no gods exist. — Frank Apisa

Importance is subjective. I don't know what you're going to consider more important on this end.

I don't consider any piece of evidence more important than any other for this. I look on my desk. There are no gods there. I look on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. No gods there. None on the moon, either. Etc. All of equal importance to me. (And not very important at that, since the question of whether there are gods seems like a colossal waste of time to me, since the idea is so absurd/childish/ignorant.)

I said what I meant to say. — Frank Apisa

Okay, but what you said is "then any gods that exist are nonphysical also." I don't know how "also" makes sense, but again, the idea of a nonphysical anything is incoherent. So the idea of gods is incoherent, if they're nonphysical, as you say.

If you are of the opinion that an IDEA is NOT nonphysical...then an entity god could be nonphysical. — Frank Apisa

What in the world? How would anything being not nonphysical have any implication for something being nonphysical?

If a translation of your "nothing is nonphysical" is that the only things that are nonphysical — Frank Apisa

If nothing is nonphysical, then "things that are nonphysical" is x'ed out. There is nothing in that category.

are things that do not exist...

Things that don't exist do not exist. Obviously. In other words, there are no such things.

then you are saying that ideas do not exist.

No. I said that ideas are not nonphysical. Ideas exist. But ideas are not nonphysical. In other words, ideas are physical.

Well I've done my bit with Scruton, over to you to deal with the above. — unenlightened

I'm not very interested in what he said. I don't know if Scruton has ever said much of anything I've agreed with. I'm primarily interested in the fact that he was sacked over saying something. That's what I care about.