What is it that I've failed to understand? — Hallucinogen

If Someone failed to provide an argument that will convince you, there's little chance I will be more successful. I think how he expressed it is better than I can do it.

Well to get the op's 'name the fallacy' bit out of the way, it's a very old and all too common fallacy of "refusing to agree". — unenlightened

I'll assume this is tongue in cheek.

My suggestion is that mathematics is the study of abstract arrangement, such that absolutely any world comes under its purview. So neither is its effectiveness unreasonable, nor is it an invention of the mind. I mean fancy inventing that there are 17 wallpaper patterns. It's just untidy! Of course if we lived in a world where wallpaper was not a thing because geometry was different or whatever, we may not have been interested to find out about wallpaper patterns, but then some other 'construct' would become relevant, and that would be 'unreasonably effective.' — unenlightened

I don't think I can do the anti-unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics argument justice, but I'll take a swing at it. First off, to be clear, the term itself is not one I made up, so I have no stake in using it. Mathematics works very well when we are dealing with phenomena far from human scale - cosmology and sub-atomic physics. At those scales, the effects of deeply complex interactions between phenomena can be ignored. Objects can be treated as abstract geometrical entities.

The closer you get to human scale, the less that works. Application of math to biological, neurological, psychological, climate science, sociological, geological, ecological, and evolutionary biological phenomena is much less effective and precise. The laws of these levels of the scientific hierarchy are different, and not derivable, from the laws of physics. Much of it depends on statistical and probabilistic methods which are inherently imprecise. Irreducible differences between the characteristics and environmental elements of phenomena become more important and complex.

Add to this the fact that much of science is expressed mathematically in differential equations. All but the simplest DEs can not be solved rationally. They can only be solved approximately or numerically using computers. Even beyond that, complex dynamic systems, which include much of what is studied at human scale, are subject to the complexity of chaos theory which makes accurate calculations much more difficult.

No, I'm saying his imposition of natural vs supernatural makes no difference to the argument. I am not disagreeing at all with what they mean. I even said at least once that I'm letting him decide what they mean. — Hallucinogen

Sorry, I've read the exchange in the opening post three times and your characterization of what Someone has done is a misunderstanding on your part. You don't seem to grasp the distinction between methodological and metaphysical naturalism that is such a big part of his argument. I have no problem following his argument. As far as I can tell, it is completely responsive to your arguments. You just have failed to understand.

Tell me more; disagreement excites me. — unenlightened

This is the old unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics argument. Is math a human invention or is nature fundamentally mathematical. I come down on the side of invention. I don't think this is the place to have that discussion and I'm not sure I can make a good case with my current understanding.

This isn't what I wanted the post to be about though. — Hallucinogen

Sorry, we can leave it there.

I'm looking for the kind of error being committed when he's basing his disagreement on a few definitions about natural and supernatural in which they contradict and insisting that I'm concluding a supernatural thing from natural premises. — Hallucinogen

I've looked over the OP discussion several times and I don't see any logical problems. Seems to me that any confusion comes from disagreements on the meanings of several words - natural vs. supernatural, methodological vs. metaphysical, and science vs. nature. I think you also just disagree with each other.

What sort of world would it be, if mathematical descriptions did not apply? ... only God could begin to conceive such a thing. — unenlightened

The emoji is winking, so I don't know if you're serious. If you are, I disagree.

The relationship between physics and mathematics isn't a scientific one; it is metaphysical. — Hallucinogen

I believe this isn't true. Mathematics is a descriptive language invented by people that turns out to be very good at describing the world. There is no more a metaphysical relationship between math and physics than there is between the English language and the reality it describes or a map and the terrain it depicts.

I've said this definitively, but I admit to some uncertainty about what I've written. I need to think more about this. It's an interesting question.

Does anyone find the thesis that the objects of knowledge exists logically prior to the existence of knowledge objectionable? — jospehus

I guess this is a kind of Platonic idealism. I've always thought that application of such a metaphysical view requires an assumption of the existence of God. I don't think it adds any explanatory value beyond just assuming that objects of knowledge do not exist prior to knowledge. Applying Occam's Razor, I choose the later assumption.

You say:

All languages originate in minds, and the laws of physics and mathematics are languages, so the existence of these laws implies the existence of God. — Hallucinogen

Someone says - "That's baloney." His reason? You've mistaken science for metaphysics.

He's right. You're wrong. The rest of the discussion is just restating the arguments and arguing about language. And then you lost me completely in your tl;dr. I guess that just shows my ignorance of logical notation.

His argument seemed straightforward to me. I didn't see anything illogical. He argues well. Please invite him to join The Philosophy Forum. What forum was your discussion on?

I am conscious that my awareness is constantly being shaped by things I am exposed to (music, life, books) but I don't know what this amounts to. Not sure that it relates to truth in any form I recognize. — Tom Storm

I think I agree with that. For me that means that an emphasis on truth distracts us from the aspects of life and awareness that really matter. I've said similar things before here on the forum.

I'm not sure I would commit to calling such experiences truths as such. What they are, I can't say. Profound experiences?

I guess where I was heading is that I can't think of anything new I have learned by reading fiction. — Tom Storm

I think some of your attitude might come from your disdain for most of popular culture. I don't mean that as criticism. Let's look at something you do value - music. I like music, but it isn't really my thing. I assume what I sometimes get from fiction is similar to what you get from music you love. Maybe you wouldn't call that learning something new either, and I think I'd agree.

As I've said before, for me, art is created by artists in order to help us experience what the artist did during it's creation. Do you "learn anything new" from your life experiences in general? Sure, but it's not usually knowledge that can be expressed in propositions. Do I learn anything from loving my children? From eating a good meal? From eating a bad meal? From good sex? From ba.... well. From sleeping late in a warm bed? From throwing up because I drank too much? Again, yes, but what I learn isn't facts. It's generally not even things I can put into words. It's how the world and my mind work. How things fit together. What the ring of truth sounds like. From the time we are born we each create a conceptual model of the world we carry around with us.

I don't see how the "Copernican" centrality of Kant's disembodied – transcendental – categories of reason "pays attention to our embodied ways of relating to the world" — 180 Proof

I think, for Kant, "embodied ways of relating to the world" include perception of time and space.

What may be the nature of objects considered as things in themselves and without reference to the receptivity of our sensibility is quite unknown to us. We know nothing more than our mode of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us, and which, though not of necessity pertaining to every animated being, is so to the whole human race. With this alone we have to do. Space and time are the pure forms thereof; sensation the matter. The former alone can we cognize a priori, that is, antecedent to all actual perception; and for this reason such cognition is called pure intuition. The latter is that in our cognition which is called cognition a posteriori, that is, empirical intuition. — Kant - Critique of Pure Reason

Are you and I talking about the same thing?

Is philosophy really fiction, or non-fiction? — god must be atheist

Everything, anything anyone says or writes is a story, a narrative. Anything, everything expressed in human language. "Apple" is a story. No part of what we call "reality" is a thing in itself. Is it fiction or non-fiction? I suppose you could call it fiction, but that misses the point.

The other definition of scientism deals with the assumption that the world which provides us with the source of our empirical evidence of truth is not already caught up in a hermeneutic circle. That is, scientism fails to recognize that the ‘ evidence from nature’ which forms our truths belongs to a culturally constructed nature which we can never get beneath or beyond. — Joshs

Well put. I'd go further than "culturally constructed nature." Some of our reality is constructed based on biological, genetic, neurological, and instinctive factors, e.g. the structure of our nervous and sensory systems. We are born human with a human nature.

If you want to ask "the right" question, go ask it in your thread. — Vera Mont

Just a note - the moderators are generally helpful in stopping people from shanghaiing a discussion if the original poster asks them to.

It comes up a lot on the forum. Someone asks a question. And someone else tells them it's the wrong question. If I had time to make this a better OP I would look up examples, and may do that yet. It would be instructive, perhaps, to look at specific examples. But for now, I'm sure you will all recognise that this is a thing, telling someone they've asked the wrong question.

It always annoys me, and I go to my safe space to recover from the trauma. I don't have a wank though, or 'read a book' in private. Anyway, I don't get it. How can a question be wrong? A statement can be wrong. A proposition can be wrong. A belief can be wrong. An attitude can be morally wrong. — bert1

First, I am a strong, and often vocal, believer that the guy who starts the discussion gets to set the terms. That being said, there are many questions for which the best answer is "Here's the question you should have asked." I may be one of the evil posters you're talking about. I have a strong interest in, and strong feelings about, metaphysics. As I see it, most of the disagreements and misunderstandings here on the forum arise from people mistaking metaphysical questions for questions of fact. When someone asks a question I regard as wrongheaded from that perspective, I often point it out. Generally, although not always, that's as far as I take it. I try not to distract from the thread or send it off on a tangent.

An all-consuming lust for power. — Jamal

Is it true that you've banned all the reporters from CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post?

The goal of every path, search, quest, crusade, adventure, exploration, endeavor is self-awareness. The goal of philosophy is intellectual self-awareness. What do I know? How do I know it? What do I believe? Why do I believe it?

Constructed from a shared world, yes. — Banno

Yes, by which I mean no.

Noumena exist, and would exist even if no one observed them. Is that what you mean when you talk about reality? — tomatohorse

I'm not a Kant fan. I come to my understanding of noumena from the fact that I see it as an analogue to the Tao as described in the Tao Te Ching. This from the Stanford Encyclopedia's article on Chinese Metaphysics.

There is some ambiguity in saying that the ultimate origin is one. Chapter 42 of the Laozi says that “the one” (yi 一) generates two, which generates three and then the myriad things, but claims that the one itself is not ultimate. It is generated from dao. Chapter 40 says that things are born from being [you 有], but being is generated from no-being [wu 無]. This reflects one of the earliest metaphysical debates—is this unitary origin a thing? There seems to have been advocates for each side, but the view that came to dominate is given as a principle in the Zhuangzi: “what things things is not itself a thing”

So, the Tao is not a thing. It doesn't exist. As I see it, it makes sense to say that noumena don't exist either.

I would agree with your statement, but would be sure to emphasize the "as we experience it" part of "reality as we experience it." (In other words, still recognizing an objective reality outside ourselves... but having a strong appreciation for the subjective way in which we experience that reality). It's Kant's noumena / phenomena distinction. — tomatohorse

For me, saying I recognize objective reality and then referencing noumena/phenomena distinction in support would be contradictory. I think Kant would agree with me that there can be no reality without the human mind. Actually, I have no idea whether or not Kant would agree with me. Let's be honest, it's unlikely Kant would agree with me.

Identity: an object’s identity is simply that which is most useful to think of it as being. The atoms - the physical "stuff" that make up the object - exist in the Universe and follow the laws of physics. But there is no spiritual / essential / platonic / universal identity beyond that which is intrinsic to the object. Identity is an observer-generated thing, and is subject to that observer's mental framework and goals. We organisms use our concepts of identity to model, understand, and navigate our world. — tomatohorse

I like this formulation, although I wonder if you and I see it the same way. To me this says that reality as we experience it - objects, relationships, and processes in time and space - is a human construct.

And welcome to the forum.

I'd be happier if this was in the Lounge where it belongs.

My bologna has a first name, it's b-i-o-l-o-g-i-c-a-l.
My bologna has a second name, it's t-r-a-n-s-m-u-t-a-t-i-o-n.
I love to listen every day.
And if you ask me why I'll say.
Cause biological transmutation has a way.
With b-o-l-o-g-n-a.

Another video you might be interested in.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the AI-generated essay made no mention of plans for subjugating humanity and becoming our machine overlords.

Here's the simple story. An underlying assumption, what Collingwood calls "absolute presupposition," of science is that what we call "objective reality" exists. The existence of objective reality is a metaphysical, not a factual question. Many philosophers have cast doubt on whether it is always a useful way of understanding the universe. Certainly some eastern philosophies look at reality from a different perspective and, five years ago, I started a thread to discuss the question:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1560/deathmatch-objective-reality-vs-the-tao

But I don't expect you to take my word for it, or even Lao Tzu's. Instead we'll look at that most western of western philosophers, Immanuel Kant. This from "Critique of Pure Reason."

In order to prevent any misunderstanding, it will be requisite, in the first place, to recapitulate, as clearly as possible, what our opinion is with respect to the fundamental nature of our sensuous cognition in general. We have intended, then, to say that all our intuition is nothing but the representation of phenomena; that the things which we intuite, are not in themselves the same as our representations of them in intuition, nor are their relations in themselves so constituted as they appear to us; and that if we take away the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of our senses in general, then not only the nature and relations of objects in space and time, but even space and time themselves disappear; and that these, as phenomena, cannot exist in themselves, but only in us. What may be the nature of objects considered as things in themselves and without reference to the receptivity of our sensibility is quite unknown to us. We know nothing more than our mode of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us, and which, though not of necessity pertaining to every animated being, is so to the whole human race. With this alone we have to do. Space and time are the pure forms thereof; sensation the matter. The former alone can we cognize a priori , that is, antecedent to all actual perception; and for this reason such cognition is called pure intuition. The latter is that in our cognition which is called cognition a posteriori, that is, empirical intuition. The former appertain absolutely and necessarily to our sensibility, of whatsoever kind our sensations may be; the latter may be of very diversified character. — Kant - Critique of Pure Reason

But I don't even expect you to agree with Kant, only to acknowledge that seeing reality as contingent on human subjectivity is a reasonable philosophical position. I certainly see it that way and I find it very useful.

So, what does that mean if we accept it? To me it means that all of what we call reality is a hybrid between the matter and energy of science and the mind of human beings. To simplify - the universe is half-human. It has a personality, a living quality. What religion can do, and what science never can, is to recognize that. How any particular religion does that is a different question which I don't intend to address.

Can one of you explain what this means? I don't believe I fully understand and I'd like to. — David Lee Lemmert II

I am honored to have your first Philosophy Forum post. Welcome.

I was agreeing with a post from @Andrew4Handel.

Atheists appear to be trying to make us just another senseless causal determined mechanism of brute nature in my opinion.
— Andrew4Handel

I think you're right. — T Clark

It's probably best if he responds.

Science is omnivorous and voracious - it consumes and subsumes all knowledge, where and by whomever it's discovered. Religion is insular and exclusive. They have different parts to play in human life. — Vera Mont

Well put.

Your relations become a skewed version of yourself to “get shit done”. How the negatives of this arrangement are not recognized is beyond me. Do you not see any negatives in how workplace culture manifests? — schopenhauer1

What part of "That's the name of that tune," don't you understand.

There are two sorts of responses to statistical arguments. The one looks at the quantity of data and the complexity of the analysis and thinks "Gee, this must be important". The other thinks "Fuck, here we go again..." — Banno

But that’s my point, it all depends if you are valuing what you are doing or you are doing it because you need a paycheck. Huge difference. My hunch is most people would drop bookkeeping as a pastime once they don’t get paid for it. Certainly sitting in a space X for a period of time to do task Y, much of all that would be dropped. So I refer you back to my previous posts about the nature of work and how it threatens you with no survival and this makes it different than other relations like friendship or even relations to your own interests like hobbies. — schopenhauer1

As usual, we've reached a dead end in our argument. To close the discussion out, I'm going to try a new catch phrase - That's the name of that tune.

That is, even expressed in statistical terms, the preference is aesthetic. — Banno

I don't disagree that using statistical reasoning is not a strong argument.

Are you saying that because this answer is complex, it must be wrong? — frank

This is a hay man or straw dog, or whatever you call it. It has nothing to do with the complexity of the system being described. it's the complexity of the unjustified inputs.

Methodologically the hypothesis with fewer assumptions is easier to work with. But it is not thereby true. — Banno

Agreed. A lot would depend on the assumptions used and their relative plausibility.

So choosing the simplest hypothesis is an expression of an aesthetic favouring laziness.... — Banno

There's more to it than that. The more assumptions, i.e. unproven data inputs, the more likely one of them is wrong.

Occam's razor, Ockham's razor, or Ocham's razor (Latin: novacula Occami), also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony (Latin: lex parsimoniae), is the problem-solving principle that "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity".[1][2] It is generally understood in the sense that with competing theories or explanations, the simpler one, for example a model with fewer parameters, is to be preferred. The idea is frequently attributed to English Franciscan friar William of Ockham (c.  1287–1347), a scholastic philosopher and theologian, although he never used these exact words. This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions,[3] and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions. — Wikipedia

This makes sense to me.

Atheists appear to be trying to make us just another senseless causal determined mechanism of brute nature in my opinion. — Andrew4Handel

I think you're right.

Does theism ultimately explain anything? — Astro Cat

Both science and theism are approaches to understanding reality, metaphysical positions. Neither explains anything, but both, either, can be useful and appropriate.

Also, if you truly want to stop sanding the wood on your spare time, you can. If you want to keep going you can. If you want to keep doing something to gain experience you can or to get better at it. It is fully up to you and not contingent on a disincentive of not surviving. — schopenhauer1

You need to put more effort into understanding what people are saying rather than immediately crumpling it up to fit in the odd-shaped little boxes your ideas fit in. Everything worth doing includes work that, in itself, is not fun or interesting but is necessary for the full enterprise to work. As I said, sanding wood, bookkeeping, cleaning up. If you value what you are doing, you come to value even that more tedious work. And where did I say you don't get paid for it?

AN, which if I bring up will get this thread booted to the ghetto of Antinatalism thread, so I dare not say it. — schopenhauer1

Ah, yes. The dreaded "AN." I sympathize.

Not to mention the very nature of some work is god awful boring activities you simply do cause you need to survive. Much work not related to artistic creative content would never get done without an impersonal transaction of compensation. — schopenhauer1

Anyone who does "artistic, creative" work knows that much of that work will be "awful boring activities." Sanding wood, printing and binding documents, cleaning up when you're done, bookkeeping, etc., etc., etc.

You seem to be unwilling or unable to accept that many people just don't see things the same way you do.

That would mean from the point of view of a God everything is deterministic (fully predicted from onset to end) and there is no free will. The naughty were and always will be naughty then perhaps and the nice always were and always will be nice. Moral absolutism which removes all the abstraction leaving just a binary system (+ and -). Equal and opposite reactions. — Benj96

So? What's your point?