Disqus - Latest Comments for Quine

Re: Outshine The Sun: Return of the Thread

Q. Quine — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 23:57:34 -0000

I am searching for something more meaningful than ancient superstitions. If I killed myself, how could I keep searching?

Re: Outshine The Sun: Return of the Thread

Q. Quine — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 09:20:31 -0000

Thanks Geena, that was hilarious!

Re: Outshine The Sun: Return of the Thread

Q. Quine — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 09:07:42 -0000

Thank you, E.

Re: Outshine The Sun: Return of the Thread

Q. Quine — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 23:28:46 -0000

Here, before I go, have some fun with http://www.patheos.com/blog...

The comments are more fun than a barrel of monkeys, and just as smart.

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 22:36:10 -0000

Thanks Michael.

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 22:35:21 -0000

Thank you, Geena. :-)

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 22:33:38 -0000

Thanks for your nice note and to Geena as well. I will try to get some time worked open to look in. I can see that it is useful to find subject matter to put up at the blog, which I have not done in these last two (amazingly busy) years.

I don't know what trick Luke was going for by starting in causation. Perhaps he thought he could make some kind of link with a prime mover being necessary for causation at all. I don't know, but it did not seem to go the way he wanted so he tried to change to metaphysics of justification, which did not go well either. I am not sure if there is anything there to pull out as a blog subject, but will have a look back at it.

Thanks again, and Happy New Year to all my friends here!

-Q

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 19:16:48 -0000

If you gouge out your eyes, you indeed will not be taken in by optical illusions, certain Gettier problems, etc.

I have no need for such silly and crude solutions (Biblical, I believe, Mark 9:47) when reason does the job so well.

I bid you farewell as I am at the end of my vacation and now must return to work.

-Q

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 17:33:58 -0000

It is therefore reasonable to suspect that QQ-reality simply cannot have such evidence, even though this cannot be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Yes, that is my suspicion, so you may stop pushing on an open door any time you want.

You are the one shifting the discussion, by your repeated requests for evidence of not merely a causal power, but a causal power which has personal qualities (as compared to the laws of nature, as regularly understood by scientists).

It is really very simple, any number of folks attribute things happening in the world to the actions of deities. Without evidence to sort that out, it is just one devotee's opinion against another. Given I can show that most are wrong it is a reasonable position for me to require evidence to think that any one is right. Sounds like (not having any evidence) you want to take the discussion up to a meta level examination of the concept of evidence. Perhaps that would be interesting, but if you expect to convince me that I "ought" not to require evidence, that is going to be very, very difficult for you.

My point is that your reliance on QQ-evidence appears to blind you to certain aspects of reality.

Seems to blind me to being fooled by peddlers of mythology and magic tricks.

Got evidence?

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 15:30:58 -0000

When you say you want 'evidence', you are actually saying: "Give me sensory percepts and analyses thereof which can get me more of my want."

That is partially true; there are other parts as well. Thinking about evidence may change my mental maps of reality in such a way as to not only change what I would do, but what I would want to do as well. Solid evidence that Moroni did give golden plates of scripture to Joseph Smith or that Lord Krishna really is the source of all love, would change both what I want and how I live.

Now, you say that part of what you want is to"understand the world better", but I find this to be a possibly highly dubious claim.

You are entitled to your doubt, however, the amount of work I have put in over the years in both formal and independent study is consistent with such desire.

One of the foundational aspects of Christianity is that the world was designed with an ought.

For which I have asked many before you to show evidence. Still nothing. Looks like mythology to me.

This ought can clash with our own. Two problems arise:

(1) the is–ought gap means you cannot have 'evidence' ofought
(2) this differing ought is in contention with your own

The gap is not a proof. If someone came up with evidence for "ought" it would jump that gap, but none exists that I know about. I agree with Hume in that I don't see how any could exist, but that is not a proof. To the best of my study I cannot find anything about how the Universe is that indicates how the Universe ought to be. With Hume on that.

Therefore, your carefully calculated request for 'evidence' is actually designed such that what you want cannot be critiqued, except possibly in the sense that you could find through science that it is unattainable.

Not "carefully calculated" just a simple request for you to show that what you ask me to believe has any basis in reality. Given the population distribution among mutually incompatible religions, we can mathematically demonstrate that most people are wrong about religion; so the initial probability is that you are; my request that you give me evidence to the contrary is only reasonable.

The result is that you are closed to what God would have to say to you along the most important dimensions.

I look for evidence that any deity exists as the starting point. How do I evaluate what any such "would have to say" if none are beyond human fiction?

A mountain of evidence of his existence would not help one iota on this topic, on pain of rejecting (1).

There is no such pain for me; I look with care to find such an "ought" but none arises. We can (and do) choose to establish ethical axioms and build a system of "oughts" upon those, but pretending that those are justified by word of mythical deities is not helping us.

The clever thing is to simply exclude "What kind of person is it good for me to become?" from the category of 'knowledge'.

Opens the discussion on ethics. I take it you have nothing more to offer on "causation."

It can be excluded epistemologically or ontologically. Sunder sapientiafrom scientia, and the latter gets you what you want, while never really challenging what you want.

Are you shifting to a discussion of what persons "ought" to want?

The result is a fundamental closedness to people who differ more than a certain amount from you. Such closedness cannot be resolved by what you mean by 'evidence'.

That seems a non sequitur to me. I interact with people of vastly different views on a daily basis. When such persons give me justification through evidence (such as test data or market data, etc.) or justification through a chain of reasoning from common foundation, I change my position.

I would end by asking for evidence to back up your point, but don't really know what point you are trying to make.

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Sun, 03 Jan 2016 22:32:40 -0000

Well, the first problem would be that God doesn't seem particularly interested in merely helping you predict what will happen next.

The first problem is having any evidence that such a being exists at all; got any?

(I doubt your significant other would be, either.)

I asked her. She said that she was very interested in making sure I had enough to help predict if I would be able to cross the street without getting run over. She also went on to express her interest in me having enough information to predict how much she would respond to certain physical things ... that are best not discussed here.

What that smells like is an instrumental rationality whereby you learn better and better how to get what you want.

Yes, that includes learning how to be a greater source of joy in her life, which is something I want.

The only things you would even consider to be 'evidence' would be those things which ultimately help you get what you want.

That is also true in so far as I gather evidence that helps me understand the world better, which is also something that I want.

If this is the case, then I don't think there could be evidence of God's existence.

If some supernatural being does exist, I very much want to see the evidence; got any?

Real people, who want to engage in real relationships, generally require action (not just perception) and the fusion of norms and desires (not just competition).

Real? "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that."

Got evidence?

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Sun, 03 Jan 2016 14:38:22 -0000

You can also take it to places like tinyurl.com and have it converted to a link you can paste that the system is not going to try to preview.

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Sun, 03 Jan 2016 14:06:34 -0000

Thanks, Luke, for that explanation; it saves me from going through a great deal of material that would not help this discussion. Let me try to put how I see things, which should be in line with much of Hume (and what you have put, above), and then we can work on where we differ. When we started off I was not sure where you were going with causation as it, so often, gets worked over in "First Cause" arguments I have addressed in the past.

I am not going to argue that I can show that causation exists (or does not exist) in the world, just as I am not going to argue that Last Thursdayism is false. For exactly the reasons you and Hume have cited, I can't know if causation exists (though I suspect it does). What I do have from evidence is that people make mental maps of what they consider reality, and work with a concept of causality in using those maps to judge what is probably going to happen next.

These maps go way back in the history of evolution to our ancestors who had not yet developed layers of neural networks that could work in symbols, but relied on wiring the networks, themselves, based on conditioning. We still have that in layers that do things like reach out to catch a ball or swing a bat to hit that ball. Our ancestors developed mental maps to explore what was seen as cause and effect not only re the physical objects around them, but also projected into the drives and motivations of those other animals and people around them (theory of mind).

In our common day to day life, we are presented with events A and B where B follows on A in time (and usually place) and we have to decide if A caused B or if it may just seem that way. What we are really doing is deciding if we can link the causation function to these events in our mental maps. We take the short cut and speak as if the relationship can be equally established in the territory as it is in the map, although folks like Hume let us know that such is an assumption on our part.

So, I go through life collecting evidence of events through my senses. I know my senses are unreliable (go to any Las Vegas magic show if you doubt that) so I take care to use the tools of rational analysis to help limit error. Then from the evidence I link the causation function in my mental maps (if appropriate) taking A into B, such that in the future if I see A happen I will have a reasonable expectation of then seeing B happen.

That is where I am at on this. If I were writing for a philosophical journal I would probably come up with a special symbol or at least something like "m_causation" to represent that function in my mental map that gives me the expectation of seeing B after A so as not to get it mixed up with Aristotelian Causality. I get evidence all the time for working the m_causation function in my maps of the world. When someone comes to me and wants me to change that function to include a source of action in the form of a purported deity, I have to subject that to the same kind of testing for error as all other potentially unreliable data that forms my daily sense experience.

Thus, I think I agree with you, and Hume, about evidence for causation in the external world because we cannot step out of the world and examine it (full four dimensional space-time static object, beginning to end) as something separate from living in it. So, in order to be clear, when I ask for "evidence" I am asking for data about events that would cause me to modify my m_causation function in my mental maps of the world such that I would have a different reasonable expectation of what will happen next.

Got evidence?

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Sat, 02 Jan 2016 19:07:04 -0000

No, I pulled that one right away because I did not like the way I worded it, and wanted to go check my sources to be sure. I am going to get back to it but am traveling on vacation so it may take a couple of days.

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Fri, 01 Jan 2016 19:30:48 -0000

It has served me well, over the years, as others here can attest.

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Fri, 01 Jan 2016 17:08:00 -0000

Full stop. Why was "absolute certainty" ever on the table? I've questioned this before:

Because Hume did not establish that causality did not exit, just that we cannot know for sure that it does. If someone takes the position that causality probably exists (which is why we all use it in our maps) Hume is not challenged.

Now, returning to that "as if": why is it acceptable to act "as if" causation exists—even though sense perception cannot detect it—but it is unacceptable to act "as if" God exists in causal contact with reality?

If living that way is "acceptable" to you, I think that is fine. I would think it should be fine with you if others live as if Muhammad did fly. I don't because all those beliefs without evidence, or in stark contradiction to evidence, amount to superstition in my eyes. Your life is yours; dissuading you is not my burden. If, however, you wish to persuade me that I should believe something, you are going to have to present evidence.

Got evidence?

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Fri, 01 Jan 2016 15:11:16 -0000

Those ten years taught me to try to explain in ways that are meaningful to as many readers as possible, not just to the poster in response, and certainly not as if submitting to a philosophical journal.

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Fri, 01 Jan 2016 13:58:08 -0000

What Michael said!

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Fri, 01 Jan 2016 13:45:08 -0000

I will try to take care of both questions as there is conceptual overlap. Big subject, so this is going to be just a sketch. I see it in the context of a map/territory relationship where the territory is the real world and the map is our thoughts and the models we make about reality. With Hume, I don't think absolute certainty about causation can be established, just like you can't absolutely rule out Last Thursdayism.

That takes us to the maps. We can establish a wide range of confidence of causality in the maps based on observational evidence. Science has developed techniques to avoid the post hoc ergo propter hoc errors that we so often make when fooling ourselves. Analysis of causes is built into everything we do and everything we build. A good case study is in Richard Feynman's book about tracking down the cause of the first space shuttle disaster. Maps built up from our experience allow us to make the best guesses about what would happen next as a result of choices of actions we are going to do now. Not being able to prove that causality exists in the territory does not stop us from very effectively using it in the maps. And thus, we get along quite nicely without consideration of that lack of proof.

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Thu, 31 Dec 2015 19:05:20 -0000

The distinction re "without" is important because I referred to the beliefs in solipsism and Last Thrusdayism which cannot be proved wrong but can be easily disbelieved. Religion is not a "without" case. It is something that also cannot be proved, and has no evidence that can be objectively evaluated, but it is not, for your side, something that people get on "without" but rather, what your folks depend on for meaning in their lives.

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Thu, 31 Dec 2015 13:38:01 -0000

Yes, it is usually a set-up for "first causers." That then goes straight down to the quantum level where what we have come to know as causality on our macro scale, cannot be shown to exist. First causers get stuck because as we look back in cosmology to an ever tiny early Universe, they want to invoke first cause creation, but that same reduction of scale drops into the quantum world where you are not forced to recognize that something must have a cause.

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Thu, 31 Dec 2015 13:19:01 -0000

Have you ever tackled an angle-trisector online? I have ...

Have tackled a geocentrist; expect it is much the same.

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Thu, 31 Dec 2015 12:29:23 -0000

So basically you're rejecting Hume. After all, he said that causation simply doesn't arrive through the senses.

I am going to pull in that short leash at this point. As in the case of Hume's general refutation of induction, we cannot prove causation will hold. However, we live our lives "as if" sure that the world was not created last Thursday, and that the regularities we study in Physics will hold tomorrow as they did yesterday. So we look for causes by means of those regularities and plan our actions for tomorrow on our expectations of cause and effect outcomes.

I don't know if you were heading this way, but sometimes people will accuse me of relying on "faith" that Physics will hold or knowledge can be obtained, etc. To that I always respond that faith is not needed because I have, "reasonable expectations based on prior evidence." That covers causation as well.

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Thu, 31 Dec 2015 06:54:47 -0000

Furthermore, you can disprove neither Last Thursdayism nor solipsism, but can get along quite well without either.
How does that which helps me "get along quite well" relate to that which is true? Religion helps a lot of people "get along quite well" in ways that I see atheists repeatedly impugn.

You left off a critical word from my comment: "without." My comment was about things that could be true and causative, but for which there is no evidence. Yes, I would put religion in that category.

Re: Outshine The Sun: The Thread Strikes Back

Q. Quine — Wed, 30 Dec 2015 20:59:28 -0000

I am going to give you a short leash to explore causation, though I won't chase you down irrelevant side paths thereabout. I accept Hume as far as not being able to prove causality. Attitudes in the centuries after him have coalesced around the idea that evidence for the idea that A causes B can add to the probability that the idea is correct, even if it can never prove it. However, given a single piece of evidence you can prove that A does not cause B. Furthermore, you can disprove neither Last Thursdayism nor solipsism, but can get along quite well without either.