The simplest answer for the purposes of TPF is to simply say, "religious experience." At that point you will advert to your presupposition about religious experience, which has been widely criticized on TPF (for example). Your idea that there are no sound inferences from a religious experience to a propositional truth is something that you have consistently failed to defend throughout the last two years I have been here. We make inferences from experience all the time, and the idea that this is simply impossible when it comes to "religious" experience is question-begging.

Do you have a response from a bona fide nominalist, such as Peirce was critiquing? I'm not convinced that such nominalists would agree with you, and it would be interesting to see their response. — Leontiskos

For example, we could take Richard Joyce's moral fictionalism as an example:

Joyce starts out from the assumption that, when taken literally, moral sentences are systematically untrue, and seeks to show that it can still be practically useful to pretend that it is not so.

[...]

Turning to moral fictionalism, Joyce thinks that the make-believe that moral properties are instantiated can have the same benefits as the genuine belief that they are. — Fictionalism | SEP

It seems that Joyce would agree with Peirce that all that can be loved is a figment, and yet would say that we should love the figment all the same. Note how closely this resembles the position atheists in the What is Faith thread are opposing,* namely the position that emotional or wishful reasons are sufficient for justifying intellectual assent. Joyce is literally advising that we engage in pretend and make-believe for pragmatic reasons, and this is an example of a moral nominalism.

I'm not sure the moral angle is the best angle for evaluating Peirce's quote, but that's where the thread has inevitably gone.

I would agree that caricatures of realism are false. And of course caricatures of nominalism are also false. But realism really shines when we move beyond caricatures and examine the actual positions of nominalists like Joyce.


* Despite the fact that no one in that thread has proposed such a position.

From a nominalist perspective, the realist project presents a different individualism, an extreme egoism, where figment is “all that can be loved, or admired, or understood”. — NOS4A2

Interesting OP, but I don't follow this sentence at all. Peirce is not saying that figment is all that can be loved...? (Edit: So is it the idea that realists are interested in abstractions apart from particulars? That seems a strange construal.)

Do you have a response from a bona fide nominalist, such as Peirce was critiquing? I'm not convinced that such nominalists would agree with you, and it would be interesting to see their response.

It mostly seems like Peirce's critique is not being understood. On your view what does the nominalist say can, or should, be loved?

Kills another what exactly? :wink: — Count Timothy von Icarus

Nice. :clap:

Okay, interesting. Such negatives are pretty slippery. I won't speak to practical prohibitions, but, "This is false," is an incredibly difficult thing to understand. Usually we require, "This is true" + PNC in order to arrive at a judgment of falsehood. I am not at all convinced that a falsehood can be demonstrated directly.

How should I interpret silence? — praxis

I would interpret it this way: people are not interested in entire posts of AI-generated content. The only words of your own were, "All AI generated, btw."

AI will be the end of us.

He's attractive for a reason. — Moliere

Thank you for the kind words, I appreciate that. :smile:

I'm not certain how to distinguish how I think yet, but one thing I've noticed is how Aristotle's move from the more certain to the less certain might not be the way I generate knowledge. — Moliere

Yes, well that would be an interesting topic. Aristotle thinks that any piece of new knowledge that someone arrives at must be generated from things that they then knew better and still know better. That they then knew them better is vacuous, so the more interesting claim is that they still know them better (at the moment the new piece of knowledge is acquired).

Cf:

If that is right, you may be interested in Gyula Klima's "Contemporary 'Essentialism' vs. Aristotelian Essentialism," where he compares a Kripkean formulation of essentialism to an Aristotelian formulation of essentialism, and includes formal semantics for signification and supposition, which involves the notion of inherence. Paul Vincent Spade also has an informal piece digging into the metaphysical differences between the two conceptions, "The Warp and Woof of Metaphysics: How to Get Started on Some Big Themes." — Leontiskos

Klima spends more time with Kripke and Spade more time with Quine. — Leontiskos

From what I remember, Spade gets at the deeper issues (which bear on the discussion between @Banno and @Arcane Sandwich in the linked thread), but he doesn't engage Kripke and therefore requires more patience. If someone were open-minded about Aristotelian essentialism I would also point to the Spade piece, but for the brawlers of TPF I think Klima is better.

- Okay, great. And for Aristotelian essentialism this is taken for granted, namely that we can know water without knowing water fully, and that therefore future generations can improve on our understanding of water. None of that invalidates Aristotelian essentialism. It's actually baked in - crucially important for Aristotle who was emphatic in affirming the possibility of knowledge-growth.

This means that Lavoisier can learn something about water, in the sense that he learns something that was true, is true, and will be true about the substance water. His contribution does not need to entail that previous scientists were talking about something that was not H2O, and the previous scientists generally understood that they did not understand everything about water.

What says is correct. I can agree with him even if he must always stubbornly disagree with me (or at least pretend to).

For me I don't see the confidence in such a belief for the simple fact that we have changed our mind about water's essence before, so there's nothing stopping us from doing it again. — Moliere

I think one could take your argument and claim that Aristotle and Lavoisier were not pointing to the same thing at all with the term "water." There was complete equivocation. Aristotle was pointing to the stuff found in rivers and lakes, whereas Lavoisier was pointing to H2O, and as @Richard B argues, there is effectively nothing in common between the two and therefore "water is not H2O". So either they were talking about entirely different things, or else they were talking about the same thing and contradicting one another.

But the more plausible view is that Aristotle and Lavoisier were talking about the same thing, and that Lavoisier learned something about that thing that Aristotle did not know. I don't see why that view is so hard to entertain. Is there some reason that this view must be opposed? That Lavoisier could learn true things from prior scientists and nevertheless make contributions to the field?

Was Water H2O before Cavendish and Lavoisier?

De Dicto, no. There was no such language, so there was no such claim -- the thing, water, may have been H2O, but this isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how we talk about essences — Moliere

Yes, of course you are. That's what I've been saying over and over. You are talking about 1a, not 1:

1. The essentialist would be likely to say that water is H2O (or that water is always H2O).
1a. The essentialist would say that the term “water” signified H2O before 19th century chemistry. — Leontiskos

When you ask "was water H2O" and then immediately say, "the thing, water, may have been H2O, but this isn't what I'm talking about," you are contradicting yourself within three sentences. If we want to talk about "how we talk" then we are talking about signification and term-usage, which is precisely what 1a does.

Where Aristotle comes in as what appeared to be your account of essence, but your emphasis on his time and place seems to mean that what Aristotle means isn't as important to your account of essence. — Moliere

I think invalidity is plaguing your reasoning at multiple levels. Just because I think Aristotle was correct about essences does not mean that I think water was not H2O in Aristotle's time. That simply doesn't follow at all. Aristotle himself would not think that follows.

This moral question has been resolved, but in Abraham's day (2000 BC?), it wasn't. — BitconnectCarlos

I think you've helped to show the real complexity of a story that is often treated with historically and exegetically tone-deaf canards.

If we don't understand the act, then we don't understand what the angel of God ultimately told Abraham not to do. Abraham was told by the angel not to sacrifice his child; he was not told to abstain from murder. Abraham presumably did not need to be told that you shouldn't murder your children.

Let's say you have a book that contains information on an ancient people. It contains a list of rulers dating back 1000 years. We can confirm the list dating back 500 years, but the evidence starts to become less reliable after that. Does the record in the book count for anything, or would we consider the claims in the books to be baseless beyond 500 years? — BitconnectCarlos

Yes, it's a good point.

Let's say you were up with Moses on Mount Sinai. What would need to transpire for you to become a believer? — BitconnectCarlos

I was trying to get at the same thing with this:

The weird thing in these cases is that the atheist has made their atheism unfalsifiable. They don't seem to even recognize the possibility of counterfactual falsifications. If one's atheism is not to be unfalsifiable then they must be able to say, "Well, I guess if thus-and-such happened then I would be rationally compelled to question my atheism." — Leontiskos

Mostly I think it would be great if we could discuss religious topics without anti-religious evangelization constantly occurring. But that's the way it seems to go on the internet: the atheists require that every religious discussion must be reduced to a discussion (or assertion) about whether God exists. — Leontiskos

I do agree. One can only go over the same argument so often. Reducing religions to a single proposition distorts them and makes them almost pointless. — Ludwig V

Right. And the odd thing is that when religious people consistently take the bait they too become confused about thinking that religions have only to do with a single proposition - lol.

It's no coincidence that atheists who fixate on that question are unable to differentiate one religion from another. "God doesn't exist, so they're all the same, namely false!"

Tom Storm, Leon is talking about you behind your back, again. Seems he wants everyone to agree with him. Except you.

Not sure why he singled you out. — Banno

Because when @Hanover said, "I trust wholly in the sincerity of your atheism, have no desire to modify it..." he was speaking to @Tom Storm. So when I commented on Hanover's statement about Tom Storm, I referred to Tom Storm.

Yikes man, what's your deal? These are pretty wild attempts to discredit me. "Ready, fire, aim"?

(Note that if you think referencing someone without notifying them is "talking about them behind their back," then you've just failed your own test.)

So is this your argument?

<A 4th century B.C. essentialist did not believe that water was H2O, therefore water was not H2O before 19th century chemistry> — Leontiskos

No, not in the least. — Moliere

Well then how in the heck are you getting to your conclusion that, "water was not H2O [at some point in the past]"? Do you have an argument for that claim? You seem to think that because Aristotle wasn't aware of H2O, or that because Aristotle was an essentialist, therefore your proposition is somehow made true. I don't see that you have offered any valid argument for your claim that water was not H2O (at some point in the past).

OK, then the Priest provided an ad hom, and you responded to my comment about an ad hom with another ad hom, suggesting it wasn't that it was an ad hom, but that i was just sour. Like I'm at all upset. — Hanover

Yes, I agree.

My suggestion is that we stop being so concerned for each other's differing views. I trust wholly in the sincerity of your atheism, have no desire to modify it, and don't believe that but for some unfortunate circumstance you'd be different. Different strokes. — Hanover

I think you've written a number of good posts and I've mostly fallen behind in this thread, but I nevertheless disagree with the bolded. Well, I don't have a strong desire to modify Tom's atheism, but that's mostly because it feels like a fool's errand. But I think a desire to modify our interlocutor's position is healthy and normal. It just has to be done within proper constraints, such as valid argumentation and the absence of impositions, begging the question, ad hominem, etc.

the sort of psychological discrediting we see here between Leon and Fire. — Banno

Super crazy. Stuff like this:

On a philosophy forum my request is actually extremely meager. It's that evangelistic begging-the-question does not happen again and again and again. For example: that we could have a discussion about faith without constantly begging the question and assuming that it must be irrational. — Leontiskos

Apparently this is, "Psychological discrediting." :roll:
"Leontiskos asked that we give arguments for our claims. How rude."

But what you're saying isn't a problem just for "foundational premises," it literally is a problem for affirming any proposition at all. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes! :up:

By foundational premises, I meant to include not just the logical forms, but the bedrock propositions to which the reasoning applies. Foundational philosophy doesn't merely specify modus ponens, for instance, but also declares content for P and Q that is claimed as foundational. Or, if "content" is suspect, it stipulates the connection between logical form and the world. — J

The point is that your objection will exist whether or not the topic is so-called "foundational philosophy." If X is true then people who hold X to be false will be wrong. And if modus ponens is true, then people who reject modus ponens will be wrong. There is nothing special here about a foundational claim (in fact it's just the opposite, but I will keep it simple).

So if we don't want anyone to be wrong then we have to do much more than avoid so-called "foundational philosophy." We have to avoid all claims of truth and validity. Indeed, we must avoid all normative claims whatsoever.

In a rather direct sense this relates to the external thread I mentioned <here>, "The Philosophical Virtue of Certitude Shifting." *

@J's concerns materialize when there is no certitude shifting and all certitude is maximal/certain. @Count Timothy von Icarus's concerns materialize when relativism precludes all certitude along with any possibility of certitude shifting (precisely because where there is no certitude there are no certitude differentials).

This is central to Aristotle's whole understanding of argument, explicated in PA. It is the idea that a true argument moves from what is more certain (premises) to what is less certain (conclusion). What this means is that for Aristotle @J's fear is impossible, because to hold a conclusion with the same certitude that one holds the premises is irrational.


* That thread was more appropriate to that forum than to this one. This forum struggles more with skepticism than certainty.

So is this your argument?

<A 4th century B.C. essentialist did not believe that water was H2O, therefore water was not H2O before 19th century chemistry>

I don't see how Aristotle's essentialism makes it true that <If Aristotle did not believe water was H2O, then water was not H2O>. Again, the antecedent disproves 1a, not 1.

P1 is False. 2 counters the claim that water was always H2O -- in Aristotle's time, water was not H2O. Aristotle in particular stood against Democritus, so we even have reason to believe Aristotle would oppose the belief that water is always H2O. — Moliere

Okay thanks Moliere. Let's think through this:

You made three basic claims, and the second and third were meant to contest essentialism:

1. The essentialist would be likely to say that water is H2O (or that water is always H2O).
2. Water was not H2O before 19th century chemistry.
3. "Water" nor "H2O" "pick out" what water or H2O is.

Now let’s look at three equivocal senses of essentialism:

1. The essentialist would be likely to say that water is H2O (or that water is always H2O).
1a. The essentialist would say that the term “water” signified H2O before 19th century chemistry.
1b. The essentialist would say that the description “water” “picks out” what water is.

Now you began the discussion with (1), which was a great start. (1) is certainly true. But then you immediately began to equivocate between (1), (1a), and (1b). (2) does not contest (1); instead it contests (1a)... — Leontiskos

P1. (2) does not contradict (1)
P2. (2) contradicts (1a) — Leontiskos

You say, "In Aristotle's time, water was not H2O." You say, "We even have reason to believe Aristotle would oppose the belief that water is always H2O."

It still looks like you're fixated on 1a rather than 1. You are focused on what someone before 19th century chemistry (Aristotle) would say the term "water" signifies. Note that whether water was H2O before 19th century chemistry has nothing to do with what Aristotle or anyone else thought. Only the question of signification has to do with what people like Aristotle thought, i.e. only the question that pertains to 1a.

So if we follow your reasoning and say, "Aristotle did not think water signified H2O (or was H2O), therefore in Aristotle's time water was not H2O," then the claim contradicts 1a, not 1. I can explain further if you require it.

From earlier:

My guess is that you think water was not known to be H2O before the 19th century, which is a very different claim. You have switched to talking about signification, which is tangential to the crux of essentialism. — Leontiskos

Posts like this ↪Leontiskos are a part of the reason that J and I moved our conversation to the PMs. J. would have understood that. Butt out. nothing to do with you. — Banno

Not sure how I am to "butt out" of a PM I am not a part of.

Note that I have known @J longer than anyone here. I was the one who him to the forum. I was having private dialogues with J before you had even been acquainted. When you were being invited to engage J’s threads and , I was actually reading the sources J presented and engaging them—something you have been .

What I concluded is that the reason @J has such a penchant for playing devil’s advocate is because his ultimate concern is to oppose strong knowledge claims. Thus if someone makes a strong knowledge claim, J will oppose it even if he agrees with it. This reflects a problematic telos for philosophical inquiry, and I have been pointing that out.

Now, at last, J is beginning to consciously probe his own premises in that area. He is beginning to identify the moral fear that underlies his reservations about strong knowledge claims. I think that’s great, which is why I encouraged him by telling him that he is asking and that I am his recognition of the moral motivation. Only once that moral motivation is discerned does it become susceptible to critique, and I think J would become a better philosopher if he moved beyond that strong fear of knowledge claims. I worry that he seeks the truth until he finds it, and then abandons it because he thinks knowledge claims are "morally questionable."

You're a bit of a dill, really.

I'll try again. J and I are talking on a PM, not a forum page, about issues hereabouts, in order to avoid irrelevant shite posts such as these.

And he will have understood the suggestion that we keep the discussion of that question until we get through our discussion in PM.

Have you more to say on a topic that does not concern you? Please feel free to keep it to yourself. — Banno

If you have something of substance to add to the thread, by all means do that. If not, please cut it out with the harassment.

Butt out. nothing to do with you. — Banno

The forum topics are available to all members, are they not? As I said, if you don't want to answer J's questions, don't. But don't get mad when other people do. Some of us do want to discuss those questions of J's.

Let's see what response this post elicits. — Banno

I would say that instead of engaging in ad hominem you should give philosophy a try.

Here is the question:

In short, if you start from premises you believe you can show to be foundational, does that commit you to also saying that everything that follows is rationally obligatory? That you are caused to so reason? — J

Here is your answer, as usual:

Phhhh.

Big issues. Let's leave it aside for now. — Banno

Just because you don't want to answer @J's questions doesn't mean no one else can.

The question of whether one is obliged to be rational goes hand in hand with the question of whether one is obliged to believe that those who hold contradictory propositions to one's own are holding falsehoods. Pretty basic stuff. Here is @J's phrasing:

The worry here is that the foundationalist philosopher who believes that everything of importance can be demonstrated apodictically, thus resolving all disagreements in favor of a position they hold, will treat those who disagree as if they must be doing something wrong, whether due to ignorance, stupidity, stubbornness, or malice. — J

And the first question is, I have proposed, much more simple. It is, "If we believe that some proposition is true, then must we believe that those who contradict that proposition hold to a falsehood?" This would be a good starting point for J, and one which is less polemical and charged than one fashioned with the various pejoratives he is leveraging in this paragraph (e.g. "apodictic," "ignorant," "stupid," "stubborn," "malicious").

Here is the moral fear I referenced:

The idea that there is only one right way to see the world [...] seems morally questionable. — J

And again: if we hold that some proposition is true, then apparently we have claimed that all contradictory propositions are false (and that this is the "right way to see the world"). So what do we do with that? Is the moral fear justified? Or when we affirm that a proposition is true are we not saying that that is the right way to see the world?

This would involve some good will on the part of [Leontiskos] [...] It might involve not dismissing someone as "beyond the pale"; — Banno

My whole thread presupposes the idea that not everyone should be dismissed and yet everyone agrees that some people should (indeed early posters mistakenly read the OP as claiming that no one should be dismissed!). So it raises the question of what criteria are legitimate for such dismissal. Your insinuation that I haven't considered the possibility that someone should not be dismissed as "beyond the pale" is simply a bad faith reading of the thread and my posts here. (Note that the whole point of my post was to point out that not every falsehood is held in bad faith. The point was that Count was jumping too fast when he jumped to "bad faith.")

What you are yet again doing is making an interesting discussion personal with ad hominem attacks, which is why I tend to ignore you.

(Since you have a tendency to notify @Jamal about everything you find questionable, and because you tagged him in that "call-out" of me, I will add him to this post as well.)

- No problem, apology accepted. :up:

Still, I think formal or quasi-formal argument would be helpful, especially insofar as we draw near to more difficult topics. I don't mean to be a pain, but also bumped us off a topic that is genuinely interesting. It is the question of the relation between the good, the true, and motivation. One could say, "They wish to substitute emotion for evidence" (Russell), but there is a much more philosophical way to investigate that issue.

Is the desperate mushroom-eater merely acting emotionally? The answer is not so obvious. Nor is it obvious that in seeking the good (life) he is forfeiting intellectual honesty (truth).

Then you have some authors who claim that the motive for faith is the good, not the true. For example, why do we listen to the weatherman? Is it primarily because we are interested in what is true, or because we are interested in what is good? It actually seems that the answer is "the good" - it is a practical consideration. We wish to know the truth about the weather precisely in order to know how to act well. For the Medievals this will bear on what is called the transcendental convertibility of the good and the true.

Wouldn't this just be true in general. If we think we know something, and people do not accept it, or affirm something contrary, we think they are ignorant in that matter (or I suppose acting in bad faith). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Quoting from, "Beyond the Pale":

For me the most interesting question asks from whence the moral disapproval arises. One person thinks black people are inferior to white people; another thinks black cats are inferior to white cats; another thinks black pens are inferior to white pens. Supposing that all three are irrational, why does moral disapproval attach to the first but not to the second or third? All of our various pejoratives seem to signal irrationality, but we do not deem all forms of irrationality to be immoral. Is there some added ingredient beyond irrationality that makes racism or bigotry immoral. Malice? Obstinacy? Harm? — Leontiskos

1. I hold X to be true
2. Therefore, I am committed to saying that Joe, who holds ~X, is holding to a falsehood

The question is, "What is Joe, according to me?" Certainly he is wrong. Is he ignorant? Possibly, depending on one's definition. Is he acting in bad faith? No, not necessarily.

No, not really. If anything, it might go in the other direction. I have seen a great many people be quite aggressive in asserting pluralism and relativism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think this is right, and I think it is because realists like Aquinas care about the answering the question of culpability accurately. If you are a consistent realist then you won't want to ascribe culpability where none exists. If you are a relativist then everything is much looser. Relativists don't tend to work out theories of culpability, or innocence, or guilt, or correct reasoning, or incorrect reasoning, etc. Therefore they tend to err in both directions: they can treat the innocent as if they are guilty but they can also treat the guilty as if they are innocent. They lack rigor when it comes to assessing culpability, because if there were a proper way to assess culpability then relativism would be false.

As a quasi-relativist @J tends to clump all of the negative predications together: wrong/ignorant/culpable/irrational/neglectful/malicious/obstinate/harmful. He says, "If we [believe in truth] then we will end up making accusations of that stuff!" The answer is, "Yes, and people do commit those acts, but not every act which supports a falsehood is guilty of the same crimes. For example, not everyone who speaks a falsehood is doing so in bad faith."

Edit: I also think that this is just bad reasoning in general: <Y is bad and sometimes it follows from X, therefore we'd better do away with X>. As long as X is a central, complex reality of human life, you shouldn't just do away with it. That sort of reasoning is why germophobes would never leave their house. It is the irrational subordination of love/desire to fear.

At this point if the conversation is to continue then I think you need to offer formal argumentation, because you have . So if you want to offer an argument, formalize it and I will accede to answering.

The worry here is that the foundationalist philosopher who believes that everything of importance can be demonstrated apodictically, thus resolving all disagreements in favor of a position they hold, will treat those who disagree as if they must be doing something wrong, whether due to ignorance, stupidity, stubbornness, or malice. And we can't limit the "wrong" to "intellectual wrong," because the whole foundationalist picture is supposed to hang together, such that ethics follows from metaphysics, or at least depends upon it. Thus it is not merely possible but necessary that to be mistaken in one area is to be mistaken through and through, at least on the big-picture significant questions. — J

I'm really glad that you are beginning to perceive the moral foundations of your philosophical project. Your whole project seems to be motivated by this moral fear. In the past I have dubbed it "pluralism as first philosophy."

Note your thesis: <If we think this way, then we will end up being immoral>. Your own relativistic approach destroys this thesis as much as any other thesis. The idea that this thesis represents the "right way to see the world" is, on your reasoning, "morally questionable." If we say that your thesis is true, then we have made other things false. And therefore people who disagree with your thesis are affirming falsehoods. But if this situation is "morally problematic," then it seems that we cannot affirm any truths at all (lest we fall into the "moral error" of thinking that someone else has erred or uttered a falsehood).

Logical consistency would require you to avoid all truth claims, and the curious thing is that, in some ways, this is precisely what you do. Some of the time you follow your own advice in this. Of course, much of the time you don't, namely when you say things are true and argue against those who disagree with you.

One of the great boons in understanding that intellectual habits can be immoral is understanding that we are not beyond reproach merely because we are engaged in some argument or another. The boon is understanding that bad faith argument exists, and that we are capable of it. Once that occurs the possibility for a great deal of growth opens up, in that one can begin to rectify their vicious (in Aristotle's sense) intellectual habits.

(Note how closely this relates to the thread, "Beyond the Pale," where the central question asks what forms of falsehood or irrationality are beyond the pale and which are not.)

Anyway, I’ve read most of the thread you’ve recommended and skimmed the rest of it. I’ve also read Why Liberalism Failed, as I mentioned. I’m still curious why it’s good for me. — praxis

Okay, great. My point was that even the most tolerant do not tolerate everything. When I say that Christianity values unity in plurality, I am not saying that Christian tolerance is without limit.

What I meant was that religious influence is used for a variety of purpose, many of which are good of course, but many are self-serving or worse. I think it should be used for what it claims to offer, and nothing besides. — praxis

A good thing should never be used for an evil purpose. I agree, but human realities don't work that way.

No curiosity, so no respect needed, and no real conversation. Frustrating bummer here on TPF. — Fire Ologist

Yep, good post. :up:

On a philosophy forum my request is actually extremely meager. It's that evangelistic begging-the-question does not happen again and again and again. For example: that we could have a discussion about faith without constantly begging the question and assuming that it must be irrational.

So if an atheist is to philosophically engage a believer on the topic of religion (or faith), then they are not philosophically permitted to simply presuppose that religion is irrational. They are not permitted to define the religious act in terms of irrationality. That imposition and begging of the question is precisely what is unphilosophical. Instead they must argue for the conclusion that religion is irrational, using premises that are acceptable to their interlocutor. That this has not occurred in this thread demonstrates the problem and the unseriousness of this form of atheism. — Leontiskos

- :up:

- No worries. I just find that when people ignore parts of posts they seldom come back and return to them later. Maybe you were planning to do so.

Today we'd say that Lavoisier had a "better" understanding than Aristotle, but tomorrow we may say the opposite if we find out teleology was right after all. — Moliere

I think you've presented a canard of "teleology," but let's accept it for the sake of argument. Does "water is H2O" contradict "Water wants to sit atop Earth"? It looks like Lavoisier did not contradict Aristotle even on that reading.

But you ignored this:

If you disagree, then assign truth values to P1-P4. Be clear about what you are saying. If you say you disagree then apparently at least one of the truth values must be false. — Leontiskos

I actually think you've ignored that sort of question over and over throughout this conversation. You are ignoring requests for clarity.

- I agree. That "reductionism" is a large part of why his thought is more amenable to modern man, and why he is a good mediator.

I disagree — Moliere

Er, but how are you disagreeing?

Again:

(2) does not contest (1); instead it contests (1a). And (3) does not contest (1); instead it contests (1b). — Leontiskos

So:

P1. (2) does not contradict (1)
P2. (2) contradicts (1a)
P3. (3) does not contradict (1)
P4. (3) contradicts (1b)

If you disagree, then assign truth values to P1-P4. Be clear about what you are saying. If you say you disagree then apparently at least one of the truth values must be false.

that when Aristotle described water without use of H2O he said true things about water which are no longer true today. — Moliere

Why? Klima's whole point is that what Lavoisier & co. discovered does not falsify what came before. That Lavoisier understood water better than Aristotle does not mean Aristotle had no understanding of water, or that Aristotle's understanding of water was false.

I thought I was cogently arguing for my point rather than it having three different meanings. — Moliere

Well here are two claims. Do you agree or disagree with them?

(2) does not contest (1); instead it contests (1a). And (3) does not contest (1); instead it contests (1b). — Leontiskos

One interesting way of phrasing the issue: If realism depends upon epistemic positions that must be taken on pain of self-contradiction, would that mean that even the most apparently entrenched philosophical disagreements not only are in principle resolvable, but must be so? — J

I think you have been asking some good questions of late. This is one of them. :up:

I would phrase it this way: <If foundational premises are known to all, and if every proposition is either true or false only in virtue of foundational premises, then every rational error is a self-contradiction>.

The problem I see with your phrasing is that "realism" is not enough for your "pain of self-contradiction," since realists need not claim that every truth is epistemically transparent.

In short, if you start from premises you believe you can show to be foundational, does that commit you to also saying that everything that follows is rationally obligatory? That you are caused to so reason? — J

How about, "If you start from premises you believe to be true, does that commit you to also accepting everything that validly follows?" Yes, that's actually called logical soundness.

Whether or not we are "caused" to be rational is a mystery and a paradox.

No, that would be ruled out — J

Would it be ruled out on pains of "obligation"? That is the question you are asking yourself. If you think it is "morally objectionable" to say that a conclusion logically follows from a set of premises, then it is in no way clear how, "That would be ruled out."

The idea that there is only one right way to see the world, and only one view to take about disagreements, seems counter to how philosophy actually proceeds, — J

Is it, though? If philosophy didn't hold that there is only one right way to see the world, then philosophy would not be a unified discipline. Philosophy actually presupposes that every philosopher can fruitfully talk with every other philosopher. There are no incommensurable philosophers. So I think philosophy proceeds according to the belief that there is only one right way to see the world. If you didn't think there was a right way then you wouldn't argue at all.

@Moliere

I want to revisit our short but illuminating discussion, since it is such a clear model for what tends to happen on TPF with discussions of essentialism. You made three basic claims, and the second and third were meant to contest essentialism:

1. The essentialist would be likely to say that water is H2O (or that water is always H2O).
2. Water was not H2O before 19th century chemistry.
3. "Water" nor "H2O" "pick out" what water or H2O is.

Now let’s look at three equivocal senses of essentialism:

1. The essentialist would be likely to say that water is H2O (or that water is always H2O).
1a. The essentialist would say that the term “water” signified H2O before 19th century chemistry.
1b. The essentialist would say that the description “water” “picks out” what water is.

Now you began the discussion with (1), which was a great start. (1) is certainly true. But then you immeditely began to equivocate between (1), (1a), and (1b). (2) does not contest (1); instead it contests (1a). And (3) does not contest (1); instead it contests (1b). But (1a) and (1b) are pretty clearly strawmen, and so there are no arguments being leveraged against the actual thesis that you yourself set out, namely (1).

That’s a good snapshot of what seems to always happen in these discussions. It's also why my so-called "transcendental error" is apparently not an error at all. Those who call it an error are relying on straightforward equivocations in their arguments.