This is how the concept is used in law. It's a bit more complicated than this, but essentially its the "if but for..." rule. — AmadeusD

Yes, exactly. :up:

I was thinking about the way that the legal context tries to avoid over-committing to metaphysical or causal doctrines by using "but-for" reasoning.

The one who controls the pre-selection of the candidates would lose enormous amounts of power and control if they were to yield up that prerogative. — Leontiskos

and who is that? — AmadeusD

Were you responding to that?

It is usually not a single person. I don't know if you follow American politics, but supporters of Bernie Sanders know the ballot gatekeeping well, particularly after the 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.* In that sense the political parties control the ballot, and in particular they exert a great deal of influence over their own candidate. In fact you could read American politics since 2016 as the incursion of populism into the presidential scene, where on the one hand the Democrats were able to exclude Sanders from the nomination and on the other hand the Republics were unable to exclude Trump from the nomination. It's likely true that if the DNC were set up like the RNC then Sanders would have won the Democratic primary, and that if the RNC were set up like the DNC then Trump would have lost the Republican primary.

All of that is indicative of the way that partisan interests control the ballot, and in fact this isn't altogether unintentional in our system.


* In 2024 the Democrats held no primary at all in order to nominate Harris.

Chiming in on the topic, using a point of departure from a different thread...

The question boggles me, too. Thoughts and verbal or written expressions are perhaps the least consequential and harmless actions a person can make in his life time. So it is a conundrum why people get so worked up about beliefs and words and often respond with some very consequential and harmful actions, like censorship, ostracization, or even violence.

Can such an inconsequential act, like the imperceptible movements of the brain and making articulated sounds from the mouth, be evil? I don’t think so. I believe the reactions to acts of speech, though, undoubtedly are, and represent some sort of superstition of language, though I no argument for it yet. — NOS4A2

Sorry, I forgot about this reply.

For my part, I am not convinced that speech is an inconsequential act. This is why free speech always becomes a difficult issue. If speech were inconsequential then no one would worry about free speech and we would need no civil right to free speech.

To give a very blasé example, suppose the captain orders his troops to kill the women and children. That is a consequential speech act, albeit a command. Its causal power is manifest. Other acts of speech, such as persuasive speech, can also be consequential. If someone traveled back in time to kill Hitler, they may very well aim to off him before he starts giving his big speeches, given what a powerful orator he was. — Leontiskos

Further, we could also try to avoid all doctrines of causality and just think about counterfactual reasoning, namely by holding that an event is impactful if it has a counterfactual effect.

For example, was Hitler's speech impactful? On the counterfactual approach we look at what would have happened had Hitler been born mute, unable to speak (and presumably also unable to write). If this would have had an impact on the historical events, then apparently Hitler's speech played a role in shaping events, regardless of any particular causal doctrine.

I think that if we accept the counterfactual approach to assessing impact, then speech must have an impact.

It's the literalism that is unworkable. — Hanover

One of the reasons I think the Stephen De Young is because it addresses your approach as well, specifically at 1:00:17, where De Young considers using Game of Thrones as a religious text.

The response to your claim that the story is unworkable when taken in a literal sense would be, "Actually the story is unworkable even when taken in a mythological sense." For example, when Plato critiques the Greek myths, he is critiquing them qua mythology. Such a critique is equally open to @Bob Ross or anyone else who takes issue with the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). I think De Young is correct when he says that the mythological pivot doesn't solve the problem.

I think if you begin with an immovable preconceived notion of what God is (love, etc.) and you encounter a tradition inconsistent with that, you are left with either judgmentally or non-judgmentally responding to it. Non-judgmentally, you'd recognize it academically and consider yourself educated. Judgmentally, you'd tell the other side they were worshipping a false god. — Hanover

And again I ask, is this what @Bob Ross is doing? Are you representing him fairly? Is his argument a "declaration"? Is he merely "considering himself educated" or "judgmentally telling the other side they are worshipping a false god"? Isn't he doing something altogether different when he offers you an argument?

It seems clear to me that you think it is impossible to give an argument for a religious position, and yet this is precisely what Bob Ross is doing. So apparently you are forced to construe Ross' argument as something other than an argument. That doesn't make any sense to me.

Both at extremes are not virtuous [...]

The problem is in taking these stories too literally. — Hanover

Would you say that taking these stories too non-literally is also an extreme?

The point is this is a mythological story about responding to evil and the consequences of misplaced sympathy. I don't think a Christian should find that notion objectionable. It's the literalism that is unworkable. — Hanover

That's possible, but the arguments are where the rubber hits the road, and those will necessarily be religious arguments. If the story is mythological then the religion which takes it to be mythological will be better than the religion that does not, ceteris paribus. Thus in order to support your own religion you would want to show that the story is in fact mythological. The point is that religious argument is inevitable. We can't make progress in any of this without it.

- But this is little more than a quibble. Neoplatonism is heavily indebted to Aristotle, and therefore ' counterpoint was perfectly valid. Clearly Ross is claiming that his conception of God is philosophical and is based on classical theism, particularly thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, etc.

A.k.a "Direct Democracy." An old idea.

I was not aware of that, and that’s fine as long as we agree then that:

1. Not all people who lived in the culture of the Amalekites were Amalekites, since an Amalekite is a religious affiliation and those who lack the capacity or choose not to engage in it were not be properly affiliated. — Bob Ross

I find it implausible that no one in an entire city [...] [was] a person that disagrees with the cult but lacks the means to escape... — Bob Ross

Well that is precisely what I am disputing, although I want to leave children to the side for the moment.

It seems like part of your argument is <The OT God told Saul to kill all of the adult Amalekites, even though only some of them were evil>.

My point is that religion/cult in the ancient world is not an optional add-on. There is no such thing as an Amalekite who is not an Amalekite in a cultic sense. The difficulty is that modern preconceptions color the way one reads these stories, and the notion that religion/cult is optional or accidental is one of those. Again, we will get to the question of children soon.

Else, Stephen De Young explains that there are precedents and examples where defectors are not under the ban. So if someone defects from the Amalekites and abandons their cultural abominations, then they need not be killed.

Compare especially the story of Genesis 18, where we find that God will not destroy Sodom if there can be found righteous within the city.

No. It’s just regular old everyday knowledge. — T Clark

Okay, so it looks like on your view there is "scientific knowledge" and there is "everyday knowledge," but there is no such thing as "philosophical knowledge."

Okay, well these are clearly two different claims:

1. The cat is on the mat
2. I think that the cat is on the mat

(2) can be true even if (1) is false. — Michael

I think there is a lot of ambiguity in such formulations. For example:

1. The cat is on the mat
2. I think that the cat is on the mat
3. "The cat is on the mat"
4. I think, "The cat is on the mat."
5. "I think the cat is on the mat."
6. "I think the cat is on the mat."

And then add the fact that "think" is itself rather ambiguous. Note especially that (1) is not clearly a claim or an assertion at all, given that people will often write it that way and intend it to represent a truth or else a proposition that is not being asserted by anyone.

I think this is an argument I could probably make. Not so much that philosophers don’t have knowledge, but that philosophy does not involve knowledge. Certainly metaphysics doesn’t. Neither do aesthetics or morals. — T Clark

Okay, and do you say that science involves knowledge? And if you know that scientists have knowledge, then is your knowledge of this philosophical? Can "philosophy" know that science involves knowledge?

You said it's heresy. — Hanover

A Christian heresy is only a problem for a Christian. To accuse a non-Christian of heresy would be a form of begging the question.

But, assuming we don't care about that, I'd say it's perfectly fine to say the OT and NT are incompatible and you've got to choose one, the other, or neither. — Hanover

Okay, good. But I want to highlight that @Bob Ross is not a Marcionite, given that he does not embrace the NT. He is rejecting the OT on other grounds.

But to declare which must be chosen because it's the correct one is simply to declare your God the true God and all other believers wrong — Hanover

"It's correct because it's correct," would be a tautological declaration. I don't see @Bob Ross doing that. His central premise is <It is unjust to kill the innocent>. He is neither declaring a tautology nor begging the question. Here is the argument he accepted as a representation of the second point in his OP:

1. The God of the OT commanded Saul to put the Amalekites under the ban
2. There were innocent children among the Amalekites
3. Therefore, the God of the OT commanded the killing of the innocent
4. The killing of the innocent is unjust
5. Therefore, the God of the OT is unjust — Leontiskos

Do you think that argument is "to simply declare your God the true God and all other believers wrong"?

I can’t help think it must be something like gnosis or one of its cognates - subject of that rather arcane term 'gnoseology' which is comparable to 'epistemology' but with rather more gnostic overtones. In any case, it is knowledge of the kind which conveys a kind of apodictic sense, although that is a good deal easier to write about than to actually attain. — Wayfarer

Yes, good. And the presupposition is that the certitude in question must be justifiable, and therefore disagreements must be adjudicable. Science is thought to be adjudicable because it is thought to have clear objects and criteria.

-

That is philosophy’s claim*, but it neither claims it “absolutely”, nor “locally”, as these are predetermined, created standards. — Antony Nickles

(* the claim is: "as long as I don't claim knowledge about what the [absolute] conception is, my talk about it can remain "local.")

I was with you all the way, until this. Maybe I'm not understanding you. Let's grant that both "absolute" and "local" are predetermined, created standards. How does this exempt philosophy from nonetheless speaking from one or the other? What would be the third alternative? — J

I see that point of @Antony Nickles as crucial. A truth-claim is neither "absolute" nor "local." These are contrived categories which tend to break down as soon as an explication is requested.

I do think Bob has clarified. He did say he didn't think the OT God was consistent with what he knew God was. And I do see why a Christian would need to sort out what is pretty clearly a change from OT to NT if there is a commitment they are the same. — Hanover

Well what is "pretty clear" to you is not at all evident to Christians. Here is the heresy I spoke of:

Marcion preached that the benevolent God of the Gospel who sent Jesus into the world as the savior was the true Supreme Being, different and opposed to the malevolent deity, the Demiurge or creator deity, identified with Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible. — Marcionism | Wikipedia

So when you claim that Christians would say "Amen" to the heresy of Marcionism, you are making factual errors that misrepresent the religion. Throughout the thread @Bob Ross has emphasized that his argument is opposed to Christianity, beginning with to Tzeentch. So it's really weird that you would claim that Ross is taking a position to which Christians would say, "Amen." Every Christian in the thread is arguing against the OP.

If your hermeneutic leads to inconsistency, you either (1) live with the inconsistency as not overly relevant, (2) declare humility and lack of grasp of the mystery, or (3) change your hermeneutic. — Hanover

I basically agree. :up:

God didn't write the Bible, so inconsistency should be expected and I choose a very non-literalist interpretation. — Hanover

Good, that's what I was trying to get at.

My objection was to the suggestion of an a priori knowledge of God as being consistent with the NT and a declaration of invalidity to all other beliefs in God.

That is, an option 4 was being chosen. The OT was being rejected as invalid. That's the equivalent of me saying the simple solution is to reject the NT. That would work too. — Hanover

Is there something you believe to be wrong with "option 4"?

I think @Bob Ross is saying little more than, "I believe in God, and according to my beliefs the OT god is not God. Here are some arguments for why." He is of course offering his arguments tentatively, in the sense that he is looking to understand and address objections to his view.

Honestly, you're coming across as kind of clueless. — frank

You are the one coming across as clueless, Frank. You make weird, contentious claims about neo-Platonism and then fail to substantiate them, gesturing towards "somewhere" in an hour-long video.

@Bob Ross - The reason these threads are tricky on TPF is because asking TPFers religious questions is like going into a bar and asking the patrons about quantum physics. They will have a lot to say, and none of it will be remotely accurate. Toss in the large number of anti-religious cynics like Frank and the quality dips even further.

This isn't my position. It's Bob Ross's. He said the OT description of God wasn't God, and I said if it's not, the he saying those who do accept it as God don't believe in God. — Hanover

Do you think Christians would say "Amen" to the claim that "God in the OT is not really God"? Because that's what you said above.

I never did. I've been consistenly open to other interpretations. I've only pointed out that if one claims to know what the true God is and then you claim others don't adhere to it, then you're just telling me your religion is right and mine wrong. — Hanover

The OP is surely presenting arguments against a particular religious tenet, namely the divinity of the OT God. So yes, it involves the claim that such a religious tenet is wrong, along with any religion which upholds it.

It seems like God in the OT is not really God. — Bob Ross

is where you present Christianity as The truth. If one is Christian, they'll say Amen, if not, then not. — Hanover

But like so much of your posts, this is simply not true at all. Christians accept that the OT God is not God? What silliness is this? Marcionism is a very old Christian heresy.

The issue here is Biblical interpretation, and as a Reformed Jew you have a very loose way of interpreting the Bible.

The key to your position is found here:

not everyone who relies on the Bible relies solely on the Bible for all direction — Hanover

You would say, "I don't think God commanded the killing of the Amalekites," and the question is simply whether this view of yours is consistent with the Biblical testimony. There are a very large number of historical Christians and Jews who do not believe that such a view is consistent with the Biblical testimony. We can't just sideline these central questions and pretend that Reformed Judaism is the only possible approach.

Does this help with the puzzles of how and why and whether they ought? — bongo fury

It's worth seeing how there is a way in which Frege and Kimhi are correct in seeing judgment as syncategorematic or unembeddable, and this can be seen by looking at one metaphysical aspect of judgment, namely its temporality.

First, Rombout points out that Frege's judgment-stroke is "performative language" (38). She says:

The vertical part of the symbol is not just signifying some act of judgment it seems, rather “the judgment stroke contains the act of assertion”(I3). This raises the question whether the judgment stroke is a sign signifying an act or whether writing it actually effects the assertion. — Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein on the Judgment Stroke, by Floor Rombout, 11

This underscores the fact that human judgment is an act. Similarly, the stroke that indicates this act is not therefore a mere semantic construction. Further, acts are temporal, and the act of judgment is no exception. This is why the act of judgment is by its very nature syncategorematic or unembeddable. To judge is to act in the present. Hence:

The issue here is that we reason discursively, and we do not (strictly speaking) ever simultaneously engage in more than one judgment. So when <I judge that I judge that a is F> there is at least a temporal distinction between the two instances of judgment, and in this case there is also a logical priority issue, i.e. one of the two judgments must be logically prior to the other.

So if Rodl wants to read that proposition as a non-temporal angelic intellection, it won't make any sense. That is, if we try to make both instances of 'judge' temporally and logically identical, it won't make any sense.

One way for Rodl to dispute true recursivity would be to say that the only way to interpret <I judge that I judge that a is F> in a non-vacuous way is to interpret it as <I judge that I have judged that a is F>. — Leontiskos

So we have 1 vs 2. Here is 1:

• I judge that a is F
• I judge that I judge that a is F
• I judge that I judge that I judge that a is F
• ...

And here is 2:

• I judge that a is F
• I judge that I have judged that a is F
• I judge that I have judged that I have judged that a is F
• ...

The equivocation of the judgment-terms in (1) can be more clearly seen once we realize that only one judgment is ever a judgment in the primary sense, namely a judgment in the present. This equivocation is remedied in (2) by explicitly allowing only the first judgment-term to be in the present tense. The others are in the past tense.

I think this sheds light on the recursivity of judgment, insofar as we can see that there is a judgment-hierarchy in any judgment about judgments. That hierarchy is most obvious when we think about tense, but we could also divert from tense and think about other forms of primary-ness and secondary-ness of judgments. For example, we might hold that (1) is acceptable, while each judgment-term is still not univocal in that primary sense.

There are two related issues. The first asks about the relation between a present-tense judgment and a past-tense judgment. There is a curious sense in which a past-tense judgment is not yet past, and is still "in effect"—at least insofar as we have not rescinded our assent in the meanwhile. (This entails that "I have judged" could mean at least two different things.) Still, this does not make a past-tense judgment active or present or primary in the same way that a present-tense judgment is active and present and primary. The second issue regards the question of whether and how a single judgment can encompass many judgments, i.e. how judgment can be mereologically complex. Philosophers are primarily concerned with this second question as it pertains to primary or present-tense judgments (e.g. "Dave, Sue, John, and Marie are all in attendance at the party"), but the question could also be extended to the various sentences of (1) or (2).


NB: I gave a number of relevant sources in the post <here>.

---

Added: Just to be clear the Kimhi quote is against writing ⊢(⊢p → ⊢q), not ⊢⊢(p→q). — Banno

No, when Kimhi says, "[The judgment-stroke] cannot be repeated in different logical contexts, but can only stand by itself," he is obviously excluding your strange embeddings. ⊢(⊢(p→q)) is obviously repeating the judgment-stroke within a logical context. Indeed, once one understands Frege's notation they realize that it is not even notationally possible to do this. Here is Rombout in the post where this was already explained to you:

Instead of writing the whole inference, consisting of the three assertions “ ⊢ p”, “ ⊢ (p ⊃ q)” and “ ⊢ q” , Russell and Whitehead propose an abbreviation containing the assertions of the two atomic propositions connected by an implication: “ ⊢ p ⊃⊢ q”. Frege would consider this a category mistake; in the Begriffsschrift it is not possible to have a judgment stroke within the scope of a conditional.

...

A reason why Russell and Whitehead consider this abbreviation acceptable can be found in their explanation of syllogisms... — Rombout, 44-5

(Rombout's whole paper examines why Wittgenstenians characteristically fail to understand this aspect of Frege, just as Wittgenstein did.)

But I don’t get it. I can’t even figure out what the question on the table is. — T Clark

It's confusing because if you just say it plainly it is seen to be silly, so it has to be dressed up in a lot of cryptic language that one must then refuse to clarify.

@J's professor, Bernard Williams, is allergic to the idea that philosophers have knowledge (and so is @J). So this is what happens:

• Williams: "Philosophers definitely don't have knowledge, but I am happy to grant that scientists have knowledge."
• Interlocutor: "If philosophers such as yourself know that scientists have knowledge, then don't you have that knowledge?"
• Williams: "Hmm... [Insert indecipherable paragraph from OP here]."
• Williams: "In short, I can be right about this, but not assert it as a piece of knowledge. As long as I don't say I know that I've got it right, I've avoided the trap."

So the idea is that philosophers can't have knowledge, even though they know that scientists have knowledge, and this is okay as long as philosophers say, "I am right about my claim that scientists have knowledge, but I am not saying I know that scientists have knowledge." *

If you like you can replace "knowledge" with "absolute knowledge" and then ask @J what the heck "absolute knowledge" is supposed to be (and you can do the same thing for any other such substitution).

Normal philosophers without an allergy to knowledge just say that they know that scientists have knowledge, and that this knowing is of course itself knowledge. So the philosopher at the very least has some knowledge, namely the knowledge that scientists have knowledge, and since the normal philosopher is not allergic to knowledge the world will not collapse upon admitting that he knows something.


* Note how intimately connected this is to @J's continual claims that there can be non-assertive assertions. The non-knowledge-claim about being right is for @J an example of his non-assertive assertion. Or in other words, the knowledge claim that isn't a knowledge claim is just one of those assertions that isn't an assertion, so it's not ad hoc at all! lol

I agree with that assessment so far. It's the killing of innocents that my OP is objecting to: I recognize that the Canaanites were doing horrible things and a war against them is justified. However, that doesn't justify purposely attempting to genocide the people in their entirety. — Bob Ross

Okay, fair.

First let's clarify that the ban on the Amalekites was a religious or cultural form of genocide, given that their cultic rites required the abominable practices in question. "Amalekite" is a cultic referent, and it is precisely the cultic practices which are abominable. It is precisely the religion that is to be wiped out (although there was no distinction between the culture and the religion, because they were the same thing). Among other things, what this means is that if all of the Amalekites abandoned their Amalekite religion, they would no longer be Amalekites, and they would not have to be killed. For example, the Israelite leader Caleb was born into the Kenizzites, who were very similar to the Amalekites on the points in question. Yet he became an Israelite.

So it is not a matter of "genociding the people in their entirety" because some of them were doing horrible things. It is actually a matter of "cutting off the abominations" per se. If the Amalekites were not engaging in abominations, they would not have been put under the ban.

Are we still on the same page? (I realize I still haven't gotten to children yet. :razz:)

It is interesting, though, that Banno thinks Frege's judgment-stroke is a functional symbol that can simply be nested contextually. So his difference with Frege has to do with whether the judgment-stroke belongs to the object language.

I don't think this thread will ultimately get away from those sorts of puzzles, namely the puzzles of how and why the boundaries between the meta-language and object-language exist, and whether they ought to. So given that Frege has already come in, we might ask why he placed his strictures around the judgment-stroke and second-order predicates. That is the sort of question that is apropos.

And since can't help himself, and also hasn't responded to the point in question:

A nested judgment-stroke would not violate Frege’s logical vision; — Banno

You simply do not know what you are talking about. For Frege the notation is unified and continuous. The horizontal represents the content and the vertical represents the judging or asserting of that content. There is no such thing as a double vertical or a nested judgment-stroke. Here is Kimhi:

Since the vertical does not belong to the functional composition of a proposition, it has no referential import. This distinguishes it, within the Begriffsschrift, as the sole syncategorematic expression. The whole symbol governed by a judgment-stroke, for example, “⊢p,” is itself a syncategorematic unit since it cannot be embedded as a functional or predicative component within a logically complex whole. (In particular, it cannot be either a subject or a predicate term in a proposition.) As such, it cannot be repeated in different logical contexts, but can only stand by itself.
— Irad Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 41-2 — Leontiskos

I agree that it (the solution) must be about recognising the interplay of object- and meta-language. — bongo fury

Okay, and what are the questions that are at stake? I assume there must be quite a few different questions.

(I wrote a bit about the general topic in <this post>, which is another thread where it came up.)

"⊢the cat is on the mat"

and

"the cat is on the mat"

... A sentence is already an assertion sign. (I assert.) How does it end up needing reinforcement? — bongo fury

This is tricky because you say we need not worry about Frege, but then you immediately introduce Frege's notation (which Banno was using incorrectly in the relevant examples).

The answer is that Frege's judgment-stroke does not reinforce a sentence, but rather judges some content (i.e. a proposition). The judgment-stroke is not a referential symbol in the object language, and so it is not added to "the cat is on the mat," but is rather a vertical stroke added to the horizontal in:

"—the cat is on the mat"

Frege was inherently opposed to meta-analysis using the object language (and even simpliciter), if I recall.

-

So I think that in order to get away from Frege we need to avoid his judgment-stroke (and any symbols that attempt to represent it).

The prefix, however we phrase it - "I hereby assert that...", "I think that...", "I judge that..." etc - does seem to iterate naturally. — bongo fury

Apparently we are asking about how the following relate:

• The cat is on the mat.
• I judge that the cat is on the mat.
• I judge that I judge that the cat is on the mat.
• I judge that I judge that I judge that the cat is on the mat.
• ... (and so on)

Hence the recursivity of judgment.

Your whole OP revolves around a highly unclear quote that you in no way attempt to clarify:

But we are not forced to that result [that philosophy is absolute knowledge]. The absolute status of philosophy would not be required just by their being some absolute conception of the world, but rather by our knowing that there was, and what it was. We have agreed . . . that we would need some reasonable idea of what such a conception would be like, but we have not agreed that if we have that conception, we have to know that we have it. . . . To ask not just that we should know, but that we should know that we know . . . is to ask for more – very probably for too much. — Williams, 303

On top of this, the quote is itself a response to an objection, which is itself a response to a position of Williams'.

So:

1. What is the objection that Williams is responding to in the quote?
2. What is the position of Williams' that the objection is responding to?

In short, I can be right about this, but not assert it as a piece of knowledge. As long as I don't say I know that I've got it right, I've avoided the trap. — J

"As long as I don't say I know that I've got it right, then I've avoided the trap/objection." So what is this trap/objection that Williams is trying to avoid? Is it the "trap" wherein a philosopher might claim to know something? :yikes:

The fly that is stuck in your bottle is pretty simple: "How do I have certainty, given that I am a fallible being?"

One problem I see, is that people vote for what's on the table. Not what they want. It's almost assured that any vote does not give us actual public opinion. — AmadeusD

According to Aristotle, prescribing which candidates are on the ballot is central to determining what kind of regime one has. For example, if voters are choosing from a pre-selected pool of candidates, then Aristotle would say that you do not have a true democracy. A regime where oligarchs decide who makes it onto the ballot is, for example, an oligarchy (although ballot selection is not the only criterion for governmental regime).

Therefore, lawmakers have to be quite reticent, in lieu of a binding referendum, to give a piss about it. — AmadeusD

The one who controls the pre-selection of the candidates would lose enormous amounts of power and control if they were to yield up that prerogative.

- I assumed Kant, but affirmation would be nice. Unsourced quotations seem like a funny animal to me.

I'm sorry but who wrote that - I can't work it out. — Ludwig V

I am wondering too. ?

I want to at least listen to those 18 minutes to refresh my memory, but I will set out the basic argument after I get around to that. — Leontiskos

Thank you: I will take a look! — Bob Ross

Okay, so let me try to sketch Fr. Stephen De Young's approach. Note that he gives lengthier treatments elsewhere and especially in his book God Is a Man of War: The Problem of Violence in the Old Testament.

The basic idea is that <The Amalekites were evil; therefore God wanted to wipe them out; and in order to do this he commanded Saul to put them under the ban>. Note that this intersects with your argument by disputing your premise that those who are being killed are innocent.

Why were the Amalekites evil? Because they engaged in human and child sacrifice, rape, cannibalism (and this was all related to their worship of demons, temple prostitution, etc.). There are lots of groups that God did not put under the ban, given that they were not irremediably evil in these ways. We see the contrast in texts like Deuteronomy 20:10-18 and Deuteronomy 21:10-14.

The Amalekite argument always finds its strongest point in the notion that innocent children were killed. But for now I will just leave it at a general level and see what you think. Before thinking about children, how does this argument sound? Do you think it is at least valid?

Like I noted before, it seems somewhat plausible but still has issues. — Bob Ross

Great, thank you for the synopsis. :up:
That helps jog my memory. William Lane Craig had proffered a strong version of option (1), which is what ignited a lot of these discussions last year.

I agree with your conclusion regarding Akin's view, "Somewhat plausible but still has issues."

But we are not forced to that result [that philosophy is absolute knowledge]. The absolute status of philosophy would not be required just by their being some absolute conception of the world, but rather by our knowing that there was, and what it was. We have agreed . . . that we would need some reasonable idea of what such a conception would be like, but we have not agreed that if we have that conception, we have to know that we have it. . . . To ask not just that we should know, but that we should know that we know . . . is to ask for more – very probably for too much. — Williams, 303

I think this is ingenious. — J

If you really think this is "ingenious," then why don't you try to explain the argument in your own words?

I will help you by providing an option:

• 1. [The absolute status of philosophy] would only be required if [we knew that there was some absolute conception of the world, and what it was].
• 2. If [we knew that there was some absolute conception of the world, and what it was] then [we would need some reasonable idea of what such a conception would be like].
• 3. If [we knew that there was some absolute conception of the world, and what it was] then [we would not have to know that we have it].
• 4. Therefore, we cannot (or else do not) know that we have that "one piece of philosophy which has absolute status."

The conclusion looks like a non-sequitur, and the reasoning is vague and confusing, perhaps intentionally so. (3) even looks false on its face. So feel free to explain what the argument is supposed to be and how it is supposed to be "ingenious."

(There is a funny scene from a movie or a show where a shyster child "makes change" with the other children's bills, and "ingeniously" always ends up richer himself. I can't recall the title. Williams' argument is reminiscent.)

[Philosophy can't] claim to be absolute knowledge. — J

Why not? Does Williams have any argument? The multiplication of these threads looks like wishful thinking and prejudice. There is something approximating an argument here:

But what if we accept the idea that science aims to provide that knowledge, and may be qualified to do it? What does that leave for philosophy to do? — J

<If science seeks knowledge, then philosophy does not>

That's an argument, though a particularly bad one. Does Williams think the following are also sound?

• If science involves thinking, then philosophy does not
• If science makes use of empirical research, then philosophy does not
• If science makes use of interpretation, the philosophy does not

Amusingly, the refutation could also go the other way – philosophy would be shown not to be an absolute conception! — J

No, I don't think so. Feel free to try to show that.

Reminds me of one of Hitler's early portraits. Aryan Jesus. — BitconnectCarlos

:up:

Yes, your summary of my argument is correct. I am curious what your thoughts are on it. — Bob Ross

Okay, good. I was trying to revisit some of Fr. Stephen De Young's work, and I noticed that he did an interview yesterday. He begins talking about the Amalekites at 57:12. I plan to listen to that section when I have time (57:00-1:15:00), but just given the first few minutes it seems like it will bear heavily upon this thread.

I want to at least listen to those 18 minutes to refresh my memory, but I will set out the basic argument after I get around to that.

I listened to Jimmy's video, and it was good: I could see that as a semi-viable solution to the conquest of Canaan. However, the fact that... — Bob Ross

Okay. Can you remind me of the view that he takes? It's been awhile since I watched that, and I was trying to use it to highlight some of the different approaches on offer. I don't recall his specific view.

-

I would be interested to hear Leontiskos response to this. — Bob Ross

There was a time, particularly in the 19th century, when the "academic" approach to Christianity was very ahistorical. During that time there was a common trend wherein it was forgotten that Jesus was himself a Jew, and that in order to understand early Christianity you really need a historical understanding of Judaism - particularly the Second Temple period. Marcionism is common among those who retain an ahistorical approach to Christianity.

- People on TPF often refuse the burden of proof, even when they obviously have it. When you start a thread promoting equality, then you are clearly the one who needs to defend your equality-claim.

- :up:

Regardless though, exceedingly few religions do (2) as (1) says.

Those who practice according to the Old Testamant, those who practice according to the New Testament, and those who rely upon no text at all for some reason pretty much lives their lives the same morally. — Hanover

I actually wouldn't agree with either of these claims.

Regarding the first claim, namely that religions do not generally interpret their texts according to the literal sense, I would say that most religious, philosophers, and linguists recognize that the literal sense is the foundational sense of a text, upon which any other senses must be built. The question that sometimes comes up is not whether the literal sense is important, but what the literal sense is. If by "literal sense" one means "interpreting an ancient text according to modern idioms," then we are not talking about the bona fide literal sense. In that case we are talking about contextless misinterpretation.

This is the argument that appears here every few months if not more often. — Hanover

Well, every few months we get bad faith attacks on religion. I don't think @Bob Ross is doing that. I think he is open to different interpretations and different ways of looking at it.

The very fact that there are so many differing interpretations of such passages lends weight to the idea that they are difficult passages. I am guessing there are different Jewish groups who would disagree vehemently over the interpretation of some of these stories.

I already said what I did say... — Banno

Here it is again. Can you answer a simple question?

If you reject the notion that philosophy has aims, then how do you avoid the implication that philosophy is aimless? — Leontiskos