Religious people, generally, are softies, to the core. Lots of moms and dads, loving their kids. Not many thoughts like you are all having. — Fire Ologist

Pretty fucking rude. So atheists are none of them "moms and dads, loving their kids"? Fuck off. — Banno

Banno here relies on a non sequitur in order to take offense. Fire Ologist says that religious people do not exhibit the traits that Banno is ascribing to them, and instead exhibit good traits. Banno claims that Fire Ologist has said that no atheists exhibit good traits. Banno is relying on the conditional <If FO says that religious people have good traits, not bad traits, then FO is saying that no atheists have good traits>. This is completely invalid, and the false inference is made in order to try to paint FO in a bad light, pretend that he has said something offensive, take offense, and lash out. That's a good example of a bad faith reading of Fire Ologist. As Fire Ologist has pointed out, Banno has been involved in this sort of thing for a very long time.

But if, as we both now agree, faith is neither good nor bad, why is it that everything else you bring up about faith has to do with fathers murdering their children and fools acting without evidence or reason? Or theism? Because that doesn’t sound “neither good nor bad” to me. — Fire Ologist

Yes, exactly right. :up:
Banno is equivocating. One second he says that faith is neither good nor bad, and the next second he is back to construing faith as bad. It's a new rendition on what I described <here>.

Right, I wouldn't say it's always religion, but it's always ideology, which includes religion. Ideologies are like religions in that they are faith, not evidence, based. — Janus

I don't think this thread has ever moved beyond my observation:

If we are going to do real philosophical work then we have to have real definitions. What almost always happens in these discussions is that the atheist builds their petitio principii right into their definition of faith. This is how the atheist ends up defining faith:

Faith_ath: "Irrational assent" — Leontiskos

Faith_ath is a bad pathway to truth. The point is that if you can't stop appealing Faith_ath then you're just begging the question. You are committing fallacies, over and over. — Leontiskos

It could be, "Irrational assent," "Belief without sufficient justification," "Belief without sufficient evidence," etc. They all amount to the same thing.

Given the way that the anti-theists are consistently begging the question, what the theist can say, every time, is, "Yes, I agree that faith_ath is bad. We are in agreement with regard to your faith_ath. Let me know if you want to talk about a more relevantly defined concept." Telling me over and over that I engage in a religious act, namely faith_ath, which I obviously deny that I engage in, is nothing more than unphilosophical gaslighting. This sums up the whole latter portion of the thread. It's no coincidence that the religious get annoyed in the face of this obstinance.

NB: I admit that @Janus has a unique view where belief without evidence need not be irrational, and so things are a bit more complicated for him (i.e. he is a very strong coherentist). No one else holds that premise; therefore it doesn't fit the tenor of the thread; and therefore I haven't spent much time singling it out in this thread.

Are you saying I should approach the issue like Joyce? — NOS4A2

I am saying that bona fide nominalists, such as Joyce, would not seem to merely dismiss Peirce's observation as question-begging. I think it would be hard to find a bona fide nominalist who does that. Joyce is one example of someone who would agree that what is lovable is figment.

It seems palatable to me. — NOS4A2

Okay, but do you see how Joyce would in no way disagree with Peirce that, "all that can be loved, or admired [...] is figment"? He would not say that Peirce is engaged in question-begging or anything like that. Peirce cannot be dismissed so effortlessly. Joyce would say, "Yes, that's true, and therefore we must resort to make-believe." Peirce would probably say that the idea that nothing is lovable apart from make-believe is "dreary," and again, this claim is not so easily dismissed.

but always fucking religion. — AmadeusD

Except for Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot, or any of the other counterexamples to your assertion that it's always religion. You've presented premises about a single religion, Islam, and you are drawing conclusions about religion generally. That is an invalid argument to be sure. If all of your premises regard Islam, then your conclusion is about Islam. In that context, shifting from "Islam" to "religion" is a form of subtle equivocation.

(It would make no sense for me, a Christian, to look at your articles and say, "Oh, Islamic adherents killed a bunch of Christians; therefore religion itself must be the problem.")

This is wholly irrelevant. — AmadeusD

But why would it be irrelevant?

You say <Religion/religious fervour is the chief source of global harm>.

Suppose I gave a parallel argument <Humans are the chief source of global harm>.

You respond, "But humans are also the source of global good." It would not make sense to say, "This is wholly irrelevant."

Just because a subset of humans do evil does not mean humans in general are the problem. We could get rid of humans and "solve" the problem, but that is not a reasonable way forward. It's fairly important to make distinctions between humans, and between religions, especially when you are talking to religious humans.

To be clear: I think that is the right way to think about moral judgement in the context of dismissal - I am unsure a moral judgement is occurring in the quote. — AmadeusD

Hmm, okay. Well maybe the rest will help clarify some of this.

That would include machines 'judging'. — AmadeusD

No, I don't think machines "judge," hence the scare-quotes on both our parts. Thus when we talk about a human "computing" and a machine "computing" we are talking about two different things. One difference is that human computation involves judgment whereas machine computation does not.

I would not want to say that recognition alone (which a schedule requires, and naught else) — AmadeusD

I want to say that a schedule requires following, no? If I am to keep a schedule then I must recognize what I am to do, and then do it, no? Else, a schedule that no one is following is apparently not functioning as a schedule at all.

But I think the act of recognition involves judgment too. "This is 22nd street," or, "This is not 22nd street," are both acts of recognition and also judgments.

It may be that an adequate definition of judgement has to include literally ever act (given every act is a version of "this/that". — AmadeusD

Good, and this is perhaps one of the more foundational places where we may be disagreeing, because I think every choice involves judgment. Still, I am happy to distinguish speculative from practical judgment.

No, that's not up to me. Either when i get there there's a 1:1 match between you directions and my location, or there is not. I do not judge whether that is the case - it either is or isn't and I observe which it is. — AmadeusD

My point was that judgments must be leveraged in order to follow the directions. But is your claim here true? When you get to the end of the directions do you observe whether you have arrived, or judge whether you have arrived? In either case it would seem that you must decide whether you have arrived at the destination, no?

However, that analogy doesn't hold with my point - if you gave me an active, working Google Maps. — AmadeusD

I actually meant to include that scenario, but forgot. :up:

I closed my eyes, followed the directions(pretend for a moment this wouldn't be practically disastrous lmao) and then the Maps tells me i've arrived - that's what I'm talking about. I am literally not involved in any deliberation - I am, in fact, still taking instruction. — AmadeusD

I don't think closing your eyes helps you avoid judgment. To decide to obey (Google Maps) is a judgment. To decide when to turn your steering wheel with your eyes closed in relation to the instructions you are hearing is a judgment. I think auditory directions involve judgment just as visual directions involve judgment.

I think when the restriction is "the ones unopen to update" its not a tough one. — AmadeusD

There are lots of traditional religious groups (not open to updating) which nevertheless do not engage in the sorts of things you pointed to.

out-groups. — AmadeusD

I would just point back to the same argument that Holland makes, namely that the West's compassionate attitude towards out-groups comes precisely from Judaism and Christianity.

I have questioned the moral standing of those who believe in eternal damnation. — Banno

Like poor, benighted Wittgenstein:

When one of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s graduate students allowed how much he regretted the Church’s condemnation of Origen’s doctrine that God would eventually abolish hell and redeem the whole world (including the devils), the philosopher shot back: “Of course it was rejected. It would make nonsense of everything else. If what we do now is to make no difference in the end, then all the seriousness of life is done away with.” — Edward Oakes - Balthasar, Hell, and Heresy

Religious doesn't make one bad, but it makes one do bad, by most lights. At least, the ones unopen to update. — AmadeusD

It's a tough inference to go from Islam to religion more generally.

Sure, . :roll:
Just keep burying your head in the sand forever.

No we haven't. Your quoted exchange (assuming I agreed) doesn't show this. It shows that a "moral dismissal" results from a "moral judgement". That moral judgement is not assessed. — AmadeusD

Okay, let's look. Here is the exchange laid out:

Nevertheless, let's save the term "moral dismissal" for the situation where you dismiss someone based on a moral judgment of their own actions or behavior. Ergo: "I am dismissing you because of such-and-such an action of yours, or such-and-such a behavior of yours, and I would do so even if I had ample time to engage you." — Leontiskos

You responded:

I think this is the right way to think of a 'moral' judgement in this context. — AmadeusD

Note that your response has to do with a moral judgment, not merely a moral dismissal. The idea here is that to morally judge someone is to judge their actions or behavior. If you want to propose a different definition of moral judgment, then you can of course do that.

Then computation is judgement. I reject this. Deliberation is judgement (assuming it results in something). Marking the exam without a set rubric (i.e I must know hte answers and judge whether student has gotten it right) would be this. — AmadeusD

Yes, I think computation involves judgment. If I give you a math problem you will require judgment in order to solve it.

Here is a definition of judgment that seems fine to me:

The central problem is that of understanding the capacity of the mind to form, entertain, and affirm judgements, which are not simply strings of words but items intrinsically representing some state of affairs, or way that the world is or may be. The affirmation of a judgement is thus the making of a true or false claim. — Judgment | Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy

(I would say that judgment already involves affirmation, but that's a minor difference.)

This could be right, ubt I'd have to review the discussion and I'm not in place to do so right now. I cannot remember exactly what I excluded there. — AmadeusD

<Here> is the post where I spoke about a comedian's ability to read the room.

Perhaps I should have used the term 'schedule'. An actual, written schedule of right responses. — AmadeusD

Whether rubric or schedule, I think both involve judgments. It's just that they involve simple or relatively easy judgments.

If I give you directions to my house you will still be involved in judgments. "Drive north on Central avenue, take a left on 22nd street, and arrive at the third house on your right, which is green." You are merely following directions and rules, but you are still involved in judgments. For example, the judgment of whether this street is 22nd street.

Or even simpler, "I am not claiming there are no sound inferences from perceptual experiences to empirical beliefs or metaphysical positions; I'm saying that I can't see how there could be and I'm asking for someone who believes there are to explain how."

I am not claiming there are no sound inferences from religious experiences to religious beliefs or metaphysical positions; I'm saying that I can't see how there could be and I'm asking for someone who believes there are to explain how — Janus

This is yet another iteration of your, "I don't have the burden of proof. They do." If you don't believe there are no sound inferences then you would not say, "I can't see how there could be." People who can't see how X could be possible do not think X is possible, and they have reasons why.

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. — Leontiskos

at least not in a way that is anywhere near as clear as "A property had by a thing in every possible world in which it exists". — Banno

I'm not sure how possible worlds semantics is supposed to be clear. Hardly anyone knows what a possible world is supposed to be. Or else, if "possible world" is supposed be derived from colloquial meaning and usage, then "essence" is much clearer, having a much greater basis in colloquial meaning and usage.

Yes, and that's the issue that relates to the entire thread. The atheists here are arguing on the basis of de-contextualized interpretations that would be rejected by their interlocutors (and therefore they are relying on premises that their interlocutors would obviously reject, thus begging the question). This relates to "hostile translation":

Sider calls this "hostile translation." From the QV/Sider thread:

This is what Sider refers to as a "hostile translation" on page 14. It is interpreting or translating someone's utterance in a way that they themselves reject.
— Leontiskos

@fdrake wants to talk about "good counterexamples," and he relies on notions of "verbatim" or "taking someone exactly at their word" (even in a way that they themselves reject). The problem is that if these are still hostile translations then they haven't managed to do what they are supposed to be doing... — Leontiskos

Such flagrant AI bigotry. What is the world coming to. :fear: — praxis

Again, it's literally against the rules:

AI LLMs are not to be used to write posts either in full or in part (unless there is some obvious reason to do so, e.g. an LLM discussion thread where use is explicitly declared). Those suspected of breaking this rule will receive a warning and potentially a ban. — Baden

-

Anyway, my argument is basically that faith is unnecessary for genuine spiritual pursuits; it is religion that demands faith—not for the sake of salvation, but because religion is primarily concerned with forging strong, unified social bonds. Faith is necessary in religion because it is action that proves allegiance. Faith serves to filter out non-committed individuals and strengthen in-group loyalty. Faith in supernatural beliefs, especially when they’re costly or hard to fake, signals deep commitment to the group. And faith-based communities that required costly religious commitments (e.g., dietary restrictions, celibacy) have been show to be robust and long lived. — praxis

My response:

This hasn't been mentioned in the thread, but religious scholars will point out that faith is only central to revealed religion (i.e. revelation-based religion). In non-revealed religion faith is no more central than it is in other traditions or institutions. For example, I would argue that institutions like the military are much more faith-centric than non-revealed religion.

In the West we have a tendency to conflate religion with Christianity (or else Judeo-Christianity), and the notion that religions can be referred to as "faiths" is one symptom of that. This is yet another incentive to get clear on what is actually meant by 'faith'. — Leontiskos

-

Please forgive the appeal to authority. — praxis

You are just name-dropping without providing any evidence that the authorities even agree with you.

- Did you see my post , where I looked at the position of a bona fide nominalist (in this case, fictionalist)? I don't think we will understand what nominalism is until we start looking at actual proponents, such as Joyce. Do you find Joyce's view palatable?

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.