What's causal to that decision? — Baden

Decisions don't have causal antecedents. That's the whole gist of free will. I don't buy determinism.

What's causal to actions then? — Baden

Usually deciding to perform them.

That only works if we presume ontological randomness exists though, right? Because otherwise physical facts determine all outcomes precisely. — Echarmion

Yeah, it doesn't work if one is a strong (thoroughgoing) determinist.

I'm not a strong determinist.

It's unreasonable to ask him to list them all, — S

It's not unreasonable if he wants me to believe that speech can be causal to actions. The main thing we'd have to show is that the people in question do not have free will in the situations in question. I don't know how we'd show that, though.

If hate speech were one factor which together with other factors, — Isaac

As I've requested many times, specify all of the causal factors/the causal chain.

I could say the same, where does that get us? — Isaac

One place it should get you is a realization that I wasn't saying anything about possibilities and I wasn't dismissing correlations.

Um... What alternative do you think I have apart from what I think you're arguing? Telepathy? — Isaac

Reading what I had already written in the thread?

Do continue making up what you think I'm arguing.

lol

It's probably because many people don't actually have a clear idea on what the god is that they are (not) believing in. — Echarmion

But then it seems weird to me to have a belief one way or the other. I would think those folks would instead say, "Let's figure out what we're even talking about first."

if someone don’t know whether it is possible whether a god exists, then he thinks it is possible that it is possible that a god exists, — NOS4A2

No, they precisely DO NOT think this. They don't think it's possible for a god to exist. That would be knowing that it's possible. They do not know if it's possible. They don't have an opinion on it.

Aren't you familiar with not having an opinion on something? For example, I don't know if it's feasible that Trump could be impeached.

That doesn't imply that I think it's feasible. And it doesn't imply that I think it's not feasible. Rather, I don't know.

But that leads to an infinite regression. It’s “I don’t know” all the way down. — NOS4A2

I'm not sure what the regression is. You know that you don't know if you think that it's possible for a god to exist or not.

I don't understand for the first part why you were basically writing the same thing just with a "cannot" instead of a "can."

At any rate, sure, if you believe that it's not possible for a god to exist--which is my view, too--then you wouldn't say "I don't know if a god exists."

But if you say "I don't know if a god exists," you might also think, "I don't even know if it's possible for a god to exist."

Sure... So your counter-argument to my position as it currently stands is...? — Isaac

To laugh at the fact that you weren't familiar with "correlation does not imply causation" and then to laugh again at your eventual attempt to claim that you were arguing that it "implies the possibility of causation" as if that were somehow material to what you want to claim in the first place, or as if we were somehow having a conversation about what is and isn't possible.

One can say “I don’t know” to an either/or question without maintaining the possibility of either side might be right — NOS4A2

Right--without having a belief in possibility either way. That's just the idea.

Until then I intend to continue presenting the flaws in your arguments as best I can. — Isaac

Sure, and I'll keep commenting as I do. Glad we have that sorted out. Maybe we can end the metadiscussion now.

If you or S or someone were to ask me this right now, I'd not be able to know whether it's even possible, especially if you don't tell me where you live, where you've been, whether you have a car in the first place, and if there's no way for me to verify any of that info (you might just be making something up), etc.

They would know whether cars and Main Street exist, — NOS4A2

Not necessarily. You might be able to discover the information, but you don't necessarily know when you're asked and when you respond. It can be the case that you don't know/you don't even have an opinion on whether it's possible. That's all that you need to understand.

Why is correcting an error a 'spin'? Why would you conduct a debate in such a bizzare fashion? — Isaac

I have zero interest in "debating."

Then he must hold on to the possibility of the possibility of a god existing. — NOS4A2

They simply don't have an opinion on it. Maybe they don't have enough information, or they think it's not something that can be known, etc.

Imagine someone asking "Is my car parked on Main Street?"

And then the person we ask says, "I don't know . . . I don't even know if it's possible for your car to be parked on Main Street (do you have a car? Is there a Main Street where you are or were for it to be parked on? etc.)"

Not only do they not know if the car is parked on Main Street, they don't even have a belief whether it's possible that the person has a car parked on Main Street.

How can one remain agnostic if he doesn’t believe in the possibility of a god existing? — NOS4A2

Because one doesn't know if it's possible or not for a god to exist. So you're not believing that's it's not possible, but you're not believing that it's possible either. You're, well, agnostic on that issue.

I'm not 'inserting' it. — Isaac

Yeah, you are. You realized you made a gaffe, and you're doing typical Internet conversation moves of trying to spin it into a save.

Does an agnostic believe it is possible a god might exist? A simple yes or no will suffice. — NOS4A2

He's saying they can be agnostic on whether it's possible, too. That's different than believing either that it's possible or not possible.

atheists can't be 100% certain that deities don't exist, — Philosophical Script

In terms of psychological certainty, I'm 100% certain that no deity exists. It's not about proof. Empirical claims are not provable. I see religious claims as absurd, arbitrary nonsense, the same as any random nonsensical idea that we could brainstorm. For example, if someone were to claim that there are pink bunny rabbits floating around Jupiter's atmosphere, wearing smoking jackets, sitting on big puffy leather couches (which are floating right along with them), reading philosophy books, etc. It's just random nonsense--maybe fun as a surreal fantasy, but I'm not about to think for one moment that it could be the case because it's obviously just goofy crap we're making up.

As I said, how do you suppose scientific knowledge progresses if correlation is not taken to imply the possibility of causation. — Isaac

lol again--now at the fact that you're inserting "the possibility of causation" in there.

I'm familiar with it. It doesn't really address my take on this, which isn't the same as either actualism or possibilism.

The actualist asks what it could mean to say that X was possible if X didn't happen. — frank

It wasn't precluded from happening, given physical facts as they are. Some things are precluded from happening. Those things are (and were) not possible. But not everything possible happens.

Of course correlation implies causation. — Isaac

Lol, no it doesn't.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

We see a correlation between hate speech and violence again and again. — Isaac

You're seriously not familiar with "correlation does not imply causation"?

But, as you still have not answered, you've eliminated joint cause. — Isaac

I did address that. The cause of C can be A and B. The cause of C isn't A in that case. It has to be A and B. A alone might never result in B. So in that case A isn't the cause of B.

If someone wants to claim that speech in conjunction with this and that and whatever causes some action, that's fine. Show all of the work. Show the entire cause or the entire causal chain.

"The sound waves from the utterance enter S's ear, and then . . ." well, then what? Show the work.

Okay, I'll disregard your future comments. If you are so stupid as to not notice the causation between Hitler's speeches to the Reichstag and to the people of Germany, his book "Mein Kampf" and the ensuing Nazi rule, then I have no hope of ever getting through to you. — god must be atheist

If you think it's causation in the sense that I accept that term, you could try to demonstrate the physical causal chain.

You don't buy influence? — Pattern-chaser

As I've pointed out at least four or five times in recent weeks, influence and causality are NOT the same thing.

Have you never heard someone, describing a good story, say "you have to suspend your disbelief"? That's what you do when you're experiencing a story: you suspend disbelief. For the moment, you believe. — Pattern-chaser

You don't believe it. What you do is not be a realism fetishist, because that's not pertinent to fiction. You enjoy the fantasy for what it is rather.

None of this changes the fact that not believing things that are impossible, illogical, etc. doesn't amount to not having an imagination, and none of it amounts to you even commenting on me pointing this out.

And yet (some of) those to whom those utterances were directed did kill people, or have them killed. Was that coincidence? — Pattern-chaser

You don't buy free will?

How sad. Even as a child, when your imagination and creative-learning ability was at its peak? What a shame. — Pattern-chaser

Fantasizing is different than believing.

So I don't consider Hitler to have caused anyone's death. (Insofar as I know, at least. I have no idea if Hitler himself ever killed anyone directly, but I'd say his utterances did not.)

That’s what the Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe, — T Clark

I wouldn't be so quick to generalize there. I'd bet plenty believe that the god of different religions isn't any different. They'd think that the differences are relics of the "translations" basically.

Does procreation create selves? — Inyenzi

I'd say no. It rather creates things that turn into selves.

Because unlike Gods, the existence of the sun or mount Olympus can be established by their physical presence since they can be seen. There is no disputing their existence in spite of them being defined by someone at some point, because they can be said to have existed by pure nature of the fact that they can be seen, and therefore whoever identified them knew of their presence by seeing them. — Maureen

First, the question is why we can't say this about the sun re prior to writing about it, the sun didn't exist, or at least there's no way to "prove" that it existed.

If experiencing the thing in question sensorily is all that's required, surely some religious folks--and often the ones who wrote religious texts, claim to have sensorily experienced god.

You could argue that most people do not, but then we can just change the question to "Why couldn't we make the same argument about subatomic particles?"

Not that I'm religious, by the way. I'm an atheist. But what I care about is whether the argument works. It doesn't, but I want you to figure out for yourself why it doesn't work, which is what I'm trying to guide you towards.