How strictly are you using "proof"? Because no empirical claim is provable if we're using that term fairly strictly. If you just means "reasons for belief," presumably most people will have that.

Why would there be a burden of proof issue with atheists anyway?

(I'm an atheist by the way, but obviously a "positive"/"strong"/etc. atheist)

Saying that "nowadays" is typically used to refer to an exact time is very dubious. "Nowadays" is usually fairly vague and broad.

For example, in the saying "Kids nowadays . . ." people might mean a generation or two of young folks, depending on just what behavior they're talking about, just how old the person who said "Kids nowadays" is, etc. A 50-something guy saying "Kids nowadays do not know how to dress" might have in mind people over a 30-something year time span.

I think it shouldn't be considered as atheism because, to be fair, the 0 state isn't a claim while atheism is one - that God doesn't exist. — TheMadFool

Again I'm not endorsing it, but the reason that people stress that definition is that they're stressing that atheism isn't a claim, it's simply a lack of belief--however the lack of belief is arrived at (which can be through a claim, but it doesn't necessarily have to be).

I think that stems from people looking at the etymology of the term "literally." They're reading it as literally "the negation or absence of theism."

No, I don't agree. — chatterbears

If you don't agree with that then you don't think that the principle/law of noncontradiction is a particular.

I don't want to move on to other stuff (and I especially don't want you to fall back on what's essentially a script for you) until you understand the distinction between particulars and universals or abstracts, because you're not going to understand what I'm saying until you understand that distinction. For example, "You state that logic and math point to objective facts"--I expressly did NOT say that. I said something far more nuanced than that, but you're not going to be able to understand what I said if you don't have a handle on what particulars versus abstracts or universals amounts to.

I've actually read it a couple times, including in school. I don't recall him really addressing what he takes himself to be doing on a meta level. If he's just recommending a way to use language, okay, but that would need more of a campaign behind it to really be effective.

If the law of noncontradiction is a particular that means there's just one instance of it, at a specific spatio-temporal location. Do you agree with that?

I think it's most sensible to interpret it as "in the beginning of consciousness, God created the heaven and earth" — Tomseltje

In what sense do you mean the beginning of consciousness? Do you mean once consciousness arose evolutionarily? Or something else?

I would imagine using modal logic is like the definition of deductive reasoning, — schopenhauer1

But we can ask the same thing about definitions. What are we trying to do when we forward them? Are we describing how people use a term? Prescribing a usage? Or what?

Another way to ask what I'm asking is this. If we make a statement about something, are we making an observation? (And if so, an observation where we're looking at what?) Are we creating something? For what purpose? Or are we doing something else?

Person one:
Names in modal logic are just descriptions.

Person two:
Names in modal logic are not descriptions.

What do we look at to adjudicate who is correct between those two people?

(Does it still not make sense to you what I'm asking about?)

If it's true that names are such and such in modal logic, then it's true by virtue of something, right? Not just by one guy's stipulation presumably.

As far as I know, he is correcting the idea that proper names and kinds are just placeholders for descriptions using modal logic. — schopenhauer1

Correcting it per what, though? In other words, what's the truthmaker for it?

One of the costs involved is that individuals are more fixed than was thought, across our modal musings. Specifically, a proper name fixes one individual across all accessible possible worlds in which that individual exists. An implication of this is that, since a definite description that fixes an individual in the actual world might turn out to be false, or be stipulated to be false, then the theory that the meaning of a name is given by an associated description is bunk. — Banno

Something that I don't think is often addressed in this stuff in this: just what, exactly, does Kripke take himself to be doing? Is he supposed to be describing how people actually use language? If not, what is he doing? Is he offering a proposal for a recommended way to use language?

It´s a known unknown, like girls for unmarried Kant. — DiegoT

Then it wouldn't be correct to say it's something you can't know anything about.

It also seems to me that relativism is meaningless, so objectivity wins out over relativism. — anonymous66

Hmm, it seems to me that the objective world is relative.

But will there ever be a way to completely describe reality as we know it? — anonymous66

Descriptions have a psychological component. Something only counts as a description if someone is psychologically satisfied that the putative description works as a description.

The term is "counterfactuals."

A huge number of philosophers active in the past century (and this century) have talked about counterfactuals, with that talk initially growing out of examining logical conditionals, which have been formalized since Aristotle, and they have an important connection to modal logic, which is a very popular topic. "Possible world" talk is very popular too. Possible world talk deals with counterfactuals/modal logic.

Counterfactuals don't need "defending"--it's a very natural way to think. People are always saying things like, "If only I hadn't made that decision," etc.--that's a counterfactual.

The challenging aspects of counterfactuals are not their occurrence but things like their truth conditions, the semantics of them, etc.

There's a thread active on the board about Saul Kripke's book Naming and Necessity. That gets into a lot of issues about counterfactuals.

Yeah, I'm not endorsing the distinction, but it's common and I think it makes some sense. I'd also prefer to use the term for positive/active denials.

Logical certainty about the future isn't possible.

Psychological certainty is, but psychological certainty doesn't imply anything about what will actually be the case. It's just what someone is convinced of.

Where we come apart I believe is I believe that atheism is an active objection to a proposed belief. One can not be a - anything, without there being an anything. — Rank Amateur

The way that negative/weak/implicit/soft atheism works is via atheism being defined as a lack of belief in deities. If you've never thought about it, then you lack a belief in any deities. And if you've actively rejected the notion, you also lack a belief in any deities.

But once you do answer - 'Matter as opposed to [the other thing]'

Then the question is: how do we understand what [the other thing] is? — csalisbury

My answer to that is, "I don't, and I'm not at all convinced that anyone does, but nevertheless, people keep forwarding it."

At any rate, I say that everything is dynamic relations of matter, or you could say there are three things in my view--matter, relations, processes--although I wouldn't say they're really separable.

In both cases, the monistic idea can only be precipitated out of a non-monistic stew. The intent of the monist is always to correct an error, to show how everything is actually one. But that intent can only arise from a situation in which there is, at minimum, a duality. — csalisbury

It arises from a situation where people claim something else. That's different than there being something else.

Think of it this way. You hand someone a deck of cards. They say, "Ah, you've given me a deck of cards interspersed with spludgemuffikins!" The mere fact that they've said this doesn't imply that it's not just a deck of cards, and especially if you can get no coherent account of what spludgemuffikins are and how you also handed them to the person, you'd probably say, "No, it's just a deck of cards."

It's important to remember that people can be confused, delusional, etc.

Your account suggested something I found amusing--namely, feeling that Hume's comment that we can have no certainty about the external world should be taken seriously, and that it's troubling to take it seriously, and then "solving" it by concluding that we can't know anything about the real world at all, forget certainty.

At any rate, I don't think it's justifiable to posit something that one can't know anything about.

Who do you think has the right idea of what science is/ ought to be? — Pelle

"Ought to be" can take a hike as far as I'm concerned.

Aside from that, I'd say "all of the above in many important respects." And part of the reason that it's all of the above is that science is really a bunch of people doing a bunch of different things, where they're not clones of each other.

Okay.

We can't do anything with that re forwarding a conversation, obviously, so . . .

I am in the process of answering your question (the answer is "No," which I've already explained), but you'll not be able to understand the answer if you don't understand the universals/particulars distinction a la nominalism, and you don't understand that distinction if you're suggesting that a law or principle, objectively, could be a particular. Hence why I'm focusing on this distinction. What I'm saying can't be understood without understanding the universals/particulars or abstracts/particulars distinction.

I told you I understand that already. And to frame your particulars/universals in the axiom context, I'll do it this way.

Universal: An axiom
Particular: the law of noncontradiction — chatterbears

If the law of noncontradiction is a particular, then there's just one instance of it at a specific spatio-temporal location.

(Or in other words, no, you're not understanding what particulars are. You're thinking that I'm saying something akin to (super)set versus a member of the set. That's not what particulars are.)

If you don't know what I'm referring to then you don't really understand the distinction between particulars and universals or abstracts.

A particular is a single thing, in a specific spatio-temporal location, and it's only that thing.

The idea of a universal is that it's something that can be instantiated in more than one thing.

So for example, many individuals can be a cat, but a particular cat would be "that one, sitting on the living room windowsill of 33 Main Street, Des Moines, Iowa, named 'Fluffy,' who likes grapefruit juice."

You don't think you're defining the law of identity, when indeed you are. — chatterbears

Would you say that the law of identity is a particular, found on just one occasion, in one spatio-temporal location, etc.?

I don't know how to ask this without it seeming patronizing, unfortunately, but do you understand the distinction between particulars and universals or abstracts? Understanding that distinction is important for understanding what I'm saying.

I suppose we just don't understand what each other is saying then. Not sure how to work around that, because you seem annoyed by all of my attempts to clarification/supplying more detail.

The only thing I could suggest is basically starting over, starting with something very short and simple to see if we can find some common ground to move on from.

If your conception of God is an inconsistent, incoherent, self-contradictory, unnecessary entity, then I'm not sure the point of engaging with the idea. — Inis

If someone's conception is that logic is somehow "above" him, then he's not omnipotent. That's okay, people don't have to propose an omnipotent god, but I'm just sayin'.

It's not a nonsequitur, because then logic is "above" god so to speak.

No one ever argues that god lacks omnipotence because she cannot make 2+2=5. — Inis

That doesn't have the same dilemma built into it though. The "rock heavier than he can lift" thing sets up a dichotomy where either answer implies something a god wouldn't be able to do.

Yet, I sincerely don’t understand what your point is with the different and incompatible logics. — Towers

If they're incompatible then we're obviously not dealing with certainty for them.

It's not clear to me what difference it would make if he were to actually create the stone or not.

Either it's possible for him to create a stone that he can not lift or that's not possible. Both possibilities imply something he's not able to do (he either could not lift that rock that he could create, or he could not create such a rock). Whether he actually creates it or not is beside the logical point.

(1) When we people refer to Western civilization today, do you think it is fair to say that they typically have in mind Anglosphere countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, the UK, New Zealand. — johnGould

Not just Anglo countries. European countries in general, and the places where European countries had a significant influence through colonization, etc.

Do you think what we currently call "The West" is best represented by this group of Anglophone countries?

Not really. That would give too limited of a view.

I'm confused why you addressed the above to me.

First, I don't think that there's an axiom or rule that's objective, just a particular relation.

I also don't think that logic is objective. The particular relation in question isn't itself logic. It's not sufficient to be logic. Logic has some basis in objective relations, but logic isn't identical to those objective relations. Logic is a way of abstract thinking about relations (and primarily it's thinking about our abstractions). You don't get to logic until you get to that thinking.

Ethics isn't anything about relations per se. So it doesn't make any sense to say that ethics is in any way based on objective relations. Logic is about relations. That's the whole subject matter of it. Logic is about relations--more specifically, implicational, inferential, etc. relations--on a generalized, idealized, abstract level. But that's not the subject matter of ethics.

Certainty: see Rene Descartes' Meditations

Logic: Is an extrapolation of how we think about relations; there are different species of logics, with incompatible axioms, etc.

Ethics: ethical foundations have nothing to do with logic and ethical utterances are not true or false.

0 is one common definition of atheism, though. It's variously called implicit, negative, weak or soft atheism.

Im not trying to be antagonistic, answering questions with more questions seems evasive. Especially when you do that instead of addressing the points I raised. Its not like im posting lengthy, obfuscating responses.
Now Im not sure how to respond, since trying to communicate towards understandung is what I am indeed attempting but you have found it offensive. — DingoJones

Maybe try being more verbose about what you have in mind.

You mentioned using the particular relation (rather than general relation, which I'm specifying because remember that I think there are only particulars) of a thing being x (or having property F) and not being not x (or not lacking property F) at the same time as something to do with ethics, but I pointed out that that doesn't have anything to do with ethics (or rather it doesn't have anything more to do with ethics than it does the price of tea in China, or garbage collection schedules, or whatever). So I'm not sure what you're talking about. You could say that ethics has to be in accord with that particular relation as a fact, but everything has to be in accord with every fact in that same sense, so again, it's difficult to say what it particularly has to do with ethics.

Hence why I asked you to explain what it has to do with ethics.