A social subject creation mechanism in effect. So, I'm sure the Chinese will be delighted with the impression that it's just a transparent attempt at oppression that people will surreptitiously oppose by trying to game the system rather than being a system that will become so transparent it will game them. — Baden

This is why I think the Chinese system, especially since it exists within a highly corrupt and totalitarian political system, won't work at all.

But in a free democracy, as per the A.I system, which might sound like science fiction, but if pushed for would take just a couple of years to be implemented when the technology is ready, might actually work. The big thing though, is that it's hard to quantify the drawbacks to have such a system within a free democracy. Where is the line between progressive disobedience and bad moral acts? As an A.I it needs to, in some way, calculate the benefits of such disobedience and decide if it's for something good or something bad according to morals not present in the current system. It needs to, for example, understand when racists act disobediently with promoting a racist society while promoting for a change in health care is good for the people. Adding parameters like this might be easy for an A.I to adapt to, but it's hard for us to find the balance that is right.

Outside of the A.I example, what might be a real-world implementation of a rubber-band score system? Is there a way to actually have this in a free democracy, without it becoming totalitarian like China or like the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive"? I think it might, but it needs a serious overhaul in comparison to those to extremes in order to keep society free and healthy.

A) not good for one to suppress emotions as they bottle up and later do come back to deal what needs to be delt and B) that its not possible. After having suppressed my emotions I, even after a great amount of time, get nothing that "comes back up" or anything of that kind.

Yet, that is not where my question lies, Is it possible to have a choice whether to feel or not? — Thesailor123

It is not possible to just decide not to feel. We can train ourselves to be instinctively ready for feelings and through that have a conscious cushion that makes it easier to suppress them when they arrive. This is how soldiers and similar occupations train in order to suppress fear and similar emotions.

We use two systems when we navigate through our waking hours, system 1 and system 2, the latter being our calm, thinking, rational self who analyze and find the right answer based on information that we know. But system 2 is never in the driving seat, it's system 1, which goes by pre-programmed responses and feedbacks towards what we experience. It continuously consults system 2 in order to process new information, but can only act on things we know. System 1 is the one acting with emotions so in order to have some control over it you would need to train it to handle those emotions, but you can never get rid of emotions consciously, since you can never switch to using system 2 in the drivers seat.

you have done a lot of work here, and you deserve a proper, reasonable response, so here goes: — Rank Amateur

Thank you, you prove to be a step higher than many others when it comes to a proper dialectic, I appreciate that. :up:

Unsupported and supported belief
Informed and uniformed acts
And distorted knowledge. — Rank Amateur

Supported belief is a belief that has some evidence for it, but cannot be deduced as pure truth yet. Essentially an "inductive belief" compared to a scientific theory which is more of a deductive conclusion, if we were to use those terms. Supported belief, in this case, can be said to be a hypothesis, it needs facts and observations in order to lead to a qualified guess but cannot be pulled from nothing. This belief needs to be supported by something that isn't a belief itself.

Unsupported belief is a belief which has no facts, evidence or logic behind it. Essentially it's pulled from thin air, emotion, prejudice, flawed logic and the list goes on. Its reasoning filled with biases and fallacies, jumpings to conclusion etc. It's a belief that breaks down as soon as the reasons get a dissection and questioned. An example outside of theism is anti-vaxxers, who tries to argue through facts but jump to conclusions and cannot see that their facts don't hold up or connect to their conclusion, essentially they have a belief that vaccines are bad and dangerous, yet have nothing to actually prove it, not even inductively as their facts break apart as soon as the real data of vaccines link to diseases show that there's zero link. In spiritualism, it's a belief in ghosts, yet there's no evidence for any ghosts ever to be filed as proper evidence and no conclusive data of any event that can lead to such conclusion. In social tensions, it's the white guy who won't buy anything from a certain store because the clerk is black. List goes on, essentially as it's named, unsupported belief.


Distorted knowledge is common, general and collective information, considered as truth, but since derived from unsupported belief (above), they aren't true but are considered facts anyway. Like during Nazi Germany, people accepted the ideas of eugenics, not as a belief but as facts. Unsupported belief lead to unsupported facts, i.e distorted knowledge. Same goes for the previous analogy about viruses, where the general public accepted the church's ideas of the poor being responsible for bringing down God's wrath through sickness. Unsupported belief leads to a higher risk of distorting knowledge and create common "truths" based on false grounds.

Secondly, independent of your definitions, there is no causality in your premises.
You would have to add, something like :

An unsupported belief, always or usually, etc leads to uninformed acts.

Without such a link, there is no direct cause one to the other. All your premises turn into - people who like vanilla ice cream leads to uniformed acts. — Rank Amateur

Sure, it's a bit semantical though.

p1 An unsupported belief always leads to uninformed acts.
p2 A supported belief always leads to informed acts.
p3 An unsupported belief always has a high risk of distorting knowledge
p4 A supported belief always has a low risk of distorting knowledge

Reason for using the definitive "always" is that even if the unsupported belief is accidentally correct, the act upon it is still uninformed. While acting by supported belief always include having information for that act, so it's always informed. However you turn it, that's a true however the outcome.
Same goes for the knowledge premises, it's always a higher risk that unsupported belief distorts knowledge. It's statistically true of the probable outcome of each belief types.

Lastly, what are the origins of “ supported beliefs” do such beliefs spring into our collective consciences fully supported?? I would opine, most if not all “supported beliefs” begin their existence as a thought, and idea, an “unsupported belief” that someone works on to validate and if successful turns into a “supported belief” — Rank Amateur

That is true, but the argument is more about the ethical nature of how we live by our beliefs. Let's say you are a white man and media has been pushing a segregating narrative that fuels racist dislikes of black people in the neighborhood. You walk down the street and in front of you there's a black man, nothing strange about him, doesn't look dangerous or anything but you still cross the street to avoid the man. This is acting upon an unsupported belief. But if you instead let that unsupported belief be the "open question" and you directly weight in the facts, how media spins news, how there have not been any problems last week and question why you should fear the man now as you wouldn't have done it last week, you choose to keep walking and not act upon the unsupported belief.

You essentially turned the open question of unsupported belief into supported belief. The problem is if you hold onto the unsupported belief. This is rather about the long term and not short term. Say you have a day when some very unsupported beliefs pops into your head and you set out to verify/falsify them. As long as you don't act and live by those unsupported beliefs and accept them as mere thoughts to be proved or disproved, they aren't really beliefs yet. They are current thoughts. But if you give up looking into those unsupported beliefs and you just keep going, after a week you still believe them and you still act upon them, you are walking the dangerous path ethically.

do such beliefs spring into our collective consciences — Rank Amateur

But I don't define beliefs as collective, I define them as personal. I define collective belief as distorted knowledge, as that's when they start becoming common truths, which is the most dangerous consequence of unsupported belief.

Pending you definitions of the above, I have no real issue at all with this statement
And no clue why you need the premises above to arrive at this. — Rank Amateur

To make it definitive in order to continue the argument in its parts. Need to define definitively that unsupported belief is unreasonable. Think of when someone has an unsupported belief that is accidentally true, it can look like a reasonable act, but by showing the connection to being informed or uninformed and the probability of risk, it shows that even if you are accidentally correct in a belief, you still increase the risk of negative outcomes if that's how you live by beliefs.

Reasonable and unreasonable acts
And your definition of
Ethical/unethical — Rank Amateur

Reasonable acts are acts based on rational probability from the reasonable belief (as defined by the first argument). I.e they are acts in direct causal line from the ideas in the reasonable belief.
Unreasonable acts are the opposite of that.
Ethical/unethical is where my other moral argument comes in (which I haven't finished yet), but heard it's close to Sam Harris landscape of morality (which I've yet to read). In essence, it's based on harm/well-being induction bridging many of the common moral theories together. Basically, your actions should be inductively reasoned to a probability of the most well-being for yourself and others combined (simplified).
In this case, it's more ethical that you act upon what is reasonable than what is not, but I'm not sure we really have to go into detail of my own argument for this. I think that even if you apply it to most moral systems, the reasonable act will always be connected to positive morals than negative ones. I.e more ethical.

Also as above, there is no causality in the premises . A does not directly cause B

Cant address any more of this until it is defined and causality is established — Rank Amateur

p1 High reasonable belief always leads to reasonable acts
p2 Low reasonable belief always leads to unreasonable acts
p3 High reasonable acts are always considered ethical
p4 Low reasonable acts are always considered unethical

I don't think there's any doubt that high reasonable belief (as per the previous argument) always lead to reasonable acts. If the act is unreasonable, it's in direct violation against the reasonable belief. It's also important not to view an act as common truth, the act is linked to the intention of the moral agent and a reasonable act is intended to be out of reasonable belief. If the outcome is not intended, it's not the fault of the moral agent if the act is based on reasonable belief. But if the act is unreasonable, based on low reasonable belief it has a corrupted intention and therefore has a high probability of a faulty outcome and the moral agent is responsible for that outcome as the intention was corrupted by the low reasonable belief. It also brings back the definition of ethical and unethical by pointing to carelessness in predicting moral outcomes through unreasonable acts and belief. It's careless not to figure out the consequences of your acts essentially.

Define – theism
And as above
You need to establish casualty — Rank Amateur

I define theism by a belief in God. It's also more broadly defined as "the belief in the existence of the Supreme Being or deities" as opposed to deism, even though deism is also still an unsupported belief type.

p1 Unsupported belief is always unethical
p2 Supported belief is always ethical
p3 Theism always relies on an unsupported belief

Definition of why theism always relies on unsupported belief is because if it's proven and we can measure it, it's deism. But even in deism, if we measure it and find God, it's not deism anymore but scientific fact. If "belief" is gone from both theism and deism, it's no longer definable as either theism or deism are defined. They are in opposition to scientific fact through this definition, and since none of them rely on hypotheses based on supported belief, like for instance the M-Theory which has a lot of math supporting it, but cannot be finished before predicted observations are shown and it becomes a scientific theory, theism is based on unsupported belief.

I am not going to spend any more time arguing the reasonability of an argument that has lasted over 700 years. — Rank Amateur

As all others when pointing out these flaws. The problem with the arguments is that they were made long before any of the modern understanding and knowledge about physics, spacetime, quantum physics and the Big Bang. There are plenty of issues with the arguments and whenever they are brought up, the response is that "they are old arguments and because they are still around, they are valid". I can easily counter that with; "they are old, so why are they still not considered as scientific theories if they are supposed to support the idea of God with solid validity?". That's because they rely on faith and belief in order to work, in order to connect "God" with their conclusions. Just because they are old, doesn't mean they are valid. Or should we bring back old Ancient Greek theories that everything is made of water, just because that is old as well?

I am saying it shows such a thing as God, is a resonable possibility. — Rank Amateur

So theism is relying on a reasonable possibility, no real support? How is that changing it from unsupported belief to supported belief? Believing the Wheeler–DeWitt equation has support in its math, that is supported belief. And how do you measure that reasonable possibility? Do you need belief in order to measure the number? So if you believe in God the reasonable possibility is 90%? If not its 10%? Agnostic 50%? How is "reasonable possibility" changing theism into supported belief when the conclusion to CA could be anything? There's a reasonable possibility that its an out-of-spacetime-dog that kickstarted the universe since we don't know, how can that not be a possibility as well?

It all boils down to a belief that doesn't have true support in conclusions, only speculations based on a possibility that sounds more like wishful thinking than actual logic to the reasoning of the arguments.

And for your argument to stand you need to show the CA is outside reason. You have not done so, and your counter arguments are not making any headway in doing this. — Rank Amateur

I have shown that it has nothing to do with God. Theism requires God. Theism is not about an out-of-spacetime-dog, it is about God. The validity of CA can be discussed and there are plenty of more counter-arguments that I can bring up, but the point is still that you cannot attach God to its conclusions since that requires a belief without the support of an actual connection, i.e my premise still holds that theism is unsupported belief.

Just saying I'm wrong does not work if we take this as a dialectic. And criticizing that my arguments don't hold with making a point that the arguments lasted 700 years is just a fallacy. I can list plenty of arguments that won't hold the test of time.

proving what happened before the Big Bang is outside physics is the entire darn point of the argument. You are making no sense at all with this line of logic — Rank Amateur

That is not what I said, is it? "proving what happened before the Big Bang is outside physics" is not the same as "How can it prove something outside known physics without assuming the properties of what is outside known physics?

Is it?

And even so, how does that in any way relate to God? Theism is about God, if God is whatever there is before Big Bang, it's still belief without support. Since you can conclude the argument with "there is something in the beginning". But by attaching "God" to that makes it speculation, it becomes belief and does not in any way or form have support.

Therefore, theism is relying on unsupported belief.

Also, in what way does CA in any way make p3 Theism relies on an unsupported belief false?
How many assumptions must be needed before a belief in God can be concluded unsupported belief?

It's like if a soccer football came rolling down the road from a couple of houses and you can't see its source. You conclude that something set it in motion, there are a force and a speed to it. You listen and hear nothing. Drawing a conclusion on what set that soccer ball in motion has nothing else than the ball itself and its motion as proof, but the conclusion drawn is that a soccer player must have kicked it.

Without knowing if it was rather a dog, a random kid, the wind that pushed it from a high place so that it rolled down the road. Without any further data, you still draw the conclusion of the soccer player kicking it. But that is pure speculation, not a valid conclusion. Then saying that such a conclusion is giving support to a personal belief that the couple of houses up the road are homes for professional soccer players is pushing the assumptions and speculations even further. Causation ≠ correlation. Therefore theism relies on an unsupported belief.

P3 is patently false, the entire point of the CA is the creation of the universe is outside physics, that it is supernatural. so then p4 is redundantly false — Rank Amateur

How can it prove something outside known physics without assuming the properties of what is outside known physics? That is assuming a lot that hasn't even been proven through theoretical physics and drawing a conclusion on that, is false.

P4 is true, we don't have any data about what was or what the properties or physics were before Big Bang, this is a fact. How can you say this premise is false? Do you have the data but no other in the entire world?

Wow, so the argument that concludes the beginning was supernatural needs a scientific explanation of what it is trying to argue. You realize absolutely none of that paragraph makes any sense at all. — Rank Amateur

How can it conclude it to be supernatural when it doesn't know if our laws of physics existed before Big Bang? How can it conclude it to be supernatural at all without knowing anything about pre-Big Bang? That's jumping to conclusions in the argument. Answer me how the arguments can prove anything at all? Any properties of pre-Big Bang, prove that it was or wasn't supernatural? If you can't answer that, how can you conclude those arguments to be valid?

And hate to do this, but the rest of the post is worse. That well could be the single worst argument against the CA I have ever seen. — Rank Amateur

Yeah, I keep hearing it, but I never get any rational counter-argument to the criticism of the those arguments. They assume a lot without even including modern physics or a rational falsification of their own premises.

The cosmological argument requires a lot of knowledge about pre-Big Bang. Without it, it's just assumptions and guesses about it and if you conclude it to be supernatural, you need support to why it is supernatural, which need actual facts and evidence in science to prove such a conclusion.

There's a reason these arguments haven't proven anything related to their conclusions and the world's population haven't accepted them as true, because they are flawed and might not even comply with today's understanding of physics. Like, you need to at least disprove or counter the Wheeler–DeWitt equation before concluding that causality can occur before Big bang.

So please address the issues and tone down the arrogant tone.

i would counter P3 is false, both the cosmological argument, and some design arguments are valid. Valid meaning the premises are true, and the conclusions follow. That does not mean, there are not counter arguments against, but none of them overwhelm the arguments. — Rank Amateur

They are valid in that they point to a first cause but...

p1 Cosmological and design arguments point to an original point of origin for the universe.
p2 Cosmological and design arguments does not incorporate attributes and properties outside of the known laws of physics.
p3 Cosmological and design arguments require known laws of physics to exist before Big Bang.
p4 There is no data to support known laws of physics to exist before Big Bang.

Therefore cosmological and design arguments only works within known laws of physics and therefore dismiss any other explanation about pre-Big Bang that does not function by our known laws of physics.

This is why the cosmological and design argument is failing since it needs to have in their premises exactly what was before Big Bang and that everything there followed the known laws of physics. This is not known yet and scientists don't know what happened before Big Bang, so how can those with the cosmological and design arguments make claims that need truths about pre-Big Bang but still have a valid argument?

Then, on top of that:

p1 Cosmological argument does not point directly to a God.
p2 Design arguments does not prove a link between universe complexity and intentional design without assuming there to be one before the conclusion.
p3 Design arguments does not point directly to a God.
p4 Theism requires God

Therefore, cosmological and design arguments do not support an existence of God.

Not only do the cosmological and design arguments not really hold up as arguments, but even if we ignore the fact that those arguments ignore the lack of data about pre-Big Bang, they don't directly point to God and Theism require God.

Therefore I cannot see how my p3 is false as these arguments don't really give support to theism having supported belief. To use those arguments to conclude that theism has supported belief requires them to be bullet proof in evidence, which they aren't because of the mentioned flaws AND that they without flaws point directly to a God, which they don't. There's a lot of assumptions made before those can conclude theism being backed by supported belief.

your argument does not work unless theism is shown unsupported /unreasonable - becomes circular. — Rank Amateur

I had a line of premises concluding on theism, but didn't want to see pitchforks but, anyway, here's the third part of that argument:

p1 Unsupported belief is unethical
p2 Supported belief is ethical
p3 Theism relies on an unsupported belief

Therefore, theism is unethical.

How can you hold onto theism without unsupported belief?

I can form an argument as to why irrational unsupported belief is unreasonable, as I did in my belief-argument thread. It's still evolving though, per the dialectic. Although it hit a roadblock when religious evangelists came in and got banned, spammed posts that got erased etc. Gonna look over it some more, but essentially it's the argument.

The question then becomes; can that be combined with theism? Or is it essentially that because unsupported belief is an essential property of theism, it falls under the bus of that argument's conclusion? How can you support theism without such belief as a core attribute?

But in a shorter and simpler version of the longer argument in the other thread:

p1 An unsupported belief leads to uninformed acts.
p2 A supported belief leads to informed acts.
p3 An unsupported belief has a high risk of distorting knowledge
p4 A supported belief has a low risk of distorting knowledge

Therefore, unsupported belief is less reasonable than supported belief.

Then

p1 High reasonable belief leads to reasonable acts
p2 Low reasonable belief leads to unreasonable acts
p3 High reasonable acts are considered ethical
p4 Low reasonable acts are considered unethical

Therefore, a low reasonable belief is unethical.


The other argument goes more into detail about what unsupported and supported beliefs are etc.

So if I make a claim that such a thing as love exists, and i want you to believe as I do that love exists, it is my burden to make an argument that convinces you. If however, you establish a burden of proof that is, by definition, outside any possibility, do to the nature of the claim. Than that person has established an impossible burden. If in the case above, you tell me you will believe in love, it I can bring you a box with a pound of love in it. Without that proof - you tell me i have not made my argument, and you have no reason to believe such a thing as love exists. All your position turns into is I don't believe you, because I don't believe you. — Rank Amateur

Except that in the case of love I actually don't "believe in love", I rationalize that it is a concept that we use in language to describe our attachments through chemical reactions and psychological factors based on social constructs around those emotions. I could probably make this case for almost anything and for that which I cannot explain I can do educated guesses, hypotheses, as long as I try to stay within what I previously know and not apply personal belief to that hypothesis. In the case of love, I could, through the sciences of psychology, sociology, biology and anthropology, argue that love is simply a concept, it does not exist as it's own thing and I could probably prove this point through all the different aspects of the above sciences and the only counter-claim would be a belief that it's something more anyway for which I would demand counter-proof that holds against the science.

But that wasn't the actual point, I get that. However, I would argue that there are very few things we couldn't categorize within more responsible handling of epistēmē.

And with this, I'm going back into my own argument about irrational belief being unethical, a thread you've been posting in. Through that, I argue that irrational belief is always wrong and that we can only hold a belief that has some support as long as we treat it as a non-value in our actions, until proven. Meaning, any time acting on a belief that doesn't have any support, we break epistemic responsibility and it creates a risk of distorting knowledge and how people act upon that knowledge.

So if you actually came to me with the love question, I would not say I believe in love, I would say that the most rational explanation for love is through the evidence of why we humans act according to the concept of love. If you hold a belief that love exists outside of the concepts we can measure, I would ask for a burden of proof, just as with any other belief and because you cannot bring a box of love as proof, I would not say that I don't believe you, or that I believe you, I would say that I have no reason to even accept the idea of such a belief as it's a concept with no attachment in reality outside of fantasy (for which I can also probably explain why people have fantasies about love as magical concepts).

This is why I could probably call myself the most atheist member of all on this board since I don't even hold "belief" as a valid concept outside of educated guesses/hypotheses. Irrational beliefs are just fantasies we've made up to explain the unexplainable, we believe a lot as children and less and less the older we get, but because of human psychology, we are prone to always lean towards believing something before actually explaining something. This is the point of my belief-argument, that we need to stop accepting things as truths just because it's comfortable and feels nice and instead take that personal belief that we take for granted as truths, and exile it completely from our minds and emotions.

And I am fine with all of that, except that the atheist does not want it to end there. As on this board and almost everywhere else the atheist wants to challenge the belief that God is, with the implicit claim God is not, with a semantic excuse they don't have to prove it. I find this disingenuous, and pure tactic. — Rank Amateur

I can say the same about theists. There's a lot of religious nutjobs joining and writing total nonsense and sending private messages about how to "save me from my devilish atheism". I rarely see true atheists acting in the same way, probably since more atheists than theists don't let their emotions guide their reasoning (of course some do, but I would call them uneducated and just as irrationally emotional as any of those religious people). But if you look at a broader picture of the world's population, I would argue, statistically that more religious people behave irrationally and dangerous than atheists. Which is a statistic in support of my belief-argument.

And my belief-argument thread is a good example of this. The actual argument is about irrational belief, both religious and non-religious, but most of the posts are about God's existence or not, and vague semantical counter-arguments with emotional outbursts rather than dialectics; just because those theists have a problem with my argument challenging their core property of "belief". To criticize belief when that belief does not correlate with anything but fantasy, makes theists grab their pitchforks since they need belief they cannot prove, in order to hold onto the truths they live by. There's no wonder one of them got banned and another got most of his posts deleted after spamming nonsense.

Is it evangelistic to make an argument that irrational belief without support can be a dangerous moral road to take? And that belief that has support, a belief that is only considered belief and acted upon with caution because of it, to be acceptable? Or is it simply that theists lash out emotionally when their personal core values are threatened by an argument like that? You cannot threaten atheists core values in the same way since there are no core values other than searching for truth and rationality.

I don't challenge religious belief because I'm an atheist, I challenge it because it's irrational, it's without support, with its arguments filled with fallacies and biases and often become painfully flawed to a point it's not even obvious to the one making it. Theists often demand atheists to just accept their argument without explaining further and why, while atheists demand theists to have solid arguments when they don't. I haven't seen atheistic argument fail in the same way as theists arguments when looking at their validity as arguments. And if they do, those atheists making those arguments seem more willing to go through dialectics and changing the argument to actually make sense while theists just say "you don't' get it" and then posts another, equally flawed argument. I'm of course not saying that atheists are always right in their arguments, I'm just tired of hearing the same fallacies and biases by theists while they blame atheists for challenging their personal beliefs. Especially since philosophical dialectic is all about challenging anyone's argument if it seems flawed.

It's irrational by theists to demand more than they can bring to the table themselves. Theists and atheists should make their case with equal demand for rational reasoning, no one has more validity over the other and everything else is just emotionally driven opinions.

i understand your point now, but that is again trying to get the argument you want, not the one I am making. — Rank Amateur

But in order for your point to be an argument, even inductively, you need true premises and if there's a chance one of them isn't you need to modify it to be true in order to make the argument valid.

My premise, the definition of the "no seeum" argument, is not false, because it is not worded the way you like. It is worded the way it is often argued. I stand by the definition - and the conclusion that follows. — Rank Amateur

That would mean instead that the argument you make is about how people use that argument, not the argument itself. You are essentially criticizing that people use that argument to prove that [blank] doesn't exist and if it's the use of the argument that is the problem, I agree with you, but then your argument needs to reflect and support that conclusion, not specifically a conclusion about the no-seeum argument.

If you want to acknowledge that no-seeum arguments, as i defined them say nothing at all about existence, we can get on to the argument you want - Russell — Rank Amateur

What I meant with Russel is that his teapot analogy reflects the actual conclusion to be drawn from the argument. If some atheists or whatever use this argument as definite proof of no existence, that is just as wrong as the opposite, but that itself is the personal use of the argument, in my opinion in the wrong way.

this is my proposition on a definition of what a "no-seemum" argument is. I am making no conclusion in the proposition at all.

What I am saying is - people, maybe you, make statements like " there is no proof of God, or fill in the blank, therefore they, maybe you, because of lack of proof, chose to believe there is no God or fill in the blank. That is not a conclusion - that is a statement I am making that I propose is true. It says NOT ONE THING at all about if God does or does not exist. All is says is a definition of an argument some people make about if God does or does not exists. IT IS NOT ABOUT GOD, IT IS ABOUT THE ARGUMENT. — Rank Amateur

This is exactly the point I've been discussing throughout. You propose a conclusion that is definitive, meaning, you see it as black and white, either the argument concludes in "therefore there is a [blank]" or it's "therefore there's not a [blank]".

But if the conclusion is "there's no reason to believe it to exist", it is neither "it exist" or "it doesn't exist", it's not even agnostic, it's a denial of any conclusion at all since you can't make one without facts, observations and correct correlations. You propose the conclusion to be a definitive answer to either existence or no existence by saying that the no-seeum argument concludes with a definitive answer. But to use the lack of evidence, burden of proof etc. as a reason not to arrive at a conclusion at all with "there's no reason to believe it to exist", is what the argument is about.

So you dismiss the argument based on your own proposition of the conclusion but won't accept there to be another conclusion that is neither "it exist" or "it doesn't exist".

This is p1
p1. - people make no-seeum arguments

what in the world are you talking about ?? — Rank Amateur

Sorry, meant p2

"conclusion - all no seeum arguments fail as proof of either existence or non existence of anything."

your point? — Rank Amateur

I asked about p1, your conclusion of the no-seeum argument.

If the conclusion you mention in p1 is instead "there's no reason to believe it to exist", then the conclusion to your counter-argument does not hold up since the conclusion you criticize isn't about either existence or non-existence. As I described earlier what "there's no reason to believe it to exist" is really about.

What I mean is that you propose a conclusion in p1 that I don't really see is the actual conclusion of the argument you are criticizing.

may well be the most convoluted sentence i have ever read. — Rank Amateur

You proposed a conclusion to the argument you are criticizing. I asked if that is the actual conclusion or if the actual conclusion is "there's no reason to believe it to exist".

Without the conclusion being exactly as you proposed, your conclusion of the counter-argument ends up misunderstanding the original argument.

the point of the virus has nothing at all to do with the point you are making above, all it is saying is, that until we are aware of such things - our unawareness of them says nothing at all about there existence, or lack there of. Your point here just begs the question. — Rank Amateur

My point is that to say "it exist" or "it does not exist" is irrelevant since a belief in either doesn't follow epistemic responsibility. Any claim of God's existence is irresponsible to how we treat knowledge and act with the knowledge that we have. Just like blaming the poor for Gods wrath through sickness instead of actually looking into what sickness is. This is why we have modern methods to arrive at facts and not beliefs.

I did not conclude any such thing - i proposed that is what the no-seeum argument concludes - that i am arguing against !!!! that is twice now that you have misunderstood a simple statement by 180 deg. Slow down - — Rank Amateur

I'm asking if that conclusion is the actual conclusion you are arguing against or if your conclusion is changed to a definitive in order to make your arguments point? You proposed it to be the conclusion, could the conclusion just as much be "there's no reason to believe it to exist"?

" we looked we didn't see anything - it does not exist" — Rank Amateur

Why do you conclude it with "it does not exist" and not "there's no reason to believe it to exist"?

Can you spot the difference between those two? One is a statement that requires knowing the truth, the other is a statement requiring a burden of proof from those making the original claim. If people were to follow epistemic responsibility, they lack responsibility if they either go for "it does not exist", but also if they go for "it exist", which is what theists do with their fallacious arguments. "there's no reason to believe it to exist" take epistemic responsibility as it does not conclude anything at all until a correlation between two things has been established. Without it, you can invent any reason something does not or does exist. The core value of this is to never believe anything that doesn't have support, but the theist approach is to believe what you want to believe because of the lack of support of that it isn't.

Tu quoque

So i make a point, you get the point 180 degrees wrong, I point it out to you, and you say it doesn't matter you got it wrong - and then ask me why I don't want to engage. — Rank Amateur

And you stop reading, don't understand the core conclusion of my counter-argument and use the missed point as your reason to ignore the counter-argument. That's called a fallacy fallacy.

p1. - people make no-seeum arguments
p2. - these arguments basically say " we know what we are looking for, we have looked in lots of places, and we don't see it, therefore it does not exist.
p3. - there are almost countless examples of things that people where unaware of, did not believe existed, but actually did exist.
p4. - all a no seeum argument shows is that there is something you can't see it

conclusion - all no seeum arguments fail as proof of either existence or non existence of anything.

If you want to directly answer this - happy to engage. — Rank Amateur

p2 is not really true. The criticism is not that it doesn't exist, it's that there's no reason to say that it exists if it cannot have observed correlation. This is the foundation of the Russel analogy. If you can make up whatever you want to exist and then "prove it" by saying that because no one can see it it must exist, you essentially just invent anything you want as existing, without any epistemic responsibility of any kind. You don't seem to understand the actual conclusion of Russel's analogy and instead, strawman it into a black and white "does not exist", which isn't the actual conclusion of the criticism through Russel's analogy.

p3 is a true premise but does not really support the conclusion, since things like viruses have a direct correlation that can be observed. I've countered this in the virus analogy I made, which essentially points to how religion continuously changed their view of the world and universe to fit the results of scientific theories. The only thing that your p3 points to is that there are things we don't know the reason for in the universe, but when we do they will be proven facts and in the meanwhile, people will slap "God" onto the reasons why without any real correlation between them.

What happens if I say that a teapot is responsible for those unexplained things? You cannot say that a teapot isn't responsible because throughout history there have been things that people didn't know about and therefore, before we know for sure, a teapot can be responsible for everything. This is the logic of your argument. Just replace the teapot with God.

conclusion - all no seeum arguments fail as proof of either existence or non existence of anything. — Rank Amateur

And how is what we don't know in any correlation with God and not a teapot?

Why do you even bother doing philosophy if that's your response to a counter-argument? I recommend that you look at your reasoning with the last thing I wrote in mind.

In order to make a valid hypothesis, you need to collect data that is in actual support of something, not in support of something vague that you can slap "God" onto in order to conclude it to be God. This is why no one has ever been able to prove the existence of God through reasoning because the reasoning is inherently flawed and ignores all methods needed to actually reach a truth as a scientific theory. And even if just a probability is proposed, that probability is as vague as the probability that a cat will pop into existence from non-existence, right before my eyes. The correlation isn't there, i.e causation ≠ correlation and jumping to conclusions. Using personal belief to change the actual conclusion of an argument. — Christoffer

It doesn't matter if your point was misinterpreted since you still talk about existing things not yet proven but do not see the difference with observable properties as basis for a hypothesis that can be tested, verified, falsified and concluded - and a causation ≠ correlation fallacy jumping to conclusions.

You are trying to argue that there are observable consequences in the universe that makes for a foundation to a hypothesis of a God and use the idea that viruses existed before observed and proven. However, as I pointed out, a virus exists with direct observable consequences that can be studied. To apply a hypothesis of God to whatever you like is like having a hypothesis about sickness being caused by saying "Hello" whenever someone walks by with a cow. There's no direct and rational correlation between "God" and something you observe, which leads to jumping to conclusion and a causation ≠ correlation fallacy, which is almost always present in any argument around God.

The analogy is simply like this. People back when viruses were unknown, attached to the idea of God's punishment through sickness. Much like the consequences, causality and unknowns of the universe are attached to God in those God-arguments. But scientists who make an actual hypothesis about what they observe do not jump to conclusions, they do not invent a correlation where they see fit, which is what Russel pointed out to with his critique against such ideas in science, calling them pseudoscience. Scientists and the scientific method, in order to actually explain something observed in nature and the universe, is about looking for actual causation. The ones who discovered viruses looked at how sickness spread and found that there are correlations between interactions between people, how water supplies were handled etc. by carefully going through these actual causations, they could draw actual correlations which informed that there's something invisible to the naked eye that caused these sicknesses. That's when they started observing things people interacted with and found microbes, viruses etc. Because of this observation, this data, they concluded a scientific theory about viruses and bacteria.

But to invent false hypotheses around flawed correlation ideas is what the people before the scientists did with their ideas about God punishing people with sickness. They jumped to conclusions and saw all kinds of correlations which they used to prove after the fact that God was responsible. Like he punished only the poor because they committed more crimes than others. It all cumulated into a long list in support of a conclusion that sickness related to God, not anything else. It's because of this flawed reasoning that the argument for God by looking at certain causations or complexities in nature always ends up fallacious. It's out of both a lack of knowledge into the actual science that exists and a failure of methods to correctly analyze what can be observed.

In order to make a valid hypothesis, you need to collect data that is in actual support of something, not in support of something vague that you can slap "God" onto in order to conclude it to be God. This is why no one has ever been able to prove the existence of God through reasoning because the reasoning is inherently flawed and ignores all methods needed to actually reach a truth as a scientific theory. And even if just a probability is proposed, that probability is as vague as the probability that a cat will pop into existence from non-existence, right before my eyes. The correlation isn't there, i.e causation ≠ correlation and jumping to conclusions. Using personal belief to change the actual conclusion of an argument.

you are missing the point ot the entire argument - read again please - — Rank Amateur

And you should read my whole post before directly answering.

Surprisingly almost none of this is true. Each of those things that did not exist, until they existed began as a thought, an idea, a concept. And without doubt all of those ideas where scoffed, and dismissed. The real start of the scientific method is the idea of something new that becomes the hypothesis. — Rank Amateur

A virus, atom and quark didn't exist until we named them? Really? So people didn't get sick with viruses before they were discovered and named? The atoms and quarks didn't exist before they were discovered, yet chemical reactions throughout history during warfare technology and similar worked, even though they didn't know it was atoms and quarks responsible for those reactions?

You are applying a causation ≠ correlation on the idea that consequences act like things not proven yet and therefore God. Then compare it to specific things that had very observable and specific existences before discovered and named. You don't see how backward this is and a jump to conclusions?

Why can't one believe God is? Is there some fact I should know that says there is no God, and my belief is outside fact? Is there some overwhelming reasoning that says God is not a reasonable concept? And my belief is in conflict with reason? Why do you feel such a need to challenge ideas of others not in conflict with fact or reason? It smacks of fundamentalism. — Rank Amateur

There's nothing to conclude consequences in the universe and world is related at all to any concept of a God. The whole idea is a big fat causation ≠ correlation fallacy and bias towards the belief in God. People didn't believe in viruses or didn't know about them. They got sick, there were many guesses, many of them, supernatural beliefs about why people got sick. But no one thought "there are these things called viruses and just because no one believes in them doesn't mean they don't exist" and later they proved they exist. They didn't know about them at all. Your argument even gets a bit meta, since people back then thought it was God that punished them through sickness.

Which leads to a great analogy to why your argument is so very flawed:

They believed it was a lack of faith or other nonsense ideas and then when they later proved it to be viruses, it proved the religious beliefs wrong. You used an example of when faith blinded people to the reasons why people got sick, later to be proven by science discovering something they hadn't seen before, which overturned and erased all religious explanations for why we get sick with viruses. So it's kind of what you are doing with God right now; seeing causality or whatever you choose as a sign of God and therefore he can be proved, when it's more likely the whole thing is exactly like the virus analogy, that we simply don't have enough data right now to explain everything and when we do, people will abandon a religious explanation since the evidence is indisputable.

The rational idea is that we are the sick with viruses right now, not knowing about viruses and it makes people, like you, to argue wild speculations of faith only because we don't have enough data to prove or observe something yet. This is why I am so strict about scientific methods and why I wrote my argument about irrational belief being unethical because it not only holds back epistemic progress, it can be harmful to people when putting a veil over the eyes looking for answers. Just like how people acted on the belief that sickness was caused by those people's lack of faith.

Russel's teapot is tactic, not argument. Russel desperately wanted a definitive argument that ended with, Therefore there is no God, he couldn't find one. — Rank Amateur

Russel's teapot analogy lead up to the use of falsification in science, one of the most powerful tools we have to reach actual scientific truth in theories. It's been such a foundational concept in scientific methods since then that our world would probably have been a lot different if we didn't have it. So, no, it's not a tactic, it's a tool to reach actual truth or actual rational reasoning. It was also an actual argument, it's called an argument from analogy and it was powerful since it spawned the concept of falsification.

Just like with the viruses, there has to be something observed that we cannot explain, then we need data to identify no link or causality with known properties or things we know about in order to search for data in support of a hypothesis related to the observed specifically. A hypothesis that we then can push through verification and falsification in order to call it a scientific theory and fact.

What you are doing is having no observed actual data in support of a hypothesis with properties that have no real relation to the conclusion and therefore is pure speculation and not even a hypothesis. It's pure faith, a belief. A hypothesis needs some observation or support for it and a causation ≠ correlation fallacy cannot exist within a valid hypothesis. And a hypothesis cannot be used as truth either, which is the biggest problem with any argument for God. They all jump to conclusion and then tries to create a truth around it by proving after the fact. Post hoc.

It just feels desperate, like desperation to prove that the belief is true or valid because of the existentialism of the 20th century which put a lot of hard questions on the rationality of belief. And I'm with existentialism on this, just as they questioned the driving force of believing irrational eugenics beliefs during Nazi Germany I see a clear connection between the dangers of clinging onto beliefs that don't have true support. It's the most fundamental reason we have bad things happening between people in the world. To justify belief without support is unethical and I see no reason to justify it with broken arguments.

Calcuating how many different possible games can be isn't the same thing as there being those games. You calculate how many different possible game there can be by mutiplying n number of possible opening moves by m number of possible second moves, etc. — Terrapin Station

Misread the OP, thought the computer calculated it by playing the moves. But, let's say that it does just this. Wouldn't that count as the games being played and therefore exist? So if they program a computer to play a new game that is always in a slight variance of the last game, but can never be the same game, it would eventually have played all games possible, i.e all games exist.

No. The only ones that exist in some form are the ones that people are currently playing, currently thinking about, or the past ones that are recorded in some manner where the record is still extant.

It must be possible to calculate all of the possible moves, though, since there would be a finite (but ridiculously huge) number of them. — Terrapin Station

But if the computer already calculated it to 10^80, it would have reached that end and therefore these exist, as they have been tested out? Or can they only exist if humans do the calculation?

A stickied list of logical fallacies probably wouldn't help... But maybe if we zoom out a bit, a stickied list of philosophical resources would probably be quite helpful. A link to logical fallacies could well be a part of that. — fdrake

This actually sounds like a better idea! :ok:

I'm often using this as a resource and way of reminding some things that might slip my memory from time to time. Could maybe be part of such a resource material.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/

EDIT: saw that it already was part of it :smile:

On the contrary -- if it were a slippery slope I would be substituting what the proposal is for some other proposal. So something along the lines of "If we post a list of tips, then this is just one step on the road to making them rules, which is surely just a way for the socialists to take over the forum" — Moliere

Sure, was just making a bit of a meta-joke :wink:

I think the misconception about this is that they should be rules, but they are tips. It's not about limiting people's ability to write philosophy, but focusing an argument when focusing is needed.

it's a common sophomoric mistake to dismiss arguments by quickly categorizing them into their respective domains of invalid inference. — Moliere

But can also be used to point out holes in an argument in a very clear and to the point way than incomprehensible counter-arguments that goes on for pages after pages.

The names are better served for self-criticism than as a list of do's and don'ts for others. — Moliere

Tips aren't do's and don'ts, rules are. These things should be tips on how to improve your way of creating arguments and participate in discussions. There are many who don't even seem to know what fallacies and biases are.

I think all it would accomplish would be to endorse the bad use of fallacies. So I voted no. — Moliere

That's a sound counter-point though, hard to know if it's gonna go down that road, but.... isn't that a slippery slope? :wink:

Yeah, it's good to know about those fallacies, but I don't think it's a case for pinning. — jamalrob

I think the general idea that was proposed earlier was to include them in the already pinned guidelines as "General tips on how to improve your writing" or something like that. So no new post pinned and clear point that they are tips and not rules that must be followed. Just like there are guidelines to include an actual argument in the first point, which can't be a rule since sometimes there's a question to be asked and discussed rather than making an argumentative point.

And among the bad posts and obnoxious posters, I suspect that fallacies and biases are far from being the biggest problems. In fact, the identification of fallacies can be part of a bad argumentative style, and a preoccupation with fallacies seems sometimes to indicate an interest in critical thinking at the expense of philosophy.

And there's just something so middlebrow about it, like a preoccupation with "correct" grammar.

So I say no way. — jamalrob

I only see fallacies used in arguments when the other one is actually brutally bad at making a point without totally bonkers reasoning or ad hominems. I don't see fallacies as part of a bad argument, they can be, as any language can be used in a bad way, but they can also be used in a good argument, especially counter-argument. If someone has fallacies and biases within their argument and it's pointed out, then the OP poster might have a very clear understanding of what is wrong with their argument.

This is part of a healthy dialectic in my opinion.

And it's not really about rules that must be followed, but tips for being a better participant in philosophical discussions and dialectics. If I want heated brawls and extreme focus on opinions there are thousands of other forums, FB and Twitter. Having tips on how to improve your argument and participation of discussions I can't see what's wrong with having such tips. It's also good for newcomers who are new to philosophy and get blasted by others for their way of reasoning and they have no idea how to really improve.

Tips aren't rules, they're just tips for those who want them. I never suggested them to be rules we must follow without exception, i.e you get banned if you don't use them, that's not it at all.

Baden mentioned that it's not correct to say valid premises and true arguments. Harry then countered by a quote that says just that, which made him counter himself. That was the point.

True premises and a valid argument guarantee a true conclusion. An argument which is valid and has true premises is said to be sound (adjective) or have the property of soundness (noun).
So in order to be true, your argument need to be valid. — Harry Hindu

Which is in line with what Baden said.

Having a sound logical structure is the bare minimum requirement for an argument — SophistiCat

...and these things are not only a tool in order to spot counter-arguments that doesn't work, but it can also be used to help someone who's interested in a dialectic to improve their own argument. An argument free from fallacies and biases helps the one who wrote the argument to communicate the idea. People treat it as a negative, but as I mentioned earlier, it's not limiting to the argument, it's focusing.

Hahahahaha, didn't see that :rofl:

Maybe just the wikis?

Biases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Fallacies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

We're not going to overwhelm the guidelines with a list of fallacies and their explanations, but we could possibly put a link to a list of fallacies in there. Although that may be a compromise that pleases no-one. — Baden

Sounds good! :ok:

Found these two, which are a nice and clear to some fallacies and biases, maybe these links?

Fallacies
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

Biases
https://yourbias.is/

I happen to agree with Willow. Fallacies are so basic as to be entirely philosophically uninteresting. If one is arguing over fallacies, one has ceased to engage in any interesting discussion at all. — StreetlightX

They're foundational for philosophical arguments. I've seen way too many examples on this forum where arguments go nowhere since people just bash opinions and doesn't listen to the other side.

I'd be against because fallacies are a terrible way of relating to philosophy. At best the only describe some kind of logical error in abstract. It's not helpful to engaging with philosophical claims because doesn't really address them. In the face of a claim regarding what is true or not, fallacies only pick out some element of logical structure of an argument.

Pointing out a fallacy doesn't actually tell us about whether a philosophical claims is worthwhile. People argue poorly (or not at all sometimes), for true claims. If we are thinking about pointing out fallacies, we've lost sight of what we are interested in. We cease to be investigating what is true or which claims are worth accepting, and have insert became obsessed whether someone has said a word we think to be wrong.

The VR of fallacies holds no truths. All we see there are some rules we've grown to like playing in, a game of handing out jellybeans or not, depending on whether someone has said all the right words. Fallacies are for debaters, who are not interested in learning anything.
— TheWillowOfDarkness


We could pin this as an example of what not to do. — Terrapin Station

Yes, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding towards what a fallacy and bias really is. If we are interested in truth, we cannot arrive there if every post reads like personal opinions and facts mixed in with personal values around those facts.

Keeping fallacies and biases in mind while writing is not limiting, it's focusing.

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I believe the idea is that the less pinned, the better. There's only so much real estate, and we want to save it for discussion. Fallacies and biases would be nice and all, but a bit of a luxury that we don't really need. — StreetlightX

Maybe have it in the already pinned post as an addition to what's already pinned there?

My fear would be that pinned rules would not appear as helpful and educational, but they would be viewed as pedantic rules that must be adhered to or face the consequences of being chastised for failing to read and understand the fundamental rules of logic this board apparently is prioritizing. — Hanover

The suggestion wasn't really about "rules", but recommendations or a list to have in mind in order to not drift away too much when writing.

Perception of gender in terms of how we move our bodies, how we process perceptual information, how we perceive others in terms of sexual attraction, is not simple socially constructed. — Joshs

This is straw-manned. Of course not everything around sexuality is a social construct, but how you act on the biological impulses and emotions you have and what is creating those feelings externally is very much a construct. Everything around you, how you navigate the world is based on what you've learned and experienced so far.

If I were to take you in a time machine back to when you were still in the womb and flood your brain with certain sex hormones , your brain physiology would be altered in terms of gendered perceptual-affective processing(such studies have been done on lab animals). — Joshs

Yes, but you are missing the entire point. Did you read the previous posts with the of back and forth arguments? If you did that, it's exactly what I'm talking about. If you have emotions and biological drives that don't comply with the norms of society and that's why you lean towards another gender concept, you try to fit in within that social construct as there are no concepts in our social construction of a person that is balancing in between. People want to fit everyone else into boxes with labels, this is how we process the world around us. If someone doesn't fit in either box with labels "man" and "woman", people will behave like they're from outer space. Read my earlier posts.

I could steer you in more of a masculine or feminine direction. I'm not saying that the definition of masculinity and femininity is fixed, though. It changes throughout human history as a consequence of the interaction between biology and culture, but there is an underlying brain physiology basis that is independent of culture. — Joshs

It changes throughout human history as a consequence of the interaction between biology and culture

You counter-argued your own argument here since it's exactly what social construct is. The culture is the construct and the clash between biology and culture creates our gender identities. I don't know why it's difficult to juggle the two concepts at the same time? Gender identity is a construct as it relates to the perception of the biological gender, which is our biology.

The clash between the perception of our biology and our biological drives is the basic things we have tried to control ever since society was created in human history. And that is culture, which is a construct, we have constructed ideas about men and women, different in different cultures. Put any child with any type of hormonal makeup into a culture and they will grow up within the confines of that construct. It will affect how they act, process the world and process their own emotions. If you remove the construct and have two people: a man and a woman just existing together without any previous culture, they will spot the biological differences they have between them and then start constructing behavior around it. If you have three people as a starting point, one who in our culture would be unsure which gender they belong to, they wouldn't ask those questions in a tabula rasa culture, since there are no constructs to measure against. There would just be three people without any demand to put them in two boxes, they essentially exist in three boxes without labels. As that culture grows, it may be that such a culture then has three labeled boxes for their basic understanding of gender.

Everything around you is a social construct. From the time you wake up to when you go to bed, you navigate through societies construct. Built up through thousands of generations each changing small things about how we should handle our biological drives and impulses.

Think about this every time you have an impulse or a thought of doing something and you don't, why didn't you? Do you think that's biology? No that's how we've reasoned around our biology, that's the construct that programmed you not to act on that impulse; "oh, if I did that, people would think I'm crazy" or "I can't do that, it's stealing" ...or "I can't do that, it's not what a man should do". That is a construct.

Maybe tips on how to improve posts scare those away who just want to express opinions and not do philosophy at all.