What does "the physical" refer to other than the interpretations of our sensations — Metaphysician Undercover

The sensed?
It's how I know about our neighbor.
Would be a bit rude if I walked over and said "Hi neighbor, you're just my sensations".



red marks conundrum (to some)

I think the fundamental issue in Western culture has been the role of dogmatic authority in religion. The way it has been formulated, you were told either ‘believe and be saved’ - or you were outcaste and damned. — Wayfarer

Hmm well, if someone was about to jump off a tall building, then I'd try to stop them.

Welcome to, @Dexter.

Teaching children is among the most important parts of civilized societies.
(And, recalling how I was at that age, what a rough job.) :D

Important moral stuff to teach... Good question.
Responsibility, that others (not just humans by the way) are much like you (don't harm them), but different also (diversity is excellent), that your own dislike for harm and liking freedom extends equally to others, empathy, sympathy, decency, respect and acceptance, self-ownership, ...
I'm not a school teacher by education, don't know much about the details.

A priest teaches a peasant about God.
Peasant: “If I did not know about God and did not worship, would I go to hell?”
Priest: “No, not if you honestly did not know.”
Peasant: “Then why did you tell me?!” — Samuel Lacrampe

Just FYI, the dialogue is (adapted) from Annie Dillard.



Eskimos weren't/aren't particularly bad as far as I know...? :)

What strikes me about ancient stories is that people thought they could talk to the sun and ask it for help. — frank

Sometimes by means of sacrifice I guess (even human).

We aren't quite born a tabula rasa, and we aren't exactly perfect.
We're subject to a rather tedious list of well-documented cognitive biases, like personification or agent detection, for example, which also is related to apophenia, pareidolia, and patternicity.
Introspection illusions, hysteria, the reiteration effect, autosuggestion, ...
Makes you wonder how much we have actually learned. :)

Need good epistemic standards.

A being whose existence is not contingent on anything, and whose existence is necessary for everything. — Rank Amateur

Well, does "being" (implicitly) include abstracts (in particular), relations, processes, things that are conserved, ...?
Or, conversely, does "being" implicitly exclude anything?
I'm asking because we can reason about necessities, which is what modal logic is about.

(y)

Actually, instead of definitions, maybe just ensure we know what each other are talking about.
I've become wary of always insisting on definitions; it can become a whole unending thing all by itself.

By the way, per earlier (or was it a parallel thread?), I don't think a supposed necessity is the way to go.
Unless you want to get specific, and set out something necessary for our universe specifically perhaps.

My emphasis:

Gods have been with us since the beginning of time. There is no known culture without gods. This phenomenon is not dependent on the word "god", of course. — Mariner

In a very broad sense of the term "gods" perhaps, though I think that could be misleading.

Animism (Wikipedia)
Panpsychism (Wikipedia)
Pirahã (Wikipedia)

mean by god — Mariner

Wouldn't it be, say, Brahma, Ganesha, Yahweh, Quetzalcoatl, Allah, Jesus, Ridhu Bai, ...?
Those are some names used by adherents anyway.
I suppose the "god of the philosophers" might be listed as well, in a sense, though it's more of an intellectual exercise (abstract), not elaborate, no particular scriptures or temples or rituals or worship, and heaven, hell, karma, reincarnations, etc, are more extra additions.

"contradiction, noun, a combination of statements, ideas, or features which are opposed to one another." — Devans99

Or more formally put, for a proposition p, p ∨ ¬p is a contradiction.

A completely full hotel that can except infinity accept infinitely many new guests is definitely contradictory. — Devans99

If we're talking an ordinary full hotel, yes, which isn't the case here, hence the counter-intuitive nature of ∞.

(Some basic mathematics required.) — jorndoe

Appeal to ignorance is fine, while keeping in mind that not just anything goes.
People have vivid imaginations and can, and have, come up with a lot of ignorance.

In real life, childrens' heads are filled up with that, and that has real life consequences, both for them and for others.
I don't recall having heard of any pujaris priests imams etc ending their sessions with "oh, by the way, we don't know", though that would seem the moral thing to do.
Some folk are out to learn more about whatever is indeed the case, which involves a conscious effort to minimize all the known tedious shortcomings.

So, yes, it matters.

Here are two of the typical arguments against an infinite past, and why they don't hold up. (Some basic mathematics required.)

Last Thursdayism

• Assumption (towards reductio ad absurdum): infinite temporal past
• Let's enumerate past days up to and including last Wednesday as: {..., t, ..., -1, 0}
  That is, there exists a bijection among those past days (including Wednesday) and the non-positive integers
• Now come Thursday
• Observation: {..., t, ..., -1, 0} cannot accommodate Thursday
• Let's re-enumerate the same past days but including Thursday as: {..., t, ..., -1, 0}
  That is, there exists a bijection among those past days (including Thursday) and the non-positive integers
• Observation: {..., t, ..., -1, 0} can accommodate Thursday
• The two observations are contradictory
• {..., t, ..., -1, 0} both cannot and can accommodate Thursday
• Conclusion: the assumption is wrong, an infinite past is impossible

This argument could equally be applied to infinite causal chains, and nicely lends support to the Omphalos hypothesis (hence why I named it Last Thursdayism). Another thing to notice about the infinite set of integers: any two numbers are separated by a number. And this number is also a member of the integers. That is, the integers are closed under subtraction and addition. For the analogy with enumerating past days, this means any two events are separated by a number of days. Not infinite, but a particular number of (possibly fractional) days. That's any two events. To some folk this is counter-intuitive, but, anyway, there you have it.

The first observation is incorrect. Whether or not the set can accommodate Thursday (one more day), is not dependent on one specific bijection (the first selected), rather it is dependent on the existence of some (any such) bijection. A bijection also exists among {..., t, ..., -1, 0} and {..., t, ..., -1, 0, 1}, and the integers, for that matter.

Therefore, the argument is not valid.

The unnumbered now

1. if the universe was temporally infinite, then there was no 1^st moment
2. if there was no 1st moment (but just some moment), then there was no 2^nd moment
3. if there was no 2nd moment (but just some other moment), then there was no 3^rd moment
4. ... and so on and so forth ...
5. if there was no 2^nd last moment, then there would be no now
6. since now exists, we started out wrong, i.e. the universe is not temporally infinite

The argument shows that, on an infinite temporal past, the now doesn't have a definite, specific number, as per 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, ..., now. Yet, we already knew this in case of an infinite temporal past, so, by implicitly assuming otherwise, the argument can be charged with petitio principii.

Additionally, note that 1,2,3 refer to non-indexical "absolute" moments (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd), but 5 is indexical and contextual (2^nd last, now), which is masked by 4. We already know from elsewhere (originating in linguistics) that such reasoning is problematic.

That is, 6 is a non sequitur, and could be expressed more accurately as:

5. if there was no 2^nd last moment with an absolute number, then there would be no now with an absolute number
6. since now exists, we started out wrong, i.e. any now does not have an absolute number


Hilbert's Hotel and Shandy's Diary, for example, are peripherally related, known veridical paradoxes, and do not imply a contradiction, but they do show some counter-intuitive implications of infinites.

However, completing an infinite process is not a matter of starting at a particular time that just happens to be infinitely far to the past and then stopping in the present. It’s to have always been doing something and then stopping. This point is illustrated by a possibly apocryphal story attributed to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Imagine meeting a woman in the street who says, “Five, one, four, one, dot, three! Finally finished!” When we ask what is finished, she tells us that she just finished counting down the infinite digits of pi backward. When we ask when she started, she tells us that she never started, she has always been doing it. The point of the story seems to be that impossibility of completing such an infinite process is an illusion created by our insistence that every process has a beginning. — James Harrington

• Time: A Philosophical Introduction

There is no logical or conceptual barrier to the notion of infinite past time.
In a lecture Wittgenstein told how he overheard a man saying '...5, 1, 4, 1, 3, finished'. He asked what the man had been doing.
'Reciting the digits of Pi backward' was the reply. 'When did you start?' Puzzled look. 'How could I start. That would mean beginning with the last digit, and there is no such digit. I never started. I've been counting down from all eternity'.
Strange, but not logically impossible. — Craig Skinner

• Pathways to Philosophy - Ask a Philosopher: Questions and Answers 47 (2^nd series), question 94

∞ does not derive a contradiction, rather, to learn more about our world, we'll have to go by evidence and try to piece things together.


_{Whitrow and Popper on the impossibility of an infinite past by William Lane Craig
Georg Cantor (1845-1918): The man who tamed infinity by Eric Schechter}

Hm.

start challenging atheism then — Jake

What is there to challenging atheism other than promoting theism?
Theism is the name of this game, exemplified by Vishnu Yahweh Allah Vedas Bible Quran etc, yes?

("promoting" may not be the right word here, Englitch is my 2^nd language)

, I'm going by the formal definitions. The formalities are in that other thread. Starts with ordinary logic (consistency), then extends with necessary and possible, and so on.
Say, in general, all that's necessary is consistency. Not sentience, for example. Which may rule out deities, depending on what those deities are supposed to be.
(I think Meillassoux argued similarly about contingency and necessity, except that was on a different angle altogether.)
Anyway, you can't necessitate deities into existence by such definitions; those definitions has then already implicitly defined your deities as something else.

, it's really not so much about a/theism as it's about general necessity.

I'll hypothesize that the only general necessity is consistency.
As shown, not sentience, green, soccer games, coffee ☕, etc.
But maybe that's not so surprising, since that's where we started out, modal logic being an extension of ordinary logic.

So, if you go ahead and define something as necessary in general, then that something may turn out to simply be consistency.
Kind of anti-climaxic if we were looking for something special.

As I will say it is reasonable to believe in a non contingent or necessary being is. — Rank Amateur

Old post: The Bare Necessities

1. anything necessary in general holds for all possible worlds
2. possible worlds are consistent, non-contradictory
3. a really simple world without sentience, green, soccer games, even coffee ☕, does not derive a contradiction and is therefore possible
4. anything necessary would also have to hold for such simple worlds
5. sentience, green, soccer games, even coffee ☕, etc, are not necessary
6. if your deity is defined as sentient, then your deity is not necessary
7. if your deity is defined as necessary, then your deity is not sentient

Swinburne concurs:

All explanation, consists in trying to find something simple and ultimate on which everything else depends. And I think that by rational inference what we can get to that’s simple and ultimate is God. But it’s not logically necessary that there should be a God. The supposition ‘there is no God’ contains no contradiction. — Richard Swinburne (2009)

The latter, 7, would be a rather impoverished definition if you ask me.
(Besides, if we have to resort to defining, then that in itself is suspect, not dismissible as such, but suspect. After all, we don't define things into existence, which is known as word magic.)

Just FYI, I'm unhappy about the coffee ☕ thing above. Not sure what to do about it. Can we make coffee ☕ necessary?

Indeed, Everything is a Goat (Bill Capra, Philosophy Now, 2009).

Furthermore, Nigeria police hold 'robber' goat (BBC, Jan 2009), and then there's Rick.

Compelling. Undeniable. (y)

There must be a referent of the word (even if it is a fictional referent). — Mariner

Or multiple referents?
It's not like there's anything in particular to show.

[...] they can say nothing at all definitively about anyone's salvation because you can not know the heart of another or the mind of God — Rank Amateur

That's what adherents of the elaborate religions do. And act on.
You can't have missed the trees in the forests.

[...] the Catholic teaching on salvation. — Rank Amateur

Some old scribbleries for your target practice, toasts and other fun.

Just FYI, your theology is bad, that is not a Catholic belief. — Rank Amateur

Right, I seem to recall the current Pope has declared a less stringent admission to heaven. :)
That said, there are people on this forum that has declared the above, thoughtful people if you will.

I'm wondering, though, why wouldn't Catholics (and Hindus) make such declarations...?
There's no arbiter around to set the record straight, they can only go by some scripture reading.
Surely it's not a matter of some personal moral sentiments or preferences?

Why should Catholics declaring that Muslims go to hell be taken more seriously than Hindus saying you'll be reincarnated? They shouldn't.
This stuff isn't epistemic, it's highly elaborate superstitious faith. Fabulation and creative story-telling upheld as if literal truth, which is why others keep pointing out the lack of justification.
Holding such faith is fine, declaring it the be-all-end-all truth applicable to all less so. It's too bad that the doctrinators aren't listening.



Might be worth mentioning that a majority of non-theists out there are ex-theists.

If I genuinely and honestly thought that some population group were bound for hell due to their (non/dis)belief, then I'd be rather busy trying to tell them that and how I'd arrived at that.
Analogous to how I'd try talking someone out of jumping off a tall building.

Right, , we could probably come up with a couple *isms just for this thread. :D
Yep, babies are implicit atheists by this colorful diagram:



They never heard of Amun-Ra Vishnu Yahweh Allah etc.
I suppose that's the unpolluted default.

, you know, theism is the name of this game.
If theists didn't promote and obsess about Amun-Ra Zeus Vishnu Yahweh Asherah Allah Vedas Bible Quran etc, then there wouldn't be much to talk about here.
Leave it to theists to come up with all kinds of diversions (occasionally to avoid the onus probandi). :)

But, if we're talking belief disbelief doubt absence thereof etc, then we could perhaps come up with more general classifications.
This need not be about theism, but more about whatever attitudes (and absence thereof) towards propositions claims statements postulates etc.

, right, yes, the Euthyphro has been used to question the existence Gs as defined.
Going by definitions only is already suspect in itself, and the Euthyphro is applicable to some such definitions.
If a definition along with the Euthyphro leads to something incoherent, then G does not exist as defined.
No problem if G isn't real. Hm maybe there should have been an explicit voting option for that, no matter, just use the 3^rd.

Here's one angle in brief:

"Torquemada" — moral agency and in/consistency
"Nuremberg" — responsibility and in/action

Referral to "Sin" (as per some Biblical reading) does not make homosexuality moral immoral amoral.
Persecuting and stoning a homosexual, referring to "Sin" (as per some Biblical reading), remain their acts.

Obeisance to Biblical readings alone does not exemplify moral agency.
Acting on them does not circumvent liability.

Elsewhere, @Marcus de Brun asked: Should Religious Posts be banned from the forum?

There are way too many full-time professional religious apologists making lots of $s trying to talk their respective deities into existence, catering to adherents' confirmation biases.
Heck, they've been at it for centuries on end.
What better place to show them the door than the Philosophy of Religion sub-forum? ;)

We can easily jugde the nazis at Nuremberg or the Spanish Inquisition as their World, their World view and their moral views differ so much from ours. It's an easy thing for us to do. Far more difficult is to judge things from our time and challenge the views the majority or the intellectual elite view as our moral responsibility today. — ssu

Right.
And history is a great teacher, has real life examples and everything. :)
Some things we'd like to repeat should the occasion arise, others not so much.

started out claiming that referring to the sayings of Jesus or Moses was illegitimate — unenlightened

Nah.
Rather that such textual passages do not define (or install) moral agency, but of course may (or may not) exemplify morals like other stories.
Nothing specific to the Bible or Jesus or Moses, though.

the OP focus on religion — ssu

That wasn't quite the intention, not exclusively anyway, though admittedly the example conversation I had elsewhere was about religion.

@unenlightened, in our two stories, the judge and the father act inconsistently if their actions at work go against morals and they're aware of that, cf this snippet above:

are likely inconsistent (or, less likely, pathological) — jorndoe

Justice system are supposed to be moral. Morals aren't derived from justice systems.
(Which can sometimes lead to a conflict between the letter and spirit of the law.)

Admittedly, in general, morals aren't all trivial, or even necessarily decidable.


Related:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. — often attributed to Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. — John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. — Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)

Adolf Eichmann's Final Plea: "In His Own Words" (Remember.org article)

Ambrose Bierce satirically wrote:


Elsewhere written:

@unenlightened, well, not exactly. :)

So, the judge comes home after a tedious day of case laws, paperwork, etc, only to find disarray.
Their law-studying daughter and her girlfriend had bullied their uncle due to his baldness, whom, in turn, had called two ruffians to threaten his nieces.

The judge easily judges both the bullying and threats bad, who wouldn't?
And, by the way, nothing wrong with homosexuality regardless of statutes, constitutions, appeal to models of biological evolution, etc, yes?

The judge has made moral evaluations, like moral agents/actors do, not by referral, not by reciting a book, not by giving up moral agency.
If the judge had done no such thing due to a decision that statutes, conventions, laws, etc were the definition of morals, or some similar referral, then they'd apparently become less human, or, more likely, inconsistent.

Anyway, busy day at the judge's house.

Here's an excerpt of an actual conversation I had a little while back elsewhere (names replaced):

• Opening: How can you be against homosexuality and say Jesus loves you?
  ... Sub-dialogue:
• Someone: Because homosexuality is a sin.
• jorndoe: Someone, if you've surrendered morals to scriptures (and an invisible arbiter you can't ask), then you've surrendered moral agency, which does not bestow a whole lot of confidence in you. Should we be concerned...? Scared...? :o
• Someone: jorndoe we don't follow morals
• Someone: jorndoe morals are weak. As demonstrated above
• jorndoe: What church are you in, Someone?
• Someone: jorndoe that doesn't matter, my beliefs are my own
• jorndoe: Okie, Someone. It's just that you wrote "we", so I thought knowing what church might be interesting/informative.
• Someone: jorndoe we as Christians. Sounds like a demonizing tactic to me

To me, this is a kind of moral bankruptcy.

But the opening post wasn't really intended to be about religions only.

@khaled, the three bullets were actually intended to be different expressions of the same thing.
An example for one is likely to cover the others, at least somewhat, though my wording could suggest otherwise.
I can try to come up with some more examples; apologies for the silence on my part until then.

I didn't know this had a name — StreetlightX

Sorry, I concocted that. Seemed an appropriate name for the topic.

The is/ought gap of old also came to mind while I typed this stuff up (plus the illustration) a month or so back. Maybe I should just have posted the whole thing, though it's still being reworded.

, I just meant that reason, "the just and good" still refer back to moral agency/actors, so I find it hard to separate them. But, yep, gave a good analytic response.

we rarely hear God people say "God made me do it" — Πετροκότσυφας

Indeed, although the most common argument from morality more or less does.
Furthermore, most such religious folk are already moral agents, regardless of their religious faith, which renders references to extra-self objective (or mind-independent) morals incoherent (inconsistent).

Is referral to Reason, the Just, The Good or whatever still referral? — Πετροκότσυφας

Superior orders, a book, things snatched out of thin air, ...

• Refusal to take responsibility for one's own actions is a kind of moral cowardice (shirking).
• Someone not owning their morals shouldn't expect to be regarded an autonomous, morally authentic human being, which could justify distrust in their actions (or even constraining their actions somewhat).

Presumably adults (including moral actors) can reason or we're faced with troubles. :) (But this may be a side-avenue.) "The just" and "the good" are typically abstractions that are parts of moral agency and decency for people to be so, surely not discoveries made with telescopes or microscopes. Referral is giving up moral evaluation.

You have your framework, I have mine. — Ram

Yours is susceptible to The Torquemada problem, which is not a good thing. :sad:

Thanks, , point taken.
(And, as usual with these elaborate religions, there are disagreements.)

Right.
If knowledge acquisition is to be deductive, then we run into the diallelus (links below).
Knowledge acquisition in general isn't purely deductive, however, which means we'll need good standards of justification, perhaps something like evidence and reason together (starting out in that order).

Regress argument (Wikipedia)
The Problem of the Criterion (IEP)

It hinges on the meaning of 'to exist'. As I said, it sounds a pedantic quibble, but it is a philosophy forum, and this is a basic question of ontology and metaphysics. — Wayfarer

Or it hinges on what this "God" you folk talk about is supposed to be?

It's not just about half a dozen or so quotes about obscure abstracts, but also about what people actually believe, and their actions.
Championing such obscure abstracts, and hijacking the terminology for the occasion, isn't particularly representative.
Also ask ministers, pundits, imams and pagans what their "God" is supposed to be, and their ($fulltime) apologists how they justify.

Seems the word "God" is up for grabs, maybe we all ought come up with something of our own. :)