This is a greedy reduction. The use of the word God isn't determined solely by its attachment to a private sensation; it's rather that when someone senses such a presence, it is attributed to God. Just like the word "tree"'s use isn't determined by "I see this tree" when functioning as a basic belief. — fdrake
If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "God" means - must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?
Now someone tells me that he knows what God is only from his own case! --Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "God". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a God is only by looking at his God. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "God" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.
That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.
You can have "propositional content" in your mind without having any words to mean by it. You can have, as I phrase it, an "attitude toward an idea" (a picture in your mind held to be in a certain relation to the world), which is what a proposition is, without yet having words with which to communicate that to someone else. — Pfhorrest
...if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.
I think that we should believe in religious tolerance. What's your view? — frank
Propositions are not words. Propositions are the things that words mean. — Pfhorrest
To state what a belief is, you have to put it into a sentence with a subject/predicate form. So whether or not beliefs are propositional, you have to say them in so they sound as if they're propositional. — Pneumenon
...any belief can be stated; and if it cannot be stated it is not a belief. — Banno
To state what Mt Everest is, you have to put it into a sentence with a subject/predicate form. — creativesoul
It can be said that there is God. It can be said there is no God. Rainbows and Psyche likewise. And allowing for context, there need be no contradiction.
— unenlightened
So while psychology might have something to say here, philosophy remains irrelevant, or silent. — Banno
Whenever we get into a discussion, this comes up again.
Tedium ensues. — Banno
My conclusion, is that if you have a belief in God, then it requires a good epistemological justification. It's a cop out to think that such a belief doesn't require such a justification. — Sam26
Epistemological justifications require inter-subjective corroboration. The existence of a tree can easily be so corroborated. Can the existence of God? — Janus
Can the existence of beauty, of any value, of oases and mirages, of rainbows, of other minds, of one's own mind? Let's eliminate from the discussion anything that cannot be so corroborated; the discussion will be short indeed. — unenlightened
Perceptions of beauty, belief in values, perceptions of oases, mirages and rainbows, the ideas of one's own and others' minds all obviously exist, — Janus
from Plantinga
...so far as I know, no one has developed and articulated any other reason for supposing that belief in God is not properly basic...
Properly basic beliefs can be given linguistic form, but they cannot be dependent on language use. The difficulty then is to explain how the jump is made from pre-linguistic intuition to linguistic formulation. We can say that the linguistic formulations of what might be considered to be "properly basic beliefs" find their foundations in pre-linguistic "seeing". but that is not the same as to say that the former are rationally justified by the latter. — Janus
So what kind of further existence do beauty, values and God have? Would they exist absent human perceptual experience? Is there anything there which would reliably appear to all percipients as beauty, value or God, as there is in the case of oases, mirages, rainbows and trees, in other words? — Janus
This loosening would permit some properly basic belief to be existentially dependent upon language, while also having no issue accounting for those that are not. — creativesoul
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