The poverty of your position, as had been repeatedly demonstrated, is that you suppose that wonder, achievement, awe, adoration, love... are somehow incompatible with understanding of the physical world — Banno

:100:

Of course, die-hard materialism of that kind may only be a minority view, but in my experience, many people believe in something like it — Wayfarer

Scientific materialism and/or physicalism is the mainstream orthodoxy of the secular academy — Wayfarer

Materialism (in the sense Banno is clearly using the term) and physicalism are not the same thing.
Materialism is/was the position that everything is matter. Its a view that is, obviously, inconsistent with our contemporary understanding of the world, since there are things which are physical, but not matter (quantum fields, for instance).

Physicalism is the position that everything that exists is physical (not material, in the sense of matter), or stands in some important relation (causation, supervenience, etc.) with the physical. Obviously physicalism is similar to and is a direct philosophical descendent of materialism (and very probably is "the mainstream orthodoxy"), but they are not the same, and it is extremely unlikely you've ever met anyone who is a materialist in this sense.

It boggles the mind that one can have such strong and dogmatic opinions on a given topic without having even bothered to familiarize themselves with the basic terminology. You'd think people would get bored with only ever fighting strawmen, rather than positions anyone actually holds.

The inflaton field is imaginary. — Cornwell1

I'd say you rather missed the point here, the inflaton comment was a joke meant to make the point that, as I said, "Its just a bad idea in general to tether one's religious/theological views to scientific facts, since scientific facts are provisional and subject to change... That's the problem with gods-of-the-gaps: gaps have a tendency to get closed."

After all, its not like identifying an act of divine creation with the (very probably artificial) Big Bang singularity is much better or less ridiculous than identifying it with the inflaton field. Either way, its an all-advised attempt to jam the round peg of theology into the square hole of scientific/physical theory.

So the universe is infinite spatiotemporally. Gods, standing outside of this spacetime, created this infinity. Who else,? — Cornwell1

As on the other thread, this is just a naked appeal to ignorance. From the fact that we don't know how or whether the universe came to be, it doesn't follow that God/gods did it. Maybe its always existed (since an infinite/eternal past remains a viable possibility; past-eternal models remain perfectly consistent with the empirical evidence)). Maybe it did come to be, but through some process or mechanism other than theistic creation. From the fact that we don't know, we don't get to jump to the conclusion that therefore God did it; this is just transparently fallacious reasoning.

We can, faithfully to both science, as seems to be imperative in modern society, and God, say with 100% certainty that there is a god or even more (the latter seems to be the actual case). They are absolutely there. How else can it be? Where did our universe or the laws governing it come from? — Cornwell1

This is just a naked/textbook argument from ignorance. From the fact that we do not presently have a non-theistic explanation for some X, it does not follow that it therefore has a theistic explanation.

And in any case, God is not any sort of an explanation anyways: explanations account for unknowns in terms of knowns, they do not merely substitute one unknown for another unknown.

cosmologists seem to be more or less in agreement that the Big Bang "singularity" is merely an artifact of general relativity breaking down when gravitation becomes significant on the quantum scale: it does not represent anything real or physical. Candidate theories of quantum gravity like loop quantum gravity and string/superstring/M-theory remove this singularity (as well as the gravitational singularity in black holes).

Its just a bad idea in general to tether one's religious/theological views to scientific facts, since scientific facts are provisional and subject to change. Once we extend our scientific picture past the earliest stages of the Big Bang, where will the theist insert god next? The inflaton field? That's the problem with gods-of-the-gaps: gaps have a tendency to get closed.

Knowing requires truth, as you point out, but it also requires justification, so you can attack the claim to know by pointing out the lack of--or rather, the inapplicability of--justification, without attacking the truth of the statements. This is what W is doing. — jamalrob

:up:

If you say God doesn't exist then you make the same judgement as when you say That I don't exist — Cornwell1

I've already pointed out the differences between the two cases. But sure, there are similarities between local atheism wrt some specific god and disbelief in the existence of some individual.

In both cases you ignore a person. — Cornwell1

Well, no, not at all. For one thing, whether there is a person to ignore is precisely what is in question, and for another, in thinking about whether God/gods exist, we are doing the opposite of "ignoring" the matter.

You argument holds good up until the start of the 20th century and the arrival of QM. I resort to the empirical extremis, which greatly weakens my argument, but it's all I've got for now. In the approach & departure to & from 29 Jan, time dilation, grown significant at micro time intervals, perplexes the exact now of beginnings & endings of calendar days. Not only you do not know, authoritatively, the calendar date; no one does. Instead, we must make do with a cloud of probabilities describing our calendar date. — ucarr

Neither relativistic time dilation nor planck-scale uncertainty invalidates our authoritative knowledge of today's date (let alone any of the many other things we know quite authoritatively)- our dating methods are obviously relative to our own reference frame, and the calendar is a social convention and so the date just is whatever we agree that it is.

But the more fundamental point is that knowledge/"authoritative" knowledge, on any acceptable account, doesn't require strict apodeictic/logical certainty, else we could never know matters of empirical or scientific fact, or even of trivial matters of everyday experience... and so doesn't require omniscience, either.

The authoritative, certain knowledge long sought by science has been partially derailed by science itself — ucarr

.Very few people would agree with such a characterization of science or scientific knowledge. Absolute certainty has long been an ideal for religion or philosophy (thanks, Descartes), but science is, quite self-consciously, a fallible and approximate method for knowing and navigating the empirical world.

You imply that a proposition can be analyzed & judged apart from its referent within the empirical world.

You therefore imply that language has existence & meaning independent of the empirical world it describes. — ucarr

I'm certainly not making any such claim or implication. Language can only exist and have meaning in relation to the empirical world and social/linguistic habits of communities of language-users.

The point is merely that this talk of "judging a being" implies that the proper name "God" has a referent, when this is, of course, precisely what atheism denies... and so its a better and more accurate analysis of atheism as the position that neither the proper name "God" nor the common noun "god" has a referent, that there is not any being or entity to which either accurately applies.

I think the word "authoritatively" is doing a lot of work there. The only way this even remotely follows is if we're supposing that one can only know something "authoritatively" if one is omniscient. But that's dubious to say the least. I know its January 29th quite authoritatively, and am most decidedly not omniscient.

Right, you're not. Or, at best, that would be a highly unusual and awkward way of speaking, bordering on self-contradiction. And in any case this is an apples/oranges comparison since, unlike the atheist, you are judging the existence of an individual, and are not judging the existence of the entire class or category (i.e. to which I belong/of which I'm merely one individual instance) let alone an entire ontological/metaphysical category (i.e. deities)... nor is there a considerable intellectual/social tradition consisting in the belief or teaching that I exist.

Obviously you're free to disengage as you like, but I would have liked to hear where the above line of reasoning goes wrong.

We cannot know Moorean/hinge propositions. In order to be known, something must be both true and justified. So, our inability to know hinge propositions could be due to their inability to be true, their inability to be justified, or both. But the idea that they cannot be true doesn't seem to work since, among other things, a proposition which cannot be true is a contradiction. So it seems that our inability to know hinge propositions is because they cannot be justified.

And they cannot be justified because of the foundational role they play in the process of justification. If they form a part of the background against/upon which we justify propositions in general, then they cannot themselves be justified. And if they cannot be justified, they cannot be known... even though they can be true.

They aren't normal propositions, or normal statements, they have a special standing in our language-games — Sam26

On this we agree. But their special standing isn't due to anything intrinsic to the propositions themselves, but rather due to the role they play: hinge propositions form the bedrock upon which our entire process of knowing, evaluating, and justifying is built. But I (and jamalrob) are suggesting it is their inability to be justified, not an inability to true, which distinguishes them from ordinary propositions (and their inability to be justified is directly due to this peculiar role- or "special standing" as you say).

And there isn't anything contradictory about propositions or truths that cannot be justified, whereas the idea of a proposition which cannot be true is contradictory, or at least highly problematic (given the ordinary usage of the word "proposition").

Knowledge entails truth, by definition, so if knowledge entails truth, then Wittgenstein's attack of Moore's use of know is also an attack on the truth of those same propositions. — Sam26

Or on these propositions ability to be justified. Knowledge entails not only truth, but justification, and it is our ability to justify hinge propositions that is lacking... due to the fact that hinge propositions are the background against which our process of justification takes place, and so justifying these propositions would become circular.

I don't think that hinge-propositions are propositions in the normal sense, i.e., they don't have a truth value — Sam26

I hate to be the one to hand-wring over definitions, but I don't think I understand what you mean when you use the word "proposition" (and that is, perhaps, a source of our disagreement here): can you tell me how you define this term?

(At least in much contemporary analytic philosophy, a proposition just is something which can be true or false, and so the notion of a proposition that lacks a truth value would be a contradiction in terms.

And so, as both jamalrob and I have suggested, Moorean/hinge propositions are propositions- they can and do have a truth value- and are distinguished from ordinary propositions not by an inability to have a truth-value, but in their inability to be justified, and that inability to be justified isn't due to anything peculiar to themselves, but rather because of the role they play in our epistemic process)

I'm not sure why that should follow. We judge things best as we can, in light of our limitations. What else could we do?

And in any case, the atheist isn't judging a being (divine or otherwise), but a concept or proposition: the concept of God/proposition that he exists.

And I'm not sure what exactly you mean when you ask whether "such an atheist exemplifies an ideal". Certainly, rational/critical atheism is based on/informed by certain norms/values ("ideals"), especially epistemological ones... but I'm not sure if that's all you're asking.

Sure, I suppose, broadly speaking. But the details are very different, so I'd be hesitant to press the comparison.

Pretty sure the laughing emoticon represents laughing (yikes- nice try though, I guess).

Now seriously, go troll someone else; you've wasted enough of my time already.

So when Hume says "The words "necessary existence" have no meaning" (after arguing extensively to that effect), your interpretation is that he meant they do have meaning. Uh huh. :rofl:

Like I said, not serious. Go waste someone elses time.

:up:

Well said. I find Sam's position here sort of perplexing. The boulder has a weight, regardless of whether we know what it is or not. So one of these two propositions must necessarily be true... again, irrespective of whether we know which it is.

So again, hinge propositions aren't distinguished from other sorts of propositions in virtue of some peculiar inability to be true or false, but because of the pivotal epistemic role they play as the background assumptions against which we evaluate truth or falsity in general (and so therefore cannot themselves be so evaluated, on pain of circularity).

Oh dear. Yes, both of them explicitly repudiated the concept. Hume could hardly have been more specific::

The words, therefore, "necessary existence", have no meaning, or, which is the same thing, none that is consistent. — Hume, DCNR Part 9

(italics mine for emphasis)

I mean honestly, how did you miss this? Did you not even bother reading the cited sections? Or is it that you see no problem in asserting that people said the literal exact opposite of what they actually said?

Either way, its clear you're either unwilling or unable to have a serious conversation on this topic, so I'll spare myself further wasted time by ending this conversation here.

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but I don't see any obvious relation; the problem with God's "necessary existence" isn't that it leads to contradiction (as in Russell's Paradox), its the mistaken idea that one can meaningfully talk about necessary beings, or necessary existence without respect to some antecedent (in virtue of which something is necessary, or exists necessarily).

I suppose it would be like saying something "follows", but doesn't follow from anything, or that something could be "to the left of" without being to the left of anything: you're simply misusing terms, such that they've ceased to be meaningful or intelligible.

Both Kant and Hume are in agreement with what I’ve said: necessity can be asserted about things; the assertion may not be right, but there isn’t a logical problem with making it. — AJJ

They are most explicitly not in agreement with what you're saying: they both explicitly repudiate the concept of necessary existence, which you mistakenly claim is perfectly fine.

And no one said there was a "logical problem" (as in a contradiction, or a fallacious inference) with it; what I, and virtually every philosopher (as opposed to apologists/theologians) to consider the matter going back to Hume, have said is that its a terminological or conceptual error: unconditioned necessary existence, without respect to some condition/antecedent, is an abuse/mis-use of logical terminology and is not a meaningful concept that can be correctly attributed to any entity or object, and God's existence is not a necessary truth.

Temporality and causality... interaction.

Transcendence: you can’t find God as an object in the world.

Immanence: he’s that which gives everything its being.

The concepts are clear. — AJJ

Still just hand-waving. If the concepts are clear, then answer the questions I posed.

Necessary means can’t not exist. If an object such as a pen exists you can make it so it no longer exists, i.e. it isn’t necessary. — AJJ

You keep repeating this, as if this is what is in dispute here. Are you even reading the posts you're attempting to respond to, or are you just being lazy? We know what the word "necessary" means, that's not the problem.

You mentioned temporality in respect to interaction. — AJJ

Right, the point was that the general conceptual tension manifests in various ways. Transcendence/interaction was one. Temporality and causality another.

It wasn’t hand-waving — AJJ

It most certainly was.

Necessary means can’t not exist. It doesn’t follow from something existing that it’s necessary.

I know what it means (and strictly speaking, "necessary" means necessarily true, not necessarily existant). And yes, that's how deduction works: if something is given- for instance, the existence of some X- then, it follows necessarily that that thing exists. Which is the correct and meaningful way we can talk about necessary existence; i.e. based on the condition of something... as opposed to the nonsensical talk of an absolute and unconditioned necessity, i.e. as of God's existence.

Please actually, if you’re willing — AJJ

for Hume, see part 9 of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

for Kant, see chapter III section IV of the Critique of Pure Reason

There's also an abundant literature on this topic within the philosophy of religion. The consensus appears to be, as I've stated here, that the theological notion of God's necessary existence is a category error, a mis-use/understanding of the relevant terms, and not something that is logically sustainable.

Its also worth noting, wrt this point, that all theistic arguments that make use of this purported necessary existence ("ontological arguments") are, without exception, invalid or question-begging... it appears even apologists agree that this is an empty concept, as any other necessary truth can be demonstrated in virtue of its negation entailing a contradiction, not merely assumed/stipulated rather than shown (as must be done with God's "necessary existence").

You didn’t mention any other issues, just the one about interaction. — AJJ

Also the one about temporality. So you ignored one, and hand-waved away the other.

Better luck next time, I guess?

“It is in the nature of a triangle to have 3 sides. Given that a triangle exists, it necessarily has 3 sides.”

“It is in the nature of God to exist. Given that he exists, he exists necessarily.” — AJJ

Lol, exactly. Of course, given some X, it always follows that, necessarily, X exists; nothing peculiar to God there. What is attributed to God, of course, is an absolute and unconditioned necessity. Which is, as I noted, and as countless philosophers going back to Hume have pointed out, simply meaningless- a misuse of terminology. If you want to more substantively contribute on this point, you might want to familiarize yourself with what they had to say on the matter (happy to provide references, if you're genuinely interested).

You didn’t mention any other issues. — AJJ

Yep, I sure did.

Necessity is something you can assert about things. To say something is necessary is just to say it can’t not exist; you might be wrong in making that assertion, but it isn’t nonsense — AJJ

Sure it is. Necessary existence is, by definition, conditioned; given something, something else exists necessarily. Talk of unconditioned or absolute necessary existence is meaningless- you may as well talk about the deductive validity of the color purple.

being that which gives everything its being; in that sense he’s always interacting with everything. — AJJ

Right, and this leads to the sorts of issues I mentioned.

Necessity isn’t nonsensical; it just means can’t not exist. Omnipotence understood as every power that exists - like the power heat has to boil water - coming from God also seems reasonable. — AJJ

I know what it means, the problem is that it doesn't hold up under scrutiny, as Kant and Hume and many others have shown: a conditioned necessary existence makes perfect sense- e.g. given a triangle, three angles exist necessarily- but an absolute/unconditioned necessary existence is non-sense.

So again, on purely logical grounds, its hard to say that classical theism is on firmer ground than theistic personalism; the motivations for many of these aspects of classical theism are theological, not logical.

I have always been convinced that classical theism is more logical, God being both immanent in the world and transcendent beyond it — Dermot Griffin

More logical in what sense? Classical theism has at its core an apparent contradiction or conceptual muddle, between God's transcendence, and God's causal role in creating the world and periodically interacting/intervening within it. What does it mean, for instance, to claim that an entity is timeless and atemporal but nevertheless stands in various causal (and therefore temporal) relations with the world? How does a transcendent entity interact with the world they supposedly transcend? And what to make of traditional, apparently nonsensical, attributes of God like necessary existence or omnipotence?

So at least in terms of logic, it seems theistic personalism has one up on classical theism, and I think the primary arguments for classical theism are theological rather than logical.

Right. And at least traditionally, atheism has been akin to/friendly towards materialism/realism/physicalism, whereas idealism/anti-realism has been aligned with theism, and it is idealism, not materialism, which is always in danger of slipping off into solipsism.

(after all, the core epistemological argument for idealism that calls into question the material/physical world, similarly calls into question the existence of other minds by the very same token)

Its not that I don't know what you're saying; I don't agree. I don't see why we can't distinguish between the claim and the corresponding state of affairs- it seems we're doing so perfectly sensibly right now. And so whatever the weight of my truck, there is a true proposition corresponding to that value- if my truck weighs 2800 lbs, say, then "my truck weighs 2800 lbs" is true irrespective of whether I'm aware of it or not. And I'm not saying that the truth is "independent of the facts"- its certainly dependent on the facts, its only true in virtue of those facts.

And in any case the point is that we cannot evaluate the truth or falsity of hinge propositions not because they cannot be true or false (else they wouldn't be propositions, or the contents of belief), but because of the peculiar role they play in our epistemic process- the fact that they form the hinge or background, the part that is "held firm", around/against which we can evaluate propositions or beliefs. We cannot evaluate their truth or falsity because this involves us in a circularity. In other words, its not anything about their content, but about their role or function in our overall epistemic project.

The proposition that, "My truck has an unknown weight," is true, but that proposition is known to be true, viz., you know that you don't know the weight. This is still a confusion, and it's not an example. You still haven't given a truth that you don't know is true.

Of course its an example. My truck does have a particular weight. So there is some truth corresponding to its weight, whatever it may be. But its a truth I don't know. Just like there is some truth of the form, "the temperature in Paris right now is X", for some value of X... I just don't know what it is.

So the idea of a unknown truth, or of a proposition whose truth we cannot evaluate, doesn't appear contradictory- its almost trivial. But knowledge and justification are a separate matter.

I was in fact looking where you wrote this. Couldn't find it though.I had the same experience.

Yep, exactly! That's why its a problem, and why its dishonest. Many people might not even realize you can manually input a quote into the quote function at all, and so would assume that the person must have said it.

So if people want to paraphrase someone else, by all means... but use quotations, or say "in other words, such-and-such"- only use the quote function to accurately quote things people actually said.

I can't make any sense of the idea that there are propositions that are true, but I don't know if their true, it's contradictory

I guess I fail to see what is contradictory about an unknown truth. My truck has a certain weight. I don't know what it is, but it has one. So there is some truth, i.e. "my truck weighs X lbs/kg", I just don't know it. Similar examples aren't difficult to multiply: I don't know what the temperature is right now in Paris, but there is a temperature (and so a truth corresponding to that). I don't remember Wittgenstein's birth date, but there is some truth RE when he was born. So I don't see what is difficult about that.

But I do agree with you about justification (and therefore, by extension, knowledge). Given their role as hinge propositions, we cannot evaluate or justify these propositions as we can with other propositions, because any process of evaluation or justification proceeds on the assumption or against the background of these propositions (and so this would involve an obvious circularity). And so they cannot be known, because they cannot be justified. But truth and justification -> knowledge are not the same thing; as above, something can be true, without me knowing whether its true, or without my having rational justification/warrant for believing it.

Otoh, the proposal that hinge propositions could be propositional or beliefs without being truth-apt does strike me as contradictory; given the usual definition of propositions, isn't it necessary that they be truth-apt? And similarly for beliefs, at least, if those beliefs are cognitive and meaningful, mustn't the content of the belief be truth-apt?

So again I suggest that hinge propositions are propositional, are truth-apt, and do not have any special epistemic role because of their content, but rather because of their epistemic function and relation to our other beliefs and propositions and entire method for holding beliefs and evaluating propositions.

No, only woo is woo, nor was there anything difficult to understand about your comment.

That's also extremely dishonest to use the quote function to attribute to someone something they never said- reported, btw. If you want to strawman people in this way, at least use quotations rather than the quote function when its something the person didn't ever actually say.

don't think of hinge-propositions as propositions in the normal sense of the word, which is why they're called hinges, basic. or bedrock propositions. They don't fall into the epistemological language we use, at least in terms of JTB. They're not truths, they don't need some kind of justification, at least in the way Moore was referring to them. They're more akin to the rules of chess, as has already been mentioned.

I think Banno has the right of it here. What makes hinge propositions different isn't that they aren't propositional, or cannot be true or factual- its not anything peculiar to their content that marks them out from other sorts of propositions. What makes them hinge propositions is the role they play: the fact that they form the hinge (or bedrock) upon which our other epistemic moves depend.

But by that same token they cannot be subject to evaluation the way other propositions or truths can: they must be held true, in order to play their role. But there presumably still is some fact of the matter regarding whether e.g. here is a hand, or any other hinge proposition or epistemic bedrock or whatever... its just that we cannot simultaneously rely on them as hinge propositions, while also entertaining the possibility that they are false.

Nothing is the absence of delineating qualities. Infinity is the absence of limiting qualities. Even on a semantic level they are not 'very different concepts'.

These are, as I suspected, highly idiosyncratic definitions, and even on your personal non-standard definitions they are different. But in this context, the question is regarding the past duration of the universe, and so your personal stipulations aren't really relevant and the two possible answers are mutually exclusive (either the past temporal duration of the universe was finite, or it was not).

By re-defining the relevant terms, you basically just punted on the question entirely (and instead just posted some squishy pseudo-mystical woo), which makes one wonder why you bothered to post to the thread if you didn't intend to weigh in on the question.