faith is not confined to religion. It is to be found in ideologues of all persuasions.
— Janus

Sounds like religion is bad. Like other ideological persuasions are bad.

Still sounds like a contradiction with “faith is neither good nor bad.” — Fire Ologist

How many times do I have to say that I am saying that thinking faith is evidence based knowledge is what is bad? That kind of thinking is what people use as a justification for inflicting their beliefs on others. In case you haven't noticed ideologues, and not just religious ideologues, may be prepared to kill for what they believe in. If they acknowledged to themselves that what they believed was not the Absolute Truth but merely an expression of their own predilections, then they might understand that others need not share their beliefs.

Trust in one's abilities may be blind faith or it may be based on past success, so it is not a good analogy in the latter case at least. We do put our trust in other sometimes, and in life or death situations, someone must lead lest there be chaos. In that situation people do not trust their leader then there will also be the danger that order will break down into chaos, or 'every man for himself"―and that would obviously not be a good strategy for survival.

There's a logically possible world in which water ≠ H₂O. But there is not a metaphysically or physically possible world in which water ≠ H₂O. That water=H₂O is a metaphysical fact, not a logical fact. It should be apparent that once we agree that water=H₂O, we rule out the possibility that water ≠ H₂O. — Banno

The Stanford article from which I stole the image has more on this sort of thing. It takes tome to grasp these ideas, however the result is a consistent picture of nested possibilities and impossibilities. — Banno

Cheers, I will take a look at the article. The question I have right now (which may be resolved after reading the article) is this: if we want to say there is a logically possible world in which water is not H2O, on what other basis could it be said that it would count as being water?

A nice summation. In the context of metaphysics the answer to "what is real?" would seem to be 'what is actual, as opposed to what is imaginary or merely an idea'. But now the question will be 'what is meant by 'actual'?'. Is it what exists, what acts or something else? @Wayfarer is constantly saying that 'what is real' is not equivalent to 'what exists'. The paradigm example is numbers―they are said to be real but not to exist. So the question becomes 'in what sense are they real then?'.

Numbers may be merely ideas, I think of number as real and existent. We don't see actual numbers, but we see number or plurality everywhere. It is not an individual entity or thing, but it exists just as space and time do. For me that solves the supposed conundrum.

The same goes for universals―they are not real or existent in some platonic sense. I prefer the less loaded word 'generalities'―I see generalities in observed regularities, patterns and similarities that also exist, but obviously not as individual entities.

Fundamentalists treat articles of faith as if they were empirical, evidence based facts, and that is where the trouble begins. If, instead, intellectual honesty prevailed and the faithful acknowledged that their faith is for them alone, between them and their God, so to speak, then they would not be arrogant enough to commit heinous acts purportedly in the name of God.
— Janus

Don’t you see how none of what you just said addresses what I asked?

All of what you just said contradicts “faith is neither good nor bad” because that all sounds bad. — Fire Ologist

I've already made it clear that faith is not confined to religion. It is to be found in ideologues of all persuasions. Facts are supported by evidence, faith is not. By 'evidence' I man 'what the unbiased should accept'; that is what being reasonable means. I don't mean 'what the individual finds convincing' because what convinces one individual may not convince another, and that it what should be expected in matters where there is no clear evidence.

We all hold beliefs for which there can be no clear evidence. To do so is not irrational, but those beliefs are nonrational, not in the sense that no thoughts processes are involved, but in the sense that the thoughts are not grounded in evidence.

You say that what I said about faith all sounds bad, but that was not about faith as such, but about faith not being acknowledged as such.

There's a lot in this. An ideology is another example of a belief that is not to be subjected to scrutiny. — Banno

That's right. That is the other key hallmark of faith-based beliefs. If a belief is not based on evidence then it is not open to question (for the believer, obviously), because there is no evidence to be critically examined.

Except for Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot, or any of the other counterexamples to your assertion that it's always religion. — Leontiskos

Right, I wouldn't say it's always religion, but it's always ideology, which includes religion. Ideologies are like religions in that they are faith, not evidence, based.

But if, as we both now agree, faith is neither good nor bad, why is it that everything else you bring up about faith has to do with fathers murdering their children and fools acting without evidence or reason? Or theism? Because that doesn’t sound “neither good nor bad” to me. — Fire Ologist

I'm not presuming to answer for @Banno but I couldn't resist giving my take on this. When faith is taken to be fact, then we have fundamentalism. Fundamentalists treat articles of faith as if they were empirical, evidence based facts, and that is where the trouble begins. If, instead, intellectual honesty prevailed and the faithful acknowledged that their faith is for them alone, between them and their God, so to speak, then they would not be arrogant enough to commit heinous acts purportedly in the name of God.

Imagining impossible worlds is an interesting idea―I have no doubt a physically impossible world could be imagined, but I wonder whether it is possible to imaginable a logically impossible world.

So this

It's the thing we were discussing. If water was not H2O in Aristotle's day would this mean that being H2O is neither essential nor necessary for water or that water itself changes? Or could heat be caloric? might be a similar sort of question (or was it?) — Count Timothy von Icarus

raises a question for me:

Is there a possible world in which water is not H2O? if there is, what would make it count as water in such a world? Presumably since water was not understood to be H2O in Aristotle's time, people of that time could have coherently imagined a possible world where water was a black opaque liquid (because the god's could have made it so, say), but can we coherently imagine such a world if water must be H2O and H2O cannot possibly be a black opaque liquid?

If we said we could imagine it what would make it count as imagining water? Mere stipulation?

What about imagining a world in which there are round squares? We can say 'there is a possible world in which there are round squares", but would that count as imagining such a world? Would it count as coherently imagining such a world?

Deflective bullshit Leon. Your level of intellectual honesty is atrocious.

Yep. And there is the additional problem of their never quite explaining what an essence is, at least not in a way that is anywhere near as clear as "A property had by a thing in every possible world in which it exists". — Banno

I've long thought that possible world semantics is simply an exploration of what we can coherently imagine. That said, I haven't looked into it much. In light of my perhaps limited understanding of it I would reframe your formulation―" A property had by a thing that we cannot imagine it existing without".

.....hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom, and beneficence of the Creator; and lastly, to make the several parts of the creation, so far as in us lies, subservient to the ends they were designed for, God's glory, and the sustentation and comfort of ourselves and fellow-creatures.
— "
The secularist will not do any of that. But won't miss it. — Ludwig V

The secularist may do the same thing with a different object of worship, though.

"Hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom and beneficence of Nature; and lastly, to make the several parts of the creation, so far as in us lies, appropriate to the ends they were designed for, Nature's glory, and the sustention and comfort of ourselves and fellow-creatures".

Cheers, it seems we agree― I don't have anything further to add.

All well and good, except the world possibly contains things that make no sense, in which case the reduction to an intelligible world is irrational, or, the intelligible world of sensible things for some members of it, is not the experience of others, in which case the reduction to an intelligible world is merely contingent. — Mww

Right, it's not as though we can claim that the world is absolutely intelligible―to claim that would be to claim that we know everything there is to know about the world. We could never reasonably claim that, given that we could never know that we had got it all.

As to others interpreting things differently, I think that is understandable given that the world of things is more complex than we can imagine, offering an almost infinite variety of things to be noticed and understood. In other words there are many ways to make sense of things, and to make sense of things is to make them intelligible.

I don't buy the idea that that is an arbitrary process entirely governed by the mind― it seems far more reasonable to think that the things constrain our ways of making sense of them as much as the nature of our brains does, and that we are blind to both of these constraining influences. This is what I have referred to as the pre-cognitive conditions that govern our cognitive sense-making.

And when you consider the fact that, for us anyway, there is but one world of things….period, and there is only one single method available for making sense of it….period, it seems pretty bold to say the one is intelligible when it’s exactly the same method in play by which things make sense on the one hand, and, conceives the reduction of the manifold of sensible things to a descriptive world, on the other. — Mww

Where do you get the idea that there is only one single method available for making sese of the one world of things? I'm not even sure what that means, but if you can say that there is but one world of things it would seem that you have made sense of it. As to there being but one single method available for making sense of things, I don't think that is supportable. I mean, what is this purported method?

Also, if I understand what you are saying correctly, you seem to be conflating method with world.

But, hey, just between you ‘n’ me ‘n’ the fence post, the internal subjective, empirical content of consciousness can’t be extracted, which makes the conceived reduction to an intelligible world….you know….tautologically superfluous. — Mww

Do you believe there is an internal, subjective, empirical content of consciousness? I don't know what that even means. How could you know about such a thing?

I don't think it's that complicated―it just seems undeniable that we find ourselves in a world which makes sense to us, by and large―not completely, to be sure―we are not omniscient.

Of course something is, independently of our perception of it. But precisely insofar as it is independent of any possible relation to perception or thought, it is beyond all predication - hence, also, not really 'something'! Nothing can truthfully be said of it—not that it is, nor that it is not, for even non-existence is itself a conceptual construction. — Wayfarer

You've contradicted yourself. Non-existence may indeed be merely a conceptual construction, but when it comes to existence, it is the idea of existence which is a conceptual construction, not existence itself. This is where you confuse yourself.

I can’t get behind the notion of an intelligible world, is all. Just seems tautologically superfluous to call the world intelligible, or to call all that out there an intelligible world, when without our intelligence it would be no more than a mere something. — Mww

To say the world is intelligible just is to say that intelligences can make sense of it; which they patently do. Something can be intelligible, even if there are no intelligences to make sense of it, just as something can be visible even if no one sees it.

I am not claiming there are no sound inferences from religious experiences to religious beliefs or metaphysical positions; I'm saying that I can't see how there could be and I'm asking for someone who believes there are to explain how such purportedly sound inferences are supported by something that could count as convincing evidence to the unbiased. I am yet to see such an explanation.

You are not answering the question. If the "signs and milestones" constitute evidence and are not mere handwaving you should be able to explain how they could be counted as evidence.

So I reject this 'belief without evidence' dogma, as that is what it is. For those prepared to pursue these paths, there is plenty of evidence, albeit not of the kind that positivism will acknowledge. — Wayfarer

How could you know that if you haven’t successfully completed the journey yourself? Seems like it must be down to faith. If you want to claim that that faith is supported by evidence then tell us what the evidence consists in.

Some cryptic answers there! Regarding the Berkeley quote, I see no reason why the secularist cannot appreciate the order, the beauty and so on and leave God out of it. So I don't see it as a case of, "the secularist will never miss it" if that means that there is an experience of awe, wonder, beauty or whatever that they don't have, and that they don't miss it because they simply don't know about the possibility of such feelings. On the other hand if you mean that they don't miss it precisely because they have it just as the religionist does, then I agree.

On the latter interpretation then, we are still left with the question as to waht the secularist doesn't have in the life experience as opposed to the religionist (other than the obvious beliefs in God and immortality, and whatever comforts they bring, of course).

What did I miss? — Wayfarer

'Can be read as' does not equate to 'used the term'. I already explained that I am not claiming that Spinoza thought precisely in modern materialist terms, but that his philosophy is not inconsistent with modern materialism.

Materialism in the form I favour is the position that there is nothing beyond the material universe we find ourselves inhabiting and that the mind and body are not separate things. Spinoza said: "The mind is the idea of the body" and he saw mind and the body as one and the same thing conceived in two different ways: under the attribute of thought and under the attribute of extension.

Spinoza equated God with the Universe, the whole of Nature and thought God was the one and only substance, infinite, eternal and self-causing. The same could be said of matter, so his view is consistent with materialism. He denied there was any afterlife, or anything transcendent of the Universe. That is also obviously consistent with materialism.

I'm not responding to you again if you fail to address the actual points I've made or try to dismiss what I say by labelling it as this or that.

Material states in this sense cannot be cognition. A materiel state is given by that it exists (mode of extension), never by how it appears in cognition. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Material states can be extended and/ or they can be cognitive. The body is a material state, or preferably process, and it is cognitive, so...

It's as though you don't read what I've written. :roll:

I never claimed that Spinoza thought in such modern terms, but merely that his philosophy is not inconsistent with that modern conception.

:up:

I am not going to disagree, except to say that we have what seem to be coherent conceptual distinctions between reasons and causes, distinctions which nonetheless may not be based on anything other than our naive intuitions, and which indeed may come apart at the seams under the pressure of analysis.

I don't agree. Spinoza can be read as thinking that material substance has the potential for both the attributes of extension and cogitation. Your "modern reductionist materialist" and "a material with uniform qualities" is a straw man, because no one denies the fact of cogitation or that matter has many attributes and diverse forms., just as Spinoza's God has infinite attributes and modes; they are facts to deny which would be ridiculous. The materialist simply says that matter in certain configuration can feel and think just as matter in certain configurations is measurable.

I think not, but it's far from clear. The traditional distinction is that we're supposed to understand things in the human sciences and explain things in the physical sciences. Where does this kind of experience fall? — J

I have nothing further to add in response to the rest of your post, but I'm wondering when you say that we understand things in the human sciences you mean that we understand human behavior in terms of reasons not causes. If so I agree. But can this also apply to experiences?

Reasons for behavior seem to be understood to be intentional and it's not clear to me that we could understand someone having a mystical experience in terms of them intending to do so unless we think in terms of practices designed to elicit such experiences such as taking certain drugs or practicing meditation.

What the implications and explanations are of the fact that taking drugs and other practices may elicit mystical or religious kinds of experiences is not clear, and I wonder whether it ever can be made definitively clear.

Yet you presume to tell others that you know what they have or haven't read. — Wayfarer

I seem to remember that you said you had not studied Spinoza, and were not familiar with his work. You have never quoted him directly as far as I recall. If my assumption that you haven't read his works is incorrect then I'll own that.

In the Ethics (which I did study as an undergraduate) Spinoza finds lasting happiness in the intellectual love of God, which is the vision of the one infinite Substance (which could equally well be understood as Being) underlying everything and everyone. This is not the love of a subject in the personal sense, but the joyous recognition that all finite things, including our own minds, are expressions of the one infinite reality that is. — Wayfarer

Perhaps Spinoza's substance could be understood as being if being were understood to be natura naturans or nature naturing. In the Ethics Spinoza writes: “By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, i.e., a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence.” Now 'being' in its basic meaning simply refers to existence or the attribute of existing, so you would need to qualify the concept as Spinoza does in that sentence in order to make it fit.

And the other point is that Spinoza's God is not separate from nature or transcendent of it, but is wholly immanent. There is no transcendence for Spinoza, no eternal life for mortals, no afterlife and no personal or caring God. Spinoza was a determinist: he believed free will to be an illusion and even denied that God has free will. If God is being for Spinoza it is infinite, eternal, necessary being, and it is only mortal creatures who experience anything, and the only immortality to be hoped for is to be an idea in the eternal substance.

What you wrote could just as well apply to a materialist (and I believe Spinoza was a materialist). It is not a being underlying everything or everyone in the sense of being separate from or greater than materiality (as I read Spinoza at least), but a being immanent in everything and everyone, and that is an important difference. If we say that 'substance' means to stand under, I think that should be read as referring to the hidden constitution, otherwise transcendence might be evoked since to be what is understood to separately beneath might equally be understood to be separately above, and I don't believe that was Spinoza's intention at all.

It isn't just a matter of world-view, but of ways of life. I mean by that, that it's not just an intellectual matter, but a matter of how to live one's life, day by day. — Ludwig V

What that characterizes the religious life do you think is missing in the secular life?

Nor do I, except that almost universally, when one points out a flaw in their position, the comeback is a denigration of the critic rather than a response to the criticism. — Banno

:100: Yep apart from one or two religionists on these forums that is just what almost always happens.

The other thing I would note about religionists is that their investigatory enterprises are almost always aimed at finding confirmation via authority (since argument seems to be a lost cause) for their beliefs, rather than holding up their beliefs to critical examination The latter attitude is what I see as the admirable disposition in scientific enquiry, and it is the only way to improve the understanding. Dogma equals stagnation.

I think you miss two critically important points in your etymologically based purported potted history of the idea of substance.

First the inquiry into the fundamental constituents of the world began with the Pre-Socratics, and being itself was not the explanation but what they wished to explain since being just means 'existence' or 'to exist', and it was precisely what constituted existence that they were concerned to investigate. None of the Pre-Socratics proposed ousia to be the fundamental substance or nature of existence.

Second substance was never "subject" for Spinoza―for Spinoza God was not an experiencing subject, not transcendent but immanent, and was the nature of nature itself, and you would know that if you had actually read his works. I doubt you have read or understood Aristotle either, but I can't correct you on that since I have not studied his work. i don't presume to comment on what I have not studied in depth.

Regarding the question about "one correct interpretation" of texts; I can't see how that could be supportable. What could it mean to say there is only one correct interpretation if we cannot have any idea what criteria could be used to identify it? That said, I suppose it could be argued that what the author had in mind determined what was written; but then it could be asked as to what 'What the author had in mind" could refer to beyond the actual words that were written.

I mean the author could have been experiencing all sorts of feelings and associations during the process of writing, but it is questionable whether even the author, let alone anyone else, could identify and describe them after the fact.

To leap several steps ahead, I'm exploring whether the meaning of an allegedly mystical experience can be the subject of correct interpretation. — J

If we ask what the explanation of a mystical (or any other kind of) experience are we not asking what caused it, or what were the necessary conditions for its occurrence?

Is the meaning of a mystical experience the same thing as the explanation of it? We could also talk about what are the implications (for ontology perhaps?) of mystical (or any other kinds of) experiences.

Would the latter kind of question not be related to the former. For example if we thought that mystical experiences only occur because God exists would that not be asserted because we also thought that God caused or provided the necessary conditions for mystical experience?

Or we could say that mystical experiences occur on account of DMT or Seratonin in the brain, and the preferred implication there could still include God (with DMT or seratonin as neurophysical "gateways") or it could leave God out and just stick with the psychoactive chemicals as providing both necessary and sufficient conditions for the occurrence of such experiences.

Quite so, but for me, the non-physicist, the reliable evidence is not Einstein's equations but my evaluation of the competence and sincerity of those who understand those equations. A very different kind of evidence, and yet I insist that I'm justified in saying that I know the theory is correct. — J

I haven't attempted to understand the equations, but is not the real test whether what the theory predicts is actually observed? Apparently GPS relies on calculations based on relativity theory for its accuracy
(don't ask me to explain that). But yea, I accept the theory on the basis that it is generally accepted within the physics community as the best understanding we currently have and also that it has real technological applications. Perhaps the Theory of Evolution is a more pertinent case. Apparently Popper at one time claimed it was not falsifiable and hence did not count as a scientific theory. If memory serves he later withdrew the claim.

It's confusing because logic involves univocal predication and substance as a logical category is "the type of thing." — Count Timothy von Icarus

That would be in accordance with Aristotle's understanding of a substance as an individual entity. Spinoza understood substance more in line with the modern way as "what is fundamental". So, for Spinoza God or Nature (which he considered to be synonymous) is fundamental and individual entities are modes of that fundamental reality. If you think about the etymology 'substance' suggests 'what stands under', which interestingly is related to the etymology of 'understanding'.

However, Spinoza's "Nature" is not a scientific principle― it is like 'being' in that all it tells us is that everything is of the same substance. Modern physics searches for what is fundamental, what everything consists of. I don't think it will do to say it is 'being' because that is just an empty idea and tells us nothing about the nature of the fundamental. It would seem to be a question which could never be definitively answered, though, because how could we know we had reached the most fundamental level of reality?

It seems that the most coherent notion of substance, especially in that it accords with modern scientific understanding, is something like 'that which is constitutive'.

For instance, in the Beyond the Pale thread, you said racism was beyond the pale because it was irrational. Yet you hold science up as a paradigm here. But modern science, peer review and all, affirmed racism in many respects into the middle of the 20th century. This position passed the test of consistency and popularity. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Racism was not held on account of the science but on account of sedimented centuries old prejudices, some of them religious. For example when the Christian first settlers came to Australia they justified treating the indigenous folk as less than human on the basis that they were Godless heathen savages.

Has there been any actual scientific evidence that some races are superior to others? I don't think so. What could such evidence even look like? Science is not in the business of providing evidence for qualitative judgements.

You are basically presuming to impugn science for the fact that some people, and probably even some scientists, held unscientific attitudes. They did not hold such attitudes on account of the science but in spite of it.

The question is whether they would have warrant, not us. Would they? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It would depend on whether there was another, better explanation for what they witnessed. Even scientific theories are not proven, and it seems that we have warrant only to believe they are the best we have at the moment, given that they have been superseded in the past.

In any case, I don't think that is the relevant question, because we are here discussing what we have warrant to believe, not what people 2,000 years ago may or may not have had warrant to believe. The question for us is also whether or not we have warrant to believe that they witnessed what it is written that they did.

Then how is it that so many people convert and de-convert, in large part on the basis of argument?

You have a tendency to ignore basic questions like this:

Assuming the events of Exodus happened as recorded, would the Hebrews, who saw the sea split for them, the sky raining blood, a pillar of fire following them every night, water come from a stone, etc. still lack any epistemic warrant for believing God exists?
— Count Timothy von Icarus

Or if someone saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead after four days in the tomb, would they have epistemic warrant for a religious conclusion? — Leontiskos

I didn't answer that because it is irrelevant to us. Given it is plausible that some of the ordinary historical events detailed in the bible did happen, what evidence is there that the extraordinary events purported to have happened did happen?

In other words what evidence do we have today to justify belief that those events really occurred? I think the more plausible explanation for those accounts is the well-known tendency of people to exaggerate and myth-make about their heroes. Also when you consider the bible was not written by eye-witnesses anyway...

Have you ever seen an event so extraordinary as someone rising from the dead, walking on water, healing the blind with a touch or turning water into wine? So why bring such unbelievable events up in the context of today?

No, your statement was just categorically wrong, so I provided a similar statement to mirror yours, hoping to point that out, but you just got mad.

There are thousands of years of theological debate, consisting of hundreds of millions of pages. And then you say "there's just no way to rationally debate it."

I'm just saying maybe rethink your post, which is really not a major event. I'm truly not trying just to piss you off. — Hanover

I'm not at all pissed, just nonplussed by your apparently poor comprehension. You are either cherry-picking or not understanding what I have been writing.

I wouldn't suggest it is bullshit unless they argued that I should accept it. There seems to be no rational way to argue that when it comes to scripture. When it comes to Wittgenstein, we can assess whether what he describes about linguistic practices makes sense according to, is plausible in the light of, our own everyday experience, so that is quite a different matter. — Janus

I have been saying that there seems to be no rational way to argue that revelation should be accepted by any unbiased person as truth, I haven't anywhere said, or implied, that those who do accept it as truth cannot have rational arguments about what it means. And note the "seems"―I haven't encountered such an argument, so the invitation is for you to provide one if you can.

Yes, theology is not philosophy, and I think the best theologians admit that―acknowledge that theology is based on faith―it's just a matter of intellectual honesty in my view.

If all you guys are looking for is a circle jerk I'll gladly dip out.

More empty assertions. I'm looking for an explanation, not unnecessary history lessons or vacuous claims.

There are no books providing argument in support or against Wittgenstein either.

I just thought I'd write a post as bad as yours so you could see how bad it looked when you read it. — Hanover

Totally irrelevant and a classic example of resorting to denigration when no argument can be found.

The Bible frequently records actual historical events. Most of the Old Testament consists of established history and is supported by other ancient sources outside of the Bible. As for the New Testament, Jesus surely had a ministry, so the broad outlines of it describe something factual. — BitconnectCarlos

Sure, perhaps the bible does present good evidence that certain historical events occurred and that Jesus existed and had a ministry. But that says nothing about the existence of God, or eternal reward and punishment, or Christ as son of God and savior of humankind or whether the reports of extraordinary phenomena ―raising from the dead, curing the blind, walking on water, turning water into wine and so on―should be accepted as reliable. If you think they should be accepted as reliable, then please explain why.

If someone has found meaning in John Smith's interpretation of gold plates stumbled upon supposedly in the Adirondack for example, and he has full buy in to all that due to his upbringing, why would I suggest it's bullshit? That i don't get. — Hanover

I wouldn't suggest it is bullshit unless they argued that I should accept it. There seems to be no rational way to argue that when it comes to scripture. When it comes to Wittgenstein, we can assess whether what he describes about linguistic practices makes sense according to, is plausible in the light of, our own everyday experience, so that is quite a different matter.

The point is being missed that testimony about what is perceived is more corroborable than testimony about religious feelings.

That's right―the assumption is that the bible, or some assumedly authoritative interpretation of it, should be accepted as evidence, and yet no one seems to be able to say why. I mean it's fine if I accept it as evidence to support my own faith, on the mere basis that it feels right to me or some such, but in what possible way can it be rationally argued that others should accept it? It is an entirely personal matter, surely.

Some religionists complain about that conclusion, but it is apparent they cannot counter it so they resort to dismissal by labelling and derision. All they would have to do to counter would be to explain just how scripture can be cogent evidence for religious or metaphysical claims, evidence that any unbiased person ought to accept, and that is just what we never find coming from them.

The problem is that authority is not evidence unless it can itself be backed up with evidence. And by evidence I mean anything that an unbiased person would be forced to admit given they can understand it.

Religion in general claims one kind of revelation or another, but there seems to be no way to determine whether purported revelation is telling us something metaphysically real or is just fantasy.

This is what it comes down, religionists cannot say how there could be substantive evidence of their claims. The only conclusion I can see can be drawn from this is that religion is a matter of faith, pure and simple.

In its original sense of textual interpretation, we want to say that there can be better or worse readings, and that some readings can be known to be incorrect, and that some (perhaps quite small) group of readings can be known to be correct. — J

It seems the problem with hermeneutics lies in specifying what criteria there could be for a reading to count as a correct reading. Would it be getting the intentions of the author right? Or something else? If it is the author's intentions, how could we find out? By asking the author? What if the author doesn't know what his intentions were, or what if the author were dead?

Yes, but I thought we agreed that this level of certainty is not what we require for something to count as knowledge. I know the special theory of relativity is correct, though I am not absolutely certain, because I can't do the math. On the JTB model, I think my belief is justified because of how I rate the scientific community which asserts it. I could be wrong. Just about all knowledge claims can be defeated. But I think it does violence to what we mean by "knowing something" to take this as a formal skepticism about non-analytic knowledge statements. — J

What could it mean to say I know the theory of relativity is correct beyond saying that there is reliable evidence that it works?

Here, it might be helpful turn to G.K. Chesterton’s discussion of the “madman." As Chesterton points out, the madman, can always make any observation consistent with his delusions “If [the] man says… that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny [it]; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours.” — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not clear on the purpose of this. It seems clear that some premises are more plausible than others, and the premise that all others are conspiring against one would count as one of the least plausible imaginable. I've already said that reason consists in conclusions being consistent with premises, and also that premises should be consistent with human experience taken as whole, since that is the condition into which we are inducted in growing up.

Science with its peer review is a microcosm of the human community as a whole. That doesn't mean that there are not people who cling to whacky theories, but it seems reasonable to think that, in general, such people are not being reasonable, if they don't have cogent evidence for their beliefs. It is also doesn't mean that some superstitious hangovers from pre-scientific traditions don't hold sway on the minds of many.

I meant to suggest something similar, when I wrote about the trustworthiness of people's intuitions. Your intuition about the job candidate is private and, in an extreme case, unjustifiable to anyone but yourself. But my choice to trust your intuition can be justified fairly easily -- again, not with any absolute certainty. — J

I think this kind of intuition―your intuition about the job candidate and my intuition about the soundness of your intuition are both based on our accumulations of our prior experience and our expectations based on that. This is kind of like inductive reasoning―or it even is inductive reasoning. As Hume pointed out we have no deductive certainty in those cases, as we don't when it comes to the regularities of nature (although the latter may be far more reliable than humans).

Yes. This takes us to the question of meaning, of interpretation. My sense is that those who are firmly opposed to the idea of religious or mystical experiences believe that no conceivable interpretation of experience that include references to godlike entities could be correct. That, I'm sure we both agree, needs independent argumentation. — J

Well I don't want to say that interpretations of mystical or religious experience cannot be correct, but I would say that there is no way of determining whether or not they are correct. It seems we have three sources of grounding for our beliefs, or if you prefer, the premises upon which we base our (hopefully) consistent reasoning―logic, perceptual observation and reflection on and generalization from experience. The latter is what I would say phenomenology at its best consists in. I see analytic philosophy, philosophy of language as phenomenology in this sense―it consists in reflection on, analysis of and generalization about our uses of language.

Likewise we have no way of determining whether our beliefs about the reliability of others' judgements, or our scientific theories are correct, even though it seems reasonable to think we have a better idea about the veracity of those based on whether the predictions they yield are observed.

The only certainties would seem to be the logical, including mathematics, and the directly observable.

Reason is simply consistent thinking. You start with premises, and then work out what they entail.

This is just a restatement of "reason is nothing but discursive ratio" without addressing any of the problems it entails (mentioned in the post you are responding to). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Those "problems" are, in my opinion, merely imagined on account of looking for something which cannot be found. Reason just is consistent thinking. If we don't think consistently then we will hold beliefs which have no relation to their premises or we will contradict ourselves, thus cancelling out any cogent beliefs at all.

See my response to @J above―I think it answers all your questions. I don't want to waste time repeating myself, but if you think some questions remain then let me know what they are and why you think they remain unanswered.

It seems clear to me that of all our kinds of beliefs those based on religious and mystical experiences are the least grounded, are in fact groundless, and are thus purely matters of faith. I understand that it may be hard for some to admit this―however I don't see this as a bug, but rather a feature. If people generally understood this, there would be no evangelism, no religious indoctrination and no fundamentalism, and I think we would then have a better world.

I have the utmost respect for others' faiths. provided they don't seek to indoctrinate others. I have my own beliefs which are based on pure faith, but I don't want to argue for them because I see that it is pointless given that no intersubjectively determinate corroboration is possible in respect of them.

This is usually where I get (falsely) accused of being a positivist. Dismissal by labelling is so much easier than refutation by argument.

No, I think "absolute certainty" as a synonym for "knowledge" is way too high a bar. I have in mind the same criteria for knowledge we'd use in the ordinary cases. "I know the sun is shining." "Are you absolutely certain?" "Not absolutely. Memory and perception can be false at times. But I'm happy to insist that I know this fact nonetheless." — J

I've always liked to draw a distinction between being able to be absolutely certain and feeling absolutely certain. I think it's possible that people can feel absolutely certain about something they cannot be justified in being absolutely certain about. So, I was referring to feeling absolutely certain in the bit you responded to above. Given the possibility of radical (if not global) skepticism, it can be said that we cannot be 100% justified in being absolutely certain about anything at all.

Right, but how we want to discriminate them and evaluate them is not obvious. The suggestion here seems to draw the line between some ordinary accumulation of experience which is shareable, more or less, with others, versus an esoteric metaphysical/religious insight which isn't produced by any kind of accumulation of experience, but is strictly personal. In short:

Intuitions which are based on accumulated experiences and prior processes of reasoning are different than intuitions about gods or metaphysical ideas.
— Janus

Devotees of various religious traditions and practices would certainly find this odd. The whole point about such ways of life is that they are based on accumulated experiences, both personal and collective. But I won't try to argue for that here. — J

The problem is that my "ordinary accumulations of experience cannot be obvious to anyone else, so I think my intuitions about something like choosing intuitively who to hire as @Tom Storm gave as an example does not seem to offer any cogent justification for my believing his choice was correct unless I had my own accumulated experience that showed a substantial history of his good judgement of character.

I don't understand metaphysical ideas and religious beliefs to themselves be accumulated experiences, even though they may be believed to be supported by experiences, and also to give rise to experiences. So, in other words the belief in the existence of God or that some metaphysical thesis is the true one are not experiences, but may be held on account of experiences, and in turn give rise to experiences.

I'll agree that there are multiple notions of "intuition" and "understanding" that are unhelpfully related but distinct. I was referring to "what is self-evident," which is often attributed to "intuition" because it does not rely on discursive justification, but is rather the starting point for discursive justification (and in some philosophy, also its ending point).

I don't know if I would necessarily identify the self-evident with "what is true by definition." — Count Timothy von Icarus

What is logically self-evident is that, for example, if you say something that contradicts itself, that is made contradictory assertions, then you have not really made an assertion. As I said earlier, it's like saying 'yes' and 'no' at the same time. If you say to me, do you want to go for a coffee, and I say " yes I want to go for a coffee, no I don't want to go for a coffee" how will you know whether I want to go for a coffee? We don't need intuition to see that.

We don't need intuition to know that something cannot be all white and all black all over; nothing we have ever perceived has been like that, and what something like that would look like is unimaginable; it obviously could not look all white or all black or both.

That 2+2=4 is self-evident on account of the meaning of the words and the fact that we can hold up two fingers, and then two more fingers, and see four fingers.

Maybe I should have said "intellectus," but I don't think many people are familiar with that term. — Count Timothy von Icarus

'Intellectus' is a more equivocal term that 'intuition' so I don't think that well help.

True, but this is equally the case for the opposite claim that reason is nothing but discursive ratio/computation. And it faces the problem of being wholly unable to explain the phenomenological aspects of understanding and knowledge (hence eliminitive materialism), nor how "something computes so hard it begins to have first person experiences and understanding." So too for the symbol grounding problem, the Chinese Room, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Reason is simply consistent thinking. You start with premises, and then work out what they entail. Intuitions are not generally based on this kind of reasoning, but are more "gut feelings". I think attempts to explain things like the quality of personal experience are misguided; seeking to do that involves a category error. Our explanations are given in terms of causes and conditions, or personal reasons, and it seems impossible to explain qualities in either of those ways. Think, for example, about trying to explain beauty in terms of causality or personal reasons.

More radical forms of empiricism start from the presupposition that the phenomenological side of cognition is "off limits," but when this has tended to bottom out in either the denial of consciousness (eliminativism) or the denial of truth and almost all forms of knowledge, one might question if empiricism has become self-refuting at this point (or at least proven to be a bad epistemology). At any rate, even empiricists tend to accept that empiricism is not justifiable in the terms of empiricism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's not surprising that empirical reasoning cannot be explained in terms of empirical reasoning, because empirical reasoning is about predicting from observed patterns and regularities as to what will be observed and/ or inferring what must be the case. It relies on the whole accumulated body of practical knowledge and wisdom and science. Why would we need to explain it if it works? Why should we seek to explain it if the desire for an explanation is misguided?