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Assume that the standard empirical scientific is true. Reach a conclusion inconsistent with the assumption, i.e., "there exist supernatural phenomena." Why stop there, OP? From inconsistency you can prove anything. I have just devised a marvelous proof that the real numbers are countable.
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Aug 16, 2015 18:50
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 05:56 |
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blowfish posted:An argument could be made that people who have at some point heard Words on the internet and are insecure about their existence are not able to see the morality of the situation I gotta say, at first I thought the argument was merely inconsistent (which isn't so bad, people often inadvertently introduce contradictions in the course of sufficiently complicated arguments  ) , but the more I read the more  it gets.Effectronica posted:Thank you for making my point. What I said is that the choices are solipsism, creationism-without-God, and the supernatural. I would assume that a functional, knowledgeable human being would realize that the first two are blatantly unreasonable, but I didn't consider the power of hatred and small-mindedness. Hmm, what would you say P("These are the only three options" | "Nobody has found this argument even slightly convincing") equals?
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Aug 16, 2015 21:54
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Effectronica posted:Can you read, or are you blinded by hatred? I'm reminded of an old German with some unspellable name who claimed that hatred was something reserved for those we esteemed. If he's blinded by anything, I doubt it's by hatred. Will you address the probability question I asked above? Do you even know what conditional probability is?
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Aug 16, 2015 22:37
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Effectronica posted:If you want people to treat your insults as sincere arguments, disguise them better, and also don't accidentally imply that truth relies on popularity. A) I disguised nothing, if you're talking about my first line. It wasn't thinly-veiled; hell, if there's a single theme with you, you are not nearly as clever as you think you are. B) I implied nothing. I asked what you thought the probability was that this question can be reduced to a trichotomy given the fact that you are actively hostile to everyone who criticizes said argument. It's a reasonable question! You expressed some slight uncertainty in the OP, possibly insincere. But you explicitly stated that your argument relies on a trichotomy, where you regard two of the options as ludicrous, reducing it to a monochotomy. Is your belief shaken by the fact that you have no adherents? Do you consider that, at best, you are terrible at presenting your arguments? Or, most likely, do you regard yourself as a genius prophet before heathens?
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Aug 16, 2015 22:58
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Originally I felt like Effectronica was just another tedious moralist. Now I welcome him as another jrodefeld.Effectronica posted:80% of Americans believe in angels. By your reasoning, you must convert to Christianity and live a joyless life of deception. But your gleeful nonsense relies on the assumption that I had any belief I would convince people. I didn't and don't, because I am fairly unconvinced of the ability of reasonable argument to assail deeply-held beliefs, such as the aggro-atheism and megamaterialism of many people posting in this thread. "These reasonings do not cohere," per the cheap translation I have of Epictetus. Suppose I approach a question sure that I'm a philosophical genius saying something profound, i.e., Effectronica posted:What I said is that the choices are solipsism, creationism-without-God, and the supernatural. and that, broadly speaking, everyone laughs at you, and that, strictly speaking, nobody accepts this as correct. Does your internal estimate of the probability that you are a philosophical genius (clearly approximately 1) change at all? My reasoning compels me to nothing, it compels you to nothing; it merely asks: is your faith in your own genius at all affected?
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Aug 16, 2015 23:25
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Effectronica posted:Who said I felt I was a genius? Only you. Interesting! Yet you have a clear propensity to assert that people are stupid who make cogent arguments against your own. Your assertions of your own superiority -- well, shall I quote them? You still haven't answered my question, at all. Has your faith (i.e., your probabilistic belief) in your chosen trichotomy decreased at all over the course of this thread?
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Aug 16, 2015 23:41
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GulMadred posted:This is unfair. Philosophy and epistemology are fields of human endeavour with their own specialized terminology. You may find some of the terminology to be confusing, pretentious, poorly-defined, or even vaguely offensive (i.e. where it seems to co-opt scientific words in order to grant itself an undeserved legitimacy). You might consider the whole thing to be a big self-referential circlejerk performed by autists and having no relevance to the outside world, but humans do that kind of poo poo often (example, example). I was a philosophy major, then got a degree in math, pursuing a doctorate. I love the humanities and despise the culture of STEM sneering. As someone with a passing interest in epistemology, it's interesting to thing about that which is provable versus that which is knowable. Buuuuuuuut GulMadred posted:His arguments regarding cognition, perception, knowledge, and experience may be wrong, of course. If so, he has asked you to identify the errors so that he can resolve them. In order to refute his ideas on his own terms, you must be willing to do some reading and familiarize yourself with esoteric Kantian vocabulary. If you don't want to do that, then just sit on the sidelines and laugh at the freak (or vote 1 and move on ... whichever floats your boat). Given that he specifically declared a logical implication in his title, he ought to be quick to try to carefully and rigorously define his terms. He didn't say "why evolution possibly suggests the supernatural." And I see no evidence that he meant it in that sense, either. Again, there's his chosen trichotomy. GulMadred posted:His empirical claims about natural phenomena (e.g. plate tectonics, neuronal impulses) or math/stats may contain inaccuracies, but it isn't really productive to harp on them. At best, he'll just choose a different example (or insist that the details aren't relevant to the core epistemological argument). At worst, you'll antagonize him and then we get pages of back-and-forth insults. With regard to probability, there is a well-known saying: "all models are wrong, but some are useful." He has taken the spectacular and deliberate wrongness of his model and projected it outwards, consequently declaring the need for the supernatural. He has never even stopped to consider his model both wrong and useless. Again, I can't stand STEM sneering at humanities or philosophy (because why would life be worth living without them?). But this is a bad hill to defend. Tacky-Ass Rococco fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 00:12
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