Should Christians Fear Evidentialism?

by dunsscot 54 Replies latest jw friends

dunsscot

Lewis: To believe that God--at least this God--exists is to believe that you as a person now stand in the presence of God as a Person . . . You are no longer faced with an argument which demands your assent, but with a Person who demands your confidence":
Six: I know these aren't your words Dens, but I am curious as to what this hack Lewis is talking about. Which God, and in what way does this Person demand the believers confidence? Also, on a more personal note, if you believe this Person demands your confidence, what do you suppose this Persons' motivation is?:
In a broad sense, Lewis is undoubtedly referring to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. More narrowly, he is probably speaking of the triune God, which includes the "eternal" second Person of the Trinity. I take issue with Lewis here, but we share a common ground in that we believe the God of the patriarchs is Summus Deus.
Lewis contends that the Creator God of the patriarchs demands our confidence in the same way that a husband or wife demands our confidence and exclusive devotion. If a marital relationship is going to succeed, there must be a very high level of confidence that is shared between the two human parties. Similarly, it is imperative that the creature who worships YHWH manifest confidence in this peerless God, if the relationship is going to function smoothly.
Lastly, I think God's motivation for "demanding confidence" is multifaceted. But I am sure that his motivation is benevolent and a product of geunine divine concern and interest in the other. Isa 48:17-18 tells me that God wants his creatures to benefit themselves. They can only act with profit to themselves, the spokesman of YHWH declares, if they heed the commands of God and maintain a vital relationship with El Shaddai.
Duns the Scot
dunsscot

:But with god, you never see him, he never talks to you, he never does anything. There is much scientific evidence for the existence of say, my cat, but there is szilch for god. Why? because he is non-corporeal. And he does not communicate with peoples.:
Your comments show that we all filter "facts" through certain presuppositions. You seem to possess certain positivistic preunderstandings that govern your epistemic starting-point. I have my own preapprehensions through which I apprehend phenomena. Duns thinks we must both admit that we are not neutral adjudicators of what is and is not "real."
But let me just say that the Christian who affirms the notion of a sensus divinitatis thinks that he or she does see God when he/she beholds God's creation (Romans 1:20). I know the designer argument is highly debatable and I think it will never be considered compelling by a universal set of finite agents. I am only trying to show you how the Christian looks at matters. Moreover, science cannot provide irrefutable evidence that your cat exist. It may at the most show that your cat probably obtains.
:SO you see why alot of people don not beleive in god, because if he exists, refuses to show himself.:
According to Scripture, God cannot show himself. Merold Westphal calls our inability to behold the unmediated vision of God, ontological inadequacy. We are dust and God is Wholly Other.
:How can you have an 'intimate' relationship with a person when that person 1) never shows himself 2) never talks to you, and when you talk to him you can never do it to his face, you have to send him something and hope he reads it or hears it, because he never sends you any verification that he has received it 3) in fact, you have never seen this person and noone else has either. You have just been told since you were little that this is a good person.:
While I do not believe that God visibly shows "himself," I think we can infer God's existence from his "effects" (Hebrews 3:4). As Paul Davies notes, I choose to believe that the world with its marvelous order did not just come about by happenstance. It seems reasonable to me that someone created the universe. You are of course free to believe that the cosmos has no need of THAT hypothesis, sire.
Personally, I think that God does participate in divine speech-acts. He communicates with humans on sundry levels. Can I prove that God has communed with me in an illocutionary and perlocutionary sense? No I do not think that I am able to perform that feat. That is why I just share my experiences with others and let them make their own decisions.
Duns the Scot
dunsscot

Duns: Even simple problems like 2 + 2 = 4 are unprovable
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six: btw, why do you keep saying this? Take two of something. Take two more. How many will you have?
Some things really are that simple. Self evident.:
First, please do not confuse the addition of two "numbers" (2 + 2) with the addition of two and two physical items. One activity does not necessarily prove the validity of the other. Your senses could either deceive you or you could make an epistemic mistake when adding two sticks and two sticks. In other words, adding two items and two items works for most everyday activities. But this procedure does not establish the apodictic nature of mathematical problems like 2 + 2 that involve concepts.
What is more, both Saul Kripke and Frank Tipler have shown there are an awful lot of assumptions at play when we work math problems. For example, we might ask what the + sign means in 2 + 2. How do we know it really means "plus"? What if it really designates "quus"? Then 2 + 2 would not = 4.
Tipler picks up on this difficulty and notes that we basically use algorithms to solve math problems, employing what someone taught us as children. Proving the truthfulness of 2 + 2 = 4 ultimately results in circularity or dogma. The + sign seems completely arbitrary. It is a human convention.
As far as "self-evident" truths are concerned, do you mean such truths as 'These truths we hold to be self-evident . . ."?
Duns the Scot
Zep

I think its time the nurse upped your medication duns.
BTW, forget all this existentialism and 2+2 not equalling 4. The big question everyone wants to know is: How do you actually manage to type when your arms are strapped behind your back?
SixofNine

In other words, adding two items and two items works for most everyday activities. But this procedure does not establish the apodictic nature of mathematical problems like 2 + 2 that involve concepts.

for instance?
+=plus where I'm from. What is "quus"? My dictionary has no listing for it.
As far as "self-evident" truths are concerned, do you mean such truths as 'These truths we hold to be self-evident . . ."?
nah, not really. Just meant...you know, apodictic.
dunsscot

Dear six,
:for instance?
+=plus where I'm from. What is "quus"? My dictionary has no listing for it.:
That is the point Tipler makes. + = plus 'where you are from.' You think that + means "plus" because you have been taught that it "means" plus. But the + sign is purely arbitrary. It only possesses the value that a certain community imputes to it. IT does not inherently mean "plus."
As for quus, it is (as far as I know) a generic term that philosophers use like schmedentity. Kripke's point in using "quus" as he discusses Wittgenstein is that a certain skeptic could come along and insist + signifies "plus" and you could not disprove his contention without being arbitrary or dogmatic.
quote:
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As far as "self-evident" truths are concerned, do you mean such truths as 'These truths we hold to be self-evident . . ."?
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six: nah, not really. Just meant...you know, apodictic.
Duns: That is a good one, six. :-) That was like . . . bodacious!
Duns the Scot
SixofNine

Duns,
So you'll know; when you use a word that I'm not familiar with, (so long as I get a sense that you are using it to advance communication) I go to the dictionary and look it up. When you drop a name that I am not familiar with, such as Tipler or Kripke or Wittgenstein, I roll my eyes and form my left hand into a big "O" between my thumb and index finger, making a lewd stroking motion to indicate that I believe you to be engaging once again in conversational masterbation.
That is the point Tipler makes. + = plus 'where you are from.'
hmmm...I always thought of it as universal. Whoa! not so fast. You thought you caught me, but you're wrong! I think that even God wants us to use + to mean plus. In fact, I think She demands it.
But the + sign is purely arbitrary. It only possesses the value that a certain community imputes to it.
I hope my daughter doesn't get ahold of that argument. Btw, isn't that "community" pretty much the whole of mankind?
IT does not inherently mean "plus."
I'm sure that using rigid logic definitions, a case can be made for that statement. Perhaps I'm being arbitrary and dogmatic, but I can't help but believe that to do so would be apodieticly worthless. If you see some value in that argument, please reveal it. I suspect I'm being neither arbitrary or dogmatic, just practical.
Hey look, I wrote a whole post without quusing!
dunsscot

:hmmm...I always thought of it as universal. Whoa! not so fast. You thought you caught me, but you're wrong! I think that even God wants us to use + to mean plus. In fact, I think She demands it.:
That is the problem. We have been taught that + "means" plus for so long, we have come to believe that it is "universal" or God-given. But one cannot prove irrefutably that + = plus. Frank Tipler rightly notes:
"For example, if I ask you, 'What do you get if you multiply 52 times 27?" an 'algorithm' you can use to get the correct answer 1,404 is just the procedure you were taught to use as a child to multiply two numbers together. A problem for which there exist an algorithm to solve it is said to be solvable" (Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, 25).
quote:But the + sign is purely arbitrary. It only possesses the value that a certain community imputes to it.
six :I hope my daughter doesn't get ahold of that argument. Btw, isn't that "community" pretty much the whole of mankind?:
At this point in time, it is most likely is. But such was not the case from the beginning. :-)
quote:IT does not inherently mean "plus."
six: I'm sure that using rigid logic definitions, a case can be made for that statement. Perhaps I'm being arbitrary and dogmatic, but I can't help but believe that to do so would be apodieticly worthless. If you see some value in that argument, please reveal it. I suspect I'm being neither arbitrary or dogmatic, just practical.:
Maybe an illustration from language will help. Linguists say that language is arbitrary. Signifiers point to or mean what a specific language community says a word means. There is evidently no metaphysical reason why we could not use the term "heat" to describe H20 or the word "water" to signify molecules in motion. The terms are putatively arbitrary. I submit that mathematics can be viewed in the same light. Signs such as + or - are arbitrary symbols that allow us to manipulate concepts (numbers) in a supposedly precise and practical fashion. But we need not think these signs essentially "mean" anything.
One web site discusses the problem set out in Kripke's work in some detail. Here is the address for this site.
http://csmaclab-www.cs.uchicago.edu/philosophyProject/chomsky/Kripke1.html
Note what Kripke himself writes:
"First, consider what is true of one person considered in isolation. The most obvious fact is that . . . [a]lmost all of us unhesitatingly produce the answer '125' when asked for the sum of 68 +57, without any thought to the theoretical possibility that a quus-like rule might have been appropriate! And we do so without justification. Of course, if asked why we said '125', most of us will say that we added 8 and 7 to get 15, that we put down 5 and carried 1 and so on. But then, what will we say if asked why we 'carried' as we do? Might our past intention not have been that 'carry' meant quarry; where to 'quarry' is . . . ? The entire point of the sceptical argument is that ultimately we reach a level where we act without any reason in terms of which we can justify our action. We act unhesitatingly but blindly (Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, 87).
Sincerely,
Dan
Duns the Scot
SixofNine

A problem for which there exist an algorithm to solve it is said to be solvable"

The entire point of the sceptical argument is that ultimately we reach a level where we act without any reason in terms of which we can justify our action. We act unhesitatingly but blindly
Please reconcile those two (1 statement + 1 more statement ;-) statements.
I hate to be thick, but what is the point?
But we need not think these signs essentially "mean" anything.
Well sure we do, don't we? It's important for communication. It's important for solving problems. Especially since it works. Now, is there something to be gained/solved by viewing these signs differently? I guess I asked that already; what is the point? Or am I right about the conversational masturbating? Should I add philosophical masturbating to the mix?
larc

Six,
I didn't notice these quotes because don't read Duns any more.
Duns,
In philosophy, there are no alogrithms, only heuristics. For the ordinary mortal, this is also true of something less complicated than philosophy, like chess.

Should Christians Fear Evidentialism?

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