Re: Israel Suspends Ties With Vatican

Micha Berger wrote:
sheldonlg <sheldonlg@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Because knowing something and knowing I know it has nothing whatsoever to do with this discussion.

It has everything. Steve is confusing that which I can know with that
which is true, as though they are identical. That confusion then persists
one level up, saying that therefore if he could show that it's impossible
to distinguish between knowledge and mistaken belief then he showed that
(1) it isn't known, and therefore (2) it isn't objectively true.

Our entire concepts of truth, of verification, etc... are different.
There is no way we will ever get anywhere WRT the topic iteself.

Either O Judaism (to take the relevent example, my own flavor thereof)
is true, or it is not. There is no "true for me" in whether G-d gave

We are not talking about O Judaism. We are talking about the ability or lack thereof of proving the existence of God. That is all!

How can I separate the two if I'm arguing that it's the experience of
observing O halakhah that convinces me of the truth of the Torah and
thus its Author?

Notice the word you used - convince. You are confusing that with an absolute proof...

SINCE I DON'T BELIEVE ABSOLUTE PROOF EXISTS, THIS DESCRIPTION HAS NO
RESEMBLENCE TO WHAT I WROTE! How many times do I have to respond to
that same error?

Justification convinces.

"Proven" in the absolute sense never haappens, because I can never prove
that there is no error in a proof. It's an infinite regress. Say I believe
concept A because of justification B. Well, maybe B is flawed. So,
we bring C to justify B, to show it isn't flawed. And then D to justify
C... An infinite regress. All the while, if the mode of thought or mind
are broken, or if a melevalent force is fooling you, B, C, D... would
all be flawed for the same reason.

"Proven" in the colloquial sense means so convinced I'd have to question
my ability to think or to perceive or would have to go paranoid in order
to question my conclusion.

Scientific process only proves in the colloquial sense. Which makes sense,
since that's the only sense in which the word proof refers to something
that actually exists. And science is constantly refining old guesses,
it never is proof against black swans. It's not even the most solid
justification process we have, as there are abstract truths that have
no black swans (word games aside).

Your colloquial usage of "proof" means "convinced". I use proof differently. To me there are absolutes. I can prove absolutely, for example, that I am alive as I satisfy all the conditions that one could set forth for being so classified. There is no gradation there. (OTOH, there are gradations as to NOT being alive). Some things can be so proven absolutely.


...
I don't disagree. There are absolute truths. Some can be proven, some cannot. Is the existence of God one of them? Who really know with absolute certainty? No one!

Justification could be internal, and thus can't be held up to show
others. I gave non-religious instances of that -- mathematical postulates
that are considered true (as opposed to the modern notion of searching for
any consistent algebra). We all know that parallel lines in an intuitive
flat space won't meet. We never saw a physical example of infinite lines;

ONCE AGAIN (for what, the thirty seventh time?) -- THAT IS THE DEFINITION OF PARALLEL LINES. IF THEY MET, THEN THEY WOULDN'T, BY DEFINITION, BE PARALLEL.


In the same post I pointed out that we speak of parallel lines
in positively curved space that do meet. You're mistaken about the
definition. AND playing word games, just toying with the word parallel. If
you prefer, "two lines in a flat space that have the same slope and
aren't identical never meet".

That is not the definition. That is result of proving a theorem about same slope.


BTW, you obviously replied to my post before reading the whole thing,
since you assume up here that I would agree with your definition. And
yet further down you reply to that point.

I don't have the time to read a long post entirely and then go back and itemize. I regard it as a conversation and so respond inline.


we imagined it and assessed the truth of that mental experience. The
whole Gedankenexperiment idea brought the same kind of justification to
science. See <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thought-experiment/>.

I'm arguing that the results of that parallel line experience or a valid

There is no such thing as a "parallel line experience".

Says you. Close your eyes, picture parallel lines. Draw conclusions from
the mental image. Tada! -- parallel line experience.

That's not an experience. That is thinking of a concept.


Gedankenexperiment are objective, even if all the activity is inside
your head. Who you are doesn't change the results -- if you're really
doing the same mental excercise. And for the same reason, one can have
an objective assessment of religion as well.

The only objective assessment I can see is whether it works for any given individual.

So relativity is a faith? It rests heavily on Gedankenexperiments.

I must confess that I don't understand relativity. I could never quite understand how if one travels at the near the speed of light and comes back he will be younger. After all, if he is traveling away from me, aren't I also traveling away from him? So, why am I not younger? Why him? I simply have FAITH that Einstein was much more brilliant than I am and since all those brilliant scientists say it is correct and no one says it isnt', I accept it -- on FAITH.


...
The very fact that [sane and rational] people (not just me) DO leave after having those same experiences that caused you to reach your conclusions means that the result is entirely subjective and so does not constitute PROOF.

Or I can believe my own mind and take it as evidence that you didn't do
it right. (Your own testimony confirms that your family wasn't O as the
term is now generally used. So, there is a second reason for that
belief.) Do you question your own opinion every time someone disagrees?
Is every disagreement two subjective truths -- or do you usually believe
the other guy is simply wrong?

You are "proving" my point. It is your "judgment" to believe your own mind. BTW, did you notice the "not just me"? That was put in there for a reason -- to exclude me from this consideration. There ARE people who are were O as YOU currently define it who simply left. Do you disagree with that? I doubt it. Assuming you agree that there are, then your conclusion is inherently personal and not proof, but only justification.


...
one could possibly know. (E.g. Pi to infinite precision.) And then there

Again, that is the DEFINITION of an irrational number. We CAN state it precisely as the limit of an infinite series.

But you can't know ever digit. BY definition those digit both exist,
but in principle no one could ever know all of them. Not sure why
capitalizing "DEFINITION" changes that point. If it happens to be that
the 4 googleth digit is a 9, that's a truth that no one will ever know

Not true. Given enough computer power and enough time, that digit could readily be known. It is just a question of how much energy you are willing to invest. (googleth?)

(I'm assuming the total universe is insufficient resources to compute it,
if not, pick a different digit.) Andf yet that truth is objective, and
real.

Oops. I answered inline again.


are things that are true that some people can prove (as we generally use
the term) and others can not. And those others need not agree.

A proof PROVES things. There can be no disagreement...

In that hypothetical "absolute proof" sense that doesn't exist, yes.

Actually, the definition of parallel has to do with having the

Uh no. Slope is define with respect to a reference, another line.

Nope. Slope is del x / del y. Derivative. All that stuff.

What do you mean "Nope"? You just said so yourself. What do you think that dy/dx means? it is the change in y WITH RESPECT TO X -- another line, exactly what I just said.

...
Those are not "parallel lines". Latitude is parallel circles, but longitude is, in no way, parallel lines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Euclidean_geometry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curved_space
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_Geometry

Look at something simple:
http://www.mathsisfun.com/definitions/parallel-lines.html


In fact, for most of my life, most austonomers believed that real space
had positive curvature, and what we call a line isn't the Euclidian sort
but the longitude sort.

just use a different postulate, like the sum of the internal angles of
a right triangle equals a straight line.

.....and this has to with anything --- how?

It's another truth you can verify in your head by inspecting an
imaginary triangle. Not a reasoned argument, a synthetic a priori,
a mental experience you accept just as you would a sensory one.

No I can't. There is no way I can take the interior angles of triangle, rearrange them in my head, and demonstrate to myself that it is always a straight angle.

Your reason for neglecting religious truth is your rejection of the
synthetic a priori. I'm arguing that the synthetic a priori is used in
science and math. If you really want to believe that there is no "this
is true" experience, then there is no applied math or science, either.

In science I start with postulates/axioms that are accepted as
true....

You start by finding the postulates and axioms. I'm talking about ways
of gainng postulates and axioms other than through your senses or through
definitions and tautologies.

But Micha, if you take that O is correct as the postulate, then of course you come to God exists. Basically, you have already taken your intended object of proof as an axiom. You can't do that and still argue that it a "proof".


You already skipped over the step in question.

work from there. I don not accept the objective as true and then backtrack to prove the objective. Accepting the religious statement as TRUTH has already predetermined the answer. It cannot come to any other conclusion than that which as already been accepted as truth. It is not a proof. It is totally circular reasoning.

As is believing your own eyes when you make an experimental observation?

I don't get what you are saying here. How is believing what I see circular reasoning? How is it assuming the objective?

Or believing the results of one of Einstein's thought experiments? Or
believing Euclid's postulates?

I take those on FAITH for reasons already stated.


Actually, Steve and I agreed on this point already. You just entered the
discussion after the proof. See above for why it doesn't. You can't
prove that your proof system is flawless. Bootstrapping problem, as we
would say in computer science.

You know Micha, I win this argument because using your version, I think that you are just a figment of my imagination. You really can't prove otherwise.

Actually, I think this argument is pointless because I would have to
teach both of you Kant's arguments against Empiricism, we would have
to go through all of the history of philosophy on the topic since his
Critique of Pure Reason, you would need a detour course into non-Euclidian
geometry. Then we could discuss Schopenhauer's criticism of the proofs of
the parallel postulate, as an example of how to obtain other postulates
without Empiricism. Then a tour through Relativity and the role Einstein
gave the Gedankenexperiment in modern science.

Frankly, I think you have studied too much. You can no longer see the forest for the trees. You are entranced with all those theories when the obvious is right in front of your nose. You cannot base a proof of A if your starting point in that process of proof is that A is true. Being all the theories you want into it and that simple statement won't change.


Then, once we established the reality of synthetic a priori postulates,
then we would have to discuss whether religious experience is a valid
means of triggering such thoughts. And then we would debate reliabilism,
and whether one can go from postulates learned by watching one's own
religious experience to the claims of the religion that describes how
to have that experience. And debate Poppers and the meaning of
scientific process.

In short, it's a college syllabus, not a usenet debate.

See above. I am using Occam's razor as a technique. I look at the simplest explanation. That is "ou cannot base a proof of A if your starting point in that process of proof is that A is true." Ergo, you cannot PROVE the existence of God by ASSUMING that God exists.


...
Personally, I would prefer using the word emunah, from the same root
that gives Hebrew the words for reliable, trust, trustworthiness. They
better connote justified belief rather than belief in general.

I don't speak Hebrew. I'll agree that those English words describe your feeling ....of why you have FAITH.

You're using the word faith both inconsistently and sometimes
idiosyncratically. It's worthless to this conversation in any
capitalization.

I'm arguing that scientific proof is just another form of justification,

....and that is your fundamental error.

Umm... It's definitional. A proof is a justification, a reason to believe
something is true.

YES, but a justification is NOT proof. That is the whole point.

Some justifications are proofs, because all proofs are justifications.

Yes.

And your whole point is a fiction, because you have yet to show why one
kind of justification is more valid than another. Instead you show that
one kind of justification is more sharable than another. Of course if
it's harder to obtain the same postulates there will be more
disagreement. That doesn't make me any less sure.

Postulates? You assume that God exists in order to prove that God exists! That is nonsense "logic".

What you really have is that you assume that God exists and you life experiences reinforce that belief.


Then stop using the word "prove" and we will no longer be arguing. Use justify. We have no argument with that word.

I have been. Or, spoken of "proof in the colloquial sense", since you
showed evidence of thinking "justify" had something to do with actions,
not knowledge. Now you stop using "absolute proof", which is a fiction
for the reason given above.

It is not, so I can't.

--
Shelly
.

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