My epistemological system
Offline Last thursday we had a discussion in my Atheist and Agnostic soceity where one of the atheists was defending christanity(if you want to know the specfics i'll make another thread about the whole discussion just tell me).
First i probably should define what i mean by epistemological system. What we meant was what we would allow to personally to be allowed to be "knowledge" in this system. I was given a scale from being sceptical of everything even our existence, meaning thinking we don't even exist to letting everything into our epistemological system. I am extreamly close to the sceptical end, almost to the point that i am an example of the extreame on that end. I think for the sakes of being able to talk to people and so that i can think i know things i accept that i exist, but am still sceptical if i really do.
One thing he brought up was people who think there is no way that something could be supernatural or that evidence could be provided for it. I am an exmple of a person with this type of epistemological system. I do not think anyone can provide me with evidence for supernatural occurances. We were told this epistemological system is to closed off and to sceptical. Does anyone concur with my stance and/or the other persons stance? Is there something fundlementally wrong with my epistemological system .
Sorry if this is nonsensical i'll try to clearify if need be.
Zach
- Login to post comments
I concur.
Evidence is contradistinctive to supernature. Supernature is unobservable
The problems with supernaturalism are more fundamental than evidence. I think the worst problem with the 'supernatural' is how it's defined. Supernatural is roughly defined as 'of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe' (to borrow a dictionary definition). This definition excludes the natural world, but is defined in terms of it. In other words, it has a purely negative definition. So, entertaining the idea that supernatural things could exist is basically meaningless.
Furthermore, how could we be aware of anything supernatural? We have defined it as excluding the natural, so any knowledge of supernatural things in the natural world would eliminate their supernatural status. This puts the 'agnostic' in 'agnostic atheist'.
It's only the fairy tales they believe.
Oh i definately agree with you, I just don't see how this system of mine is to restrictive. We were also told that if we say there is no such thing as miracles then by our system we should be sceptical of that statement, but like you said since there is no way that we can define supernatural with any postive statement and "miracle" that happens has to be of a natural cause. So i really don't understand why my system of gaining knowledge is to restrictive wen it is ,imo, the most logical one to have.
I also kinda bring it up because i've heard alot of atheists when asked what evidence we would need to be given in order to beleive there is a god say that if he showed up in front of us or some other such thing. I don't think that would be evidence for it because there are many more natural explantions that would fit the situation alot better then some supreme being doing it.
There's nothing wrong with expecting a meaningful definition for something before entertaining the possibility that it exists. As miracles are supernatural events, and 'supernatural' is meaningless, it makes no sense to say that they might occur.
I agree with you there. I'm not sure that anything could truly persuade me, but I'm keeping an open mind just in case.
It's only the fairy tales they believe.
Oh obviously i keep my mind open, but I can think of nothing that someone could give to me. If someone presetned me with something i haven't thought of it might convince me, i highly doubt it, but it might. This is all in the frame of reference that again there is absoutely nothing that i could think of that could be given to me. Which is also why i call my self a strong agnostic atheist, the strong a modifer for agnostic. I am also kind of curious why others think that some kind of evidence could be given to them that the can think of.
Bingo. The 'supernatural' is defined contra naturalism. That means it is defined solely negatively, without anything left over for it to 'be'...
But even worse, we can't even use terms like 'exist' or 'be' unless we can point to characteristics or identity. This is because the most basic axioms of metaphysics tell us that to exist is to exist as something.
This means that not only can there be no evidence for the supernatural (nothing material can point to its own negation!) but that we can't even refer to it at all.
Yes. Precisely.
To say that something is caused supernaturally is to commit both an existential error (refering to something without any identity) and a basic error in causality. The supernatural cannot be causal.. to be causal is to be natural.
The supernatural, leaving aside the ontological problem for a moment, must be acausal, magical.... ergo we cannot make any causal argument for 'it'.
In the end, the supernatural is simply a broken concept... it can't mean anything.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
I think your high level of skepticism is absolutely required of anyone who really reflects on the limitations of what we know, the size of the universe and the inadequacy of the human mind as a tool for perceiving it. We are still filtering all our information through a system designed primarily to distill patterns out of informational noise. Our brains automatically introduce bias into everything we see and hear! How can our knowledge ever be anything other than flawed and extremely subjectively skewed.
Add to that the fact that you may actually be in the Matrix, and all epistemology is effectively dead. True Knowledge is just another fantasy invented by priests who wanted to pretend that god (and therefore they) knew something that others didn't.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
Wow, for someone I thought there would be more people who disagree with my level of scepticism. I mean I hear tons of atheists all the time say how x evidence might convience them. Is it just everyone who's read my thread here agrees or something?
Reread Todangst's post. Once there is evidence for it, the supernatural ceases to be supernatural. This is because it is defined only in negative terms ie that which does not conform to natural laws. Things that you can sense and gather evidence for DO conform to natural laws. If something we have evidence for appears to violate some natural law (for instance, a solid object that floats in the air in defiance of gravity) then it is the natural law that is wrong and needs to be rewritten to incorporate the new knowledge about nature.
So the point here is not that we wouldn't accept evidence of "supernatural" phenomena but that "supernatural" is a flawed concept.
If someone showed me a live leprechaun tomorrow, I'd accept that leprechauns exist and revise my worldview to incorporate them as part of the natural world. The problem with "supernatural" phenomena is that no such evidence is ever forthcoming.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
I see what you mean, but i think alot of people think that supernatural ideas aren't broken, for some reason. I also,even after reading todangsts explantion over and over again, can't seem to explain why it is broken,even to very rational people.
Let me see if I can clarify.
If we observe something, we can't call it supernatural, because we have defined supernatural to be outside the natural world, and we ourselves are in the natural world. If we discover something that occurs in the natural world, it must by definition be natural, be it gravity or the power to raise the dead.
It's only the fairy tales they believe.
but then by this defintion you are necessarily ruling out any supernatural ideas and are limiting what we can know [heard this from someone].
also, another "objection" i've heard is that then god is by this definiton natural. I think the rebuttall to this i've come up with is a good one but would like everyone's comments on it. "Well then god cannot created that for which he is apart of."
In order for something to be supernatural, it must be separate from the natural, which means that we would have no way to know anything about it. If he wants to use a different definition, he must be able to define supernatural in a positive way, meaning without reference to the natural. Otherwise, it's just meaningless.
So, yes, I'm using a definition which excludes knowledge of the supernatural, but I am doing so because no definition has been offered that would allow for such knowledge.
Well, god can't be supernatural, because the supernatural is nonsense. I would be skeptical of any claim of a natural god, but that's a discussion for another time.
It's only the fairy tales they believe.
To AiiA. I think the evidentialist objection that you implicitly raise is far too restrictive and thus would exclude in principle drawing any inferences from its effects. I do not see any good reasons for jettisioning Organon Nuovum.
SDG
Agustine
Crede ut intelligas et fides ut intelligas.............
Are you just going to say I'm wrong with no explaination?
Of course, thats how most theists work don't ya know?
***
zntneo - you are closer to grasping it than you realize. It will "click" very soon, I think.
If something exists, then it is necessarily natural, since to exist is to exist as something (i.e. part of the natural world/universe... existence itself--todangst repeats this statement for a good reason).
Allow me to turn on the afterburners:
If positing the supernatural entails positing the "not natural" and all that exists is natural, then positing the supernatural amounts to positing non-existence. So for a theist to claim that god is supernatural... they are saying that god does not exist.
Too much? Hehe.
If they claim that god is natural, since that's the only other option, then they've got problems. That, or they're a pantheist.
Personally, I think that labeling a phenomena as 'supernatural' as a way of admitting that it is illogical. Hell, the word supernatural is practically a euphemism for illogical.
To go with what Todangst was saying, I tend to use a similiar argument when discussing the existance of the immortal soul. Most people who believe in souls would basically credit ones soul with human conciousness and dub it supernatural; meaning it is seperate from the body. The basic idea alot of people have is that the conciousness and the soul are akin rather than one and the same. They are similiar, but the main diffrence between the two is that the conciousness is a product of the brain, where as the soul is the product of the supernatural.
What I usually say is that if a soul were to exist, then it would have to be natural. The soul would have to be directly produced by the body. If it wasn't, then a soul simply wouldn't be nessecary. We would still retain our conciousness after the loss of our soul, since the brain would remain intact. If a soul isn't nessecary for a human to live and exist, then its value diminishes signifigantly. If that's the case, then does a soul truly have a purpose? Alternatly, if the soul is produced by the body, is it supernatural? In order for the soul to exist, it must have importance. In order for the soul to have importance, it must be a natural occurence.
Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine
Whether 'something' supernatural 'exists' is another question. My problem with it is that we can never know it, by defintion.
We are natural beings, thus we can only understand, comprehend and gain knowledge of that which is natural. If we observe and comprehend something, then it is by definition a natural phenomenon. And we cannot point to the supernatural, from the natural!
I also don’t think there can be any interaction between the natural and the supernatural. By definition, they are entirely separate ‘realms’. There is nothing physical about the supernatural world, and there is nothing supernatural about the physical world. If either was the case, then they would be the same realm. If things from the two realms can interact in any way whatsoever, then they are not actually separate realms! To talk about such interaction is therefore incoherent.
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring" -- Carl Sagan
To Mr. AiiA. I don't think I said you were wrong per se. My comment was directed toward the entailments that follow from your objection. However, I do not know of any good reasons for abandoning for example the Kalam argument whereby one may reasonably deduce from empirical observations what in point of actual fact is the efficient cause of the universe.
Agustine
Crede ut intelligas et fides ut intelligas.............