Epistemology has always been a shell game, Lib. The field is empty unless certain members are valid. But no member can be demonstrated to be valid without an epistemology through which to evaluate.
You and I danced this dance before, if you remember. I have confidence in reason which is inspired by repeated and unambiguous experience. This is insufficient to declare a valid epistemology, of course. It is not an induction. It is the core of empiricism, but empiricism cannot exist until the confidence in reason is established.
This does not bother me. I do not feel lost without an absolute anchor on which to hinge my existence. I have no guarantee that the rules will not change tomorrow. I cannot wrap a logical blanket around my experience and proclaim it to be sound.
Nevertheless, I manage to wake up each day and not be surprised that the Universe still plays by the same rules.
Disregarding your doubtful assertion that biblicism can be considered an epistemology, I’d have to say you’ve provided your own validation of reason.
No epistemology (including reason) (and including faith) can be validated without the use of reason. Validation itself as the act of corroboration on a sound or authoritative basis requires reason. Just as much as faith in the constancy of certain rules of thought is required in the construction of an epistemology of reason, so reason is required in the construction of any system of thought.
It is not so much the ubiquitous utility of reason which validates it as an epistemology; it is the necessity for reason which does so.
Lib, sorry about my statement regarding the “…doubtful assertion that biblicism can be considered an epistemology.” Obviously, biblicism can be just as much an epistemology as I Ching or 1P2P (One potato, two potato…) -Usually when I compose an argument based on my gut I’m able to self-critique the nonsense out of it before I send it. Must’ve slipped this time.
Lib, think of it this way: Math is invalid! There is no physical proof that math is true! How can we have the concept of ‘two’ when there are no completely similar objects? All we see as being in a pair are objects that have variations between them. For example, you might see ‘two apples’. In reality, however, there are only two objects with so many differences between them they are not groupable. There are a huge amount, if not an infinite amount, of variations in things such as color, texture, shape, etc. Therefore, any concept of twoness is faulty and cannot hold up in the real world. If there is no concept of two, how can three exist? Three is just defined as a group of objects, ignoring the fact that no objects are groupable. Therefore, math is simply a faith system with about as much backing in the real world as the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Okay, now let’s snap out of that nihilistic inanity and get into some real debating. Reason is valid because without it communication is not possible. Without something upon which we can base our foundations, the house of communication, and therefore civilization, falls. Reason is like shipping an egg parcel post: We can wrap it in as many layers of padding as we like (read: we can derive proofs from the axiomatic system all we want) to protect it from shock (read: valid proofs, proofs like relativity that do indeed describe physical phenomena quite well, argue the case that the base axioms are indeed valid) but the egg itself is still vulnerable (read: the axioms can still be challenged) and it must still exist (read: a proof without base axioms to argue from is meaningless) but it has a good chance of surviving unscathed (read: a good axiom system can withstand challenges because it works). In the end, the egg must still be there. If you don’t accept the basic foundations, you can’t communicate because there is no common ground. If you do not accept that 1=1 and 1+1=2, nothing else can follow. You end up like the nihilist up top systematically ‘disproving’ math until he no longer has any axioms to reason from. Trying to ‘disprove’ reason itself is akin to undermining (literally) your own foundations: You only hurt yourself as the world spins on.
No problem. I’m glad you caught it. There are lots of people for whom scripture is their epistemology.
JMullaney
Yes, you can say that, for this purpose, reason is logic.
VarlosZ
Yes, and that makes reason a faith-based epistemology. Axioms and undefined terms are accepted without question.
Spiritus explained why Descartes’s rather flippant “I think, therefore I am,” is lame: it’s a non sequitur. We must accept our own existence as axiomatic. We cannot prove that we exist. Not without a tautology.
As to what it had to do with GoBoy’s comment, the common element is “Descartes”.
Spiritus
A shell game, yes, good metaphor.
I certainly don’t mind anyone asserting that reason is a — {{{a}}} — valid epistemology, so long as they will admit, as do you, that it is just one giant circle. What irks me is when reason is held up as a valid epistemology in its own right. It is necessary that a person first believe in reason. On its face, it is a house of cards.
All I ask of atheists is that they acknowledge that our experiential epistemology with God is as valid as their scientific epistemology with atoms.
Whoa, Nellie! Good effort! You’re saying that reason has an ethical validity. That is, it is a means to achieve a political end. Very interesting indeed!
Unfortunately, a scriptural epistemology serves the same purpose (c.f., Iran).
Actually, Peanno proved that 1 + 1 = 2, albeit to do so, he invoked the rather dubious (in my opinion) “Induction Axiom”.
I’m not trying to disprove reason. I am simply trying to get us all to recognize its shortcomings, and to recognize that there are other epistemologies that are not necessarily unharmonious with reason. Like faith, for instance, which we use to accept our axioms and undefined terms.
As I myself have said before both to you and to others, Lib, I believe that you believe it. That is as far as I am willing to concede. I will also absolutely agree to the statement if posed as:
“All I ask of atheists is that they acknowledge that our experiential epistemology with ‘God’ is as valid as their scientific epistemology with atoms.”
. . . which acknowledges your experiental epistemology with what you believe to be “God,” while saying nothing about God qua God.
I disagree, though, that reason is a faith-based epistemology. I find it to be pragmatically reinforced and experientially valuable.
I make no claims that it is valid in the epistemological sense. To me, any such assertion (for any epistemology) is as tautological as Descartes existence.
I do not accept reason as valid unquestioningly. I do not assert it axiomatically. I rely upon it because experience has demonstrated that it is the best tool available to me. Among the set of epistemologies (none of which can be demonstrated to be valid) it has demonstrated the most utility in dealing with the problems of my life. Therefore, I use it.
This is not equivalent to accepting it on faith as valid. I have no assurance that my experience is valid. It is not possible to pierce phenomenology (except axiomatically). As I said before, I can live with that.
Libertarian - thank you for both an interesting intellectual debate and an insight into women (at least one, in particular). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said to my wife “But dear, be reasonable”, thinking to myself that she was not being reasonable just to be mysterious. But it was more likely that she simply did not have the proof that reason was a valid epis…
The Reason that reason is valid is it yelds predictable results when applied. The belief in God (or scripture) does not. Some examples - if you use the formula above (1+1=2) to attempt gaining two apples, and you first pick up one, then another one, you will have two. Predictable result.
Maybe an example of stepping onto a freeway at rush hour is also good - you can reason that this will result in bodily harm (not doing the exact odds here).
How can we get predictable results from God or Scripture? (Not saying here that we can and can’t, rather asking how)
There is nothing ‘political’ about communication. Try to survive without it. Reason is simply a tool used to explain the world and predict what it will do under certain circumstances. It has an excellent track record. Lib, you are posing a nonexistent argument. Reason does not conflict with faith because reason deals with facts and proofs while faith deals with emotions and beliefs. Comparing them is a fool’s errand: They flow from different sources. However, as Spiritus points out, reason must be proven by natural processes. As I have said above, reason is valid because our experiences are valid. Reason explains, describes, and predicts our physical world in a very exact way. You can explain, describe, and predict your mental world in any way you want.
If you have Faith, then you will be able to perform overrides of quantum-mechanical probabilities (a.k.a. miracles), and this will be your evidence.
Reason, meaning logic, is not the only method of communication in the koinos kosmos. I would suggest Wisdom, Love, and perhaps others, work equally well. Although, that is a good point – much communication is based on reason and without it various tasks would be unlikely to be easy performed.
Six months ago, there were 22 inches of snow outside his front door – he posted the fact.
Ever since then, I’ve expected the improbable – and usually been right!
Beyond that, I concur with Spiritus on the need for some entity to occupy the set in order for it to not be meaningless. Having been down the Rationalist road with Rene in my college days and found how easy it is to make fraudulent assumptions, simply because the very vocabulary one uses to discuss the ultimate must have referents which are therefore assumed, I tend to be very much in favor of a variant on the Berkelian structure in which what is sensed, is, but is such because it was the invention of a God antecedent to the creation in which we occupy space and time. (In the absence of matter and energy, space and time do not exist.) I accept that God because I have internal subjective evidence of Him, just as I accept the ideas of justice and love on internal evidence. Since we all have different meanings for these three terms, we cannot debate them with total agreement on their meaning, and can only approximate each others’ concepts of them.
“All I ask of atheists is that they acknowledge that our experiential epistemology with ‘God’ is as valid as their scientific epistemology with atoms.”
If they were to acknowledge this, would they still be atheists? I think the epistemology you accept depends on the axioms you accept as self-evident truths. I think in my high school geometry class, the definition of a point was defined as an axiom. There are probably more complex geometries that do not have this axiom.
When dealing with epistemologies (which Webster’s defines as the theory or science that investigates the origin, nature, methods and limits of knowledge) I like to apply Occam’s Razor, which is something like this:
In a complex situation, the simplest answer is usually the correct one.
Worked wonders in child rearing problematic situations.
Thank you for visiting the thread! It is a great honor indeed.
If existence were implied by thinking, then most of the universe does not exist.
Okay, probably too harsh. Let me change that to “insufficient”.
Spider Woman
“Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatum.” — William of Ockham
Beyond necessity. Why would an atheist insist on the validity of his own empirical observations while at the same time asking me to deny my own experience?
Derleth
Well, good heavens. Many people survive without it. Very very few even understand it. Political in this context simply means a societal ethic, i.e., relations with people.
But that simply means that you are validating reason now, not as a political expedience, but as a utilitarian one. Naturally, any tautological model will make accurate predictions. You are still using reason to validate reason, which still is no different than a Bible thumper using the Bible to validate the Bible.
Once again, you accept your axioms and your undefined terms on faith. Axioms, by definition, are accepted without proof, which itself is the definition of faith.
Try, for example, to prove that A is A, or to prove the Induction Axiom: “Any property that belongs to zero, and also to the immediate successor of any natural number to which it belongs, belongs to all natural numbers.” And while you’re at it, define “successor” and “natural number”, two terms that thus far have been left undefined.
That is “proof” that you are willing to accept on faith. How do you know there are no purple ravens?
Not so. Empiricism does that. If reason did it, we could go ahead and derive every secret of the universe by constructing syllogisms. DeMorgan would already have explained everything to us.
