How do you deal with the fact that very smart people disagree with you?
I'm going to unabashedly re-post this question that I posted in a different forum recently:
How do you deal with the fact that very smart people disagree with you?
For example, on the existence of god, I consider myself an agnostic that is leaning towards atheism. Although theism is not the majority view of philosophers, it seems absurd that the theistic philosophers are just idiots.
I use this example because when it comes to the existence of god, it often includes the existence of hell. And although I have my own opinions on this (such as the perceived incompatibility of hell and omnibenevolence, the argument from evil, the argument from ignorance, etc) I have to wonder how a professional philosopher can actually argue that these things exist and are compatible, or how any rational person for that matter can hold such positions. Which actually makes me doubt my own opinions, like they are superficial because they apparently do not have the argumentative power to sway the opinions of professionals. Therefore, I end up doubting my own view (even though it makes perfect sense to me) simply because much smarter, more professional people aren't swayed by them; and worse, if I'm wrong, off to hell I go (and it might be justified even). Having more confidence in my views is especially important because if I'm wrong, I might go to hell, and even though this seems absurd to me, this isn't absurd to a lot of philosophers so it might be justified to send me to hell simply because I'm ignorant (which also seems absurd to me, and yet I find it ridiculous to assume these philosophers haven't thought about that). It's a bit of a vicious circle.
Aquinas, Anselm, Plantinga, van Inwagen, etc were/all Christians (for example) and all contributed greatly to philosophy: they obviously were quite intelligent. So how could they miss something that I find to be obviously absurd? Isn't it more likely that me, the novice, has missed something?
End of re-post.
This doesn't apply just to the existence of god/hell (which my above elaboration sounds suspiciously like Pascal's Wager), but really to any position. Is the only rational position to take, agnosticism?
Obviously the initial reaction would be to just read what they have to say. This can be problematic, though, if the work is very articulated and technical.
How do you deal with the fact that very smart people disagree with you?
For example, on the existence of god, I consider myself an agnostic that is leaning towards atheism. Although theism is not the majority view of philosophers, it seems absurd that the theistic philosophers are just idiots.
I use this example because when it comes to the existence of god, it often includes the existence of hell. And although I have my own opinions on this (such as the perceived incompatibility of hell and omnibenevolence, the argument from evil, the argument from ignorance, etc) I have to wonder how a professional philosopher can actually argue that these things exist and are compatible, or how any rational person for that matter can hold such positions. Which actually makes me doubt my own opinions, like they are superficial because they apparently do not have the argumentative power to sway the opinions of professionals. Therefore, I end up doubting my own view (even though it makes perfect sense to me) simply because much smarter, more professional people aren't swayed by them; and worse, if I'm wrong, off to hell I go (and it might be justified even). Having more confidence in my views is especially important because if I'm wrong, I might go to hell, and even though this seems absurd to me, this isn't absurd to a lot of philosophers so it might be justified to send me to hell simply because I'm ignorant (which also seems absurd to me, and yet I find it ridiculous to assume these philosophers haven't thought about that). It's a bit of a vicious circle.
Aquinas, Anselm, Plantinga, van Inwagen, etc were/all Christians (for example) and all contributed greatly to philosophy: they obviously were quite intelligent. So how could they miss something that I find to be obviously absurd? Isn't it more likely that me, the novice, has missed something?
End of re-post.
This doesn't apply just to the existence of god/hell (which my above elaboration sounds suspiciously like Pascal's Wager), but really to any position. Is the only rational position to take, agnosticism?
Obviously the initial reaction would be to just read what they have to say. This can be problematic, though, if the work is very articulated and technical.
Comments (56)
Then there's the kind of philosophy that arises spontaneously from your own life. If it hasn't yet.. give it time. It will. This sort of philosophy cares nothing for what the contemporary trends may be. It doesn't care what the cool kids are saying. It's earnestly trying to understand something.
As for proofs of God... every one of them is defining God in a peculiar way... Anselm says it's the greatest thing, Descartes says it's perfection, Aquinas says it's the mystery of motion.
Your thoughts are more important than any of these and the collective academic establishment.
Because they are your thoughts. Write them down and keep them. Your future self will be amazed by your wisdom.
For every sophisticated argument supporting any position there is (potentially, at least) always a more sophisticated argument supporting its antithesis. It is always a matter of what your starting assumptions are, that is what is axiomatic for you. This is where the real evaluation takes place in my view; that is, what (ultimately) groundless presuppositions are the most plausible? This will be a matter of taste, or conditioning; should we accept the venerable deliverance of tradition on the basis of their ancient provenance or should we free our speculative reason from all such traditional prejudices as much as possible and start our inquiries afresh?
But maybe it's because I'm stupid. :-d
Or maybe it's because some of these philosophers realized they made a mistake pursuing a degree in philosophy and now have to compensate. Or maybe it's because reason (and intimidating wordplay) is too often used to justify bullshit.
Sweet, this rings very true with me. Philosophy, in my opinion, should be about untangling the crap in our minds and clarifying the basic suppositions of life. It's when grand theories begin to be stated that things get way too twisted and out of touch with reality.
But somehow, I know that the only way to deal with it is to talk to Americans who aren't psychotic.
I agree that grand theories should not be taken too seriously, but it might be fun creating one yourself or attempting to understand one that has been created by another. I don't think any grand theory can be 'the truth'. I agree with Hegel who says all philosophical systems are dialectically related aspects of the truth, 'truth' being understood here in the Heidegger kind of sense of 'aletheia' (disclosedness, unconcealing or revelation). Grand theories may contain invaluable insights that can be gained nowhere else.
"I was very much influenced by [John Henry] Newman's Grammar of Assent. Newman shows in this work that it's not the same thing to give one's assent to an affirmation which one understands in a purely abstract, and to give one's assent while engaging one's entire being, and "realizing" - in the English sense of the word - with one's heart and one's imagination, just what this affirmation means for us. This distinction between real and notional assent underlies my research on spiritual exercises."
I think what he's saying here is that you can assent to ideas in a sort of trivial way, perhaps in much the same way a scientist assents to a fact, data or a theory, which can be disbelieved on the moments notice if something better comes along. We give assent like this all the time in every day situations, knowledge or truth that goes as easily as it comes. Then there's a kind of assent that comes to you like a revelation, a "realisation" using "one's entire being", as Hadot says. Here's something I said on PF back in November 2014:
"knowledge isn't really Knowledge until one finds this knowledge deeply profound (you don't 'get it' until you really get it). This profoundness usually comes with experience (a lesson learned (the hard way)), instead of from a hand-down in a class room, a piece of advice or from the page of a book. But a book or statement can speak to something in your past experience that you may or may not have realised at the time (ie. knowledge through revelation). This does not necessarily apply to scientific knowledge, which probably is just the memorisation of scientific facts/theories."
This "hand-down in a class room" kind of knowledge is assented to with the kind of assent Newman first speaks of, the trivial sense. You accept it and agree to it, but it's just not the same kind of assent or knowledge as a deeply held belief.
Both Newmans/Hadots and my ideas of truth and knowledge sound very similar to Johns comment on Heideggers understanding of truth:
Quoting John
There may be differences in the details though, since I don't know a lot about Heideggers theory of truth or knowledge. But on the face of it they seem eerily similar, or at least compatible.
I think it's this deeper or profound kind of understanding (literally a revelation of a spiritual/religious kind) that makes people religious, and not their intelligence, or lack thereof. Like someone has said before, I forget who, "No one ever converted to Christianity because they lost the argument." The kind of assent that one gives to an argument is not the same kind of assent one gives to a spiritual experience.
In fact, if you look at the kinds of studies the New Atheists love to cite, that purport to show a correlation between intelligence and atheism, Newmans Grammar of Assent begins to make sense; perhaps only some people are open to this kind of profound moment of realisation where one really "gets it" - an over-reliance on rationality (and philosophical argumentation) precludes one from these kinds of experiences because logic and argumentation are cold things that require no meaningful or deeply felt experience - just Newman's assent of the former kind.
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This probably explains relativism to a great degree; that the same ideas can strike some people more deeply than others leads some to conclude that truth must therefore be relative in the strict sense (which isn't what Newman, Hadot, or I are claiming) - what's true for some is not true for others. It's similar, but not quite relativism as commonly understood.
Once again, atheism and agnosticism are answers to different questions. Do you have knowledge that God exists? No? Then you are an agnostic. Do you believe that God exists, irrespective of whether you have knowledge that he does? No? Then you are also an atheist.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Intelligence is not the same as wisdom. Philosophy is the pursuit of the latter, not the former, which is not required to do it. Though there are many intelligent people who have done and are doing philosophy, many of them are not wise, which can be especially seen if one takes a peek at their biographies. Simple greed, envy, anger, or in a word, egoism, sully and even destroy the greatest of minds. I for one don't give two figs about my fellow apes' computing power. I care far more about whether they are compassionate, courteous, sincere, etc.
Quoting darthbarracuda
It's because they're not.
Quoting darthbarracuda
I think you are confusing agnosticism with skepticism, which are very similar but not the same. Agnosticism simply declares your lack of knowledge about something (usually God in deism and/or common theism), but it does not on this account imply that you doubt the veracity of the claim in question. One could be an agnostic theist, for example. Skepticism is the attitude that all claims must be doubted until demonstrated. If you don't find that the arguments theists (masquerading as deists most of the time) make concerning the existence of God have been thoroughly demonstrated enough to warrant your belief in him, then rationally speaking, you ought not to believe.
I quite like this distinction too, but the problem is that religions still require, and in my experience stress, notional assent over and against real assent. In many ways, I am already religious, much more so than my fellow human beings, but only if we judge by the latter. I do not and cannot notionally accept any of the Christian creeds, say. This paradoxically makes me a non-believer who is estranged from what would have otherwise been the religious community best suited to me.
In ages past, this wouldn't have been a problem, since non-belief would likely never have occurred to me or anyone as a possible stance to take. Religion and culture were indistinguishable. Now, however, all the critical disciplines have shattered that union and rendered it very hard for a great many thinking and contemplative people like myself to swallow the old dogmas. As long as religions cling to such empty verbiage, then their erosion by secularization and our expanding knowledge will continue unabated.
An atheist isn't just someone who doesn't believe that God exists; he's someone who believes that God doesn't exist. It's a different thing. For example, I don't believe that it will snow tomorrow, but nor do I believe that it won't snow tomorrow.
So how would you describe someone who neither believes that God exists nor believes that God does not exist? I'd call them an agnostic.
Very well stated response in general, Thorongil, but especially this part. Nowhere do I see any adequate explanations for why the "first cause" must be external and somehow have its own personality while simultaneously not being under the influence of causal relations.
Atheism is much too strong of a position, in my tastes. Agnostic deism seems to be where I fit the best, at least currently.
You've just described two different types of atheist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism
Quoting Michael
No, it's a different type of the same thing.
Quoting Michael
By definition that person is an atheist, specifically a weak atheist.
It doesn't much matter to me, so long as you use the labels right. I loathe all labels, especially political and religious labels, but they if they're going to be used, and it would be foolish to expect them not to be, then they must be used as accurately as possible.
Nope, the agnostic claims that they have no knowledge that God exists. The Greek word gnosis means knowledge, while the prefix a is a negation. So the agnostic is "without knowledge," in this case, of God.
Quoting Michael
Again, no. You can be an agnostic theist OR an agnostic atheist; in other words, you can be without knowledge of God and yet still believe that one exists or be without knowledge of God and choose not to believe.
And how is that different to the weak atheist? He also claims that he has no knowledge that God exists.
And you can also be without knowledge of God and not believe either that he exists or that he doesn't exist.
The difference lies in what one is talking about. Weak atheism is a position with respect to belief, which is perfectly compatible with agnosticism, which is a position with respect to knowledge.
Quoting Michael
No, I don't think this is possible. It would mean the person simply lacks belief. They would be an agnostic atheist.
Those are actually a contradiction. How can one believe it is true (understand) that God does or doesn't exist if there is no knowledge about God to be had? The point of believing something is true or not true is that, with respect to the belief, is that it is an expression of someone is aware of. If God is unknowable, supposing God exists or does not exist is incoherent. If knowledge is not applicable to God, there is nothing, whether true or false, for people to think and understand on the matter. Belief (either way) would be impossible.
The same way one could believe in Sasquatch without knowing whether it exists or not, e.g. "I don't know if Sasquatch exists or not, but I believe he does based on the evidence." Or you could have believed that Saddam had a nuclear weapon before the invasion of Iraq, despite not knowing that he did. I see no contradiction here.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
No, it presupposes that he is possibly knowable.
That belief is the position you know the Sasquatch exists without having the empirical evidence which shows it to be the case.
Yes... and that's what the version of agnosticism you talked about denies. It says there is no knowledge about whether God exists of not. This is a contradiction with God being possibly knowable. If we may know whether or not God exists, knowledge about God is most clearly not impossible. We may have it, unlike the agnostic claims.
To "neither believe nor disbelieve" still amounts to a lack of belief. It's a re-statement of weak atheism.
No, it's not, and I have no idea why you would say such a thing. The following statement is either perfectly intelligible or it's not, and if it's not, then you need to show me why it's not, which you haven't yet done: "I believe in Sasquatch but do not know if it exists."
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
What version? There is strong and weak agnosticism just as there are both for atheism. The weak agnostic simply lacks knowledge of God. The strong agnostic knows that there is no God.
This is interesting WW, I haven't investigated Hadot at all, But from what you say there is some commonality with both Hegel and Heidegger; the former in the sense that ideas are only really understood in their profoundest 'truth' when they are seen in their fullest dialectical relation to all other ideas, and Heidegger in the sense that we only really know something when that knowing is a lived, authentic understanding. For me that movement from inauthentic to authentic is the movement from a superficial generality 'what one does' or 'what one believes' to a profound particularity involving a commitment of the whole being. This idea is also to be found in Kierkegaard. It is also interesting that although Kierkegaard was very deeply and deliberately opposed to Hegel (to what he saw as Hegel's anti- individualistic 'objectivism', I think), digging deeper, a great deal of commonality could be found there.
According to the way you have framed it, wouldn't the analogy to " there is no such thing as pain" be "there is no such thing as belief in God" and not "there is no such thing as God"?
I'll just deal with this question, as I feel I have a great deal of experience that is probably useless in this matter.
My method of dealing with this is usually taking a review of the given. The given that I am working from as well as the given that the others are working from in fielding a dialog. More than not, I have found that this is a place where misunderstanding and disagreements begin.
I try to make a habit of investigating the given and making more a critical analysis of this foundation., as (for the most part) logic employed by such people (and I try myself most of the time to do so as well) is not too poorly applied. Quite often the statements are clear and the arguments are valid, but the given might well be the issue that causes disagreement.
Also, it might well (and is very often the case) that these smart people simply are far more familiar with the topic at hand and I need to take care that my rantings and ravings are indeed held in proportion to my knowledge of a point of discussion. You might have noticed that many of my quips come with a disclaimer that I really doubt my ability to assist or that they might well be 'unqualfied'. This is not out of false humility or in hope that others treat me with 'kid gloves', but more that I really have a very limited knowledge in the manner; thus I need to make it clear from the git go that I am certainly not an authority.
This was one of my favorite comments on old PF (I'm not implying that it applies to you, but I feel I must often apply it to myself):
"You are taking your sense of wonder, combining it with your inability to conceive of certain things, and demanding from everyone else that they remain as ignorant. That's not good." - Kwalish Kid
Indeed good ol' KK was banned, but that does not negate the gem that this statement happens to be and the honest wisdom in holds.
Anyway...
... that's about all I have on the topic and is the usual I have no idea if this is of any help or has contributed something to the muddle. IF so, great and if not... sorry for taking up your time.
Meow!
GREG
"Know" here is being used in a confusing way. Knowledge generally requires that the object of the knowledge be true, else it's not knowledge. If I am certain Joe Biden is President and claim to know he is, the fact that he's not the President makes the statement "I know Joe Biden is President" false. Truth is a condition of knowledge.
So, someone can only know there is no god if there is no god and he has a justified belief there is no god.
At any rate, if we change the word "knows" to "believes" in my quote of you above, I don't agree with the statement. You have defined "strong agnostic" how I would define "atheist." An agnostic does not know whether there is God or not because he's unable to arrive at an adequate justification for his belief one way or the other. An atheist does not know (he only believes such) there is a God unless you're either (1) stipulating there actually is no God and he believes it, or (2) you're equivocating with the term "know" and just using it to emphasize the strength of his belief (as in, e.g., "I just knew Clemson would beat Alabama, but it didn't work out that way").
Meow!
GREG
No, because I'm setting up the "there is no pain" to parallel the strong atheist claim that "there is no God," not the weak atheist claim. To say there is no belief in God is oddly worded and clearly not true.
Correct. That's why I said the strong version is a claim about the nature of reality.
Quoting Hanover
All of this is impenetrable to me, I'm afraid. At the risk of repeating myself too many times, I will only emphasize once more that these terms OVERLAP. They are not totally mutually exclusive. They answer different questions but they are perfectly compatible with each other.
Push harder I always say. The payoff is worth the effort.
Quoting Thorongil
I can only say how I use and understand terms. I take the person who simply does not know whether God exists to be an agnostic. He throws his hands up and shrugs his shoulders when asked the question.
Do you think O.J. killed Nicole? You've got three choices: yes, no, or I don't know. If you say yes, you're a believer, no a non-believer, and if you just don't know, you're an agnostic. That's how I use the terms.
And that's all that this is about: belief. It's not about knowledge. That is, do you believe in God is the question. If you say you "know" God exists, you're simply trying to emphasize how firm your belief is, but I'd contend you can't know it in the traditional sense of the term "know" because your justification is not based upon a rational basis, but it's based upon faith.
This doesn't make much sense in light of your statement, Quoting Thorongil
How can a form of agnosticism claim knowledge when the word means, "without knowledge"?
Versions of agnosticism can be distinguished by the missing feature of the knowledge claim (i.e., justification, truth, or belief). An agnostic can be one that lacks knowledge because they lack belief (atheist) and also an agnostic might come down on the conditions of justification or truth (e.g., there is insufficient justification for the statement "God exists" and so one cannot make a knowledge claim or one cannot know, "God exists" because the statement is false, or likely false). I'm not sure how to distinguish any of those as a "strong agnostic" claim or a "weak agnostic" claim, unless you take strong agnosticism is the one claiming that "God exists" is false by virtue of knowledge of the truth condition of "God exists", in which case strong agnosticism is a self-defeating position.
I understand the distinction between weak and strong agnosticism is the strength of the claim in terms of the possibility of knowing. Weak agnosticism claims, "I do not know if 'God exists' is true" and strong agnosticism claims, "'God exists' is unknowable". An atheist (strong or weak) can be a strong or weak agnostic depending on the missing feature of the knowledge claim. A theist is more likely to be a weak agnostic, if agnostic at all, wherein knowledge is unnecessary for confidence in belief (i.e., faith does the job), but would likely not commit to the strong agnostic claim that "God exists" is unknowable.
Well, you wrote this:
Quoting Thorongil
I get your distinction between "weak" forms of atheism and agnosticism and strong claims about the nature of reality.
But you are analogizing the subjective experiences of believing in God and feeling pain, and asserting that people cannot be mistaken about those. I think it is fair to say that, apart from feeling pain, there is no such thing as pain; and yet this would not be to suggest that feeling pain is illusory. In the same way we might say that apart from belief in God, there is no God, and likewise, this would not be to suggest that belief in God is illusory.
Of course if you think it is coherent and plausible to think of God as an objective entity independent from the believing in Him, then belief in God could not be analogous to feeling pain at all unless you were to posit that it is coherent and plausible to think of pain as an objective entity independent from the feeling of it; which would seem, at least at first glance, to be an absurdity. So, the burden would seem to be on anyone that wants to justify the analogy, to argue for the coherence and plausibility of thinking the objective, independent existence of pain.
Believers can have no more knowledge about God than atheists can have. Many believers claim to know a lot about God. They are deluded -- not in their belief that God exists, but in their claimed knowledge about God. Atheists assert that they do not believe in God, so there is nothing for them to know, nothing for them to believe, about God.
Believers who assert that they know nothing about the God they believe in are, paradoxically, on more solid ground than believers who have all kinds of "knowledge" about God. Why?
God is unknowable. You tell me how we very finite, narrow-minded, pig-headed, flesh-embodied beings can "know" anything about a being who is infinite, immortal, invincible, all knowing, and always present everywhere (and for Christians, is 3 Persons in 1 Being--just to make things a little more difficult than they already were). If God is our invention (which is what I think) then we have invented an "unknowable 'mystery". Unknowable mysteries of our own making are, of course, a contradiction in terms. That is the primary flaw in the "received religions" -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The God that believers claim to know is unknowable. I say, believe, then shut up about the object of belief. There is nothing to say.
On the one hand, believers say "we don't know what God will do, God is a mystery, His ways are mysterious, etc." But then they will turn around and say that God did this, that, or the other thing. And, of course, God wants us to do x, y, and z, but not a, b, and c. They want it both ways.
At last! A universally applicable principle.
Knowledge of God, including but not limited to whether God exists, can be acquired through a divine knowing event. Knowledge of God can be satisfied in the individual as long as the justified true belief conditions have been satisfied. If an omnipotent being wants to confer knowledge to another being so as to satisfy the conditions of knowledge, it is not immediately obvious to me how that acquisition of knowledge could/would fail.
P1: If God or a Greatest Possible Being (GPB) exists, and God wants a finite being to know, as a justified true belief, a finite detail of God's nature, then the finite being will know a finite detail of God's nature.
Assume: God or a Greatest Possible Being (GPB) exists, and God wants a finite being to know, as a justified true belief, a finite detail of God's nature.
C: The finite being will know, as a justified true belief, a finite detail of God's nature.
The above argument doesn't show there is knowledge of God, but is meant to argue how such knowledge is possible. There will be a challenge in showing the assumption is true without the presupposition of the existence of God, and the truth of the assumption might rely on the very assumption being made, but at least the argument is valid.
This summarizes my belief really in a nutshell. In fact, it's my belief that any attempt to attribute substance to God in terms of what he is, how he looks, what he does, etc. is idolatry in the broadest sense of the definition. Just like we are prohibited from chiseling our gods from rocks and sticks, we are prohibited from attributing anything to God that specifies what he is and makes him subject to worship.
I'd argue that the first commandment tells us that there is but one God, the second that we shall not make a graven image of him (which I take most broadly as noted above), and the third that you shall not take his name in vain, which Orthodox Jews actually take to mean you shall not speak his never ever. For that reason, the actual name of God as written in the Torah is considered unpronounceable since no one has dared said his name since folks last spoke to him.
Leaving aside all the horseshit interpretation surrounding such biblical passages over the millennia, I take all this to mean just what you said: God is too great to even consider, so stop considering him and just sort of accept him in all his esteemed nebulosity.
So do come join me this Tuesday (that's my holy day) at the Hanover Church of Nebulosia. We speak not of that which cannot comprehend, but we have spaghetti dinners every Tuesday. Wednesday is Ostracism Day where we cast out certain members for violating our rules. We are a religion after all.
Everything in politics ends in mysticism; the circle is complete...
The fact that someone is qualified on one subject doesn't mean that they can't be wrong about another subject, topic, issue or question.
Michael Ossipoff