On deferring to the opinions of apparent experts
I've always generally been of the opinion that one should think for themselves wherever possible, but also be able to recognize the limits of one's own knowledge and other epistemic abilities, recognize superior knowledge and wisdom in others, and sometimes defer to the opinions of those others in matters about which one is clearly out of one's depth.
Some experiences here on these forums, however, have made me doubt that opinion, because there are some people who seem far more knowledgeable than me in some areas, and yet clearly and completely wrong in other areas, but claim that their position in the latter areas can be justified by things I just don't understand in the former areas. And I'm not sure how to handle that.
I don't want to call out anyone in particular, so I'm going to make up an absurd example that I hope doesn't actually describe anybody here. Say you have someone who thinks that straight white cis men are objectively superior to people of other races, sexes, genders, and orientations. (I'm hoping this is something we can all agree is a clearly and completely wrong opinion). But that same person is also obviously far more knowledgeable than you in some very technical field, like say mathematics. (I really don't want to use mathematics for this example, but I can't think of anything else that's as obviously intimidating and technical to the average person without a deep education in it).
You might be inclined to say "ok well this person is smarter than me at math, but that doesn't make them right about race/sex/etc!" Except this person says that math stuff proves their opinions about race/sex/etc. And they give you a complicated argument involving lots of math that you can't really follow, that concludes that straight white cis men are objectively superior to people of other races, sexes, genders, and orientations. I have no idea what such an argument would look like, but that's kind of the point here: imagine someone puts forth some argument connecting something you have no legs to stand on in an argument about to something you're really sure is wrong and cannot possibly be justified by this other thing you don't understand.
I'm sure lots of users here have experience with being on the other side of this kind of argument: some clueless newb has an obviously wrong opinion, and you've got a bunch of math or science or whatever to show why it's wrong, but they're not equipped to engage with your technical argument conclusively disproving them, so they've basically got to either dismiss you as spewing obscurantist nonsense as a smokescreen for your obviously false opinion, or else take you at your word on faith.
I'm used to being on that side of such arguments, the person with all the technical underpinnings I can use to show why someone else is wrong. But here I'm for the first time in my life running into some people who are obviously wrong about some things, but also obviously more knowledgeable than me about other things, who claim the obscure stuff I can't follow underlies the stuff I'm sure they're wrong about. And I'm not sure, generally speaking, on philosophical grounds, whether my impulse to dismiss them as spewing obscurantist nonsense is really a better response than just blindly taking their word on faith. I'm curious to know what other people here think about such things, on general principle.
Some experiences here on these forums, however, have made me doubt that opinion, because there are some people who seem far more knowledgeable than me in some areas, and yet clearly and completely wrong in other areas, but claim that their position in the latter areas can be justified by things I just don't understand in the former areas. And I'm not sure how to handle that.
I don't want to call out anyone in particular, so I'm going to make up an absurd example that I hope doesn't actually describe anybody here. Say you have someone who thinks that straight white cis men are objectively superior to people of other races, sexes, genders, and orientations. (I'm hoping this is something we can all agree is a clearly and completely wrong opinion). But that same person is also obviously far more knowledgeable than you in some very technical field, like say mathematics. (I really don't want to use mathematics for this example, but I can't think of anything else that's as obviously intimidating and technical to the average person without a deep education in it).
You might be inclined to say "ok well this person is smarter than me at math, but that doesn't make them right about race/sex/etc!" Except this person says that math stuff proves their opinions about race/sex/etc. And they give you a complicated argument involving lots of math that you can't really follow, that concludes that straight white cis men are objectively superior to people of other races, sexes, genders, and orientations. I have no idea what such an argument would look like, but that's kind of the point here: imagine someone puts forth some argument connecting something you have no legs to stand on in an argument about to something you're really sure is wrong and cannot possibly be justified by this other thing you don't understand.
I'm sure lots of users here have experience with being on the other side of this kind of argument: some clueless newb has an obviously wrong opinion, and you've got a bunch of math or science or whatever to show why it's wrong, but they're not equipped to engage with your technical argument conclusively disproving them, so they've basically got to either dismiss you as spewing obscurantist nonsense as a smokescreen for your obviously false opinion, or else take you at your word on faith.
I'm used to being on that side of such arguments, the person with all the technical underpinnings I can use to show why someone else is wrong. But here I'm for the first time in my life running into some people who are obviously wrong about some things, but also obviously more knowledgeable than me about other things, who claim the obscure stuff I can't follow underlies the stuff I'm sure they're wrong about. And I'm not sure, generally speaking, on philosophical grounds, whether my impulse to dismiss them as spewing obscurantist nonsense is really a better response than just blindly taking their word on faith. I'm curious to know what other people here think about such things, on general principle.
Comments (290)
Some here do actually use their extensive knowledge of mathematics to argue about things that are not in its purview. They wrongly think that axiomatic thinking (deductive reasoning) is the only path to knowledge, seemingly not realizing that the axioms they rely on could never have been arrived at through deduction. See the problem here?
That is a serious mismatch.
Mathematics is exclusively about abstract, Platonic worlds while race/sex is a real-world phenomenon. There is no mathematical proof for any proposition about the physical universe.
There is still science, which can deal with some real-world problems, but that drags the problem of experimental testing into the fray. So, how exactly did this person test his views on race/sex?
I’ve had this many times, to the point where I begin to wonder if I’m making any sense at all. I’m never that positive I’m right anyway, but if someone isn’t really interested in helping me understand what they’re saying then I let things go. I’m not here to do battle but to try to work out a few thoughts I have.
In the example you give, all you have is someone making associations between different concepts and what we must think. It’s a version of Divine Command, if God says X (the mathematical relationship performed), then Y (the superiority of straight white men) must obtain. This is just an association or correlation between two different concepts (the math and the notion straight white men are superior).
In Sartre’s terms, it’s a bad faith position. Like when someone says, “Well X told me to do it, so I had no choice” or “I can only do Y because I’m a human” or “I can only be polite to the customer, for I am a waiter."
Or similar to certain accounts of sex and gender, which claim the presence of a bodily trait entails someone must only ever belong to one category or another.
Or to use a mathematical example, an instance in which someone equivocates two distinct sets as a single set. I draw these comparison to show how cross discipline “evidence” or “proof” look like, by picking out some kind of similarity in the meanings of the two disciplines to describe something.
Deductive proofs, as such, are not really a thing in this context. They only ever repeat the initial rule (including whatever prejudices and errors they entail), an exercise in just affirming what you have already claimed or, in many cases, demanded. In terms of accounting for what and when something is known, they don’t really have a place. When we are at the place of reflecting on how we know what know, we are dealing with what we understand in any case. Any sort of deductive relation only comes after this, when we know a deductive rule and the things it applies between.
A conclusion in mathematics must be about an abstraction that does not exist (in the physical universe). That makes it very obvious when a conclusion cannot possibly be mathematics, as he ends up saying things about the real world. There is no need to find a flaw in his proof, or verify any of his formalisms, because such outcome is already impossible.
In my opinion to understand philosophical arguments you do not need math or a proof by symbolic logic. It helps, once in a while, but philosophical concepts, the ones I've encountered, are relatively and absolutely simple. The answers to questions are simple. I have yet to encounter a philosophical question or concept that needed an overly complex (beyond say, grade 7 math or grade 9 debate class) explanation or answer.
The questions of philosophy are straightforward and simple; there is no need to convolute them.
If you study Wittgenstein, Kant, Russell, and the other newfangled philosophers, you'll realize what I am talking about. There is no book on philosophy that presents incomprehensible, or hard-to-understand ideas; there are just books that present the ideas in a fashion that is hard to understand.
So PfHorrest, I am on the opinion that if common sense does not make ends meet in a proof or in an argument,then no amount of math or symbolic logic would, either.
PFHorrest, you never use incomprehensible, obscure abbreviation, so why, how, and when did this cis crop op? I have absolutely no clue what it stands for. And that bugs the shit out of me. A two-second saving of typing the world out you instead banished me into a fury of anger and resentment.
"Cis" and "trans" are generally Latin prefixes meaning "on the same side as" and "across from", that can be found in many sciences etc.
Not so sure about Bertrand Russell. This following is an excerpt from Principia Mathematica (PM):
Quoting Is Bertrand Russell readable?
The entire book is like that. I wonder how many people have read it?
In fact, I don't think that PM is nowadays still interesting enough for anybody to put in that kind of effort into something that ultimately turned out to be a failed enterprise ...
Trans actually does not mean across from; it means "transiting" or "having transited". Maybe in Latin it means that, but in modern English it does not.
If it meant "across from" then all women would be transgender males and vice versa.
Transpose is an action of removing and placing somewhere else. Again, it's a transition, not simply being across.
Transatlantic means "moving across the Atlantic", not simply "On the other side of the Atlantic".
Transfiguration, ditto.
Transaction, ditto.
ETC.
Cis may mean stationary, then?
What's PM?
Again, unnecessary and irritating, vexing fucking fuckhing fucckihhing abbreviations.
Shit this fuck.
I know: post-menstrual.
Preparation Meningitis.
Principle of Mathematics? That would be PoM.
Puckering Asshole (M mistaken for A).
Physically Muscular.
Post Meridian.
Perpetrated Mainstreamism.
An unfortunate thing there is that unless you know some amount about a domain, it is difficult to verify whether someone is competent in that domain. With "real life" experts you can rely somewhat on verifying credentials, on the internet you mostly just have their word to go on.
Specifically with math and science on here, if someone says (item in math or science topic X) entails (item in philosophy topic Y), and the explanation/support of the entailment consists of natural language with vague statements regarding every day objects, pre-theoretical intuitions, and things which look incredibly difficult to formalise, I just assume that the person doesn't know what they're talking about in at least one of the topics. I'll double down on this intuition if the person ends up explaining in a loop or going off topic when pressed on the connection.
Some examples:
Popular forum one: (measurement problem in quantum mechanics) entails (subjective idealism) because "observer" dependence.
Another enduring forum one: (special relativity "paradoxes" of intuition) entails (physics is wrong).
Final (somewhat less) popular forum one: (Popper's falsification criterion) entails (anthropology and linguistics are not sciences).
Popular academic one:
(game theory model of rational agents) entails (real markets are a perfect solution to good distribution) - the social scientists/anthropologists/historians and economists with an empirical focus have been protesting for years, the theory keeps on going.
In this scenario, when someone who is good in the first domain, the one which is fed into the entailment first, they will distort the second domain in accordance with their perspective of the first. If someone is a domain expert/domain competent they should generally be able to throw some literature your way devoted the entailment (the domain connection) if it is indeed as obvious as it is portrayed.
It is possible to be knowledgeable about both domains and mostly conjectural about the domain connection between them. In my view, posts in this situation can make for interesting reads, especially when they can provide you with references, and acknowledge the speculative nature of the relationship gracefully. I learned a lot from @apokrisis by chewing on their leg in this manner.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. "Cisgender" is to "transgender" as "heterosexual" is to "homosexual". What's the problem?
Quoting god must be atheist
It can mean both:
Quoting https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trans-#English
Quoting god must be atheist
The thing that's being crossed or not is the assignment of gender at birth and present gender identity. Someone who identifies on the same side of the gender spectrum that they were assigned to at birth is cisgender, someone who identifies on the other side of it is transgender.
Quoting god must be atheist
Quoting alcontali
Quoting alcontali
I tried to spare myself from typing the entire title of his book again, "Principia Mathematica", by tagging it with an abbreviation, but it clearly failed! ;-)
Still, I just wanted to say that this otherwise famous book is unreadable, and even worse, not even worth reading, because Russell's views on the subject have turned out to be faulty.
And to my satisfaction, it was first Russell who answered the "is there a god or not" question. It took two or three easily understood, simple sentences.
This is clear. Was from the outset after it was explained to me by PFHorrest what PFHorrest thought cis meant.
I missed that. My apologies.
It came too soon after cis. I was already possed off.
Now suppose that Russell, who you probably trust to be a lot better at you than math, claimed that he could mathematically prove, with math too complex for you to follow, an answer to that "is there a god or not" question, an answer that you're very confident, for other reasons, is the wrong one.
Do you dismiss Russell's incomprehensible argument as obscurantist nonsense, or accept the conclusion of his complex technical argument you're not smart enough to follow just on his word?
"Is there a god" is a question about an axiom. You should rather compare it to :
Quoting Peano's 6th axiom of number theory
In both cases, we do not seek to prove such starting-point belief. It is just a system-wide premise in a particular theory. It is just a belief, take it or leave it. Furthermore, it is only meaningful to believe that, if you want to use the formal system built on top of such starting-point belief. Otherwise, build something on top of another belief.
By the way, there are lots of different number theories with other choices for the axioms. Dedekind-Peano (PA) is merely the most popular one ..
Yes, I dismiss his math / logic proof.
If it does not make sense to a reasonable mind, then no amount of math or obscure symbolic logic will convince me.
This has already been demonstrated in the "red" example, where only an empty set can satisfy the two manifestations at the same time and in the same respect, "everything is red in this box and everything is non-red in this box".
A simple, intuitive thought is worth to me more than ten pages of stuff I don't understand.
No, this is an empirical question, not an axiomatic question. You are on that opinion only because to you god is the alpha and the omega. To me god may be anything, but we don't know anything about it, even that it exists or not; any claim of any quality of a god, including its existence, is a matter of faith without any evidence. In other words, no authority exists on god's qualities, and if someone claims to be one such authority, he or she is badly mistaken or lying through his or her teeth.
First thing that occurs to me is that philosophy is appealing partly because it helps with just this kind of situation. I first liked it as a kind of super-science of authority. What's good? What's true? Pretty soon it's what if anything gives a person the right to answer those questions authoritatively?
In this situation, I'd attack the phrase 'objectively superior.' Isn't superior a value judgment? If one defines superiority in terms of terms of a statistic, then of course a case can be made (if one chooses just the right statistic) that this or that group is 'superior.' But if we generalize this and include other arbitrary and perhaps fuzzier metrics, then much of what humans do is make cases for the superiority of this or that group. Nonracists are better than racists because... The examined life is better than the unexamined life (which is not even worth living) because...
Can any system of reasons protect us individually from occasionally fearing that we may have it all wrong? Or a big piece of it wrong? Perhaps our acceptance of our mortality is even connected to an attachment to Kundera's not-so-unbearable lightness of being (less unbearable with time and jadedness.) I don't know if Democritus laughed as much as he was thought to, but the notion that it's atoms and voids beneath our passions, dreams, and violence is comforting. No one is wrong or right or confused for long. Though it's fun to be puffed up in the meantime.
It depends on the context. In religious law, it is an axiomatic belief.
In science, it may apparently look like an empirical question but the falsificationist boundaries of science do not allow for a question that cannot be tested experimentally.
If a question is scientific, then there exists paperwork that can be filled out as justification as well as a procedure to verify the paperwork. So, what should the paperwork look like and what does the verification procedure entail?
A few thoughts in general:
We have to use intuition in these situations.
We don't have to think in binary terms about these situations. We can remain unconvinced, for example, but notice we are not sure. There is some weird idea that is usually not uttered but seems to control people: We have to decide if an argument is right or wrong so we can put in a box. I assume it causes anxiety not to do this, but I think it would be better if humans stopped viewing things this way.
Whatever heuristic we develop for this situation is going to be terrible for some humans to follow. They may be terrible at intuition and/or introspection. They may find ideas they disagree with to threatening, in general, to even take a look at.
Whether it's a religious law or a physics experiment to establish the presence or existence of god, it is a philosophical matter. And both types of approaches give a clear, not-so-complex or -difficult, straightforward answer.
This is a demonstration that philosophical questions and problems and ideas and concerns and considerations etc are all very simple. Two, maybe three, four or five, maximum, agents to deal with in the argument. This is easy to keep in mind. Extremely complicated math as support of an incomprehensible or false theory is not going to serve an opposing debater against me.
In the "RED" (for short) example, PFHorrest, I eventually came to the same conclusion as you were trying to show me with logical transformations. I did not believe you, because I could not follow your reasoning. I still can't. Although it turns out your claim was right. But I believe you now; and not because of the "Not-not-everything is something-not-not everything else" type of transformation. I believe you now because I came to the same conclusion as per the law of the excluded middle or whatever that law is called.
You in that debate made an in-road toward my understanding your claim and to agree with you, by saying "every time machine owned by people these days are green" and "every time machine owned by people these days are not green" can only both be true if no person on Earth has a time machine. That was an in-road, because it was intuitive, it made sense, it was something I understood.
Let me put it this way. I used to belong before I was kicked out for misconduct to a society called "International Society for Philosophical Enquiry". Most of my time there was before the Internet. Our mutual club-wide correspondence occurred on a monthly magazine. Some dude published something, and a reader told the Editor about that article: "This makes no sense to me, Sir, but it must have made sense to you, since you published it." This the Editor took to heart, and admitted that he had made a mistake.
It is not good policy to agree to something you are not sure what it means. Much like it's not good policy to sign a legal document that you have no clue what it contains as far as your responsibilities and limitations of rights and benefits go by its wording.
If you are pressed, the worst you ought to allow yourself to do would be to say "This explanation is beyond my comprehension, and therefore I cannot in clear conscience accept it." Let them call you or me stupid; it's better than being a loser.
If you are intelligent, there is reward.
You don't need another human to clarify that you're intelligent; and that process is entirely unintelligent.
You become adult by the world.
Other humans can offer you aid, but it's optional.
Would you say the confusion comes from a lack of enough intelligence?
Stupidity concerning what intelligence is.
If I need an intelligent idol, I'll appoint one - do I need one forced upon me?
So you think people are not intelligent enough to measure people's intelligence. That means, that people's intelligence is below the level of their own intelligence.
Apparently.
That's not what I meant. We are able judges, but we are not thee judge.
For your self-security? Based on your judgement of my intellect?
It would be a really good idea to say what you mean. But an ability to do so actually requires a certain level of intelligence.
Could this be used as a measure of intelligence?
You're just joking around...
You've asked poor questions and you're now being destructive.
Ha? No. I just can't stand your posts around here. You are childish, infantile, and have horribly wrong and elementally unintelligent points. It really rubs me the wrong way.
You asked.
You should not take this that I am trying to silence you. You say what you want and what you will. I just answered your question, that's all.
I've been never more serious than this.
On a serious note, during your dissection of my post, you missed half of it.
I'll stop the debate with you here...
If anyone else wants to address this, which is the underlying princple to my argument, feel free.
When someone is using expertise in one field to help them reach a conclusion in a different field, where they lack expertise, more skepticism is warranted - especially when you are dealing with a singular opinion, rather than a consensus of multiple experts. They may well be going out on a limb and talking shit - it is pretty common actually.
In any case, expertise is not easily transferable: even if you accept an expert answer, you can never be as confident about it as someone who has worked through the solution. And you'll just have to live with that - or do the necessary learning and training, and check the reasoning yourself.
So what do you do when you are at an impasse? Well, when I see that a conversation is not working out, for whatever reason, I usually just leave. I like to think that am not here to "win" arguments.
Either they appear to be obviously wrong to you because they see a connection that you haven’t yet uncovered (and so they’re actually right), or they’re really wrong because they are blinded by their own false beliefs.
The more general problem is: how do you know you’re wrong? It’s possible that there’s something you’re not seeing that makes you wrong, but you don’t know you’re wrong because you’re not seeing that thing. When the other appears obviously wrong to you: either he’s right and you’re not seeing what makes him right, or he’s wrong and he’s not seeing what makes him wrong.
So how can you tell for sure which one it is? If you can’t find out on your own you need help. If the person you discuss with is willing neither to help you see what you don’t see (in case he’s right) nor to consider that he may be wrong (in case he’s wrong), then you need other people to help you see what you don’t see (in case he’s right) or help him see what he doesn’t see (in case he’s wrong).
And so if you have encountered that recently I suggest that you share the actual example with us so that we may help you untangle the knot :wink:
Happy to be shared, if me (I'm not paranoid nor sure if it is me). I won't reply to it.
This is a philosophy forum, if you think you have encountered an argument that isn’t valid and it bothers you enough that it leads you to create a whole topic based on it, why refrain from discussing it directly? You’re afraid you’re going to hurt the feelings of that person by pointing out a mistake they’ve made, or a wrong belief that they hold?
Should I create a topic to philosophize about why some people beat around the bush using analogies without tackling an issue directly (that could make for an interesting topic actually) or should I ask you directly? Well I can do both, but the point is it wouldn’t hurt to mention precisely what bothers you, we’re all supposed to be open-minded and reasonable folks, if sometimes we aren’t well we should work on it, so you shouldn’t be afraid to state what is bothering you, or send a private message to that person if you prefer.
No, I just dismiss your hypothetical.
However, I don't have much patience with arguments about foundations of math if the poster seems to have only a minimal knowledge of math.
I have no expertise in philosophy, although I may seem confrontational when I encounter words or concepts that appear to be poorly defined. :cool:
Also, the particular doubts like that that have come up about the clearest case of that that I've seen here have already been addressed by another apparent expert in the first field who immediately guessed who I had in mind right after I started this thread and assured me that they also find this apparent expert's implications outside their own field dubious. Much as @SophistiCat suggested I seek out the advice of alternate experts. So I'm not especially shaken about that case in particular any more.
In any case, I don't think I would especially like if if someone started a new thread with the topic "I see Pfhorrest keep saying this thing about [x -> y] over and over again on the forum and he seems smarter than me in [x] but he's obviously wrong about [y] and I don't know what to do about that." I dunno, I might like that, depending on how it's phrased, because I love attention, but I'm doubtful enough about whether others would like that that I wouldn't want to start a public thread just about it. I would PM them instead, if I cared that much about that particular topic. Which I don't. But the general question of how to handle questionable conclusions from apparent experts is more interesting, and worth its own thread I think.
That's just refusing to pose an answer to the question. Which is your choice to do, but... it's not really an answer, obviously.
Thank you for your kind reply! To be clear, the incidents that prompted this question in me weren't arguments I was having with other users, but rather claims I see other users make in other arguments with still other people. My self-doubt makes me not dive into those argument, because even though I see conclusions that I think are clearly wrong, I don't feel competent enough to tackle the particular arguments that come to those conclusions, so I would just have to jump in out of nowhere with an unrelated argument to the contrary conclusion, which doesn't seem like a productive thing to do.
Until we find out whodunnit, we are all suspects.
I prefer to deal with the real world rather than hypotheticals.
If someone has said that they have proven something, but the proof is couched in jargon and convoluted arguments rather than plain and explicit logic and I disagree with the conclusion then I am not going to waste my time finding the flaw(s) in their 'proof'.
I appreciated your gracious response. In the end that was a productive interaction.
That clearly depends on the definition for intelligence. According to the Dunning-Kruger research, intelligence is knowing when you do not know.
Academic education may actually achieve the opposite effect. If you give people a certificate that says that they know, then they will more easily make the mistake to believe that they know when they do not know.
Hence, academic education cannot improve anybody's intelligence. It can only destroy it, which is actually what it does in the vast majority of cases.
Quoting god must be atheist
There's a funny observation about that problem.
Lots of people are known to write programs that they themselves can no longer read. Reading/parsing source code is considered to be much, much harder than writing it.
In fact, this is also the case for programs. A program that writes other programs is much simpler than the corresponding program that needs to read/parse them.
So, writing a program at 100% of the level of your own intelligence is a recipe for disaster, because you may need 150% to understand it again a few weeks later. Someone else may then need 250% of the original intelligence to comprehend it.
Quoting The Coming Software Apocalypse
So, yes, the level of (your own) intelligence required to write a program is substantially lower than the one required to comprehend it later on.
I thought you don't like to deal with hypotheticals.... (Tse-hee-hee) (-:
It is not so much hypothetical as it is my experience. :)
Fields like epistemology and ethics/morality do seem to have that kind of hierarchical relationship where conclusions drawn from epistemology directly bear on discussions on moral truth. Others like math and ethics the relationship seems much less clear. Personally I love inter-disciplinary connections and I'd like to know the two fields were. Certainly not all fields are oriented in this hierarchical-like structure.
To millions (billions?) of people around the world, it is an empirical fact that God is real.
Quoting alcontali
This statement (and many others like it) are are exactly the sort of explanations used by people of science to demonstrate to believers that their belief - that God's existence is an empirical fact - is incorrect. These attempts are rarely successful.
Pardon the interruption.
What’s with your handle? Why must God be an atheist? Is it because He doesn’t know He’s God? Or that there is nothing above Him, and this makes his Soul long for meaning? Is God doing okay? Should we check on him?
Falsification in science and natural science in general only deals with the material world. God is a Spirit (at least that’s what most believers say). Science cannot even prove to anyone that other people aren’t philosophical zombies (that they do or don’t have conscious experience). Consciousness is private and is experienced privately. Likewise, God would only be experienced privately as a pure consciousness (Spirit) revealing itself to another consciousness.
People have “religious” or “spiritual” experiences all the time. Hard scientists say that they are just hallucinating when they can’t even prove they are conscious to begin with!
It’s like denying the most important part of existence. That’s my take.
Yes, agreed.
Science has its own legitimate purpose but a lot of questions simply do not fall under its purview. Science is a tool to use for what it is good for, and solely for what it is meant to be used.
Scientism, on the other hand, is a shit show, and generally ends in a complete disaster:
Quoting Wikipedia on scientism
If your only tool is a hammer then sooner or later the whole world will start looking like a nail!
Agreed. :smile:
God isn’t a philosophical idea. That’s not in philosophy’s purview.
An expert is only an expert in a certain field, but not much else.
That said, the errors experts commit when outside their zone of expertise are explicable in terms of a lack of knowledge or partial/complete ignorance on other subjects. What bears mentioning though is that experts are trusted not only because they're knowledgable but also because we deem them as more logical too. So, it's not surprising that we expect those who have a good background in math and the sciences to be capable of making good judgments in other topics too; we trust their |reasoning skills but unfortunately their ignorance on some topics trip them up. By the way, it's quite unreasonable for someone to expect that one person possesses encyclopedic knowledge: that's an impossibility. However, it's entirely permissible that we expect mathematicians and scientists to be more logical than the rest of us.
Logic only gets you so far when it comes to questions such as, “How do I live a good life?” “What should I do with my life?” “What should humanity do to heal itself from its obvious sickness?” “Is there really such a thing as mental illness, or is there just neuro-diversity?”
Indeed. Logic alone doesn't cut it. However, a superior logic, even if only provided with bits and pieces of life's puzzles, will rarely make glaring errors.
Agree.Quoting TheMadFool
Disagree. I think it would take clairvoyance and knowing the future to avoid errors.
About my moniker:
We have faith in god, some of us, because his existence is an empirical truth that has not been shown to be valid.
Yet we believe in god.
If god existed and was shown to us that he does, then we would no longer be dependent on belief to accept his existence.
Therefore in our world, god is a concept that requires belief in him.
Those who don't believe in him, or lack faith in him, are called atheists.
Those who have direct knowledge of god are not required to have faith in the existence of god.
Therefore they don't have faith in god; they are knowers that god exists, not believers.
But those who do not have belief in god are atheists.
Therefore those who know god, and therefore lack faith in him, are atheists.
God knows god, so he is an atheist.
000000000000000000
This argument was destroyed by someone earlier, on this site, in a series of forum posts, where my moniker was also in question. He or she said that belief is a form of knowledge. It is not absolute knowledge, but a form of it. Therefore all faith or belief is a form of knowledge as well.
He or she said that if you know something, then you believe it, too. You can't know something and believe its opposite!
Now I have second thoughts.
I don't know if I buy that "believing the opposite" is the same as "lack of belief", but since that was a consensus, that faith is a form of knowledge, I declared that the claim in my moniker was false. I now say that the NECESSITY of belief is missing if you know something for sure. I believe now that my critic then used an equivocation of belief. "Not believing in (something)" is not quite the same as "believing that (something) does not exist". "Not believing in (something)" allows the thing to exist; the other does not.
Therefore god not believing in himself allows his existence. Therefore his knowing he exists allows his not believing in himself.
Do you personally know @Alcontali? Your asserting that he (@alcontali) is okay, indicates to me that you two are personal acquaintances, if not relatives, or if not family.
A direct and decisive answer would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
Thanks, Noah!
I, on the other hand, got to know @alcontali as a person who puts his or her faith in front of logic; he or she has set beliefs that can't be changed for him or her even when presented by overwhelming evidence; I find such people not logical, and therefore they bug the shit out of me.
This of course does not negate the fact you claim, unknown, that he or she (@alcontali) is good. That may very well be the case, I ain't no judge of that.
What fool would want to not give his or her true self under circumstances like these, eh?
You won't need to prove that you are you, but I don't have to believe it, either.
By-the-by: my name, real name, is also God Must Be Atheist. And the profile pic was taken of me back in God school. (I failed, never graduated, after repeating grade 3 five times. I could not master the concept of 3-0=1 properly. Basic god math, if you ask the teachers.)
(-|
You’re too funny. The police and the NSA know it’s me, though. Meta-data and all.
Ah. So you are a metaphysical entity. I always wondered what they would look like in person.
Pleased to meet you.
:smile:
I like to troll the authorities for their harassment of me. I put someone in the hospital once. I didn’t get charged, but his friend is a cop. I’ve also trolled the FBI and NSA toll free numbers, too.
Etymology
From Latin exspurtus.
ex: a has-been.
spurtus: big drip under pressure.
I think it's important to be knowledgeable about areas where expert opinions are varied. If they're not varied then there's probably hard evidence for their position but if many experts have differing or opposing positions then it might be an issue of interpretation. I am always particularly distrusting of experts that haven't actually demonstrated their proficiency. To me, that generally means doing something or achieving something that required proficiency.
Unfortunately the experts in the fields with good models of explanation with the hard evidence to back it up OFTEN think they know how to run things. The thing is no one knows how to save humanity from itself.
If I play Rainbow Six Siege, a First-Person-Shooter, in the first inings of a match-up, I don't know where the enemy are located. This means I must scout, or fortify a strategic location.
I'm less agile when it comes to offense and defence in this match-up; this knowledge is imperative, and I've not acquired it yet.
If my team mate spots an enemy and tells me over the microphone, I will defer to his expertise.
This decision is based on trust obtainable in a virtual contest; some scenarios - such as real combat - may require that evidence is produced.
Contrary to imperative knowledge, is the knowledge of, per se, what shade of blue a pixel in the sky is. If someone communicated in the game, all the various shades of every pixel, I would never defer to his expertise - it's off topic.
To conclude, I will only defer to another's expertise, if it's knowledge is imperative, and I don't regard that every known expert, is righteously known as an expert. Knowing the shade of every pixel in a game just means it's spent a lot of time with an available resource. Does it account for imperative knowledge?
Sometimes convention is wrong.
Nowadays this etimology only only apples to very old lady's breasts.
You harrassed him to first degree harm?
Or you are talking about your wife when she went into labour to bear your child.
When I was married to my ex-wife, she told me that the guy I beat had “fucked her best friend in her sleep.” I already didn’t like the guy because he would spend nights over at my house with my ex and her best friend when I was away. He also made fun of me for being “weak” for taking medications for depression and psychosis.
So when he called my house that same day that my ex told me that, I was irate and threatened him and told him to never come to my house again. Well, he showed up at my front door about an hour later with his buddy to kick my ass. I fought both of them, and his buddy cut my eye which I needed stitches for later (he was wearing rings). After his buddy cut my eye, I didn’t go down but yelled, “you fucker!” and I stood my ground. He must have been, well, I don’t know what he thought but he told me to fight the alleged rapist. I walked up to the guy and jacked him in the face, and I kept hitting him. He didn’t go down as I expected him to but kept ahold of my shirt with his clenched fist. So, I kept hitting him in a rage. Mind you I was rushing with adrenaline from the cut eye. He still didn’t go down but kept clutching my shirt. I finally stopped when his buddy said something. I can’t remember what he said, but I realized that I had done enough. His buddy helped him to their truck, and it was over.
This guy’s best friend from high school is a Sheriff’s deputy in that county. Even though I was never charged by the DA because no jury would ever convict me, I’ve been harassed by the police ever since. I’ve also been under surveillance ever since.
Oh well.
Other way around: knowledge is a form of belief. Justified true belief, traditionally, but it's recently come into question whether that is enough. But it's still necessary, even if not sufficient: to know something, it must be true, you must believe it, you must be justified in believing it, and maybe some other things too, still being debated. "Belief" is not a synonym for "faith".
Your username reminds me of how in the Lord of the Rings, the Elves, who openly perform what Men consider "magic", declare that there is no such thing as magic. Similarly, your username makes me imagine a being that many humans would call "God", declaring that there is no such thing as God. The resolution to both apparent paradoxes is that those with lesser knowledge see something mystical and supernatural, while the so-called "mystical" or "supernatural" beings themselves possess superior knowledge and know that everything about them is in fact perfectly natural and amenable to science.
All humans have “lesser knowledge”. We are all ignorant of what causes us to be conscious. Don’t fool yourself. Science cannot even answer this question as it deals with matter and energy and fields. Science can’t even prove to you that others aren’t philosophical zombies. Consciousness is not in science’s purview. Neither is God.
The problem must be that you don’t know yourself well enough, and that basically amounts to ignorance or the opposite of wisdom.
Why not just stick to assessing arguments rather than worrying whether the arguer is an expert or not? That is, why not just consult your reason? I think the problem is that you're focussing on the arguer, not the argument.
That's completely the wrong approach (if creationism is true, you'll made yourself blind to it). Forget who's making the argument and just assess it on its own merits.
Thanks, but I don’t know if I’m wise or reckless. It’s easier to be brave when you’ve been pushed into a corner with nothing to lose but your false freedom. Lies, lies, lies all around from the streetwalker all the way up to Congress, the President, CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. etc. etc.
Isn’t it refreshing to hear some honesty for a change?
What are you talking about? I wasn’t even addressing you.
This is because there are no objective or provable truths in philosophy; it is all opinion.
A lot of philosophy is systems-thinking and you can make right or wrong moves within systems.
My view has long been "when you can't work something out yourself, recognize the limits of your own knowledge and believe people who are clearly smarter than you", but I've almost never actually been on that side of the equation before, except in an educational setting where I've set aside the time and effort to dedicate to studying more and more until I can understand and critique the argument itself. But outside of the classroom a lot of people don't have the time or energy or opportunity or maybe just the intellectual ability to do that, to learn about every topic they're faced with until they can adequately understand explanations as to why they're wrong or else adequately argue that they're actually right. So now I'm questioning that long-held view.
Haha.
Is that all seagulls do?
I've always liked the voice of seagulls - such a beautiful chord.
And don't get me started on the grey seagulls.
I suppose you’ll have to trust me when I say that no one needs support in a confrontation with the forum clown.
But when they're not, then you shouldn't.
So take the creationist and the scientist. Well neither is an expert on metaphysics. Yet whether creationism is true or false is a metaphysical matter, not a scientific matter.
For example, reading 'The God Delusion' would be a big mistake if you wanted to find out whether a god exists or not. It is written by someone whose expertise is in biology, not metaphysics.
And reading Sam Harris's 'The Moral Landscape' would be a big mistake if you wanted to find out about the nature of morality, as he has no more than a BA in philosophy and no peer review publications in relevant journals in the area.
And so on.
Sounds reasonable. I think that pretty much sums it up. :cool:
Only metaphysicians are authoritative on the existence of a God? That doesn’t make sense.
You think a biologist is an expert on whether a god exists?
Have you read The God Delusion? If you have, and if you thought the one chapter in it dedicated to the question of whether God exists was a good chapter, written by an expert in the area who fully understood the arguments he was talking about, then I bet my house and everything in it that you are not a metaphysician.
It doesn't follow logically that anyone is such an expert.
Not all metaphysicians are experts on whether a god exists, but all those who are expert on whether a god exists are metaphysicians. And that does follow logically because, like I say, to be an expert on whether a god exists 'just is' to be an expert on a metaphysical question.
Take a course in any subject to you like, you won't deal rigorously with the question "does a god exist?" until or unless you take a course in philosophy. Specifically, philosophy of religion or 'western philosophy' or something like that.
It isn't studied in biology. It isn't studied in physics. It isn't studied in engineering, or architecture, or food science. Philosophy alone deals with it.
I trust you when you say that. I’m consistently reading into things that others don’t see. My doc says my mind plays tricks on me, but my ability to read people seems to me to work most of the time.
No it isn't.
Is your username Pfhorrest because you are an idiot?
Yes I agree, but do those systems have a direct connection to the real world? My answer is that no they don't.
You haven't proven that there are actual experts on the existence of god. You simply assert that if they do exist they are metaphysicists. I would concur, since in my opinion there are no experts in this regard.
I realize one might argue, via epistemology, that such a person doesn't meet jtb, say, but it seems to me an academic metaphysician, with what turns out to be a great deduction on paper, might have no experience of God at all. It's a bit like telling me I don't know my wife exists but some scientist who never met her does.
IOW I think you are correct about what those who are experts must be, I would just include people who are not academic experts on metaphysics.
Those are not equivalent claims. Someone could know that God exists, yet not be an expert on the question of whether God exists. For example, someone can know that they themselves exist, yet not be an expert on what selves are.
The point is just that the question of whether God exists is a question in metaphysics, not science. And so a scientist is not an expert on the matter - they won't know the ins and outs of the various arguments.
Well, I don't agree with that. To 'demonstrate' the existence of God an argument is needed. And it is metaphysicians who are in the business of discovering and assessing such arguments.
A true metaphysician is, as a philosopher, interested in what's true, not in promoting belief in God per se.
Quoting Coben
Again, I disagree. There are plenty of people here who know they exist, but have thoroughly confused ideas about what kind of a thing they are, due to being very stupid.
Quoting Coben
If someone wanted to find out about the arguments for God's existence then you most certainly should refer them to a philosophy department and it'd be mad not to - for it is in philosophy departments alone that these questions are rigorously explored by experts.
Note too that someone who was one justified in believing that God exists might, through encountering arguments against that belief - arguments that they do not know how to counter - come to be unjustified in their belief, and thereby lose their knowledge.
Knowing that God exists does not, I think, require knowing arguments for God's existence. But knowledge depends on the existence of a justification. You can be default justified in a belief, and that belief can be true, yet something can happen - one can, for instance, encounter what seems to be good evidence that the belief is false - and through that encounter the default justification can disappear. Thus, what one once knew, one knows no longer. The belief is still true, but now one is not justified in believing it. So knowing that God exists today, does not guarantee that you'll know he exists tomorrow.
Personally, I don't think most people come to belief in God via argument and texts. Most are born into it of course, but then of those who come to it later they generally sought it out and went to experts in the practices. They participated in the system. And I doubt many went to unviersities for this.Quoting BartricksYes, but that was not the point I was making. I don't think those arguments are a good way to demonstrate the truth of their conclusions. Quoting BartricksSure, could happen. Quoting BartricksThis cuts both ways. One can come across good heady arguments that make you want to deny what you have experienced and correctly interpreted. Obviously the ideal is a combination, but I think demonstrations - even if they must be hard earned over decades - are better than arguments.Quoting BartricksThinking that God exists because on paper it makes sense to you seems very fragile to me also. Frankly, even more fragile. And then, I am not sure what difference it makes, since it is not relational.
The wider context is that I don't think God can be demonstrated on paper, or proven to exist. However I do think practices can demonstrate it. So, I am disagreeing with your reactions to others - and I find some of their reactions confused at best - but going off on a tangent.
A builder is a creator of buildings.
A God is a creator of universes? No. That's not right. We need a new word for it.
God isn't a word we apply to a creator, it has a whole, non-scientific doctrine.
The new word should be defined: X: creator of universes.
When people conflate God, flexing it's meaning, it's annoying - that's suited better for X.
We don't need to rely on the Bible for X. Christians, not only rely on the Bible, but also conflate God to be used in contexts where it's not associated with the Bible.
Let's refresh ourselves.
The universe exists.
Does that mean something must have created it?
If yes...
Is this something God(a characterized creator as the Bible defines)? There is no current evidence to suggest it.
Is this something X, a creator of universes? Yes, we just don't know it personally.
Quoting Bartricks
A metaphysician can necessarily only make metaphysical claims about the existence of God. A biologist, on the other hand, can offer physical evidence supporting or disproving metaphysical claims. For instance, biological evolution appears to contradict claims made about God. Even fields of study like history and sociology have a lot to say about the existence of God.
I'd say that they do. Philosophers serve on ethics boards. These boards guide what can or cannot happen within, say, medicine. Over time most of the west is moving away from religion and if these atheistic or secular thinkers can lay forth compelling cases for new forms of secular morality then I think we're going to see drastic shifts in, well for one, medical ethics but also many, many other areas.
If you look at the effective altruist movement many of the leaders in that movement are philosophers. that movement is starting to catch on in the public eye and it's very much created by philosophy phds.
the world is moving away from religion whether we like it or not, someone's going to have to create new accounts of morality, truth, reason, etc.
A god's existence can be proved, and God's existence can be shown to be more reasonably believed than not. But the point here is not whether it can or cannot be, but simply to note that the whole issue is one in metaphysics, not physics, not biology, not chemistry, not psychology, not theology.
Again, it is metaphysicians who search for arguments for and against such matters and metaphysicians who carefully assess these arguments. They do not just pronounce, but analyse. And if you want to learn about the arguments - and truly understand whether they do or do not work - it is in metaphysics alone (broadly construed) that you do so.
Er, no. That's a metaphysical claim, and it is false.
Those expert on the issue of whether God does or does not exist are metaphysicians. But it does not follow that everything a metaphysician might say about God's existence is metaphysical.
The metaphysical implications of discoveries made in the empirical sciences is a matter metaphysicians, not scientists, are expert on. (But because many academics are hacks and know full well that the ignorant public do not know exactly what they are or are not expert on, they think nothing of writing confident garbage on topics outside their areas of expertise and flogging them to the likes of you).
Whether a god exists or not is a metaphysical question.
The implications of evolution by natural selection for that question is a metaphysical question.
the implications of evolution by natural selection for morality is also, for instance, a metaphysical question (metaethics being a branch of metaphysics).
the implications of morality for the existence of a god is a metaphysical question.
And on and on and on.
These are metaphysical questions investigated by metaphysicians. They're the experts. But there's no law stopping those with no expertise in the area pronouncing on them - and they do. And there is no law stopping others who lack expertise believing everything they say and believing, falsely, that biologists, physicians and psychologists are all experts in these matters. Being stupid is not yet against the law.
Anyway, you, for instance, are clearly not a metaphysician. Yet you are confident that the empirical sciences do investigate questions such as whether a god exists. I rest my case. Just know that when you take biology thinking you'll be investigating whether a god exists, you're in for a big disappointment.
Support this far-reaching pronouncement with a logical argument. Apply your favorite tool of reason, please.
I know I am lacking the credentials, but please display this "proof." Others here may very well be metaphysicians and may be eager to process this information. Thanks. :nerd:
Quoting Bartricks
If the existence of God is a metaphysical question then how can any claim about it be anything else but a metaphysical claim? If the claim were somehow supported by science.
Quoting Bartricks
I'm not aware of any such studies. I wrote that science can support or debunk metaphysical claims. Your reading comprehension could use more attention, my friend.
I do not understand what you are saying. "If the existence of God is a metaphysical question" - "the existence of God" is not a question. Does God exist? Is a question - a metaphysical question.
People with no expertise in metaphysics have views on it. But having views on something is not the same as being an expert on the matter.
A biologist who insists God does not exist, is no different from a baker who insists God does not exist - they're both talking outside their area of expertise and only a fool would take their claim that God does not exist to have some kind of special authority.
And similarly, a biologist who is confident that the metaphysical implications of his/her discoveries in biology are that God does not exist is, once more, someone who is talking outside their area of expertise, just as a baker who thinks his/her baking discoveries imply God does not exist would be too.
Quoting praxis
Again - the implications of scientific discoveries for metaphysical matters is itself a metaphysical matter.
Do you have any expertise in metaphysics? Do you have a PhD in the area or publications in peer review journals in the area? Or are you someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, but isn't letting that stop them - an empty kettle?
I'll try to make it simpler for you. If a metaphysician made a claim about whether or not God exists, would that not be a metaphysical claim?
To make it simpler for you - you earlier made ludicrous claim that
Quoting Bartricks
That. Is. False. Do you know what 'necessarily' means?
I'll answer your question if you answer mine. :smile:
Now, a) do you have any credentials in this area at all?
If true, you should be able to give an example. I won’t hold my breath.
Quoting Bartricks
No, and worse, I probably have below average intelligence.
Well, it doesn't follow from it being true that I should be able to give an example. But meh. As for an example, the claim "God's existence makes me feel lovely" is not metaphysical, yet it is about God's existence.
Quoting praxis
Yes, that sounds about right.
Remember you're trying to support the claim that metaphysicians are the authorities on the subject. This suggests otherwise. Surely metaphysicians can say things of more substance, yes?
er, no it doesn't. You're not getting this are you. You don't need to 'remind' me. Why don't you remember what you admitted in the last post.
To make it clearer for you: you no teacher. You pupil. Pupil listen, not blurt. Pupil learn, not try teach teacher.
Metaphysicians are experts on the question of whether a god, or God, exists. If you had any expertise in this area, you'd know that.
If you were above average intelligence you'd also realise that it does not follow from this that everything a metaphysician might say about God's existence is metaphysical. For instance, if a metaphysician said that "the existence of God makes me feel lovely" then they have said something about God's existence that is not metaphysical. Thus your claim that anything a metaphysician says about God's existence is metaphysical is false.
Are they acting in the capacity of a metaphysical authority when they say such things? No. So why don't you give a relevant example, being the expert that you are?
No.
Quoting praxis
An example of what, exactly, Pratis?
I also didn't claim to be an expert. That you are not an expert does not entail that I am.
Dementia?
A metaphysician making a claim about God's existence that's not metaphysical. Something relevant that might support the claim that metaphysicians are authoritative on the subject, if that's not too much trouble.
No relevant example, how piteous.
~ Karl Popper
Well, I can't do that as anyone who isn't as thick as a thick thing on thick day would know.
Or do you want an example of a metaphysician saying something about God's existence that isn't metaphysical?
Well I did that: a metaphysician who says "God's existence makes me feel lovely" has made a claim about God's existence that isn't metaphysical.
Look, why don't I just draw you a unicorn and you can colour it in?
Can I color it both pink and invisible?
Metaphysics deals with what's in the universe.
God isn't really in the universe. I don't think they're authoritive on some fantasy unless they're atheist.
What do you think, you can answer yes or no to the God problem through metaphysics?
Then the answer is Atheism.
How hypnotic of you.
:100: :party: We have a winner!
I suppose my basic point is that metaphysicians are essentially theorists. Theorists are not authoritative in nature but speculative. No matter how well reasoned a theory might be, it is still just a theory.
I wonder how many metaphysical ideas have been off the mark. I guess that's the beauty of being a metaphysician, no one really cares when a theory is wrong.
Safe to say that much of what passes as definitive scientific truth today is wrong. What I love about Popper is that he is so...balanced. The most important thing to remember about science is it is only ever approximate. Otherwise you end up with Scientism.
And we care when it's wrong because it has real-life consequences. When speculation is wrong it's quickly forgotten because it's just one theory out of many, none of which are known to be true.
Speculation can be valued but it's not authoritative. How could it be? I'd ask @Bartricks but he's become infatuated with coloring books.
I think by definition speculation is not authoritative, otherwise it becomes dogma?
Speculation isn’t authoritative. For example, I speculate that the amount of ad homs coming from you have a direct correlation to your level of insecurity, but I’m no expert.
Exactly. Take a moment to reflect on what that actually means.
You know when someone says "I'm not a racist, but...." We all now know that we're about to hear something horribly racist, yes?
When someone says "I'm no expert, but..." we all know that the person believes with total confidence in the truth of whatever follows that 'but' and doesn't think anyone knows more about it than themselves.
That's you that is.
I don’t have the background or enough information to accurately determine the level of your insecurity. I speculated, as I said. Your amount of ad homs is remarkably high. There is some explanation for why you rely so heavily on logical fallacies. But I could care less. I’d rather you acknowledge that speculation isn’t authoritative or address the point in some way.
It certainly could become dogmatic, and cease speculation.
Expert or know-nothing. This doesn’t demonstrate good critical thinking.
You wouldn't know a good critical thinker from a bad one. The only distinction you'd draw is between one you agree with and one you don't, yes?
I didn’t claim that you were a good or bad critical thinker. I said that something you wrote demonstrated poor critical thinking. Logical fallacies, for that matter, demonstrate poor critical thinking. But it could be that you realize your fallacies and are doing it intentionally for some reason. I can’t imagine a good reason but you may have one nevertheless.
Why? What would the point be? I mean...
You are here to tell us what it means, even when it comes from another's pen.
Sigh...
Experts are generally specialized... They are often called "experts" in a field, in some specific 'domain of discourse', I suppose you could say. Either way, generally... experts are specialized...
...you like that?
:wink:
So...
An expert in a field(at a minimum) is familiar with the current knowledge base in that field. They well may also be familiar with the history of that field. One's expertise can be said to run parallel to one's knowledge of that field. An expert in metaphysics would be one who knows about 'metaphysics' as a subject matter.
But...
If the field has been wrong for centuries...
So too is the expert, usually. It's not always the case though. For example, an expert in metaphysics can reject much of the convention agreement of his/her time. Nonetheless... experts can be wrong.
In philosophy, it seems quite readily evident to me - when it comes to my forte - than many are.
He's jerking your chain...
This does not negate the fact that we can and do give our true self because we don't need to hide it.
Whether our true self is the emotional content that governs us in expressions of philosophy, is actually true or not, is not debatable; we give our true self whether we know what it is or not.
In fact, most people here on the board, if not all of us, think of ourselves as the smartest, wittiest person. For one. We also think we are each always right. Obviously neither of these two statements are true for all of us. But our true self dictates that we think so.
So our true self... is not what the truth IS about our own personality and persona and reactions, but what WE perceive of our own selves of our persona.
This is a difficult concept and I accept if you can't see it. The "true" self is as used by you, @praxis and by me, are not the same concepts. You equated "your true self" as "how you really are"; I equate "your true self" more in a literary sense (not literally, but figuratively) to "do what your impulses dictate you to do without holding back".
What a brilliant piece of analysis. Do say more.
Quoting creativesoul
Really? I never realized. Me learn lots. clap clap.
Quoting creativesoul
Hm, that's a bit of a thinker.
Partly right. It would be like showing a Rembrandt to a dog. But also it would be off topic.
Why is it so much better to explain an experience as hallucinations or wishful thinking than to accept it as an experience of God? If you’re a physicalist, then you would call it a hallucination. If you believe that consciousness is an essential part of existence, then you are probably more open to God. Neither philosophy is provable. I happen to find one of the two more compelling personally.
Unfortunately the term God invokes strong prejudices on both sides. So replace god with ? and I'd agree. The cosmic unknown maybe?
As far as the ongoing pissing match, appeal to authority is generally a poor argument and can itself be a fallacy. Experts validate their credentials through the inherent strength of their actions or arguments, they don't rely on them for validation.
A person wants to take the elevatore to the top floor of the building. But he is invisible. He can not exert force on the world, but he can hear, see, and smell the world. He can touch, but he can't exert force.
How is he going to go up to the top floor on the elevator, if he can't push the buttons?
His only chance is to ride up with someone who will push the button to the top floor.
He can't ask anyone to push it. He can't tell anyone anything, but he hears everyone talk, and he sees everyone.
A god-experience is a bit like that. It's fully experienced, fully realized, but it can't go outside the system of the experiencer. He will never be able to tell anyone "go to the top floor", even if god is waiting for them there. The inivisible man is jumping up and down in frustration, screaming at the top of his lungs, "push the friggin' button to the top floor" and nobody pays him any notice.
1. A newt.
2. A two-headed snake.
3. Medusa.
4. Me. Me, me, me!!!!
5. Peter Goddard. (Not much adjustment in spelling is required.)
6. A piano.
7. Sticky glue.
8. Air.
9. Many people who believe in him.
10, Another god.
No argument from me.
Quoting Pantagruel
Of course. Many people have had bad experiences with religion, especially the Christian religion. I think that is mainly the fault of the preachers and evangelists. “God” shouldn’t invoke such resentment from so many people. I think it’s bad experiences with believers that make God so controversial. “God” is just a term when it comes down to it. Even believers in God know nothing of what He is like. If you want to call it the “cosmic unknown” to avoid controversy with your atheistic acquaintances, then have at it.
You omitted my option. Surely no one would deny the role of the unknown in stimulating discovery.
We have to pick our spots in terms of gaining expertise and when to trust experts and, in the end, also have to develop our intuition - when to get a third opinion, when to distrust consensus or majority expert opinion, when it's time to become an expert or at least a more knowledgeable layperson in a field, when to trust the marginalized expert, when to doubt the mainstream opinion and more.
I agree that if we are trying to see who has the arguments about the existence of God, we should head to metaphysicians (who might or might not be experts in other fields).
I just don't think it's a good heuristic for developing one's own belief or developing a relationship with God or unlearning certain modes of experiencing/not noticing.
I omitted your option on purpose. Nothing is good enough to replace god. God does nothing. It has no purpose, no action, no visible effect on the universe. So if you took nothing, and put it in god's place, you'd get the same world, absolutely unchanged.
If he does it long enough he may begin to believe his own crap.
Note that sometimes when people argue, their words are spontaneous(I know because I have done it); instinctively, we think we know. Again, sometimes, sometimes I know.
If a man in a third world nation somewhere stood up to an oppressive military regime because of his belief in God, inspiring a revolution and freedom, would that be nothing? Things like this have happened. Granted, it is the "idea of God" but, really anything that anyone does is because of "the idea of" something, not because of the thing itself.
True.
Quoting god must be atheist
False. I tend to regard it as emptiness.
Quoting god must be atheist
And this is why you fit the role of the forum clown so well.
11. The manifestation of an illusion.
You expressed in an earlier post your conviction that God's existence could not be demonstrated rationally. That's really neither here nor there, but nevertheless I did not want to let it pass and so I expressed my justified belief that it can be demonstrated rationally, for I have done precisely that here - that is, demonstrated it rationally (not this thread, but elsewhere). Or so I think.
As to my view not being accepted by the majority of experts in the field - well that's true in one sense and false in another. It is false in that the majority of expert metaphysicians do, actually, accept that God's existence can be demonstrated, or at least shown to be more reasonable than not. You are confusing the current crop of expert metaphysicians with 'all' expert metaphysicians. But there have been expert metaphysicians for millennia. And most have thought God's existence can rationally be demonstrated. So, that's the sense in which what you say is just false. Among those whose expertise is not in question - among those whose brilliance is undisputed - there is a broad consensus that God's existence can be demonstrated.
The specific proof that I was talking about, however, is not currently widely known. So we cannot really look to the expert community's judgement about it, for it has not yet been formed. Academic publications are not widely read, so the whole process from discovery to academic respectability is a very long and drawn-out one. As such lack of widespread current acceptance doesn't really tell you anything important about the credibility of the argument.
If it was a widely known argument, and if the majority of the expert community, being aware of it, has judged it to fail, then I grant that would provide non-experts with prima facie reason to think it probably doesn't work.
But this thread is about expertise. So we can put the specifics of the proof aside and just consider things in the abstract and think about what it would be reasonable to believe in light of an expert judgement.
Say an expert in a field thinks he/she has made a discovery in that field. You - a non-expert - think that X is the case. But this expert in the field is very confident that X is not the case. His evidence has yet to become widely known in the field and so it has not yet been widely scrutinized.
What should you, as a reasonable person, now think? You know that this person knows a lot, lot more about this matter than you. And you know as well that this person is very confident that X is not the case (which is unusual, because normally experts are more circumspect).
Well, I think you should take very seriously that X is not the case.
Secret knowledge. I look forward to the revelation, although I may be ill-equipped to critique it. :chin:
Interesting. Have you ever read Freud's "Future of an Illusion"?
1. Prescriptions of Reason exist
2. All prescriptions have a mind that issues them.
3. Therefore, the prescriptions of Reason have a mind that issues them.
4. None of the prescriptions of Reason are issued by my mind (and that applies to you too, of course)
5. Therefore, the prescriptions of Reason have a mind that issues them, and the mind in question is not my mind, or your mind.
That mind - Reason's mind - is a god, and with a few more steps it becomes more reasonable than not to suppose that the mind in question is 'God' (where 'God' is taken to be a mind who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent).
Quoting jgill
Yes. I predict, like I say, that you will either end up questioning the probative value of any argument for anything, or you will dismiss the argument on the grounds that it has premises that entail its conclusion (which, I suppose, amounts to the same thing).
You are saying you regard yourself as emptiness.
That's actually right on the dot.
I see. Your doctor wrote you a prescription for you to become reasonable.
I have news for you. The prescription failed.
Chances are the man would stand up to his oppressive regime because he does not fancy living in an oppressive regime. God has nothing to do with hating oppressive regimes. In fact, god will teach him (the scriptures, that is), that all authority derives from god. The person in the oppressed status in the other country will first obey the teachings of his scriptures or his inner voice that demands a fairer treatment. If he obeys the scriptures, he obeys god. But the scriptures say "obey your authority, for all authority derives from god." But the guy does not obey authority; hence, therefore, he is not obeying god.
Your entire simile failed. People don't rebel because of god. They rebel because they figure their lives sould be better.
My example (it wasn't a simile) didn't fail, you disputed the premise, which is a long way from invalidating it. Cheers.
Well, no, I tend to regard everything as empty.
Actually, no. Reason is a gift from a god since we are endowed but not capable of conceiving. Sounds a tad like archaic Greek logic. When, according to Jaynes, thoughts were god-given.
But I'm sure I have missed the more subtle features of the argument. Color me embarrassed. :yikes:
Quoting jgill
You missed it in its entirety. Bad dog!!
This is the classic 'god of the gaps' argument.
Does ignorance = god?
No it isn't. I don't think you know what you're talking about.
Do you have any formal qualifications in philosophy?
Please display yours. If they exist I'm not seeing much evidence. :gasp:
But then, I have almost none, so what do I know? (I can guess your reply) :sad:
That's because you don't have them. The argument I just presented is a proof of a god's existence. But you don't recognise that, because you don't know what a proof of a god's existence would look like when it's at home. Someone with credentials would or would at least know what to do to test whether we've got the real-deal on our hands.
Quoting jgill
You guessed correctly.
Makes me regret not having those mysterious credentials you may or may not have that would allow you and I to debate issues that may or may not resonate with those who consider themselves authorities, but may not be. I feel defective. :cry:
I had one semester of senior-level philosophy. You?
My prof laughed at metaphysics. Although I proposed Leibniz's monads to him as a legitimate metaphysical actuality. I think it is. :smirk:
And Jesus said to him, "Again, it is written, 'You shall not test the Lord, your God.'"
Matthew 4:7
That can and does happen.
This from Wikipedia: "God of the gaps" is a theological perspective in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of God's existence.
BTW I hope you realise that ad hominems are a disappointing tactic used by people who cannot put forward any rational argument.
Rubbish.
What if you believe there is no god? Then would this directive not lose its punch?
My goodness gracious. I read this as follows:
My prof laughed at metaphysics. Although I proposed Leibniz's gonads to him as a legitimate metaphysical actuality. I think it is.
I had to look up what a monad was, and I got lost in the text.
I am coming slowly to the realization that all the great philosophers talked about one thing, and one thing only, and they gave that one thing different names, each their own creation of a name, and that's the only reason we think they are saying different things.
Here's looking at you, Bartricks:
Can someone congenial prescribe a god to a non-believer? Can a proof be so shallow that ducks even won't wade in it? Can someone ask questions if he is only able to do that in lieu of coherent speech and thought?
If this means he or she thought it was all ridiculous, well that's a metaphysical stance and not an easy one to defend either. Further, metaphysics is present within scientific disciplines, certainly physics, but in others as well.
But perhaps your professor just really loved metaphysics and that's where the laughter came from.
Well, to be fussy, no, I don't think that's the case. I have seen people mount excellent arguments and use ad homs. It might be a tactic used by someone who cannot put forward a rational argument or it might not.
The study of the fundamental nature of things.
Quoting BartricksMost of those metaphysicians were living in times where your profession, life, family were all in jeopardy if one openly believed there was no God. They were likely trained and evaluated by believers whose lives, families and professional lives were similarly dependent on that.
I realize that today there are now counterpressures, which lead to biases in the other direction, though not generally against one's life and family. And an academic metaphysician can probably hold their job if they openly believe in God and even if they assert they have or have read a proof.
For me outside the expertise, I see a lack of consensus withing experts. In college, decades ago, I wrestled with some of the proofs, perhaps not the one you find convincing, and found they did not work. I would have been allowed, in that context, to find them correct. At least one of my professors was a theist. I also had a general reaction that deduction at that level can seem perfectly convincing but turn out not to be the case. I would say I was a strong and clever student but no genius and never became an expert.
From my position, I find a lack of consensus.
And experts often say those experts are not really experts - I do this also, both when I am an expert and as a layperson even. But here I am in a position where I need to use processes that are experiential - some coming of themselves, others the products of long practice. I think most people are in that position.
Quoting Bartricks
It certainly doesn't rule it out. At all. But here we are, without expert consensus or majority in favor of it. I am focused what the in situ situation for most people is. I am not saying the proof you consider a proof is wrong (I read it quickly and the only conclusion I can draw so far is that one person has no idea what a God of the gaps argument is and is not). I am focused on position most people are in. But as I expressed earlier, I don't really see this as a problem. I think experience is a great way to learn.Quoting BartricksI have had this experience in a wide variety of fields. Medicine might provide a good example, let's see.Quoting BartricksI think it works better if it is a consensus of experts, and I tend to take it seriously. But they've been wrong. I have the unpleasant but highly educational experience of a child where the supposed experts on the mind/body treated a member of my family for their emotional (and practical) troubles. The police and the courts were involved so there were experts from other fields confirming that the experts making decisions about my family members were the relevant and best experts. My gut feeling was it was wrong. My family member's gut feeling was that it was wrong. I investigated, during differnet periods and filled out my critique of consensus with more knowledge and also found fringe experts who supported my position. I became very confident that there was a systematic/paradigmatic problem. Now I took the experts opinions seriously. In fact, I and we had to. But beyond that I don't find it easy, in some new situation, to dismiss experts, unless I have already dismissed them over a longer period of time.
But we are always in position of having to trust our intuitions, in different ways and to different degrees. I do not leave over power to experts easily, especially if the risk is high and I have time and my gut says not to. If we study the history of many disciplines including ones that are supposed to be free of bias like science, we can see that minority opinions have turned out to be correct or better. And especially if I see clues that there are paradigmantic biases in the consensus they seem unaware of or, for example, motives to hold onto a way of looking at something other than evidence of solid deduction, I can often start with a very strong rejection stance, even if they are the experts and I haven't even found one fringe expert to help me flesh out my particular position.
More, of course.
Quoting jgill
So you think, like me, that everything that exists is made of indivisible, simple entities? Good!
Erm, hmm, okaaay. Not really an answer to my question, but okay.
Well certainly experts can make mistakes (and expert philosophers spend a great deal of time pointing each other's mistakes out). But so too do those who lack expertise. And of course, those who lack expertise make the mistakes far, far more often.
And I agree that if there is a consensus among experts that X is a proof of God, then other things being equal non-experts are more justified in believing that X is a proof of God than if it is one expert alone who is saying that X is a proof of God.
But in this hypothetical situation, if one expert says that X is a proof of God, and what this expert is saying is not positively contradicted by a consensus of experts (because the other experts simply haven't scrutinized the argument yet), then a non-expert should take seriously that X is a proof of God.
I mean, why shouldn't they? If the expert really is an expert, then they know their beans. They've spent years and years thinking about these matters - far more than a non-expert. So they're far less likely to mistake a proof of God for something that isn't one. Non-experts do that kind of thing all the time. Their 'proofs' are the work of an afternoon, not thousands and thousands of hours. They've read one or two things - probably popular books and Wikipedia entries - not hundreds of peer reviewed articles and a pile of dry academic books. And they're used to being cautious and to checking and rechecking their arguments - for their career depends on them doing so. That's part of what expertise involves - it involves doing all the tedious checking and cross checking, reading and re-reading - that non-experts just can't be bothered doing (not a criticism of course - it is why we have experts).
So, given all that, even if one solitary expert says that X is a proof of God, then even if that supposed poof has not been verified by other experts, a non-expert should still take seriously that X may be a proof of God.
Expert philosophers make mistakes, but not as many as non-experts, and so other things being equal it is wise to trust the expert over the non-expert.
Wikipedia? What next? You going to quote from some toilet cubicle graffiti?
Wikipedia is not written by experts. It isn't peer reviewed. You could write a Wikipedia entry, yes? So how is quoting from Wikipedia quoting from any kind of authority?
Well no.
If the quote from wikipedia is not attributable because it should be considered original research, then it will probably already have been flagged as such in the page itself. If not, the sources mentioned in the page may not support the quote. That is also possible. Otherwise, the quote can be considered to be sound.
Quoting Bartricks
How exactly do you know that?
If you cannot justify that this particular quote was not written by an expert, then your own views are certainly not the ones of an expert.
Furthermore, who decides who is an expert and who isn't?
By using the one or the other citation carousel?
Quoting Bartricks
How exactly do you know that?
Did you verify the page's revision history?
Did you compile that information from the talk section for the page?
Quoting Bartricks
You would still have to follow the regulations of the wikipedia regulatory framework. Do you know its rules and how they are enforced? If not, then you are yourself not an expert on wikipedia.
Quoting Bartricks
So, how is your own opinion any kind of authority on Wikipedia?
Seriously, what do you even "know" about Wikipedia?
Do you happen to be familiar with the MediaWiki source code (at github)? Can you even read it? Not that it is particularly hard, but you really sound like someone who does not need to read anything but still knows everything.
Seriously, what exactly do you actually "know"? You may think you "know" it, but in the end, just like in the case of Wikipedia, you obviously know fuck all.
Even if it were possible to test, I don’t anyone would actually want to prove that God exists, basically because the only meaningful God is a human God or some sort of ‘sky father’ figure that is relatable. An incomprehensible God is meaningless and the most essential ingredient of religion is meaning.
Quoting BartricksSure, but there's no hurry. And it's not like a situation with a dentist where one can already have experience, as a layperson, with credentials and dentists who are licenced and perhaps even check what others have said. With a metaphysics expert, it would almost take an expert to know if the other is an expert. You could check their education, sure. But then to know that their dissertation was actually in metaphysics or a relevant area. And perhaps they are every strong at certain kinds of explication but not necessarily proofs. Perhaps they are strong on evaluation other people's ideas, but not their own. Perhaps they have a bias related to their own desires, either way. It's not like experts in a number of other fields with more concrete results that can be looked at.
I would trust a metaphysics expert, in general, when judging an argument or essay in metaphysics, over my own ability to judge such an argument in a thorough way. But that's in general, over a bunch of arguments. I would not put their ability outside of that area above my abilities. IOW I would value my experiences, in this case, and what I have learned through practice and direct experience at least equal to their ability to draw the correct conclusion on paper. I am not saying laypeople in general. I am saying my ability.Quoting Bartricks
Sure, we do. But in my case I see it in most cases as choosing between Quoting BartricksGood arguments, not necessarily correct conclusions. They can have their office across the hall from someone who is also skilled with arguments and who has at the same time completely different opinions, sometimes over things where more direct empirical evidence plays a role in the issue.Quoting Bartricks
Take is seriously, I guess. I would likely respect it as the product of skilled thought. In my experience people overestimate what deductive arguments that are quite abstract but are not symbolic, for example, are capable of. So, I'd have a healthy dose of skepticism.
And, yes, it does take time for an idea to reach consensus in philosophy. On the other hand an argument that should convince any metaphysics expert should be making the rounds. It would be an earthshattering proof. I would think it would have a buzz around it, and certain some acquaintance supporters in the expert community. If not now, if just written say, then soon.
And if we are told that there is closemindedness amongst the experts, well, this cuts into the argument that I as a layperson should trust experts on these issues.
And then there is the alternative: direct immersion in experiences and practices.
Proves beyond a reasonable doubt that one can be formally educated and be quite wrong, and thus not an expert... unless experts can be wrong... oh wait!
They can... and you are.
Then metaphysics is best left to the physicists and not the incoherent ramblings of philosophers who have no understanding of physics.
I consider wikipedia a very good source for introductory material on many math topics. If a topic is fairly popular, it is likely to be accurate. For minor topics not quite so accurate at times. The same can be said of peer reviewed articles, having been there and done that while active. :cool:
Well, you do have a point. Philosophy is all about opinions and as such is personal. But this doers not mean that the ideas presented cannot be evaluated entirely on their own merit and, particularly on a forum such as this, the integrity of the poster be respected.
For a person not to do so is an indication that they are not so much interested in exploring the ideas of philosophy as they are determined to preserve their own opinions.
Once a discussion has devolved into ad hominems, it is the end of the discussion.
The point here, though, given that this thread is on expertise, is that if an expert - a metaphysician - believes there is such an argument, then other things being equal non-experts have good reason to think he/she is correct, even if what the expert is saying contradicts what they believe, for they haven't thought about it as much or as well as the expert has.
The classic opinion of a non-expert. "Experts are no better than us non-experts" Er, no. Experts can be wrong. But that's true of non-experts as well. And non-experts are wrong a lot more often - they're not experts after all.
Gibberish.
Quoting alcontali
Well, because there's nothing in it for them. Why would an expert write a Wikipedia page? It isn't peer reviewed, so it won't count for anything. I mean, I suppose they might if they wanted to just promote themselves - they could cite their own articles a lot or make out they're a bigger name than they are or something - but then that this might be the sort of motivation that could drive an expert to devote some of their valuable time to writing Wikipedia pages only underlines why such pages are unreliable.
Quoting alcontali
It isn't peer reviewed by academic standards. Hence why an academic wouldn't cite such pages in their work and why students are told not to cite them in their work.
Quoting alcontali
I think someone exactly like that would think what you've just said is true.
Quoting alcontali
Do you, by any chance, write Wikipedia pages? If the answer is 'yes', then case closed.
To me it seems better to just call out the ad hom, even with some passion, but not present as logical conclusions things that are not.
It's not really God of Gaps. The list a metaphysical postion things do not depend upon our mind. Questions of whether things have been explained in our mind hasn't been touched. God of gaps would need the supposition that when things appeared to us, they are inexplicable or unexplained.
All we have in the list is the fact our minds are not equivalent to what is true. We might reason about many things, but it is not that we are reasoning about them which makes that reason true.
There is a mistake in the list, an equivocation between the defintion of reason and the mind of a God. Thinking of a God is in a no different postion than us: reason cannot be instances of the existence of a God either, for reasons is always true, not just when a God might happen to think about it.
But I don't think any expert in metaphysics would deny that, historically, most expert metaphysicians - including most of the undisputed best - have thought that God's existence could either be proved or shown to be overall more reasonable than not. They may not themselves think that God's existence has been proved or shown to be more reasonable than not, but they will agree that the bulk of the best have thought the opposite.
Note too, the quality of the metaphysician counts for a lot. Let's say 100 third rate expert metaphysicians think that there is no good case for God's existence. But 5 of the very best metaphysicians - as judged by the harshest of all critics: time - think that there is a good case for God's existence. Well, then despite the difference in numbers it is probably wiser to think the 5 are correct than the 100 third-raters.
Of course, comparing cohorts is not how one does metaphysics - one has to assess arguments on their own merits. The point, though, is that for non-experts the fact that the majority of great metaphysicians have judged God's existence either to be rationally demonstrable, or to be more reasonable than not, provides them with good reason to suppose that this is in fact the case, even if they - non-experts - can't see why, or believe otherwise, or find what some other non-expert has said on the matter more convincing.
Quoting Coben
I don't think you do. It is surely sufficient for a non-expert to have reason to believe there is a proof of the existence of a god that an expert has said so, especially when the proof in question has not yet been assessed by other experts.
Say you are in some kind of a diamond hall and the diamond experts are sat at their tables sifting through piles of diamonds and paste fakes, putting diamonds in one pile on their respective desks and paste fakes in the other.
You go up to one of these tables. There is a pile on the left marked 'diamonds' and a pile on the right marked 'paste'. Stones have been put in these respective piles by one expert - the expert sat at this particular desk. So no other expert apart from this one has inspected these stones. And it is also well known that diamond experts do sometimes - though far more rarely than any non-expert would - mistake a paste diamond for the real deal. Nevertheless, as a non-expert yourself you surely have very good reason to think that a stone taken from the pile marked 'diamonds' will be a diamonds and not paste? And that's the case no matter whose table you go to.
Now imagine you go to a 'God proof hall' full of expert metaphysicians sat at tables sifting pieces of paper into two trays on their respective tables. In each case one tray is marked 'proof of God' and the other 'not a proof of God'. You look around the room. On all of the tables bar one, there is nothing in the 'proof of God' tray. Do you have reason to think that the piece of paper in the pile marked 'proof of God' in the tray on that one metaphysician's table is a proof of God?
I think you should take seriously that it is. It hasn't been checked by the others, and even experts make mistakes. But still.
Mathematics is a social or community endeavor to a large extent. And, yes, many experts from that community pay attention to what is written on their areas' Wiki pages, correcting mistakes and contributing info. The only other subject I'm familiar with is climbing, and, there, things are not quite as disciplined, but still mostly accurate.
Several years ago there was an effort to compare the accuracy of articles on the same subject appearing in Encyclopedia Britannica(online) and Wikipedia. If I recall correctly, in general Wikipedia was slightly more accurate than EB.
In ancient Greece a bolt of lightning was reasoned to be due to Zeus. Reason evolves.
Now you assume that some kind of incentive psychology that would govern the behaviour of all experts. How do you justify that? Where is the paperwork with the justification that we can mechanically verify?
Furthermore, I can give you a simple counterexample.
An anonymous author, named Tom Elvis Jedusor, published his MimbleWimble whitepaper in July 2016, which later on turned out to be an impressive breakthrough in the cryptocurrency field:
https://scalingbitcoin.org/papers/mimblewimble.txt
Why did he publish this anonymously, if according to your incentive psychology he would never be able to benefit personally from doing that?
Quoting Bartricks
According to academic standards, students are supposed to be paying off their student loans for another 14 years after graduation. That is an incredible scam that is busy destroying the lives of the millions of students who believe in that so-called "academic standard".
After everything is said and done concerning the student-loan scam, the academic world will simply have destroyed itself. You can already treat it today for what it truly is: a dangerous scam.
Quoting Bartricks
No, I am merely a user/reader of Wikipedia pages. I am grateful to the people who volunteer their time to maintain this incredible knowledge database.
I am not grateful to the academic world for destroying the youth of the world with student loans meant to fund their participation in the gigantic promiscuity fest that is college, and getting them to graduate with a worthless degree that will only get them a job at Starbucks. Seriously, the world is better off without that dangerous scam, called "the academic world".
I am also mostly a user of free and open-source software. I am grateful to the people who volunteer their time to maintain the linux kernel, the gnu operating system, its wonderful applications, and so on. According to your incentive psychology these things should not even exist, but they certainly do.
So you say... but how can we trust this if "Reason evolves" is not true?
If "reason evolves" does not carry across times, then there will be instances in which lightening is still being generated by Zeus.
Most of my publishing was done years ago, before Wikipedia, and I don't read the journals very much anymore. So I can't say with any degree of accuracy. But times are rapidly changing, and in the past I have found mistakes in reviewed articles, so I would guess that in time Wikipedia will be cited if merely to acquaint a reviewer with arcane material or the latest breakthroughs.
The entire structure of reviewing, refereeing, and dissemination should change and should put journal publishers out of business. This should be an age of open, free discussions. :chin:
Also, since every claim in Wikipedia besides things like "the sky is blue" are supposed to be cited to reliable sources, there's really no reason to ever cite Wikipedia directly: just cite whoever it cites instead. If a claim in a wiki article doesn't cite a more reliable source, then maybe that particular claim isn't so reliable, and probably shouldn't be cited in something that's supposed to be professional.
But in a casual conversation like this, Wikipedia is generally very reliable, especially about anything big and contentious, because anyone who disagrees with a claim will fight to remove it and whoever has the best reliable citations to secondary sources will win.
On the other hand the proliferation of online journals with weak refereeing standards exacerbates problems.
You're a bit boring - to me - to be an expert. A very talented rhetorician though. Gifted, perhaps, in the art of persuasion. A keen eye for using certain fallacious means at the appropriate time.
Or...
I'm overestimating your mental grasp upon the world, yourself, and your place in it. Could be that I have it wrong as well. Your participation on this forum could be the one activity that keeps you thinking positively about yourself. I mean, some folk find picking on other people to be an acceptable worthwhile ability/habit/personality trait.
Now, you're attempting to use the notion of "expert" as a means of what... exactly? Self comfort?
:kiss:
A rhetorical means of devaluing another person's thoughts on matters... matters of God notwithstanding...
Appeal to authority - "I'm an expert, and you're not" - "Experts are mistaken less often than non-experts" - "I'm an expert, and you're not" - is wrong for very good Reason.
:rofl:
As is poisoning the well.
I think that I remember him saying that he’s not an expert. His tactics are indeed tedious though.
On what planet is that the test of whether someone is an expert? Is this person an expert? I dunno - see if creativeoul finds him interesting (creative soul's over there, trying to force his face through a closed window).
Are you an expert on experts?
Quoting creativesoul
I don't think I've committed a fallacy anywhere on this site. But by all means draw my attention to one.
Quoting creativesoul
Are you a psychologist? Hope not, because your analysis is rubbish. But anyway, the reason I keep talking about expertise here is because that's what this thread is about.
Quoting creativesoul
Joined-up thinking please, not just a series of blurts.
The same one where it makes sense to ask such a stupid question.
So, as you clearly think it doesn't make senes to ask that question on 'this' planet, you admit that the 'is this person interesting to creativesoul' test is not the test of expertise here. Yes?
Now, can you answer my question above please, if it isn't too boring.
Quoting Bartricks
Sigh. As I said... you're a bit boring to have several years of graduate level philosophy. You've been talking in academic terms, so...
Since you asked to point out any fallacies...
Just after having denied being guilty of any logical fallacies and/or fallacious Reasoning, you immediately offer a non sequitur at best and an ad hominem at worst.
You're arguing against your own strawdogs my friend.
How do we know when the experts have been wrong?
Quoting Bartricks
What about all the time that passes prior to their becoming aware of that fact?
Quoting creativesoul
So you think that what determines whether you've had several years of graduate level philosophy is not how much graduate level philosophy you have had, but how interesting you are (more particularly, how interesting you are to someone who has 'not' had any years of graduate level philosophy study). Is that right?
Do you think the point of graduate study is to be able to entertain you, or is perhaps the point to get things right, even if that might bore someone who doesn't care less about such matters - what do you think?
What are you even asking there? You are asking me a question about a patch of time?
Is that correct?
I suppose you'd ask non-experts - is that right? God must be atheist? Praxis?
It was not an analysis. It was just offering a few possible explanations. That's something your entire philosophy rests it's laurels upon. Logical possibility alone.
Of course, you know that already, or at least ought given that you've several years graduate level academic philosophy.
Quoting Bartricks
I may not find it boring to critically examine your position...
Is it still based upon logical possibility alone?
How do we know when the experts are wrong?
Experts are wrong before they know it. So... We cannot just ask the experts. However, that is not to say that there are many historical situations where the experts were wrong, and we now know that much. Some experts may even be aware of being wrong about something themselves during their own lifetime...
The point stands...
We cannot always know that the experts are wrong by asking them. As a matter of fact, we cannot ever know that experts are currently wrong by asking them their opinion on the matter. We have to know what that opinion is in order to know that it is wrong... at least in most cases... but... because they do not ever know that they are wrong while they are...
We cannot know that they are by asking them.
Now what?
Well, you likely have yourself, consciously or unconsciously or both, set up a bunch of heuristics. And your solution might or might not work fairly well for you but not be right for your neighbor. Intuition has to play a strong role in those heuristics. When you decide to ask for second opinions? When you choose to doubt consensus amongst experts and do some reseach? how to choose between opposing experts - and there are almost always opposing experts, from mainstreat to fringe? how much you decide other factors - monetary compensation, paradigmatic biases, tradition, etc. - are affecting or may be affecting expert positions? And what you do when you have doubt. These all end up being approaches to a no answer is perfect and certainly not everyone approach to dealing with fallibility. And different people have different optimal solutions, since they differ in intelligence, lay knowledge of different fields, vocabulary (reading justifications and evidence), confidence, available time and more.
If it matters who says it, then what he says cannot possibly matter.
The reason why a statement is sound knowledge is because there is paperwork to justify it as well as a mechanical procedure to verify that paperwork. In that case, who cares who exactly has produced the paperwork?
For example, you can mechanically verify that bitcoin works. Hence, why would we need to know who exactly Satoshi Nakamoto was? Would that change anything to the software's reference implementation?
Not for me. I don't have some kind of working relationship with experts in metaphysics to get a sense of how accurate they are as a whole, how much divisions they have (schools, differing approaches and paradigms) and how much this affects their conclusions. With many experts I can look at the whole groups track record, to some degree at least, and also to some degree individual track records. My gut sense and experience is also that even experts overestimate their ability to deduce things. They are overconfident of their ability to judge the semantic scope of terms and what we can be certain of in general. Of course I could be wrong. And I assume that experts in metaphysics are much better than laypeople at that. Of course they are aiming high and very abstract.
1) they were using different arguments than the one that has not now been confirmed by other ones now
2) those experts had extreme pressure to assess arguments in favor of God as sound.Quoting BartricksAs I said in the other response, I don't think these kinds of experts dealing with concrete objects with real work direct consequences are in the same kind of expertise type. Further the closer parallel would be if one expert in the room says, I have come up with a new test for authenticity. I am the only one who has this test. It takes a while for others to evaluate it. Me, I am wondering why it doesn't have a coalition in favor of it. OK, the expert finished that diamond test protocol yesterday. Fine, I'll check in in a while. First I have no need to take it seriously now. If I was on a plane that is going to crash and there is one parachute expert and he is telling me how to put on, for example, the last remaining chute, which like his, is broken, so that it will work. Well, absolutely. I will take that expert deathly seriously. I have no other option. And his skill set makes it more likely than mine, for sure. But a metaphysical expert telling me he as a proof and thinks I should take it seriously, whatever that means, makes me wonder why he himself is not interested to see how other experts react. Individuals have tremendous motivation to view their creations as right. Hence peer revies type processes in most fields. I don't really need to do anything.
As a kind of parallel. Online I have encountered experts in all sorts of fields use their fields to rule ou what they would call supernatural phenomena. They have in the main been confused about what one can do with deduction. I have encountered professional philosophers, and fairly frequently, who reach what I consider confused conclusions. I have a smattering of expertise in philosophy, but I am no expert and I am not a philosopher. But I still find with regularity great individual confidence when it has seemed to me they were incorrect. And, in most cases, I could find philosophers who agreed with me, though this was not the basis of my disagreement. So, no, in some fields and some situations and to varying degrees I will take seriously experts conclusions. And it gets very complicated how I make my choices there, which are not binary.Quoting BartricksI would wonder why there wasn't a crowd about that proof.