Rise of atheism: 100,000 Brits seek 'de-baptism'

[appolose]

Final-Fan said:

PREFACE:  FYI, this gets better as it goes; although all sections say important things, IMO the last three paragraps, especially second to last, are the best, if only because they are nice and concise.  Also, don't worry about abrasiveness; I'm being much worse. 

[edit:  PREFACE 2:  I missed something in my original response that may be key.  I'm editing now; it will appear at the bottom.]

A.
1. "Since we're discussing a method of truth... I wonder how you got belief X in the first place. It just ignores the whole issue of legitimately arriving at a belief which is fundamental to this."
'butbutbut any specific interpretation is just an assumption'
What I think you fail to grasp is the fact that the belief having no absolute rational foundation (i.e. does not defeat your skepticism) is IRRELEVANT to the fact that such a belief can EXIST.  So, no, that "issue" is not fundamental at all, but totally irrelevant to the point I am making.

2.  'butbutbut that sense data could actually mean anything if you interpret it differently'
Oh, so you are infact saying that the belief CANNOT exist.  You say it cannot exist because rational analysis will admit that that belief is not the only possible belief.  Well I'm sorry to have to break this to you but not all beliefs are 100% rational, and not all beliefs will capitulate when confronted with rational investigation.

"I can't ignore that and pretend someone can legitimately believe sensedataY must indicates cheese."  What do you mean by "legitimate"?  I think you are acting as if such a person having that belief would somehow have to prove you wrong about your skepticism in order to be possible.  In fact this is not true.  In fact, you are putting yourself in the position of PROVING to me that no person with such a belief can possibly exist, which doesn't seem very compatible with your skepticism to me.  Or, how does the nonrationality of a belief render it IMPOSSIBLE? 

If a person ABSOLUTELY BELIEVES that sensedataY means only Z, they will ONLY interpret sensedataY as Z, and the million other interpretations DO NOT EXIST to them.  If I understand you correctly you are trying to say that Belief Set A can't be contradicted by evidence because Belief Set B would not interpret that data as evidence against Belief Set A, but Belief Set B is not relevant whatsoever to the issue of Belief Set A being contradicted BY ITSELF (along with sense data that can only be interpreted one way by Belief Set A). 

I now think the bachelor comment is actually relevant when I actually just included it as a laugh.  Suppose I have ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY (nonrational but then I'm not a rational man) that Guy is a bachelor.  Suppose further that I have ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that only married men have rings on their fingers and also that I can accurately detect said rings.  Now I witness a ring on Guy's finger.  ZOMG!  One of these certainties is incorrect.  If I choose to interpret the evidence in a way such that I can continue to believe that Guy is a bachelor, that is just as bad as if I decide that "bachelor" actually means "married man". 

"A. and B."
"I believe Z and also that A - Y are demonstrably false. ...Oh, but I'm not saying I know that."  There's your problem I think. 

Or, your 1, 2, 3 interpretations of "belief vs. knowledge" ignores 4. knowledge is provable/proven belief.  So we can prove, and thus know, things WITHIN our input/output data, but we can only BELIEVE that said data and knowledge is actually TRUE knowledge of a "really for real" universe.  (Or believe something else, or nothing.) 

I suspect that you are failing to differentiate what is true/provable/possible WITHIN a belief set vs. what is true/provable/possible for ALL belief sets.  Thus knowledge is differentiated from absolute knowledge, the latter of which is what you say cannot be derived from sense data (and I don't disagree).  Here you appear to be saying that regular knowledge is not possible either, but I disagree.

[edit:  "When I know to hit "Y" on the keyboard to make it show up on the screen... that's right, I don't believe I came to know that through sense data. Again, there are other methods of truth proposed."

[WAIT, WHAT?  How did you not sense it?  Even if God drilled a hole in your head and delivered the information via a teaspoon of pixie dust ... you still received sensory data of pressing the key and seeing the Y.  Also, by "don't believe" do you mean disbelieve, or just lack of positive belief?

[Also, I believe that this does not actually address the point you were responding to, which is partly about consistency of the perceived world with perceived actions, not method of reception of perception.]

Misunderstanding on our topic: Legitimate vs. Illegitimate

     I was under the impression we were discussing the means of obtaining a legitimate belief. What I meant by legitimate belief refers to gaining a belief through a method which grantees the belief is not false (aka knowledge or ‘absolute’ knowledge as you say). This is the subject of epistemology. That is why every time you brought up a belief that hadn’t dealt with its ‘legitimacy’ I found it irrelevant.

     So yes, of course your scenario is possible in the sense of illegitimate beliefs. I never meant to imply such illegitimate beliefs didn’t exist. In the same way a person could simply believe the moon was made of cheese: A person could believe the CD player in his car makes pancakes. In the same way you pose a person believing that sense data could only mean one thing to them: A person could believe that Y could only mean 4 in the equation Y x 0 = 0. I find them both “illegitimate” according to my issue of a method of truth. Again, apparently you’re not discussing a method of truth.

    (And I must add, a person who believes sensedataZ must mean Y… just may find himself recanting it by force at little moments in their life: e.g. “Oh it totally looked like a man from where I was standing.”) Butbutbut :P not the issue now…

 

The new root problem between us:

     So from what I gather you agree that what you call ‘absolute’ knowledge can’t be obtained through sense data. But you think there is some kind of other position amidst ‘absolutely’ knowing something and not knowing it (or however you say it, honestly I haven’t been able to mimic that kind of sophistry). You’re calling it mere belief or ‘regular knowledge’.

     I read your point “A and B” several times and I’m finding it difficult to follow, sorry. I have my suspicions but maybe you can make it clearer for me.

 

Bachelor Issue

    You haven’t understood what kind of a statement I was making. It was an analytical one which has nothing to do with the outer world. It has to do with what meaning is assigned to a word in one’s mind. Analytical statements, in that specific use, are not claiming that what’s being defined even exists in the world or not. It’s basically defining a word in your mind.

    I gave the analytical statement as an example of the kind of problem I was getting at with empiricism (in that the doctrines of the method could be examined in your mind and be realized false). Wherein, if I have assigned such a meaning to the word “bachelor”, it would be contradictory in my own mind to call it something opposing to what I defined it as. Thus it’s a statement I could examine and recognize its truth or falseness within the confines of my own mind.

 

Fine Line

    When I say that I don’t come to the belief of “Y key to computer screen” through sense data it may be difficult from me to explain clearly. As I understand sense data represents a million possibilities and tells me nothing further I can’t use it to come to the correct belief as to what it represents. Rather, I would need a something (method) that was able to legitimately tell me about the sense data staring me in the face (namely, what it represents). The difference is “using” sense data (empirical method) to come to the truth about what sense data represents versus relying on a different method to tell you about what sense data represents.

   According to the example, God can impute (drill a hole in my head and deliver via pixie dust) this information as to what the sense data I’m receiving represents. The sense data is certainly not telling me what it represents by my analysis.