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

[Final-Fan]

appolose said:

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.

A. 
Okay.  The discussion had at one point been about whether we could know anything absolutely about the accuracy of sense data, but this was a side discussion about an assertion you made.  Leaving aside the question of how a person would come to believe that his CD player produced pancakes, such a person, presuming he trusted his input data, would have to reevaluate either the input data or his breakfast plans upon being corrected. 

Your math example is nice.  Looking at it from another angle, such a person would have to reevaluate his position if he followed the same math rules.  The only difference is instead of being corrected by sense data, he was corrected by math data. 

I think we now agree "Belief sets exist that can be contradicted by sense data". 

B.
For math, the math data is absolute, so it can produce absolute knowledge.  But sense data only produces relative knowledge.  To illustrate this, let me give some examples from non-self-contradicting belief sets:  within empiricism the moon is definitely rock.  The sense data proves this (under the assumption that sense data is more or less accurate).  Within the Matrix theory the moon we "see" is definitely programmed to be rock.  The sense data proves this (under the assumption that sense data is more or less accurate about telling us about things in the Matrix).  And sense data can produce this relative knowledge.  This is how it is possible for it to disprove a belief set. 

"Sophistry"?  Are you saying what I think you are?  If you want to spell out your accusation then please do.  If not, recant.  Also, didn't I explicitly give a difference between the definitions of belief and knowledge?  It's stupid to say I equated the two.  Perhaps you didn't understand the concept of "belief within belief" versus "knowledge within belief".

C. 
I disagree - I think I do (and did) understand; I was just grabbing that and mutating it into another example to talk about (A).  Sorry. 

D.
1.  What I'm saying is that your sense data, taken all together, indicate one general picture of the world.  It may not be a correct picture, but the picture exists.  Your output affects this picture in generally reliable ways, which is to say the input you receive back reacts in generally reliable ways to your output.  Are you with me so far?  That is, do you agree with what I have said so far in (D)?  If not, what do you disagree with? 

2.  As for God's input (I know you said impute but am not sure how it's supposed to differ in this case), either you detect it (i.e. sense it) or you don't, in which case you unknowingly have a new belief no less arbitrary than the last.  In that case, it's not really a "method" of anything, unless that phrase is synonymous with "belief".