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

[Final-Fan]

appolose said:

Final-Fan said:

But didn't you say that absolute knowledge couldn't be gotten from sense data?  If you didn't, never mind.
    Right, I was hoping to make it clear that revelation would be the thing bringing something to you for knowledge in some way and still not through the use of sense data. So if there was any confusion in the distinction I was bringing, I'll answer it straight: You can't get the correct interpretation of sense data by sense data (as per my explaination of it's definition essentially). Therefore proposing the possibility that revelation can just give you "something that will make it otherwise" comes off as meaningless really. I suppose it's like saying revelation might one day reveal that a bachelor is actually a married man.

But if the sense data is a form of revelation (as you suggested above), and if interpretations of that sense data can also be revealed, and if revelation confers absolute knowledge (your def'n.), then couldn't you put those two types of absolute knowledge together logically and derive more absolute knowledge from them?  Or is sense data a type of revelation that is not absolute knowledge?
    Sorry for that other distinction that has been confusing (so many distinctions to make at a constant rate): Sense data would be some absolute knowledge, yes, and what that sense data represents would be further absolute knowledge. In regards to your comment, yes, in putting propositions together we can "use logic" to find conclusions if they are available. Whether conclusions can be considered 'new knowledge' is an interesting point. But the real question is, what propositions do sense data give you? And if it does give you anything expressable in proposition what can you use it with to gain further conclusions about the world? E.g. You sense a blob of colors and then you have the revelation that, say, Santa clause doesn't exist. ...Well, what can you derive from those two pieces of information? I doubt there's much to be derived in having the recognition of 'red, blue, and green' and a specific proposition about the world. Plus, as we understand in logic, a conclusion is just something that was already basically present in the premises. It's not a totally “new discovery” in that sense. In other words, you can’t build a whole world out of knowing that “I exist”, “I’m sitting in a chair” and “I sense red, green, and blue”.

Empiricism is about taking sense data and making judgments about the world based on it.  As long as the revealed interpretations result in a consistent/persistent world and can create a working I/O system with feedback, I don't know why revelation of those interpretations would necessarily be inconsistent with empiricism.  But then again I'm pretty tired right now.
    No, a particular arrangement of sense data doesn’t necessarily have the same interpretation every time it occurs. If I ‘experience’ sense data and it is then revealed to me that it represents a piano, it doesn’t mean that the next time I sense the same arrangement of sense data it will necessarily represent a piano for sure again without the aid of revelation (insert all those millions of interpretations here that convey the same sense data).
    Thus consistency, in the sense I think you mean it, really never comes into the picture because it always would take revelation to tell you what any moment of sense data represented. A ‘reliable’ I/O system can’t be developed with only specific moments of revelation concerning particular moments of sense data you experience.

(1)  No, that's not what I'm saying.  I'm proposing that the sense data is revealed, from which you can't make your own interpretation that gives absolute knowledge, AND you are given a REVEALED interpretation (and revelation, according to you, is (or can be?) absolute).  How can an absolute interpretation of absolute knowledge not possibly produce absolute knowledge?  (Or, perhaps, are you suggesting that that wouldn't be an "interpretation" if it is revelation, not our fallible minds, that produced it?)  It seems to me that we would be like a computer given a good (revealed) program and good (revealed) data, so no danger of GIGO applies.  Or can't we even do that?  If we were broken computers then we couldn't even do logic, so ...

(2)  That is indeed interesting; the alternative would be to say that all knowledge is actually held within the most fundamental knowledge.  But on the other hand that seems offhand like saying that diamonds don't exist, only carbon.  Well, maybe not quite, but it still seems like a very strange position although it's interesting to think about.  I guess it would be more like saying that the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem isn't "new" knowledge, only "newly discovered" knowledge, but I struggle to see a material difference. 

(3)  But what you are implying is an individual revelation for every single moment of sense data experienced.  I am not suggesting that.  Why can't a particular arrangement of sense data always have the same interpretation(s)?  How is that inconsistent with the method of revelation?  
     Then the I/O system could be built of revealed interpretations.