My Fellow Specifically Agnostic Atheists

[Purple Rabbit]

I'll pick up on what I think are your main arguments, since otherwise this indeed will soon derail into a impenetrable maze of heavily nested argument and counter argument.

First, let's resume what I think we agree on (feel free to deny any point of this, this is only what I infer from your writings so far):

A1) You and I both deny the absolute claim of fundamental unknowability, i.e. the claim that there is absolutely 100% certainty on the truth of the statement that knowledge about god's existence cannot ever be obtained.

A2) We agree upon the fact that the term 'agnosticism' is ill defined ("Even philosophers can't agree with each other on what agnosticism means" your quote).

A3) We agree upon the fact that you are giving your personal interpretation of agnosticism.

A4) Agnosticism contains the position of strong agnosticism (leaving out the "unknown" from the definition) and weak agnosticism (leaving out "unknowable").

A5) Strong atheism is fundamental unknowability

A6) Fundamental unknowability is a possible (but not necessarily valid) stance for the agnostic


Second, I'll resume our main issues of disagreement on this subject:

D1) You disagree with me when I say that A6 implies that agnosticism possibly but not necessarily contains an absolute claim

D2) I disagree with your rebuttal of the strong agnostic position with:

If you know X is unknowable, you know something about X, therefore X is not unknowable.

D3) I disagree with you that logical validity is relevant to evaluate if a position according to definition is (a type of) agnosticism

D4) I disagree with you that I am referring to my own definition of agnosticism, since I've presented to you several posts earlier exactly what definition of agnosticism (with the OR-clause) I refer to and have referred to since (i.e. the Wikipedia defintion that reads "Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable"). If you want I can give you the post number in which I did.

D5) I disagree with you that from the definition of agnosticism we are assessing (i.e. the Wikipedia definition) it is possible to read unambiguosly mathematical language such as XOR or mathematical OR. It could well be intended as a way to give a limitative list of possible stances within agnosticism.

D6) I disagree with you that what you give as your interpretation of the "or"-clause in the definition can ever mean "either at the same time". That would be an "and" in my vocabulary.

Ad D2

If you know X is unknowable, you know something about X, therefore X is not unknowable.

Firstly, if you believe this, it is a rather strong argument to not add the "or unknowable" to the definition of agnosticism, for in your interpretation this would introduces a contradiction in the definition itself. Not really an enhancement of the definition I'd say.

Secondly, if you know the existence of X is unknowable, you only know something about the provability of existence of X, not necessarily about X itself since the provability need not be exclusivey dependent on X itself. Just the impossibility of proof doesn't mean it isn't real. And other truth claims about it might not be inaccessible. So you have mixed up different claims. That existence of X is unknowable does not necessarily imply that we have knowledge of X, nor does it imply that we can have no other knowledge of X than about it's existence. One can always assess the validity of other claims on X while refraining from absolute certainty claims on the existence of X. In fact that is what we do all the time in mathematics, astronomy, the whole of science.

Consider the following stances:

P1: The existence of X is unknown or unknowable
P2: The existence of X is unknown
P3: The existence of X is unknowable
P4: all statements about X are unknown
P5: all statements about X are unknowable

P3 does not contradict P2 but only the much stronger P4. To know that the existence of X is unknowable does not contradict that the existence of X is unknown. So we can have true statements about X (i.e. P2) when P3 is true.

Ad D6
You stated:

No, I don't intend to rule out absolute statements. I fully understand that you can interpret agnosticism to include absolute statements, but you can interpret it in many ways. My personal interpretation doesn't have any absolute statements in it, and that was all I was trying to show. If you accept that the version of agnosticism in the pure form with the OR rather than XOR doesn't have any absolute statements, then we can all sit back and have a nice cup of tea. Otherwise (and I fear it might be otherwise), we'll be debating for far longer

I guess we'll be debating on this subject indefinitely then, you assisted with double monitoring, since I cannot possibly accept that "or" in normal language means "either at the same time". That really sounds as an "and" to me. Moreover we seem to agree on the fact that the definition itself is inconclusive as how to interpret the "or" exactly. The most straightforward and probable interpretation of "or" in the definition is as to suggest an enumeration of possible agnostic stances.