RE: What the God debate is really about
March 14, 2014 at 6:09 pm
(This post was last modified: March 14, 2014 at 6:10 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
Should there be a thread just for axioms?
I knew my list of first principles would arouse the contrarian impulses of some members, even though each item seems obvious and uncontroversial to me. For the sake of clarity I have added the needed qualifications and a brief summary of what makes each point true:
There is only one reality.
Only two alternatives present themselves: a) There is no reality OR b) There is more than one reality. Anyone can see that (a) is absurd. Someone might suggest that if people live in a Matrix or as brains in vats, then nothing is real. But all such scenarios only mean that people’s knowledge of reality is limited. If (b), then the sum of the various alternative realities would be in fact the whole reality. The point holds apart from any specific cosmology. For example, if the multiverse theory is correct then the total of all multiverses would be included within one reality. On the other hand if there were both a physical and non-physical world, the two together would also constitute one reality.
Our senses do not deceive us.
Technically, this one is not self-evident; however, further reflection reveals that it must be the case for there to be knowledge. Since all knowledge comes from reason applied to experience, it follows that no knowledge could be gained if sense data did not correspond with reality. Illusions happen when people misinterpret what their senses tell them. For example, everyone knows a straight stick looks bent when placed halfway into water. Someone could interpret this sense data to mean that the stick is actually bent. The sense data is not wrong; the viewer is merely mistaken about what he thinks he sees. By adding his store of sense data he can come to know about light refraction. If sense data was deceptive then he could not compare former experiences with current and future ones to distinguish between how things appear and how they actually are. Illusions also tell us not only about what we see, but how our brains interpret what we see. A correct interpretation of sense data, one that accounts for how things appear AND the viewer to which things appear gives us knowledge about both.
Knowledge, justified belief (whether true or not), requires someone who knows [i.e. an intellect].
Suppose the opposite were true, that knowledge does not require someone who knows. That notion would mean that beliefs could exist outside the mind, which is clearly false.
Sound reasoning yields knowledge. (slight modification from how earlier presented)
The counterfactual to this is: sound reasoning does not yield knowledge. If that were the case then no one could in any way justify their beliefs and there would be little point trying to understand anything at all. If reason was not available to us then we would have no means by which to interpret sense data.
Facts cannot be true and false at the same time.(modified from earlier)
The point as written above stands as self-evident. Facts refer to how reality actually is. This excludes self-referential propositions like, “This sentence is false.”
Facts are universal and do not vary between individuals.
Knowledge of fact is imperfect. Opinions about what is or is not true can indeed vary, but without facts against which to compare, the beliefs could not be justified and no knowledge would be possible.
Sorry, but I didn’t have time to get to the most contested first principles on my list: “Out of nothing, nothing comes” and “That which does not begin cannot have an end, i.e. infinite regress”.
I knew my list of first principles would arouse the contrarian impulses of some members, even though each item seems obvious and uncontroversial to me. For the sake of clarity I have added the needed qualifications and a brief summary of what makes each point true:
There is only one reality.
Only two alternatives present themselves: a) There is no reality OR b) There is more than one reality. Anyone can see that (a) is absurd. Someone might suggest that if people live in a Matrix or as brains in vats, then nothing is real. But all such scenarios only mean that people’s knowledge of reality is limited. If (b), then the sum of the various alternative realities would be in fact the whole reality. The point holds apart from any specific cosmology. For example, if the multiverse theory is correct then the total of all multiverses would be included within one reality. On the other hand if there were both a physical and non-physical world, the two together would also constitute one reality.
Our senses do not deceive us.
Technically, this one is not self-evident; however, further reflection reveals that it must be the case for there to be knowledge. Since all knowledge comes from reason applied to experience, it follows that no knowledge could be gained if sense data did not correspond with reality. Illusions happen when people misinterpret what their senses tell them. For example, everyone knows a straight stick looks bent when placed halfway into water. Someone could interpret this sense data to mean that the stick is actually bent. The sense data is not wrong; the viewer is merely mistaken about what he thinks he sees. By adding his store of sense data he can come to know about light refraction. If sense data was deceptive then he could not compare former experiences with current and future ones to distinguish between how things appear and how they actually are. Illusions also tell us not only about what we see, but how our brains interpret what we see. A correct interpretation of sense data, one that accounts for how things appear AND the viewer to which things appear gives us knowledge about both.
Knowledge, justified belief (whether true or not), requires someone who knows [i.e. an intellect].
Suppose the opposite were true, that knowledge does not require someone who knows. That notion would mean that beliefs could exist outside the mind, which is clearly false.
Sound reasoning yields knowledge. (slight modification from how earlier presented)
The counterfactual to this is: sound reasoning does not yield knowledge. If that were the case then no one could in any way justify their beliefs and there would be little point trying to understand anything at all. If reason was not available to us then we would have no means by which to interpret sense data.
Facts cannot be true and false at the same time.(modified from earlier)
The point as written above stands as self-evident. Facts refer to how reality actually is. This excludes self-referential propositions like, “This sentence is false.”
Facts are universal and do not vary between individuals.
Knowledge of fact is imperfect. Opinions about what is or is not true can indeed vary, but without facts against which to compare, the beliefs could not be justified and no knowledge would be possible.
Sorry, but I didn’t have time to get to the most contested first principles on my list: “Out of nothing, nothing comes” and “That which does not begin cannot have an end, i.e. infinite regress”.
