My Fellow Specifically Agnostic Atheists

[Tiberius]

That's the thing about "absolute truth", it is a very confusing thing indeed. The argument that humans cannot know they know absolute truth is one based on logic.

By simple definitions, a being that is capable of knowing whether something is absolute truth or not is an omniscient being. An omniscient being can be seen as one who knows everything, or one who knows which statements are absolute truths and which are not. Thus an omniscient being does not necessarily need to have any prior "knowledge" to be omniscient, but when given a question in the form "Is X true?", they will always know whether it is or not. To elaborate, an omniscient being does not need to know that my name is Adrian, but when someone asks this being "This man is named Adrian, is that true?", the being will know that it is so.

The argument continues that as humans are not such beings, and are fallible, we cannot ever say that something we "know" is true. It might be true, but there is no way of knowing with 100% certainty that our justified belief is absolute truth. This is because we are subjective, and there is no objective way of viewing reality (as of yet) that doesn't succumb to some kind of subjectivity.

As for your assertion that agnosticism is a strong absolute truth claim, I disagree. Agnosticism is a belief, a way of thinking, nothing more. It is the same kind of system as skepticism, a way of thinking about truth claims, rather than a truth claim itself. I believe (because of the logical arguments I've presented) that humans are incapable of knowing whether the knowledge they posses is absolute, but I do not claim that as an absolute truth. Indeed, as you pointed out, this would invariably lead to a contradiction.

As I am open to the existence of Gods, I am open to humans having such an ability as to know the truth value of certain claims (or all claims for that matter). Show me a method for doing so that doesn't involve subjectivism, and nulls the arguments presented, and I will gladly throw agnosticism out the window.

[Purple Rabbit]

That's the thing about "absolute truth", it is a very confusing thing indeed. The argument that humans cannot know they know absolute truth is one based on logic.

By simple definitions, a being that is capable of knowing whether something is absolute truth or not is an omniscient being. An omniscient being can be seen as one who knows everything, or one who knows which statements are absolute truths and which are not. Thus an omniscient being does not necessarily need to have any prior "knowledge" to be omniscient, but when given a question in the form "Is X true?", they will always know whether it is or not. To elaborate, an omniscient being does not need to know that my name is Adrian, but when someone asks this being "This man is named Adrian, is that true?", the being will know that it is so.

The argument continues that as humans are not such beings, and are fallible, we cannot ever say that something we "know" is true. It might be true, but there is no way of knowing with 100% certainty that our justified belief is absolute truth. This is because we are subjective, and there is no objective way of viewing reality (as of yet) that doesn't succumb to some kind of subjectivity.

I'm in agreement with this as you surely must have noted by reading my postings. So there is no need for lecture.

As for your assertion that agnosticism is a strong absolute truth claim, I disagree.

Please be accurate. I did not make such a statement. I stated that there is ambiguous meaning of agnosticism and that one particular meaning (the one involving 'unknowable') has a variant ('fundamental unknowability') that makes an absolute claim. Since I do not want to make any absolute claim, I prefer to stay away from the gnostic/agnostic attributes. Both 'gnostic' and 'agnostic' have ambiguous meaning. And when you use such labels, you should be aware of the fact that you are merely adding your own interpretation to an already confused issue. You are implicitly claiming to have resolved these matters on behalve of all atheists if you do so. In doing so, you are trying to establish a central doctrine of your own, with its own list of approved definitions. You are essentially redefining agnosticism to mean only the 'unknown' variant. For me such a quest is totally irrelevant to the atheist position. In my experience most atheists are capable of defining exactly what their partuicular stance is without ever using the words gnostic or agnostic.

So with this remark of you, you brush aside the ambiguity about agnosticism that is pretty well everywhere to find, mostly on the first page of a google search:

1) The Wikipedia defintion I gave in the former posting. And I fully acknowledge that Wikipedia is not conclusive evidence since anyone can put it on the web.

2) The Free Dictionary (by FARLEX):

Agnostic
a. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
b. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.

Note that (a) leaves open fundamental impossibility to know

3) My dutch dictionary (Kramers 1981)

4) And look at this source (about.com) that gives a pretty good explanation on the issue of fundamental unknowability and even makes a distinction between strong and weak agnosticism:

"If someone is a weak agnostic, they state only that they do not know if any gods exist or not. The possibility of some theoretical god or some specific god existing is not excluded. The possibility of someone else knowing for sure if some god exists or not is also not excluded. If someone is a strong agnostic, they don’t merely claim that they don’t know if any gods exist; instead, they also claim that no one can or does know if any gods exist."

Well, please don't sweep fundamental unknowability under the carpet any more, will you?

Agnosticism is a belief, a way of thinking, nothing more. It is the same kind of system as skepticism, a way of thinking about truth claims, rather than a truth claim itself. I believe (because of the logical arguments I've presented) that humans are incapable of knowing whether the knowledge they posses is absolute, but I do not claim that as an absolute truth. Indeed, as you pointed out, this would invariably lead to a contradiction.

Agnosticism is also an ill defined label. Why use it?

And when you've read Huxley on this, be aware that agnosticism involves two separate principles.
a) The epistemological one (that knowledge about the world relies on empirical and logical means).
b) The moral one that there is an ethical duty not to assert claims for ideas which we cannot adequately support.

As I am open to the existence of Gods, I am open to humans having such an ability as to know the truth value of certain claims (or all claims for that matter). Show me a method for doing so that doesn't involve subjectivism, and nulls the arguments presented, and I will gladly throw agnosticism out the window.

There is no need for that, since I agree that we must leave this possibility (existence of humans with absolute knowledge) open and at the same time are fallible beings ourselves. We as fallible beings lack the faculty of abolute knowledge and we cannot ever establish absolute truth about someone who makes that claim. Do not put me in the corner of absolutists. I do not claim absolute knowledge, only tentative. So it is not for me to show how to assess absolute truth of absolute claims.

As for the others guys assembled here. Please keep on giving kudos to the guy that is on your side no matter what his argument is, cause debate is like battle, not the argument counts, but only who wins it.

[fr0d0]

As for the others guys assembled here. Please keep on giving kudos to the guy that is on your side no matter what his argument is, cause debate is like battle, not the argument counts, but only who wins it.

A sigworthy point Rabbit. Well said

[Tiberius]

As for your assertion that agnosticism is a strong absolute truth claim, I disagree.

Please be accurate. I did not make such a statement.

Yes you did:

See the word unknowable in there? That means knowing for absolute certain that the existence is unknowable. That is principle unknowability. If we are talking about that kind of agnosticism, maybe not in your dictionary but Wikipedia is not the only source for it, it means a claim of absoluteness: to know absolute that god's existence cannot be known. So agnosticism in this form certainly is a strong absolute truth claim. Do you acknowledge this?

I stated that there is ambiguous meaning of agnosticism and that one particular meaning (the one involving 'unknowable') has a variant ('fundamental unknowability') that makes an absolute claim. Since I do not want to make any absolute claim, I prefer to stay away from the gnostic/agnostic attributes. Both 'gnostic' and 'agnostic' have ambiguous meaning. And when you use such labels, you should be aware of the fact that you are merely adding your own interpretation to an already confused issue. You are implicitly claiming to have resolved these matters on behalve of all atheists if you do so. In doing so, you are trying to establish a central doctrine of your own, with its own list of approved definitions. You are essentially redefining agnosticism to mean only the 'unknown' variant. For me such a quest is totally irrelevant to the atheist position. In my experience most atheists are capable of defining exactly what their partuicular stance is without ever using the words gnostic or agnostic.

Firstly, there is not an ambiguous meaning of agnosticism. Agnosticism has always meant the view that the truth value of certain things are unknown or unknowable. I've never denied this, and indeed I make sure to include both "unknown" and "unknowable" whenever I talk about it to others.

I'm not redefining it at all. You say "there is no need for the lecture", but evidently you didn't even read what I'd said, since the entire "lecture" was on unknowability (that certain things cannot be known). Read it again. It's not about things being unknown, it's about how fallible beings are incapable of knowing whether what they "know" is true.

So with this remark of you, you brush aside the ambiguity about agnosticism that is pretty well everywhere to find, mostly on the first page of a google search.

As I already said, no I didn't.

Agnosticism is a belief, a way of thinking, nothing more. It is the same kind of system as skepticism, a way of thinking about truth claims, rather than a truth claim itself. I believe (because of the logical arguments I've presented) that humans are incapable of knowing whether the knowledge they posses is absolute, but I do not claim that as an absolute truth. Indeed, as you pointed out, this would invariably lead to a contradiction.

Agnosticism is also an ill defined label. Why use it?

Agnosticism is far from an ill defined label. It takes some understanding of philosophy to fully comprehend it, but that doesn't make it ill defined. Ask a person to define knowledge, and most will fail to define it well at all. Knowledge is a hard thing to understand, and it has confused philosophers for many many years (and still does). Since the definition of agnosticism rests on how we understand knowledge, it is not surprising that most people don't understand it.

There is no need for that, since I agree that we must leave this possibility (existence of humans with absolute knowledge) open and at the same time are fallible beings ourselves. We as fallible beings lack the faculty of abolute knowledge and we cannot ever establish absolute truth about someone who makes that claim. Do not put me in the corner of absolutists. I do not claim absolute knowledge, only tentative. So it is not for me to show how to assess absolute truth of absolute claims.

And so this all boils down to you completely misunderstanding my position. I wasn't putting you in the corner of the absolutists, I was responding to your charge that agnosticism contains an absolute statement when it clearly does not. Just because the agnostic view states that certain things are "unknowable" does not make it an absolute statement. Agnosticism is a position that you can believe in or reject, and there are many arguments that support it as a view. Indeed, the very point about agnosticism is that it applies to itself as well. How can we know that agnosticism is absolutely true? We can't! How do I know we can't? I don't! I don't claim agnosticism as an absolute position anymore than I claim atheism as an absolute position. Agnosticism relies on belief in the validity of several logical arguments (as does atheism / theism). Disprove these arguments and you cast doubt on agnosticism as a valid concept (note: I'm not asking you specifically to disprove them, it's an open challenge).

As for the others guys assembled here. Please keep on giving kudos to the guy that is on your side no matter what his argument is, cause debate is like battle, not the argument counts, but only who wins it.

Such an arrogant statement, spoken by a person who has clearly not considered the possibility that the people who give me kudos aren't doing so because I'm on their side, but because my arguments are valid.

[Purple Rabbit]

Is there any reason why the reply to Adrian I've prepped encounters difficulties uploading while other replies give no difficulty?

---

OK, I'll split my post, since I suspect the difficulties have their origin in the volume of the post.

As for your assertion that agnosticism is a strong absolute truth claim, I disagree.

Please be accurate. I did not make such a statement.

Yes you did:

See the word unknowable in there? That means knowing for absolute certain that the existence is unknowable. That is principle unknowability. If we are talking about that kind of agnosticism, maybe not in your dictionary but Wikipedia is not the only source for it, it means a claim of absoluteness: to know absolute that god's existence cannot be known. So agnosticism in this form certainly is a strong absolute truth claim. Do you acknowledge this?

Non sequitur. It does not follow from this that I have asserted that all variants of agnosticism make an absolute claim, only the kind that claims fundamental unknowability. I was commenting on this definition (why leave it out?):
"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." (source Wikipedia)

In which there are clearly two kinds of agnosticism. They read unknown or unknowable

I stated that there is ambiguous meaning of agnosticism and that one particular meaning (the one involving 'unknowable') has a variant ('fundamental unknowability') that makes an absolute claim. Since I do not want to make any absolute claim, I prefer to stay away from the gnostic/agnostic attributes. Both 'gnostic' and 'agnostic' have ambiguous meaning. And when you use such labels, you should be aware of the fact that you are merely adding your own interpretation to an already confused issue. You are implicitly claiming to have resolved these matters on behalve of all atheists if you do so. In doing so, you are trying to establish a central doctrine of your own, with its own list of approved definitions. You are essentially redefining agnosticism to mean only the 'unknown' variant. For me such a quest is totally irrelevant to the atheist position. In my experience most atheists are capable of defining exactly what their partuicular stance is without ever using the words gnostic or agnostic.

Firstly, there is not an ambiguous meaning of agnosticism. Agnosticism has always meant the view that the truth value of certain things are unknown or unknowable. I've never denied this, and indeed I make sure to include both "unknown" and "unknowable" whenever I talk about it to others.

The fact that you acknowledge that there are two variants with fundamental different meaning, i.e. unknown and unknowable, means that you acknowledge there is not an unambiguous interpretation of agnosticism. Unknown is not the same as unknowable. It simply is not true that you have always carefully included these different kinds. For example you do not make such a careful distinction when you say:
"As for your assertion that agnosticism is a strong absolute truth claim, I disagree."
You boldly deny any possible absolutistic content.

---

next part:

I'm not redefining it at all. You say "there is no need for the lecture", but evidently you didn't even read what I'd said, since the entire "lecture" was on unknowability (that certain things cannot be known). Read it again. It's not about things being unknown, it's about how fallible beings are incapable of knowing whether what they "know" is true.

Oh, yes I've read it. Don't draw any hasty conclusions now.

Firstly there is a difference between what we could call practical unknowability (not being able to know now for practical reasons) and fundamental unknowability, i.e. being absolutly sure that such knowledge is unattainable forever. Whenever I speak of fundamental unknowability, I am speaking about the latter.

You bring up human fallibility to make your point but make no explicit claim that human infallibility is absolutely unobtainable forever. If you would do so, it would be an absolute claim and since you're a fallible being yourself that would be contradicting yourself, wouldn't it? And that is why your lecture clearly brings to light that you do not really include the kind of fundamental unknowability that I am speaking about.

Also the question is not whether I acknowledge human fallibility or not, the question is what range of interpretation to agnosticism is around. You've missed the fundamental unknowability position inside agnosticism.

So with this remark of you, you brush aside the ambiguity about agnosticism that is pretty well everywhere to find, mostly on the first page of a google search.

As I already said, no I didn't.

I think I have made clear now what the difference is between your human infallibility argumument and the stance of fundamental unknowability.

Agnosticism is a belief, a way of thinking, nothing more. It is the same kind of system as skepticism, a way of thinking about truth claims, rather than a truth claim itself. I believe (because of the logical arguments I've presented) that humans are incapable of knowing whether the knowledge they posses is absolute, but I do not claim that as an absolute truth. Indeed, as you pointed out, this would invariably lead to a contradiction.

Agnosticism is also an ill defined label. Why use it?

Agnosticism is far from an ill defined label. It takes some understanding of philosophy to fully comprehend it, but that doesn't make it ill defined. Ask a person to define knowledge, and most will fail to define it well at all. Knowledge is a hard thing to understand, and it has confused philosophers for many many years (and still does). Since the definition of agnosticism rests on how we understand knowledge, it is not surprising that most people don't understand it.

This whole thread and certainly your neglect of the fundamental unknowabiliy position testifies of how ill defined it is.

There is no need for that, since I agree that we must leave this possibility (existence of humans with absolute knowledge) open and at the same time are fallible beings ourselves. We as fallible beings lack the faculty of abolute knowledge and we cannot ever establish absolute truth about someone who makes that claim. Do not put me in the corner of absolutists. I do not claim absolute knowledge, only tentative. So it is not for me to show how to assess absolute truth of absolute claims.

And so this all boils down to you completely misunderstanding my position. I wasn't putting you in the corner of the absolutists, I was responding to your charge that agnosticism contains an absolute statement when it clearly does not. Just because the agnostic view states that certain things are "unknowable" does not make it an absolute statement. Agnosticism is a position that you can believe in or reject, and there are many arguments that support it as a view. Indeed, the very point about agnosticism is that it applies to itself as well. How can we know that agnosticism is absolutely true? We can't! How do I know we can't? I don't! I don't claim agnosticism as an absolute position anymore than I claim atheism as an absolute position. Agnosticism relies on belief in the validity of several logical arguments (as does atheism / theism). Disprove these arguments and you cast doubt on agnosticism as a valid concept (note: I'm not asking you specifically to disprove them, it's an open challenge).

Are we in the clear now? Fundamental unknowability is not the same as practical unknowability.

As for the others guys assembled here. Please keep on giving kudos to the guy that is on your side no matter what his argument is, cause debate is like battle, not the argument counts, but only who wins it.

Such an arrogant statement, spoken by a person who has clearly not considered the possibility that the people who give me kudos aren't doing so because I'm on their side, but because my arguments are valid.

Please curb that anger Adrian. I do consider that possibility and I do value your opinion. But this reaction does not make it more plausible since neither you nor I can retrieve their motives straight from their heads. Did you miss the emoticon trying to signal a ifeeling I got from the way this thread is going? I may be deluded here but EvF stopped answering and immediatly Void takes over crediting him with kudos, Void stops answering and 'the boss' steps right in. I sincerely apologize if this has only been in the eye of me as a beholder.

[Tiberius]

Non sequitur. It does not follow from this that I have asserted that all variants of agnosticism make an absolute claim, only the kind that claims fundamental unknowability. I was commenting on this definition (why leave it out?):
"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." (source Wikipedia)

In which there are clearly two kinds of agnosticism. They read unknown or unknowable

Very well, you meant one "form" of agnosticism, but I still disagree that there are "forms" of agnosticism in that definition.

The definition says "is unknown or unknowable". This does not mean that one for of agnosticism says that things are unknown, and another says thing are unknowable. It is specifically written so to include both "unknown" and "unknowable" so as to be a relative statement.

To demonstrate:

If X is a statement, and X is unknown, then it can be unknowable, but given that the statement is already unknown, we cannot say whether it is unknowable or not (hence the OR).

If X is a statement, and X is unknowable, then by very definition it is unknown (since something that is unknowable cannot be known, and anything that cannot be known is unknown).

You cannot separate agnosticism into two categories, one saying "unknown" and the other saying "unknowable"; that isn't the point of it. Indeed, the "unknown" position already has a label of its own: skepticism.

Skepticism is the method of reserving judgement on the "unknown" until further evidence comes forward. Skepticism never states that things can be "unknowable".

The fact that you acknowledge that there are two variants with fundamental different meaning, i.e. unknown and unknowable, means that you acknowledge there is not an unambiguous interpretation of agnosticism. Unknown is not the same as unknowable. It simply is not true that you have always carefully included these different kinds. For example you do not make such a careful distinction when you say:
"As for your assertion that agnosticism is a strong absolute truth claim, I disagree."
You boldly deny any possible absolutistic content.

I boldly deny any absolutistic content not because I am leaving out some absolutistic content in my definition of agnosticism, but because I disagree that there is any absolutistic content in agnosticism. I disagree that there are two types of agnosticism, one for the unknown and one for the unknowable (as I've already argued above). Given that I am left with only one definition of agnosticism (including the "unknown or unknowable" phrase), I further disagree that this is in any way absolutistic.

Firstly there is a difference between what we could call practical unknowability (not being able to know now for practical reasons) and fundamental unknowability, i.e. being absolutly sure that such knowledge is unattainable forever. Whenever I speak of fundamental unknowability, I am speaking about the latter.

You bring up human fallibility to make your point but make no explicit claim that human infallibility is absolutely unobtainable forever. If you would do so, it would be an absolute claim and since you're a fallible being yourself that would be contradicting yourself, wouldn't it? And that is why your lecture clearly brings to light that you do not really include the kind of fundamental unknowability that I am speaking about.

Also the question is not whether I acknowledge human fallibility or not, the question is what range of interpretation to agnosticism is around. You've missed the fundamental unknowability position inside agnosticism.

I brought up the fundamental unknowability point before, when I spoke about the subjective nature of knowledge, and how there is no known way of obtaining objective knowledge. This is very different from practical knowability, which I agree rests on the fallible nature of humans.

As I've said before, bringing up such a "claim" is not an absolute statement, because agnosticism itself is applied to it. In other words, I believe that some things are unknowable (fundamentally) through agnosticism because of the logical arguments that have been presented and as so far not disproved. At the same time, because of my agnosticism, I hold my belief as just that (a belief), because the very arguments that hold agnosticism up are the result of human logical thought, and as such cannot be known to be true themselves, thus they may be wrong, and thus agnosticism may be the wrong way to look at things such as knowledge. This is a profoundly relative statement. It might be a relative statement about absolute knowledge, but it is relative (as I hold, are all statements about such things).

I think I have made clear now what the difference is between your human infallibility argumument and the stance of fundamental unknowability.

And I hope I've made clear the difference between one argument I made for human infallibility, and the other argument I made previously addressing fundamental unknowability.

This whole thread and certainly your neglect of the fundamental unknowabiliy position testifies of how ill defined it is.

As I said before, not neglected (read the argument from subjectivism I made in my first post). You are making it ill defined by splitting it into two types of agnosticism which simply don't exist, namely because one make an absolutist statement (because it misses out the relative "or") about knowledge, and the other is just another way of describing skepticism.

Are we in the clear now? Fundamental unknowability is not the same as practical unknowability.

Never said it was...

Please curb that anger Adrian. I do consider that possibility and I do value your opinion. But this reaction does not make it more plausible since neither you nor I can retrieve their motives straight from their heads. Did you miss the emoticon trying to signal a ifeeling I got from the way this thread is going? I may be deluded here but EvF stopped answering and immediatly Void takes over crediting him with kudos, Void stops answering and 'the boss' steps right in. I sincerely apologize if this has only been in the eye of me as a beholder.

Indeed, you have surely looked at the other side. You simply seem to have failed to come to a rational conclusion that EvF said something that Void agreed with (hence the kudos), Void then taking over the line of arguing (and EvF not saying anything due to simply not wanting to say "I agree" and waste a post, or perhaps due to some time constraint), and then when I pitched in he gave me kudos because he, likewise, agreed with what I said, and left me to argue the rest.

Of course, the other rational explanation (before we accept some "conspiracy" or an "immature" reason) is that this entire debate has only spanned the length of 48 hours (if that), which combined by this being the holiday season (and therefore a drop in forum activity), has simply been ignored or postponed by some of the aforementioned members who have much better things to do.

I myself will have to leave this debate for a while, since I'm going home tomorrow and won't have much internet. I'll get back to any responses you have at a later date (assuming I don't tonight if I have time).

Have a merry christmas

[Purple Rabbit]

Adrian, just one question for you to maybe ponder about while in exile from the internet. Do you know absolutely certain that there is no way of obtaining objective knowledge?

If so you are making an absolute claim, like a fundamental agnosticist would do.

But I think your answer will be 'no' to my question, since it is the only answer that is consistent with human infallibility.

Also your phrasing here suggests that to me (underlining by me), though my conclusion would be that the underlined bit rules out the fundamental unknowability I am putting forward:
"I brought up the fundamental unknowability point before, when I spoke about the subjective nature of knowledge, and how there is no known way of obtaining objective knowledge. This is very different from practical knowability, which I agree rests on the fallible nature of humans."

And a merry christmas to you also (sorry for yet another inappropriate emoticon)

[Purple Rabbit]

The definition says "is unknown or unknowable". This does not mean that one for of agnosticism says that things are unknown, and another says thing are unknowable.

It does not explicitly rule that out either, meaning that any stricter interpretation, such as yours, is in essence a redefinition of your own making. Strong and weak agnosticism, not terms I invented myself, coin these different varieties.

It is specifically written so to include both "unknown" and "unknowable" so as to be a relative statement.

To demonstrate:

If X is a statement, and X is unknown, then it can be unknowable, but given that the statement is already unknown, we cannot say whether it is unknowable or not (hence the OR).

If X is a statement, and X is unknowable, then by very definition it is unknown (since something that is unknowable cannot be known, and anything that cannot be known is unknown).

This clearly shows that 'unknown' and 'unknowable' are not interchangeable terms and hence that it is incorrect to treat them as such. The defintion says "unknown OR unknowable" not "unknown AND unknowable". This means someone deserves the label agnostic according to this definition when he states that X is unknown, but also the person who states that it is unknowable deserves that label. Since these are not he same statements, they are different varieties of agnosticism. And even when you redefine to "unknown AND unknowable" to overcome this problem a person can only be agnostic when according to his believe X is not only unknown but also unknowable. In that case a person who only states that X is unknown, would not be an agnostic..

This is demonstrated in another definition I presented to you before:

Agnostic
a. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
b. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.
(source:The Free Dictionary (by FARLEX))

There is an analogon of this in the field of mathematics called proof theory, which is considered one of the four pillars of the foundations of mathematics. It focuses on the terms 'proven', 'provability', 'unproven' and 'unprovability'. In this field statements about provability are dealt with separately from proof itself, also strongly suggesting that the two constitute related yet different concepts.

You cannot separate agnosticism into two categories, one saying "unknown" and the other saying "unknowable"; that isn't the point of it. Indeed, the "unknown" position already has a label of its own: skepticism.

Now you are mixing in yet another concept, skepticism.

Skepticism is the method of reserving judgement on the "unknown" until further evidence comes forward. Skepticism never states that things can be "unknowable".

Then you are in denial of some historic facts. Skepticism historically has had two basic traditions: Academic Skepticism and Pyrrhonism. The credo of so called Academic Skepticism is that some truths are completely unknowable to people. This branch of skepticism comes from the Platonic Academy which gradually adopted this position after Plato's death. Known is that Cicero and Erasmus (another nasty dutchman) adopted this view.

Firstly there is a difference between what we could call practical unknowability (not being able to know now for practical reasons) and fundamental unknowability, i.e. being absolutly sure that such knowledge is unattainable forever. Whenever I speak of fundamental unknowability, I am speaking about the latter.

You bring up human fallibility to make your point but make no explicit claim that human infallibility is absolutely unobtainable forever. If you would do so, it would be an absolute claim and since you're a fallible being yourself that would be contradicting yourself, wouldn't it? And that is why your lecture clearly brings to light that you do not really include the kind of fundamental unknowability that I am speaking about.

Also the question is not whether I acknowledge human fallibility or not, the question is what range of interpretation to agnosticism is around. You've missed the fundamental unknowability position inside agnosticism.

I brought up the fundamental unknowability point before, when I spoke about the subjective nature of knowledge, and how there is no known way of obtaining objective knowledge. This is very different from practical knowability, which I agree rests on the fallible nature of humans.

Yet (1) fundamental unknowability, (2) the subjective nature of knowledge and (3) human infallibility are different things. (1) is a philosophical position, (2) and (3) are specific arguments (the specific arguments you bring forward) in support of fundamental unknowability.

When you subscribe to (1) it is not absolutely neccesary to subscribe to (2) and/or (3) ( for one can have other reasons than (2) or (3) to subscribe to (1). That you might think that (2) or (3) are the only valid arguments for (1) is irrelevant. You cannot put your own personal mask of reasoning over philosophical argument of others when your aim is only depicting all possible stances. If you do so, you are in essence arguing for valid philosophical stances rather than stating the possible ones. You indeed do so when you say "I boldly deny any absolutistic content not because I am leaving out some absolutistic content in my definition of agnosticism, but because I disagree that there is any absolutistic content in agnosticism."

Anyway, I can show you that (2) and (3) are not the only possible arguments to adopt (1). There is indeed another possible argument I can think of that also amounts to fundamental unknowability of god's existence and that is the argument that god deliberately and actively hides knowledge about his existence from us. One might adopt this stance while at the same time refute (2) an (3); i.e. humans can have absolute knowledge about things other than god's existence and knowledge is not subjective in nature.

Furthermore, to have "no known way of obtaining objective knowledge" (underlining by me), as you put it when explaining your point about the subjective nature of knowledge, does not necessarily mean that there is a fundamental/absolute barrier to ever obtain objective knowledge. You surely know this difference since you in your explanation of why absolute truth cannot be obtained, stated "This is because we are subjective, and there is no objective way of viewing reality (as of yet) that doesn't succumb to some kind of subjectivity." (underlining by me). This again shows the discrepancy between what you see as valid reasons for agnosticism and fundamental agnosticism which is an absolute statement about such a barrier.

As I've said before, bringing up such a "claim" is not an absolute statement, because agnosticism itself is applied to it. In other words, I believe that some things are unknowable (fundamentally) through agnosticism because of the logical arguments that have been presented and as so far not disproved.

At the same time, because of my agnosticism, I hold my belief as just that (a belief), because the very arguments that hold agnosticism up are the result of human logical thought, and as such cannot be known to be true themselves, thus they may be wrong, and thus agnosticism may be the wrong way to look at things such as knowledge. This is a profoundly relative statement. It might be a relative statement about absolute knowledge, but it is relative (as I hold, are all statements about such things).

OK, so you agree that we should not mix up the philosphical position of fundamental agnosticism with valid arguments for such a position. What you believe to be valid (accidentlly it coincides with what I think) is not relevant for the philosophical position someone might take. You and I cannot declare some law about reasons to adopt the fundamental unknowability position. Those arguments are just your and mine beliefs about it. This simply means that you cannot exclude the absolute interpretation of agnosticism that I have presented to you as fundamental agnosticism, related to what is also known as strong agnosticism.

The second part of this comment of you (which I agree is a relative statement) is not really an argument that unambiguously shows that agnosticism must necessarily and exclusively entail relative positions but it is about your own skeptical assessment on holding the general agnostic position.

The conclusion from this is that the fundamental unknowability position that makes an absolute claim is a possible philosophical position to take (though arguebly not a valid position) and that it is not excluded from common and accepted definitions of agnosticism. Moreover, the wording in common and accepted definitions strongly suggests that the fundamental unknowability position is indeed included.

[Edwardo Piet]

I may be deluded here but EvF stopped answering and immediatly Void takes over crediting him with kudos, Void stops answering and 'the boss' steps right in. I sincerely apologize if this has only been in the eye of me as a beholder.

Actually I do believe I replied last, I was expecting a response from you and then you and Adrian got involved.

I said this last directly under your last post to me:

Ok....... lol.

Well I mean agnostic in the sense of not claiming absolute knowledge, gnostic in the sense of positively claiming absolute knowledge. I believed these were the original meanings of the terms, if I'm wrong then fine I'm wrong, but it's a meaning.

I don't claim to have absolute knowledge of God's non-existence (because I can't have it), so that's why I don't do so... and why I'm agnostic.

EvF

[Purple Rabbit]

I may be deluded here but EvF stopped answering and immediatly Void takes over crediting him with kudos, Void stops answering and 'the boss' steps right in. I sincerely apologize if this has only been in the eye of me as a beholder.

Actually I do believe I replied last, I was expecting a response from you and then you and Adrian got involved.

I said this last directly under your last post to me:

Ok....... lol.

Well I mean agnostic in the sense of not claiming absolute knowledge, gnostic in the sense of positively claiming absolute knowledge. I believed these were the original meanings of the terms, if I'm wrong then fine I'm wrong, but it's a meaning.

I don't claim to have absolute knowledge of God's non-existence (because I can't have it), so that's why I don't do so... and why I'm agnostic.

EvF

The matter already has been settled. Everybody has hugged and shaken hands already. Let's leave it at that.

As for your post: Agnosticism has no definite meaning and pretty much every atheistic hide-out on the internet testifies about that. To choose your own specific meaning or interpretation to the label is fine by me but the label alone is not enough to unambiguously accurate describe your position. Agnosticism is not by definition free from absolute claims. The fundamental unknowability position that makes an absolute claim is a possible philosophical position to take (though arguably not a valid position) and is not excluded from common and accepted definitions of agnosticism. For more information on the ins and outs of this, see my last post to Adrian.