(March 23, 2019 at 5:39 pm)Belaqua Wrote: Thank you, this is getting back to my main point. 

We say that by definition only those things which may be confirmed with intersubjective empirical data are reliable. And since only science uses intersubjective empirical data, we're really just saying that only science is reliable. So we're really not that open-minded to other systems.

What does open minded mean to you ?

Have you found a way to confirm (by any means) if it's reliable or not ?

What does reliable mean to you ?

(March 23, 2019 at 5:39 pm)Belaqua Wrote: I'm not particularly interested in revelations. I'm focussing more on what we mean when we talk about reliability. 

Except that you are.

(March 23, 2019 at 5:39 pm)Belaqua Wrote:

(March 23, 2019 at 10:44 am)Abaddon_ire Wrote: We have countless "revealed facts" which turned out to be BS and none which turned out to be correct.

What a puerile argument. Take the number of failed "end-of-the-world" revelations that have passed without incident. Gonna brush those all under the rug?

Do we have countless "revealed facts"? I don't think we do,

Google it. Is that beyond you? Yup.

(March 23, 2019 at 5:39 pm)Belaqua Wrote: because all those things which were interpreted as revealed facts failed. Which means they were illusions.

So you admit there is no means to tell the reliable from the false.

(March 23, 2019 at 5:39 pm)Belaqua Wrote: Does this mean that ALL revealed facts are illusions? Maybe.

No it means "revealed facts are fundamentally unreliable.

(March 23, 2019 at 5:39 pm)Belaqua Wrote: But in the desert people often see mirages where there's no water, and this doesn't mean that no oases exist. 

What a dumb assertion. A moments thought would reveal to you why it is an utterly bovine assertion, but you are not even capable of that.

(March 23, 2019 at 5:39 pm)Belaqua Wrote: False positives abound. But this doesn't rule out the existence of real revelation. 

There are none. That rules it out. Disagree? Present one true revealed fact.

(March 23, 2019 at 5:39 pm)Belaqua Wrote: I don't believe in real revelation,

Yes, you do.

(March 23, 2019 at 5:39 pm)Belaqua Wrote: but we have to be careful in our logic.

Logic is unnecessary to dismiss abject nonsense.

(March 23, 2019 at 5:39 pm)Belaqua Wrote: Don't people say that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, or something like that?

Nope. One man stated that. everyone else is just quoting him because it is so true. That you are ignorant of the origin of that quote lends further weight to my conclusion about what you are about. You cannot credibly claim to be ignorant of such a statement.

Frankly, you are deploying every method you have been indoctrinated with to try and drag everyone down to your stupid level. Go fish.

(March 23, 2019 at 6:28 pm)possibletarian Wrote:

(March 23, 2019 at 5:39 pm)Belaqua Wrote: Thank you, this is getting back to my main point. 

We say that by definition only those things which may be confirmed with intersubjective empirical data are reliable. And since only science uses intersubjective empirical data, we're really just saying that only science is reliable. So we're really not that open-minded to other systems.

What does open minded mean to you ?

Have you found a way to confirm (by any means) if it's reliable or not ?

What does reliable mean to you ?

I'm not sure. This is new to me. 

I guess that open-minded would mean that you agree there may well be reliable things which cannot be confirmed though intersubjective empirical evidence (i.e. science). 

I brought up revelation only as an example of something which isn't available to science. The first reaction was to assert that all revelation is illusion. But that's begging the question. Just because a lot of what people call revelation isn't really, doesn't mean there's not real revelation out there. (I don't believe there is; I'm using this as a way to think about reliability.) 

If I had had a revelation, or knew someone trustworthy who had had one, I would be able to answer the question better. 

So let's say we can't judge whether revelation is reliable or not, because we lack data, and only know of false positives at the moment. If we found a way to judge what is real revelation, it might be reliable. 

An analogy: all telephone messages from your uncle are reliable. But you have 10 fake uncles who call you who are not reliable. In every case, your real uncle is reliable and your fake ones aren't. The trouble there is not whether your uncle is reliable, it's determining which call is really from your uncle. 

And another possibility: inspiration. 

This need not be from an external source. The subconscious is fine as a source which is not available to science. Suppose you're an artist working on a painting that isn't going well. You sleep on it, and in a dream or half-waking state you get exactly the idea you need to fix it. Neither the dream, nor the mental image, nor the judgment of quality concerning the painting, are something that science has access to. Still, I find it reliable. (I'm a painter and I have frequently gotten reliable ideas in this way.)

So there are two possibilities of using the word reliable that aren't scientifically testable. I'd be interested if open-minded people here could think of others.

(March 23, 2019 at 6:50 pm)Belaqua Wrote:

(March 23, 2019 at 6:28 pm)possibletarian Wrote: What does open minded mean to you ?

Have you found a way to confirm (by any means) if it's reliable or not ?

What does reliable mean to you ?

I'm not sure. This is new to me. 

I guess that open-minded would mean that you agree there may well be reliable things which cannot be confirmed though intersubjective empirical evidence (i.e. science). 

I brought up revelation only as an example of something which isn't available to science. The first reaction was to assert that all revelation is illusion. But that's begging the question. Just because a lot of what people call revelation isn't really, doesn't mean there's not real revelation out there. (I don't believe there is; I'm using this as a way to think about reliability.) 

If I had had a revelation, or knew someone trustworthy who had had one, I would be able to answer the question better. 

So let's say we can't judge whether revelation is reliable or not, because we lack data, and only know of false positives at the moment. If we found a way to judge what is real revelation, it might be reliable. 

An analogy: all telephone messages from your uncle are reliable. But you have 10 fake uncles who call you who are not reliable. In every case, your real uncle is reliable and your fake ones aren't. The trouble there is not whether your uncle is reliable, it's determining which call is really from your uncle. 

And another possibility: inspiration. 

This need not be from an external source. The subconscious is fine as a source which is not available to science. Suppose you're an artist working on a painting that isn't going well. You sleep on it, and in a dream or half-waking state you get exactly the idea you need to fix it. Neither the dream, nor the mental image, nor the judgment of quality concerning the painting, are something that science has access to. Still, I find it reliable. (I'm a painter and I have frequently gotten reliable ideas in this way.)

So there are two possibilities of using the word reliable that aren't scientifically testable. I'd be interested if open-minded people here could think of others.

I don't know how you could say anything about divine revelation, you haven't established that there is a divine being, that a divine being can or wants to reveal things, how revelation works, or that any perceived revelation isn't some sort of a delusion. You have to do a lot of work before you before you can claim that revelation isn't available to science.

(March 23, 2019 at 6:50 pm)Belaqua Wrote: This need not be from an external source. The subconscious is fine as a source which is not available to science. Suppose you're an artist working on a painting that isn't going well. You sleep on it, and in a dream or half-waking state you get exactly the idea you need to fix it. Neither the dream, nor the mental image, nor the judgment of quality concerning the painting, are something that science has access to. Still, I find it reliable. (I'm a painter and I have frequently gotten reliable ideas in this way.)

I'd argue that all ideas, including scientific ones, are arrived at this way.  Ideas pop into your head, and you have a Eureka moment, in which a truth is revealed to you.  In science, you make observations of shareable experiences-- measurements made with a ruler, for example.  But in order for you to make anything out of those observations, you must still have that little Eureka moment in which you experience an idea.  And we as thinking agents don't make those ideas-- they pop into the mind and we express them verbally, but we don't really have much say in what form our ideas will take.

In other words, science is the process of collecting observations about which we hope to have Eureka moments, and the process of confirming whether our inspired ideas accord well with further observations.  The idea that science has (or even can) supplant inspiration shows a remarkable misunderstanding of (and possibly dishonesty about) how the mind interacts with information.

(March 23, 2019 at 7:13 pm)Mr.wizard Wrote: I don't know how you could say anything about divine revelation, you haven't established that there is a divine being, that a divine being can or wants to reveal things, how revelation works, or that any perceived revelation isn't some sort of a delusion. You have to do a lot of work before you before you can claim that revelation isn't available to science.

Please try to focus on what I'm doing here.

I'm not arguing that revelation is real. I'm not arguing that there is a God who sends it. etc. etc.

I am thinking about what we mean when we talk about reliability. It looks as though most of the time when we use that word, we use it to mean "scientifically testable." So that becomes a begged question. Science = reliable and not science = not reliable. 

So one way to question this would be to think about other sources of knowledge, and how they could, theoretically, be reliable in non-science-type ways. I have offered, as a thought experiment, the idea of revelation, which I take not to be a scientifically valid source of information. 

If you want to offer a different example of a non-scientific source of information and talk about how it might be reliable, that would be fine too.

---

(March 23, 2019 at 7:20 pm)bennyboy Wrote: the process of confirming whether our inspired ideas accord well with further observations.  The idea that science has (or even can) supplant inspiration shows a remarkable misunderstanding of (and possibly dishonesty about) how the mind interacts with information.

Yes, good.

I tried to say earlier that everything we know comes from what we think. And it's too simple to say that science frees us of inspiration, desire, preconceptions, etc. 

I think what people here want to say is that reliable information, by definition, is that which can be given added credence in only one specific way (repetition through intersubjective empirical input) and this is what I'm not sure about. 

If that is the only way to add credence to an idea, then science is all there is. But there may be other ways.

(March 23, 2019 at 7:35 pm)Belaqua Wrote:

(March 23, 2019 at 7:13 pm)Mr.wizard Wrote: I don't know how you could say anything about divine revelation, you haven't established that there is a divine being, that a divine being can or wants to reveal things, how revelation works, or that any perceived revelation isn't some sort of a delusion. You have to do a lot of work before you before you can claim that revelation isn't available to science.

Please try to focus on what I'm doing here.

I'm not arguing that revelation is real. I'm not arguing that there is a God who sends it. etc. etc.

I am thinking about what we mean when we talk about reliability. It looks as though most of the time when we use that word, we use it to mean "scientifically testable." So that becomes a begged question. Science = reliable and not science = not reliable. 

So one way to question this would be to think about other sources of knowledge, and how they could, theoretically, be reliable in non-science-type ways. I have offered, as a thought experiment, the idea of revelation, which I take not to be a scientifically valid source of information. 

If you want to offer a different example of a non-scientific source of information and talk about how it might be reliable, that would be fine too.

You miss the point, in order for revelation to be considered a reliable source of information we would need to know that it is real and how it works. You might as well say we can reach reliable conclusions through magic.

(March 23, 2019 at 7:44 pm)Mr.wizard Wrote: You miss the point, in order for revelation to be considered a reliable source of information we would need to know that it is real and how it works. You might as well say we can reach reliable conclusions through magic.

You miss my point. 

Suppose, in this thought experiment, there is revelation. How would we confirm that it is reliable? 

The point I am making is that people will only accept as reliable a very specific kind of confirmation -- science-type confirmation. 

I am not arguing for the truth of revelation. This is a thought experiment about confirming information gained in non-scientific ways.

(March 23, 2019 at 8:00 pm)Belaqua Wrote:

(March 23, 2019 at 7:44 pm)Mr.wizard Wrote: You miss the point, in order for revelation to be considered a reliable source of information we would need to know that it is real and how it works. You might as well say we can reach reliable conclusions through magic.

You miss my point. 

Suppose, in this thought experiment, there is revelation. How would we confirm that it is reliable? 

The point I am making is that people will only accept as reliable a very specific kind of confirmation -- science-type confirmation. 

I am not arguing for the truth of revelation. This is a thought experiment about confirming information gained in non-scientific ways.

And what information have you gathered in a non scientific way ?

(March 23, 2019 at 8:00 pm)Belaqua Wrote:

(March 23, 2019 at 7:44 pm)Mr.wizard Wrote: You miss the point, in order for revelation to be considered a reliable source of information we would need to know that it is real and how it works. You might as well say we can reach reliable conclusions through magic.

You miss my point. 

Suppose, in this thought experiment, there is revelation. How would we confirm that it is reliable? 

The point I am making is that people will only accept as reliable a very specific kind of confirmation -- science-type confirmation. 

I am not arguing for the truth of revelation. This is a thought experiment about confirming information gained in non-scientific ways.

We confirm its reliability by the results it produces, if revelation could produce accurate and consistent results the you could determine it's reliability. The thought experiment is stupid because I could say that magic produces reliable results, "magic allows me to pick the winning lotto numbers every week, therefore magic is a reliable method for picking lotto numbers.", now where did that get us.