No reason justifies disbelief.

[LadyForCamus]

I’m not making an assertion, but nice try. I’m saying that I’ll believe another reliable method of knowing things exists when someone shows it to me, lol.  It’s what I’ve been asking for, for several years now.  No one has ever been able to offer me anything.  Just like god.

This statement seems a little peculiar to me, and I'd like you to clarify on it.  Is science really the vehicle by which you know what exists?  Like, are you suspicious of putting books on a new desk until you confirm the hypothesis that it's a real desk?

My post was in response to Belaqua’s earlier claim that there is no way to investigate or gather information about the existence of god using the scientific method. I was accused of having a closed-minded, metaphysical commitment to empirical investigation as the only means to acquire knowledge about that which is real.  My response, then, is that if you’re asserting one method is not going to work, by what other method can I gather information in order to have a good chance at reaching an accurate conclusion about the existence of a god?  And how do we know this alternative method is reliable?  What about this alternative method lends itself to accuracy, so that I don’t have to wonder if I’m just guessing about stuff?

It’s not helpful to tell someone, “I can’t believe you think this one way is going to get you there; you’re so closed minded”, without telling them what the other ways are.

[LadyForCamus]

How do we know that knowledge through revelation isn't reliable? Because it isn't confirmable through science-like methods.

But that doesn't in itself mean that it's false. Only that it's not science.

If there’s no way to confirm revelation is reliable, on what rational grounds should we assume that it is?! What reason is there to think that it’s a reliable pathway to the truth, and how do you know that reason is a good reason? It’s not a contradiction, Bel. It’s a tacit admission on your part that you have no reason to think these other ways besides science are accurate pathways to the truth. It’s a tacit admission that if we can’t demonstrate a method is reliable, how is it any better than guessing, or imagining, or making shit up?

One good reason why revelation is a lousy way to learn truths about gods:

Revelations lead folks to mutually exclusive gods.  So now, how do we figure out who’s revelation was true knowledge, and who’s wasn’t?  The guy who saw Allah, or the guy who saw Jesus?  Or the guy who saw a space alien from Hale-Bopp’s commet who told him he was god? Maybe I just had a revelation from the universe that there is no god. How do we figure out who’s correct?

@Belaqua

Please tell me how you are going to distinguish, without using any empirical means, the difference between a schizophrenic hallucination of god, and a divine revelation. Remember, no empirical evidence may be used to draw the distinction here.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, yeah, but once you accept that we can guess right outside of and without the use of sensory experience you're wondering about the reliability of guessing, not the validity of intuition as a basis for knowledge, and you've already accepted that empiricism is not the basis of knowledge in doing so.

You’ve lost me a bit here. Explain it to me like I’m..ya know...me. 😛

NP.  Empiricism is a position that all knowledge is ultimately derived from sense experience.  If there is any knowledge that we can or do possess that isn't based on sense experience, such as knowledge derived from intuition, then empiricism is false.  We can use disparaging terms like "guessing" to describe intuition..and we probably do that as shorthand for our opinion that it's not reliable, and it may not be, but even if 99.99% of our intuitions were wrong, the remaining .01% still has the heft to discredit the claim empiricism makes.  

How can we ever possibly distinguish between acurate intuition and lucky guessing?  I was certain my first born was going to be a boy.  I walked out of our twelve week ultrasound certain he was a boy.  We didn’t find out until months later of course, that I was right.  Did I use accurate intuition to acquire non-empirical knowledge about the sex of my unborn?  Or was it a lucky guess? That he was a boy after all would lead many to say that my intuition gave me true knowledge.  But if he had been a girl, then I guess I didn’t know after all, did I? And, if all correct intuitions that lead to knowledge are simply lucky guesses...then...how on earth can any rational person consider guessing to be the true foundation of knowledge? I mean...?

It's a good question, isn't it?  We find ourselves facing the same question with empirical knowledge.  How can we distinguish between accurate and inaccurate intuition, how can we distinguish between accurate and inaccurate sense experience?  Most would offer deduction in either case...or any of a number of other methodological ways of organizing our thoughts.     

Describing accurate intuition as a lucky guess leaves open the door for accurate sense experience to be, equally, a lucky guess.  I could, after all, look to my left and see a fairy outside the window.  I'm lucky that I don't..because if I did, then I would very likely be wrong about the issue of whether or not fairies are outside my window.  Ultimately, this weakest form of the other than empirical doesn't posit that we are or can be certain, that it will always be possible to distinguish between accurate intuitions -or- accurate experiences and inaccurate ones, it doesn't even make the claim that intuition is the foundation of all knowledge, or that a nominally rational person would have to accept a conclusion derived from intuition....it merely seeks to add intuition to the possible sources of knowledge.  It only establishes, if accepted, that the claim of empiricism is wrong.  

What I’m trying to say is that there is no meaningful difference between the concept of a not-real thing, and a real thing, because concepts draw from empirical data. A dog is real. We have empirical knowledge of dogs. The concept of a unicorn is real. We have empirical knowledge of the current parts and features of existing creatures that our physical brains use to imagine a unicorn.  Without empiricism there is no imagining of a unicorn. I would say that that empirical knowledge is no less empirical than my empirical knowledge of dogs. The concept of a unicorn is not real in some special, different, metaphysical way. 

Fair enough, that may be the case...it may be that intuition is a sort of back-of-the-house empirical assessment.  That we're not conscious of the process, only the conclusion, and due to this it presents itself as something other than what it actually is.  That latter bit isn't a revelation for either of us, it's just worth noting that this particular notion which could defeat intuitionism does so by calling the accuracy of empirical contents into question.  

Intuition certainly seems different than sense experience, even if it isn't.  

Haha, well, I was being tongue-in-cheek about the relationship between my hair color and my...flakiness.  But, I can definitely confirm there exists physical, empirical evidence of my flakiness, lol. I mean...I could list a lot of examples, and there are probably plenty that I could corroborate with documents, lol.  But, then I’d have to hide from the forums in shame for a month. 😂 No, I don’t need to rely on intuition to know I’m a flake. The evidence has lead me to no other reasonable conclusion. I’ve made my peace with it. 😏

OFC, OFC, and that it was humor is clear, still, this example is a bit like the manticore from before.  A vernacular substitution of flakiness for blondeness.  If we made up some fantastic term it would show that we're not answering the question so much as shifting around the terms.  This is as good a place as any to bring up the next other than empirical proposition.  Innate knowledge.  The notion that there are some concepts known to us as a consequence of our rational nature.  You mention above that you've surveyed a long list of individual empirical instances of knowledge in order to arrive at the conclusion of your flakiness.  We've already discussed, however, that no number of individual instances of empirical knowledge can support a necessary truth in and of themselves.  You aren't necessarily flaky on account of those observations.  The classic example is that watching the sun rise a thousand times won't make it necessarily true that the sun rises tomorrow.  

So, how do we rescue necessary truth, and how do we contextualize what we take to be true in light of that?  Perhaps, instead of arriving at the conclusion that you are flaky, that flakiness exists, based on observation, you have an innate concept of flakiness, and every individual instance of empirical observation allows you to recognize some action as a representative of that concept?  If this were the case, then innate knowledge would be the foundation, and empirical observation would be additional verifying information.  We might say, "ah, but someone explained what flakiness was, to me" - and sure...but just as before, their having explained it to you might have done little more than provide you with the vernacular for some concept you already held.  "Ah, "flakiness", we say to ourselves...that's what we call this thing I am !".

But, I’m saying I can’t ever know that as a fact.  I may intuit that I exist, but it might not be a fact, like someone intuits their unborn baby is a boy, until they learn it’s a girl.

Well, I wouldn't worry to much about certainty, at least not at this point, because certainty like that is a very high bar for knowledge of any kind that carries a monumental amount of baggage.  But, since we're concerned with the accuracy of intuition and the worry that it may amount to little more than guessing, lets instead consider that your knowledge of self is innate.  That, due to your nature, you cannot help but know that you exist.   That your every empirical observation proceeds from the innate truth of your existence as a being that can observe.  If you didn't already know that you existed, then what, exactly, should the phrase "I see a red ball" be taken to mean?  There's an "I" in there, right at the start.

This could place some knowledge, like knowledge of self, in the category of a priori knowledge.  Independent of sense experience... perhaps, even, the basis -of- sense experience.

[bennyboy]

This statement seems a little peculiar to me, and I'd like you to clarify on it.  Is science really the vehicle by which you know what exists?  Like, are you suspicious of putting books on a new desk until you confirm the hypothesis that it's a real desk?

My post was in response to Belaqua’s earlier claim that there is no way to investigate or gather information about the existence of god using the scientific method. I was accused of having a closed-minded, metaphysical commitment to empirical investigation as the only means to acquire knowledge about that which is real.  My response, then, is that if you’re asserting one method is not going to work, by what other method can I gather information in order to have a good chance at reaching an accurate conclusion about the existence of a god?  And how do we know this alternative method is reliable?  What about this alternative method lends itself to accuracy, so that I don’t have to wonder if I’m just guessing about stuff?

It’s not helpful to tell someone, “I can’t believe you think this one way is going to get you there; you’re so closed minded”, without telling them what the other ways are.

Yes, it's complicated. However, I think Belaqua has attempted to describe another way of collecting knowledge, and it was summarily discarded.

My view of things is this: we start with raw experience, filter it through our world view, and then categorize and systematize it.  There are plenty of experiences, in my opinion, which are so intellectually, emotionally or philosophically powerful that they are worth categorizing as such.  You might call them religious experiences, or moments of realization.

I myself have had experiences which I recognize as matching descriptions of religious experience.  I can honestly say to a Christian talking about the feeling of communion with God that I've been there.  Personally, I don't think it's necessary to attribute the experience to God or any other mythological source.  But what I CAN say is that the truth of that moment is self-contained: either you've had the experience and can "get it," and can understand why Christians might call it God, or you haven't had that experience.

Science might provide interesting insights.  Very many so-called spiritual experiences have been reproduced in the lab: lucid dreams, OBEs, near-death experiences, and so on.  But in my opinion, having the experience provides a level of insight that none of the mechanisms a scientist might use can proxy for.


There's another path by which experiences can be confirmed: by the following of instructions meant to arrive at a particular mental realization or state of mind.  The problem is that it often requires an investment that an unconvinced party is unwilling to make-- and those unwilling to make it, being unable to reproduce the experience, will nevertheless place the BOP on those who outlined the path to having the experience, and discard both the experience and verbal descriptions of the kind of realized truth the experiencer had.

A simple example would be that of lucid dreaming.  If I told you that you could wake up in your dreams, and have complete control over the dream content, and that in this state, the dream felt much more vivid and full of detail even than waking life, then what next?  You could discard my assertion as woo or as an overzealous exaggeration.  But I have actual knowledge of lucid dreaming that your appeals for me to "show the evidence" cannot devalue.  To really be qualified to discuss the issue, you'd have to have a lucid dream, the steps of which can fairly easily be followed by all.

So the short answer to your question: another way of arriving at knowledge is by personal introspection. And the categories of truth arrived at in this way are qualitatively different than those arrived at inference from objective observation.

[The Grand Nudger]

Starting with raw experience is an affirmation of empiricism. A person who has a "religious experience" - that says god spoke to them or revealed something to them, or transported them to some place where they saw some thing..is explicitly invoking an empirical basis for their claim.

[Abaddon_ire]

"knowledge thorough revelation" is NOT reliable. 

Please demonstrate this through empirical means.

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?

Of course you are.

You are a navel gazing waste of everyone's time.

[downbeatplumb]

[quote='downbeatplumb' pid='1893999' dateline='1553336900']
"knowledge thorough revelation" is NOT reliable. 

Please demonstrate this through empirical means.

The brain is an extremely unreliable tool. 
Much of what people think is real is the brains interpretation of what it thinks its experiencing which can be confused and miss led by many many things.

That's right. But an illusion perceived by an unreliable brain isn't revelation. It's an illusion. 

Your argument here only works if you assume, a priori, that all revelations are illusion.

How do you tell the difference between an illusion that seems like a revelation and a revelation?
That's right. There isn't one.
So by their nature they are unreliable.

Even Dickens knew this "there is more of gravy than of grave about you!".

What do you mean by "even Dickens"? Do you think he's generally unreliable?

Charles Dickens. Hes kind of a big deal. I think he was quite reliable as the 19th Writer that he was. My point was that it has been known for centuries that brains are unreliable.
 

So everything that is experienced only through the brain needs backing up by other means.
So in order to be trustworthy anything must be detectable by something other than the human mind.
Revelation is not and so is unreliable.

Good. So you are also saying that the word "reliable" means "testable through scientific methods."

So if our metaphysical commitments tell us that the word "reliable" always and only means "available to science," then we are not open-minded to other methods than science.

You're getting it now.
To be reliable it must be testable somehow. That's why its reliable.

By the way: look! You attempted to use logic alone to prove something about the world! Mrs. Camus will reject this out of hand.

I used logic to demonstrate that the scientific method is required to verify claims. I don't think she'll have a problem with that.

[Simon Moon]

"knowledge thorough revelation" is NOT reliable. 

Please demonstrate this through empirical means.

Oh please...

We have billions of people, all with different, mutually exclusive, beliefs, many of them claim to have revelations of their various gods.

Of course, they can't all be right. But they sure as hell could all be wrong.

If revelation can lead Muslims to their beliefs, Christians to theirs, Hindus to theirs, Zoroastrians to theirs, etc, etc, how can it possibly be reliable?

[Belacqua]

Please tell me how you are going to distinguish, without using any empirical means, the difference between a schizophrenic hallucination of god, and a divine revelation. Remember, no empirical evidence may be used to draw the distinction here.

I'm not particularly interested in revelations. I'm focussing more on what we mean when we talk about reliability. 


If you say that revelation isn't reliable because it can't be confirmed by intersubjective empirical evidence, then you're saying that it can't be confirmed because it isn't science. Because intersubjective empirical evidence is how science works. 


So what you're really saying is that only those things which work like science are reliable, by definition. Which means that by definition, "reliable," for you, equals "scientific." 


Which means that you're not open to non-scientific modes or reliability.

---

Please demonstrate this through empirical means.

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, because all those things which were interpreted as revealed facts failed. Which means they were illusions.

Does this mean that ALL revealed facts are illusions? Maybe. But in the desert people often see mirages where there's no water, and this doesn't mean that no oases exist. 

False positives abound. But this doesn't rule out the existence of real revelation. 

I don't believe in real revelation, but we have to be careful in our logic. Don't people say that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, or something like that?

---

How do you tell the difference between an illusion that seems like a revelation and a revelation?
That's right. There isn't one.
So by their nature they are unreliable.

I don't know, I've never had a revelation. Have you? I've had some illusions.

If a person had a real revelation, there might be a way to distinguish, but since nobody we know has had one we can't judge. The preponderance of false positives make it difficult. 

Let's say that those people reporting revelations are unreliable. But we can't say that revelation itself is unreliable, because we don't have any data on that. 

You're getting it now. 
To be reliable it must be testable somehow. That's why its reliable.

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.

[bennyboy]

Starting with raw experience is an affirmation of empiricism.  A person who has a "religious experience" - that says god spoke to them or revealed something to them, or transported them to some place where they saw some thing..is explicitly invoking an empirical basis for their claim.

You are conflating subjective experience with empiricism.  That's a pretty poor affirmation of science as an exclusive methodology for seeking truth.

"I think therefore I am."
You: You are observing your subjective experiences as objects, so that's an empirical realization.  Congratulations, you're doing science!

That's fine, if you are willing to accept Buddhist meditation systems and philosophical insight as science.  Sam Harris, I think, might actually agree.

But it's not what we normally mean when we use the word "science," and I don't think that it's what LadyForCamus and others in this thread mean when they used the word in opposition to the idea that insight might be a valid (or valuable) tool for seeking truth.

---

Please demonstrate this through empirical means.

Oh please...

We have billions of people, all with different, mutually exclusive, beliefs, many of them claim to have revelations of their various gods.

Of course, they can't all be right. But they sure as hell could all be wrong.

If revelation can lead Muslims to their beliefs, Christians to theirs, Hindus to theirs, Zoroastrians to theirs, etc, etc, how can it possibly be reliable?

Consider the possibility that there are categories of "religious" experience  (quotes because I want to distinguish between the experiences themselves and any source attributions people might make about them) which are difficult to verbalize, and which are rarely achieved.  I think that's a fair enough supposition.

It may be that various myths, parables, and so on were attempts by people with Eureka! moments to explain the knowledge gained by insight, and to lay out some path for followers to arrive at that state of mind.

Buddhism does this very explicitly, but there are schools of meditation and insight in all of the religious traditions.  They are represented by an EXTREMELY small portion of the population which claim a religion as their own, but I'd say there is enough commonality there that you could say they transcend the boundaries of their individual mythological traditions.

Fasting, long periods of prayer, self-abasement (i.e. the suspension of ego), altruism, and so on-- these aren't just moral virtues or commandments.  They are psychological techniques, and f practiced constantly, they are likely to bring a person to philosophical realizations that you couldn't arrive at though science.

---

How do you tell the difference between an illusion that seems like a revelation and a revelation?
That's right. There isn't one.
So by their nature they are unreliable.

How do you tell the difference between "empirical observations" made in a material monist Universe, or in the Matrix, or in a God-monitored idealistic reality, or even just in your own dream?

We've learned enough about science not to reaffirm that our general sense of exist is accurate, but to demonstrate that it is not.  When you or I look at a table, we don't see a gazillion virtual wave functions vibrating in space, some of them in a state of paradoxical superposition.  Instead, we see the idea of a table-- its flatness, its parallelism to the floor,  and so on.

Whatever is really "out there," we aren't seeing it, and can't.  This is a scientific truth at this point.