RE: Argument against atheism
December 24, 2011 at 1:06 am
(This post was last modified: December 24, 2011 at 1:16 am by The Grand Nudger.)
What subject has been changed? You made an assumption about consciousness, and then used this assumption to draw an inference. The assumption was not a very good one, the inference (a justification of assumptions no less) a bad one. I couldn't have asked for a better example.
What on earth made you think that I was implying that mollusks lacked consciousness? That would be where your argument for the justification of assumptions would lead. That assumptions and axioms about the "fundamental blah blah....." are required or we would be unable to do anything. Well, show me a mollusks assumptions, a mollusks axioms, and yet they are able to do many things. You replied that mollusks did not have consciousness (apparently because you thought that I would make such a strange claim....), and that as such they did not perceive things the way that we do. I wouldn't argue on the latter, but the former can be discredited via evidence. They solve problems, can learn to perform tasks, remember those actions, and some even have a wonderful little camo routine that is the very definition of awareness of self and surroundings. No change of subject, and still no assumptions, at least not coming out of this corner.
Before you respond....again...with "you're assuming the axiom of reason". Not quite. I'm applying reason to evidence and reaching a conclusion based off of a starting point called observation. If reason would lead me to conclude that an octopus did not posess consciousness I would doubt my use of reason first, then the evidence, then reason itself, then evidence itself again, and at some point something would have to break, or I would have to admit that the phenomena was in-explicable. That I did not possess enough knowledge about the subject, or the proper tools, and could not proceed. See all of that going down that has nothing to do with assumptions?
Or....I could go on until the end of time with a philosophical argument, full of assumptions......likely learning nothing whatsoever.
This is precisely why I continue to attempt to explain to you why a conclusion reached by the use of philosophy alone is not equivalent to a conclusion reached by science. That the limits of philosophy begin and end with the fact that it deals merely in concepts, whereas other methods continue further to establish whether or not a concept has application outside of our own minds.
What on earth made you think that I was implying that mollusks lacked consciousness? That would be where your argument for the justification of assumptions would lead. That assumptions and axioms about the "fundamental blah blah....." are required or we would be unable to do anything. Well, show me a mollusks assumptions, a mollusks axioms, and yet they are able to do many things. You replied that mollusks did not have consciousness (apparently because you thought that I would make such a strange claim....), and that as such they did not perceive things the way that we do. I wouldn't argue on the latter, but the former can be discredited via evidence. They solve problems, can learn to perform tasks, remember those actions, and some even have a wonderful little camo routine that is the very definition of awareness of self and surroundings. No change of subject, and still no assumptions, at least not coming out of this corner.
Before you respond....again...with "you're assuming the axiom of reason". Not quite. I'm applying reason to evidence and reaching a conclusion based off of a starting point called observation. If reason would lead me to conclude that an octopus did not posess consciousness I would doubt my use of reason first, then the evidence, then reason itself, then evidence itself again, and at some point something would have to break, or I would have to admit that the phenomena was in-explicable. That I did not possess enough knowledge about the subject, or the proper tools, and could not proceed. See all of that going down that has nothing to do with assumptions?
Or....I could go on until the end of time with a philosophical argument, full of assumptions......likely learning nothing whatsoever.
This is precisely why I continue to attempt to explain to you why a conclusion reached by the use of philosophy alone is not equivalent to a conclusion reached by science. That the limits of philosophy begin and end with the fact that it deals merely in concepts, whereas other methods continue further to establish whether or not a concept has application outside of our own minds.
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