My Fellow Specifically Agnostic Atheists

[Tiberius]

The conclusion from this is straightforward that you have to leave open the possibility that some day it might be possible for humans to obtain objective knowledge. This means you deny the absolute claim of fundamental unknowability that there not ever can be knowledge about god's existence.

Yes, I deny that claim.

Right, they are modifiers and they are possible modifiers of agnosticism. IOW, agnosticism, without the modifiers, does not exclude these meanings. Not the phrasing that Huxley used and not the phrasing you can find in dictionaries and on the internet. So I get your point very clearly, you try to wiggle out under the implication of a poorly defined term you're using. If you try to redefine agnosticism so that these meanings, particularly the 'strong' variant - meaning fundamental unknowability - are excluded you are assuming authority you do not have. And I strongly object to that kind of behaviour.

I never said it did exclude these meanings, and if that was how you interpreted my position, let me restate. My position is that a person can call themselves an agnostic (and indeed, many do) if they believe that certain truth claims are "unknown or unknowable". A "strong agnostic" is a modifier on this (leaving out the "unknown" for an absolute position), and the "weak agnostic" leaves out the "unknowable" phrase. I'm not redefining meanings, I'm simply pointing out (again since you repeatedly don't seem to get this very simple point) that the inclusion of the word "or" implies the possibility of unknowability, and isn't a claim of unknowability at all.

To make this a bit easier:

Strong Agnosticism: Some truth values are unknowable. (absolute position)
Weak Agnosticism: Some truth values are unknown. (relative position)
Agnosticism (as a general concept): Some truth values are unknown or unknowable. (No absolute position since the claim does not specify which truth values are "unknowable" and which are simply "unknown"). For this type of agnostic to go through a list and decide which ones are unknown and which are unknowable is not to follow this type of agnosticism, since they are applying some sort of knowledge to things that are not known. If you know X is unknowable, you know something about X, therefore X is not unknowable. The whole point about agnosticism is that it states that unknown things are either unknown, or unknowable. It isn't a mechanism for deducing which are which, or even if there are any "unknowable" things, but it is a position that covers all bases.

Non sequitur. It certainly means that person A who views pizzas circular and a person B who views pizzas square are both pizzashapists according to this definition. There is no reason stated in the definition you give that a person is not a pizzashapist if he believes pizzas are circular yet does not believe that pizzas can be square. You are not building an argument here, instead you're undermining your already weak position on this.

It's not a non-sequitur. Please read what I said. I said it doesn't automatically mean there are two types of pizzashapism, which is true. The problem it seems is with how we are understanding the use of the word OR, given that it can mean "one or the other, but not both", and "either at the same time" respectively. Generally, I read it as the latter, but maybe that's because I'm in Computer Science and I use the word XOR for the former. With XOR, your people could well be pizzashapists, since they only believe in one shape of pizza. With OR, they wouldn't be, since they reject the possibility of the other shape.

I think this is perhaps where we've gotten mixed up. You seem to be coming from an entirely different angle to the usage of the word OR, thus the confusion.

This is the true strength of agnosticism; that unknowability is a possibility, yet due to it's nature we cannot say whether something is "unknowable".

So do you wanna suggest that (1) I've missed its full meaning so far or (2) that there is hidden meaning besides what is right there in the definition? About (1) I say to you that I made the suggestion of fundamental unknowability being a possible postion within agnosticism to you, not the other way around. A suggestion of type (2) clearly would be a red herring. We are not assessing your definition of agnosticism, we are assessing the common definition of agnosticism.

I want to suggest that we're both interpreting the OR in different ways. You see it as an XOR, whereas I see it as an OR. Common definition of agnosticism...well that's the problem in the first place isn't it? The common definitions are all over the place, since different people interpret it in different ways! You spend a lot of time criticising me for using my personal interpretation, but all of us are using our own personal interpretations, you included! Even philosophers can't agree with each other on what agnosticism means, since there are various ways of thinking about knowledge, and they each require a different interpretation of agnosticism to even work. The "common" definition as far as I can tell is "I don't know what I believe" which is clearly a modernisation / hybrid of what Huxley actually said, but more people use agnostic as a kind of "I'm not sure" position than anything.

So instead of assessing the "common definition" (an ultimately pointless task in my view), I thought we were assessing the meanings of agnosticism, and were debating on your assertion that it includes an absolute statement in the pure form itself.

Indeed that is what I've argued for, fundamental unknowability is a possible (but not necessarily valid) stance for the agnostic.

I never disagreed on this. However, you also argued that fundamental unknowability was a part of the actual definition itself (in the pure form). This is what I disagreed on, given the OR/XOR interpretation. Will you agree then, that when read with an OR and not an XOR, the absolute claim disappears?

The "yet" suggests that there is some problem of reconciling "unkwowability" with "unknowable". But anybody can see that a claim of unknowability for X, implies that X is unknowable in that POV. Without contradiction. The words you used suggest a lot but have no real substance.

With the "due to its nature" you finally make visible for the reader what drives you to suggest that agnosticism is not the literal interpretation of the given definition. With that little remark you make clear that you argue for validity of stances within agnosticism instead of possibility of stances given the definition. You add personal preference to the definition of agnoticism. It essentially is your personal take on agnosticism, nothing more, nothing less.

Of course there is a problem reconciling unknowability with unknowable. Just as a philosopher can ask "How do you know you know?", one can ask of a claim of the unknowability of X, "How do you know X is unknowable?". To claim knowledge of the unknowability of X is to make a claim of knowledge about X (since unknowability is a attribute of X), ergo X cannot be unknowable. This is one of the philosophical arguments against Strong Agnosticism.

The "due to its nature" was a reference to unknowability, not agnosticism. I probably phrased it badly; shifting subjects in sentences ain't my forte All I meant was that the "or" is present (in my view) to allow for both, rather than a choice. That something is "unknown" or "unknowable", but no direct claim is made to either, since it would undermine the whole "unknowable" thing and leave the weakness of strong agnosticism in the definition.

You are completely free to reject strong and weak agnosticism as a position to take yourself and I can't stress enough that this argument is not about that at all. But your personal position has no effect at all on the possible stances that are within the definition of agnosticism.

Indeed, so do you now accept that the further possible stance of OR rather than XOR is also in the definition, and that this stance is not one of absolutism?

You clearly misread the source I gave you on Academic Skepticism, the Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy. It doesn't state there at all that Academic Skepticism is some archaic form of skepticism died out long ago. It just treats the position, and rather thoroughly at that, as a possible philosophical stance within skepticism. The historic references I made are just in there to provide some historic context. So don't be a wise guy with that red herring. Take it back on your plate.

Maybe it wasn't a red herring, maybe it was. It seemed pretty clear to me that when someone brings up skepticism, they mean the modern variety that Wikipedia has a long article on, and not some other version that means something completely different. It came across as petty, and a red herring attempting to divert the conversation (as I'd only brought up skepticism in a comparison).

The OR-clause does not negate the fundamental unknowability position at all. It's a complete non sequitur. It instead clearly and rather obtrusively paves the way for the absolute claim of fundamental unknowability. To negate the absolute position "but not necessarily unknowable" or something along that line should have been added instead.

If you read as XOR, yes. I think I've dealt with this above. To me, saying something is "X or Y" without making any kind of attempt to put a decision into the definition removes the absolute position in the first place. If a decision isn't made, and the only thing you can say is "X or Y" then there isn't any absolute position (unless both X and Y are absolute statements). Like I said before, the kind of agnostic I am doesn't make decisions on what is "unknown" and what is "unknowable". For everything on the list, we mark "unknown or unknowable". If something moves from the set of unknown to the known, it is obviously not "unknowable", but we can't say anything about the state of something's unknowability until it is known (and then it becomes obsolete). It's a kinda ironic (although very important) philosophical view in my eyes.

I did not say that you indeed thought that only (2) and (3) are arguments for (1)

Yes you did:

That you might think that (2) or (3) are the only valid arguments for (1) is irrelevant.

You've only argued for addition of a constraint that's not there in the definition. With "or" the fundamental unknowability is allowed in its literal form. There is no explicit constraint in the definition that rules this out. The "as of yet" clause in your statement means that in that sentence you explicitly limit yourself to what is known now. You intend to rule out absolute statements which is your personal bias towards agnosticism.

No, I don't intend to rule out absolute statements. I fully understand that you can interpret agnosticism to include absolute statements, but you can interpret it in many ways. My personal interpretation doesn't have any absolute statements in it, and that was all I was trying to show. If you accept that the version of agnosticism in the pure form with the OR rather than XOR doesn't have any absolute statements, then we can all sit back and have a nice cup of tea. Otherwise (and I fear it might be otherwise), we'll be debating for far longer

Since when is logical validity a thing to consider before categorizing possible positions?

You claim that the OR-clause had to be added to prevent some absolutistic claim. But it does nothing of the sort, it instead paves the way for the absolute cclaim of fundamental unknowability. To rule out such absolutistic claims "but not necessarily unknowable" should have been added.

Logical validity is very important when defining things. I'd have thought that was obvious. What if you define something and it's logically invalid?

Again, interpretation of the different uses of the word OR leads to our confusion. Both our views are correct, according to which use of OR you use. Also, no, I didn't claim the OR was added to prevent an absolute claim. I said it was there to address a possibility (that something can also be unknowable).

Again your words lack substance. The "OR" simply is in the definition, your personal interpretation of it is not. It is that simple. You don't like strong agnosticism, well, you're completely entitled to that and I even share that position. But in the end it is your personal constraint you've added to the definition, not what is in the definition itself.

Same with your personal interpretation, same with everyone's. If my words lack substance, so do yours. I don't think either of our words lack substance however, since they all rely on different ways of interpreting. My view comes from reading the writings of Huxley, especially in this passage:

Positively the principle may be expressed as in matters of intellect, do not pretend conclusions are certain that are not demonstrated or demonstrable.

The "or" here doesn't seem to be the type of or that means "either but not both" but rather as an inclusion of the "demonstrable" term to the definition, making sure to address the claims of non-empirical claims.