Modal Argument: The Mind is Not the Brain

[bennyboy]

The ones here are constantly saying exactly that.

I have to say, I don't the weak definition of "atheist," since my beagle and my bunion both lack a belief about the existence of God/gods. I prefer a ternary choice: yes/no/I don't know. Since I also lack the belief that God/gods DON'T exist, I believe "agnostic" is a more sensible choice for me, and don't like the word atheist.

But I don't have control over the dictionary, and the "weak" position is one of the valid definitions: a + theist = not a theist.

It doesn't matter if you don't like the word.

If you do not hold the premise that a god exists to be true, you are an atheist.

Agnosticism is not a ternary choice to the question about BELIEF. It is a position that concerns knowledge.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

"Contemporary analytic philosophers of mind generally use the term “belief” to refer to the attitude we have, roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true. To believe something, in this sense, needn't involve actively reflecting on it"

If your belief of the existence of a god is anywhere above nonzero, you are a theist. ANYTHING else is atheism.

I think my post was pretty clearly a statement of my semantic preferences. Your post ignores pretty much the entire essence of what I was trying to say, and in a pretty condescending way, too. You act as though the way you prefer to think about these words is the only way to think about them, which is a false belief.

First of all, "-ism" does not necessarily have to mean "belief," by your definition as supported by your appeal to various academic authorities; it does not mean "holding a premise." So the belief vs. knowledge axis you've set up is a false dilemma, based on an incorrect view of the etymology of that suffix.

Second, you act as though belief and knowledge are necessarily different axes. Another sensible position assumes that ALL knowledge is intrinsically unverifiable: solipsism, idealism, etc. cannot be disproven absolutely. So when I say I KNOW something, I'm stating a belief: an idea or experience accords sufficiently with the rest of my ideas that it's acceptable to me.

Third, you act as though a human is a single agent, not a composite of many brain functions. It is perfectly possible for the brain not to be able to resolve even a simple question into a single output: it is possible to believe in something and its opposite. For example, if asked "will you pass the Mensa test?" I can believe that I will, and that I won't. We've all had these questions in life where the outcome was unpredictable and the brain goes into a kind of flip-flop while it figures out if it thinks Schrodinger's cat is dead or alive. The only honest answer to Schrodinger's cat is "I don't know unless I can open the box."

Finally, when the REASON for lacking a belief is a lack of sufficient definition or information, then you are necessarily agnostic. If I say "Do you believe that X=23?" you'd be silly to state that you lacked that belief: the question is not well-enough defined even to attempt an answer. Instead, you'd ask me to define some kind of circumstance which your brain could resolve into an answer to my question. If I told you "X= the average age of people in the Hot to Trot Nightclub," you'd say you weren't sure, but it seemed like a reasonable possibility. If I told you "X= 3 * 7," you'd say you knew for sure that was not the case. If I told you, "X is the first prime number after 19," you'd say you knew for sure that was the case.

So unless given a clearly-stated question that you take as the criterion for establishing theism, I cannot process it. I can only say that by MOST of the definitions I've heard so far, I'd be an atheist. For some definitions, like that of a Deity creating the universe, I'm agnostic. For some metaphorical definitions "God is love," I know for sure love exists, which would make me a theist by that definition-- but I'd argue strenuously against that definition.

See? Trying to stuff all of decision-making into a tidy little box is wrong. And trying to stuff other people's language about their decision making into YOUR tidy little box is rude.