(March 22, 2011 at 2:36 pm)QuestingHound08 Wrote: I'm wondering how, if I profess atheism, I can now profess any kind of certainty in anything. The question's setup follows--the real question behind it is in bold at (appropriately) the bottom of it.
Who cares? What matters is whether or not we have good reason to believe that something. If you have some need for certainty that's not my problem and I frankly couldn't care less.
Quote:I read and appreciated Ryft's comment on the difference between faith and belief ("Please stop equating 'belief' and 'faith' ") from a little over a month ago. I got from his post that the belief of modern scientists and philosophers is considered to be entirely subjective--belief today is used as describing an attitude, a "seems" not an "is". Here are some words I quoted from his text.
Entirely subjective? No. The method by which the belief was arrived at can be objectively right or wrong, reaching a belief via the scientific method gives you some level of objectivity as your belief is not entirely grounded in personal attitudes.
Quote:"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,"
Insofar as belief is characterized by contemporary philosophers as a 'propositional attitude', he writes, it constitutes "the mental state of having some attitude, stance, take, or opinion
Sure, that's what a belief is.
Quote:Question: What is a Propositional Attitude? Isn't it the attitude conveying a belief in ultimate, objective reality? Why on earth would you propose something if it didn't have some kind of objective vision to contribute to or fit into?
No, that's not at all what it is.
A propositional attitude is an attitude towards a proposition... You do not propose something, you have a belief about a proposition. It has absolutely nothing with some supposed 'objective vision'.
And why would you need some 'objective' vision before you can make a proposition? That makes absolutely no sense, it is not a valid prerequisite for making a proposition about reality. You do not even need to believe something to be true to propose it, you can propose something to be 'not impossible'.
Quote:Doesn't such an objective reality require a form, some type of identifiable unity? If there is such a unity of reality, doesn't it have to include personhood (or the phenomenology of personhood and of experiencing other persons) somewhere in the mix of elements it includes (since persons or at least the experience of them are part of reality)?
You're speaking pseudo-philosophy babble, try again when you are being somewhat more coherent.
Objective reality exists, unless you are a solipsist, we are all trying to determine what it is. Is there some identifiable unity? What the fuck do you mean by that? And why do you qualify it with Identifiable? What if there is some unifying element to reality that is NOT identifiable?
And what the hell does experiencing persons have to do with anything?
Quote:Now, as an atheist, is it possible to deny the fundamental Personal facet of Objective Reality (otherwise known as God), and still retain intellectual integrity in proposing that I believe in an objective reality? If I can't--can I/should I really claim to believe anything, or is my propositional attitude a sort of hypocrisy from what is at its base a kind of nihilism--a denial of the fundamental, comprehensive and knowable unity of reality?
Again, that is mostly incoherent pseudo-philosophical babble. State your question clearly and without all the farting around.
And it would help if you use the term 'propositional attitude' correctly, as I've corrected you earlier.
Quote:Rephrasing: If I disbelieve in a deity who grounds all facts in an objective context--can I really say that I believe aything else objectively?
At what point in this augment did the existence of a deity become established? You have no epistemic justification for the existence of a deity, therefore I don't give a shit. Claim all you like about one being able to 'ground all facts in an objective context', I simply do not care. You haven't passed step 1, provide a good reason to believe that this deity exists, so anything else contingent upon that is a waste of time.
Quote:Does it make sense to say that I believe something could be true in certain circumstances, if those very possible circumstances are uncertain?
What???
When we say "something might be true given these conditions" we ARE giving a hypothetical set of certainties. If X and Y and Z then A. It's not "this might be true if this and this might be true", a statement which makes no sense at all.
Quote:If there is no place or person where the buck of reality stops, so to speak, and all is possible, then aren't all my theories pretty much equally meaningful--equally meaningless?
And now we're dealing in post modernism?
This is the most incoherent post I've read for a significant period of time.
Quote:I'm caught in a mind-set right now where all such speculations of science and otherwise are just that for me--speculations.
Are you serious? You think Gravity is a speculation? No, it's demonstrable. Is the scientific method speculation? No, it's pragmatically justified as a matter of fact, it gets results. Speculations do not get results.
Quote:It's scary--like trying to put together a puzzle with pieces that have no set shape or objective context. Is that the choice I face if I would choose continue in atheism?[/b]
No, that would be the choice you face if you pick post-modernism, and post modernism is complete bullshit.
.
