No reason justifies disbelief.

[bennyboy]

The forums exist, Benny.  Jesus christ........

Links and quotes, fucker.  Do it. The only time I ever referred to metaphysics was in response to a post in which you were blathering about it.

[The Grand Nudger]

Or, a person could just scroll back through these pages.

[LadyForCamus]

Well...wait a minute....we'd already agreed on the issue of the manticore (it was a subtle end run, I'll admit it..... I make no apologies!, lol).   No matter.  Sure, the notion of intuition doesn't rule out false intuition (but I've got another one that does, for when we turn the heat up to eleventy), which is why it's the weakest non-empirical argument as I framed it. 

Still, the existence of false intuitions doesn't rule out the existence of true intuitions..so in a meaningful sense, while it's a relevant criticism, it's a non-issue of concept.  Having an experience can also be a "false experience".  Yes, you experience it, but the contents of your experience are inaccurate with respect to their alleged referents.  Presumably, deduction (in either case, intuition or experience), could help to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Sure. Having an objective way to distinguish between true and false intuitions (as well as sensory experiences) would be necessary in order for them to be useful, or practically meaningful in any way.  Otherwise, you're just guessing at shit, lol.

I'll also tip the hat to seeing pictures of a manticore, it may be the case that manticore knowledge is empirical knowledge based on pictures of manticores (or pictures of tails..whats a tail, right?)...but that's an easy problem to solve.  Just replace every use of the word "manticore" with "beejatzulifren" and every use of the words "a tail" with "kenbanhindra"  What are those things, you might ask?  Doesn't matter.  What you know, is that beejatzulifren have kenbanhindra, and that if a thing doesn't have kenbanhindra, it can't be beejatzulifren.  This can't be empirical knowledge, you have no experience of either.

Well, sure I do! I have a physical photograph of a beejatzulifren, and when I look at it, I see that it has a kenbanhindra (and damn you for making me have to type out those words, lol. ) It really doesn't matter how we're labeling the pictures in the book; there is still a physical book with pictures in it.  But, I understand where you're going with this.  

It's stated as a truth by definition of concept.  Like math, or, in some formulations, morality....or...gods.

Right.  And, I can imagine the concept of a unicorn, but that doesn't necessarily mean that, "unicorns are real" is a truth statement.  You'd be right to say I have no empirical knowledge of unicorns, because there is no empirical evidence that unicorns exist. We have concepts of unicorns that may or may not be universally agreed upon, but I'm not sure how concepts qualify as some separate or special category of knowledge, or realness. I have empirical knowledge of a human constructed concept that is borne out of the empirically demonstrable physical characteristics of things currently in existence (horses, horns, animals that fly etc). People imagine things, and we know people imagine things because we tell each other about it. What's the big deal about that?

Can we appeal to empirical data to show that sense experience is at least sometimes unreliable?  Well...yeah.  If we need to dive in on this one we can (say the word) but..I'm hoping that we can both agree that empirical data suggests that sense experience is not universally reliable.  The whole point of science (for example) was to reduce this known vector of error in empirical analytics.

Agreed.

The intuitionist only needs to present a single example of some knowledge that is not empirical.  Empiricism states that all x is y, intuitionism responds with some x that is not y, thus, sense experience may be the foundation of some knowledge or most knowledge or even a great way of verifying knowledge, but cannot be the foundation of knowledge.

Give me an example of knowledge about something in existence that is not grounded in empiricism.

Beyond all that, though, I want to ask.  Are there notions that you consider true that are intuitive to you.  When I describe this set, can you say with authenticity that all of the things you know are known by empirical means, and that you possess no true intuitions?  I'm not going to ask you how you verify them, or ask you to prove them, or even what they are.  I just wonder whether or not you possess them, or are aware of possessing any of them.

I honestly don't know.  I'm finding that I distrust human intuition more and more as time marches on, because so many assumptions that we make based on intuition end up being incorrect once the evidence comes in. I guess, it's intuitive to me that I exist, and others exist.  I have to make that assumption in order to function, or at the very least, it would be a lot more cumbersome to function assuming the alternative.  But, I wouldn't say that I am in possession of non-empirical knowledge  that points to a fact that I, and others exist.

[The Grand Nudger]

The long and short of it, is simple...your argument is a gap argument about empirical investigation.  The difference between metaphysics and physics is..very simply, empiricism.  

It's okay if you didn't know that, like you didn't know that you weren't talking about cosmogony (or, conversely, that you didn't know that you -were- talking cosmogony but were talking directly out of your ass).  

The claim that empirical investigation os not the proper tool for some subject is an explicitly metaphysical claim.  The claim that there are "clearly metaphysical" questions is a metaphysical claim.  It's not like you typed this shit twenty years ago and just can;t remember it.  Could I quote you..yes..ofc...wtf?  

I shouldn't have to.  You should remember and have some basic understanding of the things that you've said in the last 24 hours.  Is that too much to ask?

[tackattack]

Maybe that’s an inherently faulty question to even be asking.

Sure.  You can say something like "You can't ask what caused the Big Bang, because causality is time-dependent, and the math breaks down in a singularity, which means there was no such thing as time before time.  Asking what caused it is a broken question."

That's fine, but the fact is that there is a Universe, and we'd like to know why it exists.  Saying that because a question clearly cannot be answered, the question is faulty, smells to me a lot like a philosophical Goddidit.

---

Science doesn't discover meta anything.  Metaphysics is meant to be different than empirical whatsits.  If anything is empirical, it's just physics.  If we are not capable of making knowledge statements without reference -to- the empirical..to "discovery" then we have no valid conception of a meta anything..again, it's just physics.

Infinite regress is not a problem for physics, it's a problem for a system of generating answers that relies on a terminus that may not exist, an issue for an empty set.

Right.  So if you have a question which is clearly metaphysical, then the study of physics is not going to answer it.  Physics is bounded by the Universe, so if you ask questions about why or how physics is a thing, you can't use physics to answer that question.

The forums exist, Benny.  Jesus christ........

Links and quotes, fucker.  Do it.  The only time I ever referred to metaphysics was in response to a post in which you were blathering about it.

[bennyboy]

Or, a person could just scroll back through these pages.

I've scrolled back through my comments, and I'm saying that you're full of shit.  Tell me what metaphysical or immaterial assertions I've made, because I'm saying it never happened.  I think you are getting confused between my actual statements and your many straw men.

[LadyForCamus]

.........?

What can "turn the screw" then, how do you know that the hammer can't, and can you please give at least one example of a screw?

"Why is there something rather than nothing?"

Because 'nothing' is logically impossible as an alternative state of being, by its definition. Ta da...

[bennyboy]

"Why is there something rather than nothing?"

Because 'nothing' is logically impossible as a state of being, by its definition.

Yeah, these are the kinds of philosophical truths that sometimes make me wake up screaming in the middle of the night. You put the emoji presumably to indicate that you're joking, but actually I take that as an important philosophical statement. It might even be that paradox itself IS the mechanism by which being is allowed for.

If my personal identity is defined by a positive state of being, then what happens when I cease to exist as a sentient agent?  Once being is established, how then does "nothing" become a valid description of my state of being?  It seems likely to me that the idea of soul arose more out of this kind of philosophical question than out of a mythological God idea and a fear of death.

This is different than the kind of lacking-of-being of sperm/ovum combinations that never came to fruition-- will a dead bennyboy be in the same state of lacking-of-being that all those combinations are, or is it different somehow because by existing now, some kind of philosophical superposition has been resolved, and cannot be reversed?

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure. Having an objective way to distinguish between true and false intuitions (as well as sensory experiences) would be necessary in order for them to be useful, or practically meaningful in any way.  Otherwise, you're just guessing at shit, lol.

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.  

There are people who argue for an additional qualifier to the jtb, along these lines, actually.  They insist on the criterion of reliability.  Ultimately that's a separate question.  It may be that intuition is less reliable than empiricism.....but so long as intuition ever grants any knowledge at all, sense experience cannot be the foundation of knowledge as empiricism claims.  

Well, sure I do! I have a physical photograph of a beejatzulifren, and when I look at it, I see that it has a kenbanhindra (and damn you for making me have to type out those words, lol. ) It really doesn't matter how we're labeling the pictures in the book; there is still a physical book with pictures in it.  But, I understand where you're going with this.  

PFT, whatchyou talkin bout, I speak good and everything! My made up words are beautiful and anyone who has occasion to type them is blessed! 

Right.  And, I can imagine the concept of a unicorn, but that doesn't necessarily mean that, "unicorns are real" is a truth statement.  You'd be right to say I have no empirical knowledge of unicorns, because there is no empirical evidence that unicorns exist. We have concepts of unicorns that, may or may not be universally agreed upon, but I'm not sure how that's a separate or special category of knowledge or realness. People imagine things, and we know people imagine things because we tell each other about it. What's the big deal about that?

There's the rub.  If you're not certain that it's a separate concept then it would help to show how the concept of unicorns were empirical.  Otherwise, your own words above..that you have no empirical knowledge of unicorns...is a brilliantly effective rhetorical weapon against your skepticism.  You started this paragraph by making a definitive statement that directly argues against your later uncertainty.  To your credit, you suggest that people imagine things, that we do have this experience...but remember when I reversed the characterization of the other than empirical as "real+"...and stated that it's actually the empirical rather than the intuited (in your use imagined) that deserves the +?

In a way, you're suggesting that intuition is, itself, empirical...though perhaps not the most reliable representative of the empirical set.     

Give me an example of knowledge about something in existence that is not empirical.

How about your "blondeness"?  Does it actually relate and is it necessarily bound to the empirical fact of the color of your (and my) hair?  If we can verify that a person is empirically blonde...does that grant them, then, the attribute of "blondeness" you referred to earlier..or is it possible that this thing "blondeness" is something you intuit wholly apart from an empirical fact of the color of hair or any other empirical fact?  That no amount of individual instances of empirically noting blonde hair will or ven can ever demonstrate blondeness?

-and yes, I know it's a joke, but if it's not about the empirical fact of the color of someones hair...what empirical fact is it about?  

I honestly don't know.  I'm finding that I distrust human intuition more and more as time marches on, because so many assumptions that we make based on intuition end up being incorrect once the evidence comes in. I guess, it's intuitive to me that I exist, and others exist.  I have to make that assumption in order to function, or at the very least, it would be a lot more cumbersome to function under the assumption of the alternative.  But, I wouldn't say that I am in possession of non-empirical knowledge  that points to a fact that I, and others exist.

Feel ya.  However, if you intuit that you exist, how we're using the term as real vs real+, then you must by definition possess some non empirical fact of your existence, similar to the non empirical facts of my beautiful made up words above.  

-and consider this...we're having this wonderful conversation on the basis of the weakest version of "other than empirical" knowledge.   

We haven't even hit the fire to the pan shit of innate knowledge...like..for example, the knowledge that you exist that you've begun to express above.

---

Or, a person could just scroll back through these pages.

I've scrolled back through my comments, and I'm saying that you're full of shit.  Tell me what metaphysical or immaterial assertions I've made, because I'm saying it never happened.  I think you are getting confused between my actual statements and your many straw men.

You say alot of things, Benny. That's what got us here. 

[fredd bear]

@Lady Camus

"Because 'nothing' is logically impossible as a state of being, by its definition."

I'm not sure I understand.

My understanding is that a logical impossibility does not necessarily refer to reality. It's also an unfalsifiable statement, as much as is the existence of god.

I don't believe in gods, and a bunch of other things, including my survival after death, due to a lack of empirical proof.. I can't prove that, nor do I need to, not having made claim.

Are you saying that individual oblivion is a logical contradiction, or simply that the absence of an undefined 'something' is a logical contradiction?

I don't understand how to relate your claim to my reality .

My position is summed up pithily on a Roman tomb on the Via Apia not far from Rome:

" I was not
I was
I am not
I don't care"

I only had a year of philosophy. Never came across this notion. Just as well, it's doing my head in

Could you possibly explain the basis for this claim, and why it matters, in that it is unfalsifiable ?

Plus, of course the method you used to arrive at such a conclusion.,and of course what makes your inference true.

I'd be most grateful if you use small words; I looked this up on Wikipedia, and couldn't follow the language.