STer

Again, missing the point about probabilities. Someone can be a nutjob for believing that something is 100% probable when it's apparently only about 1% probable or less. There is no need for certainty in order to make basic decisions in life or to make reasonable judgments to the best of our ability.

Correct. May. What % goes into that "may" is another discussion. Anyway, I'll leave you to your repeated postings of seeming absurdities. If you believe something sounding absurd makes it 100% impossible, you are entitled to that belief. You don't talk like you think. If we can't discount the possiblity of square-circles, then we can't discount any contradictions. If we can't discount contradictions (like true = false) then any discussion is pointless. it seems like you want to have a conversation while ignoring these possibilities. Your language also indicates this. See if you were to type something like:"Correct or not correct. May or maybe not. What percentage or not percent goes into or not into that may or maybe not is another discussion. Or it may be the same discussion, or it may not be a discussion at all. Anyways, I'll leave you to your repeated posting of seeming absurdites. Well, maybe it's just a single posting, of an actual absurdity, or maybe there was no posting at all with no hint of absurdity...." then I'd be more inclined to think you actually believed what you were writing, that contradictions may be valid. If you state that I'm repeatedly posting absudrities, you must leave open the possibilty that I dind't post anything, because we can't discount contradictions. Conversation is pointless. You seem to think knowledge is a 0% or 100% proposition. I don't believe we can discount anything completely. But I also don't believe we need to. We live based on probabilities. If we can come to a decision that something is 80% or 90% likely, that is good enough for human life on most issues. For more important issues, maybe we need 95% or even 99%. But I don't believe we can come to 100% or 0% and that's alright with me. The only thing necessary for it to be useful to choose to have a conversation is a belief that it's at least 50/50 that the conversation is taking place. Or even that it's unlikely but there isn't much to lose so why not go along with it if it feels enjoyable. It does not require a 100% belief to make something worthwhile. ... But what if we did need a 100% belief to make this specific conversation worthwhile? See..., it's pointless... right? I'm really not sure why you keep trying to make a point that has clearly already been understood and responded to. Yes, there is a cycle of infinite regress here that appears to humans highly paradoxical. But there is no law of nature saying the universe can't have apparent infinite regress and paradox in it. Nor is there one saying it must. Pointing out over and over that anything we say could, paradoxically, be the opposite doesn't really prove anything other than that - yes, things could be infinitely paradoxical...including this statement.

Based upon what? Based upon our perceptions and analysis of them, ultimately - including our perception and analysis of the accumulated views of others if we are wise enough to try to incorporate that. You do realize we're just rehashing the oldest of debates on epistemology right? Volumes have been written debating this stuff for centuries with wise people on various sides of it. In the end, these, too, are matters of belief - maybe even just preference. I don't think anyone is coming along to definitively tell us which epistemological view is absolutely true. So even that is simply our best guess.

Correct. May. What % goes into that "may" is another discussion. Anyway, I'll leave you to your repeated postings of seeming absurdities. If you believe something sounding absurd makes it 100% impossible, you are entitled to that belief. You don't talk like you think. If we can't discount the possiblity of square-circles, then we can't discount any contradictions. If we can't discount contradictions (like true = false) then any discussion is pointless. it seems like you want to have a conversation while ignoring these possibilities. Your language also indicates this. See if you were to type something like:"Correct or not correct. May or maybe not. What percentage or not percent goes into or not into that may or maybe not is another discussion. Or it may be the same discussion, or it may not be a discussion at all. Anyways, I'll leave you to your repeated posting of seeming absurdites. Well, maybe it's just a single posting, of an actual absurdity, or maybe there was no posting at all with no hint of absurdity...." then I'd be more inclined to think you actually believed what you were writing, that contradictions may be valid. If you state that I'm repeatedly posting absudrities, you must leave open the possibilty that I dind't post anything, because we can't discount contradictions. Conversation is pointless. You seem to think knowledge is a 0% or 100% proposition. I don't believe we can discount anything completely. But I also don't believe we need to. We live based on probabilities. If we can come to a decision that something is 80% or 90% likely, that is good enough for human life on most issues. For more important issues, maybe we need 95% or even 99%. But I don't believe we can come to 100% or 0% and that's alright with me. The only thing necessary for it to be useful to choose to have a conversation is a belief that it's at least 50/50 that the conversation is taking place. Or even that it's unlikely but there isn't much to lose so why not go along with it if it feels enjoyable. It does not require a 100% belief to make something worthwhile.

This is how it applies. Let's take natural phenomena which have a potential to be disastrous: earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, viruses etc. Imagine mainstream economists, sociologists, lawyers, physicians who try to find a way to make the phenomena less disastrous or eliminate effects of them. They will lounch massive research programs and come up with the whole spectrum of solutions in all sorts of settings and situations: dams, embankments, high building regulations, deep basement regulations, vaccinations, isolation wards, special relief agencies, price controls, prohibitions, special law enforcement, federal funding etc. An apriorist will tell that all these solutions are misguided (yes, unscientific) because of one fundamental reason: one huge factor is not taken into mainstream equations which is state intervention/aggression. We can only know how much disastrous natural phenomena are if we know how much disaster is caused by state intervention/aggression. Let's take Katrina. How much damage was caused by the hurricane and how much by state intervention/aggression such as taxes, subsidies, inflation, tarrifs, regulations, price control, prohibitions, welfare, law enforcement, state education? How many building were built there by cheap credit; how many people lived there supported by welfare, how many miles of subsidized roads were build there, why state education did not teach people not to live in floodplains, why the price mechanism of heavily regulated insurance companies was blocked so it would be too expensive to live there? You can only know if you eliminate state intervention/aggression. You can't eliminate hurricanes. Let's take Spanish flu. Was it a virus or massive troop movements after the war which killed 20-50 million people? You can only know if you eliminate masive troop movements. You cant eliminate a virus. And now let's take bad genes. How do you know how much damage in human life is caused by a natural phenomenon, a gene, and how much by human aggression?. You can only know if you eliminate aggression. You cant eliminate a gene. All you've done is point out that scientists need to be scientific. If you feel they are not doing actual science in some case, then you are free to point that out and you may be right. That is not a critique of science. It's a critique of some (perhaps even many) scientists. It doesn't really have much bearing on whether the scientific method is our best means of seeking truth. It just bears on whether some people are actually doing science or not. The only really relevant question here seems to be this: Must you eliminate all environmental factors to do useful research on biological factors? I think we have enormous amounts of evidence that you do not have to do so. I gave the example of diabetes as one of countless. You may not be able to zero in completely on everything going on. But that's not a reason not to make great strides in understanding the biological side. Also, as I've written about several times on this forum, scientific research often has unforeseen consequences. One study opens up insight that leads to another that could not have been conceived before. Thus, in fits and starts, we learn more about the world. So we simply seem to disagree because you appear to have an all-or-nothing approach to this.

You're entitled to that opinion, but it reflects a certain epistemology. I don't share that epistemology. I don't believe we can take the existence or appearance of anything for granted if we're philosophers inquiring into the ultimate nature of reality. So we simply disagree on epistemology. Obviously in the course of everyday life we have to use shortcuts and our best educated guesses. But when it comes to philosophy and truly trying to understand the universe, I think nothing can be taken for granted.

Which is why I keep repeating that it would be more effective to simply ask what % probability someone believes there is that something exists, and then define that thing precisely. Any other way of talking about this issue is almost willfully misleading and probably just an attempt to create drama.

As far as I'm concerned, everything you said are indeed possibilities, however slight. In fact, the rabbit hole goes even deeper since there is of course the possibility that "you" aren't who "you" think you are. We simply don't know what's going on metaphysically. We only have our best guesses to go on. That doesn't mean my best guess isn't pretty similar to yours. I just recognize it as a best guess given the always limited information available to me as a human being lacking omniscience. If you read my posts on this thread, what I agree is that we should stop focusing on what "atheist" means and speak in terms of what % probabilities someone believes there is that whatever you are asking about is the case. All percentage guesses are made with incomplete information, and all percentage guesses could be both correct and incorrect at the same time. It might be a guess and not a guess. possible and impossible, slight and not slight. You and not you. We know and we don't know, all at the same time. Lacking omniscience while possessing it. Stopping focus while completely focused. We might even understand and not understand each other at the same time. Trippy and not trippy, eh? Correct. I assume you're posting this stuff to try to make the fact that humanity lacks certainty sound absurd because it could have implications that also sound absurd. But the world can be absurd. In fact, many have found that it seems to be quite absurd. Or maybe you're just being playful. If so, enjoy. Well, I may be posting while not posting at all. Correct. May. What % goes into that "may" is another discussion. Anyway, I'll leave you to your repeated postings of seeming absurdities. If you believe something sounding absurd makes it 100% impossible, you are entitled to that belief.

As far as I'm concerned, everything you said are indeed possibilities, however slight. In fact, the rabbit hole goes even deeper since there is of course the possibility that "you" aren't who "you" think you are. We simply don't know what's going on metaphysically. We only have our best guesses to go on. That doesn't mean my best guess isn't pretty similar to yours. I just recognize it as a best guess given the always limited information available to me as a human being lacking omniscience. If you read my posts on this thread, what I agree is that we should stop focusing on what "atheist" means and speak in terms of what % probabilities someone believes there is that whatever you are asking about is the case. All percentage guesses are made with incomplete information, and all percentage guesses could be both correct and incorrect at the same time. It might be a guess and not a guess. possible and impossible, slight and not slight. You and not you. We know and we don't know, all at the same time. Lacking omniscience while possessing it. Stopping focus while completely focused. We might even understand and not understand each other at the same time. Trippy and not trippy, eh? Correct. I assume you're posting this stuff to try to make the fact that humanity lacks certainty sound absurd because it could have implications that also sound absurd. But the world can be absurd. In fact, many have found that it seems to be quite absurd. Or maybe you're just being playful. If so, enjoy.

And yet something that is both a particle and a wave at the same time does exist. Would you have said that was possible before it was discovered? So maybe your statement is both true and not true at the same time... I agree. There is that possibility. ... Or not... or maybe it's both possible and impossible simultaneously... maybe you agree and disagree. Wouldn't that be kind of meanful and meaningless at the same time? Full of contradictions and without contradictions. Precise and imprecise. Fun and not fun. Using language and not using language. So you agree that atheists don't need absolute knowledge in order to be atheists, and they do need absolute knowledge at the same time. or maybe you disagree. or both. As far as I'm concerned, everything you said are indeed possibilities, however slight. In fact, the rabbit hole goes even deeper since there is of course the possibility that "you" aren't who "you" think you are. We simply don't know what's going on metaphysically. We only have our best guesses to go on. That doesn't mean my best guess isn't pretty similar to yours. I just recognize it as a best guess given the always limited information available to me as a human being lacking omniscience. If you read my posts on this thread, what I agree is that we should stop focusing on what "atheist" means and speak in terms of what % probabilities someone believes there is that whatever you are asking about is the case.

So do you think back then you picked up on the distinction that even though they were harming you it wasn't intentional and they didn't realize it and that that is part of why you were able to maintain your own compassion and not become more dysfunctional yourself?

And yet something that is both a particle and a wave at the same time does exist. Would you have said that was possible before it was discovered? So maybe your statement is both true and not true at the same time... I agree. There is that possibility.

Being an atheist doesn't require belief of any kind. Someone who has never heard of the idea of "god" is an atheist -- specifically an "implicit atheist" (google it). So being an atheist certainly doesn't require a rejection of scientific thinking. Once again, if we stop using the labels and go to %'s this conversation would be much more useful.

I haven't made any claims about anything existing. I will make one though. Conceptual objects which contain contradictory properties cannot represent existent phenomena. There are no square circles because an object cannot both have exactly four sides and be the locus of all points a given distance from some point. I know that much. I fully understand what you're saying and why you're saying it. And I would say there is a massive probability that you're correct. But I simply can't get past the awareness that if dogs could speak, they'd say certain things are impossible that we'd find humorous because we know they are possible and we also would see just why the dog wouldn't realize that. Similarly, a much wiser being than a human might see easily how something is possible that to us seems impossible. I simply don't have as much respect for human reason as you do. I think we are an evolved being with the ability to conceive of a certain range of things and there are limits. I think we've already overachieved and will continue to do so, but there are limits. Perhaps in the future creatures will evolve that can perceive the universe in such a qualitatively different way than us that things which seem impossible to us are everyday realities to them. I understand that there is likely no way to come to an agreement on this. It's deeply unsettling for some people to accept the implications of the limits of humanity's capabilities. That desire for the comfort of knowing something - anything - 100% [or 0%] is incredibly strong. And this "conceptual" issue, where you define two things by nature of their incompatibility, thus rendering it, by definition, impossible for them to be the same thing, is a clever way of trying to find something that you can rely on completely that way. But I still can never get over that tiny possibility that even something like that, in a way we are incapable of ever perceiving, falls into that category of things that a wiser being than us would laugh at us for not realizing is actually possible. Imagine a couple of five years olds debating why something is impossible that, as adults, we know is. Similar analogy. How do you know that we aren't just like those five year olds, completely missing something because of our limits as humans? Even something as hard to fathom as how two things defined as incompatible can nonetheless somehow be compatible? The sad thing is we overwhelmingly agree. But the fact that I allow room for that tiny possibility leads to endless, probably irresolvable, debates. That's why I rarely get involved in the agnostic/atheist debate anymore, especially when it ends up just being a semantic debate on those labels rather than the actual beliefs. But for some reason I felt like indulging in this aspect of it today for a bit.

I never said reality contradicted itself. I pointed out that something that seemed impossible to us turned out to be possible. As you said, we found a level of reality we couldn't perceive before and at that level things were not the same as they are at the levels we had previously known. Things that seemed impossible at our everyday level were commonplace at that level. There are areas of reality we have no perception of at all so it's absurd for us to claim certainty in any eternal way. I refer you back to only a few posts ago where someone tried to trip me up on this already.

And yet something that is both a particle and a wave at the same time does exist. Would you have said that was possible before it was discovered?

You must really want to be correct to abandon all reason in favor of the possibility of not being wrong. Why does the idea of god not existing scare you so much? You must really want to stretch the meaning of "reason" if you think it means having absolute certainty. Why does the idea of not having absolute certainty in this world scare you so much?

Are you trying to say that atheists are those who think there is 51% probability that God doesn't exist? That would actually be scientific in my opinion. But that's not what the "official" definition of atheist is, I think. I'm saying why even waste our time with these verbal labels when we can go right to the precise %'s? I do not understand people's need to take the %'s, make up words that go with the %'s and then get in endless arguments about which words go with which %. Who cares? All I need to know is the % itself. The rest is, to me, pointless confusion and distraction. Do we want to know precisely what someone believes? Or do we find it more important to debate which name goes with that belief? I just care about the belief itself and the % pinpoints that. And I also find it revealing when someone refuses to just focus on the %'s and keeps trying to create confusion with the words. It really shows what their priority is. I mostly agree -- it's far better to just state your position, if you're trying to be precise. But we have these pre-built words that are supposed to mean something, and various factions want to strategically shift the meaning of the labels (mostly without being explicit about it) in order to make the opposing factions seem absurd. So the endless arguments and confusion are sort of by design -- it happens because clarity on the issue is not in the best interest of the majority. Yes exactly my point. And what I'm saying is that this is a good test for motive. If someone is really after the truth regarding the beliefs, they will be happy when you point out that the % is more effective and start using it. If they are trying to manipulate and obfuscate, they'll continue trying to force you to stick to the words where they can more easily twist things. They want to keep things in the realm where they can better dodge and weave - the verbal one. By the way, there is a great term for the field that would study this kind of corrupting verbal manipulation: Patho-Semantics

Many would have said something can't be both a particle and a wave at the same time. And yet we eventually found that light is. The world is much stranger than the human mind has ever been able to comprehend. Things that seem to us impossible or contradictory might be child's play if we were only smarter or had different perceptive capabilities. I think it's foolish for humans to ever 100% rule out any possibility. It's equally foolish to just accept any possibility as likely.

I speak for myself and for that part of this community that consider themelves Misesian or Hoppean in terms of epistemology. I cant speak for Stefan but his philosophical approach is basically the same as that of Mises and especially Hoppe: "reasoning from first principles", "self-detonating statements", UPB. They all take from Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant. So, there is a fundamental difference to how-we-know-things between your positivist approach and the approach of non-mainstream thinkers who assert things can be known a priori, by deduction from simple facts of human nature like an axiom of human action. The topic is very important. Please, read three chapters of Mises' Human Action (free pdf: http://mises.org/Books/humanaction.pdf) and listen to some videos by Hans Hoppe. I can't explain it better than them. Well you're right then, we have a serious difference in epistemology. Had your epistemology been used in the past, we may have missed out on many counterintuitive and surprising discoveries that science has made. I don't think Stefan shares your view as he quotes scientific studies all the time and so clearly sees merit in them. I've even heard him confront guests who try to avoid scientifically demonstrated facts by just using ideological reasoning instead. Even if you want to assert that some things can just be reasoned out by principle, I find it a huge reach to claim that applies to this topic. We have a fascinating discrepancy. Some people subjected to dysfunctional upbringings respond with violence. Others with the same upbringing respond with deep caring and compassion. This can be seen sometimes even within the same family. So what is the difference? You aren't even asserting that you can reason out a difference. You're saying nobody could possibly even usefully investigate this unless we were in a society with no violence. In fact, the exact opposite is true. It's within a society like ours that we have access to the various factors to help find out what the difference is. If we had a society with no violence and aggression, we wouldn't even be able to see what I'm pointing out - that different people respond to it differently. We'd have to manufacture those conditions to see the different responses, which would be highly unethical. In fact, one of the only silver linings of the violent world we live in is that, for the time being, we can study these types of differences to find out why they exist.

Also I was talking about scientific research. Science does not take things like this as "a priori obvious." It requires invesgiation and evidence. Nothing of this type of complexity is just accepted as "a priori obvious" by anyone practicing actual science. In fact many of the most important scientific discoveries in history flew in the face of what most would have considered "a priori obvious."

This question does not fascinate me. Because it is a priori obvious that you can find the answer only after eliminating aggression and establishing long lasting peaceful relationsips in society. So, first things first. I would not spend a dime on that research. To Eric: be proud, be absolutely proud of your choice. I'm not sure where you get that logic from. We discovered critical information about biological aspects of many conditions without coming even close to eliminating the environmental aspects that were also involved first. Did we have to eliminate the high sugar foods that exacerbate pre-existing tendencies for diabetes before we were able to learn a great deal about the biological aspects of that condition and how it works? No. And millions of diabetics are thankful we didn't wait to do that research. You want to wait to do research on why some respond to dysfunctional upbringings with violence and others with moral fortitude until after all violence and aggression is eliminated? I think that would be a massive mistake.

You were raised with the dysfunction that your parents experienced being passed down onto you, yet you say "it never took much to convince me that stealing or hurting other people was wrong." This is one of the questions that fascinates me. Why do you think it is that some, raised in such circumstances, pass on the dysfunction to yet another generation with hardly a second thought, while others, despite similar upbringings, feel viscerally, from a very young age, that the dysfunction is wrong and stand steadfastly against harming others? There is a lot of focus here on how important it is to improve parenting so as to stop the cycle of violence being passed down. But I think it's also important we learn more about why certain people, even in the face of lots of dysfunction growing up, nonetheless have a strong resistance to following in those footsteps. Is it something inborn? Something different in the brain? What is it? This is a question for further research, but your story raises it for me once again.

Are you trying to say that atheists are those who think there is 51% probability that God doesn't exist? That would actually be scientific in my opinion. But that's not what the "official" definition of atheist is, I think. I'm saying why even waste our time with these verbal labels when we can go right to the precise %'s? I do not understand people's need to take the %'s, make up words that go with the %'s and then get in endless arguments about which words go with which %. Who cares? All I need to know is the % itself. The rest is, to me, pointless confusion and distraction. Do we want to know precisely what someone believes? Or do we find it more important to debate which name goes with that belief? I just care about the belief itself and the % pinpoints that. And I also find it revealing when someone refuses to just focus on the %'s and keeps trying to create confusion with the words. It really shows what their priority is.

So, you're strictly agnostic with respect to unicorns? See my post above. The only really important question here is "What do you believe is the probability that unicorns exist?" Once you have that % you can make up whatever labels you want. The % is what matters.