Biff the unclean

Kenny, please don't get angry at my presumption. I'm just trying to understand who percisely I'm talking to...but, are you an undergraduate?

capnkirk

By this question, I will presume that you are not seeking "methodology" in the strict sense (i.e. a list of methods including empirical test, etc.), but rather what is the basis of validation of correct conlcusions.

The answer is that the ultimate arbiter of your conclusions is your mind. The quality of your conclusions is a reflection of the quality of your analytical faculties, as evidenced by ongoing confirmation by reality (subsequent events) after you have reached your conclusion, and the absence of subsequent events that refute your conclusion.

These means are far from perfect, but they are the best we have. If they were perfect, there would be no need for this dialogue. Because the final commitment to a belief is ultimately arbitrary in nature, we apply the best constraints at our disposal to reduce the arbitrariness of that ultimate commitment. Learned and/or developed analytical discipline have been demonstrated to be the most reliable tools to minimize the arbitrariness of that process.

This is the basis of the scientific model that begins with the default premise "I DON'T know the answer", then makes a TENTATIVE assumption and proceeds to test it against the best and most inclusive evidence he can secure. As a rule, one can postulate that the more "rational" a person is, the less vulnerable to beginning with prejudicial biases he is. Most analytically trained people are acutely aware of this shortcoming and go to great pains to exorcise it from their search for answers, at least in their fields of professional study. Being the limited creatures we are, we do not succeed completely. Knowing this, we are obliged to constantly review our conclusions in the light of new evidence as it presents itself. Again we do not always succeed (Some of the world's greatest physicists of young Einstein's day went to their graves denouncing relativity).

Alas, this process is fundamentally incompatible with faith-based beliefs. Why? Because faith makes the commitment to belief FIRST based on emotion rather than reason, which prejudices objective weighing evidence presented thereafter, in that evidence is considered in the light of this faith-based truth. The more preciously held that belief, the greater the prejudice.

The strength of the analytical process is that it has the capacity to change its conclusions in the light of new discovery in a way that brings concept ever closer to observed reality. The weakness of Faith-based belief is that, in attributing the authority for the belief to some divine source, it binds the person to that belief in the face of all opposition, evidential or otherwise, creating beliefs that tend to diverge from observed reality. This is why there are xtians who believe the earth is only a few thousand years old, and denounce evolution as a heretical myth.

Kenny

No, I have a B.A. with a double major in physics and philosophy/religion. I also have a reasonably good familiarity with the range of issues currently extant in contemporary analytic epistemology and have done research in that area, though, of course, I would claim nowhere near a level of expertise. Currently, I am doing graduate work at Fuller Theological Seminary (though it is only my second quarter there).

God Bless,
Kenny

capnkirk

Now really Kenny, can't you find any of your own?

If you can't, here are a few candidates for you:

Daily sunrise in the east.
For every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction.
Darkness is the absense of light.

Need I go on?

Kenny

capnkirk,

This applies to both of your posts. Note that I am not denouncing reasoning based on evidence or scientific reasoning. I am denouncing the notion that every belief need to be based on evidence to be rational. It is often acknowledged within contemporary philosophy that there are certain “pre-scientific” or “pre-philosophical” beliefs about the nature of reality which are necessarily prior to evidential reasoning and that these beliefs are themselves taken for granted. Such beliefs would include beliefs such as belief in the reliability of the senses, reliability of memory, that the future tends to resemble the past in such a way that inductive reasoning yields reliable conclusions, etc. Without these beliefs being taken for granted, almost all of our conclusions about the world based on sensory information become suspect.

Take, for instance, the piece of “evidence” you gave me that the sun always rises in the east as evidence that our senses are reliable. This argument is circular because it appeals to sensory beliefs to justify the belief that sensory beliefs are reliable. This can be illustrated with a few simple questions. First of all, how do we know that we’ve ever seen a sunrise? What if our memory gives us no reliable guide to past events? What if we’re all just brains in vats or victims of the Cartesian demon who have been fed false sensory information all our lives? Second, is past experience really a reliable guide to future experience so that we can genuinely know that it is probable that the sun will rise tomorrow? Arguing that our experience has been regular in the past and therefore we can expect it to be regular in the future is circular because it assumes what it is trying to prove – namely that past experience forms a reliable guide to future experience.

God Bless,
Kenny

K

Kuyper:

Deal.



I'm going to throw this back in your court a little. I think that we would all agree that evidence supporting a belief adds rationality to that belief. As more supporting and less conflicting evidence is obtained, the rationality of the belief is enforced. I doubt that anyone would disagree with this (If there are dissenters, please speak up). Now my question to you is this - what other attribute of a belief (given that it has absolutely no supporting evidence) could possibly give someone a reason to call the belief rational? In other words, supporting evidence is clearly one means of determining whether a belief is rational, what are the other means? I, for one, have never heard of any others.

K

Kenny:

These beliefs aren't held because they've been PROVEN beyond a shadow of a doubt. They are held because there is EVIDENCE that our senses are a reliable guide to events. The sensory information we receive is consistent with a physical world and fairly reliable senses. These allow us to make predictions about the world we appear to live in. So, while we may actually be living in a vat, there is evidence to indicate that we do live in the world we sense - and no evidence to the contrary. Therefore, it is a rational belief.

Jobar

rational
/"r n( )l/ adjective 1 of or based on reason. 2 sensible. 3 endowed with reason. 4 rejecting what is unreasonable.

There's your answer, Kuyper. Remember that the word 'sensible' may be taken two ways (in fact it has two senses)- commonsense, or perceptible by the senses.

Both those senses are correct when defining rationality. If something cannot be demonstrated to the senses, with evidence, it cannot be rational. QED.

capnkirk

The last statement is incorrect. To be correct, delete the word "almost". The fact is, ALL sensory data IS suspect! On the other hand, there is no alternative to sensory data available to us within this state we label "existence". So if we are to continue to live, we have no alternative but to make these assumptions.

As I stipulated in the subject posting(s), the scientific (objectivist) methodology is an imperfect process, but it HAS been demonstrated to be the most reliable tool available to us within this "system" we call reality. Fully cognizant of these shortcomings, objectivists have built as many checks and balances into the process as have proved useful. I have argued that these are its strengths.

By the abovedescribed standard, ALL arguments (logical or otherwise) are circular! For arguments sake, I will presume that this is so in order to pose several questions that necessarily follow. Of what value is this realization? Does it have any application? Does it have any impact on understanding our existence? Does it place another tool in our hands? My answer to all these questions is an emphatic NO!

To the question "what if we are victims of the Cartesian demon..." I reply, "So what if we ARE!" Let me offer an illustrative analogy: The picture presented on a radar screen presents objective reality in a purely symbolic manner. Does this render radar useless? Analogously, what we call objective reality may actually be completely subjective (symbolic). But if we can learn the rules for manipulating these symbols, ultimately it matters not what they are symbols 'for' in some unaccessible superreality. In a mathematical sense, the connectivity between the symbol we perceive and its superreality counterpart must be considered a constant in any equation, while the dynamics (perceiveable reality) remain the variables to be solved.

While such insight (necessity of preassumptions) may provide some philosophical satisfaction, I am an engineer first and a philosopher second. To illustrate the difference, indulge me this little allegory:

The mathematician can correctly demonstrate that if a man sitting on one end of a couch iteratively moved half the distance to the woman on the other end, he would never ever get there. To which the engineer responds, yeah but they will get close enough for all practical purposes! This illustrates the underlying point in both my previous postings: Philosophical constructs are simply that; "constructs". They are functionally equivalent to an initial scientific hypothesis. The Existentialist argues that until such hypotheses are subjected to evidential testing, they have no demonstrable validity.

In this human condition, we are bounded (limited) by the properties of observed reality. Therefore all that remains is to more fully understand those properties. This does not categorically preclude that at some time in the future, some presently inaccessible philosophical reality may become accessible, but I am satisfied to cross that bridge after we become aware that it exists.

Oxymoron

Replace the word 'truthfull' (sic) with 'useful', and no "evidence" is needed, just a basic knowledge of what cognition is about: it enables us to build a world model that can be interpolated and extrapolated from. A poor model produces poor predictions - garbage in, garbage out.