Ierrellus

geoff,

I have no idea where you are coming from or where you wish to go. You have simply negated all responses that would seek to clarify or negotiate with your preconceived ideas. I offered the idea that the human brain can duplicate any experience you wish to descibe on a physical basis. Snatchbalance reiterated this idea. Your response was to postulate a highly speculative difference between mysticism and spiritualism.

You seem unable to address the fact that anything physical could replicate what you call spiritual.
If you have experienced something of which you cannot communicate, how do you expect anyone else to verify your experience?

Ierrellus

Bookman

Just curious. I had some nice discussions with him some time ago until (IMO, only) he for whatever reason stopped listening. He had a similar POV to yours and was coincidentally named Geoff.

Bookman

Vorkosigan

That seems to defeat your assumption that all of our intuitive knowledge can be verified via experience. There seem to be things we intuitively know that can't be verified by raw experience.

Perhaps, but empirical verification is necessary for knowledge to be useful and reliable. There may be things that we know intuitively that are not verified by experience (such as), but that does not make them true. Surely you're not arguing that a lack of verification for an intuition constitutes proof of its validity.

Vorkosigan

[ May 30, 2002: Message edited by: Vorkosigan ]</p>

NialScorva

My two favorite books on the subject:

Treatise of Human Nature: of the Understanding by David Hume

Word & Object by W.V.O. Quine

Note that the first was published in 1739, so you're not really bringing anything new to the table, it's a notion that was considered and pretty much solved by the god-father of empiricism himself almost 300 years ago.

geoff

My argument could be restated as follows: Are there necessary conditions inherent to naturalism qua naturalism that can rationally account for things like abstract objects? I doubt so because (changing the premises of my original argument slightly), physical processes cannot guarantee reliable outcomes. Put more clearly (I hope), given naturalism, why should we believe that, e.g., the laws of logic (even if taken in a provision sense) correspond at all to the external world? (That there are numbers, sets, laws of logic, etc. -- however we construe their existence or lack thereof -- is taken for granted by all of us.)

Vorkosigan wrote:

"Perhaps, but empirical verification is necessary for knowledge to be useful and reliable. There may be things that we know intuitively that are not verified by experience (such as), but that does not make them true. Surely you're not arguing that a lack of verification for an intuition constitutes proof of its validity."

All I can empirically verify right now is that I am typing on a keyboard. But maybe I am posting this message to AI. I cannot empirically verify that I am communicating with humans. I think it is highly reasonable to believe that I in fact am (given my complex network of background beliefs that "cause" me to believe I am communicating with humans), but I have no independent means of verifying this empirically. (BTW, I am not arguing that rational intution as a means of acquiring knowledge is proof positive of the veracity of our intuited beliefs. I'm merely arguing that rational intuition is a reliable, immediate means of acquiring knowledge. Perhaps later, at a stage of rational self-reflection, we could supply evidence that corroborates or confirms our initial beliefs ... but perhaps not. I assumed, e.g., many, many, many unverifiable things while driving to work this morning that I will never go back to verify but are nonetheless true.)

[ May 31, 2002: Message edited by: geoff ]</p>

Synaesthesia

Abstract objects are the result of the fact that relationships, even those that are not instatiated, are objetive. The claim that is being made and repeated but is as of yet undefended, is that materialism cannot account for the existence of objective relationships.

I would like to turn the question around: Exactly what is it that materialism cannot account for?

A physical computer can express objective relationships that it does not explicate, the physical brain can trace objective relationships that do not actually exist. What is it that materialism cannot account for?

We cannot, after all, explain anything unless we know that there is something to explain. There is, right? Something to account for? Please, be explicit.

Synaesthesia

Geoff,
Sure you can. Since no one has yet produced an AI of such strength, clearly it is a vastly inferior hypothesis and should be rejected. The substance of what you are talking about, your auxiliary knowledge of human capabilities, and your general world knowledge is powerful independant confirmation.

It's obvious that we know we are talking to humans. Any philosophy of knowledge that cannot reflect that fact is simply inadequate.

Jack the Bodiless

Geoff:

You're taking the solipsist "brain in a jar" argument, but arbitrarily applying it to metaphysical naturalism only.

If we assume that our perceptions are coming from a "real world" out there, and our brains are processing that information in an orderly fashion, then there's no problem: we have a worldview we can trust, and theists and atheists alike can get on with our lives. If we choose not to trust those assumptions, we are equally lost.

Given that we both make the primary "leap of faith" together, we can both then come up with reasons why we can accurately percieve an orderly Universe. You have an orderly, reliable God (actually not according to the Bible, but let's assume a generic "God" here), we have an orderly reliable Universe. Our ability to perceive and function within that Universe is explicable by evolution (we were shaped by it), yours is explicable by "God wanted it that way".

You haven't identified an issue specific to metaphysical naturalism.

Ierrellus

geoff,

No matter how you turn your argument around, it remains the same. Walrus has submitted a similar challenge about abstractions.

Do you doubt that science in the past four centuries has used abstraction to define reality and has manipulated matter beyond what anyone could ever have imagined? Does this not prove to you that abstractions able to alter everyone's reality are adequate proofs of what lies beyond subjectivity?

In the evolutionary continuum, the brain and environmental interface is an absolute necessity.
Consequently, abstractions that can cause actual manipulation of matter are evolved, innate realities. As innate realities, they are not, noumena, qualia or a priori intuitions; they are a part of the brain's network of adaptational potentialities.


Ierrellus

[ May 31, 2002: Message edited by: Ierrellus ]</p>

owleye

geoff..

"We know certain things by intuition (call it 'rational intuition' for all I care. However you label this particular means of acquiring knowledge it is characterized by immediate, non-discursive apprehension; e.g., the way we know that 2+2=4)."

2+2=4 may be known discursively, if you accept, for example, the Peano postulates, as establishing the number system. You may also wish to consider it an analytic truth on the basis of mathematical logic using some other axiomatic system. However, if you believe that 2+2=4 is immediately and non-discursively known in intuition (say by counting on one's fingers), then it is undoubtedly founded on the conditions of sensory experience. What are the conditions of sensory experience that lay at its basis? As Kant notes, all objects of sensory experience have the property of having an extensive magnitude (according to Kant) because they exist in space and time. Thus when you say:

"Why could we not say that God is a being who is intuited; i.e., known immediately, non-discursively?"

You would be implying that God is an object of sensory experience, having extensive magnitude. Does God have a size?

owleye