Atheists often claim, "I do not believe God exists." When asked to clarify what they mean, they point out that they lack belief in God's existence. When they read the sentence provided, they see the negation as being applied to the verb believe and not the content of belief (i.e., God exists). That is, "do not believe" means simply "lacking belief."
Alternatively, if the negation applied to the content of belief, then the statement could be rephrased as "I believe no God exists." or "I believe God does not exist." This means the atheist would not "lack belief in God's existence" but would rather hold a belief about the non-existence of God.
Question for debate:
Q. Within a linguistic context, does the negation apply to the verb believe or the content of belief?
The Negation in 'Do Not Believe' Statements
Moderator: Moderators
Post #61
Fair enough. I take no issue with attempts at correction.iamtaka wrote: The concern is with language. I don't care, so far as this thread goes, what another believes or does not believe about God. As for your final question, I'd call them a non-theist.
Personally, I ceased self-labeling as an atheist some time back in any serious discussion. If I use it at all it is as a convenient short cut that most understand, at least enough to carry on a conversation. The distinction between explicit/implicit or hard/soft, etc. have little use to me now, but I do understand the distinction and believe they are valuable to those that make use of them.
Agreed that non-theist would likely cover all the bases just fine. It's just that the additional hard/weak type qualifiers are a tad more instructive, and cut to the chase where many of these discussions are concerned (e.g., whether or not it requires 'faith' not to believe in god, belief vs. knowledge, etc.).
-
FarWanderer
- Guru
- Posts: 1617
- Joined: Thu Jul 25, 2013 2:47 am
- Location: California
Re: The Negation in 'Do Not Believe' Statements
Post #62In everyday language, usually the content, but it's confusing because logically it should apply to the verb.iamtaka wrote: Atheists often claim, "I do not believe God exists." When asked to clarify what they mean, they point out that they lack belief in God's existence. When they read the sentence provided, they see the negation as being applied to the verb believe and not the content of belief (i.e., God exists). That is, "do not believe" means simply "lacking belief."
Alternatively, if the negation applied to the content of belief, then the statement could be rephrased as "I believe no God exists." or "I believe God does not exist." This means the atheist would not "lack belief in God's existence" but would rather hold a belief about the non-existence of God.
Question for debate:
Q. Within a linguistic context, does the negation apply to the verb believe or the content of belief?
Just pay attention to context, and avoid using the term yourself when it could lead to confusion.
-
keithprosser3
Post #63
Actually it is. 'not agnostic' would be 'gnostic', i.e. 'one who knows'. Such a person knows god exists and he knows god doesn't exist, which is a knowing as you can get and the exact opposite of an agnostic who claims to know neither. It is also the mark of someone who is 'extremely confused'.stan wrote:bottom line is that YY should be "not agnostic" and this is not a synonym for being "extremely confused"
But the answers reflect a different attitude to the possibility of god existing.Nickman wrote:If we examine the claims "I do not believe God exists" and "I believe God does not exist," we all can get the same conclusion. This person doesn't believe in the existence of God.
-
Jax Agnesson
- Guru
- Posts: 1819
- Joined: Mon Mar 12, 2012 11:54 am
- Location: UK
Post #64
[Replying to post 56 by iamtaka]
Usage changes: not only from time to time, and from place to place, but also from situation to situation.
What you say about general usage is true enough, very obviously, for situations involving binary options; eg "Do you believe that x is True, or that x is Not-True?" It is also normal in situations where the answerer is invited to include or exclude an individual sample in a list of members. eg "Do you believe Thor exists?"
This second usage, as presented, is merely a special case of the binary type question, ie it can be answered by yes/no. Is Thor on your list of existent Gods, or is he not on that list?
But the question of the existence of 'God', and what sort of belief one may have in this existence, is not usually of this simplistic, binary sort.
In the context of a forum such as this, the question 'Do you believe in God?" would probably be understood by most forum users as belonging to this third, non-binary, class: "What is your belief, if any, concerning the existence of Gods?" If the possible states of belief being investigated number more than two, it makes much less sense to claim that 'I do not believe that x" implies 'I believe that not-x."
To understand language usage in the real world, one must bear in mind the century, the country AND the social context.
Usage changes: not only from time to time, and from place to place, but also from situation to situation.
What you say about general usage is true enough, very obviously, for situations involving binary options; eg "Do you believe that x is True, or that x is Not-True?" It is also normal in situations where the answerer is invited to include or exclude an individual sample in a list of members. eg "Do you believe Thor exists?"
This second usage, as presented, is merely a special case of the binary type question, ie it can be answered by yes/no. Is Thor on your list of existent Gods, or is he not on that list?
But the question of the existence of 'God', and what sort of belief one may have in this existence, is not usually of this simplistic, binary sort.
In the context of a forum such as this, the question 'Do you believe in God?" would probably be understood by most forum users as belonging to this third, non-binary, class: "What is your belief, if any, concerning the existence of Gods?" If the possible states of belief being investigated number more than two, it makes much less sense to claim that 'I do not believe that x" implies 'I believe that not-x."
To understand language usage in the real world, one must bear in mind the century, the country AND the social context.
-
Furrowed Brow
- Site Supporter
- Posts: 3720
- Joined: Mon Nov 20, 2006 9:29 am
- Location: Here
- Been thanked: 1 time
- Contact:
Post #65
Hmm. I have my suspicions you are going wrong which sent me on a extended little bit of research for myself. The results are available here: Oppositional Semantics for Atheism, Agnosticism and theism. The original post now in Definitions and Explanations gives the most coherent semantics I can come up with for distinguishing weak atheism from strong atheism. Below is the bulk of that post copied and presented here, as I feel it has application in this thread.keithprosser3 wrote:Actually it is. 'not agnostic' would be 'gnostic', i.e. 'one who knows'. Such a person knows god exists and he knows god doesn't exist, which is a knowing as you can get and the exact opposite of an agnostic who claims to know neither. It is also the mark of someone who is 'extremely confused'.[strike]stan[/strike]Furrowed Brow wrote:bottom line is that YY should be "not agnostic" and this is not a synonym for being "extremely confused"
The point to this exercise is provide the most coherent answer to how weak atheism differs from strong atheism. The approach is to try and fit the oppositions inherent in the terms atheism, agnosticism and theism to a Boolean logic; when this is done we get a binary code for religious belief. If someone asks how weak atheism stands to strong atheism the answer is found in this code. If they go to the effort to unpack the semantics that gives the code its meaning they will hopefully be able to clearly understand the difference.
AXIOM: There are two possible states of affairs: 1/ God does not exist 2/ God exists.
[It is also worth noting how I switched the order of precarious and not precarious when considering the opposite state of affairs. This is not necessary but I think it makes for neater looking set of oppositions. This way a strong theist is furthest away from a strong atheist, and an agnostic holds the middle ground].
(*)(**)The interpretation of 0101 as Mindful and 1010 as Not Mindful I am not fully convinced of, and may continue to change the interpretations of these two values. I'd gladly entertain any better ideas if anyone has one. I think the rest of the values stack up pretty well.....well they make sense to me.
The relevance to this thread of the above is that attention to the definition of Theist and Atheist shows that we cannot define weak or strong atheism with a sentence about belief, we need to parse belief to be able to describe these two further sub divisions.
-
Nickman
- Site Supporter
- Posts: 5443
- Joined: Mon Sep 06, 2010 8:51 am
- Location: Idaho
- Been thanked: 1 time
Post #66
Ill give you that, but the term by itself says nothing about belief, which was my point. "CANNOT" was a bad way for me to explain it.NoisForm wrote:You seem to have conflated belief and knowledge here. You say the agnostic cannot say they do not 'believe', and then follow this with agnosticism claims there is no way to 'know'. Agnosticism does address knowledge, it does not address belief.Nickman wrote: An agnostic CANNOT say they "do not believe a God exists." Agnosticism says that there is no way that we can know whether a God exists or not.
From George H. Smiths, " Atheism: The Case Against God" (pg. 10, my bold); "Properly considered, agnosticism is not a third alternative to theism and atheism because it is concerned with a different aspect of religious belief. Theism and atheism refer to the presence or absence of belief in a god; agnosticism refers to the impossibility of knowledge with regard to a god or supernatural being. The term agnostic does not, in itself, indicate whether or not one believes in a god. Agnosticism can be either theistic or atheistic."
Agnostics may indeed claim that they cannot know one way or the other, they can and do also have a belief one way or the other, simultaneously. The two are not in conflict.
-
iamtaka
Post #68
These two statements seem to capture the heart of your argument. I want to reformulate the argument in my own words to make sure I understand it.Jax Agnesson wrote:Usage changes: not only from time to time, and from place to place, but also from situation to situation.
...
To understand language usage in the real world, one must bear in mind the century, the country AND the social context.
Your argument. Language is highly contextual. We must understand language use within context, and there are times when the context changes the meaning of something. Applying this general principle, we should then expect that the meaning of believe changes in some context. In particular, it changes in the context of message boards such as this. Is that a fair summation of your argument?
Groundwork to respond. Believe is a neg-raising predicate (NRP). Believe also belongs to the semantic category of NRPs labeled as "opinion." (See Gajewski or Edelstein for references to Horn.) The NPRs of this semantic category exhibit a unique pragmatic property. The pragmatic property leads an interlocutor to deduce "believe not X" from "do not believe X." Thus, "believe not X" is the semantic equivalent of "do not believe X."
Application to your argument. To allow "do not believe X" to communicate the logic of ~b(X), it is necessary to remove or change the NRP property of believe. Your argument seems to suggest, if it has been understood properly, that the NRP property has been removed or changed by the context. How does your argument account for the NRP property? I do not see how it does account for the property. In fact, it seems to be ignoring the property altogether.
To be candid. It appears that you are foregoing the linguistic analysis. Instead, you seem to be taking the logic of weak atheism (i.e., ~b(X)) and imposing it on language. That is, you are attempting to force language to communicate what you want rather than what it 'naturally' communicates.
I should note the candor is intended to help you understand how your arguments come across to me. If you believe the appearance does not match what is really taking place, that's fine. However, I want you to understand how it comes across to someone with a background in linguistics. And, to be fair and for the record, this would also apply to the majority of atheists who use this line of reasoning.
-
iamtaka
Post #69
This is post strictly for reference, but it has relevance to the discussion. Sailer argues that negation is semantically in the embedded clause, but it is syntactically in the matrix clause. It has a nice discussion on "scope of negation" which applies here.
This stuff is simply amazing, and that's why I love linguistics.
This stuff is simply amazing, and that's why I love linguistics.
Re: The Negation in 'Do Not Believe' Statements
Post #70[Replying to post 1 by iamtaka]
The figure in question is litotes, so lets have some examples. If you say, "He's not the sharpest pencil in the box, you are using litotes, understatement. What you mean is that he is really really dull.
We generally judge by context, but that's hard to do with the phrase "I don't believe X is true." It could mean either that you lack the belief that X is true (literal usage), or it could mean that you believe X is false (litotes).
Litotes is so common and natural to us that we often aren't even aware that we're using it. If I found one of my old posts containing the phrase, "I don't believe in god," I might not be able to tell which meaning I intended.
But, in answer to your specific question, either usage (literal or figurative) of the phrase "I don't believe" is legitimate, is common, is recognized by authorities, is used many times by writers we all admire.
Right. In my experience, when people use the word "atheist" to describe themselves, it just means that they are non-theists.Atheists often claim, "I do not believe God exists." When asked to clarify what they mean, they point out that they lack belief in God's existence.
Not following that. I see it as a matter of whether you are being literal or figurative.Alternatively, if the negation applied to the content of belief,
The figure in question is litotes, so lets have some examples. If you say, "He's not the sharpest pencil in the box, you are using litotes, understatement. What you mean is that he is really really dull.
We generally judge by context, but that's hard to do with the phrase "I don't believe X is true." It could mean either that you lack the belief that X is true (literal usage), or it could mean that you believe X is false (litotes).
Litotes is so common and natural to us that we often aren't even aware that we're using it. If I found one of my old posts containing the phrase, "I don't believe in god," I might not be able to tell which meaning I intended.
Just avoid that phrasing. We know it causes confusion. Don't say, "I don't believe in god"; rather, say, "I don't have a belief in god," or, "I believe that no gods exist," or some other phrasing that leaves readers clear about your meaning.Question for debate:
Q. Within a linguistic context, does the negation apply to the verb believe or the content of belief?
But, in answer to your specific question, either usage (literal or figurative) of the phrase "I don't believe" is legitimate, is common, is recognized by authorities, is used many times by writers we all admire.
