historia wrote: ↑Sun Sep 25, 2022 3:08 pm
Kylie wrote: ↑Sat Sep 24, 2022 8:13 pm
historia wrote: ↑Sat Sep 24, 2022 3:35 pm
I fully understand that you don't think your scheme is measuring whether the person's position is objectively true or not, and have said so several times throughout our discussion.
The thrust of my argument is that your scheme is inconsistent in measuring the person's subjective opinion. But each time I point this out, you respond by saying the scheme is not meant to measure the objective truth of their opinion, which is simply not relevant.
Perhaps we can make better headway going forward if we both keep that in mind.
I don't see why it is not relevant.
Perhaps I can clear-up your confusion, then.
There are two different issues here: (a) whether your scheme measures if the person's position is objectively true or not, and (b) whether your scheme consistently measures their subjective opinion.
Every time I offer a criticism of (b) you respond by talking about (a). But, clearly, your response about (a) is not relevant to my criticism on (b), since these are two different issues. This is conflating the two issues.
Makes sense?
I don't see how my scheme is inconsistent. I am asking where a person stands on the issue of whether God exists or not, and I am asking whether they claim to know if their beliefs are right or not. The only criticisms that I've seen presented are based on what is meant when a person claims they KNOW their position is true, but that onl;y works if we are trying to find out if the person's position is objectively true or not.
Kylie wrote: ↑Sat Sep 24, 2022 8:13 pm
If someone just has a feeling that God exists, I wouldn't necessarily categorise that as "knowing."
Right. So, again, if someone says they "know" that God exists because "they just feel it must be true," you would
not classify their position as "gnostic theist" because, even though they uttered the word "know" what they
meant by that is not what
you mean by knowledge?
Agreed?
Again, I'm just summarizing the point you made in your very first post, quoted above. You said people often use the word "know" to mean "be really sure of because they feel that it just must be true," but that is
not what you mean by knowing.
Don't tell me that you are offering a criticism of (b) and then turn around and insist I start talking about whether my scheme is a measure of whether their position is objectively true. I have stated repeatedly, I don't care if their position is objectively true, I only care if they THINK their position is objectively true.
Kylie wrote: ↑Sat Sep 24, 2022 8:13 pm
historia wrote: ↑Sat Sep 24, 2022 3:35 pm
Okay, but keep in mind you are the one making this comparison. You said you are as certain that God doesn't exist as you are that there are no elephants in your front yard.
So, if you are as certain that God doesn't exist as you are about something for which you can have "objective proof," then that is
very certain indeed, right? More than enough to affirm a proposition.
At the moment, I do NOT have sufficient objective evidence to claim there is a 100% chance that there is no elephant in my front yard. I haven't been out to check, after all. I just
believe that it is extraordinarily unlikely that there is a elephant in my front yard.
Right, so you
believe there is no elephant in your front yard.
You can't be 100% certain of that, of course. But, as Sean Carroll reminded us above, we can
never be 100% certain.
Everything we believe (outside of logical and mathematical axioms) we hold with less than 100% certainty. Right?
Are you seriously reduced to this now?
Do you know what country you are in? You must answer NO because you could just be a brain in a jar that could exist anywhere!
Kylie wrote: ↑Sat Sep 24, 2022 8:13 pm
Yes, I believe that the chances of me being wrong are extremely small, but I will not ever treat such small chances as being the same thing as zero chance.
And nobody is asking you to. There is always a non-zero chance we are wrong about
everything we believe -- we could all be plugged into the Matrix and the world around us is just an illusion, for example. Yet you and I believe all kinds of things despite that.
Yes you are asking me to do just that.
Kylie wrote: ↑Sat Sep 24, 2022 8:13 pm
historia wrote: ↑Sat Sep 24, 2022 3:35 pm
Kylie wrote: ↑Sat Sep 24, 2022 2:22 am
historia wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 8:25 pm
So they don't get assigned one of the four labels and your scheme can't describe them at all, then?
If you are so bothered by it, please feel free to assign numbers for the horizontal and vertical axes.
A person in the exact center would be 0,0, for example.
I'm not bothered. I'm simply pointing out that your claim that your scheme "describes this position easily" turned out to be false, since it doesn't even have a label for it.
*sigh*
The position of such a person on the graph is easily plottable. Do you think things don't exist unless we have a specific name for them?
Here, as elsewhere in our discussion, you appear to have lost track of the original point you were making, so let me remind you. You said:
Kylie wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 11:36 pm
There's a person who thinks that the issue of God's existence is inherently unknowable. They claim to KNOW that God's existence is always going to be unknowable. There's another person who, similarly, can't say if God exists or not, but they do NOT think that God's existence is inherently unknowable.
And then offered this claim:
Kylie wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 9:27 pm
And your system does not actual describe the difference between the two people I spoke of, it just lumps them together under the same umbrella, despite the fact that the difference between their positions is, I'd say, fairly important. Yet my system describes this easily.
So, again, on the old scheme, both positions are described as "agnostic," but people have historically extended the scheme to use the labels "hard agnostic" and "soft agnostic" to distinguish between these two position.
Now, you think your scheme describes these two positions better because we can refer to them as "0,0" and "0,50" or some such thing. But would anyone in their right mind think that is
better than "soft agnostic" and "hard agnostic," or even just "agnostic"? Have you ever met someone who describes themselves as "0,0"?
The
entire point of a scheme -- the very reason it exists -- is to assign
labels to positions. If a scheme has no label for a position that is a deficiency in the scheme.
We can, of course, put down some kind of numerical spectrum on
any scheme, assigning numbers to positions. We can do that with my scheme or Dawkin's scheme -- it's not like this is somehow unique to your scheme. But assigning numbers instead of labels is, to use your own words, "kooky."
It doesn't matter if I have met someone like that or not. My personal experience is completely irrelevant when it comes to recording the different position of people with regards to the existence of God.
I can show anyone a chart with the axes labelled and say that such-and-such-a-person holds some particular position, and they can immediately pinpoint them on the diagram and understand where they fit. But if someone says that they are a hard agnostic, or a soft agnostic, there's no specific meaning included. All they can say is, "I'm a hard agfnostic, and that's a shorthand way of saying X," and that relies on arbitrarydefinitions. You might as well say, "I'm a snarklefoozer, and that means X."
Kylie wrote: ↑Sat Sep 24, 2022 8:13 pm
Are you going to demand that I create completely unique names for every single possible position on the graph?
Again, you are the one saying these positions are important and that your scheme is better at describing them. As we just saw, it isn't. In fact, it's worse, and obviously so.
You say it isn't, yet I can precisely describe any position on that diagram with only two numbers.