PeterJ

Okay Phi - I give up. Let's put it down to experience. You seem to be willfully misinterpreting everything I say except for the bits you don't read. No doubt you feel the same about me. I asked a simple question that would have allowed us to clarify both our positions and move on, and a one word answer would have done. But you don't answer, so I have nowhere to go but to repeat myself. No point in that. You are not a sceptic in my opinion, but I can only go on what's been said so far. I'll just add that at no time was I talking about my beliefs. I was suggesting that your scepticism is not self-consistent and has unfortunate consequences for religion. What I believe has nothing to do with anything. Nor did I claim any knowledge except for a knowledge of what religion claims. It is all very odd. I'm now being told that the claim that all positive metaphysical positions are false is untestable. Weird. Anyway, I'll start a thread someday soon to canvas a wider opinion on this one, and will leave it for now. Sorry to have caused such trouble. I made a mild and (I thought) helpful objection to a philosophical position and suddenly I'm a religious nutcase. Ergh.

Ha. Totally excellent cartoon, and very relevant. Maybe this is also relevant. "Briefly, the position is this. We have learnt that the exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for penetrating. If to-day you ask a physicist what he has finally made out the aether or the electron to be, the answer will not be a description in terms of billiard balls or fly-wheels or anything concrete; he will point instead to a number of symbols and a set of mathematical equations which they satisfy. What do the symbols stand for? The mysterious reply is given that physics is indifferent to that; it has no means of probing beneath the symbolism. To understand the phenomena of the physical world, it is necessary to know the equations which the symbols obey but not the nature of that which is being symbolised. Feeling that there must be more behind, we return to our starting point in human consciousness - the one centre where more might become known. There we find other stirrings, other revelations (true or false) than those conditioned by the world of symbols." (Sir Arthur Eddington- In Ken Wilbur, Quantum Questions)

Iggy - You're right. I missed the 'non-mathematical' qualifier. I can see that to discuss relativity properly one would have to understand the maths. That's why I stay clear of the topic. But I can't quite see why an ontology of space would need any mathematics. As long as it is consistent with the maths wouldn't that be okay? If Owl's ontology is consistent with the maths and the data then I would say he's entitiled to his theory. After all, ontology as a formal discipline does not traditionally require that we study maths. Sorry to be difficult, but nor am I sure that saying space is like a rubber sheet would be an ontological claim. Really all it says that space behaves like a rubber sheet and nothing at all about what space is or is not, while the whole point of studying ontology would be get past the metaphors and similes. But probably none of this would affect the main disagreement going on.

I think this is unfair. It is not immature to seek an ontology. It's called philosophy. No doubt even you would like to have an ontology if you could find one, and even if you don't actually need one. However I would agree that an ontology is not necessary to the current project in physics. That is presumably why we have a separate discipline called Ontology. I'm with Owl on the importance of developing an ontology but I can see why a physicist would say it's not his job to do it. It's only a mandatory activity in metaphysics or religion. I do not understand physicists' lack of interest in ontology, even if it is not required for the day job, but wouldn't see this as a professional issue. Whether it is possible to do any meaningful kind of theoretical physics without dabbling in ontology seems debatable to me, but I suspect it's a matter of opinion.

Interesting but not relevant to the debate. I have no intention of trying to explain religion here. You asked me for some knowledge claims and I gave them to you. You can do what you like with them. I note that you are not a sceptic and make no attempt to study these claims before forming your view. You think relgion is nonsense. That's fine. No need to investigate something that doesn't interest you. It takes a great deal of disinterest to miss the fact that many religions encourage scepeticism. Anyway, my complaint against Phi is that he was accidently dismissing religion by adopting such an extreme scepticism. I have no problem if you want to dismiss it upfront and on purpose and by making fun of me in the process. I would just point out that science has never falsified one of these claims, and that some can and have be proved in metaphysics, and that most were endorsed by Heraliclitus, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Schroedinger and many other well known thinkers, so don't imagine your view is well considered.

Oh, I see why I was accused of sidestepping the issues. I missed some posts in all the excitement. I said earlier that religious practice often requires that we build our knowledge on firm foundations and in careful steps, testing our theories and conjectures empirically every step of the way. In reply I was asked "Can you, please, cite some examples of what you mean here? It might help with your answer to Moontanman's request ..." Here goes. In what, for want of a better word, might be called 'esoteric' religion, which would include Chtistian, Muslim and Jewish mysticism, and also Buddhism, Toaism, advaita Hinduism, Theosophy et al, the whole idea is to gain knowledge. To this end scepticism is encouraged. A person who is happy to believe what they are told or have read in a book will get nowhere. Practioners are expected to form views based on empiricism, not on theories and hypotheses, and certainly not on a blind belief in the words of some prophet or other. Empiricism requires that any theories we may have must be tested from the ground up, with no leaps of faith or unduly favoured theories. If the theory is about gravity then physics, the study of the external world, would clearly be the way forward. If it is about the nature of mind or consciousness, or ethics, God, the afterlife and so forth, then self-exploration would also be required. The idea in each case would be to build out knowledge on a firm foundation and go very carefully, testing our ideas empirically. The literature is very clear about all this. (I am not preaching, just stating the information. Moontanman, on 8 December 2011 - 06:22 PM, said: PeterJ I asked you a perfectly reasonable question yet you refuse to answer it preferring to dance in circles and say nothing and imply everything. How about answering my question........ which, to make it easy to find, is here: I'd really like to know, No, I mean really like to know, what knowledge does any religion have that humans couldn't have without religion? Just exactly what are the knowledge claims of religion that are being dismissed here? Evidently to you it doesn't matter what religion we are discussing so I'll not specify that you identify a religion that has this knowledge, just tell me what that knowledge is....." Me - I'm happy to oblige. Sorry I missed the question first time around. I don't believe there is any knowledge that a human being cannot have without religion, and this would be a common view in religion. The Buddha likens his doctrine to a medicine. Once one is cured there would be no need for it. To a large extent it is simply a method. The Buddha was not a Buddhist. Mohammed was not a Muslim etc.. If one had to follow a religion in order to acquire the knowledge claimed by religion then nobody would ever have acquired it. However, to reinvent the wheel would be hard work and unlikely to succeed. It would be easier to follow a well-tried method, and this is what the religions that comprise the 'wisdom tradition' provide. We can reamin scpetical, but even a sceptical physicist would be mad to attempt to start from scratch. As to knowledge claims - I'll only mention those I think make sense, that I believe really are knowledge claims, and not interpretations of books, guesswork etc. Lao tsu speaks of a phenomenon prior to space and time. He tells us that this is the ground of our consciousness and our world, and says that he knows this because he can look inside himself and see. Neither mind or matter would be fundamental. Dualism of any kind would be false. The Upanishads state that phenomena are void, that we will never find an 'essence' or substance at the heart of them. This is claimed as knowledge. Buddhism, Kabbalism etc say that God does not exist, or at best is an emergent concept, and other than the blind belief of some worshippers explain the persistence of a belief in him on misinterpreted meditative experience. The Sufis say that 'Al-Lah' is not a god and claim this is knowledge. The gnostic Jesus states that sin, as such, does not exist. He does not say this is a theory. All the prophets say they know the secret of life and death. One testable (in logic) philosophical claim is that all positive metaphysical positions are false. The universe would be a unity. The subject-object dichotomy would be a delusion. Time and space would conceptual imputations. Nothing would really exist. The list is endless. But the central claim is not in the details, it is simply the claim that certain knowledge of such things is possible. Mainstream monotheism does not make this claim for its members, but it does make it for its prophets. Esoteric religion makes it for all human beings. It is this claim that I was defending from (what I thought was) extreme scepticism. If we dismiss this claim then the whole of religion can be dismissed, since it must all be guesswork. The best it could be could be then would be 'justified true belief', and this would be no more 'true knowledge' than a scientific theory.

As I've said, I also consider myself a sceptical person and am also far from ridiculing religion,. This is what I am suggesting, that being a sceptic does not entail dismissing the knowledge claims of religion, it entails being sceptical of them. I'm not sure I see how a genuinely sceptical person could be a theist. Wouldn't agnosticism be the only position consistent with a sceptical approach to religion? Not being disengenious, but I really don't understand much of this one. Please make a point and I'll reply to it. I'm doing my best to keep up. Apparently you don't understand much of what I've said either. If Phi wants to end the disussion he's welome to any time. Until them I'l keep replying to him. The disussion is about religion, so I think it is fair enough to discuss it and the issues it raises for scepticism and knowledge. If Phi had not wanted to discuss his views then I doubt he would have posted them. To be honest, I'm not sure why people are getting hot under the collar.

Oh, right. I can see why you're so annoyed if this is what you think I've been proposing. No, of course I'm not proposing this. I'm surprised you could think I'd be so idiotic. Your interpretation of my comments is what is incorrect, that's all. This may well be my fault, but I expect it's a bit of both of us. I started out by suggesting that your version of scepticism, at least as you explained it, would be self-defeating and paradoxical, and that it would rule out the possibility of religious truths. I don't know why it became so complicated. We can agree that scepticism is what we should maintain until we have knowledge. Fine. But scepticism does not allow us to dismiss the knowledge claims of other people. If we are sceptical people, and if we do not know that those claims are false, then we are obliged to remain sceptical. Iow, we can completely agree that scepticism with a small 'c' is a rational approach to the study of anything. But this cannot be extended to the claim that true knowledge is impossible, for this claim would be the abandoment of scepticism. I read you as taking the second position, as saying that truth is impossible to know, that true knowledge is impossible. This would be what I meant by 'epistemilogical nihilism'. To say that true knowledge is impossible would be to say unequivocally that religion is nonsense. It would also be to accuse many millions of people who have claimed to speak from knowledge of making it all up. My preferred religion sometimes claims that knowledge is impossible, but it is not in this sense. Is not the whole point of studying something to do away with the need for scepticism? Anyway, can I have a go at stripping away the muddle and come at it a different way. I don't want to fall out with anyone, but it's would be nice to reach some sort of conclusion. Whether we need to disagree anymore seems to all hinge on one question. Q. In regard to the sort of questions that religion asks, and also claims to answer, would your scepticism allow for the possibility that the answers to them can be known with certainty, such that there could be no possiblity of disbelief and no possibility of error? If the answer is 'no' then I'll stick by everything I've written. This is what I thought you thought, and what I thought you said on a number of occasions. If it is 'yes', then I'll apologise for misreading you.

Yes. I don't think there's any 'might' about it. Unless we do this I can't see how to have a sensible discussion about religion. Phi - Here is what you said. As you say you are a sceptic, then I must read this as saying that in your view all religion is nonsense. It makes no distinction between them but is aimed at them all. It shows that you equate the whole of religion with the particular systems of religious practice and belief to which these objections would apply, or a particularly 'unscientific' interpretation of scriptures, and feel no need to be fair to religion by distinguishing between different forms of it. Scientific theory offers no current explanation for observable phenomena, just theories about their behaviour, and yet you prefer that lack of explanation to any explanation offered by religion. How much more dismissive could you be? I really can't imagine what else a person could conclude from these words. Really. Why would you make this statement and then complain when someone assumes that you think religion is nonsense? You say it is here in plain words. You could hardly state your view more clearly. Okay, you don't use the word nonsense, but that's a technicality. Yes, Mooey, I'm being pedantic. I'm asking for some rigour because without it a sensible discussion on this topic is not possible. I'm asking for the same consideration we give to science. I have no problem with this. It is quite careful and makes no wild claims, just says that we should build our knowledge on firm foundations and careful steps. I agree. Fortunately religion does not require that we must change our minds about this. Only a few well known examples do. Religious practice often requires that we build our knowledge on firm foundations and in careful steps, testing our theories and conjectures empirically every step of the way. Only the dogmatic religions are guilty of not encouraging this approach, and I suspect they will eventually fade away because of it. However, it is still possible to read into this second quote of yours a low opinion of religion. A central claim of religion is that we can verify the truth of its claims empirically and with complete certainty. If we believe that religion produces no knowledge that is more certain than that produced by the natural sciences, as you say you do, then you are dismissing the knowledge claims of religion as nonsense. If you did not think they were nonsense then you would be unable to hold this view of knowledge. Just to be clear, I'm trying to be fair to the claims of religion, and not arguing that they're true or false.

Phi - I'm happy to cut this down to just the points I make about your last para. But I'll deal with all of it. No. I just see that you dismiss the knowledge claims of religion. You keep doing it, and saying you're not doing it doesn't make much sense when your posts are still there to read. You keep saying things that religion would dispute, so what can I do but assume you don't take it seriously? What else can I assume? Maybe we're having a miscommunication, but your words seem clear enough. Not arrogant. You mke claims and don't appear to know they are inconsistent with many of those made in religion, so I just reached the natural conclusion. Your comments apply to specific religions, and not all of them. If they applied to all of them I wouldn't be nitpicking. Yes. This is what I objected to. You seem to think religion is all about supernatural deities. I therefore assume you have not taken much interest in it. I wasn't being rude, just drawing a reasonable conclusion. Okay. But I wish we could move on from all this talk of deities. They are not necessary to religion, merely sufficient. Yes of course. So why do you state that absolute truth is impossible? Well, it still seems that it reflects reality to me. I'm only reading what you write. Perhaps it would help if you clarified your position on religion, so I don't keep making these mistakes. Which one do you feel is most plausible? There you go. This says it all. This is the epicentre of our dispute. If you don't know that religion claims to be about reality and to deal in absolute truths, while the natural sciences claim to be about the relative world and to deal only with relative truths, (hence the permanent need for scepticism) then it is because you don't take religion seriously enough to look into it. You do not even acknowledge that much of religion requires the same methodology as science. One claim of religion is that the truth about the world, our existence, etc, can be known with certainty by human beings. You dismiss this claim. Ergo you believe that religion is nonsense. If Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Lao-tsu etc. did not know the truth about reality then they are charletons and liars, and this appears to be what you are suggesting. Or would this this be another misunderstanding? Do you believe it possible for someone to know the truth about God? If not, then you are dismissing any religion that teaches otherwise. It would mean that all religious teachings are unverifiable dogma. I don't expect we're far apart in our approach to these things, both being highly sceptical people by nature. If I thought that science had a 'firmer claim on those aspects that are based in reality' than religion, I'd have nothing more to do with it. More accurately, if I thought that religion could not be pursued scientifically I'd have nothing more to do with it. You think my view is nonsense, which is fine. I don't want evangelicise. But I think you reach your conclusions about religion for unsound reasons, and this makes them worth discussing as an academic issue. Or that's how I see it.

Phi - Maybe I'm misreading you, but I'll reply to what you seem to be saying. Yes, you think religion is nonsense. I know this already. It's not a topic that interests you. Fair enough. Fairness and rigour still deserve some respect. In this discussion I don't remember you ever taking care to distinguish between religions when dismissing them. You think this because you don't know what those claims are. I do, so I can see that you dismiss them. There you go again, assuming that the scientific method is opposed to religion. You like the method, so use it. By making the claims you make about religion you are abandoning it for prejudice and over-generalised criticisms. . I find the distinction important, as I said earlier, and you miss my point. The belief that something is true is not certain knowledge, and nor is recognising a better explanation. You deny the idea that certain knowledge is possible, or that there is 'absolute truth', on the basis of no evidence. Where's the evidence? I'd say that 'knowing' does not involve making a decision that something is true. I don't decide whether I'm in pain. I just know. Btw, I agree that an acceptance of a scientific explanations doesn't qualify as belief in the way most religions use the term. I would not agree that scientific theories always offer the most supported explanations. It depends on what is being explained. Religion tends to go in for fundamentals, while science tends to avoid them like the plague, so they tend to theorize in different areas. It is not 'thin ice' reasoning, and I cannot see why you would imagine it is. It is a blunt and simple fact that if we believe that certain knowledge is impossible then we must conclude that religion is nonsense. This is easily demonstrated. You think otherwise only because you do not know the knowledge claims that are made by religion, or so it seems. This leads you to post sweeping and unrigorous comments that lead me to object to them. You are proposing that nobody can know if their religious faith is justified, and that none of the prophets and sages knew the truth. This would make religion nonsense. But I agree that this discussion is impossible to keep track of. Shall we avoid the multiple quotes and just stick to the knowledge/belief question? Oh boy. No wonder you think religion is nonsense. I'd rather say that your idea of religion is whacky. No need to aplogise. But it is an opinion, of course it is. It is certainly not a scientific view. A scientific view would be researched. Oaky. Kabbalists, Taoists, Buddhists, Sufis, Theosophists, Alchemists, Advaitans and Gnostics believe there is no creator God. To be pedantic, whether this is a belief would depend on who is claiming it, but in my case it's a belief. Aha. Here may be the nub of the disagreement. It is not true that we have to take it in faith. Maybe we do for some forms of religion, but I'm not defending them. I don't think it does. In fact I'd say it's crucial to the process of gaining it. All knowledge would be possible, so a list would be a long one. To say that religion, or, better, religious study and practice, has not added to human knowledge is to say that we do not believe its claims. How can you so vigorously deny its claims and then have to ask me what they are?

It seemed to me you used the general word 'religion' throughout, and made no distinction between the Mormons and the Alchemists. Well, I find your view that religion is nonsense evident in most of what you write. When I say nonsense, I just mean that you don't take its claims seriously. To me it seems simply a fact. Either we know a thing or we don't. This has nothing to do with being for or against scepticism. I see that you don't want to offend anyone, but your opinion of religion seems quite clear. Yes. But who said anything about unobservable deities? You dismiss the whole of religion, not just those with anthropomorphic gods. Some major religions are atheistic. Yes, but why this instistence that religion is no more than unsupported beliefs? Let us agree that we do not agree with holding strong and unsupported beliefs. Couldn't agree more. It would be one reason why the Buddha asks us to abandon our views. No criticism of religion follows, however, only of those evangelists who ask us to blindly believe what they say was once said by someone else in a book, instead of looking for answers ouselves. For the writers of the Hindu Upanishads these are 'the hymn-reciters, robbers of life'. Religion is not all about blind beliefs, but some religious systems are, and I'm only suggesting that what you say about beliefs and so forth relates to some religions, and the whole of religion cannot be tarred with the same brush. I suppose I'm talking about rigour. Yes, of course there are some daft religions. A few are completely bizarre, and it beyond my comprehension how anyone could belong to them. Then there is the perennial philosophy in its myriad forms, for which we are able, so it is said, to verify for ourselves what's true and what is not, and can choose to believe whatever we like until we do. It would certainly be discouraged to merely believe in third-person reports, as we must in physics, for, as you say, this could never be certain knowledge, no more than could words in a book. Scepticism is the only sane position. But it is a starting position, predicated on ignorance, and not where even the most commited sceptic should want to end up. If scepticism claims too much, as it does when it claims that certain knowledge is impossible, then it becomes a paradoxical dogma stating that the perennial philsophy is false. I always assume that a person who holds that such knowledge is impossible must believe that all religion is nonsense, for this is what would immediately follow.

That seems to be partly true. The Gnostics were declared heretical to some extent due to their idea that religion is a living, evolving thing. But the Gnostics were also religious, and this criticism is not telling for all religion, just those that are 'religions of the book', and only then when we insist on a rigid historical interpretation. Sorry to be pedantic, but I hate seeing 'Religion' as a whole criticized for a fault that affects only a minority of its examples.

Is this what they're trying to do? Surely not.

Phi - This is interesting but I can't keep track. I'll cut it down. Not all religious people are worshippers. Mohammed tells us 'An hour's contemplation is worth an year's worship'. And not all religions rely on interpretations of books, Bronze Age or otherwise. Some practices depend on burning them. I understand that you're a sceptic, I'm just trying to keep things fair. It seemed to me that you went way beyond this. Obviously there is this difference between these things, and I would certainly agree that it would not be rational to to accept a religious doctrine as intontrovertibly true. Either you know it is true or you don't. Faith is not the same as self-delusion, or should not be. But here's the thing. There is no reason why a person should not study religion using a scientific methodology. For a sceptic there may be no other way to do it. It's your casual assumption that this would be impossible that I'm objecting to, not your methodology. You're highlighting a choice we don't have to make. I agree that the claims of religion to certain knowledge (as opposed to dogma, which is more understandable) seem contrary to a healthy scepticism. How could such knowledge be possible? Many people believe that such knowledge is impossible, and you seem to be among them. But it would be impossible to know it is impossible, and so scepticism must allow for the possibility of certain knowledge. This would not entail that such knowledge actually is possible, of course, but it does mean that you cannot believe it is and remain a sceptic. The belief can only ever be a conjecture.

Doesn't seem like scepticism to me. More like dogmatic epistemilogical nihilism. A sceptical mind would accept the possibility of fixed truths. Nor does this seem like scepticism. Especially when the claim is unsupported. I do not share your view, being more sceptical. What knowledge? I thought there were no absolutes. Are you referring to knowledge that you are not sceptical about? You mean like the belief that there is no certain knowledge? I think you're only considering a particular type of belief. Yes, some religious institutions go in for this. But no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Many would see this approach as profoundly daft. Again, you are generalising from a religion you know to religions you don't know. If you're talking about Protestantism in the US then okay. Hmm. I feel that many areas of science have their own version of the sacred shroud, or confort blanket, and so suffer from a lack of sceptical enquiry. Funny that you're a sceptic and yet perfectly certain that religion is a load of nionsense. This is a contradiction. I'd say prove it or keep an open mind, for the only alternative is to abandon scepticism for dogma. .

Damn right. My comment was out of order. I think I'd just reread that remark you made about PhDs, and imagined the reaction that I would have had to it if it was relevant to me. But it's none of my business.

Yes. The idea of a simulation runs into problems. What is being simulated? Taorich's idea that the spacetime universe is a manifestation of the unmanifest is different and makes more sense, at least in that it does give rise to contradictions or endless regressions.

Yes. That was the problem with plotline of The Matrix. But in real life the problem can be overcome.

I don't know the answer but I've always assumed that for the person flying by our solar system the distance bettween Sun and Earth would be whatever the maths says it'll be, and for higher speeds that would not be 93 million miles. Is this not correct?

Well, we do have such an alternative, but it would be heretical in theism and physics so it tends to be overlooked. It would not be a superior mind and it would not create anything except in the sense that fire creates smoke. So we do have a choice, a traditional choice in fact.

Owl, my friend, you have a damn strange way of trying to get people to agree with you.

A brave move, risking a mention of creationism. I would agree that a universe with a beginning needs a phenomena prior to (and post) that beginning to make sense. But creationism is a choice, one among a number of solutions. That is, we can agree about the need for a prior phenomenon without endorsing creationism.

I wrote earlier that I would debate the fact that the maths underlying physics is consistent, as S claimed, and suggest that its inconsistencies are usually just buried in the foundations. I walked away from a challenge to back up this comment, thinking a reply would be way off-topic. On reflection a reply may be bang on topic. This is how I see it. The problem for physics, to the extent it is a mathematical construction, is that it is prone to all the usual foundational problems that afflict almost all such system. This is not a personal theory. There is an essay online somewhere by Stephen Hawking titled 'The End of Physics' in which he explains the impact of incompleteteness on the mathematical scheme of physics, and he suggests that it represents a real problem for the ability of physics to describe the world. Then there is Russell's set-theoretic paradox, just as awkward to deal with in metaphysics as mathematics, and which has to be solved for any fundamental theory. These problems and paradoxes are caused by contradictions lying at the heart of the system. Usually in physics they are ignored or go unnoticed since physicists, these days at least, seem to be largely uninterested in foundational issues. They cannot be ignored or unnoticed in philosophy, however, for they are its meat and drink. The implication of Hawking's article is that they cannot be ignored in physics, that metamathematics and metaphysics have also to be considered. Most people here will have read Paul Davies' Mind of God, where he discusses the difficulties that these underlying contradictions pose for physics. I suppose it's a matter of opinion whether this book is about physics or philosophy, it's not a distinction that serves any useful purpose in my world, but to me it seems a perfect example of the benefits that a recognition of the relevance, or even crucial importance, of philosophy would bring to physics, and it does highlight various relevant mathematical problems. The mathematics of nonreductive theories need not be affected by these problems, but for a fundamental theory, of anything at all, we would have to solve them. I suppose if physics makes no claims to being fully reductive then perhaps it's underlying maths can be consistent. This is what Hawkins suggests. (And David Chalmers in a roundabout way). But this would not mean that there are no contradictions in the maths, only that physics has conceded both the problem and the limitation it places on theories, and chosen to live with it.

That's an odd view. Metaphysics predicts that all positive metaphysical theories are false. It predicts. therefore, that all scientific theories embodying such a position are false. Not an insignificant prediction, and not irrelevant to our theories about space. It is incredible to me that physicists so often think such philosophical predictions can be ignored. They are only the result of thinking carefully.