Resolved: that Peikoff is wrong about agosticism

[Inspector]

That is the their knowable universe and their context outside of which would be "supernatural" to them.

Oh, one more thing to add: this is a misuse of the word "supernatural," in the context of this discussion. "Supernatural" does not mean "outside the laws of nature as we understand them, but rather it means completely outside the bounds of natural law, including the axioms of existence, consciousness, and identity. "Nature," in this context, means "existence," or "all that which exists." Supernatural indicates something outside the bounds of existence itself, not merely outside the bounds of a given understanding of it.

[Seeker]

I see. Certainly if that is the meaning of CG I cannot argue. The problem I have with that explanation is that if you were to ask an agnostic whether he thinks that Christians believe that God exists, is himself, and has consciousness, he would say "yes, yes, and yes", which implies that he thinks that CG obeys the axioms. CG's essential qualities are transcendent, not supernatural in that sense (transcendent of the physical universe as we know it, i.e. transcending man's frame of reference, just as I transcended the machine world's frame of reference). All of the powers of CG including omniscience and omnipotence seem to relate to a particular existential context, because that is what CG transcends.

An agnostic may be someone who, at a very early age, resolved the contradiction by adding the contextual limitation I described. That would hardly be a surprise - the purpose of man's mind is noncontradictory identification. No wonder you can't convince him that God cannot exist. You're addressing yourself to a concept that he never held. Perhaps knowing this possibility will help us to understand how to approach individual agnostics in addressing this issue, rather than dismissing them all as cowards.

Edited November 27, 2006 by Seeker

[Inspector]

Seeker,

You make an interesting point about a possible explanation as to what most people think of the CG. I can't say I have enough data on that one.

But how, then, is the agnostic's stand not still a cowardly one? The concept of a bound god is to be dismissed as arbitrary just as surely as the the CG is to be dismissed as impossible. The agnostic is the one who says "I don't know; maybe." Your definition of an agnostic as one who dismisses the claim of god is incorrect, and is the source of your confusion. Dismissing it is precisely what an agnostic does not do.

[Seeker]

The problem is that agnosticism suffers from terminological ambiguity that Peikoff doesn't seem to acknowledge. I think that there are self-described "agnostics" who, in effect, consider the claim arbitrary and dismiss it for want of evidence. Personally I always thought that's what agnosticism was, because that's what the people I knew who described themselves as agnostics did. They didn't entertain any notion of God other than to shrug it off, saying, in effect, "show me the evidence". By "maybe" they meant "arbitrary", using our confused common parlance. I am happy to modify my definition and call myself an atheist, and to take whatever definitions are appropriate here for this discussion, but I think that our concern here goes beyond that and includes what self-described agnostists believe and how they define the term. That's where I differ with Peikoff - not with his logic, but with his seemingly over-inclusive choice of labels.

Edited November 27, 2006 by Seeker

[DavidOdden]

but I doubt very much that this is what Christians intend to do. Is that really the best way to treat the Christian notion of God?

The best way to treat the Christian notion of God is with utter disregard. I think it is and always has been true that the average supposedly god-believing Joe doesn't really have any idea about god beyond a handful of phrases that they were taught to chant an appropriate points on Sunday. In fact, part of what made Christianity sell so well is that it has Jeebiz who's a tenable intermediary between the mystical thing "god" and man. That take a lot of pressure off of those who find the concept of god to be just a little bit too bizarre to consider. This is true for all religions: your average workaday Hindu almost certainly does not really understand the Kaṭha Upaniṣad and hasn't grasped Śankara's philosophy. For most so-called Christians, god is really just a version of Santa Claus, except he has a different name and job description. Many Christians are willing to consider the possibility that maybe there is more than one god, or god is completely different for each person, or maybe god had a birthday and went to god-school as a young man. A proper concept of god would, in fact, tell you that this is god's avatar on earth.

So yeah, when you have an insane belief system, it's really difficult to maintain consistency in the insanity: people naturally try to integrate the unintegrable, by confusing god with Santa.

[Inspector]

That's where I differ with Peikoff - not with his logic, but with his seemingly over-inclusive choice of labels.

Then we have arrived at the reduction of this issue to mere semantics. The agnostics who are the cowards are the ones who say "maybe" and mean it. When I was young, I self-described as an agnostic at times, I said maybe, and I meant it. I can tell you without the slightest hesitation that this was cowardice.

Anyone who isn't "that kind" of agnostic has no business self-describing as an agnostic. The term is "athiest."

[Seeker]

That's fine for us, but it doesn't help us address ourselves to those self-described agnostics. They're avoiding the term "atheist" for a reason - because it involves a claim to knowledge of God's non-existence that they don't agree with according to their contextually bound understanding of God (the Santa version, as David puts it). Since their belief stands in contrast to two positive claims that they dismiss as arbitrary, they use the term agnostic to distinguish themselves on the matter they consider most essential.

I don't think it's necessary to approve of their definition, merely to acknowledge the diversity of beliefs that the term actually encompasses.

Edited November 27, 2006 by Seeker

[DavidOdden]

Anyhow, you can't get anywhere if you don't have a decent epistemology. Obviously, it's knowable that god doesn't exist so you should assert that you are an atheist, but there are, no doubt, highly concrete-bound people who live these dis- and mis-integrated lives, who just plain don't get it that no being can be powerful enough to make a burrito so leaden and hot than he can't eat it and run a marathon. Now if you don't have the benefit of epistemological ethics that that tells you to reject any arbitrary claim, then you are in a hell of a bind because you can't say you believe in god (that would just be insane), and yet you don't know for sure that he doesn't exist (because we've all been taught that you can't prove a sentence with a negative in it). So all you have is this position in the middle, to say "Gosh, I just don't know". It's widely known that "agnostic" means "one who does not know", and that lack of knowledge does not per se mean that you are asserting that "P" describes a fact, or the opposite of a fact. Without "the arbitrary" (or a serious look at what god entails), saying "I'm agnostic" means one of three things to me. First, it can mean that you just don't have the conceptual tools to deal with the question you you really mean "I don't know". I'm okay with that, and hope to teach the neessary conceptual tools to those people. Second, it can mean "It is a possibility, and I'm still weighing the evidence", which is a bad position but I'm not entirely sure whether it's cowardly -- the point is that they're seeing evidence that just isn't there. Third are the thorough, overt cowards, the covert atheists who are unwilling to stand up for their convictions, and deny their principles solely to avoid social opprobrium. I spit upon them the most.

[KendallJ]

I don't think it's necessary to approve of their definition, merely to acknowledge the diversity of beliefs that the term actually encompasses.

hmm. That is sort of a tolerationist approach I guess. My question for you is "What does acknowledging the diversity accomplish?" What about that diversity is essential to the conversation?

I prefer to look at the unity of the net effect of any of these people (rather than their rationale): they sanction their enemies. Regardless of intent or rationale, they all allow false claims in that should be banished from the start. Think of the usage of "cowardice" as in, you'll always run from the fight you should fight. It matters not wether you run because you are ignorant, mistaken or fully knowledgable and just chicken, you're still running.

[KendallJ]

I appreciate your responses. I perhaps wasn't clear enough in describing the virtual world of the computer. The objects that reside therein have "sense perception" within their virtual frame of reference only (until the very end when I undertook a sort of divine revelation). They have no way of ever finding or perceiving me or the computer on their own. Within their limited frame of reference, to them, I am everything that the Christian God supposedly is to us: I am omniscient (I can see and inspect every attribute of every object), I am omnipotent (I can change any object at will), I am eternal (I existed since the program began), I am invisible (since they can't detect me), etc. That is the their knowable universe and their context outside of which would be "supernatural" to them.

Whether the Christian God is defined in such a way as to bear a similar contextual relationship to our knowable universe is certainly debatable, but in my opinion I see no reason why it cannot. It need not be supernatural in every context, but only in the context of man's, to have the powers and abilities commonly ascribed to it by man. Given that understanding, I would like to know how I could know that such a God didn't exist.

You may have gotten past this already, but your above analogy is still in error. Your computer people have sense perception of the same reality you do, the same cause and effect. Just from a different perspective. If it is indeed the same cause and effect, then things caused by you may appear "supernatural" but are ultimately explainable, even from their perspective. They are just epistomologically more complex, and hence understood later.

Peikoff has a very nice assessment of this (although I can't remember where it was). He was asked about conscious beings who were very tiny and percieved the world at the atomic level. To them, neutrons, electrons, etc. are metaphysical self-evidencies just as ball, tree, and house are to us. But things like ball tree and house are incredibly complex things that they would only be able to deduce through observing cause and effect, and after building up significant knowledge of their world, just as atomic structures are to us. As long as you and your computer creatures are governed by the same world, they will eventually be able to identify you.

I think that it only takes a few minutes of thinking to see that the Greek version of God immediatly opens all sorts of theological questions to any Christian, not the least of which is "If God is part of the universe, and only created our little portion of it, then who created him and his?" I used to be one, and my knowledge of what God was supposed to be, was definitely the creator of everything. Try asserting to any Christian that God is only a big powerful alien that created them but lives within the universe and is goverend by cause and effect just like we are, and I think you'd see some very troubled people. It is incompatible with their view, ultimately.

[Seeker]

hmm. That is sort of a tolerationist approach I guess. My question for you is "What does acknowledging the diversity accomplish?" What about that diversity is essential to the conversation?

I wasn't suggesting acknowledging anything other than reality - the fact that there are people who describe themselves as agnostics for reasons other than the one that Peikoff explains as being cowardly. If we are to label a group of people as cowardly, we need to know who it is we are labeling and why, and we had better be right.

As to the computer creatures, I expressly stated that their perceptive abilities were so limited as to prevent them discovering me. So it is not true that they have sense perception of the same reality I do, until at the end I chose to give it to them.

Edited November 27, 2006 by Seeker

[Seeker]

I think that it only takes a few minutes of thinking to see that the Greek version of God immediatly opens all sorts of theological questions to any Christian, not the least of which is "If God is part of the universe, and only created our little portion of it, then who created him and his?" I used to be one, and my knowledge of what God was supposed to be, was definitely the creator of everything. Try asserting to any Christian that God is only a big powerful alien that created them but lives within the universe and is goverend by cause and effect just like we are, and I think you'd see some very troubled people. It is incompatible with their view, ultimately.

In that case, it should take even less time for them to figure out that their view is self-contradictory and impossible, but that doesn't happen, either.

[KendallJ]

As to the computer creatures, I expressly stated that their perceptive abilities were so limited as to prevent them discovering me. So it is not true that they have sense perception of the same reality I do, until at the end I chose to give it to them.

Well you have to make them at least conceptual right? With any faculties needed to sustain them as conceptual beings. Othewise, we're simply wondering why tadpoles can't discover God.

If you do that, then the only thing you can say is that their cognitive abilities prevent them from discovering you, today. Conceputal faculties are not limited the way perceptual faculties are. They will be able to observe cause and effect, and one day infer you.

I wonder if you have ever seen an atom up close? No, but yet we know they exist. We've measured them. We manimpulate them predicably, daily.

The Christian God must be outside of nature (outside of cause and effect), non-inferrable, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, and all else, and require the use of faith.

[Seeker]

The difference though is that we were able to develop the means of (indirectly) perceiving atoms. The computer beings have no such means of indirect perceptual development. How they would infer "God" by the existence of cause and effect, I don't know. Can you clarify, please?

[KendallJ]

The computer beings have no such means of indirect perceptual development.

So your analogy breaks down and does not apply? You tell me why this should be so.

If they

a. are conceptual

b. have some sensory perception of the world

c. have the ability to act on and manipulate their world

then they have means of indirect perceptual development. If they don't have these characteristics, as humans do, then your analogy is useless.

Before we beat this horse again, realize that your claim above is the arbitrary claim in the analogy. It is the one that makes the idea of "supernatural" possible. To say there is a part of reality that I cannot ever indirectly perceive is the nub. This was my original point. To push the claim around wether it be God, supernatural, etc, you still make it. The analogy is not helpful in resolving it.

But you act on the computer world. You act on it via cause and effect, via a predicable manner. In the same way that magnetism causes loadstones to repel each other as if by magic, in the eyes of a primitive human. Yes, it appears like magic now, but given the 3 characterisitcs above in the future it won't.

[Seeker]

Is this a disagreement as to my mis-use of the term "supernatural" in my example? I'm sorry about that. Inspector corrected me - "supernatural" violates the axioms of existence, and I did not intend my computer world to do that. It was a mistaken use of the term, one that I was most emphatically NOT urging. I think that "transcendent" would have been a better word. I was intending to create a visualization for you of how a nested frame of reference could exist and be transcended by "God", without violating the axioms of existence.

[Seeker]

Also, I am still having difficulty seeing how the three characteristics you mentioned would enable the computer beings to one day discover me. I think that either there is something about my example that I haven't expressed well enough, or else you seem to be saying that those three characteristics eventually result in omniscience.

[KendallJ]

Also, I am still having difficulty seeing how the three characteristics you mentioned would enable the computer beings to one day discover me. I think that either there is something about my example that I haven't expressed well enough, or else you seem to be saying that those three characteristics eventually result in omniscience.

It has to do with this definition of "transedance". You are positing a "barrier" of sorts. Some sort of sensory shield that it is impossible for someone in a certain context to penetrate.

I am saying that if you define your analogy to have this barrier, then your are committing the fallacy I accused you of. If you are of the same cause and effect reality that I am, and you are, this sheild cannot exist. Causality bridges the gap. You take action (by your nature) and cause something to occur in "my world". You cannot defy causality in reality and thus your actions can only have certain characteristics and not others, even in "my world". But the very fact that you cause something in my world means that one day I will be able to posit you. For what is indirect perception but backtracking causal events to their source by building devices that transmit your causal nature, through a chain of causes and effects into direct perception in "my world".

Long ago, the stars were inexplicable entities, who we only saw as twinkling lights in the sky. Today we know what they are. We measure their mass, composition, position, etc. extremely accurately. So too must the I/O inputs from your mouse and keyboard seem today to be such inexplicable phenomena to the people in "my world".

But I must be able to sense something.

I must be able to form concepts, because only then can I stretch a limited cognitive faculty to the level I need to understand you.

And I must be able to manipulate my world, otherwise I cannot build causal chains to one day prove you exist.

[Inspector]

In other words, the Greek God (GG) type that you posit yourself as in the computer example would necessarily leave evidence of his activities.

[Seeker]

Okay, maybe I should start at the beginning ... in computer software there is an idea known as object-oriented programming (OO) that you may be familiar with. The programmer defines "classes" of objects and then instantiates (creates instances of) them in the computer memory by way of a main program. These objects possess internal states (variables or attributes), accessor methods (so that other objects can read their states), and have an ability to detect other such objects and pass messages by invoking "methods" on other objects. The perception here is extremely limited - it's the ability to "see" and pass messages to other objects. The conceptual faculty that results from this limited perception would enable these objects to conceive of nothing other than themselves and each other because that's all there is, to them. There's not three-dimensional space, as such. They can "remember" what happens, but not much happens for them to remember. I programmed these objects; there is no "free will" from my perspective, it's all deterministic. The "cognition" exists solely to choose from a short menu of options using some sort of value-maximizing function that I specify when I program them. Every time I run the program, the same thing will happen, every time. The computer I/O ports aren't accessible in any way to these objects. They're in a virtual box, so to speak, and can't get out. It's like a really dumbed-down version of "The Matrix".

The main characteristic of the machine world that I was trying to present was one of limited capacity for perception and action within a limited frame of reference. I don't see how these limited creatures could get past the limitation of the nature of their existence in the machine and detect me. The most they could do is trace back their memory to their point of creation when their memories were empty, or have a very limited catalogue of observed cause and effect.

I don't think a thorough validation of my machine world example is necessary: I thought that we agreed that a "greek" God was not impossible but arbitrary:

Kendall is precisely right. The "god" that Seeker posited is a NON-supernatural one, that is still bound by the laws of identity. Therefore, this "god" is in the "greek god" category, rather than the "Christian god" category. As I repeatedly said earlier, the former is arbitrary, where the latter is impossible.

Thus, you would be correct to assert that discussion of a frame of reference outside ours is inadmissible, unless and until evidence is given (of the sort I gave my computer creatures at the end of the example, when I revealed everything to them). We dismiss it as arbitrary. My point was that we couldn't disprove the existence of the transcendent God in the example, and indeed this is correct: we can disprove a supernatural God as impossible and violating the axioms, because that's what a supernatural God does by definition, but a natural or Greek god is to be dismissed as arbitrary. I would disagree however that the example wasn't useful - it enabled me to clarify terms and aided my understanding of the topic of disproving the existence of God depending on what type of God it is. I thought before that the atheist position was one of disproving the greek God, and I no longer believe that to be true. It's to be dismissed as arbitrary. Yes?

Edited November 28, 2006 by Seeker

[KendallJ]

Okay, maybe I should start at the beginning ... in computer software there is an idea known as object-oriented programming (OO) that you may be familiar with. The programmer defines "classes" of objects and then instantiates (creates instances of) them in the computer memory by way of a main program. These objects possess internal states (variables or attributes), accessor methods (so that other objects can read their states), and have an ability to detect other such objects and pass messages by invoking "methods" on other objects. The perception here is extremely limited - it's the ability to "see" and pass messages to other objects. The conceptual faculty that results from this limited perception would enable these objects to conceive of nothing other than themselves and each other because that's all there is, to them. There's not three-dimensional space, as such. They can "remember" cause and effect, as you say, but all that would (I think) necessarily result from that is the ability to "trace back" to their instantiation, i.e. the moment they were created in the memory "space". And remember, I programmed these objects; there is no "free will" from my perspective, it's all deterministic. The "cognition" exists solely to choose from a short menu of options using some sort of value-maximizing function that I specify when I program them. Every time I run the program, the same thing will happen, every time. The computer I/O ports aren't accessible in any way to these objects. They're in a virtual box, so to speak, and can't get out. It's like a really dumbed-down version of "The Matrix".

The main characteristic of the machine world that I was trying to present was one of limited capacity for perception and action within a limited frame of reference. I don't see how these limited creatures could get past the limitation of the nature of their existence in the machine and detect me. The most they could is trace back their memory to their point of creation when their memories were empty.

I don't think a thorough validation of my machine world example is necessary: I thought that we agreed that a "greek" God was not impossible but arbitrary:

Thus, you would be correct to assert that discussion of a frame of reference outside ours is inadmissible, unless and until evidence is given (of the sort I gave my computer creatures at the end of the example, when I revealed everything to them). We dismiss it as arbitrary. My point was that we couldn't disprove the existence of the transcendent God in the example, and indeed this is correct: we can disprove a supernatural God as impossible and violating the axioms, because that's what a supernatural God does by definition, but a natural or Greek god is to be dismissed as arbitrary. I would disagree however that the example wasn't useful - it enabled me to clarify terms and aided my understanding of the topic of disproving the existence of God depending on what type of God it was. I thought before that the atheist position was one of disproving the greek God, and I no longer believe that to be true. It's to be dismissed as arbitrary. Yes?

I think I see where you were headed. My undergrad honors project was the use of neural networks for chemical process control, and I did some LISP programming in an AI class I took at the time so I'm a little familiar with the concepts.

I think your model is a perfect model of ameoba's in a pond. Mechanistic, non-conceptual, unconscious. Yeah, they can't ever know a "greek" God (although they might sense some of his effects), but it is because they are non-conceptual.

Yeah, the Greek "god" is arbitrary. Aliens might exist, but I'm not going to worry about it until we find some evidence. Christian God on the other hand, can't exist.

[Inspector]

Yes?

Yes. Your computer example kind of muddied the waters, since it was bringing deterministic non-free-will beings who I don't think would be capable of being conceptual at all into the equation. Nevertheless, if it's clear that that is a GG example and not a CG example, then I think it worked out in the end.

[Seeker]

I think your model is a perfect model of ameoba's in a pond. Mechanistic, non-conceptual, unconscious. Yeah, they can't ever know a "greek" God (although they might sense some of his effects), but it is because they are non-conceptual.

Hmmm - interesting. Supposing I gave them a rudimentary ability to process similarities among percepts of other objects into "conceptual" groupings and store those in their memory. For example, they could detect the attributes of other objects and form abstractions of their similarities to make conceptual groupings or "object classes". This would enable them to predict other objects' behavior depending upon class membership and choose actions accordingly. Would that make them "conceptual"? If so, would it enable them to discover me?

I think the answer is that they would be conceptual but they could not discover me because their ability to perceive reality is limited to the context of their virtual world. That was why they couldn't detect me - that was the point I was trying to make.

Edited November 28, 2006 by Seeker

[Inspector]

Would that make them "conceptual"?

No, this sounds perceptual; like a dog.

I think the answer is that they would be conceptual but they could not discover me because their natures do not include the necessary sense perception apparatus to go beyond their reality.

We don't have the sense perception apparatus to detect electrons, yet we know they exist.

[Seeker]

Yet in the case of electrons we can perform a reduction on our means of knowledge back to our level of sense perception. So in that sense, we do have the "apparatus" necessary to know they exist. The creatures lack such ability because of their limited natures.

Now I am curious as to what it would take for these creatures to be considered conceptual, if not the ability to process abstractions based on their limited percepts according to a specified algorithm, that they use to make evaluative decisions, then what exactly?

Edited November 28, 2006 by Seeker