Convert Me

"Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six." -Revelations

Ignorance asks: what doth numbers have to do with the anti-christ? Or is the beast here mentioned something else?

Curiosity asks: Of the Christians in this comm, who believes the anti-christ to be a literal person who will come and bring about these end times, and who believes that the anti-christ is a metaphor for the evil that dwells inside of each of us?
Both? Neither? Curiosity wants to know.

Ok, so here's my problem with computer analogies wrt the mind. This is not meant to be a clear position on mind-body problem, or any assertions regarding the ultimate, transcendent, radical truth of the matter. It will be an explanation for my hesistancy wrt the issue at hand, and a request to have my qualms settled and dismissed.
( Cut. )

Is it possible to be truly open minded? Is it possible to for someone to exist for whom every opinion, practice, and belief of every state, culture, and livelihood is equally respected?

I don't believe this is possible. There are many practices and ways of life that are rejected by people who claim to be liberal and respectful of other cultures, including homosexual marriage, clitoridectomy, arranged marriage, polygamy, misogyny, capital punishment, abortion, sharia, equal rights for opposing genders, minorities, and subcultures and so on.

Please, convert me.

I just happened to notice our gerbil-cum-devil decided to criticize mechanical determinism. I thought about criticizing solipsistic idealism in response, but couldn't think how to make it both pointed and funny.

So instead, I'll try to draw some points from a project that's interested me for quite a while: meaningfully describing freedom of the will.

Both terms seem equally important here. It may be said, in a trivial sense, that any sapient and perhaps any sentient thing has will -- the capacity to effect a deliberate change in the world. It may equally be said that any sapient and perhaps sentient thing has a spectrum of possible ways in which they could change the world, of which only some are ruled out by obvious intractable constraints -- one cannot choose to fly, but one can deliberate over which of several foods one eats for breakfast.

If this is all that is meant by "free will," we're done. There is no point in arguing against this without very compelling evidence that it is in some way flawed, because it would fly so directly in the face of the experience apparently available to the vast majority of humans who have ever lived. This free will is, coincidentally, rather compatible with many descriptions of determinism. The set of options from which we are free to choose narrows, of course, but there is always some theoretical way in which it could be re-set. God could change Its mind, perhaps, or we could conceive of some way of altering the initial state of the universe (or creating our own in which the initial state was subtly altered).

But it seems to me to be a ridiculous straw-man of a position, both to attack "determinism" and to hold its own case. There is "free" and there is "will," but neither seems much to be a property of the other. The only link between them is this sense of deliberation... that is, that courses of action available to those with will are not arrived at instantaneously, but must be figured, felt, computed, sniffed out. Options are weighed and cast aside until the course of action which actually is to be, or at least hoped to be (for no-one here either supposes omniscience as an aspect of the human condition), is arrived upon and enacted.

No, freedom of the will seems to me to suggest something much more profound than deliberation. It suggests, it seems to me, that that deliberative process is not one upon which, given identical factors down to the smallest each time, the same conclusion would in some possible worlds not be reached -- and yet neither is it said to be a randomness. For even a coin has "freedom," much in the sense I illustrated it above... there is more than one possible state it can conclude in... but I doubt anyone would suggest this is meaningfully the same as the "freedom" of the will.

But this is problematic to me. Deeply. Because another way of saying this is that there is a non-random acausal element to deliberation. Or, in grandiose language, that we are each miniature First Causes.

This is voiciferously rejected by many proponents of free will, yet it must be if what I said above is an accurate depiction of the claim it makes... that is, that given absolutely identical sets of causes, in each case (and either ignoring random elements or assigning them the same state each time) there is a possible world in which another decision was reached after deliberation. For this to occur, there must be something intrinsic to the deliberative process which has no prior cause -- or you must admit that you are a random creature who decides, not based on your knowledge, intuition, and feeling (all causes); but based on a game-spinner somewhere inside you that has perhaps a wide slice reading "eggs for breakfast" and a narrower, but just as existent slice reading "murder my neighbor's dog."

And yet, I see so few serious proponents of free will stepping forward to claim we are all gods, each one a Prime Mover.

Of course, there is nothing in the idea that decisions have random elements to contradict with the idea that there is no acausal element. This perhaps seems the most reasonable conclusion to take, given the evidence. It could, if one were in the mood for oxymoron, be called something like "chaotic determinism," or in a more classical mood "indeterminacy," although that may confuse some philosophers. Perhaps tychism is as good a name as any, when it is convenient to refer to.

Einstein once paraphrased Schopenhauer in German, and it is the translation of that I find most relevant for this conversation: "Man can do as he wills, but cannot choose what he wills."

Or, convert me. Does freedom of the will mean something else? Or have you spied the way out of my dillemma, and wish to persuade me that the will does not contain the cause-less, per se, but actually not subject to causality as we understand it? The latter has been opined to me more than once, but it is still a position I do not claim to comprehend.

I believe that I have never said, written or thought anything that is "mine" in the sense that I, and only I, am responsible for.

First I can argue along the language lines. I think in English because that is what I was raised in. I most certainly didn't choose English as my primary language. Thus when I think: "That woman is pretty." Not only are there are host of subconcious biological and social forces at work, there's the very fact that I'm not saying: "Die Fraulien ist [german word for pretty here]"
Second I can argue along the past idea line. In order for me to have a thought about, say, Jesus Christ, I have to have heard about this idea before. If I am thinking about X when it's the first time I've heard of X (some news article releases brand spanking new info) then the thoughts I had are conditioned upon the thoughts I have had in relation to similar things.
Third I can argue that there is nothing truly new, just combinations of old ideas.

Lastly I would say that my thoughts *come to me* and are not *chosen by me*.

When I see a photo of the concentration camps of WW2 I don't decide: "Ok, time to be horrified and feel like vomiting." Not at all, my brain does that on it's own. I don't choose to, it just happens. I simply respond to my environment.

So, go ahead, convert me. Convince me that I'm a special snowflake, who has his very own, unique, special thoughts. Cause frankly, I don't buy it.

~B

In a previous post, I was criticised for unfairly characterising pragmatic justifications of science. After chastising myself for daring to suggest that a pragmatic justification of science would have something to do with how science was used, I thought that I'd maybe have another crack at showing why pragmatism would never justify science as the exclusive truth-telling tool.

I don't even need to appeal to kitchenware (though, seriously, you guys should read up on the hazards of most of our appliances).

The main question at hand regards the justification in terms of usefulness. Given that some untrue things are useful to believe, it's clear that the justification of anything is going to require more than mere utility.

Agent S is free if and only if at some time for some act F both F or not-F are possible acts.

Wait. Was that too formal for the noisy yokels and oslo?

Okay, let's use an example. Today, I had mushrooms kilpatrick for breakfast. Call 'eat mushrooms kilpatrick for breakfast' 'F'. Yesterday - as we know for an absolute certainty - it was possible that I would F this morning. It is conceivable that I could have had something else for breakfast this morning (i.e. not-F).

So, unlike the problem of conscious computers, free will doesn't suffer a conceivability problem.

But conceivability has often run into trouble with causation. It's conceivable that a kettle full of water in the constant heat of a fire won't boil.

Running with Anscombe, we could say that: 'If an effect occurs in one case and a similar effect does not occur in an apparently similar case, there must be a relevant further difference.' ('Causality and Determination')

I have breakfast a lot. It happens quite frequently. The breakfasts are often of different kinds. The other day, I had kippers. There was a wonderful morning about a month ago when I ate poached goose eggs (I encourage you to do the same. They're wonderful. Ignore that you're a vegan for a day and try some with some toasted rye). So there are a bunch of different acts that I choose, but this morning could I have chosen one of those (or any of the seemingly infinite number of other options) not as a matter of logic but as a matter of, say, physics. Is there some relevant further difference which entails that sometimes I have mushrooms kilpatrick, sometimes I have kippers, and sometimes I have poached goose eggs?

What on Earth sort of causal chain could have prevented me from not-F this morning? Determinists seem to think that there is such a chain. They seem to think - contrary to known science and philosophy - that, if you were to rewind the universe to last week and reran everything, the universe would be identical to its current state after a week. It's an unfalsifiable thesis, so it's certainly not a scientific theory. It runs contrary to our lived experience - that we engage in choice or something that looks an awful lot like it. Worst of all, it harks back to spooky thinking about God's omniscience.

Who could honestly speak in favour of such an anti-intellectual, primitive theory of causality?

I'm inclined to believe in determinism, unable to see how free will would work, so to say.

In order to convert me, the following would be useful:
- A clear definition of free will
- An explanation as to how such a thing arises and/or its effects in the universe
- An explanation as to how the experience of a deterministic universe would differ from the experience of a universe in which free will exists
- Devise a potential test, the results of which would differentiate between the two alternatives

Convert me.

In a previous post, I briefly presented Alvin Plantinga’s “Reformed epistemologist” thesis that theistic (and Christian) belief may possess warrant in a “properly basic” way (i.e., in such a way that the proposition believed does not gain warrant from having its basis in propositional evidence). There I focused on Plantinga’s response to atheist Michael Martin’s objection that Plantinga’s brand of epistemological foundationalism “puts any belief beyond rational appraisal once it is declared basic” and concluded that Martin’s objection fails. I would now like to consider Plantinga’s response to a second objection, also raised by Martin and related to the first objection.

( Martin vs. Plantinga—the final showdown )

Martin’s second objection, then, fails—just like the first. Although it is “at least interesting,” it “suffers from the annoying defect of having a false premise” (ibid., p. 349). Hence, Plantinga’s Reformed epistemology (and his extended Calvin/Aquinas model of warranted Christian belief) is not “radically relativistic.”

On the contrary, Plantinga’s thought requires that we ourselves rethink the nature of interfaith dialogue (and the way we conceive of the nature of the convert_me challenge). I can claim that my Christian belief is true, and this claim may have warrant, without my needing to argue that Christianity is true or that my belief has warrant. Hence, if a person of, say, Muslim faith wishes to challenge my belief, it will not follow that my mere inability to present an argument for my belief in and of itself permits the Muslim to assert that I must not possess warrant for that belief; other reasons must be adduced. Perhaps the following inductive argument: “I have been able to demonstrate that most people I’ve met who lack arguments for their belief also lack warrant for their belief; you do not have arguments for your belief; ergo, your belief is probably unwarranted.” But it seems that the only really persuasive arguments against the warrant of my belief will be ones that target the truth of my belief. If so, it follows that the burden of proof is initially on the one who denies that my belief has warrant, and not on me to show that it has warrant. But, in keeping with the argument of my former post, once an objection has been leveled against the truth of my belief, then my interlocutor will have shifted the burden of proof to me.

It is my belief that anybody who accepts Breatharianism is an idiot, and that all those who died trying this deserve Darwin Awards

EDIT:

Oh, and also, this is one of those things that prove I shouldn't believe someone just because they say it. It is very reasonable for me to disbelieve such outrageous claims. Other, equally outrageous claims, can likewise be disbelieved even if individuals claim it to be true.

The other day I was leafing through some NT texts. I came across a minor inconsistency.

Was Barabbas a robber or a murderer? One gospel indicates one thing, another indicates something else.

Sure, he coulda been both. But I'm pondering as to the views of those here who are "in the know".

Also:
Romans I 18-20:

"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." -NIV version

I'm gonna go right ahead and question that. I am not trying to make an excuse, but I am trying to explain my current disagreement with that section. God is not made plain to me; if God were made plain to me, and I had a good reason to suspect God existed, I would believe God existed; as it currently stands, I do not have plain reason to believe in God--certainly not in his eternal power and divine nature. Perhaps my eyes cannot see for I have dirty glasses on infront of my eyes. Perhaps one of you can help clear away the soot.

Might I also ask: why has God's wrath been so incredibly imperceptable these past few thousand years?

~B

My dad is an avid golfer. Every couple of months he sagely informs me that he has discovered the optimum 12 point golf swing: "Club-head back to here, twist 15 degrees, turn hips to here, lock the wrists here, break them here, right elbow tucked...". Every couple of months I "hm", and "ah" at this new technique, as I am informed that while he hasn't quite gotten used to it yet, my Dad is certain that once it becomes physically comfortable he will drop 10 from his handicap. And every couple of months, I give him the same advice: "Why don't you try lining up your shot, then close your eyes for the back-swing, and keep them closed almost to the moment when you hit the ball? After all, the one time you did try this idea of mine, you won the B-Grade championship."

"True," he replies, "but it's not as much fun." I can understand his point of view.

( Indulge me... )

My friend who is a religious studies major at Warren Wilson have been discussing religion. He admits that:
"The God that the Atheist does not believe in, is one that I do not believe in either." (said by someone famous before my friend repeated it to me)

He also said to me that he feels that Santa Clause is the worst thing for western theology ever.
Santa Clause theology is the all knowing, all seeing, all judging-reward and punishment giving God, which, we all might buy into as little kids, but later on in life we realize there is no Santa Clause.

If we were lied to about Santa, what else were we lied to about?....

Now, lie might be the wrong word--parents *know* Santa doesn't exist, but they might, in their honest foolishness, actually still believe in God (how last century!) and thus they truthfully (from their POV) tell their kids God exists.

But the God they speak of is too much like Santa! Now, there are some empirical facts about Santa that we can disprove (he doesn't live in the north pole with elves making toys year-round, nor does he fly about with reindeer) however, like all things, we cannot prove a negative.

It is *impossible* for me to disprove the existence of Santa Clause. Maybe he's invisible. Maybe this, maybe that.

I would like to ask the group:

Who believed in Santa Clause as a kid?
Who believes in Santa Clause as an adult?
Who believed in God as a kid?
Who believes in God as an adult?

Does this charge of santa clause theology ring familiar for anyone else? Share a bit.

Grammer! Monceys.

I try as hard as I can to stay relevant to the community, so I thought the following topic would be most productive. No, pastorlenny did not make me do this, nor did he threaten me with hellfire, nor did he enlist the aid of some Italian men nor did he make vague threats as to the distribution of certain photos of a certain nature.

This is, first and foremost, the internet. Secondly, it is Livejournal. The proper usage of the written word is a hot-topic in many internet Livejournal discussions. It is appears frequently and with great vigor. Very often, the common defense of the delinquent is that they don't care about internet grammar, or LJ grammar, or whatever. This is odd, because last I checked, there was "grammar", and what it meant and towards that which it attended.

Complaining about people pointing out your typos by crying "Nazi!" is akin to accusing a police man of totalitarian thuggery for pulling you over for speeding. Now, I'm sure the same people do the same thing when they get pulled over, so the analogy might not connect, but I must try regardless.

So, given that there is no such thing as LJ grammar as distinct from simply "grammar", I contend that it is an equally atrocious crime against language as any sort of similar tom-foolery in a report or academic work.

Convert me!

In 1971, intellectual giants Michel Foucault (1926–84) and Noam Chomsky (1928–) had a debate in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, entitled “Human Nature: Justice versus Power.” (A transcript of the debate is available here, and a few very short segments of the debate also appear on Youtube here and here.) The debate is fairly long, but worth reading if you have the time. In this debate, the two thinkers discuss the philosophy of human nature and the politics of justice and power. A number of interesting subtopics come up as well, but what most interests me is the interrelation of these two main topics of discussion.

The question of whether there is a human nature common to all human beings and, if so, what it is, is strongly related to the question of what ought to take precedence in political discussions: justice or power. The relationship seems to be mutual, in that the answer I give to one of these questions will shape or limit my answer to the other, and vice versa. However, in the Foucault–Chomsky debate the relation of the second question to the first is perhaps the more readily apparent one. Foucault’s self-proclaimed “Nietzschean” perspective on justice seems to be a product, at least in part, of his failure to accept a concept of human nature that embraces the qualities and values Chomsky ascribes to that nature. Foucault argues that “the idea of justice…is an idea which in effect has been invented and put to work in different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political and economic power or as a weapon against that power,” and adds that this idea “itself functions within a society of classes as a claim made by the oppressed class and as justification for it.”

Chomsky’s realism about justice is likewise rooted in his realist conception of a common human nature. His counterargument to Foucault’s position is that although existing systems of justice “embody systems of class oppression and elements of other kinds of oppression,…they also embody a kind of groping towards the true humanly, valuable concepts of justice and decency and love and kindness and sympathy”—concepts that according to Chomsky refer to realities that are much more than mere instruments of oppression.

( Foucault’s response )

( Foucault and Chomsky on the political task(s) of society )

( Justice, critique and human nature )

( Aquinas’s metaphysico-metaethical grounding of critique )

( Sign theory, semioethics, and critique )

Since this is a somewhat lengthy post, I invite the members of this community to convert me away from any position I have defended herein; alternatively, you may wish to discuss any topic Foucault and Chomsky hit upon in the debate.

(Cross-posted to sign_studies.)

What justifies science?

It can't be its past performance. After all, we know of so much science which has been disproven or ammended in the face of new information.

It can't be on the grounds of pragmatism. After all, some scientific facts are just not pragmatic for us to believe. We fill our homes with appliances which we would - immediately and without hesitation - remove if we really bothered to investigate them and behave 'scientifically'. But our lives are made so much easier by them, so we ignore the science and cling to pragmatic - but forced - ignorance.

It can't be brute fact because... well, there aren't any brute facts which justify science.

It can't be based on some comparison with the alternatives. The performance of X says nothing about whether we're justified in using Y as a substitute.

So why do so many e-atheists cling to science like a drowning man clings to a straw?

Prejudice? Bias? Ignorance? Pick one, guys.

I was walking up Broadway and upon crossing west 79th street I saw a church that had this inscribed above it's doorway:

"If you declare with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and if you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you will be saved." -Romans 10 (That may not be the precise wording of the church I saw, as their translation may have been slightly diff, but it's the same passage and close translation)

I must be misunderstanding this section, for it sounds to me, like one may be guilty of great crimes and awful conduct, but so long as one declares and believes properly, one will be saved. Certainly that is not the case, is it?

This passage seems very strange indeed as it puts the emphasis on belief/faith and what one declares. Shouldn't we be more concerned with people's actions?

Maybe that's just me.

So, who spotted the grammar error? Who was looking?
Monkeys.

~B

EDIT:

My friend recently told me something that shocked me.
There is a church, which is blasphemous enough, to have a McDonalds INSIDE THE CHURCH.

The new Family Life Center at Brentwood Baptist Church is a unique place that everyone in Houston, Texas will want to visit. Now completed, this 74,000 square foot facility will provide the staff and congregation of Brentwood Baptist many innovative ways to minister to the community. Brady Eggleston, Project Manager, stated, "Century Builders has created a well planned design that can handle a variety of ministry functions". There is a NBA regulation size basketball court with 6 retractable goals, a volleyball court, full locker room with showers, and retractable bleachers. Besides a full service kitchen, there is also a McDonalds restaurant inside the building. -source

Brentwood Baptist down in Texas. ...McDonalds, a capitalist enterprise, inside the church...how come nobody has gone in there with some chords and started whipping people?

Srsly now?



That's justed F-ed up!

And fact is only what you believe
And fact and fiction work as a team
It's almost always fiction in the end

The coherence theory of truth never much appealed to me. However, recently I was re-considering an argument I encountered about it while reading about Nietzschean skepticism. The argument was roughly:

The only way to verify belief A as true is to justify it in the context of beliefs X, Y and Z.

That is: "Bob went to work today" is true if it coheres with my beliefs about Bob, where Bob works, and where Bob went today. But my beliefs about Bob must cohere with....and so on, for a fairly infinite regression.

So as much as I don't like the coherence theory of truth, it, in a certain logical way, forces itself upon me, like a bad date. I would like to ask your help in fending off this fiend.

Is it possible to justify a belief outside of other beliefs? If it is not possible (as it seems to me) does that mean we must resign ourselves to a coherence theory of truth where we admit that our justifications for X being true is that it coheres with another set of beliefs we have, which in turn we hold because they cohere with another set of beliefs that we have, which in turn....

It's somewhat unsettling, this shifting ground of truth. Even Zentiger said it when Pooperman asked him about it: "Truth is one big mess." (sorry if the paraphrase is slightly off)

So yeah, convert me about the coherence theory of truth.
Also: laugh if you know what I mean.