Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Are your beliefs consistent? Take the test...

philosophersnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 84 posts

Re: Are your beliefs consistent? Take the test...

#61

Post by loup-vaillant »

ThomPete wrote: post #58
loup-vaillant wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That they seek it doesn't mean it's so. True. I got carried away. > Seeking a model that is without doubt is simply fools gold Seeking something doesn't mean we assume that we will find it. The fact that it's unattainable doesn't mean it isn't worth pursuing. Like perfection.

It might just be a matter of semantics or taste, but what about just seeking better predictability. How is that leaving us worse of? Truth, objective, rational etc. is covered with all sorts of baggage.

> How is that leaving us worse of?

It doesn't. I just haven't thought of this "third alternative".

Re: Are your beliefs consistent? Take the test...

#63

Post by Tichy »

ziadbc wrote: post #5

Was going well. However, one of my 'misses' had a logical flaw in it. I previously responded that it is ok to believe something spiritually based on a firm inner conviction, without external evidence. It then posed that a person raped someone because an inner voice told them it was ok. I responded that this was not ok. It said that I had now some logical conflict. This is not the case. I said it was ok to believe in…

I couldn't follow the logic of that question at all. If person X believes thing Y, person X believes thing Y. No logic enters into that. So if Sutcliffe thought he was doing the will of god, of course he felt justified. Obviously Sutcliffe follows a different logic to mine, so I can not argue with that.

The question "do I think it is justified that he thought like that" has no semantic meaning to me. What is it supposed to mean?

Re: Are your beliefs consistent? Take the test...

#64

Post by ugh »

Tichy wrote: post #35

Hm, it does not even use the same logic I do. I don't believe anything. There are just likelihoods (or proofs). So how am I supposed to answer "is it rational to believe that Nessie does not exist if there has never been any evidence for it"? I don't think it is likely that Nessie exists, but I can not prove the opposite either. So I can not claim to believe that Nessie does not exist.

Sure, there are only liklihoods, I can never be absolutly sure of, well, anything, really. Defining 'truth' as something I am absolutly certain of wouldn't make much sense.

But why should I define 'truth' that way? I have no problem calling something 'true' which merely has a high enough liklihood. It's a useful approximation, it basically dichotomizes a scale which is quite often pretty useful.

I also don't have many semantic worries. We seem to be well aware of the double character of 'truth' and usually say something like 'absolute truth' when we refer to statements of which someone is absolutly certain.

Re: Are your beliefs consistent? Take the test...

#65

Post by Tichy »

cwp wrote: post #18
ziadbc wrote: post #5

Was going well. However, one of my 'misses' had a logical flaw in it. I previously responded that it is ok to believe something spiritually based on a firm inner conviction, without external evidence. It then posed that a person raped someone because an inner voice told them it was ok. I responded that this was not ok. It said that I had now some logical conflict. This is not the case. I said it was ok to believe in…

Actually, the question was not whether Sutcliffe was justified in committing rape, but whether he was justified in believing that he was doing the will of God. If "firm inner conviction" justifies a belief, and Sutcliffe had firm inner conviction, then Sutcliffe was justified in his belief.

What does "justifies a belief" mean? Serious question, I really don't understand this.

Re: Are your beliefs consistent? Take the test...

#66

Post by ugh »

timcederman wrote: post #26
andymorris wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's getting at: say you had more actual evidence for the God theory than you did for evolution. Your response seems to indicate that you would STILL prefer evolution, as you would require certain, irrevocable proof for God. Your previous response said that you didn't need that level of proof for evolution, hence it states your views are logically inconsistent. I made the same "mistake", as I intended to impl…

The previous question said "Is evolution essentially true?" Well, yes. Plenty of physical evidence for it. I read the question as "Do you need actual evidence to believe in a God." I say yes. I don't see how my views are conflicted there - evidence means something is "true" (ah, but what is the definition of truth? We end up going down the rabbit hole about evidence, models, likely truths, etc)

I think the important word here is "irrevocable". Saying you don't need irrevocable evidence doesn't mean you don't need any evidence. Irrevocable seems to me to be pretty much the same as unfalsifiable which doesn't make much sense and would not be good evidence for the existence of god.

Re: Are your beliefs consistent? Take the test...

#67

Post by Locke1689 »

No hits, but only because I'm familiar with the questions being posed. For example, the statement about God being able to do anything was clearly an allusion to the Philosopher's God (i.e., most agree that the Philosopher's God can perform any action which is logically possible). Similarly, the question about "God exists. True/False" is clearly designed to get someone to make a straight statement about the existence of God, which the only logical answer is "unknown." The question about moral justification in absence of a God is tricky, mainly because of the wording. The wording implies that there can be no moral system outside of a theological system. Technically, it's not that there is no moral system, but only that all moral systems are essentially equivalent in fundamental foundation. This is ideally trying to trap one in the same well that Kant fell into.

Re: Are your beliefs consistent? Take the test...

#68

Post by Locke1689 »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #41

I got a direct hit because of a contradiction between question 5 (I answered true) and question 16 (I answered false). Actually question 16 strikes me as meaningless. If god "creates" something, that something must be a physical thing, which potentially influences our world (unlike the Dragon in the proverbial garage). That, or I misunderstood the meaning of "create". Squares and circles are not physical things. They…

It's an annoying philosophical problem. Mainly it's concerned with a long-running debate of how one should define "omnipotent" for the Philosopher's God. Consider the problem, "Can God make a block so heavy even he cannot move it?" Disregarding the problems with physics here, most philosophers agree that omnipotence should be complete power over all things which are logically possible. Whatever system such a God creates, things will operate consistently within that system. Of course, altering the system is fine, but then "logic" would still continue to be consistent in the new system.

Re: Are your beliefs consistent? Take the test...

#69

Post by Locke1689 »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #49
anthonyb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that squares or circles are outside our world? I guess it's hair-splitting, which is what the questionnaire was trying to avoid (ie. it's not a rational/refutable proposition), but how do you know for certain? It might be hard to conceive of such a world - much like trying to think about five-dimensional objects - but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

> How do you know that squares or circles are outside our world? I know it because of my overall education. If I had a different education, I might have believed otherwise. Anyway, I'm pretty darn sure of myself, and I have actual arguments to back it up. Have you ever seen a circle? A real circle, and not just a clever disposition of graphite on a sheet of paper. Likewise, have you ever seen a number? A real number,…

Depends on whether or not you consider yourself Platonist. Still, you fall into the same trap here that the ontological argument makes. Simply because a perfect instance can be posited in a system doesn't mean that such an instance must exist in that system.

Re: Are your beliefs consistent? Take the test...

#70

Post by Locke1689 »

dkersten wrote: post #15

You claimed earlier that any being which it is right to call God must want there to be as little suffering in the world as possible. But you say that God could make it so that everything now considered sinful becomes morally acceptable and everything that is now considered morally good becomes sinful. This is stupid. I said that god COULD change what is considered sinful and that god would WANT to minimize suffering.…

You're right, the explanation of the contradiction is poor. The true contradiction is that your definition of sin is arbitrary -- if God simply decides what is "sin" and that definition is in and of itself malleable, what makes an action "sinful?"

Tomorrow I will see if I have my Socrates texts. I think he spoke about this in the Creeto (piety under the Gods).

Post reply on HN