No. I presented a hypothesis for how one can potentially obtain a belief. I have made no claims as to any potential belief that would be derived from that hypothesis.
the value is personal - it has little value to others, but to each individual who is convinced by a truth, then it has value to them as individuals.
As to it not being subjected to critical scrutiny or due diligence, that’s down to each individual to give any belief due diligence and critical scrutiny. I have not denied these being applied, only that the outcome is an individual being convinced.
As stated. Burden of proof is something that applies when a claim is made to others, requiring scrutiny or acceptance by others. It does not apply to someone who has already justified their belief.
The point is, the initial stage of being convinced has been met. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t an ongoing process of scrutiny, but just as with a burden of proof, once the justification has been satisfied, the burden is lifted. Unless something new arises that requires additional support for a belief/claim, one need only refer back to the original support.
It’s not burden of proof though. You’re conflating logical discourse with internal justified belief.
Who says it hasn’t been subjected to critical scrutiny? And again, the value is what the individual makes of it.
You as an individual accept your senses give you sufficiently accurate data about reality. You have no way to objectively scrutinise that justified belief, because you cannot interact with reality independently of your own senses. What value do you place on your belief in reality?
I don’t know how to answer that. The words I used are clear.
Consider a child. A parent shows them a card that is green, and says, “this is the colour green.” the child then goes outside, and the parent says “what colour is this grass?” and the child says, “the grass is green”
They accept that the grass is green. They can see it.
They don’t need to grow up and study science, specialise in physics and examine the wavelength of light emitted from grass to prove that grass is green. They saw it and they accepted it.
That is the point I made. Just because external validation exists doesn’t mean it is necessary. Acceptance that grass is green predates scientific understanding of wavelengths of light (17th century) by a significant period of time.
To summarise, I’m not denying the scientific basis of colour. I’m saying that someone can form a justified belief based on perception alone, without needing to understand the science behind it.
You’re demonstrating bias in expecting all things to be possibly subjected to objective scrutiny.
Consider the following: Person A experiences a new unknown emotion. How can that experience be objectively scrutinised? Imagine there are no physiological indicators associated with the emotion, and Person A has no words to meaningfully describe it.
Your reference to flat earthers is a false equivalence - this is something that can be objectively scrutinised. I already addressed this when you suggested flat earthers before:
To summarise - I have no disagreement to the point that where possible, objective scrutiny should be applied, but it has to be something that can be objectively scrutinised.
If one is genuinely pursuing the truth, then of course it makes sense to be biased against poorly or completely unevidenced ideas.
If I’d suggested they were the same then yes, but I did not, I was merely pointing out how absurd it is to suggest an entirely subjective belief is epistemologically justified.
So anything that can’t, would not justify belief, if one genuinely cared about the truth. Tgat was the criteria you set, and it is incompatible with ideas that are entirely subjective, and cant be objectively scrutinised.
I have no problem with people believing unevidenced woo woo, only when they pretend this represents an objective pursuit of truth, people do this when the beluef matters to them more than the truth.
Consider the green grass example I gave before. When a Person (Person A) sees something that is green, their brain interprets a particular wavelength of light as having a specific appearance - distinguished as colours. How would Person A know that when they see “green” it is the same “green” that Person B sees, or that anyone else sees?
Imagine if one of those two people, A or B, has the colour spectrum reversed, so blues become yellow/orange, greens become pink/purple, etc. So all colour remains consistent but negative. If the person with the reversed spectrum has been born with that condition, they would have no way of knowing that they see things differently to the rest of the world. Someone points at grass and says, “this is green” and they would agree, even though they see what would objectively be recognised as a red/pink/purple colour depending on the shade, because they learnt what “green” was, based on what they were told was green in colour by others, who saw green.
So one of our two people, Person A or Person B, sees colour differently. Both therefore have entirely subjective beliefs as to what any given colour looks like. Their entirely subjective beliefs are epistemically justified, but they have no way to objectively evidence them - they can’t independently verify their own senses.
We have no way of knowing whether colour is objective - we can only tell if someone’s perception of colour is inconsistent (i.e., colour blindness), but as long as it is consistent, there is no frame of reference by which a subjective perception of colour can be independently validated.
If a person is convinced of a belief - if the source that convinced them is a hypothetical god, then they have had an experience that can reasonably be considered to be a justified belief, just as any other empirical experience becomes a justified belief. If you see a lemon in a supermarket, you accept that you saw a lemon. You don’t need objective evidence to support it.
To say otherwise is bias, and as I pointed out in my last comment, how can any person objectively evidence their own perception?
So no one feels pain?
Pain is a justified belief. A person doesn’t need to objective scrutiny to accept the fact they are in pain.
If a person genuinely cares about the truth, they would be open to the possibility that a truth may not be objectively evidenced. If a person experiences feelings/emotions, they accept them as justified beliefs of what they feel. They don’t dismiss them because they cannot be objectively scrutinised.
You’re making a category error. Truth isn’t limited by your constraints and to suggest otherwise is illogical.
You talk of objective scrutiny but it’s self-contradictory to make it exclusive. How does one objectively scrutinise objective scrutiny? If everything must be objectively scrutinised, then you create a circular argument, because you can’t objectively scrutinise everything being objectively scrutinised. The logic collapses under its own weight.
You’re also at risk of promoting scientism. The belief that objective evidence is the only path to truth. This view itself is not provable by objective evidence. It unjustifiably excludes entire areas of knowledge, like morality, aesthetics, and introspection.
Are you sure you want to argue against proven neurological facts? Pain isn’t based on belief.
Yes, nerves are how your body senses potential or actual injury and tells your brain you are in pain, a process that involves specialized pain receptors called nociceptors sending signals to your brain, which then interprets these signals as the sensation of pain. The signals travel from the site of injury along peripheral nerves to the spinal cord and then up to the brain, where the sensation of pain is experienced and processed
Spoken like a true Christian. I’d say you just flushed your whole debate right down the shitter with that remark.
You’re misunderstanding the point I’m making here. If a person feels pain, the fact that they (a particular person) is feeling pain (at that moment) is a justified belief that cannot be objectively evidenced.
There is a distinction between pain being recognised as something that can occur, and a particular person feeling pain.
That’s why when people go to a doctor or a hospital, there can be a question of whether a person is feeling pain or not, and how intense that pain is.
That’s poisoning the well fallacy. If you have counterpoints to my arguments, by all means, voice them. I only referenced scientism in regard to the view being presented:
which I read as truth being dismissed if it cannot be objectively evidenced, which is an ideology of scientism.
I didn’t openly assert it, I merely said “at risk” to indicate that the view was sounding similar to scientism.
But whatever your opposition to the statement is, the claim that it somehow affects the rest of my arguments is fallacious.
It’s true that pain is subjective, but we understand how pain is caused, we understand it is an entirely natural physiological phenomenon, but most importantly, we can objectively test it.
Painkillers make pain reduce or go away by blocking receptors at the piint of pain, while others block them in the brain. There are also objective markers that clinicians are trained to look for before offering pain relief, and single out addicts simply seeking a fix.
So we can objectively test the presense of pain.
Of course one must be biased against demonstrably poor methods at verfying the veracity of claims, if as you asserted one is genuinely seeking the truth. The bias would be is accepting something as true, using a standard one does not apply equally to all claims.
We already know, and ive already explained, that methods designed to remove as much subjective bias as possible, are exponentially more likely to provide true explanations of reality, than entirely subjective personal ones. This is not bias, it is an objective fact that objectively testing medicine, provides more true diagnosis than homeopathy for example.
By all means build a car or plane without objective evidence, based on your subjective feelings, and see how your results compare with technologies derived from objective science.
If you genuinely are concerned with the truth, you’d use the best methods.
“Although pain is characterised as a symptom, it is a subjective personal experience or a perception. This perception is influenced by both nociceptive transmission and central nervous system modulation; and psychological, social and other environmental factors. It is a complex issue most simply described by the phrase ‘Pain is whatever the experiencing person says it is, existing whenever he says it does’.” (The measurement of pain)
And:
" Pain has been defined as “an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage” by the International Association for the Study of Pain. This definition underscores that pain is a subjective experience; therefore, unlike other chronic diseases, such as hypertension or hyperlipidemia, there is no single objective measurement to best characterize the extent of the problem or to evaluate treatment outcomes. Measuring a patient’s pain must correlate objective data with the patient’s subjective reporting to provide a comprehensive outcome representing the pain state."
I get that there can be physiological signs. I get that to some degree there can be some means of recognising a person is in pain. But as per the quotes and sources above, this is by no means definitive. A person’s actual experience of pain is subjective.
A person can’t even know that how they feel pain is the same way someone else feels pain - even the words we use to describe different types of pain (sharp, dull, aching, etc.) are associations with other types of pain, so it’s all circular. We can only be certain of the consistency of types of pain, but we have no way of knowing how other people feel pain. It is largely a justified belief - a subjective experience.
as per my quotes in the comment above, I acknowledge there are limited means to get some objective measurement, but pain remains subjective and objective measures are still dependent on the subjective experience.
This is all somewhat detracting from the initial point though. As I pointed out with pain in my last comment - we have no way of knowing if the pain we feel is the same as the pain others feel. It’s subjective in that context and it cannot be independently corelated with other subjective experiences, just like my example with colour.
Except this is bias. Of course reality is going to have more explanations from objective evidence when your basis for determining what true explanations are is based on objective evidence. This would be a circular argument. Correct me if I’m wrong in stating this is your argument here.
I’m not rejecting the benefit of objective evidence, or its role in explaining reality.
I’m pointing out that it cannot be claimed that reality is limited to that which can be objectively evidenced. I’ve given examples of the limits in which objective evidence can apply, where we know that reality extends beyond.
This highlights the discrepancy and is the point I was making - reality is greater than what objective evidence can explain.
That’s not a flaw of objective evidence, it’s just a limitation.
It doesn’t mean objective evidence should be valued less, it just means one should recognise there is knowledge of reality that cannot be objectively evidenced, and if that knowledge is to be explored, we cannot rely on objective evidence for that knowledge (but we can still rely on objective evidence for the reality it does apply to)
that’s fine, but the best method is also the most appropriate/suitable method.
It’s a case of accepting there can be a difference. If you want to know how another person is feeling, the best method isn’t going to be objective evidence.
If one is concerned with the truth, they also have to be open to the wider reality.
In the end though, I’ve only presented a hypothesis on what people can do if they choose. No one is compelled to do so.
No, painkillers can be used to test if your pain is real, and clinicians are trained to look for objective markers before dispensing pain meds.
I agree, subjective personal experience alone, is a very poor method for deriving truth.
Circular, and false, as I’m not picking a method I favour, just the one that demonstrably has exponentially more reliable results, and of course that subjects all claims to the same standard.
You’re wrong that my argument was circular, but the straw man you offerred certainly was.
Who has made any such claim? Citing one method as exponentially better based on objective results is not a claim it is the only method.
However until you can get anything like the results of objectively scrutinising ideas and claims to verify their veracity, no one can claim they’re genuinely seeking the truth, and then use poorer methods, and personal subjective experience is a very low bar.
Maybe a better alternative to Pascal would be not so much to seek the truth as to remain open to new facts and evidence that might change your understanding and perception of what is or isn’t true.
Something about seeking the truth, while it sounds superficially noble, is wrong. It is assuming too much – that there is one simple Truth that’s “out there” free of pesky context or any ambiguity at all, free of any specialist expertise or experience to grasp, to be “discovered”. It assumes that certitude is the objective.
In reality, “truth” is just something we try to more accurately approximate as we iterate on testing its explanatory power in lived experience, including, if we want to discover general principles, the full scope of human experience.
As such, Pascal’s wager and any alternative wager is missing the boat, IMO. It’s looking for simple, definitive, static answers that don’t exist.
Normally when someone calls something the “truth”, especially in a religion. I always assume they’re lying. I feel like the whole “truth” argument is deceptive and manipulative.
We’ve had multiple pagan religions that date way way back and those people said those religions were the “truth”. The Muslims are doing it and so are the Christians. And hundreds of years from now, their religions will probably be has beens that are dead.
Ra, for example, was more loved than “god” during the time of the Ancient Egyptians, until one day people quit worshiping him.
The ancient Egyptian sun god Ra was worshipped by millions of people. As the creator god and ruler of the heavens, he was the most important deity in the Egyptian pantheon for thousands of years.
While no definitive census data exists for ancient Egypt, modern scholars have provided population estimates for key periods of Egyptian civilization:
Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2181 BCE): During the time the pyramids were built, the population was likely between 1.5 and 2 million people.
Middle Kingdom (c. 2134–1690 BCE): The population increased to approximately 3 million people.
New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BCE): At the peak of Egypt’s imperial power, the population ranged from 3 to 5 million.
Greco-Roman times (c. 30 BCE–640 CE): Some estimates place the population as high as 7 to 8 million.
Ra’s widespread worship
Ra’s enduring popularity and state-sponsored cult ensured his influence touched every part of Egyptian society.
Royal devotion: Beginning in the Fifth Dynasty (2494–2345 BCE), the pharaohs proclaimed themselves the “sons of Ra.” They constructed massive monuments like pyramids, obelisks, and sun temples specifically to honor him.
Syncretism: Over time, Ra’s cult absorbed other deities, creating composite gods like Amun-Ra and Sobek-Ra. This allowed his worship to remain relevant through various political changes. Amun-Ra, a fusion with the god Amun, became the most important state god during the New Kingdom.
Decline: The worship of Ra ultimately began to decline after the Roman conquest of Egypt and the rise of Christianity, which put an end to the ancient religion.
I think it’s more mis-framed and mis-defined than outright lying.
In the Christian crucifixion story, Pontius Pilate is portrayed as asking rhetorically, “what is truth?” The subtext (at least as it was presented to us pew-warmers) was that he had no idea and the question was kind of cynical and nihilistic, whereas of course by contrast, we knew with confidence what he did not, by virtue of trusting the teachings – er, God.
In reality, even then, I secretly admired that rather than debate about what was or wasn’t true, Pilate asked a meta-question about what truth even IS. In fact it was one a few insights I had when I was young that gave me some small shim to begin to pry apart the dogma and the assumptions around the faith and examine them critically. It took a couple of decades for it to fully bear fruit, but bear fruit it did.
My thesis is what is a correct apprehension of what’s true is something that can’t be known with 100% certainty, but it can be systematically approached with increasing degrees of certainty if you’re willing to put in the work.
For some less consequential questions, even 51% certainty is sufficient for practical purposes; for others, we must approach 100%. For example, to afford belief to the Christian deity (deities?) making extensive claims about reality (that we are immortal, that there’s a positive and negative afterlife influenced by our conduct in this life, that morality is externally and arbitrarily defined, imposed and enforced by an authoritarian deity who is all powerful and all knowing), we would want to be at or just shy of 100% certainty – especially given that, as with all deities, they are conveniently invisible and ineffable.
Yes, eventually Jehovah and his son will go the way of Ra and Odin and countless others, though that’s unthinkable for Christians who see him as the ultimate underpinning for existence itself. But I see Christians less as lying than as self-deceived. They are as honest with us as they are with themselves, which is to say, deluded.
There is no ideology of Scientism, I have only ever seen it used to handwave away objections to claims that something exists beyond the scope of the natural physical world and empirical objectively verifiable evidence.
Most often to reverse the burden of proof.
I agree, and true is defined as “in accordance with fact or reality”, how are facts established about reality without any objective evidence or critical scrutiny? I am curious if such methods can be universally applied without inevitably violating the law of non-contradiction.
Yes, that’s the point I was making. There are things that are subjective - the direct experience of pain - that cannot be objectively evidenced, but are still accepted as justified beliefs without objective evidence.
A painkiller is still dependent on subjective experience. You give a person a painkiller and are dependent on the person’s confirmation of a change to their subjective experience. I’m not saying that objective measures can’t work, only that they are limited.
“very poor” is a biased viewpoint. It depends on what is being derived.
Consider a person asks someone what their favourite colour is, and they say red. This is based on subjective experience. One person has subjectively given a justified belief, and another person has accepted that justified belief.
Now you could try to objectively evidence what a person’s favourite colour is by observing their clothing (what colours they wear, if there are any predominant colours in their wardrobe, etc.), the colours of possessions they own, and so on - but in this context, it would be a poor substitute for the subjective experience. Some people can like a particular colour but they don’t wear it because it doesn’t suit them, or another colour suits them better, or they’re trying to convey a particular image from their appearance that overrides their colour preferences. Possessions can be limited in colour choice or may be more expensive for certain colours. A person may choose to coordinate colours to match possessions they couldn’t choose the colour for, instead of prioritising a favourite colour when the choice was available. Objective evidence has no guaranteed accuracy because there would be an unquantifiable number of variables - all subjective experiences and justified beliefs - that influence how the “objective evidence” could be interpreted.
The claim that one method has more reliable results is biased, which is the point. The problem is, if a method isn’t using objective evidence, you can’t make a claim as to whether the results are reliable or not, because you would be dependent on objective evidence to measure reliability. Hence the circular reasoning problem.
That’s a dismissive response. You don’t state whether your argument has been represented correctly or not, and you haven’t clarified your argument if it hasn’t been represented correctly. Denying the argument against it without answering the point itself or clarifying your argument is empty.
I didn’t say such a claim had been made. I was just pointing out that there are things that cannot be objectively evidenced in reality, so making qualitative statements about methods is biased and erroneous.
A method can only be qualitatively measured for the context it suits. So if we’re measuring rainfall, a container with measurement indicators on the side is a better method than trying to catch a series of individual raindrops, getting an average of their size and quantity, and then extrapolating from the duration of rainfall.
As I have said in previous comments, I am not arguing against objective evidence or the methods of obtaining objective evidence being the best methods where objective evidence is suited, but as per the favourite colour example, there are contexts where the method isn’t the best, and there are also contexts where the method simply can’t work at all.
This doesn’t mean the other methods are “very poor” because that would be biased towards the contexts where a particular method is suited.
If we take our rainfall container and try to use it to measure the percentage of oxygen in the air, it’s going to be a lousy method. Just as no single method works in physics for all evidencing, neither can one single method work in reality for all truths.
Consider the following hypothesis example:
Imagine there is a simulated world, and in that simulated world, the creators of the simulation have added a hidden feature. Any person who wants to know if the world is a simulation just needs to want to know beyond a specific threshhold
We can consider that the simulation has a means of measuring desire/want for each person, and while the scale may be subjective, the system is set that any want/desire over 75% will be sufficient to meet the criteria. However, the “answer” will appear at a random time from the moment the want reaches at least 75% and when the person dies (the simulation has already plotted out how each person dies, so this is a known value in the simulation’s program)
The “answer”, when it appears, comes in the form of an overlay seen by the individual - the word “Simulation” is visible in the top right corner of their vision, in either or both eyes, depending on which eyes are open. The word remains there whenever they are able to otherwise see.
There is no objective evidence for this effect. The only way it can be tested/validated is by individuals meeting the criteria, and then waiting for the effect to occur, which could be any time up to a second before they die. It cannot be detected using any machinery, etc.
In this hypothetical, people have a means of proving they are in a simulation, but only to themselves.
Can you say that they have not found the truth, if they cannot objectively evidence their experience?
My hypothesis makes no claim as to there being a truth to be found. It merely posits the possibility with potential associated consequences, and then provides a means by which a person could account for the possibility without needing to change their existing beliefs on a gamble, as a “just in case”, etc.
It is not saying “there is something to be found”, just “if you have this mindset of wanting to know if there is something to be found, then if there is something to be found, you will find it. If you don’t, then it’s business as usual.”
To clarify, I have not made any claim as to anything specific being the truth in my hypothesis. I have referenced “a truth” but only as a potential, and I haven’t stated what it may or may not be. I have also stated that the outcome may be that no new truth is found, so I am not even claiming that there is a truth, just the potential for one.
That is where my hypothesis is intended to stand apart. It makes no claim. It’s not asking anyone to start believing something. It just suggests a mindset, that - if there is something to be found - will enable a person to find it, if the conditions match as stated.
It makes no statement as to how one should search, other than being genuine and open, and it makes no statement as to what one should do if they find a truth.
I have also made a point in other discussions in this group, not to make any claims as to any theological belief I have. I have not presented anything as “truth” in a theological sense, nor have I even stated what specific belief I have. Simply because I am not seeking to push my beliefs, I am trying to focus on logic and supportable statements.
The end game is as my initial post stated - I want people to consider seeking the truth, to see if there is something or not. For people to just be genuine and open in searching for truth. If they find something, they find something, if they don’t, they don’t.
But I’m just putting it out there, and answering any questions on it. Nothing more. If people want to take it seriously, that’s up to them, I’m just making the hypothesis available.
Aside from answering questions/challenges/etc. I’m going no further with it.