Terms & Agreements for Debate

Debate Room
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Mathematics rests on some axiomatic assumptions, but it only has actual utility because again and again it has been shown to accurately represent / predict / quantify observable reality. If it did not, then no matter how beautiful and internally consistent the axioms, it would have no utility for real world exploration.

On the other hand, Goedel’s theorem, lacking as it does a means to apply it to the real world to see if it holds up, is just a bare assertion. It is a thing that is possibly true in a possible world somewhere perhaps, but that does not equate to it being a proven actuality.

Perhaps a big difference between Goedel’s theorem and math is that only one of them is making assertions about reality that can be measured against actual reality.

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bsengstock20 wrote…

Well frankly, if I believe my positions to be true, why would I change them?

I would like to point to something that might serve as a bridge between the opposing positions held by bsengstock20 and by us. He believes in the truth of his positions, but when called upon to demonstrate that truth he seems to do so using only modal logic. He also seems to say that the truth involved cannot be demonstrated in any other way, discounting the possibility of using the contingent and provisional qualities of the empirical to do this.

That may be so. But I submit that he could do as the scientists running this forum often do.

Questions put to the scientists here are broken down into three levels; Basic, Intermediate and Advanced. So, the scientists pitch their answers according to the level of the person asking the question. If someone asks a Basic level question they will receive a Basic level answer.

Now, here’s the crucial point that I would like bsengstock20 to consider very seriously.

Sometimes, when answering Basic level questions the scientists must necessarily simplify what they know are complex, counter-intuitive and difficult to understand concepts. They know full well that these simplified answers are not fully accurate descriptions of the concepts, mechanisms or phenomenon in question.

But they make these concessions to other people to promote better understanding. The scientists aren’t required to change their minds about what they know to be the accurate facts. They aren’t required to do anything in terms of changing their beliefs. They can still be themselves and still hold to what they know to be factual and correct.

But, because they are dealing with people who do not understand the issues as they do, they move from their positions of expertise and understanding and attempt to meet these others at their level. Doing this involves no betrayal of their own beliefs and does not compromise their integrity in any way. They remain unchanged themselves but have simply changed the way they communicate with others.

Yes, I realize that the example I have given here deals with science, which exists in the contingent and provisional realm of the empirical. But surely you can do as the scientists have done and retain your beliefs while talking to us on a level that is better suited to our understanding?

So, even if you believe your positions to be true bsengstock20, can you follow the lead of these scientists and change the way you communicate with us - for the sake of promoting better understanding? Will you choose better communication over holding strictly to your positions? Will you do the reasonable thing that reasonable people do when they want to communicate better? That is, to compromise, to negotiate and to adapt?

Thank you,

Walter.

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It hold to me, as no one has offered any objectively verifiable difference.

No, on the contrary.

Now that’s a bad faith argument, since I have offered no objection to the idea that deities are entirely theoretical. Even as theoretical though Gödel’s argument fails.

I used the word subjective as it was apropos, as was unevidenced. Since they are unevidenced and not objectively true.

It is also an unevidenced assumption, about the very thing he arguing for, and this of course amounts to question begging, and this is a widely held criticism of the argument of course.

Define possible, epistemically, objectively, nomologically, then evidence your / Gödel’s claim that any deity is possible. Either way he defines a deity in that way, none of those assumptions are objectively true.

It looks very circular to me, and the assumptions are of course both subjective and unevidenced.

No it doesn’t mean this, assigning those properties to any deity without any supporting evidence is just a subjective claim.

That idea is itself a subjective one, a philosophical term, and not an objective truth.

All beliefs would necessarily involve the “orientation of the will” since our will is a product of our mind.

Gödel using Modal logic did not achieve the second, clearly, only a biased subjective argument, (see faith) would ignore the rational objections to his ontological argument.

:rofl: :rofl:

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Even if we accept that there are higher definitions than provisional expressions, we’ve yet to hear an admission from you that you too inhabit the provisional and contingent realm as we do, live your life in this realm as we do, make your life decisions according to provisional and contingent information and are a provisional and contingent being, just as we are. To carry on focusing solely on the higher definitions of the modal to the exclusion of all else is to deny what really you are.

Let us first hear an honest admission of what you are from you.

Doing that would go some way to alleviating the stalemate that currently exists. Assuming that you actually want to communicate with us and eventually persuade us?

Thank you,

Walter.

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The user known as bsengstock20 has been placed in the corner until January 1. They decided to once again break the rules placed on them. It was decided that they should get one more chance (as a Solstice gift :woman_mage:t4:) before permanent banishment, ergo the temporary timeout.

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I raised this very point to bsengstock20, mordant.

Using Hawking and Penrose’s mathematically beautiful and internally consistent singularity theorem of 1970. In 1998 it was found to have no real world explanation of the origin of the universe and was thus discarded by the very scientists who wrote.

But this wasn’t good enough for bsengstock20.

He objected that they didn’t understand the epistemological underpinnings of their science properly, just as most scientists fail to do. Yet he does?

He also objected on the grounds that because their theorem only dealt with the provisional and contingent, it couldn’t be compared to anything revealed by modal logic.

There really is no stopping the man in his single-minded pursuit of the modal!

:roll_eyes:

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as bseng uses it it is “modal magic”.

lost patience some posts ago.

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Thinking further on what bsengstock20 has claimed, I wonder about this.

Let’s say that we grant that Gödel was correct and his modal logic does indeed prove the existence of a god-like object. What then? I’m thinking that we would be in the same position as Dionysius and Damaris, BEFORE the apostle Paul identified the UNKNOWN GOD to them as being Jesus. Which he didn’t do BEFORE they believed his words. His identifying this god as Jesus to them is not recorded in the Bible.

Acts 17 : 22 & 23
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

Acts 17 : 34
Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

Assuming that modal logic can prove the existence of a god-like object but cannot identify WHO or WHAT this object is, I can only see two options. I assume that modal logic can’t do the identifying because if it could then Godel would have done so - and he didn’t. Also, if modal logic could identify the god-like object, then surely bsengstock20 would have announced that to us by now.

Anyway, to the options…

First, the identity of the god-like object is discovered and determined by empirical evidence.

Second, in the absence of such empirical evidence the only remaining option is to do as Dionysius and Damaris did and to believe it’s identity by faith.

I therefore conclude that if bsengstock20 could persuade us that modal logic proves the existence of a god-like object he would then be obliged to fulfil either of the two options. He would have to identify this god with empirical evidence for us or he would have to ask us to believe in the identity of this god by faith and the absence of evidence.

If he can present such evidence I would be fascinated to see it. But I will not be believing what he says about the identity of this god-like object by faith. I’ve done something similar before and have since rejected my leap of faith as irrational and unreasonable.

Thank you,

Walter.

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I’m just going to say it: this is the hallmark of the crackpot. He doesn’t present as a typical crackpot, eg., like the guy (using modal logic!) that said the crucifixion story positions Christ’s arms on the cross in a way that matches modern analog clock faces or some such. He avoids going way out on limbs like that but ultimately he still has an understanding unique to himself.

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Quality made me laugh. Each time the criticisms are offered they are dismissed with subjective philosophical terms / ideas, as if this changes the claims from unevidenced subjective assumption somehow.

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More of a strident fanatic perhaps? Though of course the two are not mutually exclusive, so as you were then.

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It’s a little like the guy who read about how IRS laws are unenforceable so he just stops paying taxes. You are privy to insight others lack. Eventually you will find out otherwise. Or not.

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its a clown show, without the comedy

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Whenever I encounter anyone this incapable of doubt, the stridency does make me smile. To quote Mark Twain:

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

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Just my luck. After taking a few days off for Yule and winter solstice, I discover that someone pushed the pause :pause_button: button on our very verbose friend here. Anyway, I doubt I’ll be able to catch up on all of it, but here are a few bits:

That’s a rather trivial truth. Of course there are assertions which cannot be rationally denied, like

  • there is extraterrestrial life
  • the universe is infinitely big
  • there is no god or gods

The reason they are assertions is because they cannot be proven[1] using scientific means. And analogically, within logic (and by extension mathematics), I’m sure you are aware that within a big enough axiomatic system, there are true statements that cannot be proven[2]. So there you have it. There are true assertions that cannot be proven. So what?

But your deepity above draws the attention away from the real point, which was

It all boils down to the input to the logics, i.e. the axioms. They are of a kind that have not been linked to an objective reality.

There is also this thing about “possible worlds” which seems dubious. If there are other worlds, they wouldn’t be interacting with our world (otherwise, they would be part of this world and hence not another world). Thus, there is nothing we can know about them. Heck, they might not even operate on logic as we know it, and be contradictory as we see it. So in view of the above, here’s an assertion for you: There exist other worlds that do not operate on our kind of logic. If true, Gödel’s ontological “proof” (GOP) would not apply there. But since you cannot check out this other world, you cannot rationally deny it. So let us assume that GOP is true here, and that it cannot apply in the other world, as the rules are different there. But GOP states that it would be true in all possible worlds. I have no idea whether this is profound or just a big pile of shite, because I just pulled it out from my arse. But that’s exactly the kind of problems you get when you speculate about “possible worlds” that you cannot interact with in any way. It remains pure speculation.

And then there is the definition “An object x is God-like if, and only if, x has all positive properties.” What the hell is even a “positive property”? It has not been defined, but as presented, it seems awfully subjective (as others here have repeatedly pointed out). Who decides whether a property is positive or not positive? Is it voted upon, and can I or anyone else veto it? And how many “positive properties” (which really are subjective) are there? If there are a finite number N of identified positive properties, how can you prove that there is not N+1? Or infinitely many? If infinitely many, are they countable or uncountable? Note that GOP says “if and only if, x has all positive properties”. So there is a condition that this “God” has ALL positive properties. Is it even possible, especially if there are infinitely many such properties? What if two “positive properties” are contradictory or that possessing two particular “positive properties” lead to a contradiction? If this “God-like x” also possess a negative property (whatever that might be), will it still be considered god-like? What if it possesses more negative properties than positive properties — would it be “anti-god-like”? And so on.

So the definition does not really make any sense. To make it make sense, you have to define what a positive property is (and make sure that they are not subjective), and you have to show that no positive properties are contradictory or that possessing them is not contradictory.

It’s late, and I have to get up in the morning, so I’ll leave it at that for now. I might comment more later, if I feel I can be arsed.

Edit: Oh, I forgot — if you feed your logic shit assumptions or definitions that fail to reflect reality, you get shit results. Or in short: Shit in, shit out. Data is king.

Edit 2: Some cleanup because there were just too many typos. And a few small additions.

  1. or so it currently seems ↩︎

  2. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem ↩︎

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Like for instance the assertion that Gödel’s argument uses unverifiable assumptions in his opening premises, about the very thing he is arguing for, which amounts to question begging, which is why his argument is widely rejected.

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Then there’s also question of whether a positive moral property is absolute or relative. Relative, as in a social construct, which is subject to change as cultures and societies evolve and change.

As we know, in the Bible there are many examples of things which were then considered ‘positive’ in a moral sense but which we now consider to be immoral and abhorrent and wicked. The God-sanctioned ownership of people as property (slaves), the stoning of children to death for disrespecting their parents and the treatment of women going through their menstrual cycle as being somehow unclean, to name but three. There are more.

Other civilizations and religions have their own understandings of what is morally positive too. In India it was once expected of a widow to join her dead husband on his funeral pyre and burn herself to death. This practice of Sati was thought to be a fine and noble thing and the widow would be highly respected in her community for doing this. The practice of Clitoridectomy was widespread in some parts of Africa and the Middle East and some hardliners still assert that it’s a morally positive thing to do to a young woman. We call it what it really is, female genital mutilation. And who is to say that we consider to be morally good and positive today will not seem hopelessly barbaric and evil to future generations?

Which raises the question - if there are no positive moral absolutes to be found anywhere in human experience, what does modal logic even mean when it asserts that a god-like object would possess all positive moral properties?

Our understanding of a what a positive moral absolute is cannot be absolute in anything other than a mathematical or logical sense. These disciplines deal in absolutes but we do not live in the realm of pure math and we do not live in the realm of pure logic.

I therefore submit that what modal logic tells us about this god-like object is essentially meaningless in human terms.

Unless one asserts that human reality is not real and that modal reality is.

:roll_eyes:

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Well all one need do is demonstrate one objectively true moral absolute, then that question is settled, but I have not seen this done, ultimately all moral claims rest on a subjective belief, this is of course not say they are not useful, or beneficial.

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I agree Sheldon.

But I further submit that bsengstock20 cannot demonstrate anything absolutely outside of modal logic and mathematics. Let alone demonstrating one objectively true moral absolute. Because absolutes do not exist outside of those ENTIRELY ABSTRACT realms.

The onus is on him to demonstrate that the abstract is real. The Google Oxford language definition of the word is…

Existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence.

So it seems that he would have to demonstrate that thoughts and ideas are more real than the physical and concrete existence we all find ourselves in.

Yes, our thoughts and ideas influence our reality, but in the doing so they cease to be absolutes.

Thank you,

Walter.

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I doubt he sees the oxymoron, or if he does, he’s arbitrarily redefining those words, as he has done with others.

I’d settle for equally, but it’s xmas, and I’m a soft touch.

Interesting, it’s worth noting that this is true only in an indirect sense, not that I imagined you meant it any other way, I am just anticipating yet more straw men from those peddling the imaginary, as if its objectively real.