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Re: Religion And Authority by thehomer: 10:19pm On Jul 16, 2012 |
Mr_Anony: You'll need to show me how you think I misunderstood his premise because it seems to accept pretty much anything as being an authority which doesn't make sense based on the definition of the word in English. I clearly demonstrated the problems with his approach. |
Re: Religion And Authority by MrAnony1(m): 10:20pm On Jul 16, 2012 |
@Pastor AIO With such differing "authorities", how can one ever know truth? About truth, can there be multiple truths? This is because different people defer to different "highest authorities" Please answer my questions, I've been waiting |
Re: Religion And Authority by PastorAIO: 10:46pm On Jul 16, 2012 |
Mr_Anony: @Pastor AIO I would say that the Truth cannot be grasped with certainty using the tools and methods of a) establishing axioms and then b) following the inferences from these axioms via a system of logic. If we arrive at the truth by these means then there is a certain measure of fortuity what would be required. The system will always be open to doubt. This fact has in fact been established MATHEMATICALLY through the work of philosopher/mathematician Bertrand Russell and others like Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein wrote what in my opinion is the most deliciously titled book in the whole of Philosophy. It was called Tractacus Logico Philosophorum. And furthermore the final line of that book is also in my opinion the most delicious way to end any book. 7 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. Actually it starts off quite deliciously too: 1 The world is all that is the case. |
Re: Religion And Authority by PastorAIO: 10:51pm On Jul 16, 2012 |
Re: Religion And Authority by InesQor(m): 10:52pm On Jul 16, 2012 |
*Tracta[b]t[/b]us Sounds interesting. Will check it out sometime. |
Re: Religion And Authority by truthislight: 11:01pm On Jul 16, 2012 |
thehomer: @dehomer i brought this up as a reminder to you. What answer did u expect from mr Anony hear if not the obviouse that he should accept that he does not need an external authority to know if he is having an headaech or not? From this it is obviouse from the start that you were of the opinion that the individual can be an authority to himself without resorting to an external source for confirmation. Meaning that he is equip to tell himself what to decide. Unless u have change ur stance like am noticing. Ok, lets use two terms, one is the word TRUTH and the other is the word FACT. From this two word it is obvious that an individual perception does not qualify to be an authrity since it is prone to lots of errors. Meanwhile FACT remain as the actual occurrance as use in science instead of truth. And it remain the actual ocurrance since it is not from one's imagination. Peace |
Re: Religion And Authority by MrAnony1(m): 11:26pm On Jul 16, 2012 |
Pastor AIO:I'm not sure I quite get this but if I am right in my reading, I think you are saying that we cannot possibly have truth with any certainty. If this is indeed what you are saying, wouldn't this imply that truth does not and cannot exist? |
Re: Religion And Authority by MrAnony1(m): 11:29pm On Jul 16, 2012 |
thehomer:You know what, i don't think I need to show you anything, If you fail to understand what he's getting at then that's just too bad. The rest of us seem to understand his premise quite well enough. |
Re: Religion And Authority by PastorAIO: 11:44pm On Jul 16, 2012 |
Mr_Anony: Oh, the Truth Can and Does exist, BUT we cannot grasp it with Thought (as based on axioms and inferences) and neither can we articulate it in the terms of Thought, or Knowledge. Even when our thoughts and beliefs approximate the Truth it is due to some measure of fortuity. Consider Gettier's Problem. A farmer wants to check if his black Cow is in the field. He sees a black cloth hanging on a tree and presumes (due to his poor eyesight) that it is the Cow. He concludes that the Cow is indeed in the field. It so happens that the Cow is indeed in the field. However can the Farmer really be said to know it? He arrived at the truth via a faulty process. So a very important distinction must be drawn between Belief and TRUE KNOWLEDGE. Just because a belief may be true does that really mean that the believer KNOWS the fact. He believes it and the truth of his belief is quite fortuitous. Now how does one arrive at said TRUE KNOWLEDGE? The axioms will have to be valid/true and the process of inference will have to be Valid/true. How can we be sure this is the case? We cannot hence we can only believe things to be True but we cannot Know them to be true. Not with our carnal reasoning in any case. (making room for the possibility that there my be another way). |
Re: Religion And Authority by PastorAIO: 11:46pm On Jul 16, 2012 |
InesQor: *Tracta[b]t[/b]us Thank you jare. It's actually Trata[b]t[/b]us Logico Philosophi[b]cus[/b]. Very sweet book. Also look for a book called Logicomix. It tracks the history of 20th century Logic and philosophy of Mathematics. |
Re: Religion And Authority by PastorAIO: 11:49pm On Jul 16, 2012 |
thehomer: Pastor AIO: |
Re: Religion And Authority by thehomer: 11:50pm On Jul 16, 2012 |
Mr_Anony: Why do people find it so difficult to back up their claims? I've just demonstrated to you the problems with the concept of authority he wanted to use. If you did understand it, you would be able to show me exactly where I went wrong. |
Re: Religion And Authority by thehomer: 12:02am On Jul 17, 2012 |
@ Pastor AIO I'm sorry but your post doesn't really help me because it seemed so all over the place. It is quite distinct from the clear thoughts you usually express. Pastor AIO: Saying an authority is something that cannot be questioned doesn't really help because there are so many things that cannot be questioned which wouldn't qualify especially because they don't make pronouncements. Is there any authority that can say green (the colour) is Good and it will be accepted? What if the pronouncements of this authority though axiomatic are contradictory? Will its will still be done? |
Re: Religion And Authority by thehomer: 12:03am On Jul 17, 2012 |
Anyway, it looks like my contribution to this conversation is already doomed due to the non-standard way the word authority is being used. Which is one of the earliest things I pointed out in the thread. |
Re: Religion And Authority by PastorAIO: 12:04am On Jul 17, 2012 |
thehomer: From what I seem to understand you saying, you insist that an Authority must be a Person, a personality, or a Book. But it cannot be any other source of information. Why? Why can Authoritativeness not be applied to every source of information? |
Re: Religion And Authority by PastorAIO: 12:13am On Jul 17, 2012 |
thehomer: @ Pastor AIO Such as? A few examples would be nice here. thehomer: @ Pastor AIO Say for instance a style guru says that Green is the best colour for this fashion season, many who accept her authority as a fashion guru will insist that Green is indeed the best colour to go to the party in. The green part is fruitless speculation. How does that affect the argument in anyway? |
Re: Religion And Authority by MrAnony1(m): 12:34am On Jul 17, 2012 |
thehomer:Dude, you have failed to demonstrate anything. As far as I can see, you are only arguing against the use of a particular word "authority" and not the idea he is trying to convey. This i feel is unnecessary and doesn't help the debate in any way. It only drags it round in circles. @Pastor AIO, I asked this on post 70 and I'll ask again. ........I think you are saying that we cannot possibly have truth with any certainty. Do I really have to always ask you the same question twice before you attempt to answer? or perhaps you are really more interested in playing semantics with thehomer? |
Re: Religion And Authority by PastorAIO: 12:51am On Jul 17, 2012 |
Mr_Anony: I thought that I'd already answered it here: Pastor AIO: |
Re: Religion And Authority by truthislight: 1:06am On Jul 17, 2012 |
@Anony yes truth does exist when TRUTH is equel to the FACT(truth = the fact). However, this is uncommonon with man since they dont have the capacity to always get it right from all angle. But were there is an entity with capacity to express truth as facts then and only then truth can stand out for what it is = FACT = AN AUTHORITY. |
Re: Religion And Authority by MrAnony1(m): 1:09am On Jul 17, 2012 |
Pastor AIO:Ok, are you then saying that we cannot possibly know the truth with any certainty except by supernatural means? If this is the case, How does one go about showing another person the truth that he /she has learnt supernaturally and get the person yo actually understand this truth? |
Re: Religion And Authority by PastorAIO: 1:31am On Jul 17, 2012 |
Mr_Anony: I am saying that if we can grasp Truth with certainty it will NOT be by means of our 'logical' faculties. Since Truth if grasped by some other faculty cannot be articulated in language (which, it seems, uses the same terms as knowledge, or rather belief) then it cannot be spoken or argued or demonstrated to another person. As Wittgenstein would say: 7 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. However, someone can guide another in such a way that the other will come upon the ineffable Truth for himself. eg. I might not be able to tell you what is going on in Room 303, but I can tell you to walk down the corridor, take a left, then a right and enter into Room 303. When you come back from Room 303 you will know what I'm not talking about. Check out Plato's Allegory of the Cave. ( i know, i know, it seems like I bleat on about this incessantly). |
Re: Religion And Authority by MrAnony1(m): 6:57am On Jul 17, 2012 |
Pastor AIO: I agree |
Re: Religion And Authority by thehomer: 7:17am On Jul 17, 2012 |
Pastor AIO: Because some of those other sources of information are inherently different. |
Re: Religion And Authority by thehomer: 7:23am On Jul 17, 2012 |
Pastor AIO: Like numbers, mathematical processes etc. They're very different from someone simply telling you something. Pastor AIO: (Emphasis mine) Is it possible for you not to accept the laws of thought? Pastor AIO: If an authority is self contradictory, how can its will be done? |
Re: Religion And Authority by thehomer: 7:25am On Jul 17, 2012 |
Mr_Anony: I'm not arguing against the use of the word authority. I'm arguing against the use of that word in a certain way because it will easily lead to confusion. |
Re: Religion And Authority by MrAnony1(m): 8:10am On Jul 17, 2012 |
thehomer:Apparently, I am not confused by it. |
Re: Religion And Authority by PastorAIO: 9:14am On Jul 17, 2012 |
thehomer: How about if, rather than use the word Authoritativeness, I used the word Reliability. Various people therefore Rely on different sources of information seemingly arbitrarily. Some rely more on the information provided by their senses to determine 'truth'. Others rely on Consensus to determine whether something is 'true'. Others rely on what their teachers in school tell them. Others rely on their pastors. Would you really say that some sources (eg. the Senses, as you have been claiming) are too inherently different from other sources to be Relied on? |
Re: Religion And Authority by PastorAIO: 9:34am On Jul 17, 2012 |
thehomer: @ Pastor AIO
I said: Such as? A few examples would be nice here. thehomer: This is quite wonderful cos I've already mentioned Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein. I should just stick with Russell though cos he is the one that made famous the questionability of Numbers and mathematics, and furthermore the Contradiction (or paradox) at the heart of numbers. He made the problem famous and that is why it is called Russell's paradox but in fact it had been noticed by mathematicians and Logicians way way way before him. Some people might say that I was stretching the argument if I say that it was recognised by philosophers even thousands of years before the 20th century, but I firmly believe that even though they might have not tackled the issue head on they certainly alluded to it in many texts. So what is Russell's paradox? Russell had been researching into the foundations of Mathematics and Logical processes (in fact that was the main bulk of his life's work) when he came upon it. He was writing The Principles of Mathematics at the time. Russell’s discovery came while he was working on his Principles of Mathematics. Although Russell discovered the paradox independently, there is some evidence that other mathematicians and set-theorists, including Ernst Zermelo and David Hilbert, had already been aware of the first version of the contradiction prior to Russell’s discovery. Russell, however, was the first to discuss the contradiction at length in his published works, the first to attempt to formulate solutions and the first to appreciate fully its importance. An entire chapter of the Principles was dedicated to discussing the contradiction, and an appendix was dedicated to the theory of types that Russell suggested as a solution.http://www.iep.utm.edu/par-russ/ |
Re: Religion And Authority by thehomer: 9:35am On Jul 17, 2012 |
Mr_Anony: I think you are. Let me see if I can make this more explicit by using my previous example of pain. thehomer: My point is that your senses are personal to you in a way that people aren't. Thus, you can be having a pain without an external reference e.g phantom limb. This doesn't mean that the pain isn't there just that the reference isn't there. Here's another example from Pastor AIO Pastor AIO: Here, you're perceiving a white horse. While your perception doesn't match the reference of the pig, you're still perceiving what you're perceiving due to how direct it is to you. |
Re: Religion And Authority by thehomer: 9:41am On Jul 17, 2012 |
Pastor AIO: Reliability would be a better word to use though as I've said, the senses are inherently different but one can decide on whether or how much to rely upon them. Reliability takes into consideration more than just the senses or other people. It also considers mental processes, logical processes, memory among other things so one is able to apportion how reliable they consider the various sources of information to be. |
Re: Religion And Authority by PastorAIO: 9:43am On Jul 17, 2012 |
thehomer: If the likes of Russell and Frege are too mathematical for you you might like to check out instead the works of Hume and Locke. Hume laid out the Problem of Induction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction I love that quote: "induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy" |
Re: Religion And Authority by thehomer: 9:58am On Jul 17, 2012 |
Pastor AIO: While all that is interesting, I really don't see how it affects what I'm saying because what I'm saying is that I don't consider numbers as being authorities. |
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