Comments by "MC116" (@angelmendez-rivera351) on "PragerU"
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mackdmara Such an accusation is invalid for the reason that your description of my argument is inaccurate. My argument concerns not the reliability of science and math and whether they are real or not, my argument concerns the axiomatic nature of every set of premises and the impossibility of complete a posteriori justification, which is very different. Reality is itself a construct, because the definition of reality already depends itself on the assumed set of axioms. That cannot be taken lightly. That implies not that by any means, anything can be true if you assume it to be true. The process of choosing which axioms to assume is a very difficult, precise, and sophisticated one, and we base it on practicality. Skeptics care not about practicality and challenge all axiom sets equally. I am not challenging all axiom sets equally, I am merely postulating such axiom sets do exist, but must be assumed a priori according to arbitrary standards. However, I do base my choice of axioms on efficiency and practicality. That is why my argument is not skepticism. My argument postulates that any claim about truth is in itself a truth claim, and that is the only reason there is an infinite regress, this is not a matter of whether science and mathematics are reliable constructs. Mathematics and science simply cannot be concluded from an objective standpoint and must be assumed axiomatically, but from a pragmatic worldview this is entirely valid.
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mackdmara No, you're still misunderstanding.
You claim that, according to my logical worldview, no conclusion can be true, and because I'm claiming such a circumstance to be true, my argument is self-defeating. This isn't true, and I already addressed this a dozen of comments ago. I clarified that nothing is meaningful UNLESS you allow axiomatization. There's nothing wrong with axiomatization: most philosophers accept it. But the one thing some of these philosophers need to accept is that axiomatization is equivalent to subjectivity. You haven't been able to accept subjectivity because you ignore the existence of axiomatization. My proof is axiomatized: it's not objective, but it's still meaningful because I've admitted I had to assume a set of axioms, called logic, and I've admitted everyone else in this thread, except for you and kws is assuming that set of axioms. So that's fine.
No, God doesn't need to be omniscient in order to exist. See, the omniscience of God is a logically derived property, not a definitional one. Jewish theology states that the definition of God is that God exists by logical necessity: virtue of God's own nature. All other properties can be derived from this, but they're not part of the definition and thus unnecessary. The idea that God must be omniscient stems from the intuition that existing supernaturally should logically allow omniscience, but it doesn't imply it by necessity.
Now, if you do wish to assume axiomatically that God must be omniscient, then yes, I would in that case be claiming God can't exist. Why? Because the infinite regress exists by logical necessity, regardless of whether God can logically be omniscient or not.
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mackdmara I never claimed subjectivity is practical outside of philosophical circles, but that by no means implies subjectivity is false. And no, if I'm right, it does not mean I'm not right, it merely means I'm right because of the axioms everyone has chosen, and choosing other axioms is impractical. Again, if you don't understand the argument, it's best to not critique, you made a wise decision of stepping out of a discussion you admitted having little credentials for, and it would do you good to keep things that way, unless you prefer to make a fool of yourself. I already explained why my argument is consistent. Logic renders my argument correct. You can assume a set of axioms different than logic to make my argument false, but realistically speaking no will do that. So, no, it isn't absurd.
Also, I already explained why the statement "existing before time" is self-defeating.
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Maximilian Kircher I think you misunderstood the proof.
Truth is a quality of a proposition. But what does that quality represent is subjective. Why? Because you can have different standards and there isn't anyway to choose any of them objective.
K: corresponds to physical reality - empiricism
M: corresponds to mental reality - anti-empiricism, or Cartesian rationalism
I provided two standards of truth as examples, there are many more though. But the point would still apply.
Let's say that a statement is true if physically observable via evidence or directly. So,
P(0) is True IFF P satisfies K.
But you realize this definition itself needs to be proven true, because, how do we know empirical adequacy implies truth? If we merely decide that as a convention, such is subjective. So we actually do need a justification for our choice, no matter how intuitive that choice is. Otherwise, it just becomes logically inconsistent. So the notion of empirical adequacy implying truth must itself be true in order for the above definition to be correct. Therefore:
[P(0) is True IFF P(0) satisfies K] is True, which by logical necessity implies [P(0) is True IFF P(0) satisfies K] satisfies K... but this is circular reasoning. It is circular reasoning because in order for satisfying K to imply truth, the latter needs to itself meet K AND imply truth as a consequence. And undoing the circularity yields infinite regress, because the proposition given above becomes
[P(1) is True IFF P(1) satisfies K]=P(2)
Where P(1)=[P(0) is True IFF P(0) satisfies K].
So we see that the only way P(0) can be assessed as either true or false (rather than as indeterminate or unknown) if P(1) is already known to be true, but P(1) can only be true if P(2) is true, but P(2) can only be true if P(3) is true.... P(N) can only be true if P(N+1) is true... ad infinitum.
Hence infinite regress. There is nothing anchored in P(0) as you state
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William Brown They aren't false dichotomies though, you haven't proven they, and what is worse, you can't prove they are.
Lack of free will DOES imply lack of moral sense. It is already implicit in the definition of morality itself, so that statement actually is true by definition.
Also, if it is part of your character to act a certain why, then that also by definition implies lack of free will. I think you lack understanding of how free will operates. If God is choosing an act, then there is a justification behind the choice, and because there is a justification, that means it was not by any means influenced by any personal characteristics. That is how choice simply is defined, it isn't even really a debatable idea.
Omniscience means all knowledge. But knowledge implies absolute certainty, lack of certainty implies belief and not knowledge. However, both by the Occam razor and the burden of proof, every claim requires a justification. This is because if a claim is true, that means the claim satisfies all the properties of truth that are determined by the definition of truth itself, but that definition of truth can't be proven, because proving it implies a demonstration of it being true. And demonstrating that the definition of truth is itself a truth requires circular reasoning. One can only undo the circular reasoning by using an infinite chain of justification. Justify the definition with a claim, but that claim itself will require justification, and that justification also needs justification, ad infinitum. Hence an infinite regress.
To give an example:
2+2=4 is true.
Well, why? What makes any true statement true? Well, they meet a definition. That definition is, the conclusion can be implied from the premises. So, 2+2=4 is true iff it follows from the premises AND if following from the premises makes any statement true. But this last part cannot be proven. Proving the definition of truth is impossible.
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William Brown William Brown William Brown William Brown William Brown William Brown William Brown William Brown William Brown William Brown William Brown William Brown William Brown William Brown "You are the one making the claim omniscience requires infinite regress, so explain."
I already did. I'm not sure you're even trying to read my comments or that you understand them then.
"It seems to assume past events have occurred in order for it to be an infinite regression."
No, that isn't what an infinite regression is. Take a course on logic. I already explained it, an infinite chain of justification.
"Morality: principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong behavior."
Not a valid definition, as it is circular and hence a fallacy. You must define morality in terms that aren't itself.
"Free will isn't necessary. If someone cannot carry out an action, it doesn't meant they can't comprehend that it would be."
Actually, it does mean that, yes. Empirically shown. That is why... parenting is a thing, you know. And it is impossible to derive a non-arbitrary correct assertion about an action hasn't been experienced by the actor.
"Free will is the act of choosing, acting and thinking voluntarily."
Exactly. But if your choice is driven by a personal characteristic, it isn't voluntary, by definition. It follows from the definition of both voluntary and of driven.
"Where do you get justification is opposed to personal characteristics?..."
See above.
"So if God makes a choice to take a life or not take a life, it's no longer a choice no?"
I never claimed that. Stop using straw men fallacies, and stop twisting my words. What I did say is that if actions are driven by a personal characteristic or property, they're not a choice, it has nothing to do with the action itself. You need to learn how to read and/or be intellectually honest in a debate.
"You're assuming falsely that you need a justification for your justification."
No, that isn't a false assumption, it's a basic law of logic. It's called the burden of proof. If a claim has no justification, then the claim is arbitrary and as such is dismissed as a non-sequitur fallacy.
"Something doesn't need to satisfy your opinion in order to be true."
Straw man fallacy AND red herring fallacy. I never claimed this. This is intellectual dishonesty, and it shows you have no grounds to support your position. Sad.
"You defeat your entire position if you claim the definition of truth requires circular reasoning."
No, it doesn't. It defeats your argument, because you argue truth is objective. I'm not arguing that. It is only self-defeating for an objectivist position.
"Where is your justification."
Above: the burden of proof.
"Where is the justification for the justification."
The Occam razor. Although, in all technicality, I'm not required to have one, because I'm not assuming logic is objective, so I can just assume the burden of proof to be true and then match on.
"Truth: that which is true in accordance to fact or reality."
...a circular definition. Those are valid linguistically, but not semantically nor epistemologically. A definition that references itself is a circular statement, which is a fallacy. Philosophical definitions don't make self-reference for that reason, but then it follows by the burden of proof that they necessitate a justification.
"Axioms exist, both logically and mathematically."
1. Mathematics is a discipline of logic.
2. Axioms yield objectivity as false, which would destroy the idea of omniscience.
"They are things that don't require justification because they are self evident."
Quite ironically, that isn't the definition of an axiom. I can show this with a very simple example: Euclidean geometry vs non-Euclidean geometry. Both are true because both use axioms, yet both axioms are mutually exclusive. Which means one of them isn't self evident. But that isn't a problem, because:
1. Objectivity is false.
2. That isn't the definition of an axiom.
"I don't need to prove my existence, it's an axiom."
...in your worldview. However, many other world views have non-existence as an axiom.
Two notes:
1. Self-evidence isn't real. If the burden of proof is self-evident, then there is a contradiction. Plus, self-evident assessments are subjective.
3. The idea that something is self evident is not only itself not self evident, but the idea that self-evidence means anything is also not self evident. You're on several layers of self-contradiction here.
To clarify, axioms are a sign of subjectivity. Subjectivity renders omniscience impossible by the simple virtue that omniscience obviously implies objectivity.
"This fails to honestly tackle the contradiction between omniscience and perfection."
I never claimed there was a contradiction between the two. More straw manning, more word twisting, more intellectual dishonesty. You honestly don't understand what contradiction means. Listen mate: a claim is contradictory if it contradicts itself, but two claims are mutually exclusive if they contradict one another. I never claimed they're mutually exclusive. In fact, I literally can quote myself saying "Perfection is impossible BECAUSE omniscience is impossible." I literally wrote that in one of my previous responses. I'm tired of your dishonesty. If you can't debate me honestly, then don't: admit defeat. But you're wasting both of our times here with this word twisting.
...and I already showed why omniscience is impossible. SMH.
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William Brown "To be honest I was typing the response as I was reading. Its obvious that I read your comments and explained my objection as to how they are flawed."
You clearly failed at it, in any case.
"Circular? The statement doesn't even use the word "morality" to describe itself."
No, but it does reference right and wrong, whose definitions indirectly reference morality, eventually, or at least in the case of the definitions relevant to ethics.
"I guess Meriam Webster, Cambridge, and Oxford are just dullards then because they all practically use the same words to describe morality."
They're indeed dullards. Check out the Merriam Webster's definition of the word happiness.
"We both now that is false as you can know whats moral and not without actually committing the act itself or be capable of it. A wheelchair bound person can know its an immoral act to kick someone in the face for no good reason by just being told. They don't even have to see someone kick another person, they can see the action of kicking and derive, "It wouldn't be good to do that too a person".
My argument was concerned with comprehending a moral act, although I somehow deviated from that. Regardless, I will concede to this. However, there still is an impossibility in being moral without free will. Why? Because free will is tied to consciousness. Notice, for example, that organisms whom we have discovered to have a consciousness have the capacity to actually make legitimate choices in various circumstances. The higher the order of consciousness, the higher the order of choice. This is an empirical observation, but the concept of consciousness, if generalized to ontology along with its correspondent aspect of free will, then we can reach similar conclusions, which many if not most philosophers do. Total lack of free will stems from total lack of consciousness, which means absolutely one choice, and this is because if only one choice is possible, then there is a causal relationship between the cause and effect, and there is no choice, and causal relationships are blind. This implies, because they're guaranteed, there is either no cognition of any external circumstances or no concern for them. This is different from your examples, in which one is unable to do on particular action, but still able to do many other.
"All choices are driven by characteristics,"
Only in a deterministic universe.
"...but we still choose which to exhibit and when. If God could choose between showing justice or showing mercy, both which are good things, why does that then not count as a free will choice? Hes not forced to choose one or the other."
Funny that you speak of God as being male. Regardless, this argument is flawed. Both may be good, but God is maximally good, a.k.a benevolent, in theological terms. God won't merely make a good choice, but actually necessarily make the best choice, simply by the nature God is characterized by. Now, if showing mercy and showing justice in terms of a simple quality are both the maximally best actions, then both would need to be executed because this would imply they are both elements of a composite action that would represent the absolute maximal good. This is an argument similar to the reason why only one perfect entity can exist at once. Moreover, the two qualities cannot exist in a situation such that separately they're both maximally good but combined not because this would imply mutual opposition or exclusivity, in which case both could not be maximally good to start with.
"You seem to be taking free will as, "acting outside of your nature" which has never been the definition of free will, yet seems to be what you are implying (note I said implying in case you try to accuse me again of something I didn't do)."
Not at all. God can only necessarily make one action simply by the nature of benevolence, so this actual does mean lack of free will.
" I never said you said that I'm using an example so calm yourself down. If I was setting up a straw man, I would claim what you believe and tearing it down."
Then it wouldn't be a straw man. Tsk.
"I'm asking a question, which obviously wasn't a statement of what you believed. But instead of looking at it honestly you get all angry and throw around insults."
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William Brown I can show that you were straw manning, but it is a waste of time to do so since it is irrelevant. But I will say that the fact that you claim I threw insults at you even though I literally never did does prove my point to begin with. And yes, I did not insult you. Just read my comment again. And yes, you did claim I insulted you. The claim is right in the quotation marks.
"I'm showing an example. The actual definition of free will doesn't lessen if its, "driven by personal characteristics" If you have no choice but to do one action out of a myriad of others, then you don't have free will. Lets go by the actual definition."
1. We're going by the actual definition.
2. You're committing the fallacy of assuming that every true assumption about a particular concept stems from the arbitrary dictionary definitions of the word representing the concepts. Even if you can't see or aren't willing to admit it, your arguments are phrased in such a way.
"I didn't say anything about a claim having NO justification, I'm talking about a justification FOR a justification."
Yes. I know. What you fail to understand is that justifications themselves are claims.
"If we go along that line of reasoning we get an infinite regress. If something is faulty, then it has no justification to begin with."
Or it does have a justification, which is in itself faulty, but those who accept aren't aware of it until later. Which showcases my point about justifications being claims. They are.
"You don't need a burden of proof for your proof and so on, thats all i'm saying."
Except you do. That literally is his both inductive arguments and deductive arguments operate.
"Even if I constantly said, "Where is your justification for that?" The burden of proof ends SOMEWHERE..."
Really? Where is the proof for that? No, I'm serious. So there is a certain point at which I'm no longer required to justify my claims? Then show me where, it'd be very helpful at ending several debates I'm involved in, including this one.
"Unless now you want to argue how your whole premise is not objective."
I do want to argue this, and there is nothing wrong with that.
"Are you not being the least bit introspective and apply the same standard to yourself?"
I am.
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William Brown Truth is objective otherwise the entirety of your arguments could be false."
They could be false, but if you assume the basic axioms of logic, then they're true. And sure, you could reject the basic axioms of logic, but according to you they're self evident so I think you and I would both understand the problem with that. So I'm not concerned.
"You assume both Occam's razor and burden of proof are objective standards to define truth yet argue against objective truth."
No, I'm not assuming they're objective. They're subjective alright. But if we're going to use any axioms to try to build logic and our entire framework of knowledge, then those axioms will've to be the ones of basic logic. For our purposes in particular (not necessarily for any other purposes, certainly not for all purposes), they're the best axioms to use. A.k.a, in relation to our purpose, accepting them as true is the best choice.
"Its entirely nonsensical. Its like using logic to prove logic doesn't exist."
False equivalence. Claiming logic is subjective is not even close to the idea of declaring logic to be false. I'm claiming logic to be subjective, but I still assume it a priori to be true.
"Again, I guess Oxford and Webster don't know what they are talking about when they describe what an axiom is?"
1. They disagree on the definitions in some aspects, which means: even if they do know what they're talking about to some extent, each of them is wrong about something.
2. They're English language dictionaries, not philosophy dictionaries, so for all we know, their definitions could be completely irrelevant.
"Webster: a statement accepted as true as the basis for argument or inference : "
Yes, a statement ACCEPTED as true. Not because something is accepted as true does it mean it is objectively true on an ontological, metaphysical sense. Axioms are different from any other claim in that we assume them to be true a priori, a.k.a they're definitions constructed by us, also known as analytic statements. Any other claim requires justification and must be a posteriori true, these are also known as synthetic claims by epistemologists. So, that definition only helps my argument. Because this is the very thing I was arguing.
"...postulate 1 one of the axioms of the theory of evolution 2: an established rule or principle or a self-evident truth cites the axiom “no one gives what he does not have” "
Self-evident is subjective. The fact that there are no claims on which exactly 100% of the population agrees with goes to support this. Although it isn't much of a support.
" 3: a maxim widely accepted on its intrinsic merit the axioms of wisdom"
Same as for #1. These axioms do have intrinsic merit, and that intrinsic merit relies in that they are natural to us because we construct their truth based on our instincts and what appears obvious due to our mechanisms of survival. That doesn't make them true on an ontological aspect though.
Oxford: "A statement or proposition which is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true."
Yes. This actually helps my arguments. Axioms are precisely statements that we establish to be true. We decide that they're true. But they can't be proven to be true or false. We can choose whether they're true or not. A.k.a: subjectivity holds. That is what subjectivity fundamentally is.
"But all make a distinction between a mathematical axiom and a philosophical axiom."
Mathematical axioms are special forms of philosophical axioms, but they're underlying nature and how they operate within mathematical systems is essentially the same with some differences corresponding to the sub-field itself.
"So I made a mistake when assuming a logical axiom is the same as a mathematical axiom, my bad."
You actually assumed the opposite in a way, or so did your claims imply. But that wouldn't have been a mistake, in any case.
"The axioms i'm referring are indeed self-evident,even the translation from the greek word is, "that which commends itself as evident" "
1. This only means they were self-evident to the Greeks specifically, not universally or ontologically.
2. The etymology of the word is irrelevant. The word logic comes from the Greek work logos which literally translates to speech. Yet this is clearly not what logic today is. The word physics comes from the word physis in Greek, which means nature. But that isn't what the word refers to today, that isn't even the definition you'll find in most dictionaries. This is a fallacy.
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