Refutations to criticisms of religion

Brady (and any 3rd party viewers reading this),

As noted above (in light of your inconsiderations), I have now ceased engaging you on this subject. Therefore, I will not talk about whether or not I have already (in this very thread) successfully disproved your statements about perceptions, and whether they are something that is indeed justifiable, or ultimately unjustifiable.

In place of direct engagement, however (with which I've considered you to be too unreasonable of a person to maintain), I can provide 3rd party readers -- who as yet find themselves still interested, yet too uninformed to make a confident personal decision on this matter -- with links to arguments that have already and also engaged this "perception" question of Brady's ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_realism
[in particular, Thomas Reid's Reductio ad Absurdum argument contra Hume]

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~noe/directperception.pdf
[see reference to JJ Gibson's elucidation of what it is that perception actually is]

http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Mind/MindHuds.htm
[see about the inconceivability -- i.e., the outright absurdity -- of indirect (or, non-veridical) perception]

http://www.tcnj.edu/~lemorvan/DR_web.pdf
[see about how the 8 potential arguments against Direct Realism (direct perception) are refuted]

http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/~vallabha/research/GKVallabha_BVallabha_direct_realism.pdf
[see about how peculiarly it's possible that humans are able to communicate with other humans]

http://acad88.sahs.uth.tmc.edu/courses/hi6301/affordance.html
[see further elucidation of Gibson's elucidation of what it is that perception actually is]

http://www2.tech.purdue.edu/cgt/courses/cgt112/lectures/gibson_affordance_theory.htm
[see the simplest depiction of Gibson's elucidation of what it is that perception actually is]

http://www.kovan.ceng.metu.edu.tr/~emre/literature/Literature_On_Affordances.html
[see perhaps the most comprehensive elucidation of Gibson's elucidation of what it is that perception actually is]

http://www.alamut.com/notebooks/a/affordances.html
[see quotes regarding Gibson's elucidation of what it is that perception actually is]

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/mjs/ftp/thesis-05/edirisinghe.pdf
[see how it is that we understand perception so much so, that we have been able to "re-create" it in non-living automatons (robots)]

To interested onlookers: I hope you find the above, informative links useful, if not entertaining. To Brady: Good day, sir.

Ed

Post 81

Saturday, March 17, 2007 - 10:36pm

I will in turn offer a link that shows, given Ed's basic propositions, knowledge is not possible:

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~gbl111/atheism1.htm

This is the extended version of the argument that Ed has been unable to answer. If knowledge is not possible, then justifying sense perceptions will not be possible as well.

Note, that I only need one link, one paper and one argument to make my case.

G. Brady Lenardos

(Edited by G. Brady Lenardos on 3/17, 10:40pm)

Post 82

Sunday, March 18, 2007 - 7:28pm

Readers,

One reason that makes G. Brady Lenardos an intellectually-dishonest party to this debate has been his insistence in requesting a justification from me for direct perception (a.k.a., Direct Realism). The reason that this makes him intellectually-dishonest is that he is simultaneously asking me to believe in his existence (and to believe that the typed words on my computer screen are actually the typed words on my computer screen), while having to find justification of my perception that he (and the typed words) exist.

It's like a murderer about to murder you who claims that you have no proof that he's about to murder you (so you shouldn't, therefore, resist him). That's an intellectually-dishonest mode of operation -- an intellectually-dishonest way to engage in a debate with someone.

Ed

Post 83

Monday, March 19, 2007 - 11:34am

Hello Dear Readers,

One thing that often happens in discussions like the one in this thread is that one person will run out of intellectual responses and, as a result, will resort to personal attacks. Oh look, that is what Ed has done in his above post. He admits he is not able to answer the question he insisted he could answer; and this, somehow, makes me "intellectually dishonest."

Ed explains it:

The reason that this makes him intellectually-dishonest is that he is simultaneously asking me to believe in his existence, while having to find justification of my perception that he exist.

Well, I never said that other people (he or myself ) didn't exist. I never said that our perceptions weren't accurate. All I pointed out was that Ed's (and Bill's) basic propositions did not allow for the justification of sense perceptions or any knowledge at all, for that matter. For those who would like to review this, see posts 22, 23, 24, 25 and 28. The rest of the thread has been Ed's unsuccessful attempt to show that his basic propositions can offer a justification for perceptions; something he now admits he can not do. So, because he can not make his case, he has determined that I am intellectually dishonest.

There is another position that Ed could have taken rather than the above personal attack he did. That other position recognizes the philosophical bankruptcy of the Ed's basic propositions and rejects those basic propositions. This other position would then allow Ed to move on to other basic propositions (i.e. cosmologies) that actually allow for and provide a justification for the accuracy of perceptions. But, Ed choose not to do that, he would rather take the road of personal attack.

For those who would like to see the full extent to the philosophical absurdity of Ed's basic propositions, read my paper, "Atheism�s Blatant Contradiction," at:

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~gbl111/atheism1.htm

G. Brady Lenardos

Post 84

Monday, March 19, 2007 - 8:37pm

I wrote, "Question: Is the proposition, "THERE IS NO WAY TO JUSTIFY ANY OF YOUR PERCEPTIONS" analytic or synthetic?" GBL replied,

Why analytic, of course.

Analytic? But didn't you have to refer to experience in order to make that claim? After all, perception is a form of experience, is it not? And doesn't that suggest that the proposition is synthetic? Of course, Objectivism rejects the analytic-synthetic distinction, so I'm not holding out for either answer to the exclusion of the other. But I don't see how you, who believe in the distinction, can claim that the above proposition is analytic rather than synthetic.

It is simple to show, as I have in past posts, that your basic propositions do not have the elements that allow you to get to knowledge of any kind, including the justification of our perceptions.

According to Objectivism, perception is the foundation of knowledge, since all information is gained through the senses. Since perception is self-evident, it requires no justification. A percept cannot be mistaken; what can be mistaken is only the interpretation of sensory evidence. Percepts are the given; they are the form in which one is directly aware of the external world; as such they are necessarily valid. When a color-blind man perceives a red car as gray, his perception is no less valid than when you or I perceive it as red. Both perceptions are accurate; they are simply different ways of perceiving the same thing -- just as thunder and lightening are two different ways of perceiving the same electrical discharge, or the Morning Star and the Evening Star, two different appearances of the same planet.

I asked, "How about the proposition that 'It's always possible there was an error in the gathering of evidence.' Is that proposition analytic or synthetic? Or the proposition, 'Synthetic statements are probable but not certain.' Is that proposition analytic or synthetic? Inquiring minds want to know. ;-)"

I think we are in complete agreement that there is a huge problem here. But that problem stems from your (and Ed's) inability to answer the above question.

But I was asking the question of you. If you can't answer it, then that says something about your philosophy, not ours.

- Bill

Post 85

Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - 8:34am

It's kind of shady how, when you ask Brady a question, he responds by telling you how you're in some kind of error in speaking or thinking (rather than answering the asked question). This is but another instance of his intellectual-dishonesty.

Ed

Post 86

Wednesday, March 21, 2007 - 11:40am

Bill wrote:

I wrote, "Question: Is the proposition, "THERE IS NO WAY TO JUSTIFY ANY OF YOUR PERCEPTIONS" analytic or synthetic?" GBL replied,
Why analytic, of course.
Analytic? But didn't you have to refer to experience in order to make that claim? After all, perception is a form of experience, is it not? And doesn't that suggest that the proposition is synthetic? Of course, Objectivism rejects the analytic-synthetic distinction, so I'm not holding out for either answer to the exclusion of the other. But I don't see how you, who believe in the distinction, can claim that the above proposition is analytic rather than synthetic.

It's analytic because the conclusion must flow from the premises alone as in any deductive argument. This is why you can not justify your perceptions from your basic propositions. Those propositions do not have the elements that allow you to conclude that that your perceptions are accurate.

According to Objectivism, perception is the foundation of knowledge, since all information is gained through the senses. Since perception is self-evident, it requires no justification.

Isn't this an admission that I am right? You admit here that your perceptions are not justified by your basic propositions, which was my claim. Please don't forget that the phrase "justify your perception," is shorthand for, "show how you know that your perceptions accurately correspond to an external world." The perception itself is not really the problem here, but your ability to know that it accurately corresponds to an external world is. I think you will agree that in Objectivism, perception is NOT the foundation of knowledge, but perception that accurately correspond to an external world is the foundation of knowledge. It seems that this is merely assumed by you to be the case; which was my claim back in the beginning.

Percepts are the given; they are the form in which one is directly aware of the external world; as such they are necessarily valid.

"Necessarily valid" is a deductive term referring to the form of an argument, you have given no such argument. Perhaps you were referring to your conclusion? The term then would be "necessarily sound." But a necessarily sound conclusion must come from a valid argument with true premises, as I pointed out, you have given no such deductive argument. That aside, if I understand the above correctly you are saying that perceptions accurately correspond to an external world because, you say, they are a given. Why do you say perceptions a given? Because they accurately correspond to an external world. Bill, I think you will agree that the circle can't get any more vicious than that.

I think we are in complete agreement that there is a huge problem here. But that problem stems from your (and Ed's) inability to answer the above question.
But I was asking the question of you. If you can't answer it, then that says something about your philosophy, not ours.

Please Bill, Tu Quoque. I will be happy to tell you all about my philosophy after we are done with the current problem.

And I think we are done here. If you reread my original post I said that you couldn't justify your perceptions accurately correspond to an external world given your basic propositions. In your last post you admit that you can't. I also said that you were begging the question, something you tried to do once again above.

If we are in agreement on this, I will be happy to move on to my philosophy.

Regards,

G. Brady Lenardos

Post 87

Wednesday, March 21, 2007 - 8:18pm

There's an interesting epistemological science fiction novel by Varley, titled "Steel Beach."

In the novel, there is an ongoing progression of upgrades that people are moving through as technology improves, such as implants in the hand that allow typing without a keyboard, and, just introduced at the time of the novel, a full chip implant that allows one to directly communicate with and experience data from the computer that provides the life support and general communications for this lost colony on the moon, the Earth having been taken over by technologically advanced aliens who are so far beyond human that they can't even be bothered to eliminate the moon colony, which has existed as humanities last refuge for several decades at the point of the novel's events.

At some point, the main protagonist gets a nasty blow to the head, as best I recall, in a bar room brawl, and wakes up suddenly in the bar room still, to his amazement, as, to the best of his recollection, he was somehow transported from the bar to a desert island, where he spent several years building his house, learning how to fish and hunt, etc. The memories are utterly convincing. Then the computer informs him that it was just trying to make a point. It asks him to try to remember in detail how he constructed his house. He finds that he cannot. The computer explains that it only had a couple of minutes to plant the false memories, so it concentrated on just a few vivid scenes and let his own mind fill in the blanks...

The point is that the computer "knows" that it is supposed to work for the general welfare of humanity, but now it finds that it has this open-ended power to intervene in someone's most personal possession, their mind and its memories. What is it supposed to do now? Should it try to somehow forget that it can do this? What should it do as people realize that it can provide an effective paradise for them, including erasing all the inconvenient memories of their supposed real life, while planting new ones that turn them into heros or Gods in their own minds.

In real life, there is Robert Pirsig's '70's best seller, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," which details how a man (Pirsig, himself, in fact) who had a psychotic break and then had a whole set of artificial memories created for him by the nice therapists, using extensive shock therapy to make it stick, starts finding clues that he was once someone completely different and then goes on an odessey to rediscover who he had been.

One might be totally convinced of the validity of an argument, only to discover a mistake later. So, how do we then deconstruct the meaning of "totally convinced?" In reality, the bottom line is that if an argument is "convincing" enough, we will act as if we know with absolute certainty that it reflects an accurate view of reality. Perhaps we are in an epistemology machine and it was just this past second rebooted, and our apparent state of awareness including the memories of our past life is simply an artifact of some programmer's or games players imagination.

Certainty is what we are willing to commit to. One can imagine all kinds of harrowing situations that have happened to people millions of times in real life - such as being faced with overwhelming odds on a battlefield. Yet even if one's chances are one in a million, one acts on that chance. The assumption that one is about to die leaves no space for action. The assumption that one can do something does. We assume that we are dealing with a real world, not a dream, hallucination or epistemology machine, because the other options leave us nothing to do.

Pascal's wager depends explicitly upon this view of epistemology. The odds might be tiny that there really is a God who will reward the believers, but the payoff is effectively infinite. Any positive number multiplied by infinity is infinite. And then there is the infinite downside if you make the wrong choice and there is a God who condemns you to eternal damnation. The costs of believing, on the other hand, are finite, so if you believe and are wrong, and the atheists are right all along, so what?

(Of course the problem with Pascal's wager is that there is no particularly convincing argument that any particular version of God is the correct one, and one can easilly postulate an equally large infinity of possible Gods, thus cancelling out the advantage to belief, but that's not the point.)

The point is that belief is a function of a physical mind/brain. A correct epistemology has to start with decision theory. One weighs outcomes against probabilities. I don't claim to have a complete philosophy on this issue, BTW. Just thought I ought to make more trouble before the day runs out... ;)

Post 88

Wednesday, March 21, 2007 - 9:12pm

Hi Phil,

Thanks for your input.

Let me just point out, once again, that I am not a skeptic. I do not deny the accuracy of sense perceptions in conveying info about the real world. I am only pointing out that the basic propositions of naturalism cannot get us to knowledge. In this thread both Ed and Bill insert the justification of perceptions Ad Hoc, and then appeal to sense perceptions as a justification of sense perceptions. In other areas, Objectivists would not accept such a assumption or the subsequent fallacy that follows that assumption. In the section of this web site titled "Objectivism 101," there is a article on Reason vs. Faith. The second paragraph begins as follows: "Objectivists have a very clear and specific concept of faith. Faith is accepting an idea as true without reason, or against reason." This is not my definition of faith, but as Objectivists it is Ed's and Bill's, and it does accurately describe their acceptance of the justification of sense perception from their basic propositions. The Ad Hoc part is accepted without reason and the fallacy is accepted against reason. That is my only point, so far; but I bet you can predict where this will ultimately lead.

By the way we are having a philosophy meeting at my home this week on Friday March 23rd at 7:30. As always, we would love to have you come. Let me know if you can make it and I will save you a seat.

Regards,

Brady

Post 89

Thursday, March 22, 2007 - 11:51am

GBL wrote,

It's analytic because the conclusion must flow from the premises alone as in any deductive argument. This is why you can not justify your perceptions from your basic propositions. Those propositions do not have the elements that allow you to conclude that that your perceptions are accurate.

One doesn't infer that one's perceptions are accurate from a deductive argument, because such an argument would require that the premises be justified inductively through direct experience. If by the "accuracy" of one's perceptions, you simply mean that one's perceptions are of the external world, then our perceptions are "accurate," because there is nothing else to perceive. To perceive is to perceive the real world -- the world external to awareness.

I wrote, "According to Objectivism, perception is the foundation of knowledge, since all information is gained through the senses. Since perception is self-evident, it requires no justification." GBL replied,

Isn't this an admission that I am right? You admit here that your perceptions are not justified by your basic propositions, which was my claim.

My point was that they require no deductive justification -- that they are self-evidently "accurate." (To say that they're "accurate" is not exactly the right word, because it suggests that they could be inaccurate, which is false; "trustworthy" would be better.)

Please don't forget that the phrase "justify your perception," is shorthand for, "show how you know that your perceptions accurately correspond to an external world. The perception itself is not really the problem here, but your ability to know that it accurately corresponds to an external world is. I think you will agree that in Objectivism, perception is NOT the foundation of knowledge, but perception that accurately correspond to an external world is the foundation of knowledge. It seems that this is merely assumed by you to be the case; which was my claim back in the beginning.

You're operating from a flawed theory of perception. Our perceptions don't "correspond" to the external world; they're "of" the external world. A proposition corresponds (or fails to correspond) to the external world; perceptions do not. What you have is a pictorial model of perception, in which perception is like a picture, which either corresponds or does not correspond to its object. But perception is not like that; it does not exist separately from its object in a way that requires that it be compared to the object in order to verify its accuracy. A perception is "of" the external world. One perceives the world directly, not via a pictorial representation of it. So the issue of its accuracy (correspondence) or inaccuracy (failure of correspondence) doesn't arise.

I wrote, "Percepts are the given; they are the form in which one is directly aware of the external world; as such they are necessarily valid." GBL replied,

"Necessarily valid" is a deductive term referring to the form of an argument, you have given no such argument. Perhaps you were referring to your conclusion? The term then would be "necessarily sound." But a necessarily sound conclusion must come from a valid argument with true premises, as I pointed out, you have given no such deductive argument.

Right. I was using the term "valid" somewhat loosely here, simply to indicate that our perceptions were trustworthy -- that they were not to be regarded as questionable or unreliable.

That aside, if I understand the above correctly you are saying that perceptions accurately correspond to an external world because, you say, they are a given. Why do you say perceptions are a given? Because they accurately correspond to an external world. Bill, I think you will agree that the circle can't get any more vicious than that.

See above.

- Bill

Post 90

Thursday, March 22, 2007 - 4:01pm

What Bill said.

;-)

In post 80, I supplied 10 links to online articles showing what it is that "perception" is. GBL must not have clicked/read/understood them. If he did, he wouldn't still be stuck on this issue.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/22, 4:05pm)

Post 91

Thursday, March 22, 2007 - 6:28pm

Bill wrote:

One doesn't infer that one's perceptions are accurate from a deductive argument, because such an argument would require that the premises be justified inductively through direct experience

Bill, I think you are missing the point. If (A) your basic propositions do not have the elements that allow you to get to knowledge, or even worse, if (B) they have elements that infer that knowledge is impossible, then either your basic propositions are false or your assertion of knowledge is false.

When I ask you to justify your perceptions given your basic propositions I am asking you to show that A and B are not true. The fact that you can't show how you justify your perceptions, given your basic propositions, shows that either A or B is indeed true.

Your above statement shows the pickle you are in. I have given you the basic propositions you ask for. I am not demanding that you prove any of them true. I am just asking you to show how you get to knowledge using those propositions. I think you should at this point admit that you cannot do it. If you can, then show it.

Bill continues:

I wrote, "According to Objectivism, perception is the foundation of knowledge, since all information is gained through the senses. Since perception is self-evident, it requires no justification." GBL replied,
Isn't this an admission that I am right? You admit here that your perceptions are not justified by your basic propositions, which was my claim.
My point was that they require no deductive justification -- that they are self-evidently "accurate." (To say that they're "accurate" is not exactly the right word, because it suggests that they could be inaccurate, which is false; "trustworthy" would be better.)

Once again, you are admitting I am right. you have no way of justifying your perceptions given your basic propositions, you just assume they are trustworthy (that term works fine for me). Who are they self-evident to? Descartes? No. Hume? No. Kant? No. They aren't self evident to me. We have no way to transcendentally compare our perceptions to that which is being perceived.

Hume gave an interesting problem, I paraphrase:

We know that causes are not like effects. For instance, in lighting a match, the flame (the effect) is nothing like the cause (i.e. the stick or the chemical or the motion of lighting it). Another instance is when one drops a bowling ball. The �THUD� sound (the effect) is nothing like the cause (i.e. the roundness of the ball or the hard surface of the floor). So, once again, as Hume points out, effects are not like their causes. Here lies the problem, if effects are not like their causes, and your perceptions are caused by the world around you, what makes you think that your perceptions (effects) are anything like the world around you (causes)?

You're operating from a flawed theory of perception. Our perceptions don't "correspond" to the external world; they're "of" the external world. A proposition corresponds (or fails to correspond) to the external world; perceptions do not. What you have is a pictorial model of perception, in which perception is like a picture, which either corresponds or does not correspond to its object. But perception is not like that; it does not exist separately from its object in a way that requires that it be compared to the object in order to verify its accuracy. A perception is "of" the external world. One perceives the world directly, not via a pictorial representation of it. So the issue of its accuracy (correspondence) or inaccuracy (failure of correspondence) doesn't arise.

Well, thanks for sharing your statement of faith. What, besides, "because I say so," do you have to back that up with? That whole paragraph is nothing but an unfounded assumption. I understand you like your assumption and you wish it were true, but you have no way of demonstrating any of it. Since you admit you have no deductive means of demonstration, and to use inductive means would involve the fallacy of Petitio Principii, what means of "rational thought" are you going to use?

G. Brady Lenardos

Post 92

Thursday, March 22, 2007 - 8:25pm

My understanding of knowledge, in brief:

We assume that there is raw data - interaction with reality, by inference. As in the denial of existence, the denial itself implies its own negation.

Sensations are the raw data coming into our consciousness as organized by our sense organs. They can neither be right nor wrong, true or false, as truth and falsity only apply to conclusions about the nature of the reality behind the sensations.

Perceptions are our organization of the sensations based on their source in reality. Perceptions do not tell us "what" something is, but only "that" some particular thing is. "What" requires a classification and comparison to something else.

First level concepts are our mind's organization of perceptions according to classification by similarity of the perceptions.

Higher level concepts are classifications of lower level concepts according to functional and epistemologically useful similarities.

If we assumed that reality was fundamentally disordered, then none of the classifications would make sense. The organization of data on every level would be an exercise in futility.

Thus, from the beginning we implicitly assume that reality is in some sense ordered, that at least some similarities in sensations can result in real perceptions, that the objects perceived are somehow capable of being treated as members of classes, not just random things. Once again, to emphasize, we really have no choice about this assumption. If the opposite were in fact somehow the case, then the whole exercise of consciousness, or our illusion of it anyway, would be pointless and doomed. It would leave us nothing to do.

Thus, we make the assumption that we are capable of knowing useful things about the reality causing our sensations and the objects we percieve, even though we may have no clue as to how or why. It is that assumption that drives our consciousness.

It is a natural then to assume that whatever exists is somehow knowable in its entirety as in "Das Ding an Sich," or the Tao. In fact, however, it may be that we can never know some things about reality. Our knowledge consists simply of useful classifications. We attach a mental symbol as our way of concretizing a classification of some set of things by some criteria that allows us to treat all those things as of a type, with implications as to our behavior toward them, both mental and physical, based on our experience and complex chains of inference.

We might never be able to know, for example, whether the reality we experience is composed simply of atoms or quarks or some other set of purely physical entities without any further connections to some underlying further ground of existence, or whether we might not actually be in some kind of epistemology machine, whether designed by Jehova or some teenage computer whiz in the equivalent of what our next century of tech advances might bring.

My previous entry to this thread holds, however. In a strong sense, it does not matter. We act as though we are awake and dealing with real atoms and other people, etc., even though we know that we are convinced on a nightly basis of the same thing when we are dreaming. We know that we can totally believe in a dream while we are dreaming. Thus, we could be dreaming now. Or hallucinating. Or participating in an experiment in virtual reality. Or existing only as ephemeral ghosts in an epistemology machine.

Just as we may suddenly become aware that "I must be dreaming," because something would only make sense in a dream - having a conversation with a long dead relative or whatever, it is possible that one day we might suddenly come accross evidence that we are in an epistemology machine of some kind. This would not invalidate our organization of the data into sensations, percepts and concepts; it would simply place it in a larger context.

In order to act, including the act of thinking, we have to make a whole set of implicit assumptions, most of which we only become aware of explicitly in the case that someone tries to question them, at which point it becomes obvious that we WILL assume that existence exists, that we are conscious, that it is possible to know things about existence.

Just because we may not be able to know "everything," however, is not an excuse for not trying to know as much as we can that is useful to us.

Post 93

Friday, March 23, 2007 - 4:04am

Hi Phil,

Thanks for your reply. I am not going to answer all of it at once. I am hoping that we can come to some agreement on the first part that may clear up some things in the second part.

Phil wrote:

We assume that there is raw data - interaction with reality, by inference. As in the denial of existence, the denial itself implies its own negation.

Sensations are the raw data coming into our consciousness as organized by our sense organs. They can neither be right nor wrong, true or false, as truth and falsity only apply to conclusions about the nature of the reality behind the sensations.

I am willing to give you that the denial of one's existence is self-stultifying, and therefore the denial of existence is self-stultifying. I am also willing to give you that the denial of knowledge is self-stultifying. But neither of those "infers" the "assumption" that there is raw sense data. Please note the contradiction in your first sentence. If something is assumed, it is not inferred. An inference is a conclusion to an argument, an assumption is not a conclusion. An assumption is something that is proposed without argument. I point this out now because you make this error throughout your post:

Thus, from the beginning we implicitly assume that reality is in some sense ordered...
Thus, we make the assumption that we are capable of knowing useful things about the reality....

Ther word "thus" implies the conclusion of an argument. Your conclusion can not be an assumption, it must be a conclusion. To insist that your conclusion is an assumption is just as self-stultifying as denying one's own existence. You do not "assume" your inference, you "know" your inference. The problem with your post is that there is no inference to be found, just one assumption atop another assumption. Sure, if all of the assumptions in your post were true, you might have something. The problem is that not only can you not show that some of them are true, you can't show that any are true, thus, they are merely assumptions.

Now it is possible to argue based on assumption, but that is done in indirect derivations to show a contradiction in the assumed position, in order to negate the assumed position. That is very different than what you are doing. If the basis of your position is an assumption, nothing that follows is justified, because the basis of your entire position is unjustified, it is merely an assumption. It is like you and a ladder are both falling in a bottomless pit. It doesn't matter how many rungs of the ladder you climb, both you and the ladder are still falling, there is no way out!

Are we in agreement here? Let me know.

G. Brady Lenardos

Post 94

Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - 6:13pm