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Post by booley on Jun 10, 2009 14:37:18 GMT -5
How can anybody know what knowledge is correct? .... Well the evidence is important. I can give leeway to someone even if they are probably wrong if they can at least show they have some rational basis for believing what they do. OF course I can not say I am absolutely right. But for real world purposes I don't need to. So in short form, I can beleive I am right if... 1. I have evidence. The more evidence the better. 2. My interpretation of that evidence is relatively free from fallacies. At the least they must not be fatally flawed by such. 3. My interpretation can account for or at least not be automatically refuted by seeming contradictory evidence. 4. It stands the test of time/ can be used to make a prediction about similar but distinct circumstances. (for instance, if I think a room mate is a thief and I predict that something will dissapear when he's around it and it does, that' sa good indicator)
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Post by Tiger on Jun 10, 2009 15:10:35 GMT -5
3. My interpretation can account for or at least not be automatically refuted by seeming contradictory evidence. And can be modified to account for new contradictory evidence. I've seen plenty of creationists claim that one minor aspect of evolutionary theory was wrong, therefore the entire idea needs to be thrown out.
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Post by schizophonic on Jun 10, 2009 15:11:27 GMT -5
It's easy to say something like "my beliefs are correct because they're backed up by evidence," but then how can one know what degree of evidence is sufficient "proof" of a correct belief? I'd say it depends, in part, on the nature of the belief. That degree should be fairly evident in most cases. Personally, because I don't just post on sites where people agree with me. More often than not, I post on sites where people yell at me for thinking I "know it all," simply because I'm able to work a search engine and/or provide actual papers on the subject. I only mention this because this is like, a big fucking deal for a lot of people unable to grasp it. Define "so much?" Technically, we don't. It's possible, mind, that there really is an all-loving God out there who is just fucking with us because he's some sort of bipolar douchebag. In all practicality, you have to ignore the only truths and commonalities we share in order to tear down the building blocks of evidence. RR touts a mythos which lacks any evidence or reason. Not Christianity, but their specific breed of it. Maybe Jesus loves Torture, hates gays, and is pro-American, but none of that shit's in the Bible, and they will effectively censor you simply for issuing that claim. Remember Saddam's propaganda guys denying the presence of American forces in Baghdad? Well, it's like that. You kind of have to ditch EVERYTHING to consider their beliefs and statements valid.
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Post by Undecided on Jun 10, 2009 16:13:12 GMT -5
Jodie et al.: I like the succint answer. As you know, just having the fossils is not enough: after all, the creationists can see the same fossils that we do. What makes our ideas different is that `we' have an interpretation of the evidence which remains valid even as new species are discovered through direct observation or through the fossil record and is consistent with other types of sciences. In my opinion, the reason the creationists believe they have a fighting chance is that the evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that it seems like a conspiracy against them. Therefore, I ask the question: if a cohesive body of strictly scrutinised evidence in contradiction with current knowledge were to be found (e.g., precambrian human-like fossils), what would your reaction be? dasfuchs: I think that they would claim that we are the ones who ignore the obvious and the real. @antichrist: so you've managed to develop a test proving the biblical god doesn't exist by using the Bible? ausador et al.: How do we show that any given event happened in the past? Obviously, nobody can reasonbly argue that, say, the Holocaust did not happen, because the evidence is so overwhelming. But as we go back in time, it becomes more difficult to attest that events occurred in a particular fashion. We basically are relying on archaeology and written history in order to "prove" that something happened. rookie: I agree to a point that correctness can be relative, but when we say that something is true, we want to mean that it is true independent of whether anybody believes to the contrary or not. ironbite: maybe everybody has different ways of choosing what the bottom line should be. booley: cf. the scientific method. booley, Tiger: on the other hand, you can't continually refine your theory in light of new evidence before the theory is tested. Let's say that my data was a bunch of points. Then I could draw an arbitrary curve through all of them and that would be what my `theory' predicted. Whenever I got new data, I could just redraw the curve to go through those points, and then I'd have another 100% accurate prediction of my `theory'. Sigmaleph, m52nickerson, Amaranth & ausador: I obviously don't have a better way of testing something than experiment. I'm just trying to make sense of the beliefs of people who are different from my own—I'm a humanist, nontheist, and methodological naturalist. To this end, the idea of deliberately choosing a different way of gauging truth in order to see the results appeals to me.
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Post by malicious_bloke on Jun 10, 2009 16:18:38 GMT -5
Knowledge and Belief are two different things. Knowledge is that which can be quantified and understood, belief is whatever you want it to be.
This is a nice clear boundary until you start denying reality and claiming that your belief supercedes and contradicts that which is already known.
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Post by Tiger on Jun 10, 2009 16:22:02 GMT -5
booley, Tiger: on the other hand, you can't continually refine your theory in light of new evidence before the theory is tested. Let's say that my data was a bunch of points. Then I could draw an arbitrary curve through all of them and that would be what my `theory' predicted. Whenever I got new data, I could just redraw the curve to go through those points, and then I'd have another 100% accurate prediction of my `theory'. And that's why we sometimes simply throw out the old line and draw a completely new one. Geocentrism was once a valid scientific theory.
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Post by booley on Jun 10, 2009 17:50:49 GMT -5
booley: cf. the scientific method. Yes except that what i described is a very dumbed down and simplified version. The actual scientific method wouldn't work for everyday decision making. Ahh but I don't necessarily have too. Again what i listed above is not the scientific method per se. That supposes I am seeking an objective truth which I am also trying to convince others of. It also would incredibly time consuming. But for most things in life a we can get away with a less demanding standard. I do not have to prove something objectively to hold it as a personal truth. We also can rely on credible sources. For instance I have never been tortured. But I believe that torture is very bad (doesn't work, dehumanizes both victim and abuser, becomes an end in and of itself). While I have not been tortured I can look at the history and testimony of people who were tortured, evaluate how credible they are (do they have biases? Have they made an unusual claim without evidence? Have they been accurate in the past?) But that would be an obvious flaw that you would need to account for and find a way to correct, if by nothing else using another, less biased method. The point here is not that one can never be wrong nor to find absolute truth. It's to develop a degree of certitude. Something which holds together logically also works.
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Post by lonelocust on Jun 11, 2009 0:53:00 GMT -5
Really, there's no way to "know" that induction is valid. We think that the universe is consistent and that past phenomena indicate present and future phenomena because it always has in the past. We think that when we drop a book it will fall because it has billions of times before, and it has never hovered, fallen up, disappeared, or turned into a fairy and granted us three wishes in the past. However, it COULD just all be a coincidence. We could be living in a billions-years-long (or conservatively, hundreds-years-long) period of coincidence in a truly random universe.
Likewise, we can't PROVE that deduction is correct. Maybe if A=B and B=C then A doesn't necessarily =C. Maybe A ->B does not actually mean that !B implies !A. We believe these things because they are "obvious", they make sense to us, AND they cause our actions to produce predictable results. Or so our perceptions tell us.
What keeps us from descending into ontological madness is that to doubt the veracity of observation and logic is to doubt the thing that is letting one doubt. If I don't think my perceptions or my ability to reason are valid, then that very doubt is also invalid, as it stems from the same source. It's a pointless exercise to doubt the mechanism of doubting. The RR people MIGHT be right, and I MIGHT be the only sentient AI in a very complex alien computer made of peanut butter on a flat planet which is the center of a closed universe and around which the sun which shines darkness literally travels in a chariot. However, I will choose to go on the evidence that I have, which is to say perception and logic.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Jun 11, 2009 1:09:07 GMT -5
Is Undecided a troll?
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Post by Trevelyan on Jun 11, 2009 2:08:13 GMT -5
Knowledge and Belief are two different things. Knowledge is that which can be quantified and understood, belief is whatever you want it to be. This is a nice clear boundary until you start denying reality and claiming that your belief supercedes and contradicts that which is already known. I like to explain the difference between knowledge and belief like this. Let us say that humanity dies off and all of our records and what have you are gone as well. Let us further say that the earth is repopulated by another intelligent species. They might have religion but it's doubtful that they will have Christianity as it is now. That's what belief is, there is no basis or evidence to back your shit up. Now, lets take the theory of gravity. This new species is damned sure to find out about that one really quick. They might not call it gravity, they might just call it, "That thing that makes you fall down and fuck yourself up." but it will still be there. That is knowledge. Basically, knowledge doesn't need people believing in it for it to remain, beliefs do.
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Post by booley on Jun 11, 2009 2:51:39 GMT -5
Really, there's no way to "know" that induction is valid. ... OF course we don't have ot go beyond any doubt before we can say our decision was correct. Beyond a reasonable doubt works just fine. And if we are talking about subjective truth that affects only ourselves, that bar gets lowered even further. For instance, I think trance music is great. I don't have to prove it to another person in order to think that. It's true for me and since it's subjective that's all that's required.
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Post by dasfuchs on Jun 11, 2009 3:12:51 GMT -5
" dasfuchs: I think that they would claim that we are the ones who ignore the obvious and the real." That's perfectly fine. the only problem is, i have the very real evidence that they would have nill against to offer as a counter point
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Post by Vene on Jun 11, 2009 3:26:32 GMT -5
Okay, he's what I do when I start doubting (especially with regards to evolution); I read their arguements. Five minutes later, I'm convinced again. They are really that poor.
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Post by Damen on Jun 11, 2009 5:14:18 GMT -5
How can anybody know what knowledge is correct? It's easy to say something like "my beliefs are correct because they're backed up by evidence," but then how can one know what degree of evidence is sufficient "proof" of a correct belief? - How do people on this site know that they're not suffering from a confirmation bias by habitually posting on sites where people agree with them?
- Why should scepticism be valued so much?
- How do we know that people from Rapture Ready or an equivalent community aren't really correct, and that scientific methods are the only test of knowledge?
This is a logical fallacy. Just because there is a possibility that our knowledge may be false does not make it false. We're comfortable in the knowledge we have because we've arrived there through testable theories and observable results. There's a possibility that RR is right and god exists, but there's about as much possibility that invisible pink unicorns and flying teacups in space exist. It's possible, but the possibility is so remote that it can be readily dismissed. I have very little patience for this type of argument because it tries to shift the burden of proof. How do you know you're not just hooked up to a computer and everything you experience is false? See, I can do it too. Thus far, our knowledge of the world has withstood test after test and if you want to accuse that knowledge of being faulty (even through insinuation) then you're going to have to give us some evidence for it. Please, show us the god test.
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Post by lonelocust on Jun 11, 2009 6:46:01 GMT -5
Really, there's no way to "know" that induction is valid. ... OF course we don't have ot go beyond any doubt before we can say our decision was correct. That was the entire point of my post. You have to START at a point of doubt ad absurdum to doubt whether observation and logic (and thus the scientific method) are valid. Given that they are valid, we can be reasonably sure of our correctness. Some people feel the need for an unrealistic ontological certainty and/or think that a lack of such unattainable certainty means that all possibilities are equally likely. (They do not, however, in general feel the need to jump off of tall buildings because it's just as likely that they will suddenly start flying as that they will fall.) The original poster, whether trolling or in good faith, was presenting a question relevant to such a point of view.
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