AIP - they love it when I do this.

I am completely lost now lol

What did I miss?

It's OK, this happens from time to time. KIR has possibly had a few ales this evening.

Dolorosa wrote:I am completely lost now lol

What did I miss?

your sewing kit

Fallible wrote:It's OK, this happens from time to time. KIR has possibly had a few ales this evening.

Gotcha... On that note I think I'm gonna call it a night.

Fallible wrote:It's OK, this happens from time to time. KIR has possibly had a few ales this evening.

Oh bloody hell I wish it seemed that simple to me right now.

TBH I should speak of my mother's unread horror novels and my sleep at this juncture

Dolorosa wrote:
Gotcha... On that note I think I'm gonna call it a night.

Post count failure.

BWE wrote:When people confuse internal facts with external facts, the fun can go on forever and two diametrically opposed views can both be correct!

The external fact, the observation, is that people learn to call it 'god' by learning the word in their own languages, as children. The external fact, the observation, is that people have been doing this for at least thousands of years, ever since they were too ignorant to know that their fee-fees, their rapture, was the product of brain farts. To call those external facts, those observations a basis of belief, involves at least disingenuousness, and for anyone familiar with mental health issues to insist the conclusion from these external facts, these observations is thus a form of belief, that one can avoid by saying "Oh, la, I lack belief" is even duplicitous.

You make a good point that the argument itself ("oh, la, I can't believe ahaha we are still having this argument") is a social problem, but that does not excuse argumentative duplicity from those who claim to value observation over belief. After awhile, closing one's eyes to easily-acquired observation begins to look like the same old exercise in groupthink that the focus of the argument has noticed. That includes trotting out the old chestnut of "internal facts", which is the worst kind of wibble and is usually heard from people who find mastery of external facts too much of a bother.

Lacking belief in gods, yeah, sure, no one is ever obliged to go farther than that, but going farther than that is no sort of excess (except maybe if confronting facts is considered excessive) and implying that the advance is a form of belief is only a defensive move.

Fallible wrote:

BWE wrote:how about you apply it to your posts on the topic as well?

That's nice, but I am responding to your claims here.

I apologize. I was apparently subtling when I should have been obviousing. My claims and your claims are only claims insofar as they are claims about our own ways of understanding. They do not constitute a shared objective landscape. They can't. You are arguing as if there is some objective truth to this matter. There is not. This is a matter of individual language usage. You cannot be right about anything in this conversation other than that you've given an accurate or inaccurate description of how you code/decode a particular concept.

This is not a case of objective facts. It is a case of the peculiarities of language usage on an individual basis.

Thank you for explaining to me what it's a case of. Moving on, no it isn't. With regard to yourself, it appears to be a case of you making sweeping claims, at times regarding the inner workings of other people's minds, which make little or no sense, about which you appear totally unconcerned.

Look, I'm not trying to belittle you or anyone else here, but this is a surreal high horse you seem to be on. As I mentioned, I can only describe how I structure my understanding of the concept. I cannot describe how you understand it. There is no external validation available in this discussion. There is only whether or not one person's description makes sense to another person. No ruler or other precision instrument can validate any of these claims. There could potentially be logical errors but you'd need to put the statements into logical form and see what the propositional calculus would do as a computer command. And even then, those logical errors would not help you or I win this argument. It is an exchange of what essentially amounts to opinions. The parts that encroach on that which Wittgenstein says we must pass over in silence. This is a legitimate case where we can have different truths, where the actual truth value is only that we individually parse meaning the way we claim to. Each truth claim requires a different individual subject and so are different truth claims.

TIA.

I don't know what this is.

clearly it isn't relevant.

let's review.

OK, professor.

This is a case of how we individually understand an idea.

Thank you again for taking the time to explain things to me.

You are welcome.

Not a case of objective fact.

Yeah, I've been knocking around the forum for a while. I managed to get by with my understanding of what these discussions are all about before you showed up. I'm not sure how, but I did. Instead of retreating to vapid truisms to hide the superficiality of your argument, why don't you actually engage?

What is not engaged about my response to the topic? I stated how I construct the information. I responded with why your construction doesn't work for me. I tried to clarify how my construction works such that you would know why your construction doesn't fit my process. What do I need to do to engage?

It does indeed seem just a little disingenuous to me.

I'm really not concerned with how things seem, I think I made that point to KIR. Accuracy is what I'm after,

That is an entirely accurate statement. If you don't think it is, please explain what is inaccurate about it and what an accurate statement on the subject might look like. I am not being snarky. I just don't understand what you are saying and I don't think you understand what I am saying.

and your view as expressed does not present an accurate description of my position or state.

of course it doesn't. That would be impossible for me to state as a factual claim. It would need to be a question.

That I remonstrate with how things seem to you is not an example of me making claims that I can't back up, or of confusing perceptions with objective facts, or internal with external facts.

re·mon·strate
rəˈmänˌstrāt/
verb
make a forcefully reproachful protest.

If you are making a forcefully reproachful protest with how things seem to me, then it most certainly is a claim you can't back up as well as a confusion of internal with external facts. You are replacing a specific subject in a logical statement with a universal subject. Creating the mind of god is actually how I put that but that's probably a discussion for another time.

And you'd have to have some sort of mind control device to change that.

No I wouldn't, I'd just need to say the right things in order for your belief switch to be pressed. But why do you think I want to? I'm just pointing out to you that I'm not being disingenuous. If you find it sits more comfortably with you to assume I'm a liar, well, that doesn't give me the desire to change your mind. Quite the opposite.

Ah. I didn't say you were being disingenuous. I said "It does indeed seem just a little disingenuous to me." Which it does. I believe your statements that you do understand it the way you do. If you want to lie to me, that's your business. I will believe you because it does a discussion no favors not to believe you. If I discover on some future occasion that you lied to me, that will be new information then. As far as I am concerned, everyone's claims here are truthful accounts of how they understand the issue.

When people confuse internal facts with external facts, the fun can go on forever and two diametrically opposed views can both be correct!

I don't know what to say to this, other than well done for extrapolating something from my words that was never even implied.

I was extrapolating from my words, not yours. If I ask you which are cuter, blonds or brunettes, is your answer universal? No. It is personal. It is logically erroneous to pursue an objective truth claim on the topic.

You said this to my comment that only one thing is needed in order to qualify as having no belief. Two diametrically opposed views can both be correct? Where did you pull this from?

Let's say I say brunettes are cuter and you say blonds are cuter. We are both correct assuming neither of us is lying. That's because the implied subject is the individual making the assessment. It is true that I make this assessment and true that you make that assessment. But it is actually word salad to imagine a truth value to the topic with no agent involved because the statement is an internal assessment. There is a reason a universal ethics doesn't exist.

What exactly are you finding so hard to get about the concept that this is not a matter of things being correct or incorrect in a binary fashion? For all the 'splaining you're doing to me about how we're not dealing with objective facts, you seem to be making extraordinarily hard work of the concept.

It's possible. I am often a confused mess. However, you are not helping me very much.

BWE wrote:This is a legitimate case where we can have different truths, where the actual truth value is only that we individually parse meaning the way we claim to. Each truth claim requires a different individual subject and so are different truth claims.

Well, if you understand that, and I think you do, then you realize what has just happened to the implication of saying "I lack belief" when it is used to imply that stronger statements based on observation are likewise forms of belief. To flip-flop to insisting on internal truths being pertinent to the common understanding of saying "I conclude there are no gods" is just the same old shell game writ small. It means I don't take seriously your "internal truths" unless you're heavily armed and a bit manic.

Cito di Pense wrote:

BWE wrote:When people confuse internal facts with external facts, the fun can go on forever and two diametrically opposed views can both be correct!

The external fact, the observation, is that people learn to call it 'god' by learning the word in their own languages, as children. The external fact, the observation, is that people have been doing this for at least thousands of years, ever since they were too ignorant to know that their fee-fees, their rapture, was the product of brain farts.

That's definitely how I see it except that I think god was originally proto-scientific, an explanation for events. Given assumptions about angry gods, it makes sense to work on appeasement techniques. Then priesthoods and all the rest. Paradigms change though.

To call those external facts, those observations a basis of belief, involves at least disingenuousness, and for anyone familiar with mental health issues to insist the conclusion from these external facts, these observations is thus a form of belief, that one can avoid by saying "Oh, la, I lack belief" is even duplicitous.

That's how I arrange that idea too. But that part, it's important to remember, assumes information unavailable for evidence. If it makes sense to someone to say they simply lack belief, then that's how it is for them. For me, lacking belief involves rejection of a claim, ignorance, or stupor.

You make a good point that the argument itself ("oh, la, I can't believe ahaha we are still having this argument") is a social problem, but that does not excuse argumentative duplicity from those who claim to value observation over belief. After awhile, closing one's eyes to easily-acquired observation begins to look like the same old exercise in groupthink that the focus of the argument has noticed. That includes trotting out the old chestnut of "internal facts", which is the worst kind of wibble and is usually heard from people who find mastery of external facts too much of a bother.

You misunderstand what I wrote. Internal facts are personal assessments. See my previous post about blonds and brunettes. There is an external truth value but that truth value is only that such and such a thought occurred to so and so a person. There is a category of statements which are the products of internal modeling with too many elements to share. We can share one plus one but can't share an objective truth about whether blonds and brunettes are cuter because there are too many variables and the answer doesn't even abstract from time. Later the same day I may change my mind and make the other choice and the truth value is still only that I made the assessment I did. That is what I mean by internal facts vs external facts.

Cito di Pense wrote:

BWE wrote:This is a legitimate case where we can have different truths, where the actual truth value is only that we individually parse meaning the way we claim to. Each truth claim requires a different individual subject and so are different truth claims.

Well, if you understand that, and I think you do, then you realize what has just happened to the implication of saying "I lack belief" when it is used to imply that stronger statements based on observation are likewise forms of belief. To flip-flop to insisting on internal truths being pertinent to the common understanding of saying "I conclude there are no gods" is just the same old shell game writ small. It means I don't take seriously your "internal truths" unless you're heavily armed and a bit manic.

dramatically missing my point. Internal truths are a category which are inaccessible to you without asking. There is no instrument that can tell you what assessment I make if I don't tell you.

It sounds like you are saying that this conversation does indeed have an objective nature. That there is some objective thing you can point to which will falsify fallible's statement. Is that what you are saying?

BWE wrote:But that part, it's important to remember, assumes information unavailable for evidence.

If you understand the nature of sciences with a historical dimension, geology, astronomy, cosmology, then you know the kind of evidence those sorts of scientists are used to using, that is, the observations of physics in the laboratory, or indirect observations that imply something about planetary interiors not exposed to a simplistic treatment of what constitutes 'evidence'. When you also suggest that the evidence one will allow into the record is just another kind of 'internal truth' means you and I are not going to be on the same channel. You are no doubt also aware of theoretical frameworks like isotropy and uniformitarianism. Are you still going to insist that the information I use is not derived from observational evidence?

BWE wrote:
It sounds like you are saying that this conversation does indeed have an objective nature. That there is some objective thing you can point to which will falsify fallible's statement. Is that what you are saying?

I am mainly objecting to any implication that the conclusions I am drawing by ignoring people's "internal truths" in favor of observations I can cite constitute a form of 'belief'. If that means to you "stop bullshitting me" then we cannot discuss this matter further, and small loss to either of us. Is the problem that the observations I am citing are so easy to make that somebody has either avoided making them or has made them and finds them inconvenient to an argument they then decide they do not really wish to join? Perhaps all I'm doing is treating belief in god as a social disease, so that lack of belief does not mean immunity nor status as a non-carrier.

BWE wrote:I think god was originally proto-scientific, an explanation for events.

Do you want to admit there's anything new under the sun since then in that department? Do you want to suggest that 'god' should be regarded as an 'explanation'? Then no, it deserves no protection as some kind of "internal truth".

You might be trying to say we don't have access to how people acquire their 'god' talk, but somebody else might call that disingenuous. We are born immersed in a sea of people who can't stop talking about god as if it were something, and that is not some kind of 'internal truth". Yes, people do learn later in life to transform that feeble objectification into their internal truth, but they have to learn those words first, too. And we know what kind of psychological gyration it involves.

BWE wrote:
dramatically missing my point. Internal truths are a category which are inaccessible to you without asking.

I really don't want to miss this point, if you still have one. I can observe what people have to go through to learn to call that "internal truth", and I also know how to call a species of discourse 'apologetics'. Me, I'm asked to swallow that one, whole. I call it 'rapture' or 'brain farts', and somebody who thinks he has an internal truth might not cotton to that. It's also not as if anyone in this conversation is recommending the statement "I lack internal truth convictions that I call belief in god", which just seems, well, awkward.

I,personally, am overwhelmed by these posts. my 50cent

Cito di Pense wrote:

BWE wrote:But that part, it's important to remember, assumes information unavailable for evidence.

If you understand the nature of sciences with a historical dimension, geology, astronomy, cosmology, then you know the kind of evidence those sorts of scientists are used to using, that is, the observations of physics in the laboratory, or indirect observations that imply something about planetary interiors not exposed to a simplistic treatment of what constitutes 'evidence'. When you also suggest that the evidence one will allow into the record is just another kind of 'internal truth' means you and I are not going to be on the same channel. You are no doubt also aware of theoretical frameworks like isotropy and uniformitarianism. Are you still going to insist that the information I use is not derived from observational evidence?

I wouldn't dream of saying that. But how we model is not what we model. The problem for me with what I think is your point here is that the observations we individually make get run through our personal filters. History is the art of making up stories to fit scant evidence. Fun, but it's important not to believe the stories.

BWE wrote:
It sounds like you are saying that this conversation does indeed have an objective nature. That there is some objective thing you can point to which will falsify fallible's statement. Is that what you are saying?

I am mainly objecting to any implication that the conclusions I am drawing by ignoring people's "internal truths" in favor of observations I can cite constitute a form of 'belief'.

I am sure you missed my point. I am not saying what you are arguing against. Internal truths are just facts about the product of internal thought processes. You are doing the same thing fallible is doing and trying to shake the subject out of subjective statements. It produces faulty results.

If that means to you "stop bullshitting me" then we cannot discuss this matter further, and small loss to either of us. Is the problem that the observations I am citing are so easy to make that somebody has either avoided making them or has made them and finds them inconvenient to an argument they then decide they do not really wish to join? Perhaps all I'm doing is treating belief in god as a social disease, so that lack of belief does not mean immunity nor status as a non-carrier.

BWE wrote:I think god was originally proto-scientific, an explanation for events.

Do you want to admit there's anything new under the sun since then in that department? Do you want to suggest that 'god' should be regarded as an 'explanation'? Then no, it deserves no protection as some kind of "internal truth".

I never said it did. I wouldn't say it did either.

You might be trying to say we don't have access to how people acquire their 'god' talk, but somebody else might call that disingenuous.

I'm not saying that or anything like that. Not sure where that came from.

We are born immersed in a sea of people who can't stop talking about god as if it were something, and that is not some kind of 'internal truth". Yes, people do learn later in life to transform that feeble objectification into their internal truth, but they have to learn those words first, too. And we know what kind of psychological gyration it involves.

BWE wrote:
dramatically missing my point. Internal truths are a category which are inaccessible to you without asking.

I really don't want to miss this point, if you still have one. I can observe what people have to go through to learn to call that "internal truth", and I also know how to call a species of discourse 'apologetics'. Me, I'm asked to swallow that one, whole. I call it 'rapture' or 'brain farts', and somebody who thinks he has an internal truth might not cotton to that. It's also not as if anyone in this conversation is recommending the statement "I lack internal truth convictions that I call belief in god", which just seems, well, awkward.

Apologetics is out of left field here. Who is talking about apologetics?

BWE wrote:Internal truths are just facts about the product of internal thought processes.

Not even according to you, or else you've just bent 'facts' beyond all recognition. It's none of my business what somebody believes until they make it my business by telling me what they believe.

BWE wrote:how we model is not what we model. The problem for me with what I think is your point here is that the observations we individually make get run through our personal filters. History is the art of making up stories to fit scant evidence. Fun, but it's important not to believe the stories.

That means describing people's professed beliefs as "internal truth" is at best obfuscation, and at worst, making excuses for the content of what they profess, which is the observable. I'm simply not treating with kid gloves those who don't introspect their own raptures and choose instead to project them as "internal truths". People who profess don't merely profess not to lack belief. My kindest response to that shit is to say I don't have a clue what they're on about, or something about bending spoons, and then wait for the expected regurgitation of teleology. Why? Because fee-fees.

What I don't automatically conclude is that they believe what they profess to believe, stories I never invited them to hand me, and I am simply prepared to tell them why their stories sound to me like hard-luck stories. With god-botherers who refer to it as their 'internal truth', it's a response to the social disease of not being capable or at least willing to introspect the content of one's brain farts. If it is a product of introspection, then it implies a decision to project their "internal truth" instead of keeping it to their own fucking selves.

"I lack belief in deities" is then, according to you, only a profession of lack of belief in deities, and comes from a place where professions are made. You could say it's the product of internal thought processes, and might as well have stayed right there.

You are really not getting my point. If I say brunettes are cute than blonds, the fact is that I arrived at that conclusion. In fact there is no way to generalize the statement. The only possible fact in the statement is that I made that assessment. The statement "brunettes are cuter than blonds" actually means nothing without the addition of "to me". And yet we find ourselves in huge arguments over such statements when the available fact is unambiguous. Or insert an argument over which brand of truck is better. Without more information, the answer can only be personal.

BWE wrote:You are really not getting my point. If I say brunettes are cute than blonds, the fact is that I arrived at that conclusion. In fact there is no way to generalize the statement. The only possible fact in the statement is that I made that assessment. The statement "brunettes are cuter than blonds" actually means nothing without the addition of "to me". And yet we find ourselves in huge arguments over such statements when the available fact is unambiguous. Or insert an argument over which brand of truck is better. Without more information, the answer can only be personal.

Well, then it's no longer about your point, but whether or not I'm getting your point, which is supposed to imply that you're a genius and your point is a great one. How come it always ends up like this? You are merely claiming that you've said something with which no one can disagree and used an example that has nothing to do with belief in gods. You're only asking me to treat religious belief as an opinion. I really wouldn't mind if that's the result, but it didn't start out that way. It started out with the stupid question (yet again) in the thread title, and my irritation originates with that shit or that religious belief does not entail some failures of introspection, if not outright psychopathology.

Who knows, it could be like that or someone could decide to treat it that way given the inclination. Some opinions are apparently protected species, that is, "internal truths", without being anywhere near being on the endangered species list. Your point, if you knew what it was, would be that religious opinions are in no need of protection. You should just stick to the margarine example. Or slide off it, I don't give a fuck any more.

If you're explaining why I shouldn't bother trying to dissuade people from their opinions abut what a lack of belief entails, you needn't bother. Now I'm only making fun of lame opinions that claim I'm just not getting the point. Granted, some people can have furious arguments over whether blondes are cuter, or who should have been voted into Cooperstown this year, or whether LeBron really should have signed with the Lakers.

What you write almost makes sense to me but not quite. At this point I've lost the thread of the discussion. I was responding to fallible's suggestion that it was possible to merely have a lack of belief. My position on that is that it requires ignorance or stupor to simply lack a belief. That not believing in god requires rejecting the premise of god because you can't claim ignorance. That's my reasoning. Hers is different. My way makes sense to me and I, being as you so astutely pointed out, a genius of uncommon quality, feel strongly that my argument should convince everyone. However, it doesn't seem to have convinced fallible. That's ok. She probably feels the same way although I don't know about the genius part with her. But my point of the separated truths was minor and connected to whatever she had said to me. Now I don't know what we are talking about so ah well. But I'm sure it's deep.