jamest wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

DrWho wrote:I've said all I have to say and I haven't heard any substantial objection to my thesis.

This has a chance of being truthful. Of course, it could be uttered by anyone also busy saying "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEARRRR YOU!"

Did he really say that?! Why doesn't he realise that the objection to his own thesis IS his own thesis?

Because he's too fucking busy shouting "LA". Actually, not that. He thinks that because he has a thesis, that it's the truth. Sound familiar? We can always prove our own theses to ourselves. That's why I ask for a little spoon-bending. Sure the spoons could all be a sham, but then, every good woo-head knows that the finger is not the moon. Rhymes with 'spoon'. When you prove somebody else's conjecture, there's less suspicion of collusion. DrWho thinks he's proving Hume's conjecture. But we all get a shot at that, every one of us who is not the Hume of whom we speak. DrWho's thesis incorporates the idea that he's proving Hume's theses, but includes the idea that he's the only one who's up to it. Even Hume is not simply allowed to prove his own conjecture. That's the argument from authority. Ah hum.

jamest wrote:
Yeah, but I'm not daft enough to say that all claims are susceptible to doubt, except the claim that all claims are susceptible to doubt

Well, it's lately been pointed out in this very thread, by our very own SoS, that DrWho is there deploying the dysfunction of natural language in applying itself to itself. We get a lot of threads like that, where some wag discovers that chestnut, "I'm lying to you right now", "This statement is false". This isn't a problem in logic; it's the dysfunction of using natural language to work out semantics recursively.

When lobawad or piscator asks you to work through these puzzles with symbolic logic instead, it's because they've witnessed these failures as failures to recognise failure. Hence, the Dunning-Kruger effect.

DrWho has merely tried to work that little bit of fairy dust into a play on 'faith' and 'rationality'. The problem is that neither of these has a unique symbol in symbolic logic, at least the binary kind. Perhaps someone will design a logic with operators for 'faith' and 'hope' and 'charity'. I think we begin to suspect that DrWho defines 'the rational' as 'the not obviously nuts'. That it's a meaningless tautology so far escapes him, but since he got it from Crispin DeChips, and makes sense to him, it's a keeper. When SoS talks about his garden-variety 'faith', perhaps he just signifies the 'not obviously nuts' approach to not descending into radical doubt about that which he cannot prove by means of symbolic logic, and includes the 'not obviously nuts' tactic of accepting for the time being certain scientific findings even when he cannot perform the necessary experiments in his kitchen.

When it comes to deciding whether religious faith is or is not 'obviously nuts', I still think it's every man for himself. It seems like a radical step to conclude that amorphous woo is 'obviously nuts', and rather less radical to look crosseyed at someone who believes human life begins at conception purely because The Pope claims to believe it.

DrWho has discovered the propensity of careless language to produce apparent paradoxes. Without the tools of symbolic logic, this is looking to become the greatest monument to his own intellect that DrWho has ever erected. Beware of this shit. SoS will tell you that it is a lot like crack cocaine, which it is said can make you feel like a million bucks for a little while. Mind the spoons.

Take Dr. Who's thesis on it's face and consider Hume's statement "By this means, we may make a kind of merit of our very ignorance". The idea that our ideas about how things work are a result of a massive web of consistent experience and reasoning on nothing but that experience is not all that unpalatable. We reason ON experience we do not reason to support experience.

If you take the massive web and other considerations like how ridiculous it would be for us to think we could exist without the consistency and relabel that thing 'faith' you end up as Dr. Who. You also end up closer to my definition of faith as a massive statistical mandate, insane to think otherwise.

Myself and many others here however, were suspicious of the forum malady of the other shoe dropping. There was some evidence of this in talk about YEC's and some other things.

It seems to me that we are quibbling over our individual feelings about the word faith and maybe about whether or not our knowledge is based on experience or reason alone. I don't see how reason alone could ever get started without experience.

SpeedOfSound wrote:You also end up closer to my definition of faith as a massive statistical mandate, insane to think otherwise.

You want to apply a statistical mandate to The Big Question Of Life, The Universe, And Everything?

The question, of course, is optional, making the answer to it something less necessary than the question. But, faith is there for those who find the answer a 'necessary' one. To show me it is necessary, reveal the spoon! To the moon in June.

SpeedOfSound wrote:T
It seems to me that we are quibbling over our individual feelings about the word faith and maybe about whether or not our knowledge is based on experience or reason alone. I don't see how reason alone could ever get started without experience.

Me, quibble? MOI?

Cito di Pense wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:You also end up closer to my definition of faith as a massive statistical mandate, insane to think otherwise.

You want to apply a statistical mandate to The Big Question Of Life, The Universe, And Everything?

The question, of course, is optional, making the answer to it something less necessary than the question. But, faith is there for those who find the answer a 'necessary' one. To show me it is necessary, reveal the spoon! To the moon in June.

Why would it be necessary? Who said that?

SpeedOfSound wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:You also end up closer to my definition of faith as a massive statistical mandate, insane to think otherwise.

You want to apply a statistical mandate to The Big Question Of Life, The Universe, And Everything?

The question, of course, is optional, making the answer to it something less necessary than the question. But, faith is there for those who find the answer a 'necessary' one. To show me it is necessary, reveal the spoon! To the moon in June.

Why would it be necessary? Who said that?

He did? Why's at short and Who's on Third. I Don't Know is batting cleanup.

To anyone interested in the 'status of faith' I say: It's a political football. Do not mistake it for philosophy, fellow moonspoons.

If you think it is 'more' than a political football, now's the time to fess up. More. We want 'more'. I just watched the original Roger Corman version of "The Little Shop of Horrors" last night. Audrey Junior says: "Moorrrrrrre. I wannnnnt Morrrrrrre! Give me foooooooooooood!"

Wasn't really original. It was a restored B&W print with a colorised version added for marketing purposes.

I have an idea that will make everyone happy! Let's call it god instead of faith?

SpeedOfSound wrote:I have an idea that will make everyone happy! Let's call it god instead of faith?

Why can't we call it "Bork"? Sound too much like a failed candidate for Justice of SCOTUS? OK, call it "flabigongle".

The story of the Tower of Babel is an important human myth, and helps reveal a path to post-structuralism.

I'm going with bork with a little B.

SpeedOfSound wrote:I'm going with bork with a little B.

So. You are definitely a monosyllabicist (see also: monotheist) as opposed to being a polysyllabicist (see also: polytheist).

Just to state my bona fides, I will go with 'flabigongle'. E pluribus unicorn. E Clampus Vitus.

Cito di Pense wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:I'm going with bork with a little B.

So. You are definitely a monosyllabicist (see also: monotheist) as opposed to being a polysyllabicist (see also: polytheist).

Just to state my bona fides, I will go with 'flabigongle'. E pluribus unicorn. E Clampus Vitus.

God Damn It! Can't we just all get along?