Returning to Houellebecq, it is fascinating to see the decline of one of France's greatest traditions - a shared respect and deference across the political spectrum for public intellectuals and figures of artistic merit
One can say that this is in fact RETVRN to the age old first republic tradition of silencing and executing journalists: either by censorship, guillotine or assassination with famous examples like Jacques Hébert, Camille Desmoulins or even Jean-Paul Marat. And it was not only First Republic, there was prosecution later be it in form of Bonapartists persecuted during white terror after Napoleonic wars, or "radicals" going against morals of Second Empire like Baudelaire or Flaubert and many, many others since the First Republic. In fact if you name anybody of import in French literature he was prosecuted, exiled or threatened: be it leftists like Victor Hugo, Émile Zola or rightists like Charles Maurras or fascist Robert Brasillach or even people opposing Algerian War during fourth republic - imprisoned and tortured like Henri Alleg.
There was never any deference and respect to anything opposing the French state, at best it was fear and need for control - which includes manipulation of history to create national heroes and villains during ideological shifts. France rabidly promoted their secular state religion with bloody power struggle over the narrative of what this religion should entail. Any idea of how it was some supposed softspoken liberal paradise, where everybody sang kumbaya, and where intellectuals were free to post their little pamphlets that were conveniently in line with secular republican state myth is absolute fantasy and propaganda of the very same state and ideology. Just during a few years of first republic under reign of terror there were more people executed than over 5 centuries of witch trials, Inquisition and heresy trials. And we are not even counting massacres such as infernal columns punishing Vendée uprising.
I am really baffled by this response. Why on earth would anybody think that modern France at least since 1794 is some cradle of "live and let live" hippie utopia? There are atrocities, political executions, assassinations and mass injustice every other decade for last 250 years. And it is a feature and not a bug of this strict secular state religion "republican" theocracy. It really is baffling to me.
georgioz
7hr ago
The second affair doesn't add any new information. We already knew (from the first affair) what kind of person he is
No we did not. They knew each other since early 1980s, his wife was an engineer sticking with him throughout majority of his life. And also this is how she looks like now, age 65. It was plausible that he just has some marital problem and seeks a new relationship, being serial womanizer was possible but not certain.
Well, fuck, I guess philosophy is pointless if we can't possibly make any statements about reality because we can't prove we're not living in a simulation.
I find this hilarious as this is exactly point of my debate - you can't possibly make any statements about reality without solid grounds, for me existence of God. But that is neither here nor there. For me it is interesting that you at the same time disparage philosophy but also talk about "reality". Nature of reality is the subject of examination of ontology. What is reality, what is existence, how and why do things exist "in reality"?
What do you mean by reality are those things that you experience? Is there some gradation: e.g. if you experience abstract concepts such as numbers - are they existing in the same way as trees? If not, what is a difference? Is reality only things that you yourself experience, or are other things also real - like one of many worlds that some physicist claim that they exist?
That is what I criticize. People constantly make assertions such as "numbers do not exist in reality", or that "all that exists is some universal wavefunction in Hilbert space". These are some quite outrageous claims about existence itself, don't you think?
No, that's not what I'm saying. There is some probability that Cartesian-Daemon shenanigans are occurring. There's just obviously no point in discussing that scenario or even contemplating it, so we might as well act as if they're not.
What does it mean obviously and no point? You are smuggling some new concepts, are we supposed to decide what is true and worthy to pursue by obviousness and having point? Whatever it is, it is your presupposition even in this naive and unexamined form. Can I say that Cartersia Demon obviously exists and thus there is no point having discussion, ending in some post-modern nihilism? If not why - from inside of your paradigm. How do you account for obviousness and meaning of "there being a point"?
Do you assume that everything is obvious to everybody and that the universe has a point and meaning and telos? Why? My paradigm of God accounts for such a thing: God is a person, he created the universe with a divine purpose. Humans were created in an image of God, they possess rational capacity to understand Gods plan and thus discussion is fruitful as it can arrive at this meaning, it is having a point. I am waiting for your paradigm to prove the same.
I have not found you explaining what this is.
Sure, I can present it here in this context as there are more transcendental arguments for God, including Kantian one. I mean it in this sense.
Premise 1 (Transcendental Precondition): Human experience, rational thought, logic, and objective morality are only intelligible if certain universal, unchanging, and immaterial truths exist.
Premise 2 (Worldview Comparison): Non-Christian worldviews (such as materialism, atheism, or polytheism) cannot account for these universal truths without borrowing from a Christian framework or falling into self-contradiction.
Premise 3 (The Christian Foundation): The Christian worldview—specifically the Triune God who is unchanging, immaterial, and the creator of an orderly universe—provides the necessary foundation for logic, science, and ethics.
Conclusion: Therefore, the Christian God must exist because without Him, you could not prove, know, or argue anything at all.
German wikipedia says this is a trivial modus tollens argument
Modus toles is a valid form of argument used all the time, what do you mean. Also it is far from trivial, Quines paper two dogmas of Empiricism is highly respected as correct, in fact it is why naive empiricism and other secular humanists completely gave up any notion of metaphysics and to large extend epistemology and ethics and why they are obsessed with ersatz topics such as phenomenology.
I just don't see 100% as a right, whereas it seems you do. So it's not concerning to me if I am only 99% sure about any belief that I have. I can operate on 99%s, and I don't find that invalid.
Yeah, it is just arbitrary assertion. I can declare that I have 1/(1-Googol) probability that my assertion of any claim is correct and just claim it as practically THE TRUTH. No amount of Bayesian updates I can reasonably make during my lifetime will move the needle. But technically I am still rationalist or whatever. It is just smokescreen for assertion, just with extra bells and whistles.
"German wikipedia says this is a trivial modus tollens argument. In real life we use Baye's and not modus tollens; a negative result will update the probability of each event in the chain to be lower. It will also let you rule out the entire chain. Generally experiments try to isolate variables; that means the chain is small or singular, so his argument furthermore does not apply."
No Bayesian update can let you rule out entire chain. There may be invalid moves where some probability assertion will clash with some downstream probability. E.g. you can say that you are 99% sure that you have fake coin with two heads, which would make assertion of flipping tails as 50% invalid. These inconsistencies only increase in complexity which makes these whole rationalist project very dubious, but also extraordinarily fragile to actual internal critique when examining these presuppositions.
Is your point that, if you assume you have the right to certainty, then you can deduce this
No, it is the other way around. Any certainty - even 99.9% - requires belief in presuppositions. How did you arrive to this number, why do you think it is sound? This is meta-level discussion about soundness of presuppositions, their consistency and explanatory power. Also the claim is that EVERYBODY assumes right to certainity, even you with your assertions of 99%. Are you certain it is 99% and not 0.1%? What gave you a right to do it?
The humanist project starts with fallible, limited, bounded human and it pretends access to these universal claims such as "I have 99% certainty to X". It is contradictory within itself as presuppositional paradigm. How can you claim that? Can anybody assert anything? Can I say I am 99.99% certain that God exists? If not, why?
georgioz
1d ago
"How does your framework deal with this? It seems like it demands a verbal justification and rejects other justifications."
Exactly. My frameowrk is that I accept that all metaphysics is circular and has to be self-referential. As you described above, you just ground your metaphysics on concept like "intuition" or "observational evidence". The problem is paradigmatical.
In your metaphysics, I guess you probably believe that you are fallible. So your paradigm is built on shaky and faulty grounds - it is inside your paradigm that you can be incorrect. I have a paradigm where the truth is grounded outside of myself, in personal, omniscient, benevolent and omnipotent and omnipresent God. You can object that it is also just my assertion and presupposition. However they are not equal as my paradigm has grounding that is very firm by that very entity. All logic and math are abstract concept that exist in Divine mind. The God has personal relationship and plan for creation, therefore universe has purpose, telos and meaning. God is omniscient and he lets us to know him through Divine Revelation and by using of our created natural faculties because he created the world as knowable by our rational thinking. He also gave us laws and he is the ultimate yardstick when it comes to what is bad and what is good, thus grounding ethics.
I have my asserted presupposition, and God paradigm. However that one is very powerful as it creates firm grounding that is outside of my own mind in this God entity. I can say things such as "this is good" without relying on my intuition. In fact I can judge my own intuition according to such a yardstick, thus having the ability to prove me wrong.
"1 - .99999999.... does not bother me. I also belief, justifiably, we can't do better for empirical beliefs. "
That is huge misconception. You have some idea of "cosmic truth" that Bayesian reasoning converges into. However as Quine shown in his Duhem-Quine thesis, empirical evidence is in line with infinite number of explanations and theories, where infinite numbers of them are mutually exclusive. You just use your fallible "intuition" to select a theory and then overfit data to confirm it. And then declare that you are "99% sure". It is absolutely invalid move, you do not have any access to underlying reality driving your sensory experience and you cannot say if you are 99% close to THE TRUTH or if you are converging to THE FALSE.
"You need assumption #1 because if there is such fuckery, then it fatally undermines any attempt to search for philosophical truths, so what's the point?"
Exactly. Now you embraced the basic presuppositional argument. X is necessary for Y. I assert Y. Therefore X exists. In this argument you posit that debate is meaningless if stable reality does not exist and if it is fucked up by Carthesian demons and similar stuff. I assert that meaningful debate exists. Therefore meaningful and stable reality exists, and no Carthesian demon shenanigans are real.
But observe yourself. This is pure presuppositional argument outside of any empirical or scientifical evidence as Carthesian Demon is equally consistent with empirical and scientific evidence. It is all the matter of your presupposition as Carthesian demon cannot be disproved by any number of evidence and empirical experience. You just have to accept it on blind faith.
Now we can enter into a meta-level discussion that I wanted to have with @stoatherd. The meta level discussion is as follows:
- We all have metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions
- However not all presuppositions are created equal. Some have explanatory power over epistemology and metaphysics that can give better account. They can provide grounding and justification for empirical observations.
I'd argue that Transcendental Argument for God is a very strong presuppositional position, that enables me to have access to stable reality and metaphysics, coherent ethics, grounded epistemology and possibility of math, logic and everything else. Personal God also grounds teleology and purpose and meaning of not only debate but the whole universe.
That is all.
georgioz
2d ago
It's easy to answer why Type A things exist: because of the laws of physics acting on the prior state of the universe.
It is not easy and definitely not an explanation. You just assert: "Laws of physics exist". It is a presupposition. What are these laws, why do they exist and how do they exist? Moreover how do you know that they exist? Are they uniform or do they break sometimes? Are they omnipresent and unchanging and eternal? On its own this is an outrageous statement on par of saying that "God exists".
They aren't. I verify my username by repeated observation and evidence. This is the same process I use to verify 2+2=4.
You said that you are empiricist. You know, that no amount of evidence can prove a thing. That is the core observation of Quines Undeterminism of scientific theory. There are number of alternative theories that can explain things. This is rooted in age old sceptical tradition from Hume and Descartes. Maybe you are suffering from schizoid mental illness, or there is Carthesian Demon feeding you false information and you falsely think that you are stoatherd. Moreover you filter which evidence to examine and accept into your web of beliefs as any other schizoid person who sees everything as a proof for his own personal conspiracy theory.
Observation and testing. They are better because they work. I'm fine with that not being considered "justification"; I'll just enjoy my beliefs working.
Okay so I can say that God and unicorns work for me and thus they exist. Or you may object and have some outside criterion on what is "useful" and what "works" means. Then I would challenge you to either state that dogmatic yardstick, or ground it in pragmatism itself.
I find it interesting how popular are these claims. Drake equation is right in line with other presuppositional arguments like Simulation Theorem, Multiverse theory or any number of anthropic principle arguments. You just claim your presuppositions to assert some prior probability(ies) and then speculate about results using logic and scientifically sounding arguments.
I'm frustrated because I did actually put effort into trying to make the conversation go somewhere useful. Yes, I could've (and should've) been less condescending. But if I'm going to be told I'm behaving terribly, regardless of how much effort or heat or aggression each person is putting in, it all just feels a bit pointless.
Sure, I am willing to go there and just restate the useful discussion. Please just explain your position again, I will do the same in the following positions:
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Everybody including secular materialists, Bayesian Big Yud rationalists, relativists and everybody else engages in presuppositions.
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All my arguments were asking for philosophical justification of beliefs. I was specifically arguing against the naive "math is self-evident" argument that you presented, which turned the argument to "it is evident to me" as opposed to found that argument on something. I was using internal critique to find your foundation of why you believe the assertions that you make.
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This ties to ability of anybody to make universal claims. I specifically wanted to use internal critique if your position. Is it mathematical realism in the vein of Gödel, Kantor, Penrose or Tegmark? Or is it nominalist in the vein of philosopher Harty Field or earlier Quine (who later became mathematical realist) or even Hilbert with his formalism or weird blend of mathematical anti-realism like Yudkowsky or Joscha Bach? We could never go there in our discussion, because I was not able to relate what universal claim is, how Hume or Descartes tried to wrestle with it.
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Which leads me to the topics that we had. Asserting that 2+2 equals 4 is just lower level assertion. Again, there needs to be justification for it let's say in terms of "Justified True Belief" standard or some other standard such as nominalism, which is inherently relative. Again, these are not some stupid ideas that georgioz on The Motte said, they were discussed between top philosophers - including modern philosophers of science and Math like Kantor for centuries.
I had constant whiplash where you demanded plain English but at the same time claimed to have knowledge of Gödel and his proofs sufficient to understand it.
Anyways, I challenge you again - what is your underlying presupposition, your metaphysics, epistemology and to lesser extent ethics:
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What is the nature of reality, visible (e.g. matter, energy, planets, galaxies) and invisible (math, logic, abstract concepts). How do they exist? Why do they exist?. It takes more then a baby eating alien Yuskowsky story, or just claiming - "here, I wrote number 2 on paper as an example of existence of numbers". This is the purview of ontology. As long as you say "standard numbers exist", there is a question of "how they exist" or "why they exist". And this is not just some word game. There are 150 IQ people who disagree about nature of these things. If they can have disagreements, why cannot we rehash these modern debates here?
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The nature of epistemology. What is knowledge, what is "Truth" and how can we justify something as true vs not-true. Be it My name is stoatherd and I know it to 2+2=4 to all there exists is just matter and energy. These are all dogmatic claims, that need to have some justifications. Secular atheists make fun of let's say Christians that they believe in made-up unjustified entities such as God or Angels or whatnot. Now the ball is in your court, how do you justify your beliefs and how and why are they better? Why and how do you posses the knowledge of the Truth and everything else?
Also I do not like ad hominess and other rhetorical tactics, but I will meet you where you are at. I also claim that this specific game is asymmetrical but from secularist point of view. It is considered a standard argument to say that "HAHAHA, stupid Christians believe in unproven and unjustified fairy-tales". Only to then act all indignant when in turn somebody asks them about their fairy tale cosmology and empiricist dogmas that one should take on face value. If you show basic philosophical respect, then I will show the same back.
I am not a subjectivist, I have Bayes, logic, and evidence (priors wash out under sufficient amounts of the latter). Read again:
So you have belief in Bayes, logic and evidence (empiricism). I give you that at least that you mark it as belief. However it is not justified - by its own admission. Bayes claims you can never possess the Truth - you just converge to some pragmatical result, which by itself also does not provide for the truth. Quine correctly called it as undetermination of scientific theory. It is impossible to converge to anything under strict empiricism and Bayesianism, each empirical evidence opens untold myriads of new "truths".
I have no interest in lowering myself to this. I will not produce that writing, I do not need to write pointless words, I will not cite Gödel, I will not cite Quine, I do not care for them, their work is useless to me. I have no interest in academic (philo)sophistry « justification ».
Sure, which is what I described as "willful ignorance before". Which is absolutely hilarious - at the same time people like this can utter some very stern and ultimate statements such as "I have belief in Bayes, logic and empiricism" but at the same time refuse any discussion. It is hilariously exactly in line of Quines two dogmas of empricism that are presuppositional and cannot be verified neither by Bayesianism nor by Empiricism. Moreover, this ideology does not even provide for any possibility of a thing such as the "Truth" that they are so proud of declaring. It is insane.
Just to flesh it out, Bayesian theorem requires presuppositions to generate likelihood. From the top of my head, radical skeptics such as Hume or Descartes or even physicists created concepts like Carthesian Demon or Bolzman brains, which completely skew the likelihood function. No amount of empirical data can shift the posterior - you are completely relying on your arbitrary presuppositions. In that sense how are you more justified? That is why Hume and Quinne are so devastating, they completely ended secular/emprical metaphysis and why philosophers moved over to stuff like phenomenology. It is interesting how the same zombie ideas about explanatory power of empiricism pop up again and again without realization of how bankrupt the whole thing is when it comes to paradigmatical thinking and grounding ones worldview in philosophical basics: metaphysics, epistemology and ethics.
Seems you have heard my attitude before, maybe when someone wrongly interprets his « ontological proof » ? (I have heard it said it debunks science. Wow.)
I used it as an ANALOGY of somebody taking things for granted from another paradigm for which he has not the same foundation. But I can use another analogy - imagine Newtonian who who denies Einstein Theory of relativity but he borrows that vocabulary to describe black holes. And who thinks it is absolutely normal, just citing things that "everybody knows" etc. That was my analogy.
I find Godel's proof interesting because it actually tackles the topic of existence of abstract entities, so that discussion is not turned into if Newton or Einstein is "true" empirically.
The ordinary everyday meaning. This isn't complicated. By "works", I mean: "If you use 2+2=4 when measuring out ingredients for a dish, you'll get the right proportions. If you use 2+2=4 when designing a plane, you'll get a plane that flies. If you use 2+2=4 when figuring out how much change to give a customer, you'll give them the correct amount of change".
This is just pragmatic argument. But again, did you ever try to ask question of why this is the case? The so called The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics? There is no easy answer to this. Many people are just saying "math works", which is their presupposition, a bling belief in the "Truth" of math. But it is still unreasonable, do you have any explanation of why is that and how math works? Otherwise it is just case of blind belief, something akin to Pythagorean cult.
This is obviously entirely different to the way you used "works" in your facetious unicorn analogy, where you mean something like "telling this story accomplishes my goals".
How is it different? I use something, it accomplishes my goals which is the way of how I decide what is true or not. Again, if this is not the case then tell me your epistemological principle and how you decide what is truth.
Yes. Your English is poor. I assume your native language is something Eastern European (judging by how often you omit articles). While I recognise it's a feat to discuss complicated things in your second language, you could maybe have a bit more humility concerning whether the communication issue might be on your end.
Thank you for your ad hominem. At least I know how to read wiki page of Gödel's ontological proof.
It is unusual to describe "the abstract concept of numbers" as concrete, given that "abstract" and "concrete" are pretty close to antonyms.
Yes, for somebody discussing in bad faith. It is absolutely common to use the word "concrete" in realm of abstraction. For instance things like "present a concrete proof" or "give me a concrete example of an odd number". Is this a novel linguistic lesson from Eastern European for you?
Numbers are elements within particular mathematical models. Numbers are things like 5, 2.45, and 1,000.
Oh, numbers are "elements". Okay. Unicorns are elements. They are things like Pinkie Pie or Fluttershy. Again, what are the numbers, why are they and how are they. Going in epicycles and naming numbers as "concepts" or "elements" and giving examples is not enough. Or we can also play this game - God is an all powerful being and as an example he consists of three persons in a Godhead - Father, Son and The Holy Spirit. It is my assertion. Please accept it just because I said it.
You seem confused. Numbers are abstract concepts. They aren't like apples or horses; they're not in a location. That's like asking "where is justice existing?"
So how do numbers exist? They do exist without location, they are omnipresent. Wow, we are getting into quite supernatural territory here, numbers are omnipresent and posses one of the godly attribute. How do you know this is the case? Did you directly tap with your senses into number axis and felt all the numbers in their infinitude? How can empiricist prove existence of abstract concept such as numbers in the first place?
But you said you were giving me a simple-word explanation of your analogy, and used the phrase "modal collapse". You're under no obligation to give me a simple-word explanation, but if you pretend to be giving me one while using nonsense phrases, I'm going to point it out.
You said yourself that you are well versed with Godels ontological proof and related concepts. I gave you wiki page for the proof as well as for the modal collapse. I do not have to continue with this, just argue with wiki page that is written in plain English and then give me further questions. Also I hope that you remember that I used it as an analogy.
georgioz
2d ago
As a theist myself, theism does not solve this problem and on naturalism/materialism/physicalism you do have a basic accounting of this within space-time. For anything to exist logically it has to exist at a place within space and time.
See, you presuppose existence of logic. You wield its power - but how and why does the logic or by extension math exist? Is math also existing in space and time, adding new numbers or laws of logic as underlying matter evolves? Imagine a space where there is only one physical particle. Does it embody the number "two"? If yes or if not how and why?
This is what I hammer all the time. How can you claim access to logic without grounding? It is the true presuppositional argument - logic and math exists. Because I use it. But you can use all kind of things, does it mean that inside of a paradigm anything that can be "used" exists? Again, how and why it exists. And not in first-order way how child asks, but paradigmatically.
Once we get to the universe itself, things are simpler to grasp. Everything that exists is a physical, complex arrangement of matter and energy in space-time.
Okay, this seems like a very strong claim. What is the grounding for that? You are a finite person who does not have access to things like "everything". Why do you believe this? This was the point of Hume and Quine - there is no grounding for such a strong claim.
The most cutting edge of science vindicates this claim and all theories across every branch of science are all converging on that same conclusion
No, this is scientism. Science is just a method - a method which explicitly denies access to universal statements and truth as all "truths" are provisional. What you claim is absolutely unscientific, I can tell you right now: give me falsifiable criteria to the claim "all theories across every branch of science are all converging on that same conclusion". This claim itself is not scientific, it is a theological claim of belief.
The best “first cause” explanations we have in science still belong to multiverse theories. The two that have the most empirical weight and evidence behind them are chaotic inflation and Smolin selection theory.
These are pure unfalsifiable fairy tales. They rely on belief in "truth" of some presuppositions. These supposedly scientific multiverse theories are at best bunch of speculative cosmological philosophy and at worst just made up things build on unstable grounds. There is nothing scientific about them. You cannot ground them on science, because again science is just a method. It is akin to recipe for bread, it has no philosophical grounding.
Exactly. One can reasonably argue about merits or demerits of these laws in vacuum. However in practice the UK is already anarchotyranical banana republic government, where the law is applied selectively based on tribal, ideological or personal beliefs and connections. Just conisder refusal to prosecute already exiting laws during massive physical and provable mass rape scandals such as those in Rotherham. If police does not have capacity to prosecute thes things, why on earth do they have a need to expand areas of ineffectiveness over to prosecution of virtual crimes?
But this is not coming out of the blue. There are law abiding citizens with scewdriver arrested in Hull under draconian knife laws, while of course there are marauding gangs hacking each other with machetes openly on the street during daylight in Southend-on-Sea.
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