Engaging Mormon Apologetics

[_MCB]

mfb:

I have observed your apologetics activities over the past few years, and I find that your arguments are progressively getting weaker and weaker. Your only argument now is "subjective reality," a.k.a. "Whatever I believe, is." WTH??? You are an intelligent person, and this is beneath a person of your ability.

[_MrStakhanovite]

You forgot to add Bertrand Russell to that list. And I still don't understand what you want me to type in order to satisfy you.

Well it started with your finely crafted and well thought out introduction to this thread:

As we understand it in both our systems of calculus and language the answer is yes.

Is a rose really molecules or fragrance?

It just depends on what the use is and in what context. Things become true within the systems of their use. There is no ultimate logical foundation or calculus to be derived from some external reality.

The lab has different ways in which it will break down a rose so that it will become useful to its purposes (which are human purposes).

The rose beauty contest has different ways in which it will break down a rose so that it will become useful to its purposes (which are human purposes).


Finding some kind of peace in saying at least there is logic "out there" in the world "outside of human beings" is the kind of justification a bed wetter skeptic finds comfort in.

Now, your post here doesn't even follow, but I let you off the hook for that, because I suspected you were a drive by. Notice the bold portion, anyone who makes that kind of overly confident and dismissive remark must obviously be very familiar with all the various arguments for and against abstract! I like your nice little weasel phrases you put in there too.

Since I'm dealing with someone who knows their stuff, let's start things off with something basic:

There is never a case where 1+1=2 is false. It's true in all possible worlds. The notation is cultural, the concepts it represents is not.

No one who really studies these kinds of things is going to disagree with this. You shouldn't either since...

I really don't get where you are going with this.

1+1 = 2 is the exact same thing as saying 2 = 2 or : = :

Facsimile 3 is Facsimile 3

... You recognized it as a tautology. They are true by the virtue of themselves and don't need any additional information or work for proof. Then you hit me with this zinger:

There is totally a case where 1 + 1 = 2 is not true and that is when you ask true or false with those symbols to a person unfamiliar with Arabic numbers.

Yes! The second another a person unfamiliar with Arabic numbers see's the equation, it is rendered false! I've sent an e-mail to Andrew Wiles to let him know that his proof for Fermat's last theorem is no longer any good because no more than maybe a hundred people in the world understand it.

But of course, being the charitable guy that I am, I don't launch into mocking you for making such a sloppy statement on a topic you should know something about, given the confidence of your opening remarks...

You are still hung up on notation.

What you are telling me that 1 + 1 = 2 is not true by necceisty, but by mental convention. That is not the case.

So I point out the obvious, thinking you may have misunderstood the question, but BEHOLD:

Dude, the number 1 is a symbol. These words are a phrase and a complete sentence.

They mean nothing outside of a culture that uses them.

If I see two rocks and affirm to my friend (of the same culture) that I see two rocks and my friend affirms back to me that I am correct, we are doing the same thing.

So you are repeating the same mistake, and are unaware of it. At this point, there isn't any reason for me to explain it further because...

Math is just a linguistic definition. What I mean by 1+1=2. Of course it is always true. A always = A. As long as A doesn't change, that is.

...Gee golly whiz! MFB was able to see the implicit question I was asking that I had to clearly spell out to you here:

I'm asking for truth making properties and you keep telling me that it's relative to culture. Surely you don't think that we make our own truths, do you?

To wit:

I'm at a loss here. I just don't agree that 1+1=2 means anything outside of human culture.

Let me help you. Had you bothered to actually read the thread instead of jumping into the middle of a conversation (I know, I'm asking too much, you just want to go from zero to snide right?), you'd have seen where I laid out a Correspondence Theory of Truth, where I maintain that what makes a sentence or statement true, is it's correspondence to an external reality.

1+1=2 is a mathematical notation that represents abstract concepts. There isn't a physical "one" or "1" lying around that we can point to. Writing it out on a chalkboard and showing it to a chimp doesn't render the concepts false or relative, it just means the Chimp isn't aware of the concepts the notation is trying to correspond with.

I know reading a written conversation before jumping into it seems like a strange practice to you, but if hypothetically you did, you'd also see where I talk about the futility of assailing what no one believes. Notice this:

Math is not floating out there in the ultimate realm of an ideal, fixed reality.

You totally impaled that straw man on your lance. Because the idea of a "floating" Math in a platonic heaven was totally advocated...

They are abstractions, just like numbers. They exist, but not in a temporal or spatial fashion.

...or not.

[_MrStakhanovite]

I don't know what it is, but is there some kind of circle of pragmatics over at MAD or something?

I don't believe the Church ascribes to an ultimate reality in the way that has been presented here...

Stop. Point me to a post that advocates a Kantian things-as-they-are reality. Or are you going to confuse an external reality with ultimate reality? Are you naïve about this, or do you just want to misrepresent people?

The Church is not true for the individual until he or she prays to know. The principle the Church is teaching is not true until the person lives it and receives the confirmation. Truth coincides with our development as individuals and as cultures of humans. And the circumstances are always changing. Truth as MFB has said, is dependent on propositions.

How do you discern truth from ideology?



I'm having a hard time trying to see the difference between Facsimile 3's behavior and Ed Decker's. Why is this?

[_MrStakhanovite]

Did I miss something?

Nope, wasn't aimed at you.

We'll have to get into it sometime. What is a "concept" and how is it represented?

We will.

[_MrStakhanovite]

I have observed your apologetics activities over the past few years, and I find that your arguments are progressively getting weaker and weaker. Your only argument now is "subjective reality," a.k.a. "Whatever I believe, is." WTH??? You are an intelligent person, and this is beneath a person of your ability.

MFB is not a subjectivist or a relativist really. I think he takes after John Dewey in standing between the more opposing extremes of James and Pierce. I also think MFB is more of an empiricist than almost everyone here. These are the intentions MFB came with on this thread:

The key for both groups is I think the idea of reaching the highest potential of mankind- actually defined similarly in both thought systems.

He's not here to prove the Church true, he's here to discuss ideas in the hopes of reaching some kind of consensus so a Secular thinker and a Mormon thinker can have the same goals and not be in opposition.

[_EAllusion]

But I'm not invoking God.

Sure. I was simply replying to the notion of "planting the flag of morality" in God.

Think of the numerous cosmological arguments that point to all the contingency data and posits an explanation for that data (God). I take the same path but instead of positing a morally perfect neccesary God, I'm positing an infinite amount of neccesary abstracta to account for the data, in the same manner that a infinite amount of numbers account for mathematical truths.

I have a reply for this on two levels. The first is that I think insofar as you resolve a problem like the contingency of the universe (assuming it is contingent) in the brute fact nature of God that goes ahead and causes the universe, I think you can do the same by positing that brute fact property as part of the universe qua the aggregate of all things. In fact, the latter is more parsimonious by virtue of not positing a uber-mind on top of something we already know exists. Theistic justification has a long history of proposing a problem, arguing God solves it by his fiat definition of solving that problem, then refusing to account for God. Those kind of arguments can have the middle-man cut out by simply modifying our fiat definition of the world. You don't need a magical god when you can make the universe magic.

However, on the second level, I don't recommend resolving those issues by positing them as brute facts. In of itself, it's trivial and unhelpful. You could do the same with anything. I do think certain ideas can be regarded as brute facts. I think anything necessary to make rationality coherent can be assumed true, for instance. I don't think moral properties count as such. I don't see how we can be justified in believing mind-independent, non-causal, non-natural moral properties. How do we have epistemic access to this moral noumena? I don't think the mere fact we have a moral intuition is enough. But as it happens, I think our moral intuition loosely aims at facts about the natural world.

[_Gadianton]

I don't know what it is, but is there some kind of circle of pragmatics over at MAD or something?

Indeed there is. It won't make a lot of sense to you now, but while DCP is the leader of Mopologetics and more or less a fundamentalist Christian theologically, almost every other apologist is a radical skeptic.

[_MCB]

MFB is not a subjectivist or a relativist really. I think he takes after John Dewey in standing between the more opposing extremes of James and Pierce. I also think MFB is more of an empiricist than almost everyone here. These are the intentions MFB came with on this thread:

He's not here to prove the Church true, he's here to discuss ideas in the hopes of reaching some kind of consensus so a Secular thinker and a Mormon thinker can have the same goals and not be in opposition.

Thank you for your clarification. I don't understand all this hi'falutin' filosoficel lenguge. Why doesn't he just come out and say, "I no longer believe that the Book of Mormon is true. The LDS faith is a fraud, but a good fraud, because its social structure is comfortable, and staying in it is to my advantage." Seems really simple to say, and doesn't require a bunch of big words.

[_MsJack]

I'm having a hard time trying to see the difference between Facsimile 3's behavior and Ed Decker's. Why is this?

Actually, Ed Decker came by and left some comments on my blog a few months ago. I verified via e-mail that it was the real deal. Even though I lost no time calling him "hypercritical, sensationalist and dishonest" in public, he didn't take it personally and was friendly to me and extremely polite.

Just something to keep in mind when accusing anyone of behaving like Ed Decker . . .

[_Gadianton]

He also visited Z once and was very nice to everyone, I gave him a hearty welcome. Of course, the apologists had a meltdown over it and drove him off.