Controlling your thoughts, or being controlled by them.

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Which is why I'm not giving you too terrible a time about it. I know you don't actually believe that "Nothing can be known for certain." As an example, I could, as I have in the past, ask you whether with any degree of certainty that you exist, or even if you "think" you might exist--possibly. You might think it's a loaded question, or it's a trap. It's neither, actually. The trap is in the self-refuting statement that YOU made, not a statement that I made, nor any other clever mental/logical trick I can think of--since I'm not really that clever.

If you say that you DO exist, that's ONE thing that you DO know for certain. It would be absurd to maintain that nothing can be certainly known because you certainly know you exist.

If you say that you don't know with ANY degree of certainty that you exist, then you might as well call the men in the white coats to come over for a visit. I can't imagine that, if I were in your place, that I'd find it very pleasant to live with uncertainty as to my own existence.

So unless you give an answer either way, the only reasonable conclusion I can make is your statement that "nothing can be known for sure" is not something, on its own, that you actually believe and practice in your own life and in your own thinking.

Now, I agree with the other points you made, that it is more a matter of HOW to know. There are obvious reasons why the sun WOULDN'T appear in the morning--a well-timed eclipse, or more often a cloudy day. But I CAN say for certain that there is a sun at all. I CAN say with certainty that there is such a force as gravity. I CAN say with certainty that I have emotions. I mean, there ARE absolutes. There IS an objective, physical reality in which we are all participants, regardless of our various points of view. We do have a large degree of certainty that all our senses are at least similar and are reliable, else we wouldn't be reading each other's posts on this forum. If it doesn't exist, what am I posting on?

We can be certain that there IS such a thing as an "existence."

In response to AG: No, I got it right the first time. When I said "nothing can be known" I was referring to the entire sentence, not just "nothing can be known." Perhaps I was in error for failing to include ellipses. But I stand by what I said. Making the assertion that "Nothing is ever known for sure" IS self-refuting by it's very nature: The speaker is asserting something he claims to know, which is the opposite of what has been said. I may not be as well-disciplined in logic as others may be, but even I can spot that one. I'm surprised that even you'd let something that absurd get by.

Actually, interestingly enough, I've entertained the idea of doubting that. Think about it, the idea that a thinker is needed for that thinker to think a thought, is at best logical, but who can actually verify that logic holds? If logic doesn't necessarily hold, then why is it true that I necessarily exist? Any argument that could be constructed would have to use logic.


Who knows?


How do you know that there is a sun? You could just be a brain in a vat. You could be on the Truman Show. How do you know that there is a such force as gravity? Perhaps it is just force as a result of the acceleration of the earth. As for emotions, perhaps the term really is used to refer to what other people feel, and they share those feelings, but you really feel that way at all? How do you know there are absolutes? How do you know that we actually exist, or that reality is objective, or even that it is physical? Is a "large degree of certainty" the same as being sure for your senses? Why should I be able to tell you what you are posting on?

I mean, as it stands, I really doubt that you actually know or could counter any argument in favor of skepticism, and at best you'll appeal back to the web of your experiences, but this won't prove anything. After all, to my comment about the Earth, you might reply something about "the Earth is not flat"


Prove it.


No, it really isn't. Sand didn't claim to know something for sure. Sand claimed to know something. That's not the same thing. You claiming it is the opposite is your own failing to understand what was said, as people claim to know things all the time without claiming to have great certainty on that knowledge.

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 29 Jul 2010, 10:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If there were an incorporeal entity - "the soul", pulling the strings on your neurons to manipulate the body,still somewhere in there is a mechanism.
Or if not a mechanism , who'd be pulling those strings on the soul to pull the strings on the body, and where were these thoughts and how did these arise?

Is this rejection based on the religious doctrine of the soul ?

Last edited by Mdyar on 02 Aug 2010, 10:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

When I am asleep and have a vivid dream, something that occurs to me quite frequently, I see and hear things that not only don't exist, but that cannot exist in my waking life. I have had, in dreams, multiple arms, strange eyesight, odd powers. When I awake all this is obvious nonsense. May I perhaps awake from this dream I call "life" and discover I am some sort of alien insect form with an entertaining type of mental video that fools me into believing I am human? I doubt it but how can I be sure?

Oh no, Gregor, you won't be able to get to work on time.

Arrrrrrgh!! !!

Well, the answer is that anyone who uses logic DOES verify that logic holds. You said it yourself, "Any argument that could be constructed would have to use logic." Logic, therefore, is an absolute or constant in argumentation.

Now, I'm not overly prone to strictly relying on logic as maybe I SHOULD be. I can be just as guilty of being irrational as anyone. But the issue here is when an argument is made regarding absolutes. To make the statement "there are no absolutes," one is necessarily making an absolute statement. To say, for example, "There is no absolute truth," is to make a statement of what the speaker believes is absolutely true. The logic here is dead in the water. If a statement is self-defeating, it cannot be true. Though perhaps not the case in THIS forum, somehow the idea of there being no absolutes seems to be a prevailing attitude elsewhere.

I mean, AG, just from what I've seen you post in PPR before, you seem to believe in absolutes as you are absolutely convinced that there is absolutely no God. You seem to me a fairly logical person. Would you say that your conclusion that there is no God is somehow arrived at irrationally? If not, how did you come to that conclusion? And, if you do NOT believe absolutely that there is absolutely no reason to absolutely believe there is a God, why ought we be convinced that we should absolutely believe you?

No, it really doesn't. A person using logic does not mean logic holds, any more than a person pressing buttons on a calculator proves that it works.

I said that logic is needed for an argument, but that does not mean that argumentation arrives at truth, or that argumentation proves the truth of logic. You seem to be making a leap to the conclusion you prefer.


Well, who says that a self-defeating statement can't be true? Even further, who says that the proper interpretation of the sentence is so algorithmic? You are relying on logic to validate it, correct? The issue is that if logic is potentially false, then the statement isn't necessarily invalid. We just lack the ability to validate this. You also can't prove logic to be true.

That being said, "There are no absolutes" could be interpreted as a non-absolute statement, it could be said in any manner of contexts and in any number of ways. Even further, one could express similar ideas without having a self-defeating statement.


Honestly, I seem like a lot of things.

Let's see, is my conclusion that there is no God arrived at in an irrational manner? That's an interesting question, and one that no human being can presume to answer for themselves. Here's what I will say:
1) I have rationales and reasons for what I believe.
2) I think that these rationales and reasons are potentially persuasive.
3) I think that these rationales and reasons motivate me to come to the conclusion that there is no God.

I will not make the psychological claim about whether I am "rational" or "irrational", and there are a few issues:
1) What describes rationality in human behavior? The question may seem silly, but people use "irrational" in all sorts of manners that don't have anything to do with argumentation or logic, for instance "smoking is irrational". Additionally, rationality can refer to belief in two different ways: economically, and veridically. Now, economic rationality refers to rewards and motivations, meaning that one can rationally believe something because of the rewards of doing so. Veridical rationality refers to truth-tracking tendencies. Which is better? Is one actually irrational?
2) Who says that any human being actually follows any of these models of rationality that we might propose? Why then should I think I do? Is it not even potentially possible that the very functioning of the human brain is such that our functioning actually isn't really "rational"?

Now, that isn't saying anything about whether I am "rational" or "irrational", rather it is speaking agnosticism on the matter, and an agnosticism that seems "rationally justified", but may or may not be obviously. As it stands, how I really arrive at my conclusions is a matter for psychologists to study, but not something that I am personally very privy to. Do you know how your brain works? If so, then your intuitions are probably of use to some neuroscientist somewhere, as most of them think that our intuitions are a poor way of seeing into our inner-workings. (And I could post that Dan Dennett video on consciousness, but I have no interest, however, he gets at that point)

Finally, if "I do not *absolutely* believe that there is *absolutely* no reason to *absolutely* believe in God, why ought we believe that we should *absolutely* believe you?"

Hmm.... my first response is that your question is a mistake in judgment, and even a massive one.

1) Why should you absolutely believe me? Seriously, why? As it stands, anybody could be mistaken. I could be mistaken when I say "anybody could be mistaken", and that's the kind of world we live in.
2) Would it matter whether you believe me or not? Frankly, I don't want a cult of personality anyway. If you think that I give good reasons, then believe what I argue. If you think that I have bad reasons, then question them. Either way though, try to be open to any of us being wrong, rather than closed-minded. It is not as if I am an authority, or that authorities deserve to be completely trusted anyway.
3) Regardless of whether I absolutely believe or don't, how can you verify it? If you can't verify it, how does this absolute actually matter? I cannot think of a way you can absolutely know it regardless of whether it is absolutely true or not.

The actual rationales and reasons are irrelevant. What IS relevant is that you have rationales and reasons. That is an absolute statement. That doesn't mean it's impossible for you to change your mind. It doesn't mean that you may reject those rationales and reasons in favor of others that may or may not support a belief in God (i.e. the reasons no longer work, so you get different reasons to not believe in God). It just means for whatever reasons, those being your own, you believe what you believe and can support those beliefs with concrete rationales and reasons.

Whether I can verify that is irrelevant. The fact remains that YOU believe what you believe, and you need not have further verification for yourself.



1: No reason. I have no obligation to believe you. All I have to go on is what you say and it's up to me to trust whether I believe you or not. For example, you could tell me that the moon doesn't exist. If I didn't care to verify it, I might casually accept it or reject it. If I cared, I might look outside for hours at a time only to find there is no moon. However, it might suddenly reappear one night with a change of phase. So I'd have other conclusions to draw, either that you were mistaken or you just wanted to test my gullibility for a good laugh.

2: It doesn't matter at all.

3: Like I already said, whether I can verify something isn't relevant.

I'm not sure how to fix the error. Perhaps by saying "I'm not certain/sure that anything can be known for certain/sure." Would that be correct? The problem is (sorry for the broken record) that by stating something that IS known for sure, one says that nothing can be known for sure. It's an obvious contradiction.

How you arrive at your conclusions is not so much neurological as it is whatever paradigm you're accustomed to. You perceive things a certain way, and based on what you've been taught, things you are already convinced of, you make up your mind about it. I'm not a neurologist, but based on my views, many of which I'm sure you're already aware without me going into that here, I think that the brain is the servant of the mind, rather than the mind being a product of the brain. Since I've drawn those conclusions, I can draw other conclusions based on that. I mean, if you're looking for a materialistic or medical explanation, that's something I simply don't have. It's one of those things that you can't really say without assuming that things such as the "spirit" or "soul" exist.

But the plain fact remains that we don't wake up every morning afraid of whether or not there is a bed or floor beneath us. We take steps when we walk assuming, or taking for granted, that our eyes aren't playing tricks on us and that we aren't about to fall through to some hidden gateway to Hell or something. You can ask "How do you know?" all you want, but somehow that doesn't make us less sure that the world around us really is there. To say "Nothing can ever known for sure" is not just contradictory by nature, we prove by our very actions that we don't really believe that to be true.

Well, it really depends on the question about my beliefs and how much certainty is defined into the matter. It may be the case that further verification is useful or necessary. I do not accept the position that I know all that can be known about my thoughts, or even that an outside observer necessarily knows less about my thoughts than I do.


It really depends on the phrasing, and perhaps even one's view on interpreting statements. For instance, it is a known fact in linguistics that not all statements are interpreted in a simplistic logical manner. For instance if I say "There ain't no such thing as Santa Clause", do I mean that there is a such thing, or that there isn't? I think a lot of people would interpret me as saying the latter.

In any case, by making a knowledge claim, all that a person is saying is that something is known, not how certainly it is known. All that Sand may be guilty of is failing to qualify his statement as much as you think he should have, however, the problem is that our language tends to non-skepticism, forcing a skeptic to qualify his statements to death to be consistent by such a standard. Given that there is no normative requirement of certainty in many of the phrasings in our language, it is more rational for a person in Sand's position to not qualify his statement, and assume that the qualification is a given due to the nature of charitable interpretations.


Well, paradigms are relevant, but so is neurology. Neurology can describe how human beings come to accept certain facts. I'd have to say that our psychology is perhaps more important than talk of paradigms, particularly given research such as this article written by Dr. Ramachandran. http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/pete ... 201996.pdf


"Nothing can ever be known for sure" isn't contradictory by nature though, and you've failed to prove it so. You're effort involved a rephrasing of "Nothing can ever be known for sure" to "nothing can be known", which is not a logical equivalent.

Additionally, "prove by our actions" doesn't really work unless you say that ever action is a "conscious action", but the issue is that it is pretty basic knowledge that a lot of the time we are on auto-pilot. Even further, I think that your standard of internal human coherence is a *lot* larger than it ever seems to be in practice, as by that standard, we have to not only say that we believe X, Y, and Z, but also that our X, Y, and Z, can also contradict our A, B, and C. Particularly of importance given that writing something down as a belief, is "proof by our very actions" that we believe it, and arguing which belief set is truer to debunk another set is just an effort in ad hoc rationalizing, meaning that you still haven't really gotten us anywhere, as you aren't proving anything about what Sand has written so much as you reinterpret Sand uncharitably.

As I have stated quite a few times in these discussions, people do not live with absolutes. We live and act on probabilities which, in no way are absolutes. They also give one the opportunity to change one's mind as data sways perception. I find the probability of God not only extremely low, but not in any way necessary for action. It is that necessity which is vital in living. When a supernatural being appears to me I will have to decide if it should be treated as a supernatural being, as a delusion, as an interstellar life form attempting to appear as a supernatural being, etc., etc. Imagination and peripheral experience plays a large part in all this and absolutes do not appear. It is all probabilities.

A note on the argument about Absolutes:

To say something is "absolutely so" is not equivalent to saying something "is absolutely NOT so"

I will steadfastly stand behind Sand in saying nothing can be certain, or that there are no absolutes, but I think there is an implied word in that statement that we all too often forget about.

There are no POSITIVE absolutes.

the only way we could achieve a positive absolute (an absolutely so) would be by definition.
So to say that we are absolutely certain there is a sun, that is to say that there is something that we've defined, so it's just semantic, and nothing real is being said.
But you can't say anything about the sun, with absolute certainty.

On the other hand, there are cases, many of them, where we can be absolutely certain that something is NOT.
An atom of Hydrogen is NOT an atom of Plutonium.
My "self" is NOT AngelRho's "self"
Even these tend to rely on definitions... but for the first example we could say better that an atom with one proton and one electron does not exhibit the properties that are exhibited by plutonium.

I'm not saying that this argument validates a statement that "There is absolutely no god" that statement I don't know can be validated... But it would allow you to make a statement that "There is absolutely no absolute god"

All positive absolutes, which are not reliant upon arbitrary definition, lead to (logical) paradox. This is NOT true of negative absolutes.

Another way to see this argument is to take a mathematical analogy.
Infinity is not a valid number, however zero is.
We may think (in probability standards) that 1 means certainty, however the [0,1] interval used in standard probability analysis is really just a convention to make the infinity that is 1 calculable.

It is an interesting concept to consider that an atom of hydrogen is not an atom of plutonium. For it leads one to the perceptions of the nature of atoms. One must look back to the most basic perceptions of reality where one separates individual "things" from the general background and decide that a class of things can be separated from the huge buzz of incoming data. What indeed is an atom? It can be seen as a particle or a wave or merely some kind of patterned energy fluctuation in the fundamental time-space continuum. On that last perhaps there is not all that much separation between hydrogen and plutonium, a mere change in energy fluctuation patterns. An atom exists because we have invented the word "atom" and perhaps if we could persuade a hydrogen atom to whistle a different tune it might learn to become plutonium. It seems very unlikely but who knows? Does "God" exist for some people because, in their minds, perceptions whistle melodies that are dissonant to other minds?

That's pretty close.

Sort of like the way some people define their "self" an an illusion created by their minds yet refer to it as though it were real.

Illusions are real. They are real misconceptions.