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Wrong, Plantinga's standard for inference from proper function: (a) grounded, and (b) defended against known objections. Further Plantinga's more direct standard, put forward in his second book, which is dedicted to the subject, he contends that if there is proper function then there is an objectively HIGHER likelihood of our beliefs being true. There is no guarantee, in the sense you are talking about. The ENTIRE NINTH CHAPTER of Warrant of Proper Function' is on epistemic probability... its not titled, epistemic certainty.



Not really, it can, and has been verified with a fair degree of approximate accuracy using the probability calculus. If you want to criticise my inference, you need a better reason because Plantinga DOES allow for falsification.



Well, let me get this straight, your telling me that a) I don't understand Plantinga as well as you do and b) you don't understand the importance of proper function. Plantinga contends that evidence is important but that we require proper function to be justified in our evaluation of it. Without confidence in our ability to evaluate evidence we have a defeater for any and all beliefs and conclusions we might reach. Hence, it is Plantinga's conclusion that naturalistic beliefs are highly unlikely to have warrant and are most likely irrational.



Corroboration is important, I do not dispute that and a corroborated belief no doubt has more warrant. However, we have many justified beliefs that are not corroborated, Plantinga points this out repeatedly, so claiming it is necessary without knowing or criticizing his examples is just silly. Also, my point related to your use of induction, this is a segway point that not only fails to interact with what Plantinga has said but does not interact with anything I posted, so I can only conclude that you are either missing, or dodging my point.



Nonsense, I critcised it, adequatly already, you just keep arguing in a circle and so I do not feel the need to keep explaining the same things to you again and again. Especially considering my explination was on the same page as your most recent post... Here it is again, for clarity:

'Your first position, that if something is corroborated and unfalsified then it is knowledge, is itself a use of inductive reasoning.... so you have answered your own question. Secondly it does not follow that a corroborated unfalsified position is knowledge, all it is is corroborated and unfalsified. Thirdly, the statement 'a corroborated unfalisified theory is knowledge' is unfalsifiable so it excludes itself from its own reasoning.'

There is no essential difference between guaranteed truth and guaranteed probability, it is still the same leap. Saying 'there is an objectively HIGHER likelihood of our beliefs being true' proves nothing, as say if we are omnipotent there is an objectively even HIGHER likelihood of our beliefs being true.


Wrong. You are just pointing out the fact that in science, observations are theory laden. In particular, a) there is a corroborated and un-falsified theory on the realibility of our senses b) by falsifiability there is a criterion on whether we accept or reject a theory even BEFORE we make the observation and we only need to follow it.

Assertion that is demonstrably false / nonsense (depending on how you define proper function).


Here, we are not even talking about knowledge in the foundationalism sense. There is simply no justified belief or warrant under falsificationism. There is no empirical knowledge in the sense of foundationalism but there is no reason for me to conform to their standard. I am not criticizing Plantingan and your complain is irrelevant.


It you who missed my point. I debunked all your criticism and it is clear you have run out of criticism.

Well I don't know what omnipotence has to do with anything. I think you may be have mean omniscient and no one is claiming that we are. The only claim being made is that given proper function, warrant is greater, which is pretty obviously true.



a) to proceed from 'a' would require induction, you fail. b) yes but using falsifiable as a standard is not itself falsifiable so it is a defeater for its own standard. I am not prying on the theories of science, rather I am taking issue with the fact that on falsificationism, there is no objective knowledge, just an unfalisfied position. I am not saying that an unfalsified position cannot be knowledge, rather, I am claiming that it simply requires more than falsification to get to knowledge. You have not made a post in three days that does not mistake or misrepresent what Plantinga is actually writing about.

Define what is proper function and what determines the proper function of an object.


Do you even understand what is induction and what is the difference between induction and corroboration?


What do you mean by defeater in this context?


The only mistake is you pretend I agree with your / Plantinga's notion of knowledge. As evident from your continual use of Plantinga's wording in the completely different context of falsificationism.

If you do not know what proper function is, then please do not lecture me about not having read Plantinga. Proper function is a well established area of epistemology. If I were to define it in the Plantingan sense, you would then just accuse me of presuming Plantinga's definition to be right. I grow tired of your half-baked attempts to avoid actual discussion. As for proper function, in general it is described as a normative describable value that adds to epistemic justification. In Plantinga justification is usually referred to as warrant. Plantinga attacked and essentially routed the naturalistic definitions (most naturalistic philosophers now attempt to do without it) whist giving good reasons for thinking that on theism we have proper function. As to what determines it, Plantinga is mostly open about that, in the broad sense, it is that our minds are able, normative, to process knowledge in the narrow sense, he does not commit nor does he have to. If you are unsure of what Plantinga means by proper function, perhaps it is best you end your crusade against Plantinga. Your attempts to rebuke his work are not likely to be successful, at least not until you have actually read them.



There is a clear difference between them. Corroboration is largely compatible with fallibilism. Claiming that this leads to knowledge, requires induction.



If you can only believe that which is capable of being disproven, fallibalism cannot be disproven, you have defeated the justification for the former by accepting the latter. Hence the term, defeater, it is defeating the justification, hence it is an epistemic defeater.



I have already gone over this with you. Plantinga accepts falisification, hence why he spends so much time discussing epistemic defeaters. Plantinga is a foundationalist, that does not me he is a foundationalist to the exclusion of principle of falisfication, that would be ridiculous. In relation to falsificationism, Plantinga is a falsificationist when it comes to naturalism and he has co-opted many of that school's objections to evidentualism etc. He criticises falsitifactionism for not being an adequate system but you don't seem to understand that this does not affect the criticism that it makes of other schools of thought. The schools of epistemology are not always mutually exclusive; especially in their criticisms of one another.

I asked precisely before I write up my rebuttal against the claims

and

I need to make sure that I am using a definition you actually accept and not simply accusing me of misrepresenting Plantinga. I don't see how the definition you wrote support the objection against naturalism.


Silly misrepresentation of my view. Fallibalism only concerns scientific theory, or theories supposed to describe external reality. Otherwise you may well object that 1+1=2 is not falsifiable. Fallibalism itself is not scientific theory (the theories are not regarded as part of external reality). Your 'defeater' is just like saying the theory of statistical inference haven't passed any statistical test.

You haven't read Plantinga. You can't expect me to take you seriously when you state that your going to upend one of the most respected philosophers after getting a brief explanation of what he contends on an internet forum.



You haven't read Plantinga. Its no wonder why you keep mistaking what he is saying. If you want to be careful with definitions, then read them. If you want me to explain basic epistemological terms and Platinga's position to you, then please ask. You however, keep putting forward contentions in the most combative way possible; like 'refute this' or 'nonsense that', then you have not set a situation where your knowledge will be cooperatively added to. Rather, I am going to tell you where you are wrong and act flabbergasted when you move to a new objection and continue to make simple errors.



Statistical inference is a closed system for dealing with statistics. It is a system that 'entails' certain things for it to work; like logic and mathematics etc. It is not an all encompassing epistemology and so does not have to deal with the same issues. For example, your position of falsificationism claims that things only have warrant if they can be falsified; the problem being, that there is no warrant for this belief. The law of statistical inference is not reliant on statistical inference for its own warrant; whereas basic beliefs, including nonfoundaitonalist standards (verificationsim, falsificationism etc) are. What you have done here is put forward a false analogy.

This is not to say and I want to stress this. That falisification as a principle is not a very powerful tool; because it certainly is. It cannot however, function as an epistemological standard, without self-refutation.

You haven't even read the paragraph you are replying to. The first piece of Popper's philosophy is to tell science from pseudo-science, which he proposes using falsifiability as the standard. Then he limits his focus on science. It is a simple mistake to think falsificationism is 'an all encompassing epistemology'.

I think at least we agree that falsificationism is a valid epistemology for science. What justifies falsificationism is another discussion.


I did. I bet you will say the same even if I directly quote his books and many reviews.


Same for you.

It certainly does claim to be a contender as an epidemiological standard. Fallibilism is a well researched brance of modern epistemology and Karl Popper is a well known defender of it (http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_fallibilism.html). Your quote mining verges on source abuse. Popper understood the necessary limits of his position, relative to objective knowledge, you however, do not.



I think this is true.




You have developed a bit of a reputation for misinterpretation. Also, a word of warning about those reviews and blogs, misrepresentations of Plantinga are VERY common.

Last edited by 91 on 21 Jul 2011, 8:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm a creationist, but I also believe the science behind it... The only thing I've had a problem with when it comes to most creationists is the time span. It says 7 Days in Genesis, but elsewhere in the bible it says that a Day is like a thousand years.

So we have a minimum of 7 Thousand years to start with.

Then we have the thinking that if its like a thousand years, then maybe it could be like: a million years, 10 million years? who knows (besides God).

That's my understanding on it.

I believe everything else in the Story of Creation in Genesis

The creation of the cosmos and earth as told in Genesis are at odds with observed fact. Conclusion: Genesis, the book, is fiction or more precisely, myth.

ruveyn

If a creationist is being honest, he has to admit he doesn't really KNOW. All the evidence you have to go on is the Bible itself. You should consider what some people call the "gap theory." According to this theory, the universe was created during the time span indicated in Genesis 1:1. Verse 2 begins with "Now..." Since the Bible doesn't always concern itself with exactly how much time has passed, it prefaces accounts of important events by using the word "Now..." Ok..."now" WHEN? In stories about David's rise to king and the record of his reign, he goes from being a fresh-faced young shepherd boy to Bathsheba to his deathbed in a matter of days. The difference is the writer of Kings and the chronicler had access to official documents and could have related the passage of time to specific events. WHEN the kings ruled can be traced back to dates we're fairly certain about. Genesis doesn't offer us this same convenience. Genealogies aren't reliable time markers because it's not uncommon in ancient genealogies to only highlight important people or founders of clans rather than every single individual. The days of creation, too, could have been merely the high points of creation. The days need only follow in sequence, not necessarily 7 consecutive 24-hour periods.

Regardless of how long the "days" are, the order of creation given in the Bible is falsified by the evidence of the physical universe. Now why would God say one thing in His book and another in His creation? That is what I want to know. Shouldn't the order of creation that we can discover through scientific study be the same as that described in the Book of Genesis, IF that book is meant to be an accurate description of what really happened?

The idea of taking Genesis literally was not approved of in early Christianity. People understood the use of allegories and metaphors as teaching tools. Or maybe some people really did think it was an accurate historical and scientific description of what happened, because it is based on the level of scientific understanding from the Bronze Age. Regardless, in roughly 400 A.D. Augustine warned against Christians making ignorant assertions about the physical world that nonbelievers could easily see are false. This is not a new problem, but seems to have gotten much worse since the 19th century.

I am not opposed to Creationism per se. I will say that Young Earth Creationism, based on a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, is most certainly NOT supported by ANY physical evidence and is in fact falsified by all evidence found so far. Now maybe the YEC viewpoint is correct, but if so, then why would God make it LOOK so much like they are wrong? Is it to test our faith? Is God a trickster to plant so much false evidence?

Galileo issued the same warning to the Church Management. They not only ignored him, they punished him. If he had not recanted he would be been made into toast, just like Bruno, 33 years prior.

ruveyn

Be specific, please.

Day-age has the sinker of the sun on the 4th day and the land and sea and plants on the 3rd. A 24 hour period without sunlight is one thing, but a nine billion year or so period's another. I know some day age proponents argue that an interplanetary nebula was the blockage of sunlight or something like that though, but it seems rather ad hoc of an interpretation to me. IDK, what is your interpretation?