[sonusario]

[part 1]

> I don't really know yet what assumptions to build on that you would share.

Then just start with something, and if I don't agree with your assumptions then we can decide where to go from there. It doesn't have to be perfectly formal, but at least needs to flow via enumerated propositions. I fail to see how avoiding to produce a formal argument for your position isn't an attempt at equivocation. Why else attempt to only argue informally where the informality is more likely to generate greater ambiguity?

> Yes. Example: ...

Is it possible that a testable claim could be true and imply another claim that is not testable?

===

> ... I mean, unless you really do happen to have the evidence that everyone has been waiting for ...

Flat earthers may say the same to anyone whom tells them that there is great evidence that the earth is an oblate spheroid. Simply thinking that evidence isn't sufficient doesn't mean that it isn't.

> I don't understand what the distinction is that you are making here.

Science is a method. Doing science is to use the scientific method. The scientific method involves testing claims. Using the scientific method on non-testable claims is contradictory. The scientific method and the claims it has proven can co-exist with claims that can't be tested so long as those claims don't contradict the scientific claims. While those claims that can't be tested can co-exist with the scientific method, the incompatibility is in attempting to do science with those claims.

===

> Well, let's see ...

Thanks :-)

===

> And mind you that not much reliability is necessary in order to bootstrap this, because you can largely test that, too.

I get what bootstrapping means in compiler terms, but regarding methods of discerning truth, the notion of bootstrapping would seem to fly in the face of Gödel.

> But when you think about it, you'll notice that that assumption isn't actually necessary ... And as soon as there is even a little bit of structure to reality that you could figure out, building on your senses is going to outperform ignoring your senses.

Still sounds like your relying on the assumption that our senses are reliable... Like, you wouldn't know that using your senses out performs ignoring your senses unless you were already relying on your senses to determine that.

===

> More precisely, because a statement about math is not a statement about reality, other than that math is part of (human) reality.

When you apply the name "John" to one person and the name "Jack" to another, there are physical criterion to distinguish between John and Jack allowing us to verify via testing that a claim only about John is not a claim about Jack. Unless there are physical criterion that allows us to distinguish between math and reality, you've made a false analogy.

> The answer is simply: They didn't.

The conclusion I'm looking for is "They couldn't" and in particular "They couldn't intelligibly mean 'claims only about math are claims about reality'" and I want to know why. Only saying "they didn't" leaves the door open for someone else who could.

===

> Yes, those axioms, evaluations and derivations (well, particular aspects of them). Just the same way that 'Game of Thrones' has a referent, given the series, and characters of that series have a referent, given the series.

>>>>> The point is: A bunch of axioms and what results from them.

Under this axiomatic context: Do distances, spaces, cardinalities, and sets symbolically or conceptually exist absent of any physical representation?

===

> No, you haven't. At best, you have shown that holding that position is not justified (arguably, you haven't done that either, but it doesn't really matter for this). ... Well, see above. You have to show that it is impossible for something to be unexplainable, not just that we don't know whether something is unexplainable.

Explain how I haven't. You're just saying I haven't. Where is the misstep in my argument (formalized below)?

==========

1 ) If X has no explanation, then X can't be explained.

2 ) If X can't be explained, then X is unintelligible.

3 ) If X is unintelligible and X is a part of reality, then the claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" can be truthfully asserted.

4 ) If the claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" can be truthfully asserted, then all claims about reality as a whole are unintelligible.

5 ) If all claims about reality as a whole are unintelligible, then the claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" is unintelligible.

6 ) If the claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" is unintelligible, then the claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" cannot be truthfully asserted.

----------

7 ) X is a part of reality and X has no explanation (ASSUME for RAA)

8 ) X is a part of reality (Conjunction Elimination from 7)

9 ) X has no explanation (Conjunction Elimination from 7)

10) X can't be explained (Conditional Elimination from 1, 9)

11) X is unintelligible (Conditional Elimination from 2, 10)

12) X is unintelligible and X is a part of reality (Conjunction Introduction 11, 8)

13) The claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" can be truthfully asserted (Conditional Elimination from 3, 12)

14) All claims about reality as a whole are unintelligible (Conditional Elimination from 4, 13)

15) The claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" is unintelligible (Conditional Elimination from 5, 14)

16) The claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" cannot be truthfully asserted (Conditional Elimination from 6, 15)

17) The claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" can be truthfully asserted and The claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" cannot be truthfully asserted (Conjunction Introduction 13, 16)

18) Therefore: It is not the case that X is a part of reality and X has no explanation (Reductio Ad Absurdum from 7 to a contradiction on 17)

---------

Rephrasing of the Conclusion: Either X is not a part of reality or X has an explanation (De Morgan)

Rephrase of the Rephrasing: If X is a part of reality then X has an explanation (Implication)

==========

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

[part 2]

> Replaced "attempted the method" with "carried out the method" because you can fail an attempt, but to fail to attempt the method is to not follow the method. There is not a single known instance of a person having carried out the methods employed by the saints that didn't end up with good results.

Those methods don't possibly include as one step being successful? As in: If you don't get the good result, then the only accepted explanation is that you didn't do it right? Because that would be an untestable claim, then.

Also, in any case, that doesn't resolve the bias, as that sounds pretty much like a textbook example of survivorship bias. Or in other words: Why would you expect to know about someone carrying out the methods and failing? The fact that you don't know about them does not mean that they don't exist, and it seems pretty obvious that those who succeed would be way more likely to be known. Also, it seems just completely impossible to know that such a person never existed, given that anyone out of billions or humans could have been someone who tried?

> Depends on how you are defining overall happiness. Many saints died joyfully while being tortured to death.

Seriously? You are telling me that you can't recognize this as a case of mental illness, and the only possible explanation in your mind is that they found a path to happiness that would be usable by anyone? Sorry, but your claims really are getting absurd. Pretty much what you'd expect from someone who tries to find any justification for a predetermined conclusion, rather than following the evidence where it leads, though.

> The problem you'll find with this is that you're not likely to find anyone who employs no aspects of the methods used by the saints, particularly because such a person, and you'd agree, would be completely depraved.

I'm not sure that I would agree they would be depraved, I am not really sure what your point or argument even is there.

But in any case, sure, that might be a problem, but that is not my problem. If you make a claim, it's your responsibility to provide the evidence, and if that's too difficult, then that doesn't mean that your position is reasonable without evidence, it simply means that you are making unsubstantiated claims.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

[part 1]

> Then just start with something, and if I don't agree with your assumptions then we can decide where to go from there. It doesn't have to be perfectly formal, but at least needs to flow via enumerated propositions.

Well, it's just that I have already tried that, and even the most basic concepts seem to be problematic. At its core it's pretty simple, actually, but I guess we'll just end up at exactly the same discussion we are already having:

1) Science says that untestable claims about reality are unreliable.

2) Religion says that certain untestable claims about reality are reliable.

3) Therefore, religion's claims as to the reliability of some claims about reality contradicts science's claims as to the reliability of those claims.

> Is it possible that a testable claim could be true and imply another claim that is not testable?

No.

> Flat earthers may say the same to anyone whom tells them that there is great evidence that the earth is an oblate spheroid. Simply thinking that evidence isn't sufficient doesn't mean that it isn't.

Yeah ... so? They are still wrong, and I am most likely not.

> Science is a method. Doing science is to use the scientific method.

No. "The scientific method" is a very naive conception of science that is possibly useful as a teaching device, but not much more.

You seem to insist on modeling science as a dogma. The problem is: It just isn't.

Doing science is to use whatever methods that deliver demonstrably reliable results and reject whatever methods that don't. There is no fixed method, because that in itself would be unreliable.

> The scientific method involves testing claims. Using the scientific method on non-testable claims is contradictory.

Then don't use "the scientific method"! It is well-established that untestable claims are unreliable (and I have explained at length why), and so science uses that knowledge to weed out unreliable claims. Weeding out unreliable claims is a very important part of doing science effectively.

> The scientific method and the claims it has proven can co-exist with claims that can't be tested so long as those claims don't contradict the scientific claims.

No, when science tells us that your claim is indistinguishable from stuff someone made up, then that is not consistent with you telling us that you know it to in fact be true. Either there is indeed a good reason to think it is in fact true, then science is wrong and needs to be corrected so it doesn't classify a reliable claim as unreliable, or there is not, then you are irrational when accepting it anyway.

All you are saying here is that it is reasonable to believe made-up nonsense as long as science hasn't disproved it yet. And just to make sure you don't misunderstand: I did not say that whatever model you propose is made-up nonsense. But as it is indistinguishable from made-up nonsense, either both your proposed model and made-up nonsense are reasonable to believe, or neither is, because you don't have the option to distinguish the indistinguishable.

> While those claims that can't be tested can co-exist with the scientific method, the incompatibility is in attempting to do science with those claims.

No, the incompatibility comes from the fact that both are claims about the same subject matter, namely reality, and that those claims are contradictory.

> I get what bootstrapping means in compiler terms, but regarding methods of discerning truth, the notion of bootstrapping would seem to fly in the face of Gödel.

All I mean is that you (kindof) have to make some assumption of sorts, because there is no way to prove ultimate reality or disprove hard solipsism. If someone insists that they are a brain in a vat, there is no way to prove to them that they are not. But still, most people are willing to accept that other people exist, at least as a useful model of the reality they experience, so you generally can build on that assumption to make convincing arguments.

> Still sounds like your relying on the assumption that our senses are reliable... Like, you wouldn't know that using your senses out performs ignoring your senses unless you were already relying on your senses to determine that.

You do know that by definition. Senses are, by definition, those inputs that reflect external reality. Ignoring all inputs about external reality cannot possibly be more successful at manipulating the external reality than using inputs about external reality. And mind you that that would include stuff like a "god sense", if that were a thing, and god were a part of reality that you could sense.

> Under this axiomatic context: Do distances, spaces, cardinalities, and sets symbolically or conceptually exist absent of any physical representation?

I don't know. I certainly don't see any reason to believe so.

> Explain how I haven't. You're just saying I haven't. Where is the misstep in my argument (formalized below)?

The primary problem with that whole argument is that it considers having an explanation a property of the thing to be explained, rather than of the subject (not) understanding the thing.

For one, that seems like an incoherent concept, but more importantly, it's just completely unhelpful. We were talking in the context of what we can know, and if we can't know something, it is completely irrelevant if it had some property of "having an explanation" that isn't accessible to us.

> Where did "'the measured change in state' is an effect 'of the potential of the universe to change state'" come from? I never stated this, thus you've made a straw-man and then drew comparisons with it to electrons, effectively making up the notion of me being incoherent.

Uh, well, I dunno, possibly I misunderstood something. Could you then provide a criterion by which to distinguish the physical from the non-physical, that could be applied to an arbitrary object to determine whether it is physical or non-physical, and that's not using just vague terminology that could eaily be interpreted in a dozen different ways?

> Another way to think of it. "A: X while Y". A is moral when "X: Throwing darts" and "Y: aiming at a dart board". You can modify Y to "aiming at someones face" and make A immoral with out changing X.

Sure. And what would be the analogue of "aiming at the dart board" in your abstract argument then? Wouldn't that be that it is moral to do what is moral when you think it is moral? So, it is immoral to do what is moral when you think it is immoral, and it is moral to do what is moral when you think it is moral. Or in other words: Whether something is moral is completely determined by whether you think it is moral, and whether it is moral has no effect on whether it is moral?

> Oh please. The objective definition incorporates subjective conditions. Ex: Define F as the set of propositions {A -> B, C -> D, A -> ~D, C -> ~B}. F is an objective framework which never changes, but what is derived from F is subject to the truth values of A, B, C, and D.

But what is your objective definition? There is no problem with having an objective definition that depends on subjective conditions. But there is a problem with having an objective definition that completely delegates to subjective conditions while also claiming to give evaluation results that are independent of (those) subjective conditions, which seems to be what you are doing.

There seems to be no situation in which your rule of "doing X is (im)moral if is you think it is (im)moral" would leave the morality of an action undefined, but you still claim that this is the exception to a rule that applies in other cases. What are those other cases?

> I'm curious. How do you think theists generally justify their position?

There isn't one justification, but still a somewhat limited set of justifications, that are all equally bad, but for different reasons. So, not really something I can answer in under a few dozen pages. But I guess the videos on Matt Dillahunty's youtube channel (SansDeity) do cover quite a lot of those, if you want to find out. They also had a counter-apologetics wiki at http://wiki.ironchariots.org/, but that's been offline for a while ... but, just looking into it, it seems like someone has put up a fork: https://religions.wiki/ --I guess that might be worth a look as well.

> False analogy. I'm claiming that everyone whom employs the methods of the saints achieves their goals of happiness. Your analogy would only be valid if everyone got rich with day trading, and if that were the case then that would be evidence that day trading generally makes people rich.

Well, possibly that is what you intended to claim, but you very much didn't. You wrote about saints as opposed to people who didn't use their methods, and you also didn't make the claim that all people who used those methods were saints. So, the analogy was perfectly fine.

[sonusario]

> 1)... 2)... 3)...

How do you determine that something is not testable? How do you determine that something is unreliable?

When you say "Science says", what do you mean? When you say "Religion says", what do you mean?

>> Is it possible that a testable claim could be true and imply another claim that is not testable?

> No.

Why?

===

> Yeah ... so? They are still wrong, and I am most likely not.

How do you know that there is a greater chance that you are not wrong? What are the percentages you have calculated to conclude this?

===

> Doing science is to use whatever methods that deliver demonstrably reliable results and reject whatever methods that don't. There is no fixed method, because that in itself would be unreliable.

Is "use whatever methods that deliver demonstrably reliable results and reject whatever methods that don't" a fixed method?

> It is well-established that untestable claims are unreliable (and I have explained at length why)

Would you please explain "at length" once more in the form of a syllogism that ends with the conclusion "Therefore all non-testable claims are unreliable"?

> Either there is indeed a good reason to think it is in fact true, then science is wrong and needs to be corrected so it doesn't classify a reliable claim as unreliable

It's becoming more clear that we seem to have different criterion for what we consider testable. Would you consider all claims that are provable or disprovable testable? Would you consider all claims that if true, and not provable or disprovable, are not testable?

> No, the incompatibility comes from the fact that both are claims about the same subject matter, namely reality, and that those claims are contradictory.

What are some claims of science and religion (regarding religion, particularly fundamental ones) that are contradictory, as in they claim opposing things (X and ~X)? Or are the only claims that are incompatible as far as you are concerned the ones stated in your above syllogism?

===

> All I mean is that you (kindof) have to make some assumption of sorts, because there is no way to prove ultimate reality or disprove hard solipsism.

So, there is some first self-evident method that can't be tested for reliability without being circular?

> You do know that by definition. Senses are, by definition, those inputs that reflect external reality.

A definition you have assumed? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying anything is wrong with that assumption, it is a self-evident one, but call it like it is.

===

>>> More precisely, because a statement about math is not a statement about reality, other than that math is part of (human) reality.

>> When you apply the name "John" to one person and the name "Jack" to another, there are physical criterion to distinguish between John and Jack allowing us to verify via testing that a claim only about John is not a claim about Jack. Unless there are physical criterion that allows us to distinguish between math and reality, you've made a false analogy.

>>> The answer is simply: They didn't.

>> The conclusion I'm looking for is "They couldn't" and in particular "They couldn't intelligibly mean 'claims only about math are claims about reality'" and I want to know why. Only saying "they didn't" leaves the door open for someone else who could.

?

===

>> Under this axiomatic context: Do distances, spaces, cardinalities, and sets symbolically or conceptually exist absent of any physical representation?

> I don't know. I certainly don't see any reason to believe so.

Then you can't see any reason to believe '1 < 2' could make reference to anything other than the physical representations of distances of space, cardinalities of sets, and any other needed mathematical structures?

===

> The primary problem with that whole argument is that it considers having an explanation a property of the thing to be explained, rather than of the subject (not) understanding the thing.

==========

1 ) If X can't be explained, then X is unintelligible.

2 ) If X is unintelligible and X is a part of reality, then the claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" can be truthfully asserted.

3 ) If the claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" can be truthfully asserted, then all claims about reality as a whole are unintelligible.

4 ) If all claims about reality as a whole are unintelligible, then the claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" is unintelligible.

5 ) If the claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" is unintelligible, then the claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" cannot be truthfully asserted.

----------

6 ) X is a part of reality and X can't be explained (ASSUME for RAA)

7 ) X is a part of reality (Conjunction Elimination from 6)

8 ) X can't be explained (Conjunction Elimination from 6)

9) X is unintelligible (Conditional Elimination from 1, 8)

10) X is unintelligible and X is a part of reality (Conjunction Introduction 9, 7)

11) The claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" can be truthfully asserted (Conditional Elimination from 2, 10)

12) All claims about reality as a whole are unintelligible (Conditional Elimination from 3, 11)

13) The claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" is unintelligible (Conditional Elimination from 4, 12)

14) The claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" cannot be truthfully asserted (Conditional Elimination from 5, 13)

15) The claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" can be truthfully asserted and the claim "reality as a whole is unintelligible" cannot be truthfully asserted (Conjunction Introduction 11, 14)

16) Therefore: It is not the case that X is a part of reality and X can't be explained (Reductio Ad Absurdum from 6 to a contradiction on 15)

---------

Rephrasing of the Conclusion: Either X is not a part of reality or X can be explained (De Morgan)

Rephrase of the Rephrasing: If X is a part of reality then X can be explained (Implication)

==========

> Could you then provide a criterion by which to distinguish the physical from the non-physical, that could be applied to an arbitrary object to determine whether it is physical or non-physical, and that's not using just vague terminology that could eaily be interpreted in a dozen different ways?

To exist and be non-physical is to exist and be incapable of changing state, to exist and be incapable of changing state is to exist and be non-physical.

===

> Whether something is moral is completely determined by whether you think it is moral, and whether it is moral has no effect on whether it is moral?

Wow have I done a terrible job of separating the conscience act from the external act. To be abundantly clear, it is immoral to violate your conscience. There can be two actions that occur when you perform an action: Choosing an action is itself an action, and performing the chosen action is separate from the choosing of that action. So if I where to correct my comments along these lines I would properly state: "It is immoral to [choose to] do what you think is immoral even if [what you choose to do] is moral, so you'll be better off doing [an action] you think is moral even if [that action] is immoral [because choosing to do otherwise would be immoral]. You are better off this way because you are not as/(at all) culpable for your actions if you didn't know they were wrong. That being said we are obligated to correct our neighbors' incorrect moral beliefs and to be open to being corrected."

===

> Sorry, but your claims really are getting absurd.

Argumentum ad Lapidem

Do you expect all true claims to sound rational before you've heard their justification? What did you expect given that I haven't been taking any steps to establish them?

> Pretty much what you'd expect from someone who tries to find any justification for a predetermined conclusion, rather than following the evidence where it leads, though.

"Ad Hominem"

Ouch. Like you've done with 'claims only about math are not claims about reality'? (<- ad hominem)

That might be what you'd expect, but if you claim that's the kind of person I am then you'll need to substantiate that claim.

Lol, I've stated that I'm not taking any steps to establish my claims to you, as they don't usefully tie into to our compatibility discussion, several times now.

> ... it simply means that you are making unsubstantiated claims.

I've stated that I'm not taking any steps to establish my claims here several times now. Echo echo echo ...

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> Would you please explain "at length" once more in the form of a syllogism that ends with the conclusion "Therefore all non-testable claims are unreliable"?

Because they are indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up. Do you agree that making shit up is not a reliable way to determine facts about reality?

> It's becoming more clear that we seem to have different criterion for what we consider testable.

I suspect that's a central problem, yes. The scientific notion of testability is something people with a religious background often seem to have difficulty wrapping their head around.

> Would you consider all claims that are provable or disprovable testable? Would you consider all claims that if true, and not provable or disprovable, are not testable?

First of all, just to make sure we aren't getting confused: This is all about "real truths", not about "formal truths", as "proof" is generally the term used by mathematics to describe derivation of formal truths, not so much by scientists, who would rather use terms like "evidence" or "demonstration" to describe, well, evidence for a hypothesis ... though people often colloquially use "proof" for either, even scientists, but it should be understood that it is being used in a meaning distinct from the mathematical use.

Also, I suspect that you are probably completely on the wrong track with "provability", even if I assume that you mean some sort of evidence-driven thing, because testability is not about whether some claim has been shown to be true or false, but about whether the claim could be shown to be false.

Testability is not a question of showing that something is true, because that isn't really a thing with inductive reasoning: For any model where you have not actually tested every prediction that you could derive from it (and those tend to be infinitely many for any non-trivial claims), you can not possibly be sure that there are no circumstances under which it would make a wrong prediction. So, testability is only concerned with showing that a claim is false, by demonstrating a contradiction, because you can indeed be sure that a model that makes predictions contradicted by a single test is incorrect (assuming you did not screw up the test, of course).

Now, of course, for a claim to be considered testable, it is not required that you demonstrate that it is false, that would be kinda pointless. The requirement is that you could potentially demonstrate it to be false if it were false.

So, for example, "water boils at 100 °C at atmospheric pressure" is testable, because there is an experiment that you could do that would contradict the claim if it weren't true. For example, if water actually only boiled at 200 °C, you could put together a demonstration where you heated water to 150 °C, showing that it didn't boil, thus contradicting the claim, thus demonstrating that it is false.

On the other hand, "invisible unicorns exist" is not testable, because there is no experiment that you could possibly do that would show it to be false. No matter what you observe about the world, there is no possible observation that could contradict the claim. That is simply because the claim does not make any predictions about observable reality--and if there is no prediction, there is no way to make an observation that would contradict any prediction.

Another common form of untestable claims, especially from religious people, is of the form "God listens to prayer and sends you help when you need it. When you pray, but you don't receive the help you think you need, god knew better that you actually didn't need the help you thought you needed." So, you pray, and either you get what you prayed for, then that is counted as evidence that god listened to the prayer, or you don't get what you prayed for, then that is counted as evidence that god knows better than you. The important point is: No matter what happens, it is counted as evidence for god. But an experiment where the result is counted as evidence for a particular hypothesis, no matter what the result of the experiment is, doesn't actually provide any evidence for anything, because the conclusion from the experiment does not actually depend on the result of the experiment. If you count every possible outcome as evidence for your hypothesis, there is no point in even doing the experiment, the result is the same as if you were to simply come to the conclusion without an experiment. Or in other words: Such a claim is indistinguishable from something that someone just made up.

> What are some claims of science and religion (regarding religion, particularly fundamental ones) that are contradictory, as in they claim opposing things (X and ~X)?

Religion: "It is warranted to believe that a god exists."

Science: "It is not warranted to believe that a god exists."

> A definition you have assumed? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying anything is wrong with that assumption, it is a self-evident one, but call it like it is.

WTF? Yes, I am assuming a shared definition of every single word that I am using. Are you expecting me to spell that out, as if it could possibly be any different? Yes, I am assuming that you share the definition of "to be", and the definition of "different", and the definition of "yes", and the definition of "definition", and the definition of "to assume", ... seriously?

> 1 ) If X can't be explained, then X is unintelligible. [...]

Did you change anything? This is again treating the explainability as a property of X, which is incoherent nonsense. What we are talking about is that some particular subject/class of subjects possibly won't ever gain certain knowledge. So, a sensible way to express that is something along the lines of "If X will never be understood by humans, then ...". Maybe you could rewrite your argument in those terms?

> To exist and be non-physical is to exist and be incapable of changing state, to exist and be incapable of changing state is to exist and be non-physical.

So, how does that distinguish the physical from the non-physical, when the physical isn't even mentioned?

> Wow have I done a terrible job of separating the conscience act from the external act. To be abundantly clear, it is immoral to violate your conscience. There can be two actions that occur when you perform an action: Choosing an action is itself an action, and performing the chosen action is separate from the choosing of that action. So if I where to correct my comments along these lines I would properly state: "It is immoral to [choose to] do what you think is immoral even if [what you choose to do] is moral, so you'll be better off doing [an action] you think is moral even if [that action] is immoral [because choosing to do otherwise would be immoral].

So, how exactly are you adding anything of substance here? All of those additional words don't do anything about the brokenness of the argument, unless you are saying that it is possible to act in a way that is not in accordance with how you choose to act ... which is just gibberish. The subjective idea of what is moral still fully determines the choice, and unless you can choose to act differently that you choose to act (WTF?), any independent claims about the morality of the action still are as vacuous as they were before.

> You are better off this way because you are not as/(at all) culpable for your actions if you didn't know they were wrong. That being said we are obligated to correct our neighbors' incorrect moral beliefs and to be open to being corrected."

What does that have to do with anything? I thought we were talking about morality, not culpability, nor obligations to neighbors?!

> Do you expect all true claims to sound rational before you've heard their justification? What did you expect given that I haven't been taking any steps to establish them?

No, but I expect that anyone who is serious about a discussion doesn't just suddenly dump on me some outlandish claims with the expectation that I will accept them for the purposes of building arguments on them. It should hardly be a surprise to you that I don't share the assumption that those claims that you were making are true, so it is obviously completely pointless to even mention them if you don't intend to justify them. You might as well just be saying "I am right" ... might be true, but it's obviously guaranteed to be unconvincing.

> "Ad Hominem"

Nope. That simply wasn't an argument at all, just an observation.

> That might be what you'd expect, but if you claim that's the kind of person I am then you'll need to substantiate that claim.

Correct. Which is why I am not making that claim. I am simply telling you that you maybe should check extra carefully whether that is what you are doing. Because I, ultimately, can't.

[sonusario]

> 1)... 2)... 3)...

How do you determine that a claim is not falsifiable? How do you determine that a claim is unreliable?

When you say "Science says", do you mean "Science is defined as such ..." or "Science has arrived at the conclusion ..."? When you say "Religion says", do you mean "All religions assert ..."?

> Because they are indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up. Do you agree that making shit up is not a reliable way to determine facts about reality?

While I agree that making shit up is not reliable, some claims that are "indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up" aren't necessarily untrue. Given that claims "indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up" could be true, one might think that there may be claims which, though are non-testable, are reliable for use. If that is not the case, then you have to establish the claim "non-testable claims are unreliable" in order to support what you're saying sciences asserts ("that untestable claims about reality are unreliable").

Also, when you say a claim is reliable, what is it reliable for?

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s> Is it possible that a testable claim could be true and imply another claim that is not testable?

z> No.

s> Why?

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> ... testability ... is about whether the claim could be shown to be false. ... The requirement is that you could potentially demonstrate it to be false if it were false.

You may need to elaborate for me, because true claims can't potentially be shown to be false in principle. So, are we calling claims falsifiable because we don't know beyond inductive reasoning that they are true and can out of ignorance come up with test that potentially demonstrates they are false?

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z> Doing science is to use whatever methods that deliver demonstrably reliable results and reject whatever methods that don't. There is no fixed method, because that in itself would be unreliable.

s> Is "use whatever methods that deliver demonstrably reliable results and reject whatever methods that don't" a fixed method?

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> Religion: "It is warranted to believe that a god exists."

> Science: "It is not warranted to believe that a god exists."

Assuming your saying "It is not warranted" because the claim "God exists" is not falsifiable, how has it been shown that the claim "God exists" is not a falsifiable claim?

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> WTF? Yes... ... seriously?

Oh, so you agree that science relies upon the reliability of the senses and that the claim "our senses are reliable" is not falsifiable in principle?

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z> More precisely, because a statement about math is not a statement about reality, other than that math is part of (human) reality.

s> When you apply the name "John" to one person and the name "Jack" to another, there are physical criterion to distinguish between John and Jack allowing us to verify via testing that a claim only about John is not a claim about Jack. Unless there are physical criterion that allows us to distinguish between math and reality, you've made a false analogy.

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z> The answer is simply: They didn't.

s> The conclusion I'm looking for is "They couldn't" and in particular "They couldn't intelligibly mean 'claims only about math are claims about reality'" and I want to know why. Only saying "they didn't" leaves the door open for someone else who could.

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s> Under this axiomatic context: Do distances, spaces, cardinalities, and sets symbolically or conceptually exist absent of any physical representation?

z> I don't know. I certainly don't see any reason to believe so.

s>Then you can't see any reason to believe '1 < 2' could make reference to anything other than the physical representations of distances of space, cardinalities of sets, and any other needed mathematical structures?

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> Did you change anything?

Did you read it? The first argument contains 18 points and said "X has". The second argument contains 16 points and does not say "X has".

> This is again treating the explainability as a property of X, which is incoherent nonsense.

Could you quote something from the second argument that treated "explainability as a property of X"?

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> So, how does that distinguish the physical from the non-physical, when the physical isn't even mentioned?

I guess the implication wasn't obvious enough. To exist and be physical is to exist and be capable of changing state, to exist and be capable of changing state is to exist and be physical.

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> ... unless you are saying that it is possible to act in a way that is not in accordance with how you choose to act ... which is just gibberish.

"Intend" is probably a better word than "choose".

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> No, but I expect that anyone who is serious about a discussion doesn't just suddenly dump on me some outlandish claims with the expectation that I will accept them for the purposes of building arguments on them.

Like 'claims only about math are not claims about reality'?

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> While I agree that making shit up is not reliable, some claims that are "indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up" aren't necessarily untrue.

Correct. Which is why I am not saying that claims that are indistinguishable from stuff that someone just made up are false. Really, even stuff that someone in fact just made up is not necessarily untrue. It is possible to make shit up and end up with the truth. But most claims that you could make up are false (for any claim A that you could make up, you could also make up at the very least the claim that not A, and at most one of those two can be true), which is why just making things up is not a reliable way to determine truth.

> Given that claims "indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up" could be true, one might think that there may be claims which, though are non-testable, are reliable for use.

"reliability of a claim" means the probability that the claim is true, based on what you know. The fact that some of the claims might be true does not mean that the probability of any particular claim being true is high.

> Also, when you say a claim is reliable, what is it reliable for?

It's not reliable _for_ anything, it is simply likely to be a correct description of reality.

> You may need to elaborate for me, because true claims can't potentially be shown to be false in principle.

Yes, they can, and that is the most important part of it that you have to wrap your head around.

The claim "water boils at 100 °C (at standard pressure ...)" is probably true, I suppose you would agree?

Here is an observation that could potentially be made that would count as falsification of the claim: Water in liquid form at 200 °C (at standard pressure ...).

Testability is not about actual demonstration, it is about potential demonstration. There has to be some demonstration that, if it were done, would be accepted as demonstrating that the claim is false.

The whole point is that for actually true claims, those demonstrations will never be actualized. But for actually false claims, they might, and often are. And that is how we weed out false claims, thus increasing the concentration of actually true claims in what we consider "state of the art human knowledge".

It is important to remember that "water boils at 100 °C" is not something we know for absolutely certain to be true. All attempts to falsify it so far have failed, that is all: All experiments so far have not produced any result that contradicts that claim. But for all we know, someone could demonstrate liquid water at 200 °C tomorrow (or water steam at 50 °C, or whatever--there are tons of demonstrations that would be accepted as falsification of that claim), and that would establish that this claim is false, after all.

> Assuming your saying "It is not warranted" because the claim "God exists" is not falsifiable, how has it been shown that the claim "God exists" is not a falsifiable claim?

What would you accept as falsification of the claim of the existence of the god that you believe in?

> Oh, so you agree that science relies upon the reliability of the senses and that the claim "our senses are reliable" is not falsifiable in principle?

All you are really saying here is "What if reality isn't real?" That is just a pointless objection. Whatever "ultimate reality" looks like, we still have to deal with the reality that we experience, and we most certainly experience what we experience, and the possibility that we might not be experiencing "ultimate reality" does not change that we are experiencing a reality, and that it is meaningful to make statements about that reality.

> Did you read it?

Yes, but it didn't seem like you changed anything of substance, in particular with regards to my criticism.

> Could you quote something from the second argument that treated "explainability as a property of X"?

The problem is that you are writing so massively ambiguous statements that it is very hard to nail down what you actually mean, and thus where exactly you treat explainability as a property of X. Even the first half of a sentence, "If X can't be explained", certainly sounds like "can't be explained" is a property of X. To avoid some of that ambiguity, I would very much prefer if you were to explicitly write down your argument completely avoiding "can be explained" or "has an explanation", instead using only "is known to humans" or "will be known to humans", and show that way that humans will at some point in time know everything.

And yes, I am aware that I am skipping a lot of stuff. I am getting the impression that we aren't getting anywhere with those due to way more fundamental misunderstanding, and I suspect a lot of it boils down to testability one way or another, so I think we are better off concentrating on that for now, instead of wasting a lot of time with going in circles.

[sonusario]

> ... which is why just making things up is not a reliable way to determine truth.

Your argument states "Science says that untestable claims about reality are unreliable" and not "Science says that making things up is not a reliable way to determine truth". Your argument also states "Religion says that certain untestable claims about reality are reliable" and not "Religion says that making things up is a reliable way to determine truth". There is a difference between the reliability of finding the truth by making up a claim and the reliability of the claim itself.

Your argument (from what I can tell as it is written) is not about the reliability of making up a claim but about the reliability of a claim itself. Even if your argument were referring to the reliability of making up a claim, I don't know of any religion that says or concludes that making up claims is reliable. Even if one did, that wouldn't lend itself to making the blanket statement "Religion says ...".

> "reliability of a claim" means the probability that the claim is true, based on what you know. The fact that some of the claims might be true does not mean that the probability of any particular claim being true is high.

Defining, conversely, the "unreliability of a claim" as the probability that the claim is false, your argument becomes the following:

> 1) Science says that untestable claims about reality have a probability of being false.

> 2) Religion says that certain untestable claims about reality have a probability of being true.

> 3) Therefore, religion's claims as to the probability of being true of some claims about reality contradicts science's claims as to the probability of being true of those claims.

Given that your argument makes no reference to what is more or less probable, no contradiction has been established (pending whether you mean unreliable to mean less likely and reliable to mean more likely (but then you'd need to establish how those probabilities were derived)). I don't want to put words in your mouth, so you may want to rephrase your argument because I doubt this is what you meant given that it does not establish your point.

> It's not reliable _for_ anything, it is simply likely to be a correct description of reality.

You can't/don't rely on scientific claims "_for_" anything? As in, the claims of science are not reliable for things like putting satellites into orbit or pursuing further truths, they are just likely a correct description of reality?

>> Assuming your saying "It is not warranted" because the claim "God exists" is not falsifiable, how has it been shown that the claim "God exists" is not a falsifiable claim?

> What would you accept as falsification of the claim of the existence of the god that you believe in?

You're shifting the burden of proof. I have at least five independent criterion, but you don't need to know them. Not having something to accept as falsification for the claim "water only boils at 100°C or greater (under 1 atm)" doesn't mean that there can't be one. So unless you have some solid demonstration of your claim, because lack of evidence doesn't seal the deal, then you have no convincing basis for claiming "'God exists' is not a falsifiable claim".

> All you are really saying here is "What if reality isn't real?" ...

Hahaha, what?? Not at all! I'm saying that, given what seems to be your want of disregarding all non-falsifiable claims as "indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up", you'd also be disregarding the claim "our senses our reliable" as "indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up" because that claim is not falsifiable in principle (it being non-falsifiable something we seem to agree on since we think it is self-evident).

If you think the claim "our senses are reliable" is falsifiable, then YOU would be the one likely to assert the question "What if reality isn't real?".

> And yes, I am aware that I am skipping a lot of stuff. ...

Thank you for mentioning it. I couldn't tell if stuff was being missed or ignored. It can be easy to miss things in walls of text.

> ... so I think we are better off concentrating on that for now ...

Sure, I've done more skimming myself.