Todangst's Axioms
Offline Hello.
Any foundationalist philosophy has to begin with some properly basic beliefs: some propositions that it is proper to accept which do not require further justification.
Todangst has founded his philosophy upon 3 axioms, taken whole cloth from Ayn Rand's Objectivism: identity ("A is A" ), existence ("existence exists" ), and consciousness ("I am conscious" ). He, and several other members of the forum, are under the impression that it is rational to take these axioms as properly basic, since all three are (1) self-evident and (2) defensible by retortion.
The premise here is: "if a statement is both self-evident and defensible by retortion, it is properly basic". However, that statement is neither self-evident nor defensible by retortion. It is to all appearances a naked, if implicit, assertion.
Am I missing something here?
[mod edit to remove automatic smileys]
Q: Why didn't you address (post x) that I made in response to you nine minutes ago???
A: Because I have (a) a job, (b) familial obligations, (c) social obligations, and (d) probably a lot of other atheists responded to the same post you did, since I am practically the token Christian on this site now. Be patient, please.
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Yes, you are:
God isn't real.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
I'm having a problem understanding how you could see a problem with that statement...
Yeah, something's missing. why must the premise be properly basic ?
Anyhoo... this topic will die a quick death so let's have some fun with it -
Eloise's axiom - "I" is not properly basic.
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You is definitely not basic Eloise. You is a challenging read.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
If [edited-aiia] "a statement is both self-evident and defensible by retortion, it is properly basic" is "neither self-evident nor defensible by retortion" then the statement "that statement is neither self-evident nor defensible by retortion" is "neither self-evident nor defensible by retortion".
rationale
People who think there is something they refer to as god don't ask enough questions.
I agree because you are not I
Oh good; I was beginning to think I was the only one. I would gladly think happy thoughts about anyone who could properly translate these QM posts to my level -- it will probably involve Lego.
--
maybe if this sig is witty, someone will love me.
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Maybe you should just stick to trying to prove God's existence.
Nobody I know was brainwashed into being an atheist.
Why Believe?
It's a naked assertion. It has 0 premises, 0 support, 0 argumentation.
Q: Why didn't you address (post x) that I made in response to you nine minutes ago???
A: Because I have (a) a job, (b) familial obligations, (c) social obligations, and (d) probably a lot of other atheists responded to the same post you did, since I am practically the token Christian on this site now. Be patient, please.
So what? What is the conclusion you're trying to draw? I didn't claim that it WAS self-evident or defensible by retortion.
Q: Why didn't you address (post x) that I made in response to you nine minutes ago???
A: Because I have (a) a job, (b) familial obligations, (c) social obligations, and (d) probably a lot of other atheists responded to the same post you did, since I am practically the token Christian on this site now. Be patient, please.
Yeah... so... I'm guessing you've never had philosophy 101
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
He wouldn't be a presupper if he had.
None of which actually answers his question, however. It's not an attack, it's a question. If he's missing something, tell him what he's missing and why. That's not an unreasonable thing for someone to ask.
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
Unless I'm missing something, the question has been answered thoroughly in Todangst's book page. I could cut and paste, or try to say it in another way, but it seems to me he's just presupposing nonsensical positions and then asking us to disprove them, which is silly, because they disprove themselves.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Grrr... I hate when my conscience overrides my sense of annoyance.
Ok,
The statement referenced above is simply a statement. Any statement has to go through several levels of induction. We must assume that we understand the words. We must understand that the person speaking them is real, that he understands the words as I do, and so on. The statement, "if a statement is both self-evident and defensible by retortion, it is properly basic," is not properly basic for these reasons. However, the concept conveyed by the sentence is properly basic, for it cannot be any other way. Regardless of our understanding of language, we can recognize our existence because we have questioned it.
Maybe you're not understanding the notion of axioms. Axioms precede defense. A sentence pointing out this nature of an axiom, therefore, needs no defense, as it is simply the conveyance of a self evident concept.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Well, it's a question of effectiveness toward your goals. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, if he's really sincere about not understanding and looking for an explanation, does C&P really help? It might... a quick link to the specific area that answers his question might, as well. Rephrasing it might be more effective, though, if he's read, but not understood or recognized, the passages you'd be referencing. Ignoring him, or belittling him, really has no likelihood of advancing your goals, as that sort of behavior tends to make others dismissive of your position.
Now, if we don't give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume he's just trying to be a jerk or something, obviously no amount of effort on your part is likely to advance your goals... with him. But by the same token, there might be someone else who comes along and sincerely has the same questions, and those answers would then benefit your goals with regard to that 'someone else'. Alternatively, he, or our mysterious 'someone else', might see sincere, reasonable responses and attempts to clarify and explain as a sign of a reasonable, intelligent person who trusts the rationality of his position to be evident, and decide to take a second look and maybe rethink their position.
Either way, other than the cheap thrill of feeling like you've delivered a smack-down, treating the question as serious costs you nothing, and cannot possibly be less productive in the long run than assuming the question is meant to be inflammatory.
Edit to add: Trust your conscience more often, man.
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
I'll buy you a case of beer (or something similar) if you can do it using regular old legos that don't change color somehow or do anything legos don't normally do.
What it means is that certain things need to be in place before reason is possible.
For example, in having this debate we are communicating in language.
This is only possible if we are both following the rules of language - otherwise what we 'type' won't be meaningful anymore.
E.g. If I asked you if you could carrot something yellow for me then you'd probably look at me blankly with no further comment.
The laws of logic like the laws of identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle are basically consequences of how our language works.
The whole point of the word "not" is distinguish from what "is". The moment you ignore the law of non-contradiction, the word "not" becomes meaningless.
Since we are debating in a language that has the word "not" in it, the law of non-contradiction holds.
So Rand's law of Identity is basically reflects the meaning of the word 'Is' - I think I could agree that it's an axiom, a basic self-evident truth
Her axiom of consciousness is basically Descarte's "I think therefore I am" - reasoning and language is something done by a thinking/conscious being
While I think that's a priori true, I think an axiom is meant to be a bit more basic than that.
I'm not sure that "Existence exists" even makes sense...
I don't agree with Rand's philosophy but I agree that some things can be defended through retortion.
It's basically pointing out that certain things need to be in place before we debate, and that if you don't follow then we're not even communicating let alone debating so why carry on typing?
To be fair, Strafio, not everyone agrees with this statement:
We have not established the intellectual capabilities of some smart non-lingual animals well enough to say that conceptualizing the law of identity, et al, is impossible without language.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Fair enough.
I guess there's potential for non-linguistic concepts too.
I was more trying to show that language was sufficient for logic rather than necessary for it and that language determines the rules of logic that we would use in a debate.
That ought to hold independently of what we find out about non-lingual thought.
For the non-logicians playing along, the translation:
Strafio is saying that the existence of language is enough to prove that logic exists. He is not saying that one must possess language to possess logic. Language would become the limiting factor in a debate, since language is our way of communicating logic between beings.
I do think that holds independently of any determinations of non-lingual thought.
My point was that language, while it can be used to demonstrate that logic exists, is not the cause of logic, but the evidence of it.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Lol! I guess I'm so used to the jargon that I forget that it's specialist.
I've always prided myself on being layman friendly too. Meh!
I hardly think it matters anyway. I'm guessing we lost our latest presuppositionalist back at paradox number three.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
For anyone planning to post here from now on: I'm not going to rebut any future posts that (a) insult me and (b) ignore the OP. Thanks.
Q: Why didn't you address (post x) that I made in response to you nine minutes ago???
A: Because I have (a) a job, (b) familial obligations, (c) social obligations, and (d) probably a lot of other atheists responded to the same post you did, since I am practically the token Christian on this site now. Be patient, please.
You consider it an insult that Hamby doesn't think you've taken a philosophy course?
That's rather strange.
I doubt you have a doctorate in psychology. Would you also consider that 'insulting?'
He is addressing the OP. He is stating that your claim is not philosophically sound. Let's take a closer look:
...In what way does this not address your OP?
Or are you just baiting / trolling?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
double post
You say the statement is properly basic because it "can't be any other way". How do you know it can't be any other way? The premise sort of comes out of thin air.
I understand axioms as they are used in Rand's Objectivism, and Todangst appears to use them in the same way. I should point out that although Rand did not feel that axioms could be "defended" per se, she did feel that they are subject to a process of validation, i.e., a demonstration that any statement must assume them in order to be coherent. (Otherwise, the mystics she dreaded could have taken absolutely any proposition as axiomatic.) So, if you're going to take the statement "if a statement is both self-evident and defensible by retortion, it is properly basic" as an axiom, you will need to validate it.
Q: Why didn't you address (post x) that I made in response to you nine minutes ago???
A: Because I have (a) a job, (b) familial obligations, (c) social obligations, and (d) probably a lot of other atheists responded to the same post you did, since I am practically the token Christian on this site now. Be patient, please.
The post is pretty clearly intended as an insult. Implying that I don't know introductory philosophy is kind of rude, isn't it?
That post is separate from the one in which he insulted me. You're quoting two different posts, then treating a response I made to the first as if I wrote it in response to the second. I never implied that the second post did not address my OP.
Q: Why didn't you address (post x) that I made in response to you nine minutes ago???
A: Because I have (a) a job, (b) familial obligations, (c) social obligations, and (d) probably a lot of other atheists responded to the same post you did, since I am practically the token Christian on this site now. Be patient, please.
No, it isn't. Not when your post wholly suggests that you don't know your way around the topic at all. Everything you've said so far constitutes little more than mental gymnastics and semantics quibbling, rather than actually bothering to address the meat of Todangst's arguments.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Presup, I'm sorry if you feel my post was insulting. Perhaps it is more reflective of your own philosophical insecurities than my tone. Care to tell me if you've had any courses in philosophy? If I was guessing right, it must mean that I had a good reason for guessing, no?
This is how I know you don't know much about basic philosophy, presup. You can get insulted by this observation, or you can try to learn from it.
This statement is not out of thin air. As both Strafio and I have already explained to you, the statement is nothing more than a linguistic representation of an axiom. The axiom is axiomatic because it can't be any other way. That's what an axiom is.
Axioms precede proof. They are demonstrated by retortion, but they need no proof, for they are fundamental to existence, and existence cannot be any other way. This is the nature of retortion, which also cannot be any other way.
If you feel you can not exist while questioning your own existence, I would gladly listen to your defense of this claim, but until you can, you're going to have to live with the nature of tautology, which is that it is necessarily valid.
It's hard to believe you can't see what you just did. You completely ignored the defense of axioms, which is perfectly valid, and necessarily true. You did that because of something you want to be true -- namely, you want to be able to justify your god. Unfortunately for you, if you accept the fundamental premise that axioms precede proof, you will have to admit that your god defies proof and logic and cannot exist.
You know, Rand didn't invent axioms, nor was she the first to demonstrate that they precede proof. Axioms are the foundation of ontology. It cannot be any other way, or all knowledge would be not only suspect, but complete gibberish. Without axioms, there is no such thing as knowledge.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
I would probably end up with a carrot shoved through a banana.
That's the funny thing about Presup's inquiry: Todangst has founded his philosophy upon 3 axioms, taken whole cloth from Ayn Rand's Objectivism: identity ("A is A" ), existence ("existence exists" ), and consciousness ("I am conscious" ).
The law of identity (A=A, or "every entity shall be identical to itself"
was established as it is known today by Gottfried Libniz, who was one of the contributors to Calculus next to Newton. Of course, consciousness was shown to be axiomatic by René Descartes. Whether existence exists is, for some, arguable, but attributing any of these to Ayn Rand betrays a lack of even basic philosophical knowledge.
It's worth pointing out that the philosophers who argue this point have yet to contribute anything that can even tentatively be called generally plausible to the standard lexicon of philosophy.
In other words, nobody's dented the axioms yet.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
So school me. Answer the OP.
I'm trying to understand the philosophy behind Todangst's arguments first. That's why I made this thread.
Q: Why didn't you address (post x) that I made in response to you nine minutes ago???
A: Because I have (a) a job, (b) familial obligations, (c) social obligations, and (d) probably a lot of other atheists responded to the same post you did, since I am practically the token Christian on this site now. Be patient, please.
What? You'd rather have someone else give you the answers that are already in the thread?
Both Strafio and I have explained it to you in detail. Are you just shopping around until you find someone who doesn't know how to answer your question?
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Perhaps you should take it upon yourself to aphorise -properly basic- 'another way' within the communicative limitations that Hamby and Strafio are describing, in order to demonstrate your point, Presupp?
It is an axiom, so it encompasses the observation of its validity, in logical practice. The defense of its validity is demonstrable and you can't break the statement down any further than the elements of its demonstration. Thus 'properly basic' is, like any axiom, a canny idea put to describing an elementary observation. In other words, this statement conveys a concept that isn't given to validation because it is taken for granted before we even start reasoning out any validation.
A fine example of this is demonstrated to work for what I posted before -
premise: a statement is properly basic if it is self evident and defended by retortion.
Statement - I exist ?
self-evidence - I asked the question - in order to ask a thing must exist therefore I exist.
retortion - who asked? : I did.
If we are going to be as "two reasoning between each other" then that much is self-evident and not requiring validation.
Aside: The original reason for the abovementioned post was to have some fun with the undecidability of "I" but it seems my reputation precedes and noone is biting... Oh well...
P.S: edited for increased clarity by Eloise.
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Presuppositionalist, my reply to your OP is on the previous page - post #19.
I'm not a fan or Rand or the philosophy involving those axioms.
I think that Todangst's use of them in this particular case is valid and justifiable for different reasons.
I'd genuinely like to see what you make of my arguments.
You'll see a slight critique of position from Hamby too - we atheists agree on our disbelief in God but everything else is potentially a disagreement!
Lol!!
'to carrot' just became a well defined verb.
That said, if you keep undermining my arguments by redefining my attempted nonsense then I might just have to carrot you!!
I'll bite ya! But only if you ask nice.
Sorry, had to be done.
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
I would say that you and I come from rather different views of what it is to be conscious and human. Aside from us reaching loggerheads over moderate religion, I'd say we still manage to reach compatible, if not identical, positions on most issues. That's one of the reasons I think rationalism is so great. Both of us, I believe, recognize that ours is not the only rationalist position available, and that within objective reality, a certain amount of relativism is not only acceptable, but beneficial.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism