Absent cake on a particular evening is a much more decisive failure than nonexistence of an abstract deity, because the abstract deity can be channeled and interacted with in imagination, especially posthuman imagination. Its relevance to a lot of future thoughts and decisions isn’t easily refuted by things like its absence on the table on a particular evening. Faith in strongly inaccessible cardinals doesn’t falter because of their apparent nonexistence in the physical world.
Nope, can’t bake the cake in the past, that’s why it’s an actual refutation, a meaningful disanalogy with the deity case, the reason your arguments about ignoring nonexistent deities don’t seem convincing, unlike the much more convincing argument about cake.
Faith in strongly inaccessible cardinals doesn’t falter because of their apparent nonexistence in the physical world.
The hypothetical we’re discussing is premised on a believer’s faith being shaken. If it’s shaken, but they refuse to admit the deity doesn’t exist, and start acting like talking to their imaginary version of that deity is as good as interacting with it, that’s… fine? I still don’t see how any of that involves value changes.
The hypothetical we’re discussing is premised on a believer’s faith being shaken.
The premise is that deity is revealed to be nonexistent, not that faith in deity is shaken. I’m arguing that it’s coherent and indeed the correct all-else-equal outcome for faith to remain unshaken by the discovery that it doesn’t physically exist. This does involve admitting that it doesn’t physically exist, no confusion/denial with that. (There are also no value changes, but we don’t even get to the point of worrying about those.)
If a deity is revealed to be physically nonexistent, that is perfectly in order because deities are supernatural rather than physical. But if it’s revealed that a deity is totally nonexistent i.e. that there is no entity which is the referent of its name, then that is equivalent to faith in it being shaken.
Usually you just need to find appropriate axioms, because if morally the object exists (which manifests in ability to reason about it and the facts that were initially discovered), it doesn’t matter very much if the original formulation of it didn’t work for some technical reason, say led to a formal contradiction in a convoluted way that doesn’t scream a natural explanation for inevitability of the contradiction. This does seem like a bit of an ontological crisis though, but the point is that threatening total nonexistence is very hard once you have even an informal understanding of what it is you are talking about, at most you get loss of relevance.
We have things that a given mathematician believes to be true, things that are proved to be true, and mediating between them things that have a moral reason to be true. Or, if you like, things that ought to be true, or as some mathematicians say: things that are morally true.
but the point is that threatening total nonexistence is very hard once you have even an informal understanding of what it is you are talking about, at most you get loss of relevance
True, it’s hard, but it does happen. As evidenced by the many of us who actually have become apostates of our native religions. After becoming convinced that the central thesis of the faith was in error, the jig was up.
EDIT: I think your way of phrasing it is descriptively the most accurate, because it’s psychologically quite possible to resist the act of apostasy despite not actually believing in the truth of your own beliefs. However, for many of us, we would consider such a person a non-believer and hence a de facto apostate, even if they didn’t think of themselves that way.
True, it’s hard, but it does happen. As evidenced by the many of us who become apostates
You are misplacing the referent if “it”. I was talking of abstract total nonexistence, not loss of worship. These are different things.
Loss of worship doesn’t witness total nonexistence, it’s possible to stop worshipping a thing that exists even physically, and to care less about a thing that exists abstractly. The fact that something is not worshiped is not any sort of argument for its abstract total nonexistence.
The argument whose applicability (not validity) I was contesting was that abstract total nonexistence implies loss of worship. I talked of how abstract total nonexistence of something previously informally motivated is unusual, doesn’t normally happen, only quantitative loss of degree of relevance (generic moral worth). And so the argument rarely applies, because its premise rarely triggers, not giving the conclusion of loss of worship.
The loss of worship itself can of course happen for other reasons, I wasn’t discussing this point.
Yes, I agreed in my edit that “worship”/”loss-of-worship” are possible necessary and sufficient correlates of “non-apostate”/”apostate” depending on your definition. However, one might say that worship is not sufficient; what is also required is belief.
However, one might say that worship is not sufficient; what is also required is belief.
Not sufficient for non-apostasy? What is “belief”? Some things abstractly exist, as coherent ideas. They don’t exist in the physical world. They matter or not in some way. Where’s “belief” in this, existence in the physical world specifically? Surely not, since then what is the relevance of talking about abstract total nonexistence?
What I would call “belief” or even “existence” in a sense that generalizes beyond the physical is moral relevance, things you care about and take into account in decision making. There is another thread on this point under this very post. In these terms, deities more strongly exist for believers and weakly exist for non-believers, with relevance for non-believers gained from their channeling via imagination of believers.
It seems like Thane Ruthenis is claiming rather that even if one accepted that their religious view was refuted, that still wouldn’t destroy the believer’s value system, or to quote directly: “Either way, ontology shifts don’t do anything bad to our values.”
I’m not responding to what happens if a deity loses relevance in one’s thinking. I’m arguing that deity’s nonexistence in physical reality is by itself not a reason at all for it to lose relevance (or a central place) in one’s thinking, that such relevance can coherently persevere on its own, with no support from reality.
I think we may be using different definitions of “value”. There’s a “value” like “what this agent is optimizing for right now”, and a “value” like “the cognitive structure that we’d call this agent’s terminal values if we looked at a comprehensive model of that agent”. I’m talking about the second type.
And e. g. the Divine Command model of morality especially has nothing to do with that second type. It’s explicitly “I value the things God says to value because He says to value them”. Divine Command values are explicitly instrumental, not terminal.
Absent cake on a particular evening is a much more decisive failure than nonexistence of an abstract deity, because the abstract deity can be channeled and interacted with in imagination, especially posthuman imagination. Its relevance to a lot of future thoughts and decisions isn’t easily refuted by things like its absence on the table on a particular evening. Faith in strongly inaccessible cardinals doesn’t falter because of their apparent nonexistence in the physical world.
Which is analogous to baking the cake yourself, sure.
Nope, can’t bake the cake in the past, that’s why it’s an actual refutation, a meaningful disanalogy with the deity case, the reason your arguments about ignoring nonexistent deities don’t seem convincing, unlike the much more convincing argument about cake.
I think I’m missing some inferential step.
The hypothetical we’re discussing is premised on a believer’s faith being shaken. If it’s shaken, but they refuse to admit the deity doesn’t exist, and start acting like talking to their imaginary version of that deity is as good as interacting with it, that’s… fine? I still don’t see how any of that involves value changes.
The premise is that deity is revealed to be nonexistent, not that faith in deity is shaken. I’m arguing that it’s coherent and indeed the correct all-else-equal outcome for faith to remain unshaken by the discovery that it doesn’t physically exist. This does involve admitting that it doesn’t physically exist, no confusion/denial with that. (There are also no value changes, but we don’t even get to the point of worrying about those.)
If a deity is revealed to be physically nonexistent, that is perfectly in order because deities are supernatural rather than physical. But if it’s revealed that a deity is totally nonexistent i.e. that there is no entity which is the referent of its name, then that is equivalent to faith in it being shaken.
Usually you just need to find appropriate axioms, because if morally the object exists (which manifests in ability to reason about it and the facts that were initially discovered), it doesn’t matter very much if the original formulation of it didn’t work for some technical reason, say led to a formal contradiction in a convoluted way that doesn’t scream a natural explanation for inevitability of the contradiction. This does seem like a bit of an ontological crisis though, but the point is that threatening total nonexistence is very hard once you have even an informal understanding of what it is you are talking about, at most you get loss of relevance.
E Cheng (2004) Mathematics, morally
True, it’s hard, but it does happen. As evidenced by the many of us who actually have become apostates of our native religions. After becoming convinced that the central thesis of the faith was in error, the jig was up.
EDIT: I think your way of phrasing it is descriptively the most accurate, because it’s psychologically quite possible to resist the act of apostasy despite not actually believing in the truth of your own beliefs. However, for many of us, we would consider such a person a non-believer and hence a de facto apostate, even if they didn’t think of themselves that way.
You are misplacing the referent if “it”. I was talking of abstract total nonexistence, not loss of worship. These are different things.
Loss of worship doesn’t witness total nonexistence, it’s possible to stop worshipping a thing that exists even physically, and to care less about a thing that exists abstractly. The fact that something is not worshiped is not any sort of argument for its abstract total nonexistence.
The argument whose applicability (not validity) I was contesting was that abstract total nonexistence implies loss of worship. I talked of how abstract total nonexistence of something previously informally motivated is unusual, doesn’t normally happen, only quantitative loss of degree of relevance (generic moral worth). And so the argument rarely applies, because its premise rarely triggers, not giving the conclusion of loss of worship.
The loss of worship itself can of course happen for other reasons, I wasn’t discussing this point.
Yes, I agreed in my edit that “worship”/”loss-of-worship” are possible necessary and sufficient correlates of “non-apostate”/”apostate” depending on your definition. However, one might say that worship is not sufficient; what is also required is belief.
Not sufficient for non-apostasy? What is “belief”? Some things abstractly exist, as coherent ideas. They don’t exist in the physical world. They matter or not in some way. Where’s “belief” in this, existence in the physical world specifically? Surely not, since then what is the relevance of talking about abstract total nonexistence?
What I would call “belief” or even “existence” in a sense that generalizes beyond the physical is moral relevance, things you care about and take into account in decision making. There is another thread on this point under this very post. In these terms, deities more strongly exist for believers and weakly exist for non-believers, with relevance for non-believers gained from their channeling via imagination of believers.
Fair enough, I suppose I was using imprecise language. Stated as this, I don’t disagree.
It seems like Thane Ruthenis is claiming rather that even if one accepted that their religious view was refuted, that still wouldn’t destroy the believer’s value system, or to quote directly: “Either way, ontology shifts don’t do anything bad to our values.”
I’m not responding to what happens if a deity loses relevance in one’s thinking. I’m arguing that deity’s nonexistence in physical reality is by itself not a reason at all for it to lose relevance (or a central place) in one’s thinking, that such relevance can coherently persevere on its own, with no support from reality.
I think we may be using different definitions of “value”. There’s a “value” like “what this agent is optimizing for right now”, and a “value” like “the cognitive structure that we’d call this agent’s terminal values if we looked at a comprehensive model of that agent”. I’m talking about the second type.
And e. g. the Divine Command model of morality especially has nothing to do with that second type. It’s explicitly “I value the things God says to value because He says to value them”. Divine Command values are explicitly instrumental, not terminal.
Under your latter definition, could an agent be surprised by learning what its values are?
Yes, very much so.