“I submit that claims about God are of this latter sort. There’s simply no reason to take them more seriously than one does claims about witches or ghosts.”
I… what… is this some kind of atheistic affective death spiral? How could this possibly be construed as a reasonable analogy, even rhetorically? And with such a smug tone? Why are we tolerating blatantly misleading dark arts that appeal to the inductive biases of our epistemological reference class?
What is unreasonable about the analogy? All three are claims about apparently unfalsifiable super-natural entities with no normal epistemological support, and many arguments for God would seem to work as well for other such entities. (As Anselm’s contemporary pointed out, his ontological argument served as well to prove the existence of perfect demons or islands or fairies.)
If you disagree, a read of the paper might be in order so you don’t have to resort to accusations of the Dark Arts.
Bayesians don’t care about unfalsifiability, ‘supernatural’ can only be constructed relative to a limited ontology (things that aren’t made up of subatomic particles are supernatural, say; variants on an algorithmic ontology have room for something like a God) and is thus a dangerous and slippery word, and the hypothesis of there existing something important called a God has ridiculous amounts of epistemological support even if there is lots of evidence against such a hypothesis as well.
Bayesians care a lot about unfalsifiability, a theory can only gain probability mass by assigning low probabilities to some outcomes (if you don’t believe me then go read Eliezer’s technical explanation of technical explanation).
“Anything not made from subatomic particles” is a poor definition of the supernatural, since it leaves is irrationally prejudiced against the idea that subatomic particles could be made out of something else, which is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis (currently one with no evidence for it, but we still shouldn’t be prejudiced against it).
Try “ontologically fundamental mental states” for a better definition of supernatural, and a much better one since there is very good reason to assign a low prior to such claims (there is a huge number of imaginable ontologically fundamental things which are simpler than mental states, so by occam’s razor and the principle of limited probability mass any hypothesis that claims they exist gets a very low prior).
Hypothesis: Most if not all of this epistemological support of which you speak is bad philosophy, possibly based on the mind projection fallacy, which could just as easily have been constructed to defend witches or ghosts if someone had had enough reason to do so.
Bayesians care a lot about unfalsifiability, a theory can only gain probability mass by assigning low probabilities to some outcomes (if you don’t believe me then go read Eliezer’s technical explanation of technical explanation).
To be more precise (and more correct) we should say that it can gain probability mass, but only when more precise hypotheses are falsified.
If I think a coin is either fair or biased toward heads, and then it comes up tails three times, it’s probably fair.
Bayesians care a lot about unfalsifiability, a theory can only gain probability mass by assigning low probabilities to some outcomes (if you don’t believe me then go read Eliezer’s technical explanation of technical explanation).
Nitpicking; I meant that falsifiability-in-practice-as-such-the-way-most-people-use-the-word is not a necessary precondition for determining which hypotheses to pay attention to. Apparently unfalsifiable hypotheses (which are nonetheless probably actually falsifiable with enough computing power) like the existence of a creator God are thus fair game for Bayesians, and pointing out their apparent unfalsifiability isn’t scoring a point for the atheists.
“Anything not made from subatomic particles” is a poor definition of the supernatural, since it leaves is irrationally prejudiced against the idea that subatomic particles could be made out of something else, which is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis (currently one with no evidence for it, but we still shouldn’t be prejudiced against it).
Right, but you have to use a poor ontology in order to get a concept that even looks like supernatural in the first place… this is an argument against using the word supernatural at all. God is just not supernatural if you are using the right ontology. I don’t know what an ontologically fundamental state would look like (when I think of people who believe in the supernatural that does not seem to describe their beliefs at all), and I don’t see how that conception is at all relevant to gods, witches, or ghosts. We can follow that digression, as I’m really curious as to what people are trying to explain when they talk about supernaturalism as belief in ontologically fundamental mental states, but it doesn’t seem relevant to the OP.
Hypothesis: Most if not all of this epistemological support of which you speak is bad philosophy, possibly based on the mind projection fallacy, which could just as easily have been constructed to defend witches or ghosts if someone had had enough reason to do so.
Most? Yes, of course yes. To a first approximation, everyone everywhere always has always been wrong about everything, including all of atheism and science. But all? Not even close.
Here’s a basic argument for a somewhat vague Creator God: the universe exists. Things that exist tend to have causes. Powerful things like superintelligences or transcendent uploads are good at causing things. This universe might have been caused by one of those really powerful things.
That we feel better when we call those powerful things ‘superintelligences’ instead of ‘gods’ just says something about our choice of ontology, not about the righteousness of our epistemology.
Here’s a basic argument for a somewhat vague Creator God: the universe exists. Things that exist tend to have causes. Powerful things like superintelligences or transcendent uploads are good at causing things. This universe might have been caused by one of those really powerful things.
Here’s a basic knockdown: “the universe” is not a thing in the way that requires a cause. It’s a category of things, so if you must assign it a cause, it is caused by the existence of things (and maybe a desire to refer to everything). By way of demonstration, if you listed every physical thing that makes up the universe, and I found some physical things that existed but were not on your list, would you say “there are things outside the universe” or would you add those things to the list?
(That is, your argument needs to point to things that are likely to be caused by superintelligences / transcendences. I would point to all the things we know of so far as being very unlikely to have been caused by superintelligences / transcendences, and claim that the rest of the universe probably shares that same property.)
Nitpicking; I meant that falsifiability-in-practice-as-such-the-way-most-people-use-the-word is not a necessary precondition for determining which hypotheses to pay attention to. Apparently unfalsifiable hypotheses (which are nonetheless probably actually falsifiable with enough computing power) like the existence of a creator God are thus fair game for Bayesians, and pointing out their apparent unfalsifiability isn’t scoring a point for the atheists.
Wrong. A consequence of Bayes’ Theorem is that if two theories A and B fit the data equally well, but A fits hypothetical alternative data better than B does (in other words, B is more falsifiable) then A must assign a lower conditional probability to the actual data than B, by conservation of probability. This means that regardless of where the priors start out, if we keep accumulating evidence without falsifying either the probability of A must eventually become vanishingly small, too small for any reasonable person to even spare the time to consider the hypothesis.
I don’t know what an ontologically fundamental state would look like (when I think of people who believe in the supernatural that does not seem to describe their beliefs at all)
Believing in ontologically fundamental mental states means the you believe that the actual territory, as opposed to a map, contains minds. This can seem reasonable, but the reasonableness is an illusion caused by the fact that our monkey brains are pretty good at thinking about other monkey brains and pretty bad at thinking about much simpler things, such as maths.
God falls into this category as normally postulated, since he is usually assumed to be fundamental and is usually assigned mental states as well as exhibiting the complex behaviour typical of minds. Ghosts fall into it since for a person’s mind to survive the destruction of the physical entity it was contained in/supervenient upon it must have its own ontologically fundamental properties.
Here’s a basic argument for a somewhat vague Creator God: the universe exists. Things that exist tend to have causes. Powerful things like superintelligences or transcendent uploads are good at causing things. This universe might have been caused by one of those really powerful things.
Here’s the corresponding argument for ghosts: death is an event. People’s conciousness tends to continue existing through most events, so it probably continues existing through death even though it has never been observed to do so (the same way no universe has been observed to have a cause). Therefore minds must continue existing after death, and we might as well call them ghosts.
Motivated cognition at its worst.
That we feel better when we call those powerful things ‘superintelligences’ instead of ‘gods’ just says something about our choice of ontology, not about the righteousness of our epistemology.
No, it shows that we are cautious that the connotations of our statements don’t say anything that we don’t mean.
Wrong. A consequence of Bayes’ Theorem is that if two theories A and B fit the data equally well, but A fits hypothetical alternative data better than B does (in other words, B is more falsifiable) then A must assign a lower conditional probability to the actual data than B, by conservation of probability. This means that regardless of where the priors start out, if we keep accumulating evidence without falsifying either the probability of A must eventually become vanishingly small, too small for any reasonable person to even spare the time to consider the hypothesis.
Atheism is also unfalsifiable in practice, though, so I don’t see the relevance. And I think the positive evidence points somewhat towards theism, not atheism. Thus I find theism more likely.
Believing in ontologically fundamental mental states means the you believe that the actual territory, as opposed to a map, contains minds. This can seem reasonable, but the reasonableness is an illusion caused by the fact that our monkey brains are pretty good at thinking about other monkey brains and pretty bad at thinking about much simpler things, such as maths.
Thanks for the explanation.
God falls into this category as normally postulated, since he is usually assumed to be fundamental and is usually assigned mental states as well as exhibiting the complex behaviour typical of minds. Ghosts fall into it since for a person’s mind to survive the destruction of the physical entity it was contained in/supervenient upon it must have its own ontologically fundamental properties.
God is normally considered to be outside the universe; why do you say he is usually assumed to be fundamental? Also note that there are many conceptions of God, some of which actually are something like fundamental even if isomorphic to a more detailed description (with less errant connotations) of the structure of the ensemble universe.
Here’s the corresponding argument for ghosts: death is an event. People’s conciousness tends to continue existing through most events, so it probably continues existing through death even though it has never been observed to do so (the same way no universe has been observed to have a cause). Therefore minds must continue existing after death, and we might as well call them ghosts.
And this is where I start thinking you’re crazy, for thinking this is even close to a corresponding argument. What similarities do you see? Every single thing we have ever seen has a cause. We have seen the universe. We postulate a cause, by simple induction. We have seen peoples’ consciousness fade in and out as they go to sleep or fall into comas. We postulate that it is thus probable that death is like an endless coma. It is hard for me to fathom how you could possibly have seen your argument for ghosts as being at all in the same reference class, except that ‘ghosts’ and ‘gods’ are both contemptible hypotheses ’round these parts.
Like, seriously, your analogy on the meta level seems to me like motivated cognition at its worse.
No, it shows that we are cautious that the connotations of our statements don’t say anything that we don’t mean.
This is only because we already have a word for ‘superintelligence’. Most people don’t. My point was that we shouldn’t be automatically contemptuous of concepts that are really damn similar to the ones we’re already postulating just because they’re labeled in the language of the enemy.
If God rides down from heaven hurling lightening bolts in all directions and wantomly altering the very nature of reality, I will consider atheism to be falsified. This is an extreme case, but there are many observations that could falsify, or at least provide very strong evidence against, atheism.
Don’t confuse unfalsified with unfalsifiable.
God is normally considered to be outside the universe; why do you say he is usually assumed to be fundamental?
Either God can be reduced to something else or he is fundamental. No conception of God that I have ever heard of can be reduced (I’m not show how he could create the universe if he was reducible) so it seems likely he is usually assumed fundamental.
Also note that there are many conceptions of God, some of which actually are something like fundamental even if isomorphic to a more detailed description (with less errant connotations) of the structure of the ensemble universe.
I’m afraid I can’t understand what you mean here.
Every single thing we have ever seen has a cause.
The universe itself has no observed cause, so this statement is false. It seems likely that there is at least one uncaused thing, since otherwise you have an infinite regress, and the universe seems like as good as bet as any for what that thing is, since it has no observed cause and it belongs to a very different reference class to everything else.
We have seen peoples’ consciousness fade in and out as they go to sleep or fall into comas. We postulate that it is thus probable that death is like an endless coma.
Ah, but we have never observed conciousness to be ended permanently except by death.
You may challenge that this is not evidence since it is true by definition, but if you think about it the fact that the universe has no observed cause is also true by definition, since if it did have an observed cause we would just have included that thing in ‘the universe’ and then asked what caused it.
This is only because we already have a word for ‘superintelligence’. Most people don’t. My point was that we shouldn’t be automatically contemptuous of concepts that are really damn similar to the ones we’re already postulating just because they’re labeled in the language of the enemy.
Its not about ‘God’ being the language of the enemy, its about the fact that it has been used by too many people to mean too many things and it has reached the point where even to use it is to imply many of those things. If someone wants to talk about the cause of the universe they should call it ‘Flumsy’, since that way nobody gets confused.
Think about it this way. If you are working on an algebra problem and you have some complicated term in your equation that you want to define so you don’t have to write out the whole thing every line, you might decide to call it ‘x’. This is a perfectly legitimate step (it is a primitive operation in most mathematical formal systems) unless there is already a term called ‘x’ elsewhere in your equation, in which case it is making the unjustified and quite probably false assumption that these two things are equal.
Calling this cause you postulate ‘God’ is the same kind of mistake.
Here’s a basic argument for a somewhat vague Creator God: the universe exists. Things that exist tend to have causes. Powerful things like superintelligences or transcendent uploads are good at causing things. This universe might have been caused by one of those really powerful things.
I would be curious to know if you are putting this forward as an hypothetical argument for the sake of the discussion, or as an actual summarised argument that you really do find at least somewhat persuasive.
I… what… is this some kind of atheistic affective death spiral? How could this possibly be construed as a reasonable analogy, even rhetorically? And with such a smug tone? Why are we tolerating blatantly misleading dark arts that appeal to the inductive biases of our epistemological reference class?
What is unreasonable about the analogy? All three are claims about apparently unfalsifiable super-natural entities with no normal epistemological support, and many arguments for God would seem to work as well for other such entities. (As Anselm’s contemporary pointed out, his ontological argument served as well to prove the existence of perfect demons or islands or fairies.)
If you disagree, a read of the paper might be in order so you don’t have to resort to accusations of the Dark Arts.
Bayesians don’t care about unfalsifiability, ‘supernatural’ can only be constructed relative to a limited ontology (things that aren’t made up of subatomic particles are supernatural, say; variants on an algorithmic ontology have room for something like a God) and is thus a dangerous and slippery word, and the hypothesis of there existing something important called a God has ridiculous amounts of epistemological support even if there is lots of evidence against such a hypothesis as well.
Bayesians care a lot about unfalsifiability, a theory can only gain probability mass by assigning low probabilities to some outcomes (if you don’t believe me then go read Eliezer’s technical explanation of technical explanation).
“Anything not made from subatomic particles” is a poor definition of the supernatural, since it leaves is irrationally prejudiced against the idea that subatomic particles could be made out of something else, which is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis (currently one with no evidence for it, but we still shouldn’t be prejudiced against it).
Try “ontologically fundamental mental states” for a better definition of supernatural, and a much better one since there is very good reason to assign a low prior to such claims (there is a huge number of imaginable ontologically fundamental things which are simpler than mental states, so by occam’s razor and the principle of limited probability mass any hypothesis that claims they exist gets a very low prior).
Hypothesis: Most if not all of this epistemological support of which you speak is bad philosophy, possibly based on the mind projection fallacy, which could just as easily have been constructed to defend witches or ghosts if someone had had enough reason to do so.
To be more precise (and more correct) we should say that it can gain probability mass, but only when more precise hypotheses are falsified.
If I think a coin is either fair or biased toward heads, and then it comes up tails three times, it’s probably fair.
Nitpicking; I meant that falsifiability-in-practice-as-such-the-way-most-people-use-the-word is not a necessary precondition for determining which hypotheses to pay attention to. Apparently unfalsifiable hypotheses (which are nonetheless probably actually falsifiable with enough computing power) like the existence of a creator God are thus fair game for Bayesians, and pointing out their apparent unfalsifiability isn’t scoring a point for the atheists.
Right, but you have to use a poor ontology in order to get a concept that even looks like supernatural in the first place… this is an argument against using the word supernatural at all. God is just not supernatural if you are using the right ontology. I don’t know what an ontologically fundamental state would look like (when I think of people who believe in the supernatural that does not seem to describe their beliefs at all), and I don’t see how that conception is at all relevant to gods, witches, or ghosts. We can follow that digression, as I’m really curious as to what people are trying to explain when they talk about supernaturalism as belief in ontologically fundamental mental states, but it doesn’t seem relevant to the OP.
Most? Yes, of course yes. To a first approximation, everyone everywhere always has always been wrong about everything, including all of atheism and science. But all? Not even close.
Here’s a basic argument for a somewhat vague Creator God: the universe exists. Things that exist tend to have causes. Powerful things like superintelligences or transcendent uploads are good at causing things. This universe might have been caused by one of those really powerful things.
That we feel better when we call those powerful things ‘superintelligences’ instead of ‘gods’ just says something about our choice of ontology, not about the righteousness of our epistemology.
Here’s a basic knockdown: “the universe” is not a thing in the way that requires a cause. It’s a category of things, so if you must assign it a cause, it is caused by the existence of things (and maybe a desire to refer to everything). By way of demonstration, if you listed every physical thing that makes up the universe, and I found some physical things that existed but were not on your list, would you say “there are things outside the universe” or would you add those things to the list?
(That is, your argument needs to point to things that are likely to be caused by superintelligences / transcendences. I would point to all the things we know of so far as being very unlikely to have been caused by superintelligences / transcendences, and claim that the rest of the universe probably shares that same property.)
Wrong. A consequence of Bayes’ Theorem is that if two theories A and B fit the data equally well, but A fits hypothetical alternative data better than B does (in other words, B is more falsifiable) then A must assign a lower conditional probability to the actual data than B, by conservation of probability. This means that regardless of where the priors start out, if we keep accumulating evidence without falsifying either the probability of A must eventually become vanishingly small, too small for any reasonable person to even spare the time to consider the hypothesis.
Believing in ontologically fundamental mental states means the you believe that the actual territory, as opposed to a map, contains minds. This can seem reasonable, but the reasonableness is an illusion caused by the fact that our monkey brains are pretty good at thinking about other monkey brains and pretty bad at thinking about much simpler things, such as maths.
God falls into this category as normally postulated, since he is usually assumed to be fundamental and is usually assigned mental states as well as exhibiting the complex behaviour typical of minds. Ghosts fall into it since for a person’s mind to survive the destruction of the physical entity it was contained in/supervenient upon it must have its own ontologically fundamental properties.
Here’s the corresponding argument for ghosts: death is an event. People’s conciousness tends to continue existing through most events, so it probably continues existing through death even though it has never been observed to do so (the same way no universe has been observed to have a cause). Therefore minds must continue existing after death, and we might as well call them ghosts.
Motivated cognition at its worst.
No, it shows that we are cautious that the connotations of our statements don’t say anything that we don’t mean.
Atheism is also unfalsifiable in practice, though, so I don’t see the relevance. And I think the positive evidence points somewhat towards theism, not atheism. Thus I find theism more likely.
Thanks for the explanation.
God is normally considered to be outside the universe; why do you say he is usually assumed to be fundamental? Also note that there are many conceptions of God, some of which actually are something like fundamental even if isomorphic to a more detailed description (with less errant connotations) of the structure of the ensemble universe.
And this is where I start thinking you’re crazy, for thinking this is even close to a corresponding argument. What similarities do you see? Every single thing we have ever seen has a cause. We have seen the universe. We postulate a cause, by simple induction. We have seen peoples’ consciousness fade in and out as they go to sleep or fall into comas. We postulate that it is thus probable that death is like an endless coma. It is hard for me to fathom how you could possibly have seen your argument for ghosts as being at all in the same reference class, except that ‘ghosts’ and ‘gods’ are both contemptible hypotheses ’round these parts.
Like, seriously, your analogy on the meta level seems to me like motivated cognition at its worse.
This is only because we already have a word for ‘superintelligence’. Most people don’t. My point was that we shouldn’t be automatically contemptuous of concepts that are really damn similar to the ones we’re already postulating just because they’re labeled in the language of the enemy.
If God rides down from heaven hurling lightening bolts in all directions and wantomly altering the very nature of reality, I will consider atheism to be falsified. This is an extreme case, but there are many observations that could falsify, or at least provide very strong evidence against, atheism.
Don’t confuse unfalsified with unfalsifiable.
Either God can be reduced to something else or he is fundamental. No conception of God that I have ever heard of can be reduced (I’m not show how he could create the universe if he was reducible) so it seems likely he is usually assumed fundamental.
I’m afraid I can’t understand what you mean here.
The universe itself has no observed cause, so this statement is false. It seems likely that there is at least one uncaused thing, since otherwise you have an infinite regress, and the universe seems like as good as bet as any for what that thing is, since it has no observed cause and it belongs to a very different reference class to everything else.
Ah, but we have never observed conciousness to be ended permanently except by death.
You may challenge that this is not evidence since it is true by definition, but if you think about it the fact that the universe has no observed cause is also true by definition, since if it did have an observed cause we would just have included that thing in ‘the universe’ and then asked what caused it.
Its not about ‘God’ being the language of the enemy, its about the fact that it has been used by too many people to mean too many things and it has reached the point where even to use it is to imply many of those things. If someone wants to talk about the cause of the universe they should call it ‘Flumsy’, since that way nobody gets confused.
Think about it this way. If you are working on an algebra problem and you have some complicated term in your equation that you want to define so you don’t have to write out the whole thing every line, you might decide to call it ‘x’. This is a perfectly legitimate step (it is a primitive operation in most mathematical formal systems) unless there is already a term called ‘x’ elsewhere in your equation, in which case it is making the unjustified and quite probably false assumption that these two things are equal.
Calling this cause you postulate ‘God’ is the same kind of mistake.
I would be curious to know if you are putting this forward as an hypothetical argument for the sake of the discussion, or as an actual summarised argument that you really do find at least somewhat persuasive.
I do find something quite like it somewhat persuasive.