Agnosticism = believing we can’t know if God exists
Atheism = believing God does not exist
Theism = believing God exists
turtles-all-the-way-down-ism = believing we can’t know what reality is (can’t reach the bottom turtle)
instrumentalism/anti-realism = believing reality does not exist
realism = believing reality exists
Thus anti-realism and realism map to atheism and theism, but agnosticism doesn’t map to infinte-turtle-ism because it says we can’t know if God exists, not what God is.
Agnosticism = believing we can’t know if God exists
Or believing that it’s not a meaningful or interesting question to ask
instrumentalism/anti-realism = believing reality does not exist
That’s quite an uncharitable conflation. Antirealism is believing that reality does not exist. Instrumentalism is believing that reality is a sometimes useful assumption.
Or believing that it’s not a meaningful or interesting question to ask
Those would be ignosticism and apatheism respectively.
That’s quite an uncharitable conflation. Antirealism is believing that reality does not exist. Instrumentalism is believing that reality is a sometimes useful assumption.
Yes, yes, we all know your idiosyncratic definition of “exist”, I was using the standard meaning because I was talking to a realist.
Yeah. The issue here, i gather, has to do a lot with domain specific knowledge—you’re a physicist, you have general idea how physics does not distinguish between, for example, 0 and two worlds of opposite phases which cancel out from our perspective. Which is way different from naive idea of some sort of computer simulation, where of course two simulations with opposite signs being summed, are a very different thing ‘from the inside’ from plain 0. If we start attributing reality to components of the sum in Feynman’s path integral… that’s going to get weird.
You realize that, assuming Feynman’s path integral makes accurate predictions, shiminux will attribute it as much reality as, say, the moon, or your inner experience.
Thanks for the clarification, it helps. An agnostic with respect to God (which is what “agnostic” has come to mean by default) would say both that we can’t know if God exists, and also that we can’t know the nature of God. So I think the analogy still holds.
Right. But! An agnostic with respect to the details of reality—an infinite-turtle-ist—need not be an agnostic with respect to reality, even if an agnostic with respect to reality is also an agnostic with respect to it’s details (although I’m not sure if that follows in any case.)
(shrug) Sure. So my analogy only holds between agnostics-about-God (who question the knowability of both the existence and nature of God) and agnostics-about-reality (who question the knowability of both the existence and nature of reality).
As you say, there may well be other people out there, for example those who question the knowability of the details, but not of the existence, of reality. (For a sufficiently broad understanding of “the details” I suspect I’m one of those people, as is almost everyone I know.) I wasn’t talking about them, but I don’t dispute their existence.
I have to admit, this has gotten rarefied enough that I’ve lost track both of your point and my own.
So, yeah, maybe I’m confusing knowing-X-exists with knowing-details-of-X for various Xes, or maybe I’ve tried to respond to a question about (one, the other, just one, both) with an answer about (the other, one, both, just one). I no longer have any clear notion, either of which is the case or why it should matter, and I recommend we let this particular strand of discourse die unless you’re willing to summarize it in its entirety for my benefit.
I predict that these discussions, even among smart, rational people will go nowhere conclusive until we have a proper theory of self-aware decision making, because that’s what this all hinges on. All the various positions people are taking in this are just packaging up the same underlying confusion, which is how not to go off the rails once your model includes yourself.
Not that I’m paying close attention to this particular thread.
Sure.
Agnosticism = believing we can’t know if God exists
Atheism = believing God does not exist
Theism = believing God exists
turtles-all-the-way-down-ism = believing we can’t know what reality is (can’t reach the bottom turtle)
instrumentalism/anti-realism = believing reality does not exist
realism = believing reality exists
Thus anti-realism and realism map to atheism and theism, but agnosticism doesn’t map to infinte-turtle-ism because it says we can’t know if God exists, not what God is.
Or believing that it’s not a meaningful or interesting question to ask
That’s quite an uncharitable conflation. Antirealism is believing that reality does not exist. Instrumentalism is believing that reality is a sometimes useful assumption.
Those would be ignosticism and apatheism respectively.
Yes, yes, we all know your idiosyncratic definition of “exist”, I was using the standard meaning because I was talking to a realist.
Yeah. The issue here, i gather, has to do a lot with domain specific knowledge—you’re a physicist, you have general idea how physics does not distinguish between, for example, 0 and two worlds of opposite phases which cancel out from our perspective. Which is way different from naive idea of some sort of computer simulation, where of course two simulations with opposite signs being summed, are a very different thing ‘from the inside’ from plain 0. If we start attributing reality to components of the sum in Feynman’s path integral… that’s going to get weird.
You realize that, assuming Feynman’s path integral makes accurate predictions, shiminux will attribute it as much reality as, say, the moon, or your inner experience.
The issue is with all the parts of it, which include your great grandfather’s ghost, twice, with opposite phases, looking over your shoulder.
Since I am not a quantum physicist, I can’t really respond to your objections, and in any case I don’t subscribe to shiminux’s peculiar philosophy.
Thanks for the clarification, it helps.
An agnostic with respect to God (which is what “agnostic” has come to mean by default) would say both that we can’t know if God exists, and also that we can’t know the nature of God. So I think the analogy still holds.
Right. But! An agnostic with respect to the details of reality—an infinite-turtle-ist—need not be an agnostic with respect to reality, even if an agnostic with respect to reality is also an agnostic with respect to it’s details (although I’m not sure if that follows in any case.)
(shrug) Sure. So my analogy only holds between agnostics-about-God (who question the knowability of both the existence and nature of God) and agnostics-about-reality (who question the knowability of both the existence and nature of reality).
As you say, there may well be other people out there, for example those who question the knowability of the details, but not of the existence, of reality. (For a sufficiently broad understanding of “the details” I suspect I’m one of those people, as is almost everyone I know.) I wasn’t talking about them, but I don’t dispute their existence.
Absolutely, but that’s not what shiminux and PrawnOfFate were talking about, is it?
I have to admit, this has gotten rarefied enough that I’ve lost track both of your point and my own.
So, yeah, maybe I’m confusing knowing-X-exists with knowing-details-of-X for various Xes, or maybe I’ve tried to respond to a question about (one, the other, just one, both) with an answer about (the other, one, both, just one). I no longer have any clear notion, either of which is the case or why it should matter, and I recommend we let this particular strand of discourse die unless you’re willing to summarize it in its entirety for my benefit.
I predict that these discussions, even among smart, rational people will go nowhere conclusive until we have a proper theory of self-aware decision making, because that’s what this all hinges on. All the various positions people are taking in this are just packaging up the same underlying confusion, which is how not to go off the rails once your model includes yourself.
Not that I’m paying close attention to this particular thread.