You brought it up. I merely called something 'the atheist model' and you decided this was somehow beyond the pale, and started this whole discussion.
So when you say things that don't make sense, I'm supposed to not go in on it?
I merely pointed out how you were equating different concepts, and have steadfastly refused to be drawn into what you choose to call yourself. It is irrelevant, yes, for it merely muddies the water that no one knows what is meant by Atheist anymore and rank sophistry.
It's not hard. An atheist is someone who doesn't buy into the claims of theism. Nothing more, nothing less. I don't understand what is so confusing about that.
My question was how do you determine Reality
And that was my answer.
You are describing a specific manner of testing hypotheses and deriving knowledge, but that hardly proves it to be valid or real
The proof is in the results. Empirical investigation demonstrably works.
As I said, you are more then welcome to provide me with another method that has at least an equally succesfull trackrecord. Can you? My expectation is that you can not.
This is where epistemological conceptions have to be brought in, for what you say is that if I derive something from measurable empiric means and then make a theory of this, it will be confirmed by empiric means. Yes?
Or shown wrong. But yes. How else do you propose to find out how accurate a model of reality is, if not by testing it against reality?
Or how else do you propose to develop such a model to explain an aspect of reality, if not by studying that aspect of reality first?
This does not show the validity of your method at all, merely that it has been employed.
It's validity is shown through its consistent ability in providing succesful results.
If you build your models this way, you come up with models that actually work, which allow you to build technology that works.
Once more: how else do you propose to find out how accurate a model is?
You keep trying to reference that what you observe is somehow 'reality' that we need to conform to, but this must clearly be taken on faith then.
No. If anything, I have always stated that we don't just assume that our experiences and observations are correct by default and
most definatly we don't assume that our interpretation / explanation thereof is correct by default.
As I said previously, we KNOW that our senses / brains are extremely prone to error.
So whatever method we use, it better be a method that has build in mechanisms to circumvent human bias.
For we cannot in this manner prove our observations accurate, our inferences valid or the soundness of our ideas.
Yes, that's why we test and re-test the ideas and try to debunk them.
Science itself knows this, hence it requires thousands of years of philosophy to lay the groundwork before the method could even be articulated in the 12th century, and why it is specifically framed to only work in a methodologic naturalism. This is why noted Atheists like Bertrand Russell did not argue their atheism in this manner.
I don't argue my atheism in any manner. There's nothing to argue.
My atheism is only defined by my disbelief in theistic claims.
I
could give reasons why I consider theism false, sure. But I don't actually have to. I require reasons to accept something as true and theism doesn't provide me with such reasons.
I suggest you read "Why I am not a Christian" by this author, so that at least you have a framework for the beliefs you cling to
What beliefs, in your opinion, am I clinging to?
Mathematics is a symbolic representation of the relations between quantities. As you yourself said, it is created to describe something that we presume to be true, a model of reality. In fact, we use it in all the other fields like physics, so if you doubt mathematics, it all falls. While we express it a certain manner, and expand our mode of expression accordingly, it is meant to represent a 'real thing', a real relationship between quantities, between numbers. When we find it wanting logically, we expand it, but our assumption is that this expansion remains a true inference from what came before it.
I disagree that it is an assumption.
As said, using math we can create models that are perfectly correct
math-wise, but which do not reflect actual reality. An internally consistent model of reality is pretty useless if it doesn't actually reflect reality.
It is not "assumed" that it reflects reality. It is shown empirically that it does, instead.
Again I feel the need to ask this question...
If you have 2 math models A and B, one accurate and the other not... how do you find out, if not by empirical testing of those models in actual reality?
Whether all the mathematical possibilities are present in practice, is immaterial, for it is fact that we assume a veridicality to the ones we do find. Yet it is an unfalsifiable system, which you so vehemently reject, but is in fact the cornerstone of much of science.
Completely disagree that it is unfalsifiable.
Take maxwell's equations for example. Are you really of the opinion that these are unfalsifiable as descriptions of reality?
Our technological world like literally is based on those equations... If they are wrong, why do computers work? These models don't seem to be unfalsifiable to me.
You are being a bit inconsistent, my friend.
Perhaps. But it seems you fail to explain how.
As to testing the validity of a model of reality, Empiricism doesn't do that.
Then what does?
Empiricism implies the acceptance of another model before it can become operable, such as Scientific Realism or such. There are many ways to look at reality: like the purely experiential model preferred by Buddhism, which denies the necessary veracity of our sense-data for actual inner experience; there is the Platonic in its Real world of Forms, of true Abstracts; there are Monistic ones like the Eleatics; Realism, which says we have a reality independent of our conceptual schemes and understanding thereof, in all its varieties; etc.
Can you point me to an explanatory model of phenomena of reality where any of these "methods" have a better trackrecord then empirical investigation?
