The Esoteric Knowledge Gambit

[Archaeopteryx]

Yeah, I noted that with Ana, that I don't do that and I think it's probably better that Christians don't do that for the benefit of atheists who are doctrinally disposed to disbelieve them no matter what they say.

Most atheists here (perhaps all) don't have a doctrinal obligation to atheism.

 

[quatona]

But Chesterton has a doctrinal obligation to believe they do.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

TheCadet beat me to it. I was going to mention LSD/shroom experiences. Never did it myself but of course I've read about it. I had friends who did it and just because it's interesting, I'd try to get them to explain the things I've heard are experienced - ego death, important insights into reality, coming to know your own mind. They'd seriously try to explain, but it just sounded like gobbledygook even though I trusted it was real to them.

I don't know exactly how the conversations have gone with you, but I can understand, that would be frustrating for any of us.

According to the OP, you're saying you don't accept the EKG because people don't/can't explain the knowledge, and so you conclude that the knowledge doesn't exist. It's similar to the question of the existence of God itself. If I ask you to believe in God but I can't describe Him fully and concretely, then you won't believe. But it's a doctrinal position you're taking, not based on evidence, but on perceived lack of evidence.

And I don't mean to nit-pick over your word choice, but you called it "esoteric", and then disbelieve it because it's esoteric. If it actually is esoteric, you can't really disbelieve it on that ground.

I think you're missing the forest for the trees in your reading of the OP. A better analogy would be to purported expertise. The way in which expertise is demonstrated depends on the kind of expertise in question. If someone claims to be an expert chess player, then they should be able to demonstrate that expertise by playing chess, and not merely by describing how chess is played. After all, even novices may be able to do the latter task well, despite struggling with the former. I don't think @Ana the Ist is suggesting that being able to describe something verbally is necessary for knowledge in all cases. So your fixation on this point seems somewhat misplaced.

 

[Ana the Ist]

I think you're missing the forest for the trees in your reading of the OP. A better analogy would be to purported expertise. The way in which expertise is demonstrated depends on the kind of expertise in question. If someone claims to be an expert chess player, then they should be able to demonstrate that expertise by playing chess, and not merely by describing how chess is played. After all, even novices may be able to do the latter task well, despite struggling with the former. I don't think @Ana the Ist is suggesting that being able to describe something verbally is necessary for knowledge in all cases. So your fixation on this point seems somewhat misplaced.

Exactly. Not all knowledge...but generally speaking of factual truths regarding the nature of reality...they are the kind of claims that can be expressed through words.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I saw another poster mention this, and I thought about creating this thread some time ago...but held back because it's more of a public service announcement than a topic ripe for discussion.

There's a particularly dumb claim made by some christians and other believers of various religions that literally has no substance to it at all. It's utterly worthless, yet it keeps popping up despite the fact that it never convinces anyone of anything. There's no formal name for this claim (to my knowledge) so I'm going to refer to it as The Esoteric Knowledge Gambit or EKG for short. It's constructed as follows....

Believer- I know certain truths/facts/knowledge that you don't because my faith in (insert religion here) has revealed it to me!

Non-Believer- Ok...let's hear this knowledge/facts/truths!

Believer- No! You wouldn't understand it because you don't believe in (insert religion here)!

Non-Believer- Try me! I'm a fast learner and I can pick up concepts rather quickly if they're well explained!

Believer- Nope! I don't cast my pearls before swine (or otherwise condescending remark)! You're the swine here and the truths/facts/knowledge are the pearls!

Non-Believer- You don't actually have any hidden knowledge/facts/truth....do you?

Believer- I do! I'm just not telling you because you don't believe in (insert religion here)!

Anyone who is a regular on these forums for awhile (I'd guess 6 months or so) has probably seen some similar form of this claim at least once. It's a rather poor claim, and obvious ploy, and it should stop entirely. Why? Because knowledge doesn't work that way. As long as we are speaking the same language...there's no reason that knowledge cannot be expressed through that language. Knowledge/truth/facts don't require a faith belief of any kind in order to be understood. For example...

Suppose I were to tell you that plants get energy from sunlight. That's a bit of knowledge/truth/facts. You don't have to believe it, or know anything about photosynthesis to understand what I'm saying. That's because you can read English (see how dumb this sounds now?). If you don't believe it, I can go on and give you more knowledge regarding the process of photosynthesis to help you understand why it's true. If you still don't understand it, we could meet up and I can use evidence to demonstrate the process of photosynthesis to you. If you still don't believe it...then the problem is probably on your end lol not mine.

Regardless, the point here is that there is no knowledge/truth/facts which can be revealed to someone who believes the same (insert religion here) things you do which cannot be revealed to someone who doesn't believe the same religious things you do. So please, for your own integrity, stop making this ridiculous EKG.

Thanks for reading, please enjoy the rest of your day.

Strange. I've never met a Christian claiming he's received "Special Knowledge," although I've met a few from the Charismatic and Faith Movement who have come close to doing so.

I think you're right, Ana; Christians shouldn't claim "Special Knowledge." To do so would be to imply that faith is a kind of epistemic mode----which it isn't. (....sorry Peter Boghossian).

Besides, on a Prima Facie level, a Christian's sharing of knowledge with an atheist isn't the same as tossing pearls to pigs...

2PhiloVoid

 

[KCfromNC]

Are you a relativist? Or do you reject relativism?

Not sure how this relates to the idea that believers seem to resort to excuses rather than demonstrate the obvious evidence for their claims about the supernatural.

 

[KCfromNC]

Minimizing bias in which scope? In scope of other doctors? Again, you don't present a clear cut demarcation here. Would minimizing bias in Astrology or Dianetics work the same way?

Nope. Perhaps that is a clue that certain fields have figured out a way to reduce the problem you're talking about here. Instead of pretending those methods don't exist it might be useful to look in to how they work.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Nope. Perhaps that is a clue that certain fields have figured out a way to reduce the problem you're talking about here. Instead of pretending those methods don't exist it might be useful to look in to how they work.

So, let's read some writing of Thomas Kelly then, to see how far your premise above might actually obtain.

http://www.princeton.edu/~tkelly/papers/Philosophy Compass.pdf

https://www.princeton.edu/~tkelly/pdahoe.pdf

 

[KCfromNC]

So, let's read some writing of Thomas Kelly then, to see how far your premise above might actually obtain.

http://www.princeton.edu/~tkelly/papers/Philosophy Compass.pdf

https://www.princeton.edu/~tkelly/pdahoe.pdf

Let me know what you find that's relevant to the discussion. I'm not going to sift through 100 pages of stuff hoping there's something useful.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Let me know what you find that's relevant to the discussion. I'm not going to sift through 100 pages of stuff hoping there's something useful.

No one said you had to wade through 100 pages. I gave references, which you can check out at your leisure, if you feel so inclined. (Besides, the first reference I gave is only 27 pages long--read that one). Neither am I going to attempt to break down and disseminate Thomas Kelly's insights; to do so would mean I'd have to sit here and write for the next 2 weeks, and I'm not going to do doing that. It's enough for me to say that Thomas Kelly provides me with my approach to the 'Nature of Evidence' issue, and it is one which does not jive with your predilections about evidence.

So, if you want to debate about who is more lazy between the two of us, then have at it, KC.

2PhiloVoid

 

[LivingWordUnity]

Not sure how this relates to the idea that believers seem to resort to excuses rather than demonstrate the obvious evidence for their claims about the supernatural.

Relativists deny that anything can be known to be real. They even deny that we can know that the material world is real. So how can a person accept evidence of the supernatural is real if they even deny that the natural world is real? You might say, "But no one believes that." But the fact is that relativism is the dominate philosophy of the modern age. It's the philosophy that is taught to college students at every secular university. That's why I asked if you are a relativist. And if you are working with firm belief that there is no such thing as the supernatural that means you will automatically reject the supernatural, no matter how great the evidence. Also, a lot of Christians believe because of one or more extraordinary personal experiences we had that we are not able to provide for you. I can't reproduce for you a miracle that happened to me 20 years ago. Why? Because I'm not God. If I tell you that God gave me a dream where I was warned about my life and also showed a glimpse of a significant future event, you will say that you don't believe it since I can't show you my dream and since you don't believe in God. Or if I tell you about an event where it looked certain that I was going to be killed but I came out of it completely unharmed you are going to call it "luck" instead of a miracle. Why? Because you don't believe in the supernatural.

 

[quatona]

Relativists deny that anything can be known to be real.

NO, that´s not relativism. You must confuse it with something else.

 

[LivingWordUnity]

NO, that´s not relativism. You must confuse it with something else.

Relativism denies that anything can be known to be true.

 

[quatona]

Relativism denies that anything can be known to be true.

No.

 

[LivingWordUnity]

Relativism denies that anything can be known to be true.

No.

"The relativist claims that there is no fact of the matter about whether the Copernican theory or the geocentric view is justified by the evidence, 'for there are no absolute facts about what justifies what' (Boghossian 2006a: 62) while the anti-relativist attempts to show the unintelligibility or the implausibility of such a claim." - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

 

[quatona]

"The relativist claims that there is no fact of the matter about whether the Copernican theory or the geocentric view is justified by the evidence, 'for there are no absolute facts about what justifies what' (Boghossian 2006a: 62) while the anti-relativist attempts to show the unintelligibility or the implausibility of such a claim." - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"There is no fact of the matter about X" isn´t the same as "X can´t be known", to begin with.
Philosophies, however, are a complex issue. When reducing them to one short statement you can be sure to have missed crucial parts.
Personally, I am a radical constructivist (which has quite a few things in common with the idea described in the quote), but I am always open to be demonstrated facts. So feel free to demonstrate the facts you would like me to accept. I must warn you, though: Usually it´s not hard to demonstrate that "facts" require a frame of reference in which they must be considered facts. The next step would be to demonstrate that the frame of reference is absolutely factual, and so forth.
Thus, while I am not claiming that there are no absolute facts (i.e. facts that transcend an assumed frame of reference), I am having a hard time demonstrating that there are.
But if you can do that, more power to you.
I am eagerly awaiting a demonstration of this ability.

In the meantime, I will keep accepting usefully constructed frames of reference as sufficient for accepting a something as "fact" (within the assumed frame of reference) - while keeping my philosophically radical position for philosophical discussions.

 

[LivingWordUnity]

I've had a couple of philosophy classes in college where the teacher taught the students that we can't know whether this world is real or if it is just a dream or something. I presented some arguments against that crazy idea. But I couldn't get into a full debate with the teacher or I would have risked being kicked out of the class. Relativism is the dominant philosophy of today's secular society. It's how people rationalized thinking that they can change the definition of marriage, something which before had always universally been taken for granted as only being between a man and woman. Even the Spartans, who practiced homosexuality, believed that marriage was between a man and a woman. The only exception for it in history was Nero. There was someone on these forums who tried to argue that this is all a dream. But I argued against that nonsense by pointing out that there isn't a relativist who doesn't look both ways when he crosses the street. There's no way to convince someone that God is real if they deny the evidence of reality. That's why I need to find out who is a relativist in discussions about evidence for God.

 

[Eudaimonist]

Relativists deny that anything can be known to be real. They even deny that we can know that the material world is real. So how can a person accept evidence of the supernatural is real if they even deny that the natural world is real? You might say, "But no one believes that." But the fact is that relativism is the dominate philosophy of the modern age.

Source? If this is a fact, it should be easy to back up.

It's the philosophy that is taught to college students at every secular university.

I went to a secular university. I even took philosophy classes (it was my liberal arts concentration). I was not taught that nothing can be known to be real.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[LivingWordUnity]

Source? If this is a fact, it should be easy to back up.

See post 95 in this thread.

 

[quatona]

I've had a couple of philosophy classes in college where the teacher taught the students that we can't know whether this world is real or if it is just a dream or something.

That´s probably because the teacher happened to be a relativist.

I presented some arguments against that crazy idea. But I couldn't get into a full debate with the teacher or I would have risked being kicked out of the class.

Well, present them here. I promise you won´t get knocked out of anything.

Relativism is the dominant philosophy of today's secular society.

Citation needed.

It's how people rationalized thinking that they can change the definition of marriage, something which before had always universally been taken for granted as only being between a man and woman.

Just because people have equally strong (but different) convictions as you have doesn´t mean they are relativists. It just means that they disagree with you.

Even the Spartans, who practiced homosexuality, believed that marriage was between a man and a woman.

And that´s supposed to tell me what?

The only exception for it in history was Nero. There was someone on these forums who tried to argue that this is all a dream. But I argued against that nonsense by pointing out that there isn't a relativist who doesn't look both ways when he crosses the street.

You skipped from a moral question to a non-moral question. That´s confusing. I have problem following you.
Are you saying that people who look both ways before they cross the street therefore must be moral realists?

There's no way to convince someone that God is real if they deny the evidence of reality.

Then try to convince someone that God is real who looks both ways before crossing the street and believes that cars factually exist, for starters.

That's why I need to find out who is a relativist in discussions about evidence for God.

If you could give evidence for God to someone who believes that there are facts (which is the vast majority of people, btw.), I would already be impressed to no ends. Why even start with the hardest target group?
I´ll be honest with you: The philosopher in me doesn´t believe that houses exist. However, being part of a community and being familiar with the frame of reference of their thinking, I can easily relate to that kind of thinking. Thus, if you can demonstrate God´s existence in the same way that you can demonstrate the existence of a house, I´d be totally overwhelmed, and I promise I won´t hold my radical constructivism against your argument. Deal?