Ur-Platonism, Naturalism, and Atheism

zippy2006

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Fr. James Brent recently gave a talk at the Thomistic Institute entitled, "Responding to Contemporary Atheism." There he argues that contemporary atheism, rather than being simple adherence to a single proposition, is a complex phenomenon. To paraphrase him:

"If you've ever gotten into a conversation with someone who advocates the atheist position, or takes some kind of agnostic position, you start to get the feeling as you go along that you're up against something much bigger than just a commitment to a particular proposition, such as, "God doesn't exist." And in fact that's correct. What you're confronting when you're confronting atheism is a large-scale, deep philosophical matrix. So the contemporary atheism is deeply embedded in this large-scale philosophical matrix." (Fr. James Brent)
In defining this "atheist philosophical matrix," Brent relies upon the work of Platonist scholar Lloyd Gerson. In his book, From Plato to Platonism, Gerson attempts to give a loose definition of the Platonic tradition as a whole. His name for the broad Platonic tradition is 'Ur-Platonism', or UP (which Brent refers to as 'Big tent Platonism'). As a conjunction of five negative positions, Gerson tells us that "UP is a via negativa to Plato's philosophy." Ur-Platonism is thus constituted by the following five elements:
  1. Antimaterialism ("is the view that it is false that the only things that exist are bodies and their properties...")
  2. Antimechanism ("is the view that the only sort of explanations available in principle to a materialist are inadequate for explaining the natural order...")
  3. Antinominalism ("is the view that it is false that the only things that exist are individuals, each uniquely situated in space and time...")
  4. Antirelativism ("is the denial of the claim that Plato attributes to Protagoras, that 'man is the measure of all things, of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not...'")
  5. Antiskepticism ("is the view that knowledge is possible...")

Here I give only the first sentence of his short descriptions of each of these views. The book itself is devoted to explaining the positions in more detail, but the terms materialism, mechanism, nominalism, relativism, and skepticism are common currency in philosophical discourse.

According to Gerson, the conjunction of these five views is not only Ur-Platonism, but also antinaturalism. This means in turn that naturalism is defined as the conjunction of materialism, mechanism, nominalism, relativism, and skepticism. What's important here is that Gerson is attempting to draw a clean line in the sand through the entire history of philosophy. In the end there are only two consistent positions: Ur-Platonism and purebred Naturalism. There have existed Platonists and naturalists who have not gone all-in in affirming each of the five positions, but this is only because they did not see their position through to its logical conclusion.

Although Gerson doesn't talk directly about atheism, Fr. James Brent makes the connection between contemporary atheism and naturalism as defined by Gerson. According to Brent contemporary atheism is grounded in naturalism, especially materialism, mechanism, and watered down versions of nominalism and relativism.

Sources:
 

zippy2006

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More from Gerson on antimaterialism and antimechanism:

Antimaterialism is the view that it is false that the only things that exist are bodies and their properties. Thus, to admit that the surface of a body is obviously not a body is not thereby to deny materialism. The antimaterialist maintains that there are entities that exist that are not bodies and that exist independently of bodies. Thus, for the antimaterialist, the question "Is the soul a body or a property of a body?" is not a question with an obvious answer since it is possible that the answer is no. The further question of how an immaterial soul might be related to a body belongs to the substance of the positive response to UP, or to one or another version of Platonism.

Antimechanism is the view that the only sort of explanations available in principle to a materialist are inadequate for explaining the natural order. What, then, distinguishes materialism from mechanism? It would be possible to be an antimaterialist yet still believe that all explanations are mechanical. Such might be the position of an occasionalist. Conversely, it would be possible to believe that materialism is true, but also maintain that there are nonmechanical explanations of some sort, say, at the quantum level. Antimechanism, though, seems to be derived from antimaterialism. That is, having rejected the view that everything that exists is a body or an attribute of a body, the way is open to propose non-bodily explanations for bodily or material phenomena. One way to understand antimechanism is as the denial of one version of what we have come to call "the causal closure principle," that is, the principle that physical or material causes are necessary and sufficient for all events in the physical world. Although contemporary denials of this principle are generally focused on supposed mental events having at least no sufficient physical causes, antimechanism take the stronger position that even admittedly physical events are not comprehensively accounted for by physical causes.


-From Plato to Platonism, 11-12​
 
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Silmarien

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Great post! :)

My own view of Platonism has been somewhat conditioned by Gerson, so his five negative positions are familiar and fairly self-evident concepts, but I'm wondering how clear they would be to someone who doesn't already fall under the Big tent Platonism category. Antirelativism and antiskepticism are still relatively easy ideas to wrap your head around, but I don't think it would be very obvious to a naturalist what the alternatives to the other three might be.

I suppose my concern is how one could get a via negativa approach to Platonism up and running without really focusing on what sort of worldview the rejection of these five positions actually entails.
 
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zippy2006

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My own view of Platonism has been somewhat conditioned by Gerson, so his five negative positions are familiar and fairly self-evident concepts, but I'm wondering how clear they would be to someone who doesn't already fall under the Big tent Platonism category. Antirelativism and antiskepticism are still relatively easy ideas to wrap your head around, but I don't think it would be very obvious to a naturalist what the alternatives to the other three might be.

Yeah, I agree. Gerson's project is rather ambitious and the level of abstraction he deals with is tough to wrap your head around. I actually balked after considering making this thread a few weeks ago.

In general I hope that his model will open up some depth and provide specific characteristics of theistic and atheistic worldviews in a philosophically rigorous way. That is, it provides five entry points to help people critically examine their philosophical worldview. The thread itself is obviously very open-ended, and if it goes anywhere it will probably be due to candid inquiry.

I suppose my concern is how one could get a via negativa approach to Platonism up and running without really focusing on what sort of worldview the rejection of these five positions actually entails.

Although I'm not too far into his book, he does talk a bit about the positive principles that drive (Ur-) Platonism. Yet he tries to leave this open-ended since he thinks different Platonists have different approaches. Classical theism would of course be a relevant example of Ur-Platonism. As paradigmatic examples of contemporary naturalism, Gerson gives Wilfred Quine, Alexander Rosenberg, Richard Rorty, and Thomas Nagel.
 
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public hermit

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This reminds me of A.N. Whitehead's quip that European philosophy is merely a series of footnotes to Plato. ;)

I am curious about the skepticism category. My experience is that atheists are often skeptical about theistic claims and some of the anti-positions mentioned. But it also seems that some (many?) take a more positivist position, especially as concerns the deliverances of the various methods used by scientists.

When engaging with atheists, I find myself trying to establish some common ground in terms of the limits of what can be known, or some healthy skepticism in regards to positive knowing. And, sometimes, I am surprised by the resistance. There seems to be this common assumption that if it can be known, it can only be known by the methods employed in scientific research. Is this what the closure principle was in reference to?
 
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Tinker Grey

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There seems to be this common assumption that if it can be known, it can only be known by the methods employed in scientific research.
I've asked this question before but I haven't received an answer, to the best of my recollection: What other means of knowing are there?

I should say that, here, I'm being informal about the scientific method. I mean that we know things, or feel we know things, when the thing is evidenced or is backed by evidence. If my friend says there is a bench 5 miles from here under a tree painted red, I might claim to know it on the basis that my friend has never lied to me before. If I go to the specified location, I can see for myself. I know the sun's fuel is hydrogen. But, I've never done the experiment. So, can I say I know it? Well, the experiment I've actually run is the reliability of scientific statements, i.e., statements made by the scientific community.

So the things I claim I know are those things (and systems of things; models) from which I can make reliable predictions. When those fail, I revise my models. This is the heart of the scientific method.

I contend that theists do this as well. What a theist and a non-theist do is disagree on the conclusions drawn and/or the methodology on which those conclusions are based. (We can discuss this another time.)

ETA: I don't wish to deal with nitpicks of my examples. I just want to know what other methods there are.

So what other methods are there?
 
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cvanwey

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I've asked this question before but I haven't received an answer, to the best of my recollection: What other means of knowing are there?

I should say that, here, I'm being informal about the scientific method. I mean that we know things, or feel we know things, when the thing is evidenced or is backed by evidence. If my friend says there is a bench 5 miles from here under a tree painted red, I might claim to know it on the basis that my friend has never lied to me before. If I go to the specified location, I can see for myself. I know the sun's fuel is hydrogen. But, I've never done the experiment. So, can I say I know it? Well, the experiment I've actually run is the reliability of scientific statements, i.e., statements made by the scientific community.

So the things I claim I know are those things (and systems of things; models) from which I can make reliable predictions. When those fail, I revise my models. This is the heart of the scientific method.

I contend that theists do this as well. What a theist and a non-theist do is disagree on the conclusions drawn and/or the methodology on which those conclusions are based. (We can discuss this another time.)

ETA: I don't wish to deal with nitpicks of my examples. I just want to know what other methods there are.

So what other methods are there?

Good points. And might I add that, because of the use of 'language' in general, we can really debate almost anything :)

Without getting into a twist, the person suggesting the 'scientific method' may mean something along the lines of:


" It involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation."


Tada...The 'scientific method' :)
 
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Silmarien

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Although I'm not too far into his book, he does talk a bit about the positive principles that drive (Ur-) Platonism. Yet he tries to leave this open-ended since he thinks different Platonists have different approaches. Classical theism would of course be a relevant example of Ur-Platonism. As paradigmatic examples of contemporary naturalism, Gerson gives Wilfred Quine, Alexander Rosenberg, Richard Rorty, and Thomas Nagel.

Nagel is an interesting one to cite, since he's neither a materialist nor a relativist. I've actually seen him admit to a somewhat platonic position, so I think if anything, he's one of the people who challenges the naturalist vs. anti-naturalist paradigm. Or perhaps he's the exception that proves the rule--non-materialistic naturalists are very interesting, but they have significant difficulty in trying to articulate a coherent third way.

I've asked this question before but I haven't received an answer, to the best of my recollection: What other means of knowing are there?

One underlying issue is the question of whether science is itself a means of knowing. The scientific project was originally founded upon a couple of major assumptions--the intelligibility of nature and the ability of the human mind to grasp it. If these assumptions are true in a strong sense, then it certainly looks like there's a strong corrolation between the rational mind and the external reality and the rationalist tradition is back in full swing.

Of course, there are perspectives on science that would reject that it's a genuine vehicle for knowledge. Instrumentalism, for example, is a popular form of anti-realism about science--scientific theories are useful for predicting phenomena, but idea of a greater quest for truth and knowledge is rejected. This is a common position amongst naturalists, though I kind of find the underlying skepticism hard to swallow in the face of how powerful modern science really is.
 
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public hermit

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What other means of knowing are there?

It depends on what we are willing to include under "methods employed in scientific research." What I had in mind goes back to a positivist outlook as understood in the strictly empiricist tradition. So, it would include observation and/or data gathering, induction or generalizing over a high number of particular instances, hypothesis verification, and theory formation based on the preceding.

One area that is sometimes overlooked is intuition. The basic mathematical and logical principles that we "know" are grasped by intuition. What is more certain than 2+2=4? And yet, it's difficult to get behind its truth with another reason or another piece of evidence to validate its truth. We just, somehow, know it's true. We do science with those kinds of truths in hand, so that the methods we use only make sense assuming the truth of such principles.

Keeping with the OP, a Platonist might argue that these mathematical and logical principles have some ontological status prior to, or not contingent upon, their particular instances. On the other hand, if we assume the flattened ontology that a good many atheists assume, we really have no recourse to that explanation, or one like it. It seems to me, their nominalist tendencies anchors them to an ontological commitment that says such things don't exist because our scientific methods can't deliver them to us, which (in part) I would agree with. The methods we use to do scientific research must assume these intuitions, and really I don't know how those same methods could explain them without engaging in some kind of vicious circle.
 
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Tinker Grey

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One area that is sometimes overlooked is intuition. The basic mathematical and logical principles that we "know" are grasped by intuition. What is more certain than 2+2=4? And yet, it's difficult to get behind its truth with another reason or another piece of evidence to validate its truth. We just, somehow, know it's true. We do science with those kinds of truths in hand, so that the methods we use only make sense assuming the truth of such principles.
See I disagree with this entirely. We induce 1 + 1 = 2. Sure, we learn our tables in school. But we know math is true when we observe that every time we hold a spoon in one hand and a spoon in another, we have two spoons. When we hold a fork in one hand and a knife in another, we have ... one fork and one knife; but we have 2 utensils. Thus, we induce that units are important and that math only works if our frameworks are consistent.

We know logic works, because we get the expected results when we employ it. We know logic through experience. We know math through experience. We've tested the predictability of math and logic.

Math and logic systems are formalizations of our experiences. So, I'd aver that it is still based on the scientific method.

I think your argument confuses knowledge via intuition of a mystical sort for knowledge via induction. Knowledge via intuition is just a drawing on experience; it is induction; it is based on a one's model of reality.
 
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Tinker Grey

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Let me emend my previous statement.

I'd say further, now that I think about it, that intuition isn't a way of knowing at all. It is what we call drawing a conclusion from incomplete evidence. We only do this when there is some sort of urgency to do so. It might be as mild as throwing out an answer to the question "why did they pick that shade of red for stoplights?" It might be as serious as "X wants to kill himself now! How do we stop him?"

When we think we know something, we don't (or at least I don't know that I've ever heard someone) say that we are using intuition. We we 'know' something, we think we have, more-or-less, sufficient reason to say so.

When I say I've an intuition/hunch, I readily admit it is a synonym for a guess based on weak evidence.
 
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zippy2006

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This reminds me of A.N. Whitehead's quip that European philosophy is merely a series of footnotes to Plato. ;)

I had that quote in mind too. :D

I am curious about the skepticism category. My experience is that atheists are often skeptical about theistic claims and some of the anti-positions mentioned. But it also seems that some (many?) take a more positivist position, especially as concerns the deliverances of the various methods used by scientists.

Brent isn't really interested in charging contemporary atheism with skepticism. As for Gerson, I'm not sure he would admit positivism as genuinely knowledge-producing. In the interest of making the OP more lucid, here are some more quotes from Gerson:

Antiskepticism is the view that knowledge is possible. Knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) refers to a mode of cognition wherein the real is in some way "present" to the cognizer. The skeptic does not maintain that cognition generally is impossible, but only that knowledge is. According to the argument we get in the dialogues, if either materialism or nominalism were true, skepticism would follow because it would not be possible for the real to be present to any cognizer; there could only be representations of some sort of the real, representations whose accuracy would be indeterminable. Throughout the dialogues, Plato has Socrates rail against sophists, rhetoricians, and various demagogues who share at best a cavalier attitude toward the need for knowledge of any sort. Plato's antiskepticism assumes the legitimacy of such attacks. (From Plato to Platonism, 14)

The reason for this near-universal agreement [regarding the nature of infallible knowledge] is that to allow the possibility of fallible knowledge is to conflate knowledge and belief. For if a claim to knowledge is defeasible, then that claim does not differ from a belief that may happen to be true but then again may turn out to be false. As Plato argued in Theatetus, knowledge cannot be true belief. The reason for this is that a true belief may be adventitiously true, say, a lucky guess. No one in antiquity thought there was no difference between a lucky guess and the knowledge that is wisdom, the ardently sought and presumably precious goal of philosophy. But what differentiates true belief from knowledge? Presumably, it is evidence or sufficient evidence or adequate evidence, in short, some sort of logos in virtue of which one can claim to know. The problem with this, as the skeptics realized, is that the putative evidence rarely if ever guarantees what it is supposedly evidence for. But what, then, gives nonentailing evidence its evidential character? If the supposed evidence does not guarantee what it is evidence for, then, once again, what is the difference between a belief that is based on bad or no evidence and knowledge based on nonentailing evidence? The skeptics--above all Sextus Empiricus--focused on the vulnerability of the claim that one could have nonentailing evidence. If this is a chimera, then in fact there is no difference between knowledge and a random belief, in which case one ought to suspend judgment or withold assent to any proposition since there is no more reason to believe it than its contradictory. [...] (Defining Platonism, 305-6)​

When engaging with atheists, I find myself trying to establish some common ground in terms of the limits of what can be known, or some healthy skepticism in regards to positive knowing. And, sometimes, I am surprised by the resistance. There seems to be this common assumption that if it can be known, it can only be known by the methods employed in scientific research. Is this what the closure principle was in reference to?

I think Scientism is a form of causal closure, though Gerson inevitably intends something broader (he includes a long footnote pointing to examples of causal closure in the ancient world, but it is probably too abstruse for the thread). Wikipedia is helpful here, "No physical event has a cause outside the physical domain." Scientism is basically a kind of scientific-natural closure, where the natural world is a closed system that is exhaustively and exclusively explained by modern science.

Nagel is an interesting one to cite, since he's neither a materialist nor a relativist. I've actually seen him admit to a somewhat platonic position, so I think if anything, he's one of the people who challenges the naturalist vs. anti-naturalist paradigm. Or perhaps he's the exception that proves the rule--non-materialistic naturalists are very interesting, but they have significant difficulty in trying to articulate a coherent third way.

Good point. It may be suspicious to cite Nagel as paradigmatic. I think Gerson likes him because he straddles the line but always faithfully falls back towards naturalism.

See I disagree with this entirely. We induce 1 + 1 = 2. Sure, we learn our tables in school. But we know math is true when we observe that every time we hold a spoon in one hand and a spoon in another, we have two spoons. When we hold a fork in one hand and a knife in another, we have ... one fork and one knife; but we have 2 utensils.

I'd say further, now that I think about it, that intuition isn't a way of knowing at all. It is what we call drawing a conclusion from incomplete evidence.

When we think we know something, we don't say that we are using intuition. When we 'know' something, we think we have, more-or-less, sufficient reason to say so.

When I say I've an intuition/hunch, I readily admit it is a synonym for a guess based on weak evidence.

The trouble is that there is a difference between opinion or belief, and knowledge. The proposition that 1+1=2 is not hypothetical; you do not hold it as a tentative theory. You know it. But the question arises: how did you arrive at knowledge from inductive probabilities and nonentailing evidence?
 
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public hermit

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When we think we know something, we don't (or at least I don't know that I've ever heard someone) say that we are using intuition. We we 'know' something, we think we have, more-or-less, sufficient reason to say so.

When I say I've an intuition/hunch, I readily admit it is a synonym for a guess based on weak evidence.

You're right. I am not using "intuition" in the sense of "I have a hunch." I mean intuition in the sense of how we recognize the truth of basic principles and functions (math and logic). It seem to me that we simply see their truth. We neither deduce nor induce their truth. The fact that we know math and logic works through our experience of applying them doesn't tell us how we know it works. Or even, why they should work. It only tells us that they do work.

I also think it's telling that there are no, or few if any, competing theories when it comes to these basic principles. What would be a competing theory to our intuition regarding addition, or modus ponens? The competitors seem to all be either false or fallacies.

Math and logic systems are formalizations of our experiences. So, I'd aver that it is still based on the scientific method.

There is a long history, even among empiricists, in recognizing that the basic principles of math and logic are not a-posteriori. They may be analytic, but they are not based on experience. Granted, this is a philosophical point of dispute. Do we disagree because our respective analyses of these principles have reached contrary conclusions, or because we have different ontological commitments? I would say my analysis is correct and you're allowing your ontological commitments to inform your reasoning, haha. But, you could say the same of me. So, that's no fun.
 
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Resha Caner

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So what other methods are there?

Historical method, legal method, ...

To claim all knowledge gathering can be fit into the scientific method is an abuse of the scientific method. What we call science, and what we typically mean by science, at its heart, comes down to an ability to build models of what we are studying that have underlying mathematical rules. Simply referring to evidence, process, and logic does not magically endow something as scientific.

On forums such as these it is continually argued that the beginning, middle, and end of science is "method", yet for those of us trained in science - who use it on a daily basis - and have worked with the touted organizations that sponsor scientific standards and peer-reviewed journals, you will find said standards don't build from a single, rigorously defined method, but rather take the position that whatever method the scientist chooses to use must be rigorously documented so that those who follow can test and replicate. Why? Because the positivists of the late 19th / early 20th century (e.g. Charles Peirce) expended voluminous amounts of effort to create a rigorously defined method and failed. The result was the rise of falsification ideas from Popper and the like. Most introductory science texts now (properly) refer to scientific methods (plural).

So, along with the scientific method, the method I am most familiar with is historical method. While it can depend on science at times, it most definitely is not the scientific method, and the historians I know readily agree with that.
 
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Silmarien

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Math and logic systems are formalizations of our experiences. So, I'd aver that it is still based on the scientific method.

This is a difficult claim to hold, partly because of the different types of path that various forms of inquiry take. A more traditionally empirical field of study would be astronomy--we start with the Ptolemaic astronomy, where people combined empirical observations with mathematical models and arrived at the conclusion that the Earth was the center of the universe. The underlying assumption was that the planets were moving in perfect circles, so once this was challenged by Kepler, we ended up with a heliocentric model that actually fit the empirical data better than the geocentric one had.

Now, I don't see how mathematic or logical knowledge can fit the same sort of trajectory. The notion that 1+1=2 is not the sort of conclusion that we can come to by plugging empirical observations into an abstract model and arriving at a result that can change depending on how either the empirical observations or the model itself can later be tweaked. (Not counting using a different base.) If mathematical and logical knowledge really is operating in a similar fashion to empirical knowledge, then we would need to figure out how we could falsify it, and I don't see how that's possible.

I also think you're conflating an incidental property with a genuine logical abstraction here. For example, I can imagine seeing one red rose and a second red rose, and thinking that there are two red roses. If every rose I've ever seen is red, it would make sense to think that every rose in existence might be red, but if I were to suddenly come across a white rose, it wouldn't be logically inconsistent. Redness is a property, and doesn't have to be intrinsic to the nature of a rose. If, on the other hand, I put two red roses together and suddenly counted three, I have no idea what that would even mean. That's not the sort of thing that can be conceptualized at all.

You can say that mathematics is a formalization, but I don't think you can say that it has anything to do with the scientific method.
 
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zippy2006

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A lot of attention is being given to this statement, so I want to comment on it from a different angle:

Math and logic systems are formalizations of our experiences. So, I'd aver that it is still based on the scientific method.

I agree with others that it is inaccurate to talk about the scientific method as the etiological basis of mathematics, but recall Tinker's qualification:

I should say that, here, I'm being informal about the scientific method. I mean that we know things, or feel we know things, when the thing is evidenced or is backed by evidence.

Thus you could also read him as asking whether there is an alternative method to evidence-based reasoning for arriving at knowledge. (A big topic :confused:)
 
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Resha Caner

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Thus you could also read him as asking whether there is an alternative method to evidence-based reasoning for arriving at knowledge.

Well, I don't like referring to an informal scientific method. That comes too close to appropriating scientific authority to back an opinion. The word "evidence" is equally loaded. It is likewise used in these debates as a trump card: My opinion is right because it's backed by evidence.

Evidence needs to be qualified with the method by which it will be used or it's nonsense. Again, it's a rigor thing. IMO the term most often simply means a person's experience. Not that admitting such invalidates those experiences. I am further of the opinion that experience is vastly underrated for its importance in how we form our understanding of the world.

I think the elephant in the room is the impression that to admit something one says is not scientific is to admit it's not true and indefensible. I don't agree with that perception.
 
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I've asked this question before but I haven't received an answer, to the best of my recollection: What other means of knowing are there?

I should say that, here, I'm being informal about the scientific method. I mean that we know things, or feel we know things, when the thing is evidenced or is backed by evidence. If my friend says there is a bench 5 miles from here under a tree painted red, I might claim to know it on the basis that my friend has never lied to me before. If I go to the specified location, I can see for myself. I know the sun's fuel is hydrogen. But, I've never done the experiment. So, can I say I know it? Well, the experiment I've actually run is the reliability of scientific statements, i.e., statements made by the scientific community.

So the things I claim I know are those things (and systems of things; models) from which I can make reliable predictions. When those fail, I revise my models. This is the heart of the scientific method.

I contend that theists do this as well. What a theist and a non-theist do is disagree on the conclusions drawn and/or the methodology on which those conclusions are based. (We can discuss this another time.)

ETA: I don't wish to deal with nitpicks of my examples. I just want to know what other methods there are.

So what other methods are there?

Tinker, you need to keep in mind that on this issue, as you've framed it here, it isn't only theists and non-theists who disagree on the conclusions and/or "the methodology on which those conclusions are based."

Sometimes, it can even be that theists disagree with theists, as well as even Atheists disagreeing with other Atheists as to what constitutes 'proper' methodology where science (especially Experimental Science) is concerned.

.....................But for some reason, this whole issue seems to get continuously ignored or bypassed or forgotten about.
 
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Silmarien

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Tinker, you need to keep in mind that on this issue, as you've framed it here, it isn't only theists and non-theists who disagree on the conclusions and/or "the methodology on which those conclusions are based."

Sometimes, it can even be that theists disagree with theists, as well as even Atheists disagreeing with other Atheists as to what constitutes 'proper' methodology where science (especially Experimental Science) is concerned.

.....................But for some reason, this whole issue seems to get continuously ignored or bypassed or forgotten about.

It's probably also worth pointing out that Ur-Platonism is not actually the same thing as theism, since it would incorporate the various idealistic and nondualistic traditions as well.

It would also exclude the approach to theism whereby you have an otherwise naturalistic ontology with a supernatural entity called "God" added on for good measure, so I think "Ur-Platonism vs. naturalism" is a much more useful way to frame the question than "theism vs. atheism." It provides a higher degree of conceptual clarity and knocks out the infamous "lack of belief" tangent.
 
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