Glen, Nice Wikipedia entry. If that is not what I meant, it certainly is what I SHOULD have meant.
I have been sufficiently distracted by family over the last two weeks that I don't know what is what with this discussion To recap: if I remember, I first tried to find out if we are talking about theism, or the wider category of metaphysical belief. Somebody helped me clarify that. But now, you, Glen, seem to be confusing them. Or perhaps it's me that WANTS to confuse them. Induction requires metaphysics. There are some things that you have to believe before you can start believing in FACTS. So, if you think one can survive without metaphysics, I think you are wrong. But does the metaphysics have to be theistic, in any sense. Here is where my confusion begins. In order to put my feet out of bed every morning, I have to believe there is still a floor under the bed. That belief is clearly empirical but it is also based on a healthy dose of metaphysics that tells me that the world is not the sort of place where floors disappear without some sort of provocation. Having no indications of such a provocation, I am justified in believing that the floor is there. That belief takes the form of my unhesitatingly putting my feet out. So, I would say, I don't have to believe in God to get up every morning, but I do have to belief in The Floor. Now, is my Belief in Floor a religious belief? Speaking for myself: I think my belief in Floor is religious. It's hard for me to think of a belief in God as anything but a belief in that which endures, despite any reason to believe that it endures, and my Faith in Floor is an example of such a belief. Clear as mud, Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Friday, December 26, 2014 1:28 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] clinical diagnosis of [a]theism? So, did Nick mean this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construct_validity ? On 12/26/2014 11:35 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote: > General relativity predicts gravitational waves. A result of that > prediction, elaborate measurement techniques have been devised like > computational filtering of observatory data (Einstein @ Home) or > superconducting devices to detect polarization of the cosmic microwave > background (POLARBEAR 2). It's not a single thing to measure , but also > other measurements of related phenomena, like the perihelion > precession of Mercury. It sounds like you're describing parallax, the idea of approaching something with many many meaures. Or perhaps "robustness analysis", in the sense that if a concept is modeled in many different ways and stays consistent across models, then it's a robust concept. I'm familiar with those methods ... though I have some issues with the latter. But none of this seems to fit with what Nick seemed to describe, the idea that an experiment is validated by a (validator) concept. That just seems backwards to me... like some form of insidious justificationism. It would lead a researcher to conclude that if a test (any test) failed, it would _not_ falsify the concept. It would just mean you didn't know the trait/person/species well enough. > What sort of things does it make sense for [a]theists to say and do, > and does these things occur (instead of the opposite) in a > statistically significant way? Well, my specific problem is that I think atheists and theists are delusional. They think they know things they cannot know. So, if Nick's point is that the concept of "theist" (or "atheist") is too muddy to define validatable[*] tests for, then, as an agnostic, I would completely agree. In fact, such a result would bring me quite a bit of joy! In other words, there can be no test for [a]theism because it's an incoherent concept. In fact, we're all agnostics, we just don't realize it. [*] I would just say "valid" ... but too few people read broad words like that and work to find the submeaning appropriate to the context. -- ⇔ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
