why I'm a atheist

@north,

north;171147 wrote:

because it is Natural to make ones being more important than any other

especially a concept , such as any god

Strange argument. Do you think that unimportant (to you) people dont exist?

0 Replies

@north,

So you're an atheist because you're self-important? Haha, I guess that makes sense. I mean, all the love you could possibly give goes to yourself; there's just not enough to give to a God (or anyone, for that matter)!

Love it.

1 Reply

@Zetherin,

cutting through the *CENSORED* has gotta count for something.

0 Replies

@north,

Why I am a theist

because I just cannot rid myself of the notion that there is some higher power, spirit, purpose, will or reason behind mind, experience, life, our world and the universe. I just cannot explain it away on the basis of blind purposeless indifference the result of chance and accident.

I have the greatest respect for science and for the scientific method as a way of gaining information and knowledge about the world. I just cannot help but notice that science and the scientific method inherently cannot address directly the nature of experience and mind. Science depends on sense experience (empirical data) but more significantly science depends on reason (rationalism). I just do not understand how reason (logic) can reveal to us the secrets of the universe and mathematics (a form of logic) represent universal laws if reason and logic (logos) are not part of the structure of reality in the first place. Science thus gives us a partial and incomplete picture and science depends not only on observation but also more foundationally on reason.

I thus think there is an underlying foundational structure to the universe built on the principle of reason, an inherent striving to bring order from chaos and the void. A principle which leads to more complexity, more order, more value, more experience, and ultimately to life, to mind and to us. I tend not to see this principle in the anthropomorphic terms that characterizes much of "religion" but nonetheless I do tend to see this principle in some sense as experiential, willful, mindful and rational.

The ancient notion that there are levels of reality of which the material, the empirical and the sensual are the lowest and that the world of sense experience is founded on a higher principle of order and of reason (logos and telos: a more unifying and pervasive principle) is one which in some sense is shared by both science and religion. For atheists the underlying principle or law of the universe is blind and without any inherent purpose, for the religious the underlying principle is rational, purposeful and creative.

As I have noted before, in my view the universe is experiential, perceptive and responsive as well as rational and ordered , to its very core. An enchanted world; not a mindless machine composed only of matter obeying fixed deterministic laws. Does not the former view more accurately reflect the totality of reality as you live, breathe and experience it? It is after all, a choice of views not one determined by reason or by science. Our world is also a world of experience (of feelings, aesthetic, values and emotions) and a "spiritual" or neutral monism view of the world more readily accommodates our "reality" than a worldview which sees nature as predominately, fundamentally and primarily composed of dead, inert, insensate matter.

2 Replies

@prothero,

prothero;171361 wrote:

Why I am a theist

because I just cannot rid myself of the notion that there is some higher power, spirit, purpose, will or reason behind mind, experience, life, our world and the universe. I just cannot explain it away on the basis of blind purposeless indifference the result of chance and accident.

.

I think that we should recognize that the term "why" is ambiguous as between justification and explanation. To say what you say above is to explain why you are a theist, in particular, you are giving your motives for theism. But you are not justifying your belief that God exists. That is, you are not presenting an argument for why that belief is true.

There is nothing wrong with that, of course. It is just as legitimate to explain why you believe in God as it is to attempt to justify your belief in God. They are both legitimate activities. Only, of course, we should not confuse them, and think we are doing the one, when we are really doing the other. In particular, we should not think we are justifying our belief in God when what we are doing is explaining why we believe in God.

---------- Post added 05-31-2010 at 03:09 PM ----------

GoshisDead;171163 wrote:

cutting through the *CENSORED* has gotta count for something.

Why do you keep saying that, and what does it mean?

3 Replies

@kennethamy,

Why I am an atheist,
Because if anything knew of my pain they would not insist upon inflicting it.

1 Reply

@prothero,

prothero;171361 wrote:

Why I am a theist

because I just cannot rid myself of the notion that there is some higher power, spirit, purpose, will or reason behind mind, experience, life, our world and the universe. I just cannot explain it away on the basis of blind purposeless indifference the result of chance and accident.

See I think this is the problem, your outlook is actually incorrect which causes your conclusion to also be incorrect. This is not a personal attack, I just want to make the case that your initial point of view is not accurate. I'll use water and gravity as my example.

If you place water into a gravity field, that water can do things. It can fall, it can smash into another object, and shape that other object. It's not even the water really that is doing these things, it is just the atoms themselves within this gravitational field that smash into other atoms knocking them off the other object. This process we call water erosion. Now if you were to remove the gravitational field, water no longer behaves or does these things. It is not that the water is programed to do these things, its the elements of water combined within a gravitational field which results in water erosion. There is no need to program anything or cause it to be, it just is that way.

I know that might not be the best analogy to use, but this is the way in which I see life. Life happens when you have the "elements" for life to arise coming together. It is not something magical or impossible, it is something that just occurs as a reaction to these things coming together. They just naturally react this way, there was no programing or no thought behind it. Instead this is what happens when you have these elements mixing together. They combine, then add some other events and you get a self replicating molecule. That's it, nothing special, just something that happens. It is not an accident, it is not random chance. It just does because that is the results when placed within these conditions. I don't know how to make it any more simple than that. This is the result you get when these elements come together. Remove any of the elements and life does not arise. It is that simple. No one had to design it to occur this way, it is just happens.

It is a chemical reaction in a sense. Just like if you place some heat on something which has carbon, will more than likely catch on fire. The elements of this occurring are, heat, source of carbon, which results in fire. No one had to design it to work this way, it just does.

prothero;171361 wrote:

For atheists the underlying principle or law of the universe is blind and without any inherent purpose, for the religious the underlying principle is rational, purposeful and creative.

Once again, I think it is your outlook that is skewed. I don't see the universe as blind or without any inherent purpose. The funny thing is, thiests can't even agree what the purpose would be if there was an intelligence behind everything. So I ask, if you think there is an intelligent designer, what is the purpose of living? To server the designer? That is ridiculous because there would be no need to do so. A being that had the ability to design the universe wouldn't need anything. So there is absolutely no purpose that would make sense even if there was a creator. It is a silly argument.

prothero;171361 wrote:

As I have noted before, in my view the universe is experiential, perceptive and responsive as well as rational and ordered , to its very core. An enchanted world; not a mindless machine composed only of matter obeying fixed deterministic laws. Does not the former view more accurately reflect the totality of reality as you live, breathe and experience it? It is after all, a choice of views not one determined by reason or by science. Our world is also a world of experience (of feelings, aesthetic, values and emotions) and a "spiritual" or neutral monism view of the world more readily accommodates our "reality" than a worldview which sees nature as predominately, fundamentally and primarily composed of dead, inert, insensate matter.

This is a little silly as well. If the universe was created for humans then why all the round about other things? Why create 99% of the other species in which humans never interacted with? Why create a bunch of other things that seem to have no emotional basis? Why wait billions and billions of years after forming the universe to create a world where you would place humans but then wait even longer before actually placing them there? Not to mention that these humans would be at the mercy of the universe.

Do you know how often the earth is nearly missed by asteroids that could cause massive devastation to the planet? Just last year we had over a dozen near misses that would have caused planet wide devastation. These near misses were sometimes only hours off their mark. There have even been cases where asteroids that could have caused wide spread damage that only entered the atmosphere but burned up before they struck the surface. It seems rather silly that a creator would go through all the trouble to make humans only to have a bunch of left over debris potentially destroying everything. Why allow this debris to stay around? I guess god doesn't clean up the mess of making the universe? Doesn't think he needs to or is just lazy? Maybe the whole point is to actually see if one of these asteroids will destroy everything? Maybe he is sitting back and purposely tossing these rocks at the earth.

Maybe the whole point behind this god creating everything is because he wants to create drama. He wants to entertain himself by causing conflict among people. He purposely sets people against each other so he can sit back and watch the fights and wars break out. He purposely created viruses and pathogens so he could watch these beings suffer and die and relish in the suffering of those who lost these loved ones. Maybe he wants to see his creation suffer and be miserable because he enjoys it.

Or maybe he is just a passive child who doesn't really care about his little ant farm called Earth. He made it, but got bored with it, and just lets it do it's thing in the back of his closet. He might mess with it from time to time just for his own personal enjoyment but for the most part he doesn't really care about it.

I could go on and on, but a theist would never entertain these ideas. They almost always assume that god has their best interest in mind, and that he is rooting for them, but that is an assumption without a single shred of evidence to back it up. So I find it incredibly funny that you would say science is just incapable of answering these questions so there must be some intelligence behind the scenes. Why would you make that assumption without anything at all to go off of?

Your own argument defeats your own argument.

0 Replies

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;171367 wrote:

I think that we should recognize that the term "why" is ambiguous as between justification and explanation. To say what you say above is to explain why you are a theist, in particular, you are giving your motives for theism. But you are not justifying your belief that God exists. That is, you are not presenting an argument for why that belief is true.

There is nothing wrong with that, of course. It is just as legitimate to explain why you believe in God as it is to attempt to justify your belief in God. They are both legitimate activities. Only, of course, we should not confuse them, and think we are doing the one, when we are really doing the other. In particular, we should not think we are justifying our belief in God when what we are doing is explaining why we believe in God.

There are of course many variants of "theism" (notions and concepts of god and divine action) just as there are many variants of atheism (hard, soft, militant, ect).

Most commonly the "I do not believe in a god or gods" is directed at the traditional orthodox supernatural miraculous interventionist form of "god".
I do not believe in that "god" either.

Philosophy (particularly metaphysics) is a form of rational speculation about the unifying principles of the world and of experience. Religious philosophy should be "rational" speculation about "god". In order to be "rational" I think a religous metaphysical speculation would have to take into account "scientific facts and theories". Religious concepts which reject cosmology (deep time) and evolution thus are not "rational" speculations. Of course rational specualtions may or may not be "true" (represent the world as it is).

I do not think one can "justify" belief in god (one would have to specify what they mean by god) as "true". The best you will get for "god" concepts is rational speculation and many "god" concepts do not even qualify for that.
but
I do not think one can "justify" belief in materialism or determism as "true"either.
I think both worldviews are metaphysical assumptions or rational speculations at best.

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;171367 wrote:

Why do you keep saying that, and what does it mean?

If you stop reading the same post over and over my post won't keep repeating.

0 Replies

@prothero,

prothero;171378 wrote:

There are of course many variants of "theism" (notions and concepts of god and divine action) just as there are many variants of atheism (hard, soft, militant, ect).

Most commonly the "I do not believe in a god or gods" is directed at the traditional orthodox supernatural miraculous interventionist form of "god".
I do not believe in that "god" either.

Philosophy (particularly metaphysics) is a form of rational speculation about the unifying principles of the world and of experience. Religious philosophy should be "rational" speculation about "god". In order to be "rational" I think a religous metaphysical speculation would have to take into account "scientific facts and theories". Religious concepts which reject cosmology (deep time) and evolution thus are not "rational" speculations. Of course rational specualtions may or may not be "true" (represent the world as it is).

I do not think one can "justify" belief in god (one would have to specify what they mean by god) as "true". The best you will get for "god" concepts is rational speculation and many "god" concepts do not even qualify for that.
but
I do not think one can "justify" belief in materialism or determism as "true"either.
I think both worldviews are metaphysical assumptions or rational speculations at best.

I think you must mean that you don't think that any justification (argument) for God can be a sound argument for God, not that one cannot present an argument for the existence of God, for that would be a factual error, since there are a great many argument for the existence of God. These "traditional" arguments for God are arguments for the traditional God of Judaism and Christianity (and, for all I know, for Allah too). There is an ambiguity in the term, "justification" as between presenting a justification, and presenting a sound justification (in this case) a sound argument for the existence of God. You think there are none of the second kind, but not, none of the the first kind.

1 Reply

@sometime sun,

The World and all it may contain for me is bound within systems of significance. I project intelligibility upon the world. But these significances, these understandings, the meaning I give the world, myself and all other things, outside the structures, codes and systems of my world have no other authority, no external grounding, other than being anthropocentric constructions.

The very idea of some non-anthropocentric external grounding, some genuinely objective authority or some absolutely external structure offering up significance to my existence seems unintelligibile, as it is devoid of any relevance. Even if such a thing existed, I still cannot comprehend how such a thing can have a claim on me. Structures of discourse, of meaning, of intelligibility are not conceivably external, they do not appear to be other-worldly - unless claimed as such via the all to human gob of persuassion, conviction and discourse. Too often the debate between the atheist or theist surrenders up the necessary condition that to believe or to reject with vehemence a given god and religion is to have already been introduced to the dogmas at sometime in one's life. Both the atheist and theist come across as symptoms, often covering up the intrinsic meaninglessness -other than what we project upon it - of the world we inhabit.

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;171381 wrote:

I think you must mean that you don't think that any justification (argument) for God can be a sound argument for God, not that one cannot present an argument for the existence of God, for that would be a factual error, since there are a great many argument for the existence of God. These "traditional" arguments for God are arguments for the traditional God of Judaism and Christianity (and, for all I know, for Allah too). There is an ambiguity in the term, "justification" as between presenting a justification, and presenting a sound justification (in this case) a sound argument for the existence of God. You think there are none of the second kind, but not, none of the the first kind.

It is interesting that now we slip from "a rational speculation" to a "sound argument". What is a "sound argument"? Is not the judgement about the "likelyhood" the "soundness" of an argument; a subjective judgment?

Are not all rational arguments or systems based on one or more premises or postulates (incompleteness theorems) the soundness or truth of which are questionable?

Religion is not an "objective" truth. It is at best a form of "subjective truth".
That is not to diminish the significance of "subjective truth" in human experience. For in the realm of "subjective truth" lies all of our values, ethics and aesthetic experience. In fact it is "subjective truth" Kierkegaard with which we are most interested and emotionally invested. To be completely objective is not possible for a subjective creature and would fail to account for a substantial aspect of human experience and reality.

---------- Post added 05-31-2010 at 01:38 PM ----------

[QUOTE=qualia;171386] The World and all it may contain for me is bound within systems of significance. I project intelligibility upon the world. But these significances, these understandings, the meaning I give the world, myself and all other things, outside the structures, codes and systems of my world have no other authority, no external grounding, other than being anthropocentric constructions. [/QUOTE]
Do you feel you project order upon the world?
Do you feel you project reason upon the world?
Are universal laws as mathematical equations something we impose on the world?
I agree that traditional religion is far too anthropomorphic but I think the order, form and creativity of the world is undeniable. I think the notion that there is some form of will, reason or purpose behind the world is not an irrational speculation or notion.

[QUOTE=qualia;171386] The very idea of some non-anthropocentric external grounding, some genuinely objective authority or some absolutely external structure offering up significance to my existence seems unintelligibile, as it is devoid of any relevance. Even if such a thing existed, I still cannot comprehend how such a thing can have a claim on me. Structures of discourse, of meaning, of intelligibility are not conceivably external, they do not appear to be other-worldly - unless claimed as such via the all to human gob of persuassion, conviction and discourse. [/QUOTE] Theist generally do believe that truth is eternal and inhabits another level of reality beyond the (empirical, the sensory and the material). This underlying structure of reality does "have a claim on you" and "does emanate or manifest" in both the cosmological, biological and human history. Without this belief in some realm of the Good (forms, the One,the divine) it is hard to see any notion of human values or human truth except through the lens of relativism or in the worst case:nihilism.

[QUOTE=qualia;171386] Too often the debate between the atheist or theist surrenders up the necessary condition that to believe or to reject with vehemence a given god and religion is to have already been introduced to the dogmas at sometime in one's life. Both the atheist and theist come across as symptoms, often covering up the intrinsic meaninglessness -other than what we project upon it - of the world we inhabit.[/QUOTE] Now I am not saying that what you are saying is irrational. You need to see however that it is a metaphysical assumption or a philosophical speculation this "intrinsic meaninglessness". It is as much a projection unto the world as the "inherent reason and purpose" position.

2 Replies

@north,

prothero wrote:

Without this belief in some realm of the Good (forms, the One,the divine) it is hard to see any notion of human values or human truth except through the lens of relativism or in the worst case:nihilism.

What do you mean by "realm of the Good"? Why can't an atheist know what is right and know what is wrong?

1 Reply

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;171393 wrote:

What do you mean by "realm of the Good"? Why can't an atheist know what is right and know what is wrong?

To be clear, I do not think atheists behave any less morally than theists. A case could be made for the opposite. In fact behaving morally without fear of punishment or hope for future reward is more commendable.

The question concerns the metaphysical grounding of the notion of "right and wrong". For without some higher level of reality from which "right and wrong" are derived, then "right and wrong" are merely human conceptions the "rightness and wrongness" of which depend on local customs, conventions, social conditioning and individual perspective.

I like to think that my notion that torture and slavery are morally wrong is not just based on local custom and social convention but on the basis of some higher form of truth or some more universal principle. That is just a reflection of my underlying theism and romantic idealism. This is not a discussion about the moral behavior of atheists versus theists. It is a discussion about the metaphysical basis or philosophical justification for the notion of "right and wrong" or in religious terms "good and evil".

---------- Post added 05-31-2010 at 02:27 PM ----------

Krumple;171376 wrote:

it just is that way.
it is just happens.
No one had to design it to work this way, it just does.

I do not take it as a personal attack. You could leave out all the "it is silly" parts though. I am fully rational and fully educated in the sciences primarily if you can believe it.
I understand the point of view of "just that way, just happens, just does". It seems to me that is not an explanatory argument though. It is just an appeal to assumption, speculation and lack of any further information or willingness to consider other possibility.
I understand your position; I think you do not understand mine well.

[QUOTE=Krumple;171376] This is a little silly as well. If the universe was created for humans then why all the round about other things? [/QUOTE] But when did I say the universe was created for humans? I do not agree with that.
I think that creativity itself is the ultimate value or purpose of the universe. The universe is to actualize (make consequent) that which is deficiently actual (the primordial, forms, ideals) bringing possibility into actuality.

[QUOTE=Krumple;171376] Maybe the whole point behind this god creating everything is because he wants to create drama. He wants to entertain himself by causing conflict among people. He purposely sets people against each other so he can sit back and watch the fights and wars break out. [/QUOTE]

Krumple;171376 wrote:

Your own argument defeats your own argument.

Your argument is more anthropomorphic than mine. I have no conception that the universe is only the stage for a human drama. It is the stage for the divine drama of order from chaos, and value from the void, the actualization of the mere potentiality. We are certainly part of the universe, and we are certainly the result of a long process of creative advance from the void and chaos to order, complexity, life, mind and experience.

Do not mistake me as supporting the supernatural interventionist, miracle performing, omnipotent, omniscient deity of classical theism.

0 Replies

@prothero,

Thanks for the post, prothero. Here's my hand at a little more polemic :whistling:

prothero wrote:

Do you feel you project order upon the world? Do you feel you project reason upon the world? Are universal laws as mathematical equations something we impose on the world?

All these features described, these 'laws', 'reasons', 'orders' depend on us, which is to say, there wouldn't be these notions and the hypotheses linked to them if we didn't exist. There just wouldn't be this type of intelligibility of the world if it weren't for us. Clearly, I am not bringing into issue whether or not there would still be things in existence, things which for the sake of argument we could call substances, electrons, waves and particles if we didn't exist. I don't think these entities depend on us, or to put it another way, although the ontological understanding of these beings will always depend on us, their being does not.

prothero wrote:

Theist generally do believe that truth is eternal and inhabits another level of reality beyond the (empirical, the sensory and the material). This underlying structure of reality does "have a claim on you" and "does emanate or manifest" in both the cosmological, biological and human history. Without this belief in some realm of the Good (forms, the One,the divine) it is hard to see any notion of human values or human truth except through the lens of relativism or in the worst case:nihilism.

I think humans have an absolute tendency to be mastered by ideology, a way of seeing, perceiving, evaluating and understanding their world. Humans are intelligible, meaning and value making creatures whose values and significances need not be anchored in some wholly external authority or source. Nor need the denial of such sources or authorities necessarily lead to nihilism.

prothero wrote:

Now I am not saying that what you are saying is irrational. You need to see however that it is a metaphysical assumption or a philosophical speculation this "intrinsic meaninglessness". It is as much a projection unto the world as the "inherent reason and purpose" position.

Of course. Humans project intelligibility. Structures of discourse, of meaning are not conceivably external, they do not appear other-worldly.

3 Replies

@qualia,

[QUOTE=qualia;171418] Thanks for the post, prothero. Here's my hand at a little more polemic [/QUOTE]

qualia;171418 wrote:

All these features described, these 'laws', 'reasons', 'orders' depend on us, which is to say, there wouldn't be these notions and the hypotheses linked to them if we didn't exist. There just wouldn't be this type of intelligibility of the world if it weren't for us. Clearly, I am not bringing into issue whether or not there would still be things in existence, things which for the sake of argument we could call substances, electrons, waves and particles if we didn't exist. I don't think these entities depend on us, or to put it another way, although the ontological understanding of these beings will always depend on us, their being does not.

Well we agree that the universe does not depend on us. We agree that our minds impose categories of mental conception on our experience of reality. What we do not agree on is the inherent rationality or intelligibility of the universe. We probably also do not agree on where experience and perception (primitive forms of mind) begin and end in nature.

[QUOTE=qualia;171418] I think humans have an absolute tendency to be mastered by ideology, a way of seeing, perceiving, evaluating and understanding their world. Humans are intelligible, meaning and value making creatures whose values and significances need not be anchored in some wholly external authority or source. Nor need the denial of such sources or authorities necessarily lead to nihilism. [/QUOTE] I do not think it necessarily leads to "nihilism" either, but it certainly can. At the least it leads to the notion that "ethics, values and aesthetics" are purely human derived notions and so I do not see how moral and aesthetic relativism can be avoided. I prefer to avoid even this much relativism if possible.

[QUOTE=qualia;171418] Of course. Humans project intelligibility. Structures of discourse, of meaning are not conceivably external, they do not appear other-worldly. [/QUOTE]

qualia;171418 wrote:

I am not sure what you mean here. I am in the camp with the Greek rationalists about the "structure" and "objects" and "properties" of the world of sense experience and matter deriving their forms from another higher level of reality. I share the notion that the world is based on "logos" (forms, reason, order and intelligibility) not on "matter". Even science assumes there are non- material unifying principles beyond matter and sense experience.

One cannot, of course, hope for agreement on issues such as these nor is proof available. The best that can be obtained is a certain degree of mutual respect and mutual understanding. There must be a realization that one is engaging in the realm of metaphysical assumption and rational philosophical speculation which is not subject to empirical demonstration or direct sense experience.

0 Replies

@qualia,

qualia;171386 wrote:

I project intelligibility upon the world.

Having caught yourself in the act of doing so, you must presumably have concluded that the intelligibility which you were previously projecting upon the world is an illusion, which is to say, you must presumably have stopped believing in this projected intelligibility.

What I cannot understand is whether: (a) you have therefore stopped projecting intelligibility upon the world, and if so, what you are doing now instead; or (b) you find yourself unable to stop projecting intelligibility upon the world, and you must therefore watch helplessly, and perhaps aghast, as your own deluded self, which in this one respect at least you cannot control, continues to project upon the world that which used to seem to you to be intelligibility, but which now must seem to you to be only nonsensicality; or (c) you could stop projecting intelligibility upon the world (as in (a)), but instead you choose to continue to project it, even though (as in (b)) you can no longer believe in this nonsensicality, which you used to project as if it were intelligibility.

If (b), it must be as if you are trapped in a dream, a dream from which you cannot awake, nor can you control it, so that it is not even a lucid dream. If that goes on for long enough, it must surely turn into a nightmare, mustn't it?

Or have you found some way out of this perplexity, which does not, however, involve discovering in the world some real intelligibility, an intelligibility not merely projected by your own self? Have you found either option (a) or option (c) livable, or have you found some other option?

(Here I go with the 'options' again!) Smile

0 Replies

@prothero,

prothero;171388 wrote:

It is interesting that now we slip from "a rational speculation" to a "sound argument". What is a "sound argument"?

The term, "sound argument" is a technical term in logic. A sound argument is an argument all of whose premises are true, and which is valid. So, it follows that a sound argument has a true conclusion. Whether an argument is sound is not a subjective judgment, but an objective judgment. To repeat, a sound argument must meet the following conditions: 1. All its premises are true, 2. the conclusion follows from its premises. Logic has rules for determining whether a conclusion follows from its premises. These are called, "inference rules". In deductive logic, these have been completely worked out. In fact, for elementary systems of logic, we have efficient decision methods for determining validity which can now be done by computers. It is as simple as elementary arithmetic. Of course, the question of the truth of the premises is different. That is an epistemological question. Not a logical issue. It has been pretty well known, however, since Hume and Kant, that the traditional arguments for God are unsound.

0 Replies

@qualia,

qualia;171418 wrote:

All these features described, these 'laws', 'reasons', 'orders' depend on us, which is to say, there wouldn't be these notions and the hypotheses linked to them if we didn't exist. There just wouldn't be this type of intelligibility of the world if it weren't for us.

The interesting question is the nature of intelligibility itself. I think probably it is a debate that can never be settled one way or the other, but it needs to be considered. If you say that laws are the artefact of the human consciousness, and are dependent upon it, then aren't you saying (for example) that prior to the emergence of h. sapiens, there was no number? It seems to me that number cannot be said to exist without a presiding consciousness to count it. But at the same time, it is not the product of the presiding consciousness. It seems indisputable that even though number is an artefact of consciousness, it also corresponds to the nature of reality in such a way as to reveal things about it which are not empirically evident, but also not subjective. Number can be said to represent a hidden order. This order preceeds us, but at the same time we would not have evolved were it not in existence. I think this is one interpretation of the idea of 'logos', which is, after all, the root of logic.

Generally, I think the Platonist/ Pythagorean view says that the regularities of nature are ontologically prior to the rational faculties by which they are grasped. The expression that I believe sums up that view is that of 'the rational soul in an intelligible universe'. It is actually different to the typical modern outlook. The typical modern outlook is that logic is 'in our heads' or 'in our minds'. I think the pre-modern outlook was that logic was rooted in a transcendent order which by virtue of our intelligence we were able to grasp.

1 Reply

why I'm a atheist

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know