IP's content occupied about 5 minutes of video time. My explanations required about 25 minutes. That's a debunking ratio of 5:1. It took five times more effort to comprehensively explain his errors than it took for him to make them in the first place.
That's without counting efforts that goes in the production and research. Not every minute of the video is worth the same in that regard. To say bs you only need to think you are right and do a bit of quote mining (and latter is not even necessary), no research really needed
More like UninspiringWillful-ignorance. It was at first somewhat difficult to find the opposite of philosophy, but the Greeks gives a more simple way of explaining philosophy (love of wisdom). Religious aologetics is an art to either deceive others, yourself or both. Every religous person too some extent have done this. So essentially willful-ignorance.
I'd prefer that the tiny dinosaurs give me a stern warning instead. Between the hospital bills and replacing torn clothes, I'd be beggared pretty quickly by such consistent dinosaur attacks.
I wish tiny dinosaurs attacked apologists whenever they said anything fallacious, couldn't show evidence, tried to shift the burden of proof or just said anything generally moronic and irrational.
Sometimes I think you TH-cam atheists are the actual people behind IP's channel creating utter nonsense only so you can debunk it in a hilarious fashion.
"If you believe naturalism is true you have to believe that you believe naturalism is true." Yes, its a hallmark of an internally consistent ideology that it being the case would be the logical result of it being the case.
observation1. I saw someone jump off a cliff observation2. he died conclusion: jumping off of a cliff is what killed the guy If my brain correctly stores this information and uses it again in the future, then I will be better suited to survive. A naturalistic explanation of his death would actually prevent my death If, for example, I thought that a magic fairy at the bottom of the cliff killed the man, then I may be more likely to jump off of the cliff, so long as there weren't fairies at the bottom. a naturalistic cause of death would not only be reasonable, but it would be useful for my survival
"somethings can be useful without necessarily being true" could not the same be said of religion, that it was once used as a general description of the unknown, but now has been replaced by a more useful AND true set of beliefs
Out_fucking_standing, X. IP really needed a good de-pantsing. I'm actually in the process myself of going over one of his videos that particularly pissed me off for a potential refutation.
What do you guys think of the video format? Is this something you'd like me to do more of? It's a little less flashy but a lot more dense in information.
Ikr. If this maximally great creator is so f'n great then why doesn't he show himself and save everybody?! Sorry, I've been debating theists for awhile and their cognitive dissonance has given me a few xtra grey hairs.
@Mahdi Kassem Out of the nearly 8 billion people on this planet NOT ONE PERSON knows exactly what existed or occurred prior to the Big Bang or the Planck Epoch to be more specific. If anyone claims that they do know then they are deluded or are being dishonest. Which one are you Mahdi?
@Mahdi Kassem How do you know that any supernatural claims in the Quran are true? Also, that's one thing I hate about christianity and islam, you think this life is just a temporary stepping stone to an eternal undead half-life. For all we really know this life is the only one we get and making it seem unimportant by thinking it is "temporary" is foolish and absurd.
@Mahdi Kassem Logic makes me realise that we exist in a natural universe and nothing supernatural, like a soul, has ever been shown or proven to exist whatsoever. How do you know that the natural universe didn't originate naturally?
@Mahdi Kassem Nope. Everything does not necessarily have a "creator". It is possible that the natural universe originated naturally and it is possible that life originated naturally. Show me a universe that didn't have a "creator" to prove that our universe did have a creator. Can you do that?
Inspiring Philosophy has one goal: Impress those who desperately seek to be impressed. Apologists are nothing more than influential people who conjure up excuses. It's pathetic, really.
When I hear someone question _my_ view of reality by asking, "How do you know what is true/ real?", or "Could everything you know be incorrect?", I just laugh and disengage. Solipsism isn't an argument. It's literally nothing more than a thought experiment created by philosophy professors to befuddle their students. If your opponent has to deconstruct what is demonstrably true to be able to force his preferred deity or unsupported, alternate, manufactured reality into existence, you've already won. Drop your mic and walk away.
Fucking thank you! Most of the times atheists just try to explain why their epistemic standarts are valid and fall in the trap instead of pointing the finger in the other direction. Ok, so god created us. How is my ability to reason more reliable now? I see no contradiction in a god that provides us with poor reasoning.
Estoy trabajando en algo ahora, debería estar listo esta semana o la siguiente. Pero no, yo me mantendré en el tema de la religión. No veo que esas ideologías impacten el mundo hispano y no creo que sea de interés de mis suscriptores.
*I went through and started mentally replacing "natural" and "naturalist" and "naturalistic" in your video with equivalent forms of "correct".* *It seemed to cut more to the point.* 0:05 "Apparently, there's a lot of Christian apologists who think that if evolution is real, then _being correct_ is not." 0:19 "When we hear of some new attempt to explain reasoning... _correctly_, we ought to _declare it invalid without consideration based on our premeditated commitment to always being wrong_." 1:03 "He's effectively declaring in advance that he has categorically rejected the very possibility of a _correct_ explanation for human reason." *It's fun!*
The greatest power science has is it's predictive power. Supernatural beliefs have no predictive power. I like to think of religion as a placeholder for actual knowledge. Training wheels for mankind, if you will, that we no longer really need.
It seems to me that some people are thinking that it's a waste of time to make counter-arguments to religious apologists. It's not. There exist a lot of people who are religious while knowing full well that the claims of their religion sound ridiculous. Those people, having embraced reason in every other part of their lives, grasp at straws trying to find anything to justify their belief and ease the cognitive dissonance. I know, because I was one of them, a long, long time ago. This channel has done a brilliant job of shining light into pseudo-intellectual arguments and showing them to be what they really are: vapid, silly, unsound and just plain wrong. The question isn't whether it's worth doing this or not, but how to bring this to a larger audience. (By the way, thanks, kind sir, for doing this. Your videos have been very helpful in clearing up elusive terms like "truth" and "existence". I'm not ashamed to admit that I have been stealing stuff from you, and will continue to do so in the future.)
Congrats on seeing and accepting logic and reason my friend. I have been debating theists for a while now and it does feel like I'm pissing into the wind. They are so dogged in their beliefs that no matter how many facts and however much logic, rationality and reason you throw at them they will not budge because. It's like their eternal soul depends on it or something :p The best I can do is hopefully make them question things which they may not have before and urge them to actually study scientific literature instead of relying on the Christian encyclopaedia of drivel.
His language is dishonest when he says “if naturalism is true we are an accidental consequence of evolution” since evolution has no goal for us to be vestigial or obstructionary to
A couple more points: 1. A trait doesn't have to be beneficiary to an organism to be passed on. Natural selection isn't some magical black box that shits out perfect species. Of course, IP later uses Plantinga's probability argument so he should understand that, which is why it's odd that he is so insistent before that. 2. The whole Ptolemaic model thing could be dismissed entirely if we don't try to assign a single binary TRUE/FALSE value to its entirety and use either a non-binary assessment, or assess its parts individually. For instance, if we define our a complete lack of explanation of celestial mechanics as 0 and our current understanding of celestial mechanics as 1 (which is not to say that it's perfect absolute knowledge, it just means that if we find out anything else the refined model will become 1 instead), Ptolemaic model would be, say, 0.5, while Biblical flat earth with a firmament would be, for instance, 0.25. I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass, but I don't even need to go that far, I can just use a catch-all system of "MORE TRUE THAN" to avoid this. 3. Yeah, our understanding of the universe is just a useful, if imperfect, model. So...? Sure, we don't absolutely know that there are no gods, ghosts or magic, but not a lot of naturalists and skeptics would say that they do anyway, since according to these very philosophies those questions can not have absolute answers to begin with. But hey, let's say that this is not aimed at the skeptics. Why should anyone else believe in those things?
"3. Yeah, our understanding of the universe is just a useful, if imperfect, model. So...? Sure, we don't absolutely know that there are no gods, ghosts or magic, but not a lot of naturalists and skeptics would say that they do anyway, since according to these very philosophies those questions can not have absolute answers to begin with." Actually, there are some answers, at least about there being an actual god or gods. If said entity is a god, they are supernatural. However, for us to know about such an entity, they have to interact with the world so that we can learn about them. For something to interact with the world, it has to be part of nature. Therefore, if a "god" interacts with nature, they cease to be supernatural, and thus they cease to be a god. At that point they might be sufficiently advanced aliens or time-travelers or whatever, but not gods, and it's on that basis that I deem the existence of any kind of deity just plain impossible, and then we haven't even talked about all the actual (often contradictory) claims about certain gods that could disprove every one of them anyway. So yeah, I do not subscribe to the whole "agnostic about god thing", as I find the mere concept as possible as a triangle with three 90° angles or a round square.
Eh, sure, you can go even further than I did with your reasoning (I do occasionally use it myself), but you don't even need to. I mean, let's say that you are mistaken in your logic, since, as skeptics, we all are fallible. Let's pretend there is absolutely no reason to suppose that gods can't exist. It still doesn't mean we should believe any of them do, which was what I was trying to convey in my point 3.
Okay then, I must have misread your intentions. Agnostics (especially religious agnostics) are just a pet-peeve of mine, so I tend to jump the guy when it comes to them. Carry on.
Besides being dumb, what annoys me the most about IP is the damn music. It is like he is trying so hard to trick you that he is saying anything profound with this "epic" background...
If you believe naturalism is true, then you also have to believe you believe naturalism is true. And if you believe you believe naturalism is true, you also have to believe you believe you believe naturalism is true. And if you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true, then you also have to believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true. And if you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true, then you also have to believe you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true. And if you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true, then you also have to believe you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true. And if you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true, then you also have to believe you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true. And if you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true, then you also have to believe you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true. ...and so on. I find this 'argument' funny.
Hold on now. I may believe that I believe that I believe that naturalism is true But I most certainly do not believe that believe that I believe that I believe that naturalism is true
I can understand when a person says a tautology without realizing that it is a tautology because he is saying it and not writing it down or because he uses two different looking words or phrases that essentially mean the same thing. But to fail to recognize a tautology in a WRITTEN form that REPEATS the same words - is defined one of the stupidest things I’ve seen the so called “philosophers” do…
Great channel, one of the best I have come across so far. It popped up in my recommendations just yesterday so now I am checking older videos. I admire people who take time out of their lives to try and contain the tide of illiteracy and stupidity which the Internet is helping to spread but I don't know where you get the patience to listen to so many nonsense for so long. I swear I can feel my neural connections shrink when I have to listen to illogical irrational ramblings.
IP asking if experiences are true and christians constantly saying God is the Truth or God is love is so bizarre its like they dont understand how grammar works
For Protestants, it's Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig. For Catholics, it's Edward Feser. These TH-cam apologists always have their arguments spoonfed to them by these "expert" philosophers.
Honestly IP's mistaking of internal consistency for circular reasoning should be all the proof you need that he doesn't understand shit about philosophy.
Ptolemaic astronomy is a humorously ironic example when you realize how analogous it is to theism. In both instances you have base assumptions that are regularly contradicted, requiring more and more convoluted explanations that run into contradictions of their own. The only difference is that one group was willing to reassess, and eventually scrap, the central idea. Religion's initial rejection of heliocentricism only makes the comparison even more apt.
If I lived in the world conceived by you in your thought experiment from 23:46 to 24:25 and then started to delude myself into believing falsehoods in order to further my progression then the act of deluding myself would still be based on my observation that acting on true beliefs would be bad in that world. Therefore, would deluding myself even result in desirable outcomes?
Our knowledge *is* analogous to Ptolemaic astronomy. Ptolemaic astronomy wasn't completely false. It was a useful model because it got many important things right, but it didn't get every detail right. The same goes for our minds - we evolved to get most important things right, but there are many details that we are actually predisposed to get wrong due to cognitive biases. I love it when apologists say, "If naturalism is true, then X" when X is just an obvious fact that is true whether or not naturalism is.
"If naturalism is true, then all of your beliefs were only formed because your brain thought thry were beneficial for survival" is like saying "If naturalism is true, you only broke your arm skiing because your bone thought it was beneficial for survival." It completely ignores the fact that we're just as much a product of experience as we are of our evolved nature, so not everything about a person comes from evolution. Also, holding true beliefs is quite beneficial, so saying that my brain thinks it's beneficial to believe in naturalism isn't much different from saying that my brain thinks naturalism is true.
To call something supernatural is to say that it is "above" having a nature. There is a value judgement inherent in the words 'super' or 'above', having something to do with domination. To say that something is above having a nature is equivalent to saying that the thing is not itself, and cannot be held accountable. But above the law is beneath the law, and natureless means meaningless.
I'm still unconvinced "natural" has any real utility when applied to reality itself. For instance, if we discover an Entity X tomorrow that is radically and fundamentally different than anything we've experienced to date, how do we tell whether Entity X is non-natural or just a heretofore unknown natural thing? What characteristics define the end of "natural" and the beginning of things that are not natural? Most people point to natural or physical laws, but this is unhelpful. These laws are mere descriptions of reality based on observation. We know they are incomplete and they can expand to accommodate new observation, so they offer no help in setting a clear boundary. Nor can you point to "material" or "physical" because these present the same problem as above. How do you tell whether Entity X is immaterial? Or merely a previously unknown way for something to be material? The usual characteristic that distinguishes non-natural things - artifice - is also unhelpful. Because whether things are natural or non-natural hinges on whether they were created and not something we can infer from evaluating the entity itself. So it ends up being a tautology, not a useful definition. Moreover, if god created everything, then everything is non-natural and we have no basis to make any comparison. To top it all off, _science doesn't restrict itself to the natural, but the _*_empirical._* The "natural" label is completely extraneous. You show me a well defined non-natural hypothesis with a mathematical framework and testable predictions, and I'll show you something science is perfectly capable of exploring. If your hypothesis fails to meet these criteria, that is your fault, not science's. The whole exercise feels like a linguistic game to manufacture a false distinction and pretend other people are closed minded when they are just being reasonable.
@Julez O'Neil I hear you. And I'm not sure whether predictability is really a deciding factor. Aside from believers never offering their criteria, many of the things they claim are supernatural are at least somewhat predictable.
At 18:25, the "random guy" is John Maynard Smith, an evolutionary biologist. A rather significant figure in the field. BTW, I prefer this format of this video.
So? There are lots of significant figures in biology. I'd be willing to be that 95% of them probably think Smith is full of shit about his "feelings" tirade. But you'll notice that I don't bring that sort of thing up because I don't like to argue from authority.
Yes, I took your point. I was just responding to the "random guy" bit. More interestingly, it is likely a quote-mine on the order of Darwin and the eye. I don't have time to hunt it down right now.
well said! glad to share your work in twitter. on the off chance they may see it and learn from it! or from those who do see it and pass on the information contained herein! this format is fine as well as earlier.
I love your videos, always had. I'm actually neutral to the format because I just download them and listen to the audio at work. Which brings me to a question, do you have any future plans for another live stream? Your meditations upload was very entertaining. But to my actual comment: J&R did a good job of factually addressing ip's atheism delusion video (as I know you're well aware), but if they were more familiar with his content and style, I think they'd be far less charitable. Same in this video. The same criticisms here have been brought ad nauseum by so many, its impossible for him to simply be unaware of the flaws. Which strongly suggests he is just being willfully dishonest, manipulative, and at times out right lying. If I had the tools, I'd list and pick apart all of the various communicative techniques he uses to bypass peoples awareness to groom their cognitive faculties to more readily accept his bs, but alas, I don't have that equipment.
*The same criticisms here have been brought ad nauseum by so many, its impossible for him to simply be unaware of the flaws.* That's a good point, and it explains why I can't just calmly address such people. The most egregious for me was how he tried to "debunk" the idea that usefulness is equivalent to truth. I personally explained that exact misconception to him and why it's a strawman, to which he personally acknowledged being mistaken. Then he went ahead and made this video anyway as if nothing ever happened. The guy either has no memory whatsoever, or he really is just that manipulative and wilful in his deception.
AntiCitizenX I definitely understand the frustration, especially when it comes to speaking with religious apologists. In general the less academically mined tend to merely misuse words, and are too unfamiliar with their meanings to have a meaningful conversation. So you end up talking passed one another. With more literate apologists (and better read people in general for that matter), they tend to forfeit that excuse by default when they enter the arena with a title that presumes a minimal qualification, such as a basic understanding of the applicable subject. Which is why I often think of ip's arguments as comparing apples to non sequiturs, and why a lot of people that enter a conversation with him peacefully, end up rather frazzled.
Very nice skewering both of IP and by connection, the baneful Plantinga (who is a patron philosophical saint of the Intelligent Design movement branch of contemporary antievolutionism). You rightly exposed all the many buried dicey assumptions contained in IP's argument, and neatly related that to what goes on in the real world. Kudos. From my vantage of a methodological approach to combating antievolutionism (#TIP project at www.tortucan.wordpress.com) this is smoothly applied sound analytical methods (follow the sources and the logic trails)
20:26 The President is Handsome -> True uuuuuuuuhhhh That's more of an opinion, variable from person to person, but that was probably what you were going for in the first place.
a key aspect of the problem with academic publications, in many disciplines, is lack of precision in writing. far too many writers have no idea how to find the right word or specific term that are suitable to the expression of an idea, making a statement, etc. many students and researchers often wondered if this is done on purpose. you can say that philosophy is ate most famous victim of such inaccurate verbosity.
their a fashion designer that can't see color that has a inplant to help him know what color thing are by sound. it real outside are mind don't it have to do with how light hit some surface? sorry about spelling an grammar. was just wondering if that was true.
It is encouraging that P: E maintains a courteous attitude in this video and displays remarkable reticence to buggar up any sense of decorum. It may be a prerequisite for an interlocutor to be as thick as a brick, making it difficult for me to talk with the theist.
Actually, "squaring the circle" has nothing to do with "square circles". Squaring the circle is a classic problem in geometry, known since the ancient Greeks
Could you perhaps make a video about Reformed Epistemology? I've tried to look up what the argument even is but I just couldn't wrap my head around it!
If I lived in the world conceived by you in your thought experiment from 23:46 to 24:25 then I would still try to strive for believing in truth. But I wouldn't want to act on any of those beliefs because my observations tell me that acting on my beliefs always results in undesired outcomes. However, doing so would mean that I act on my belief in that world that acting on my other beliefs is bad. Therefore, I would still be acting on my beliefs. What would that entail in that world? What would happen if I did this?
I would have even argued that there is something objective about the colors, and that is the wavelength. He even took that part from a TED-ed video that explains the same concept.
27:12 I've wondered if anyone were do develop the ability to see spectrums of light normally invisible to us, would they be totally alien colors, or would they just look like colors we are used to seeing. Thinking about it, I think it would be similar to how artificially color inferred light on a specialized camera. Our brain would interpret it based on how it it wired.
It is the height of narcissism to believe that you are the only being in the entire universe, and that you imagined/created every piece of music, every painting, every argument and scientific discovery. It is far more likely that, while you have subjective sensory experiences, that they are reliable enough to at least seek out independent corroboration, otherwise you wouldn't have lived long enough to gain the mental maturity to even contemplate this scenario...
@10:05 Oh your god, I can't believe I've only just figured out that this is an argument from: There's no god damned way I can cope with the fact that the brain named itself!
I have found that you can lay out facts, logic and reason until you're blue in the face, like you have done in the video, but these people are so convinced in their delusion and their world view depends on it so much that they completely reject facts and reason. The number of times I've debunked a theists argument and they've even conceded the point and then they go on and make the same arguments with someone else. It's very frustrating and maddening
The Truth According to the Wholly Fable, inspired while sitting upon the throne in the John 8;31 The truth will set you free, but the judge might look at it differently. I watch Anthony Magnabosco vid and he said something like discussing something with a person who places narrative above truth, has a failed epistemology. Plus The Patron Saint of Sensible said. “If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?” --Sam Harris I love scriptural hopscotch to pay penance for my past evil days being a Vaughan Again theist May my dog have mercy on my sole. He virtually chewed the rest of the shoe.
Oh, and the brain in the vat problem has a very simple solution. Assume you were a brain in a vat. Assume your sense data is merely output from a simulated real world, perfectly and always producing the sense data it would produce if you were not in fact a brain in a vat. By this premise, we disprove any possible difference between your simulated experiences and the experiences provided by a real world. And by this premise, A=A, and the simulation is just the real world. You already are a brain in a vat. Your vat is made mostly of calcium phosphate and somewhere between 6.5 and 7.1 millimeters thick, and has wires hooked up to cameras and microphones and other sensors to provide input. If you didn't object when you were that brain in that vat looking at the actual real world, you have no grounds to complain about being in a different vat looking at a perfect simulation of the real world which by the axiom of identity is just the real world all over again. Now if you find a _glitch_ in the Matrix, we can start picking up telephones looking for an exit. But until then A still =s A.
"Assume your sense data is merely output from a simulated real world" See, right there you have a problem. You want us to assume that there IS some kind of a real world, just that we're living in a simulation of it. That assumption is already unfounded. I didn't read anymore of this, I'm responding now and I already know where it's gonna go and why it's wrong.
well, I kind of have to disagree, beliefs, and culture in general, is passed from generation to generation in a socialisation-process. That said it should not really be mentioned in the same breath as biological evolution, the processes are rather different
About the section where he was talking about color... I noticed a lot of people argue that way, NOT only theist apologists, but many philosophers or people who are generally attending those topics (mind body problem, absolute knowledge, how is perception or consciousnes possible, etc...). IMHO, color is ill-defined here and the term is thrown around using the same label in different instances, having it mean different things because of the different context. Example: color as an objective, tangible fact of reality would constitute the wavelength of light. color as the subjective perception would NOT (necessarily) constitute in any way whatsoever a statement about objective reality. Yet the terms are being thrown around in such as way as to imply that color may not be real, but wait, what do they mean by that? Are they saying one cannot meassure and quantize the different wavelenghts of light in an objective way without relying on subjective perception? Because obviously we can meassure wavelength in ... say integers for example ... and then define THAT as objective reality in terms of property of light, but the fact that a red-green color-blind person would STILL perceive it differently than a non-color-blind person ... that fact at least did not mean a change in objective wavelenght of the light. Does this make sense? I forgot what my original point was. I guess I just wanted to get this msg out.
I agree. the moment someone uses qualia, I know they're on shakey ground. I would say that color is a specific sequence of neurons firing in the brain. And that's measurable, and quantifiable. Qualia is a term I see used like Dark matter is used by astronomers. A label from something not yet fully understood.
AntiCitizenX So we have a "reality" (fact), a "qualia" and a "perception" (experience). We use the term "color" as in the perception of the color to express or refer to the some fact about reality, like e.g. the flower is red. I mentioned color-blindness in my example. This is a special case, because afaik color-blindness has been confirmed to be a neurological problem with the wiring of the brain, not with the eyes or their anatomy. This means that we have the possibility that a particular fact about reality X (particular wavelenght of light) is carried in a particular set of "qualia" (the signals for that particular light-wavelenght are send to our brain) and yet the perception/experience is different for two people, one color-blind one not. 1 identical fact, 1 identical "qualia", yet two different subjective experiences. Is that correct? Or is qualia equal to perception?
I always understood qualia to just mean the subjective perception of a thing. Here's a quick google definition: "the internal and subjective component of sense perceptions, arising from stimulation of the senses by phenomena." Fun fact: singular = quale, plural = qualia So things like color, hot, cold and loudness are all qualia. If my red just looks gray to you, then we have different qualia for the same stimulation.
AntiCitizenX Ah, ok. Then it's less complicated than I thought. But I'm a little disappointed, because I feel like my (naive) explanation is more complete, because it distinguishes between objective facts about reality that could in theory be independently verified (using technology) and the "data" that is send & received via our sensory faculties *aaaand* as a third component/aspect the subjectie experience (of the same data). Because you have common objective fact about reality X, this gets translated by sensory organs into an electric signal and send to our brain X' (which correlates to the same fact X), but then what the brain does with it is a whole other question. Think of it this way: You have black box computer. The black box is receiving some facts about reality X via an interface, translates and sends the corresponding data in bits and bytes X' to the CPU over the message bus, but because CPUs can have different instructionset (or software running), the same data X' (about some same fact X) results in a different internal processing or result. So in other words still, ... if you were a brain in a box and the external world does not exist, but everything we know about brains in our fake "Matrix" world would still be true (for the sake of the argument), then it doesn't matter what the "signals" are you receive from the tubes and wires connected to your brain in a vat, you still have some (minor) different perceptions internally than whatever that fake external world (aka Matrix) was trying to force-feed you. Not that this view helps to solve solipsism, but it introduced more factors, because it establishes that our perception is not necessarily 100% correlated with sensory data. So sensory data X does not necessarily cause perception(X), therefore you cannot always reasonably expect fact(perception(X)) to be true, nuff said. You cannot ask people if they have the same quale when they see the color red (obviously, because it's not a meaningful question on it's own), but you can ask them about one object to sort it with other objects and see if there's any difference in the "sorting" (or categorizin) between different groups of persons.
I've argued with IP years ago on his video "Does God Send People to Hell" or something similar to that. He seems to be incapable of ever admitting error and always accuses his opposition of misrepresenting him while acting all pretentious like he knows it all. I've given up debating religious folk on here all together. The only time when I'd argue with one is if they come to me first and challenge something I wrote. Other than that I won't get involved because I feel like I'm just wasting my time on the offensive.
*He seems to be incapable of ever admitting error and always accuses his opposition of misrepresenting him while acting all pretentious like he knows it all.* Yup, that pretty much sums up his entire system of rebuttal.
After watching the whole video, there also seems to be this confusion between philosophical and methodological naturalism. Philosophical naturalism basically says that the natural world is all that exists while the supernatural does not. Methodological naturalists say because we cannot even begin to test or work with anything that may be beyond the physical world (supernatural) the natural is therefore the best in determining whether or not things are true since we cannot demonstrate supernatural causation nor does the supernatural have any predictive and explanatory power. So it isn't necessarily my position that no supernatural exists or cannot exist which is what IP is generalizing, it's just that I *currently* reject it because the supernatural has not met its burden of proof. It may seem like nitpicking but there is a difference in saying I don't accept x and I think x is false.
"Philosophical naturalism" is made-up bullshit. There is only methodological naturalism." But you understand the distinction in merely rejecting something such as the supernatural and saying the supernatural does not exist, correct? It's like the same distinction between an agnostic and gnostic.
Something that isn't subject to the laws of nature is the best way I could define it. Of course nobody could demonstrate that if all we have is methodological naturalism. That is why theists try to use philosophy such as the Modal Ontological Argument.
Why is it called the problem of skepticism? Anyone know? It doesn't seem to me like skepticism should be the one defining feature of the problem, enough to inspire its name. Unless I'm missing something.
AntiCitizenX They doubt everything. Like, literally everything right? Like that Carneades guy. You know who I'm talking about. I've seen you down there in the comments from time to time. Hm, I guess that would be a problem but even the philosophical skeptic believes in likelihoods do they not? They would accept that it's likely they actually live in the real world wouldn't they? Thanks for your help. I'm trying to learn more about philosophy.
AntiCitizenX I'll definitely re watch it. I watch everything you do though. Well, almost everything. The long talks you do on Google hangouts I usually skip. I used to be one of those guys who said things like "Philosophy doesn't matter anymore, we have science now." until I saw Skeptically Pwnd's video about that. He does a very comprehensive breakdown of that position and it's completely untenable. So now I've got to familiarize myself with some basic philosophy. It's not as intuitive to me as science is but it's worth it.
12:00 turns out some research shows that ADHD was an advantage when humans started farming. The ADHD humans couldn't plow a straight furrow so they were allowed to roam and it was they who brought back the occasional wild animal they tirelessly tracked. With the advent of industrialized society, that became a 'bad' behavior and is considered like the appendix.
How is it an accident? That implies personification again and some humanlike force making a mistake. Take the need to personify reality outside of humans and you skip the confusion.
1:50 You made an oops. Musicians do think of music as having color (some chords are more colorful than others: Bb13 is more colorful than a normal Bb chord). You should do a little research before making your purposely nonsense claim. A better nonsense would be "Does my music taste/smell good" or something to that effect. I love your content; thought you should know.
"It might loosely mean something to some people in some figurative context..." That's exactly the point. People intuit certain things when you say the words, but when you consider the words used it's complete gibberish. This isn't a big deal when writing music, but it's somewhat of a big deal when discussing epistemology.
That’s not what colour even means in that context. Just because the word “colour” is used doesn’t mean the same concept should be applied. Music as defined by sound haves doesn’t have a colour that can be sensed by the eyes. That’s restricted to light waves.
When my debate opponents try to bring up the idea that I’m just a brain in a jar, I just grant them that premise, then point out that the Bible says NOTHING about God creating brains in jars. That usually flusters them for a bit. If they aren’t going to take the search for truth seriously, then I can troll them in real time.
When naturalism rejects a first philosophy, does this mean, that the EAAN merely begs the question? To me it seems so, however it's not a popular objection to the EAAN.
...we would have evolved by accident from lower animals... And so what? It's religion in a nutshell. You want to feel important and have a purpose, and you want a bit of magic in your life, I can get that. I personally just can't build my world model on wishes. If you want to feel important and to have a purpose, do something important and good that other people can appreciate. If you want to feel magic, listen to good music, read Lord of the Rings, play Skyrim, go for a hike, date somebody. Being philosophic and playing word games is just a waste of time. There is no supernatural. Things exist or don't exist, and work in a certain way, no matter what you believe. If something happens, it's natural. Maybe there are a lot of universes, maybe there ins one nearby with only one habitant with God-like powers in it, capable to reach our universe through a burning bush. I don't know, our reality with atoms and quarks, or lower animals like ants building enormous and elaborate habitats, is interesting enough, and I've never seen a burning bush. And I just don't believe in preachers because all of them are just playing word games, or are even lying, and often look like clowns. And some of them are what I would call evil and hateful bigots. They don't look and talk like they have ever seen the almighty creator of the universe. Maybe I, as a life-long atheist, can't get it, but I would expect a man being wiser, loving, humble, and forgiving after seeing IT, instead of being a liar and hypocrite. And I mean, if our observable universe had been made by a supernatural being, wouldn't it be our duty to study it with an open mind and the best microscopes and telescopes we could build? And so what if IT used evolution to create us? Isn't it astonishing enough to you? Magic of the day. I don't care if we evolved from a lower animal by accident. th-cam.com/video/6xzcgWOod-U/w-d-xo.html
I think a lot of people bother believing things because it makes them feel good, or it falls in line with what their family believes or similar, not because it will necessarily be useful. As an example of what I mean, there’s the expression “there’s no such thing as an atheist on his death bed”. Also people for abstinence only sex Ed, who disregard the strong scientific evidence that it causes more teen pregnancies and disease transmission. The belief that anything else is abhorrent is based entirely on feelings, not utility. I know YOU consider utility to be of paramount importance, but many people would vehemently disagree, so you should consider this when making your points. I also think utility is important, but your videos are more helpful when they aren’t preaching to the choir. I do enjoy them though
IP's content occupied about 5 minutes of video time. My explanations required about 25 minutes. That's a debunking ratio of 5:1. It took five times more effort to comprehensively explain his errors than it took for him to make them in the first place.
AntiCitizenX A lie can travel halfway across the world, indeed, eh?
That's without counting efforts that goes in the production and research. Not every minute of the video is worth the same in that regard. To say bs you only need to think you are right and do a bit of quote mining (and latter is not even necessary), no research really needed
AntiCitizenX BS is easy! Accuracy and actual understanding is hard.
thats not shocking at all. bullshit always traveled faster in the arena of ideas
Would he ever know this?
"Inspiring Philosophy" - not inspiring not philosophy.
More like UninspiringWillful-ignorance.
It was at first somewhat difficult to find the opposite of philosophy, but the Greeks gives a more simple way of explaining philosophy (love of wisdom). Religious aologetics is an art to either deceive others, yourself or both. Every religous person too some extent have done this.
So essentially willful-ignorance.
I kind of wish that every time I made a wrong decision I got attacked by tiny dinosaurs. It would make the world a lot clearer to me.
lol!
I'd prefer that the tiny dinosaurs give me a stern warning instead. Between the hospital bills and replacing torn clothes, I'd be beggared pretty quickly by such consistent dinosaur attacks.
I wish tiny dinosaurs attacked apologists whenever they said anything fallacious, couldn't show evidence, tried to shift the burden of proof or just said anything generally moronic and irrational.
@@TheTruthKiwi I have this vision of a tiny dinosaur slumped at a bar saying "It had Hovind duty make it a double, "
@@newperve Haha! Poor little fella would deserve a raise alright :p
IP doesn't understand evolution... what a surprise.
Sometimes I think you TH-cam atheists are the actual people behind IP's channel creating utter nonsense only so you can debunk it in a hilarious fashion.
KalifUmestoKalifa
Yeah, you couldn't make this shit up.
Oh shit he's onto us!
😂😂😂😂
"If you believe naturalism is true you have to believe that you believe naturalism is true."
Yes, its a hallmark of an internally consistent ideology that it being the case would be the logical result of it being the case.
"The floor is made of floor"
observation1. I saw someone jump off a cliff
observation2. he died
conclusion: jumping off of a cliff is what killed the guy
If my brain correctly stores this information and uses it again in the future, then I will be better suited to survive.
A naturalistic explanation of his death would actually prevent my death
If, for example, I thought that a magic fairy at the bottom of the cliff killed the man, then I may be more likely to jump off of the cliff, so long as there weren't fairies at the bottom.
a naturalistic cause of death would not only be reasonable, but it would be useful for my survival
"somethings can be useful without necessarily being true"
could not the same be said of religion, that it was once used as a general description of the unknown, but now has been replaced by a more useful AND true set of beliefs
You gotta love it when IP blatantly argues against himself without even realizing it.
AHHHH OH GOD THAT POOR CIRCLE
HE FUCKING STUFFED IT INTO A SQUARE OH GOD
Just kidding. Good explanation. Take your internet point.
Out_fucking_standing, X. IP really needed a good de-pantsing. I'm actually in the process myself of going over one of his videos that particularly pissed me off for a potential refutation.
Let me guess... the reliability of the New Testament? Or the Trinity?
Being pissed off. Its in his name I~Pee.
What do you guys think of the video format? Is this something you'd like me to do more of? It's a little less flashy but a lot more dense in information.
AntiCitizenX if it let's you upload more often, then it's the best possible format.
+AntiCitizenX Please do more of these.
Whichever makes your criticisms more concise will do (though honestly I 'was quite fond of that goofy cartoon of you and the horsemen of atheism lol)
AntiCitizenX more cartoons
I'm just happy whenever you upload. Either style works for me. Do what you enjoy
I'd sure like to see a demonstration of this supernatural thing...
Ikr. If this maximally great creator is so f'n great then why doesn't he show himself and save everybody?!
Sorry, I've been debating theists for awhile and their cognitive dissonance has given me a few xtra grey hairs.
@Mahdi Kassem Out of the nearly 8 billion people on this planet NOT ONE PERSON knows exactly what existed or occurred prior to the Big Bang or the Planck Epoch to be more specific. If anyone claims that they do know then they are deluded or are being dishonest. Which one are you Mahdi?
@Mahdi Kassem How do you know that any supernatural claims in the Quran are true?
Also, that's one thing I hate about christianity and islam, you think this life is just a temporary stepping stone to an eternal undead half-life. For all we really know this life is the only one we get and making it seem unimportant by thinking it is "temporary" is foolish and absurd.
@Mahdi Kassem Logic makes me realise that we exist in a natural universe and nothing supernatural, like a soul, has ever been shown or proven to exist whatsoever. How do you know that the natural universe didn't originate naturally?
@Mahdi Kassem Nope. Everything does not necessarily have a "creator". It is possible that the natural universe originated naturally and it is possible that life originated naturally. Show me a universe that didn't have a "creator" to prove that our universe did have a creator. Can you do that?
Inspiring Philosophy has one goal: Impress those who desperately seek to be impressed.
Apologists are nothing more than influential people who conjure up excuses. It's pathetic, really.
you're ALIVE!
When I hear someone question _my_ view of reality by asking, "How do you know what is true/ real?", or "Could everything you know be incorrect?", I just laugh and disengage. Solipsism isn't an argument. It's literally nothing more than a thought experiment created by philosophy professors to befuddle their students. If your opponent has to deconstruct what is demonstrably true to be able to force his preferred deity or unsupported, alternate, manufactured reality into existence, you've already won. Drop your mic and walk away.
Fucking thank you! Most of the times atheists just try to explain why their epistemic standarts are valid and fall in the trap instead of pointing the finger in the other direction. Ok, so god created us. How is my ability to reason more reliable now? I see no contradiction in a god that provides us with poor reasoning.
Yeah, IP and Plantinga seemed to have forgotten that theists are in the same boat with regards to global skepticism.
Pues yo soy fan de anticitizenx. :D Que loco es que alguien me reconozca fuera de mi canal.
Estoy trabajando en algo ahora, debería estar listo esta semana o la siguiente. Pero no, yo me mantendré en el tema de la religión. No veo que esas ideologías impacten el mundo hispano y no creo que sea de interés de mis suscriptores.
Si, mantente al pendiente en el siguiente par de semanas viene uno nuevo.
*I went through and started mentally replacing "natural" and "naturalist" and "naturalistic" in your video with equivalent forms of "correct".*
*It seemed to cut more to the point.*
0:05 "Apparently, there's a lot of Christian apologists who think that if evolution is real, then _being correct_ is not."
0:19 "When we hear of some new attempt to explain reasoning... _correctly_, we ought to _declare it invalid without consideration based on our premeditated commitment to always being wrong_."
1:03 "He's effectively declaring in advance that he has categorically rejected the very possibility of a _correct_ explanation for human reason."
*It's fun!*
Very clever :)
The greatest power science has is it's predictive power.
Supernatural beliefs have no predictive power.
I like to think of religion as a placeholder for actual knowledge.
Training wheels for mankind, if you will, that we no longer really need.
11:50 - Beyond that, genetic drift is also a factor in evolution. Evolution is not synonymous with selection.
Ah yes - 1:12 - the Theist's sudden jump to radical skepticism to defend his imaginary bullshit.
precisely how could we know a god exists with absolute certainty when we cant even know that our parents exist with absolute certainty
It seems to me that some people are thinking that it's a waste of time to make counter-arguments to religious apologists.
It's not.
There exist a lot of people who are religious while knowing full well that the claims of their religion sound ridiculous. Those people, having embraced reason in every other part of their lives, grasp at straws trying to find anything to justify their belief and ease the cognitive dissonance. I know, because I was one of them, a long, long time ago.
This channel has done a brilliant job of shining light into pseudo-intellectual arguments and showing them to be what they really are: vapid, silly, unsound and just plain wrong. The question isn't whether it's worth doing this or not, but how to bring this to a larger audience.
(By the way, thanks, kind sir, for doing this. Your videos have been very helpful in clearing up elusive terms like "truth" and "existence". I'm not ashamed to admit that I have been stealing stuff from you, and will continue to do so in the future.)
Congrats on seeing and accepting logic and reason my friend. I have been debating theists for a while now and it does feel like I'm pissing into the wind. They are so dogged in their beliefs that no matter how many facts and however much logic, rationality and reason you throw at them they will not budge because. It's like their eternal soul depends on it or something :p
The best I can do is hopefully make them question things which they may not have before and urge them to actually study scientific literature instead of relying on the Christian encyclopaedia of drivel.
His language is dishonest when he says “if naturalism is true we are an accidental consequence of evolution” since evolution has no goal for us to be vestigial or obstructionary to
A couple more points:
1. A trait doesn't have to be beneficiary to an organism to be passed on. Natural selection isn't some magical black box that shits out perfect species. Of course, IP later uses Plantinga's probability argument so he should understand that, which is why it's odd that he is so insistent before that.
2. The whole Ptolemaic model thing could be dismissed entirely if we don't try to assign a single binary TRUE/FALSE value to its entirety and use either a non-binary assessment, or assess its parts individually. For instance, if we define our a complete lack of explanation of celestial mechanics as 0 and our current understanding of celestial mechanics as 1 (which is not to say that it's perfect absolute knowledge, it just means that if we find out anything else the refined model will become 1 instead), Ptolemaic model would be, say, 0.5, while Biblical flat earth with a firmament would be, for instance, 0.25. I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass, but I don't even need to go that far, I can just use a catch-all system of "MORE TRUE THAN" to avoid this.
3. Yeah, our understanding of the universe is just a useful, if imperfect, model. So...? Sure, we don't absolutely know that there are no gods, ghosts or magic, but not a lot of naturalists and skeptics would say that they do anyway, since according to these very philosophies those questions can not have absolute answers to begin with.
But hey, let's say that this is not aimed at the skeptics. Why should anyone else believe in those things?
"3. Yeah, our understanding of the universe is just a useful, if
imperfect, model. So...? Sure, we don't absolutely know that there are
no gods, ghosts or magic, but not a lot of naturalists and skeptics
would say that they do anyway, since according to these very
philosophies those questions can not have absolute answers to begin
with."
Actually, there are some answers, at least about there being an actual god or gods. If said entity is a god, they are supernatural. However, for us to know about such an entity, they have to interact with the world so that we can learn about them. For something to interact with the world, it has to be part of nature. Therefore, if a "god" interacts with nature, they cease to be supernatural, and thus they cease to be a god. At that point they might be sufficiently advanced aliens or time-travelers or whatever, but not gods, and it's on that basis that I deem the existence of any kind of deity just plain impossible, and then we haven't even talked about all the actual (often contradictory) claims about certain gods that could disprove every one of them anyway.
So yeah, I do not subscribe to the whole "agnostic about god thing", as I find the mere concept as possible as a triangle with three 90° angles or a round square.
Eh, sure, you can go even further than I did with your reasoning (I do occasionally use it myself), but you don't even need to. I mean, let's say that you are mistaken in your logic, since, as skeptics, we all are fallible. Let's pretend there is absolutely no reason to suppose that gods can't exist. It still doesn't mean we should believe any of them do, which was what I was trying to convey in my point 3.
Okay then, I must have misread your intentions. Agnostics (especially religious agnostics) are just a pet-peeve of mine, so I tend to jump the guy when it comes to them. Carry on.
Besides being dumb, what annoys me the most about IP is the damn music. It is like he is trying so hard to trick you that he is saying anything profound with this "epic" background...
Damn right. Shits too extreme.
If you believe naturalism is true, then you also have to believe you believe naturalism is true. And if you believe you believe naturalism is true, you also have to believe you believe you believe naturalism is true. And if you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true, then you also have to believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true. And if you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true, then you also have to believe you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true. And if you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true, then you also have to believe you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true. And if you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true, then you also have to believe you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true. And if you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true, then you also have to believe you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe you believe naturalism is true.
...and so on. I find this 'argument' funny.
What if I think that I believe naturalism is true? :)
Hold on now.
I may believe that I believe that I believe that naturalism is true
But I most certainly do not believe that believe that I believe that I believe that naturalism is true
I don’t believe it.
It is good to see something sensible instead of I~Pee nonsense; naturally.
I can understand when a person says a tautology without realizing that it is a tautology because he is saying it and not writing it down or because he uses two different looking words or phrases that essentially mean the same thing.
But to fail to recognize a tautology in a WRITTEN form that REPEATS the same words - is defined one of the stupidest things I’ve seen the so called “philosophers” do…
Great channel, one of the best I have come across so far. It popped up in my recommendations just yesterday so now I am checking older videos.
I admire people who take time out of their lives to try and contain the tide of illiteracy and stupidity which the Internet is helping to spread but I don't know where you get the patience to listen to so many nonsense for so long. I swear I can feel my neural connections shrink when I have to listen to illogical irrational ramblings.
Stupid youtube didn't notify me that the greatest channel on earth published a new video -.-
IP asking if experiences are true and christians constantly saying God is the Truth or God is love is so bizarre its like they dont understand how grammar works
They certainly use a number of words in ways that don't align with the conventional meanings. "God" being one of them.
I took a look at Alvin Plantinga's Wikipedia page and found pretty much ALL the shit arguments youtube apologists use. He's the patient zero.
For Protestants, it's Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig. For Catholics, it's Edward Feser. These TH-cam apologists always have their arguments spoonfed to them by these "expert" philosophers.
Inspiring Philosophy's voice sounds like that teenager with the acne from the Simpsons who's voice always cracks.
Honestly IP's mistaking of internal consistency for circular reasoning should be all the proof you need that he doesn't understand shit about philosophy.
10:57 i like how that graph specifies that the humans name is colin
InspiringSophistry*
Silver Surfer _Insipid Sophistry_ ;)
22:46 Jordan Peterson argues this point that truth corresponds with usefulness. Sam Harris once tried to argue this rabbit hole with him.
Ptolemaic astronomy is a humorously ironic example when you realize how analogous it is to theism. In both instances you have base assumptions that are regularly contradicted, requiring more and more convoluted explanations that run into contradictions of their own. The only difference is that one group was willing to reassess, and eventually scrap, the central idea.
Religion's initial rejection of heliocentricism only makes the comparison even more apt.
If I lived in the world conceived by you in your thought experiment from 23:46 to 24:25 and then started to delude myself into believing falsehoods in order to further my progression then the act of deluding myself would still be based on my observation that acting on true beliefs would be bad in that world. Therefore, would deluding myself even result in desirable outcomes?
Our knowledge *is* analogous to Ptolemaic astronomy. Ptolemaic astronomy wasn't completely false. It was a useful model because it got many important things right, but it didn't get every detail right. The same goes for our minds - we evolved to get most important things right, but there are many details that we are actually predisposed to get wrong due to cognitive biases. I love it when apologists say, "If naturalism is true, then X" when X is just an obvious fact that is true whether or not naturalism is.
"Uninspiring Theology"
You can shit all over their argument, but damn they chose some epic music lol.
What is the difference between epistemic pragmatism and non-epistemic pragmatism? I tried to google it but I couldn't find anything.
You should definitely make more debunking videos. (Just subscribed)
2:00 color (not in that sense) is a property of voice, so if the music has lyrics , it has color
dude I love your videos. Keep up the good work. I like it when you get technical.
Insipid platitudes has shown to be a complete failure at philosophy.
I've missed you. God I love sanity
"If naturalism is true, then all of your beliefs were only formed because your brain thought thry were beneficial for survival" is like saying "If naturalism is true, you only broke your arm skiing because your bone thought it was beneficial for survival." It completely ignores the fact that we're just as much a product of experience as we are of our evolved nature, so not everything about a person comes from evolution. Also, holding true beliefs is quite beneficial, so saying that my brain thinks it's beneficial to believe in naturalism isn't much different from saying that my brain thinks naturalism is true.
you are the first person that I have heard using the right pronunciation of the word "argued"
nice!
Wow, first time in a while my brain's had a workout. Gonna be a little sore, but stronger. Good video x
To call something supernatural is to say that it is "above" having a nature. There is a value judgement inherent in the words 'super' or 'above', having something to do with domination. To say that something is above having a nature is equivalent to saying that the thing is not itself, and cannot be held accountable. But above the law is beneath the law, and natureless means meaningless.
I'm still unconvinced "natural" has any real utility when applied to reality itself. For instance, if we discover an Entity X tomorrow that is radically and fundamentally different than anything we've experienced to date, how do we tell whether Entity X is non-natural or just a heretofore unknown natural thing? What characteristics define the end of "natural" and the beginning of things that are not natural?
Most people point to natural or physical laws, but this is unhelpful. These laws are mere descriptions of reality based on observation. We know they are incomplete and they can expand to accommodate new observation, so they offer no help in setting a clear boundary. Nor can you point to "material" or "physical" because these present the same problem as above. How do you tell whether Entity X is immaterial? Or merely a previously unknown way for something to be material?
The usual characteristic that distinguishes non-natural things - artifice - is also unhelpful. Because whether things are natural or non-natural hinges on whether they were created and not something we can infer from evaluating the entity itself. So it ends up being a tautology, not a useful definition. Moreover, if god created everything, then everything is non-natural and we have no basis to make any comparison.
To top it all off, _science doesn't restrict itself to the natural, but the _*_empirical._* The "natural" label is completely extraneous. You show me a well defined non-natural hypothesis with a mathematical framework and testable predictions, and I'll show you something science is perfectly capable of exploring. If your hypothesis fails to meet these criteria, that is your fault, not science's.
The whole exercise feels like a linguistic game to manufacture a false distinction and pretend other people are closed minded when they are just being reasonable.
Well said.
@Julez O'Neil I hear you. And I'm not sure whether predictability is really a deciding factor. Aside from believers never offering their criteria, many of the things they claim are supernatural are at least somewhat predictable.
At 18:25, the "random guy" is John Maynard Smith, an evolutionary biologist. A rather significant figure in the field.
BTW, I prefer this format of this video.
So? There are lots of significant figures in biology. I'd be willing to be that 95% of them probably think Smith is full of shit about his "feelings" tirade. But you'll notice that I don't bring that sort of thing up because I don't like to argue from authority.
Yes, I took your point. I was just responding to the "random guy" bit.
More interestingly, it is likely a quote-mine on the order of Darwin and the eye. I don't have time to hunt it down right now.
well said! glad to share your work in twitter. on the off chance they may see it and learn from it! or from those who do see it and pass on the information contained herein! this format is fine as well as earlier.
I love your videos, always had. I'm actually neutral to the format because I just download them and listen to the audio at work. Which brings me to a question, do you have any future plans for another live stream? Your meditations upload was very entertaining.
But to my actual comment: J&R did a good job of factually addressing ip's atheism delusion video (as I know you're well aware), but if they were more familiar with his content and style, I think they'd be far less charitable. Same in this video. The same criticisms here have been brought ad nauseum by so many, its impossible for him to simply be unaware of the flaws. Which strongly suggests he is just being willfully dishonest, manipulative, and at times out right lying. If I had the tools, I'd list and pick apart all of the various communicative techniques he uses to bypass peoples awareness to groom their cognitive faculties to more readily accept his bs, but alas, I don't have that equipment.
*The same criticisms here have been brought ad nauseum by so many, its impossible for him to simply be unaware of the flaws.*
That's a good point, and it explains why I can't just calmly address such people. The most egregious for me was how he tried to "debunk" the idea that usefulness is equivalent to truth. I personally explained that exact misconception to him and why it's a strawman, to which he personally acknowledged being mistaken. Then he went ahead and made this video anyway as if nothing ever happened. The guy either has no memory whatsoever, or he really is just that manipulative and wilful in his deception.
AntiCitizenX I definitely understand the frustration, especially when it comes to speaking with religious apologists. In general the less academically mined tend to merely misuse words, and are too unfamiliar with their meanings to have a meaningful conversation. So you end up talking passed one another. With more literate apologists (and better read people in general for that matter), they tend to forfeit that excuse by default when they enter the arena with a title that presumes a minimal qualification, such as a basic understanding of the applicable subject. Which is why I often think of ip's arguments as comparing apples to non sequiturs, and why a lot of people that enter a conversation with him peacefully, end up rather frazzled.
Very nice skewering both of IP and by connection, the baneful Plantinga (who is a patron philosophical saint of the Intelligent Design movement branch of contemporary antievolutionism). You rightly exposed all the many buried dicey assumptions contained in IP's argument, and neatly related that to what goes on in the real world. Kudos.
From my vantage of a methodological approach to combating antievolutionism (#TIP project at www.tortucan.wordpress.com) this is smoothly applied sound analytical methods (follow the sources and the logic trails)
There's one good thing about IP
Watching videos debunking his claims teaches some actual philosophy
Wow, apparently learning on other's mistakes is also entertaining.
20:26
The President is Handsome -> True
uuuuuuuuhhhh
That's more of an opinion, variable from person to person, but that was probably what you were going for in the first place.
a key aspect of the problem with academic publications, in many disciplines, is lack of precision in writing. far too many writers have no idea how to find the right word or specific term that are suitable to the expression of an idea, making a statement, etc. many students and researchers often wondered if this is done on purpose. you can say that philosophy is ate most famous victim of such inaccurate verbosity.
their a fashion designer that can't see color that has a inplant to help him know what color thing are by sound. it real outside are mind don't it have to do with how light hit some surface? sorry about spelling an grammar. was just wondering if that was true.
0:24 Reasoning can be explained naturalistically. It is not a squaring the circle.
Ah, but IP's video has epic music. Checkmate atheists.
Pffft, watching you lose your mind is hilarious 😂
It is encouraging that P: E maintains a courteous attitude in this video and displays remarkable reticence to buggar up any sense of decorum.
It may be a prerequisite for an interlocutor to be as thick as a brick, making it difficult for me to talk with the theist.
Actually, "squaring the circle" has nothing to do with "square circles". Squaring the circle is a classic problem in geometry, known since the ancient Greeks
And not only it was unsolved for thousands of years, the question of whether it was possible to solve at all was open as well.
Could you perhaps make a video about Reformed Epistemology? I've tried to look up what the argument even is but I just couldn't wrap my head around it!
Oh you're back, great stuff, I was wandering you would like to share how and where are you studying philosophy.
If I lived in the world conceived by you in your thought experiment from 23:46 to 24:25 then I would still try to strive for believing in truth. But I wouldn't want to act on any of those beliefs because my observations tell me that acting on my beliefs always results in undesired outcomes. However, doing so would mean that I act on my belief in that world that acting on my other beliefs is bad. Therefore, I would still be acting on my beliefs. What would that entail in that world? What would happen if I did this?
You're back hurrah!!
Great video. Concise and easy to follow. I like the video format.
I would have even argued that there is something objective about the colors, and that is the wavelength. He even took that part from a TED-ed video that explains the same concept.
27:12 I've wondered if anyone were do develop the ability to see spectrums of light normally invisible to us, would they be totally alien colors, or would they just look like colors we are used to seeing. Thinking about it, I think it would be similar to how artificially color inferred light on a specialized camera. Our brain would interpret it based on how it it wired.
Well, we can't interpret it until our brains evolve to pick up other wavelengths but it's very much possible
It is the height of narcissism to believe that you are the only being in the entire universe, and that you imagined/created every piece of music, every painting, every argument and scientific discovery. It is far more likely that, while you have subjective sensory experiences, that they are reliable enough to at least seek out independent corroboration, otherwise you wouldn't have lived long enough to gain the mental maturity to even contemplate this scenario...
@10:05
Oh your god, I can't believe I've only just figured out that this is an argument from:
There's no god damned way I can cope with the fact that the brain named itself!
I have found that you can lay out facts, logic and reason until you're blue in the face, like you have done in the video, but these people are so convinced in their delusion and their world view depends on it so much that they completely reject facts and reason.
The number of times I've debunked a theists argument and they've even conceded the point and then they go on and make the same arguments with someone else. It's very frustrating and maddening
The Truth
According to the Wholly Fable, inspired while sitting upon the throne in the John 8;31 The truth will set you free, but the judge might look at it differently.
I watch Anthony Magnabosco vid and he said something like discussing something with a person who places narrative above truth, has a failed epistemology.
Plus The Patron Saint of Sensible said.
“If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it?
If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?” --Sam Harris
I love scriptural hopscotch to pay penance for my past evil days being a Vaughan Again theist May my dog have mercy on my sole. He virtually chewed the rest of the shoe.
@@VaughanMcCue haha! Thanks for the chuckle man, love your work ;)
@@TheTruthKiwi You are most kind thanks.
Great Video! Inspiring Philosophy is a joke.
I'm kinda pissed that youtube only just now made me aware of this video.
Oh, and the brain in the vat problem has a very simple solution.
Assume you were a brain in a vat. Assume your sense data is merely output from a simulated real world, perfectly and always producing the sense data it would produce if you were not in fact a brain in a vat. By this premise, we disprove any possible difference between your simulated experiences and the experiences provided by a real world. And by this premise, A=A, and the simulation is just the real world. You already are a brain in a vat. Your vat is made mostly of calcium phosphate and somewhere between 6.5 and 7.1 millimeters thick, and has wires hooked up to cameras and microphones and other sensors to provide input. If you didn't object when you were that brain in that vat looking at the actual real world, you have no grounds to complain about being in a different vat looking at a perfect simulation of the real world which by the axiom of identity is just the real world all over again.
Now if you find a _glitch_ in the Matrix, we can start picking up telephones looking for an exit. But until then A still =s A.
You already are a brain in a vat. Only we don't call it a "vat." We call it a "skull."
I said that, yes.
Yes. I was agreeing with you.
Sorry then. It sounded like you were issuing some kind of correction to a point I overlooked.
"Assume your sense data is merely output from a simulated real world"
See, right there you have a problem. You want us to assume that there IS some kind of a real world, just that we're living in a simulation of it. That assumption is already unfounded.
I didn't read anymore of this, I'm responding now and I already know where it's gonna go and why it's wrong.
well, I kind of have to disagree, beliefs, and culture in general, is passed from generation to generation in a socialisation-process. That said it should not really be mentioned in the same breath as biological evolution, the processes are rather different
10:00 Isn't this the definition of 'single cause fallacy'?
About the section where he was talking about color... I noticed a lot of people argue that way, NOT only theist apologists, but many philosophers or people who are generally attending those topics (mind body problem, absolute knowledge, how is perception or consciousnes possible, etc...).
IMHO, color is ill-defined here and the term is thrown around using the same label in different instances, having it mean different things because of the different context.
Example:
color as an objective, tangible fact of reality would constitute the wavelength of light.
color as the subjective perception would NOT (necessarily) constitute in any way whatsoever a statement about objective reality.
Yet the terms are being thrown around in such as way as to imply that color may not be real, but wait, what do they mean by that?
Are they saying one cannot meassure and quantize the different wavelenghts of light in an objective way without relying on subjective perception?
Because obviously we can meassure wavelength in ... say integers for example ... and then define THAT as objective reality in terms of property of light,
but the fact that a red-green color-blind person would STILL perceive it differently than a non-color-blind person ... that fact at least did not mean a change in objective wavelenght of the light.
Does this make sense? I forgot what my original point was. I guess I just wanted to get this msg out.
I agree. the moment someone uses qualia, I know they're on shakey ground. I would say that color is a specific sequence of neurons firing in the brain. And that's measurable, and quantifiable. Qualia is a term I see used like Dark matter is used by astronomers. A label from something not yet fully understood.
"Qualia" just means sense data.
AntiCitizenX So we have a "reality" (fact), a "qualia" and a "perception" (experience).
We use the term "color" as in the perception of the color to express or refer to the some fact about reality, like e.g. the flower is red.
I mentioned color-blindness in my example. This is a special case, because afaik color-blindness has been confirmed to be a neurological problem with the wiring of the brain, not with the eyes or their anatomy.
This means that we have the possibility that a particular fact about reality X (particular wavelenght of light) is carried in a particular set of "qualia" (the signals for that particular light-wavelenght are send to our brain) and yet the perception/experience is different for two people, one color-blind one not.
1 identical fact, 1 identical "qualia", yet two different subjective experiences.
Is that correct? Or is qualia equal to perception?
I always understood qualia to just mean the subjective perception of a thing. Here's a quick google definition:
"the internal and subjective component of sense perceptions, arising from stimulation of the senses by phenomena."
Fun fact: singular = quale, plural = qualia
So things like color, hot, cold and loudness are all qualia. If my red just looks gray to you, then we have different qualia for the same stimulation.
AntiCitizenX Ah, ok. Then it's less complicated than I thought.
But I'm a little disappointed, because I feel like my (naive) explanation is more complete, because it distinguishes between objective facts about reality that could in theory be independently verified (using technology) and the "data" that is send & received via our sensory faculties *aaaand* as a third component/aspect the subjectie experience (of the same data).
Because you have common objective fact about reality X, this gets translated by sensory organs into an electric signal and send to our brain X' (which correlates to the same fact X), but then what the brain does with it is a whole other question.
Think of it this way:
You have black box computer. The black box is receiving some facts about reality X via an interface, translates and sends the corresponding data in bits and bytes X' to the CPU over the message bus, but because CPUs can have different instructionset (or software running), the same data X' (about some same fact X) results in a different internal processing or result.
So in other words still, ... if you were a brain in a box and the external world does not exist, but everything we know about brains in our fake "Matrix" world would still be true (for the sake of the argument), then it doesn't matter what the "signals" are you receive from the tubes and wires connected to your brain in a vat, you still have some (minor) different perceptions internally than whatever that fake external world (aka Matrix) was trying to force-feed you.
Not that this view helps to solve solipsism, but it introduced more factors, because it establishes that our perception is not necessarily 100% correlated with sensory data. So sensory data X does not necessarily cause perception(X), therefore you cannot always reasonably expect fact(perception(X)) to be true, nuff said.
You cannot ask people if they have the same quale when they see the color red (obviously, because it's not a meaningful question on it's own), but you can ask them about one object to sort it with other objects and see if there's any difference in the "sorting" (or categorizin) between different groups of persons.
Even if IP's circle was true, it would be a fallacy fallacy.
This is a prophetic video of the Sam Harris interview with Jordan Peterson :D
I've argued with IP years ago on his video "Does God Send People to Hell" or something similar to that. He seems to be incapable of ever admitting error and always accuses his opposition of misrepresenting him while acting all pretentious like he knows it all. I've given up debating religious folk on here all together. The only time when I'd argue with one is if they come to me first and challenge something I wrote. Other than that I won't get involved because I feel like I'm just wasting my time on the offensive.
*He seems to be incapable of ever admitting error and always accuses his opposition of misrepresenting him while acting all pretentious like he knows it all.*
Yup, that pretty much sums up his entire system of rebuttal.
After watching the whole video, there also seems to be this confusion between philosophical and methodological naturalism. Philosophical naturalism basically says that the natural world is all that exists while the supernatural does not. Methodological naturalists say because we cannot even begin to test or work with anything that may be beyond the physical world (supernatural) the natural is therefore the best in determining whether or not things are true since we cannot demonstrate supernatural causation nor does the supernatural have any predictive and explanatory power.
So it isn't necessarily my position that no supernatural exists or cannot exist which is what IP is generalizing, it's just that I *currently* reject it because the supernatural has not met its burden of proof. It may seem like nitpicking but there is a difference in saying I don't accept x and I think x is false.
"Philosophical naturalism" is made-up bullshit. There is only methodological naturalism." But you understand the distinction in merely rejecting something such as the supernatural and saying the supernatural does not exist, correct? It's like the same distinction between an agnostic and gnostic.
I don't even know what the word "supernatural" means.
Something that isn't subject to the laws of nature is the best way I could define it. Of course nobody could demonstrate that if all we have is methodological naturalism. That is why theists try to use philosophy such as the Modal Ontological Argument.
Excellent comment for excellent content. Praise the Algorithm!
Sensational!!!!! Soo good. Keep up the great and important work.
Welcome back X
Fun-fact: "Squaring a circle" (Drawing a circle and square with equal area) is possible with neusis construction methods.
You can also do similar things with non-Euclidean geometries and metrics.
Why is it called the problem of skepticism? Anyone know? It doesn't seem to me like skepticism should be the one defining feature of the problem, enough to inspire its name. Unless I'm missing something.
Philosophical skepticism is different from just being a regular skeptic who wants evidence for stuff.
AntiCitizenX They doubt everything. Like, literally everything right? Like that Carneades guy. You know who I'm talking about. I've seen you down there in the comments from time to time.
Hm, I guess that would be a problem but even the philosophical skeptic believes in likelihoods do they not? They would accept that it's likely they actually live in the real world wouldn't they?
Thanks for your help. I'm trying to learn more about philosophy.
It might help to watch my video on "what is truth?" I break a lot of this stuff down.
AntiCitizenX I'll definitely re watch it. I watch everything you do though. Well, almost everything. The long talks you do on Google hangouts I usually skip.
I used to be one of those guys who said things like "Philosophy doesn't matter anymore, we have science now." until I saw Skeptically Pwnd's video about that. He does a very comprehensive breakdown of that position and it's completely untenable. So now I've got to familiarize myself with some basic philosophy. It's not as intuitive to me as science is but it's worth it.
love the 'hero music' IP uses. he loves a good fluffing.
I love your videos!
20:30 ACX admits he has a crush on Donald Trump.
lol, is that your sneaky way of getting people to pay attention to important fundamentals of epistemology?
12:00 turns out some research shows that ADHD was an advantage when humans started farming. The ADHD humans couldn't plow a straight furrow so they were allowed to roam and it was they who brought back the occasional wild animal they tirelessly tracked. With the advent of industrialized society, that became a 'bad' behavior and is considered like the appendix.
How is it an accident? That implies personification again and some humanlike force making a mistake. Take the need to personify reality outside of humans and you skip the confusion.
Welcome back my man
So somehow then believing in Santa Clause should help me to survive...
1:50 You made an oops. Musicians do think of music as having color (some chords are more colorful than others: Bb13 is more colorful than a normal Bb chord). You should do a little research before making your purposely nonsense claim.
A better nonsense would be "Does my music taste/smell good" or something to that effect. I love your content; thought you should know.
"It might loosely mean something to some people in some figurative context..."
That's exactly the point. People intuit certain things when you say the words, but when you consider the words used it's complete gibberish. This isn't a big deal when writing music, but it's somewhat of a big deal when discussing epistemology.
That’s not what colour even means in that context. Just because the word “colour” is used doesn’t mean the same concept should be applied. Music as defined by sound haves doesn’t have a colour that can be sensed by the eyes. That’s restricted to light waves.
Miguel! I Draw! He clearly meant “color” in the optical, visual sense. Musical “color” is a figure of speech.
When my debate opponents try to bring up the idea that I’m just a brain in a jar, I just grant them that premise, then point out that the Bible says NOTHING about God creating brains in jars. That usually flusters them for a bit. If they aren’t going to take the search for truth seriously, then I can troll them in real time.
When naturalism rejects a first philosophy, does this mean, that the EAAN merely begs the question? To me it seems so, however it's not a popular objection to the EAAN.
...we would have evolved by accident from lower animals... And so what?
It's religion in a nutshell. You want to feel important and have a purpose, and you want a bit of magic in your life, I can get that.
I personally just can't build my world model on wishes. If you want to feel important and to have a purpose, do something important and good that other people can appreciate. If you want to feel magic, listen to good music, read Lord of the Rings, play Skyrim, go for a hike, date somebody. Being philosophic and playing word games is just a waste of time. There is no supernatural. Things exist or don't exist, and work in a certain way, no matter what you believe. If something happens, it's natural. Maybe there are a lot of universes, maybe there ins one nearby with only one habitant with God-like powers in it, capable to reach our universe through a burning bush. I don't know, our reality with atoms and quarks, or lower animals like ants building enormous and elaborate habitats, is interesting enough, and I've never seen a burning bush.
And I just don't believe in preachers because all of them are just playing word games, or are even lying, and often look like clowns. And some of them are what I would call evil and hateful bigots. They don't look and talk like they have ever seen the almighty creator of the universe. Maybe I, as a life-long atheist, can't get it, but I would expect a man being wiser, loving, humble, and forgiving after seeing IT, instead of being a liar and hypocrite. And I mean, if our observable universe had been made by a supernatural being, wouldn't it be our duty to study it with an open mind and the best microscopes and telescopes we could build? And so what if IT used evolution to create us? Isn't it astonishing enough to you?
Magic of the day. I don't care if we evolved from a lower animal by accident.
th-cam.com/video/6xzcgWOod-U/w-d-xo.html
IP doesn't understand evolution. Color me shocked.
ANTICITIZENX IS GOD.
Lol good to see you back!
I think a lot of people bother believing things because it makes them feel good, or it falls in line with what their family believes or similar, not because it will necessarily be useful. As an example of what I mean, there’s the expression “there’s no such thing as an atheist on his death bed”. Also people for abstinence only sex Ed, who disregard the strong scientific evidence that it causes more teen pregnancies and disease transmission. The belief that anything else is abhorrent is based entirely on feelings, not utility. I know YOU consider utility to be of paramount importance, but many people would vehemently disagree, so you should consider this when making your points. I also think utility is important, but your videos are more helpful when they aren’t preaching to the choir. I do enjoy them though