6. Law of Excluded Middle

[@ivancliff2514]

So since the “god proposition” is unfalsifiable what do we do? We have no actual access to determine what the truth is so how are we not stuck at “I don’t know”?

[@TrolleyDave]

Hi, thanks for the comment! We're not stuck at 'I don't know' because people often have other reasons for believing it to be true or false, same as people have reasons for saying 'I don't know/I suspend judgement'. We don't really have much of a choice about what we believe, and how we come to form those beliefs depends on a huge number of factors.

[@ivancliff2514]

@@TrolleyDave So are you asserting bad reasons are still valid to justify belief? Belief follows evidence. If you arrive at a conclusion before the evidence or in the face of counter evidence it is irrational. It’s this kind of reasoning that lands many folks in positions that are not justified. But this is kinda drifting away from the excluded middle thing we were initially discussing. My point regarding excluded middle is if access to the truth cannot be obtained it is unjustified to arrive at either conclusion even if it is a true dichotomy.

[@TrolleyDave]

@@ivancliff2514 Ok, there's a lot to unpack there. I'm not asserting that bad reasons are valid to justify belief. At least not as such. Like I said, people will be led to believe things whether we can know if those things are true or not. When we're 20 years old we can't know that we'll live until we're 80. It wouldn't be irrational to believe that we will though, and it wouldn't be irrational to save for our old age. We can't know that a bus will be on time, but it would be rational to behave as though the bus we're going to catch will arrive on time. Rationality doesn't work quite how you appear to think it does. I have a video on my channel called To Be Or Not To Be (Rational) where I give a kind of lecture on it if you're interested in it. As for what justifies belief, well that's a big question as well. The things that we use to justify why we believe something are often just schematically processed in a deterministic manner. They depend on a huge number of factors. There is no ultimate objective epistemic standard that abides on all people for what is and what isn't justified belief. And no, belief doesn't follow evidence. Sure, what we consider to be evidence for things will affect our beliefs, but evidence doesn't always affect people's beliefs. There are a whole host of psychological factors that factor in to us believing something. Evidence alone rarely changes a person mind. There is lots of literature about this in both psychology and philosophy. And I would disagree that if access to the truth cannot be obtained then it is unjustified to arrive at either conclusion, even if it is a true dichotomy. Sure, if you're applying something like a Huxlean epistemic framework, it would be unjustified under that framework. But not everybody is a Huxlean Agnostic.

[@ivancliff2514]

@@TrolleyDave It sounds like we need to define a lot of the terms here as I suspect we may be unintentionally talking past each other. At any rate I appreciate the thoughts and your engagement. Incidentally the type of things you cited regarding belief (living to 80 etc) are ALL based on your previous experiences here and are thus arrived at through some informed reason. As I’ve said though I enjoy these discussions and I appreciate the back and forth even if it is in a KZbin comment section. Cheers. Also I am indeed agnostic as it pertains to possessing knowledge (as in knowing something to be true) I reject the absolute certainty part of the Huxley agnosticism prospect. I’m not a solipsistic type of guy but I cannot disprove it thus I cannot have “brute” certainly in anything. I can only apportion my belief in any proposition to the amount it can be demonstrated.

[@TrolleyDave]

@@ivancliff2514 Yeah, language can be kind of funny like that. It often leads to people having very different conversations with each other, even though the same words are being used! Which is another one of the things I've spoken about here on the channel funnily enough! And completely agree, a lot of those kinds of beliefs are based on previous experiences, and predictive assessments. We can reason our way to some pretty good conclusions. But if the basis for holding justified belief is that we must have some way of knowing the truth of the proposition or claim, then all of those kinds of beliefs would count as unjustified. And I don't think that's the case. And no, thank you for the conversation. I enjoy these discussions as well. Especially when they're polite, and friendly, like this one. I mostly get people coming here to put me in my place and tell me how uninformed I am, so I appreciate your discussion a lot. Thank you!

[@mounirameklati-b7u]

Excellent work 👏 i will makes sure to check the rest of your videos As for the question of whether god exists or not is completely subjective. God is an idea which cannot be proved and therefore cannot be negated.