Ineffable and Unknowable?
I was going to post this as a reply at Cliopatria, but then it went on a bit longer than I intended, and seemed (yet again) less anodyne than I feel I need to be on this subject in that location. Maybe I’m wrong to feel that way, but…I’m not convinced, and so far what people have said has just convinced me of the opposite. At any rate. Ralph said this in answer to a question about why say G_d –
As I suspect you know, there is a long tradition in Judaism of using g_d. It transliterates the Hebrew which has no vowels and it respects the unknowable, mysterious, ineffable qualities of ultimate reality. It isn’t a “naughty” word, though without naming any names there are apparently some people who prefer not to hear it uttered in their presence, except as a curse. My use of it is a little affected, since I am not Jewish. It’s not my only, my best, or my worst affectation.
And I started to answer this way, and then decided not to.
Well (without naming any names) how would you go about uttering it in our presence? What does it sound like without the vowel?
But seriously folks. If ultimate reality is unknowable and mysterious and ineffable – then why discuss it at all? Why claim to know something about it? Why, specifically, claim to be able to know what God’s will is and that it ought to be prior to politics?
That’s not a rhetorical question, and it’s also not a purely provocative one, though I daresay it will be taken as such – and the reason I daresay that is because I keep being told that I should say whatever I want to and then when I do say something (something quite mild) at B&W I’m told I’m calling for a “ban” when I’m not. Hence my chronic expectation that any disagreement with religion is likely to be greeted with – shall we say, acerbity. At any rate, that’s not a purely provocative question. One of the problems with religion when one is trying to have a rational discussion is that kind of having it both ways. God is ineffable etc. but that won’t stop us from knowing all about him. That kind of move doesn’t work in secular discussion, and doesn’t get resorted to as much. But with religion – well, you know, everyone means something different, and it’s ineffable, and you can’t pin it down or define it, and if you try to you’re just being literal and scientistic…
And that’s where I decided to stop, and transfer over here, instead. But that is a serious question. I am constantly being told that when I disagree with religion on substantive issues I misunderstand because that’s not what it’s about, it’s about awe and wonder, or love, or inner experience. But that’s not what Hugo’s post is about at all. It’s about taking the Bible as a guide to morals, and without picking and choosing, because that’s a bad habit. It’s about replacing one’s existing suppositions about justice with God’s will. It’s about taking direction from the Holy Spirit – not metaphorically but literally. That is the kind of thing that worries me, not awe or wonder, and not ineffable things (provided people don’t then decide that they’re effable after all when a different argument is going on).
The last time I saw Ophelia Benson posting here and there on the net, I found her at times “ascerbic” and more often than not was amused by it. She may find that occasionally also true of me. I hope it amuses her.
Now, as for the “ineffable” thing, the scandal of the biblical witness is that the great unknown chose to self-disclose. The self-disclosure is not whole or complete, so one speaks of the “known unknown” — a useage common enough on the net and, speaking of “different argument”s, one which doesn’t apparently offend you in other contexts.
“the “known unknown” — a useage common enough on the net and, speaking of “different argument”s, one which doesn’t apparently offend you in other contexts.”
Eh? I have no idea what that means. And I’m not talking about being offended, that’s not my point.
“Now, as for the “ineffable” thing, the scandal of the biblical witness is that the great unknown chose to self-disclose. The self-disclosure is not whole or complete,”
Yes but doesn’t it strike you what a perfect evasive tactic that is? What an admirable mechanism for having it both ways? For eating the dear cake and having it? When people like me are being irritating, it’s ineffable, and when we’re not, it’s not. So believers can talk about it when they want to, and then when they don’t, they can just say it’s ineffable.
In other words one can’t really discuss at all. Not with a trapdoor like that always handy.
It was A. J. Ayer, was it not, who talked about “over-indulgent licensing of gibberish”…
Just thought I’d throw that in there.
I wonder if the known unknown is any different from the unknown known?
We should have included the known unknown in the FD! In fact, we still could (for the web version)…
We could indeed. Anything new we think of from now on can go right onto the B&W version of the dear FD. Trap door, escape hatch, heads I win tails you lose, ineffable – there’s no end to it.
Mockery, scoffery — you’re good at it. I thought I was the offender here. Scientists are commonly aware of known unknowns. Be sure to include them in the mockery and the Fashionable Dictionary. I suspect that you won’t chant your: “trap door; escape hatch; heads I win, tails you lose” at them. Seems like I’m not the only one with double standards and asymetry.
“Mockery, scoffery — you’re good at it.”
Yes, we are, aren’t we!
Ralph, do you think that we’re barely educated or something, because you keep stating the obvious.
Yes. Science deals in known unknowns. Donald Rumsfeld famously deals in them. But not all known unknowns are equal. As you well know.
It’s a serious point though, despite mockery. Do scientists talk about ineffable things? If they do it’s news to me.
(I’m not chanting about trap doors, either. I never chant.)
And you didn’t answer the question, Ralph. It was a real one. I do think religion protects itself from skeptical inquiry – from inquiry, period – by this ineffable move. It’s the same as the ‘separate realm’ move – which as one of our astute readers (Ben Keen) pointed out, is pretty bogus, because this religion that is supposed to be in the other realm is also supposed to intervene in this one, for instance by grounding our morality. More having it both ways, in short.
So it is a real question – do you see that as a problem, or not?
But there, you don’t want to answer, I expect. I told you. I told you you didn’t want to hear my views on religion.
There are things which scientists know they don’t know yet, but which they know are there to be known (and which they know something about). Reconciling Einstein’s theory of relativity with quantum mechanics would be an example.
Ah, that sort of thing. Sure. But that’s a different kind of thing – as you pointed out.
You told us ‘Austen is better than King and I can tell you why’ types we were hand-waving the other day. But at least nobody said anything about ineffability! That’s hand-waving squared, or cubed.
Well, there are other things which are kind of ineffable in science (e.g., the Copenhagen interpretation of QM, for example, has consequences which I think probably would fulfil the criteria for ineffability [though, of course, David Bohm’s interpretation is still an open possibility]). But scientific ineffability is evidential; religious ineffability is just assertion.
I think of the ineffable move as a kind of make me fall over with boredom move. If you want to attack Ralph’s stuff look up some of Flew’s criticisms of the unfalsifiability of religious language.
“But scientific ineffability is evidential; religious ineffability is just assertion.”
That’s what I meant. I think of ‘ineffable’ as a kind of assertion-word.
I know combining (or trying to combine) QM and relativity gets very strange results – as Steven Weinberg says, the results are not deep, they’re just nonsense, things like negative probability, just gibberish.
But the difference between evidential and just assertion is what I’m talking about. The trouble with religion is it just makes it up and then calls whatever it makes up ‘ineffable’ – but tries to impose it on everyone else anyway.
Okay, I will look up Flew, I have a book of his…
Martin Rees told me that there were two things he wanted to live to see. The first an answer to the question as to whether there is intelligent life on other planets. The second a reconciling of QM and relativity.
“Scientists are commonly aware of known unknowns.”
Yes, but equating these scientific enigmas with the religious “known unknowns” is like comparing apples and oranges. Religion’s unknowns are based on revelation and unverifiable assumptions, all of which are the mark of a faulty epistemology.
The analogy is incorrect because there is virtually no resemblance between the methods used by scientists to arrive at their conclusions (tentative though these may be) and the usually arbitrary manner in which theologians reach theirs.
Weasel words (like the “ineffable”) and deliberate misuse of non-applicable concepts are typical of theistic thinking. Advocates of religion always formulate their approaches to fundamental issues in such a way as to preserve the sacrosanct idea of a “god”, no matter how convoluted and superfluous the reasoning incurred in such a task might be.
Hi, José, haven’t seen you in awhile.
Yep – that’s what I’m saying. That’s why I take ‘ineffable’ to be an escape hatch. That is by no means mere mockery.
Interesting about Rees. I gather quite a few people would like to know the answer to that second question…
You two or three talk on, Ophelia having already settled the question of whether I did, can, or would give her an answer to her question. Such certainty! It’s really impressive.
But I didn’t express certainty. I qualified my prediction with an expression of non-certainty. “But there, you don’t want to answer, I expect.”
And you haven’t answered the question!
OB:
The answer to the pronunciation of “G-d” is an easy one. It is not true that Hebrew does not have vowels; originally, it didn’t, but a slash and dot system of vowels, like in Arabic, was added later. Hence, the liturgically unpronouncable name of “Y-HW-H”, which was euphemized with the expression “Adonai”, “Lord”, was spellt in the Hebrew Bible by substituting the vowels from the latter into the former, resulting later in Christian translators mistransliterating the made-up name of “Jehovah”. But the Jewish practice is to euphemize in place of the unpronouncible name with “Lord” or “the Holy One.” Judaism defines itself through the Law, by the way, and is doctrinally quite porous. It does not necessarily involve any belief in the after-life and is primarily an ethical religion. The rationale for the Law and its elaborate separations is that it serves to keep things whole and thus to maintain the place of the holy.
As to the issue of the pre-political, whether this is phrased in religious terms or not, the question is one of the pre-political conditions for the political realm, which can set limits to it, in terms of a before and a beyond the political. This is a problematic that is sometimes referred to as “Hegelian murder”, that is, as the question of political violence in the name of an ideology or idea. It is a matter of how the political realm can bear its fruit without degenerating into totalitarianism, or, for that matter, dissolving into the endless relativism of the pursuit of particular interests. For this, pre-political determinations, which can serve as inputs to the political, must be preserved and protected, and expectations for what can be achieved in the political realm must allow for what can not be so achieved, for what lies beyond. Check out Hannah Arendt’s discussion of “plurality” as the very condition of the political.
Now, it very well may be that there is no mystery, nor any need for mystery. Perhaps all that is required is an account of neg-entropic organization and of its transition from the second law of thermodynamics. But this still would require an acceptance of the holism of sets of chemicals and their phase-arrays, as well as, of emergent properties and capacities that make all the difference in the world, but which can not be derived from prior conditions. Still, this is an application of probability theory and thus for finite creatures remains riddled with multiple contingencies. It is perfectly understandable that such contigencies might give rise to anxieties. (It is less understandable that they might not.) But to assert that all this is always already contained within the known and the knowable might strike some as more than a tad defensive and dogmatic, as well as containing some considerable over-expectation with respect to the value of knowledge, what knowledge might get one, (in terms of a purchase upon the real), and how knowledge is actually situated and distributed. In the end, this boils down to the groundlessness of authority, to the question of what is it that holds one to account, when there is no question of any “what”.
I myself, of course, am not particularly concerned with what lies “beyond”, with any world beyond this world. My concerns are with the composite nature and limits of reason and it is on these grounds that I sharply dissent from the party-line at B&W. But, still, there are those limits and questions beyond those limits may nonetheless be construable as meaningful. (Less so, any answers, at least, insofar as they are non-arbitrary.) It is all but inevitable that some people will entertain such questions and concerns, however dubious they are. It is here that question of differentiation within reason obtains, in how to handle such uneliminatable concerns. It is a matter of sorting out and testing the purport of beliefs and what sorts of beliefs can be handled in a reasonable manner and what must be consigned to private avocation. (The common ground is potentially much greater than you seem to think.) Simply claiming to be ever so skeptical will not do, since skeptical claims are never quite as skeptical as they take themselves to be. (It is true that there is a sort of anthropologically rooted asymmetry here. Have you ever been just stunned with disbelief? It’s not quite the same thing as horror, which also involves disbelief, but simply amazement at what the power of even the crudest beliefs will permit themselves.) Militant atheism of the “there is no God and Sartre is his prophet” variety seems a particularly question-begging approach. (The work of Marx, by contrast, contains no critique of religion; he approaches the matter only by way of a critique of the critique of religion.) On topics, such as strictly scientific ones, where religious beliefs are not relevant, this is a relatively simple matter of clarifying the topic, how it operates, and what would then count as evidence. But on matters when a person’s prior beliefs, religious or otherwise, may reasonably be taken to inform their position, since there are always prior choices and commitments, one must be open to the variety of possible interpretations, which in no wise amounts to a relativistic renunciation of the claims of reason. (You seem to have a poor handle on the problem of literal and metaphorical language, which causes you to regularly misinterpret the potential import of claims such as Hugo’s. There is no purely literal language. Check out Tarski on purely formal-logical languages. Further, Wittgenstein talks of “meaning in a secondary sense”, which is neither literal, nor metaphorical, but which arises when there simply is no other way to put the matter. The non-standard use of the modal verb “ought” in moral discourse would be an example.) But the main point is that you seems to be conflating recurrently different levels and kinds of arguments in the dispute with religious believers. 1) There is the argument for worldliness, for the value of attachment to this world. (This is a central theme of the work of Arendt, for whom the political realm is the pre-eminent venue for such worldliness.) This is an existential domain of argument and, in dealing with religious believers, who may be inclined to claim to be living outside of, if not beyond, this world, it is important to bring to bear upon them that they are nonetheless living in this here world and can not escape their implication in it, nor their accountability and responsibility for their comportment within this world. (Some religious believers would have no problem with this and would claim that their religious beliefs precisely hold them to such account.) 2) The argument for the value of secularism. This is basically a pragmatic sort of argument and occurs standardly on liberal premises. 3) The argument for the value of science. This is an epistemic argument and concerns not just the basis of validity and mode of operation of claims to scientific cognition, but also the relation of scientific cognition to everyday ordinary cognitive claims and the limits of what science can achieve and of the application of its competency, such as e.g. to ethical or political matters.
As if said before, the rise of right-wing religious fundamentalism is a real and large problem. But it is primarily a political problem. If you want to attack religious fundamentalism, as far as I’m concerned, go right ahead: blast away! But staging the matter as an argument between religious and scientistic fundamentalism is liable to degenerate into a pot and kettle calling contest and is not likely to be particularly effective. Pointing to the operative functionalization of such religious beliefs, beyond the claims they take themselves to be making, and attempting to understand the anxieties that they mobilize might prove a more fruitful or, at least, clarifying approach. But, at any rate, such concerns are not a matter of some kind of generalized conflict between science and religion in general. That, too, is just another epistemological fantasy. In particular, the notion of knowledge as “justified true belief”, common in analytic philosophy as an effort to translate the Platonic doxa/logos distinction, strikes me as misleading, if not completely erroneous. To know and to believe are different words with different uses and functions, if some overlap. In particular, belief seems to me to involve normative commitments that are not decidable on purely external grounds.
It strikes me that there is a basic rule of honor attaching to critical thinking: viz. if you can dish it out, you can take it. I don’t know why you would expect these matters to be unexceptional and non-conflictual. It seems to me that such conflict is simply a cross one has to bear. Complaining about double standards seems to miss that, at least, there are standards to be brought to bear, however emmeshed in human self-division and doubleness, and that perhaps multiplication serves in better stead than division. You a big girl now!
John,
Do try not to address women as girls. It just isn’t useful.
It’s not a matter of not being able to take it. It’s not (as I’ve said seven or eight hundred times now) about being “offended” (why do people insist on translating disagreement into being “offended”? I’ve been wondering that for several years now). It’s about whether or not discussion and clear thinking are possible. I’m saying that I think the asymmetry makes it difficult or impossible. I can’t be as explicit as I would like to be at Cliopatria, because other people will not like it – will be “offended”. Some of the people in question tell me they won’t be “offended” and then they get “offended” at every single thing I say, which does not bode well for the accuracy of their predictions.
As for your point about conflation – hmm. I am talking about more than one thing, that’s true enough, but I don’t see why you call it conflation. I’m just talking about more than one thing, that’s all. I’m not claiming they’re all the same thing.
Ophelia, It does seem to me that there is an unrecognized mirroring or doubleness — note I did not say duplicity — in your retorts. You claim only to disagree with me but I an offended by you. If my claims or Hugo’s claims to epistemological insight beyond what you will allow do not _offend_ you, I do not know what does or should, apart from the occasional sexist remark. On the other hand, you attribute offense to us, where we may be merely articulating disagreement. Frankly, atheism strikes me as merely quaint — rather late Victorian thoughtfulness, if you will. Agnosticism is understand. It doesn’t presume to know all things with certainty. It’s the ultimate certitude in you that I disagree with — not to say that it offends me. Given all that we do know and that most of what we do know only raises better questions about what we don’t know, how can one honestly have such certitude about ultimate reality?
OB:
That last tag was in dialect. If you are not familiar enough with Afro-American speech patterns, then you might have missed the earthy, scoffing tone.
I don’t know that you are conflating issues or not. My point is that by differentiating issues, arguments and stakes, one can sometimes achieve a clarifying effect, wherein hostile disagreements- (and they’re not called arguments for nothing)- might be dissolved or, at least, shifted to more productive ground. Complaints about double standards may rather be more a matter of people talking past one another, provoked by and provoking struggles for recognition. I don’t, by any means, think that you should not give offence, but that you should try to be well-informed about the offenses you give, so as, at least, to aim effectively at your target. In matters of religion, it’s not clear to me that you’re particularly well-informed, which is fine, if such matters don’t interest you, but also no reason to give or take offense. (The rooted asymmetry is simply that atheism, minimally, is an absence of belief in a deity or after-life, whereas religious belief is an assertion about such things, as an assertion of belief. Intelligent, rational religious believers know that their beliefs are groundless, but they can equally point to other forms of groundlessness. But then you and I disagree about “epistemology” and what its claims could get one.) In particular, it is not priorly clear what phrases like “God’s will” or “the Holy Spirit” would mean and this would require dialogue to fill out: they could mean simply an ordinary effort at conscientiousness within the terms of that person’s orientation, rather than some sort of totalizing designs. (In this particular case, Ralph Luker was a bit whiney, but Hugo, who is, after all, a convert, was good humored. Ralph can be called out on that, provided it’s not just a continuation of a crossed-purposes entanglement.) But surely what bothers you can not be the existence of religious persons rather than the mistaken entanglements they might create by advancing their beliefs? I myself would press my case on the grounds of worldliness, with secondary reference to secularism. Scientific considerations are of little relevance and, in the end, just as abstruse as religious ones. But, if one attaches strong value to worldliness, especially under modern conditions, that means that one inevitably lives amongst a pluralism of others who derive their beliefs from traditions other than one’s own.
Self-correction: “Agnosticism is understand” should be “Agnosticism I understand.”
To John: You find the Cliopatriarch of Atlanta “a bit whiney”? Hush yo mouf!
Since no-one else has quoted this, I feel the need to:
“What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence.”
(Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus)
The most annoying thing about using ‘G_d’ is that it is a fairly meaningless affectation. ‘God’ is hardly the ‘true name of God’, its just the singular of the English word ‘gods’ made into a name. If Jewish people want to avoid pronouncing YHWH that is up to them and their religion, but it seems pretty meaningless to -say- ‘God’ but write ‘G_d’, and far from a transliteration (which would make -some- sense) it is a convoluted adaptation of the lack of written vowels in Hebrew, a word translated into English and the tradition of not pronouncing the name of God transferred to the written domain.
And to do it if you’re not Jewish – that is just weird!
At risk of repeating something John Halasz said (I followed most of it, really, but I’m a simple historian and a little behind on my metalinguistics homework, and I never heard of “Hegelian Murder” before) I think the initial post contains an error of conflation. Which I am about to compound with an error of generalization.
Divine Ineffability and Will Discernment represent two different, possibly entirely irreconcilable, theological positions. Both take the existence of God as a postulate, and seem to accept the divinity (I’m not sure about perfection) of scripture.
Will Discernment suggests that the Will of God, on matters which are not contained in Scripture or about which Scripture speaks in contradictory terms, can be determined through communication with God in the form of prayer, group study, human intellect and scriptural tradition (properly selected, including the initial selection of religion and text).
Ineffability implies (or perhaps I should say that philosophers who argue ineffability also argue) that human reason can only be applied to the texts, not to the Will of God, because God is both ineffable and incomprehensible. In fact, there’s a famous scene, in Midrash I believe, in which the rabbis reject intervention of God in a dispute because it is, in effect, a violation of God’s covenant to allow Jews to develop the Oral Law independently based on the Written Law which was completed and sealed.
OK, perhaps they’re not as irreconciliable as I thought when I started to write this.
It seems to me that there is a difference between a linguistic assertion about the nature of God and a political assertion of knowledge of God. I’m not entirely sure if it’s a meaningful one, in the strictly rationalist sense. Perhaps it’s the difference between hand-waving and touching.
Clio People
Can you please have your theological discussions at Clio not here.
This is not the place for discussions of god, her nature, her name, her bra size, or anthing else of that nature.
This isn’t a discussion board. I’d rather shut down the whole of B&W than have a discussion board. This is a comment facility for a blog. I don’t want to disable the facility, but I will if people continue.
Ophelia feels the same way. Indeed, I wouldn’t have posted this if she didn’t, because she’s the boss.
Thanks!
Regarding “g-d”, this page gives an explanation. It’s all about the defacement or erasing of the name of god, it seems:
http://www.jewfaq.org/name.htm
These earnest conversations about non-existent beings give me the crawls, frankly. That’s one reason I find the ones at Clio a problem, and why I think I’m out of place there. So I thought I would articulate my disagreements in a blunter fashion over here, on this secular, rationalist site. I never intended to kick off a theological discussion – that’s not what our readers expect from B&W, and probably not what they want.
Ralph,
“On the other hand, you attribute offense to us, where we may be merely articulating disagreement.”
Well, not to all of you, no, but to you in particular, yes. Because of the way you translate what I say – you disagree with things I haven’t said and ignore what I have said. In this comment for instance –
“Ophelia’s inclination to ban it from the public sphere would be one way to exercise an authoritarian control of free speech.”
Conflating disagreement with banning and authoritarian control of free speech looks to me like a symptom of being “offended.” Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps it’s just careless reading?
And atheism doesn’t equate to certainty, either. Theists love to claim that but it’s incorrect. Non-theism is simply non-theism. I don’t believe in your religion, that’s all. Not believing things is not the same thing as certainty. I’m not a theist in the same way I’m not a tooth fairyist. Certainty doesn’t come into it.
Tom, cheers, interesting, how amusingly recursive. You can’t write ‘God’ because it refers to God and might be erased, so you call God ‘G_d’ – except that becomes your name for God so really shouldn’t be written either.
Ah religion, home of rationality.
Ophelia is free to post at Cliopatria as she chooses.
To Jerry S.: Odd that you invite us not to post here, as Ophelia initiated and sustained the discussions here with three posts in a row. You appear to think that believers are free to post at B & W so long as they don’t post anything with which you don’t agree. Fair enough. It’s your site.
“Odd that you invite us not to post here”
Well Ralph, I guess life is just… ineffable.
Rather nasty sort, eh Jerry?
Ralph
You’re being ridiculous. You have a blog where you can post to your heart’s content. We have absolutely no reason to communicate with each other. So why don’t we just leave it at that?
“Frankly, atheism strikes me as merely quaint — rather late Victorian thoughtfulness, if you will. Agnosticism is understand. “
Frankly, thats wrong. We managed with the term atheism for centuries. It covered the whole spectra of disbeleif from simply declaring one didn’t know, to declaring that god does not exist.
Agnostic isn’t a very old word. T.H. Huxley, who created the term, used it to mean our modern definition of ‘scientist’ more than anything else. In fact he probably meant atheist, but was being political, or at least diplamatic. A way of declaing yourself atheist without the connotations. The word has changed meaning over the years, and people have tended to use the term as a sort of middle ground between atheism and theism.
“Frankly, atheism strikes me as merely quaint — rather late Victorian thoughtfulness, if you will. Agnosticism is understand. “
And also frankly, I find belief in an overgrown Santa Claus who looks over us very quaint. Rather late Pleistocene caveperson ignorance. Free thinking is, if not to understand, at least the best shot one has at it.
Jerry, If Ophelia insists on continuing to post attacks on me and us over here, I see no reason why you should expect us not to respond over here. She chose the site for attack. I didn’t.
“If Ophelia insists on continuing to post attacks on me and us over here, I see no reason why you should expect us not to respond over here. “
Surely you should be turning the other cheek?
Ralph
But surely:
1. It isn’t necessary to reply to every attack?
2. And if you want to reply, you can reply on your blog, can’t you? Ophelia always tends to link there, so…
And anyway, it isn’t so much that I’m opposed to you responding to Ophelia. What I’m opposed to is this “Comments” system turning into a forum for theological debate. There’s a fine distinction between philosophical and theological debate, I realise, but I think there is one, and it’s the theological stuff I object to. I think it is largely possible to reply to Ophelia’s criticisms without, for example, talking about the fact that “Our Lord road into Jerusalem” on a mule (that wasn’t you, I realise).
Ophelia was free to post her criticism at Cliopatria, which would have left B & W untainted by theology.
Ralph
Yes, but that isn’t really an answer to either of my questions, is it?
Ophelia chose this ground. I didn’t. That answers both of your questions.
Sorry, but how is:
“Ophelia chose this groung. I didn’t.”
an answer to:
But surely, it isn’t necessary to reply to every attack?
Actually, I’ve got a question for you. I’ve got to write a piece on the internet for The Philosophers’ Magazine. I’ve been thinking of writing about blogging. I presume you have no objection if I quote from this exchange?
Given your obvious biases, including the typo just attributed to me, I can’t imagine anything you produce would be fair to either Hugo or me. So, yes, I would object.
Ralph
Well, I’ve got to warn you that as of this moment, the condition of your participation on this forum is that you sign over the copyright of anything further you write here to Ophelia and me. If you post again, then it is in terms of that understanding.
And I’m going to write about you anyway.
Jerry:
I think Ralph is envious–there are more comments here than on his site.
“there are more comments here than on his site.”
Even if a lot of the recent ones are his! :-)
I don’t bear the guy any ill-will. So long as he keeps the theology off B&W, then I’m happy.
Anything that actually does exert and effect on the contents of the universe can be detected either directly or indirectly. If it cannot be detected, then how can it be having an effect? Therefore, if God does have an effect, he should be detectable and theists should back up their claims with proof.
However, you could say that since God created the universe, everything we experience is a result of his work. If this is true, then God actually has no effects beyond the behaviours of things subject to natural laws. More concisely: God has no effect on anything that cannot be explained by natural laws. Why worry about God, then? Certainly why worry about how he would want us to run our political systems?
Which is a simpler explanation: An omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent being or a set of natural laws?
“I wonder if the known unknown is any different from the unknown known?”
If this was a serious question, then I’ll try to answer that. In knowledge management theory, many operate with four levels of knowledge:
1) Known knowns
2) Unknown knowns
3) Known unknowns
4) Unknown unknowns
1) are those things that you are aware that you know – the official organization of your company, you job description etc. These can be thought to other people fairly easily.
2) are those things that you know on a more instinctly level, such as perhaps the social structure of your company. They are rather hard to teach to other people, excpet perhaps trhough those people observing you.
3) are those things you are aware that you don’t know. These things you can plan around – even through learning something about it, or by other measures.
4) are obviously those things you don’t know you don’t know anything about. These are what causes the big problems. An example of this could be the culture of a country that you visits – you are not aware that they have a different culture, and thus you don’t know that you don’t know how their culture differs from your own.
When you’re dealing with knowledge management, you want to move 4) to 3), and 2) to 1) (and preferably also 3) to 1) but that might be too much to hope for).