When I attended a Christian Private School, one of the things the apologists were really big on was criticizing the phrase “There is no absolute truth,” then pointing out all the problems with it and why atheism is at best no more valid than theism (and Christianity in particular). It wasn’t until I started watching a lot of Matt’s content that I was able to escape this mindset and understand the much more nuanced view of certainty and truths that my school both failed to teach me and, intentionally or otherwise, succeeded in hobbling.
I went to a private Christian school too, but they didn't really engage in the philosophical arguments for and against religion, and just focused on personal testimonials, and "Look at the trees!" I would love to go back there and debate them.
@@sirbrr "This dude is dumb don’t base any world views of someone who has to explain why he’s certain about not being certain" Did your invisible fantasy daddy-friend tell you to say this?
I think reason provides a better grounding than religion. Even if I changed my mind tomorrow, and started believing in a god, I (hopefully) would do it because of reason, not despite it.
Religitardation is a long dead horse Dildohunty has been beating on far too long. Watching the worlds dumbest people be debated is great Jerry Springer / Maury Povich entertainment and it pays the bills, but it also totally dodges the question centered in each debate. Is there a gawd, and what is it's nature. He argues against gawd, yet never considers the mountains of evidence for universal consciousness which has nothing whatsoever to do with religitardation. Vedic philosophy, NDE's, 5-MEO DMT, the placebo effect, emotional contagiousness, third hand illusion, multiple personality disorder, net zero energy in the universe, the recognition emerging that materialism is nonsense, the E8 lattice, Donald Hoffman's 'conscious agents', and countless other evidence of varying weight that contribute to the conclusion that the ONLY thing that exists is the mind of god. Taken collectively, it is a mountain that can't be ignored. The most powerful of evidence is 5-MEO DMT, also known as Bufo Alvarius... the true 'gawd molecule'. Take the right dosage, and don't fight it, and your experience of a self is completely and entirely dissolved. You find your awareness instantly expands from its cage in your head to encompass every atom in your body, to every atom in the universe. You feel all, see all, know all. You see in all directions simultaneously outside of space and time, all past present and future. While in this state, no questions remain unanswered. You know and recognize it as the truth because it is you... all of it. You know there is nothing more. You know there is nothing more real. When you return from this experience, and your ego in a panic reassembles itself, you're left with several months of mental processing asking yourself "what thaaaa fuuuuuuuk was that" ... and you struggle to some degree with what it means to be human. You permanently lose all fear of death. In any case, it's way past time to leave the thought disease of religitardation behind and look at actual evidence of the true nature of reality/consciousness/awareness.
One is a retired professional video production specialist who lives in Houston and wants Matt shot beautifully, as in being well lit in eye-pleasing settings that lend theirselves to Matt's messages. 'Friendly confidence' is something we want put forth in each and every message. That isn't happening in this video. Matt does it, but the setting doesn't.
@@lancethrustworthy That sounds like a fair critique of the video, but you can still not downvote a video as well as leave a comment saying "This would've been much better with some lighting changes"
Great video as always Matt. Thank you. Hope to perhaps take an exchange year in Austin through my university some day, I’ll visit ACA for sure. Keep up the good work! 🙌
Hey Matt. Thanks for all you do. Your content is extremely valuable imo. I'm pretty sure you make more sense to me than anyone else whenever you talk. Well, you and Chomsky. You are super gifted in being able to put into plain English, in a sorted manner, complicated ideas that lay people such as myself can understand. Anyway, I'm really happy that I have your videos to watch. I have a hard time not getting ahead of myself in actual conversation sometimes. When I ask myself, "what would Matt say", it really helps me compose my thoughts and form a more cohesive and coherent response. Thank you for helping me learn how to use my brain better and in turn my brain is better at helping myself. I think I am much better at communicating because of you, when I use the skills you've given me. I'm pretty sure your content is my favorite on all of UA-cam and all of media. I think it has been the most valuable. I can't thank you enough. (And others too, but your content is very much next level)
I wish you had covered the fact that we *could* be wrong doesn't mean we are. We very well could be right. hyper-skeptics like to pretend that any amount of certainty means we can't be right, which is absurd. It just means we can't verify it to some unreasonable standard. When we use a ruler and measure something to be 10 inches long, it might be 10.1 inches, 9.9 or dead on the money 10.0 inches. Depending on what we mean by inches, it could genuinely be 10 inches, and we just have no way of verifying it outside of trusting reason. And yet that isn't a problem, because any doubt or alternative scenario proposed, will have as a minimum that same uncertainty rating.
I like Matt's definitions of absolute, maximal, and reasonable certainty. I'd like to add another term to the pot: practical certainty. To define, I have a goal and my level of certainty is enough to practically achieve that goal, thus I am practically certain. When I purchase a frame for a painting, I need to measure to a tenth of an inch (let's say). That level of precision is not practical for someone engineering computer circuit boards but it is practical for my goal of putting a picture into a frame. In this case, you cannot know if you have practical certainty until you have a goal with a clearly defined scope. This idea is similar to the one that states you cannot have a set of moral principles until you have a goal and the most likely goal for our modern principles is that of human well-being. I cannot comprehend all that "reasonable certainty" entails (certain via the use of reason), so I can't tell if practical certainty as described above is the same as (or a subset of) reasonable certainty.
This very subject sparked a huge debate amongst my peers in college. After much back-and-forth we came to the conclusion that the only thing I (an individual) can be absolutely certain of, is that I am conscious. Even if I am in the matrix or a brain in a vat or that my entire reality is some sort of weird mental recording, I know that I am experiencing it. Beyond that, there is no certainty.
@@BigRalphSmith We were freshman students, on our own for the first time. And by debate I mean, speaking our minds in an open forum, in the up stairs loft of a rented college house. And by "back-and-forth", I mean a lot of good Kush being partaken of. But I have yet to be presented with convincing evidence beyond what we already extrapolated.
That”s why in science, uncertainty is recognized as a crucial part of all measurements. Every measurement has uncertainty, and we need to know what that is and how to account for them.
Best way to dissuade someone from claiming absolute certainty is to explain Bayes rule (which is a theorem with mathematical proof) and show that the claim of absolute certainty is equivalent to saying that literally no evidence would change their confidence even a little. That should be an obviously untenable stance to take.
This reminds me of how amazed I am of the human desire not to be wrong; more to the point, perhaps, not to be seen as being wrong. I’m an atheist now, after having taken on my own challenge to find a proof for a god’s existence. I remember feeling a sense of certainty that I hoped to be able to give to others. I remember a sense of fear, having publicly expressed my goal, that I’d be exposed, if only for being one who could not prove the most obvious (to me at the time) and important fact of reality that could be known. Most importantly, I remember the sweet release of being able to say, “I don’t know”. I guess I’m surprised now at the reluctance of some to say it. But, I remember it being as terrifying as anything, once. Pray for them, my atheist brothers and sisters, in one hand. Continue to reason with them in the other.
@@mewrenchturner we understand the numralogy of 1+1=2 and we can make sense of it. It's language. We can see that there can be one pair of shoe and how there's also another which makes it two. In order to deny math you would also have to deny words because then words wouldn't be absolutes as well. It would just be a concept. A understanding. If everything was just like that there would be no definite answer. Thus no one could lie and no one could steal because there would be no absolute to tell us if one individual is stilling at all. In order to deny absolute truths you would must have to deny logic and any for of science
@@mewrenchturner how can I know what you said is true? You would only be left with what you know, and how can ik that that's enough? It could just be nothing but molicals after all. How as are we able to decode these messages being sent from one another?
@@lisapriola7927 Lol you and Rod don't understand that I "BELIEVE" the same things you guys do. But this is about ABSOLUTE certainty. Have you not heard of the problem of "hard solipsism" ? Solipsism: As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind.. While I find it useless, (we're after all forced to deal with the world we experience) an honest person must acknowledge they have no way of demonstrating that it's not the case.
theres a great Horizon programme called "How long is a pice of String?" it's a few years old now but still well worth watching. It shows that depending on how and what we measure with will mean that the answer can very enormously.
This is the Pakistan plane crash yesterday on May 22 2020 The last thing Muhammad Zubair can remember before the plane hit the ground is the acrid smell of jet fuel and the cries of fellow passengers as flames began to engulf the cabin. As he struggled to unbuckle his seatbelt with fire blazing beneath his chair, Zubair said he “followed the light and got to this hole and I jumped out on to the wing, and then to the ground”. The other survivor was Zafar Masud, the chief executive of Punjab Bank, who escaped with a broken arm and bruising and is being treated at Darul Sehat hospital in Karachi. ’His sister, Zainab Imam, said it was a miracle that he had survived. Absolutely a miracle. : )
I love the part about how one's level of confidence _in_ a claim has no bearing on the validity _of_ the claim. As Darwin noted, "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (See Also: Dunning Kruger Effect) As for certainty itself, I've often described Knowledge in these terms: The logical _default value_ for any assertion is ZERO, and that value is then adjusted, based on the Logical Analysis of Evidence (quality and quantity) upon which the assertion is based. Knowledge is then linguistic _shorthand_ for, "Highest currently determinable level of Probability." P.S. The hilarious thing is when theists attempt to defeat my Evidence & Logic arguments with, "Well within the limits of our own minds and senses, nobody can be 100% absolutely certain of anything," and I respond with, "I agree, which is why you can't be sure God exists."
@Trolltician Abductive Reasoning can only lead to theism by first _discounting_ Occam's Razor because the conclusion ultimately _demands_ assumption. The fact that something can be _conceptualized_ does not make it functionally possible (let alone probable), especially when there is no objectively observable precedent. The invocation of, "...indeterminates," is a poorly disguised Argumentum ad Ignorantiam fallacy. "What we don't know can be attributed to God because any imaginary thing can be rationally attributed to any _other_ imaginary thing." The problem is it can be attributed to _any_ other imaginary thing. Abduction just as effectively proves unicorns as it does gods. For abduction to conclude theism _also_ requires a Special Pleading fallacy to arbitrarily exclude all _other_ equally viable conclusions. That said, when it comes to ANY version of theism yet presented in the history of mankind, there are actually numerous _determinates_ that clearly contradict the _presupposed_ theistic "conclusion". In other words, the only way Abduction leads to theism is if the Abductor already allows for the viability of a completely imaginary conclusion AND ignores any counter-indicative determinates. Not to mention that, even if the Ontological Argument were rationally sound (which it isn't...at least, not demonstrably), one would then have to determine WHICH god(s) _actually_ exist(s). Otherwise, the entire ontological exercise is nothing more than mental masturbation.
I think asking people how confident they are is a superb way of getting one to admit that their belief in X isn’t 100%. It allows the sliver of doubt into their worldview that, in regards to changing ones mind, seems to be a necessary ingredient.
I was absolutely certain that Matt was NOT a flying spaghetti monster, temporarily grounded by the FAA, but after seeing this video, I concede I must allow for the possibility.
I like the Descartes approach to certainty: cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. I can be a brain in a jar, an alien that's being projected into sensations of a body, but that does not negate one single fact: there is something out there self-identifying as "me". I also like the scientific definition of certainty to the limit of our knowledge. Science is riddled with ideas that were proven wrong after new evidence surfaced - and were rightfully discarded for that reason. If you want to, say, disprove evolution, first show me evidence that is in accordance with all the other evidence that has been rigorously tested and re-tested, but that somehow puts everything in a new perspective.
@Trolltician The statement in question is a figure of speech, expressing one's feelings. He takes it as brute fact & now the burden would be on us to prove he's lying about how he feels. He only explained the statement itself ergo to demand context where null is is a red herring. Absolutes are a false concept, demonstrate otherwise. Ofc to ask that would be unreasonable; after millennia we've only an increasing lack of evidence of physical infinities.
@Trolltician lol Demonstrate any possibility 1st. What shall not be violated? Tell me what I violated that I so hold dear? Or are you that maniac in a western movie that's guns blazing before the cards are even shown? Don't you know that you have to explain how one is cheating IOT make the claim credible?
I agree with you Matt on a lot of what you said, but the problem I have is that even after a theist questions my logic again and I give the answer that I am reasonably confident in X, they will still bastardize the argument and ask "yes but are you absolutely certain". Its like they are beating a dead horse. Then if you retort and say you don't believe anything in absolute, they'll ask "So do you believe that nothing can be known as absolute, absolutely?" Anyone else have any suggestions on how to cope dealing with people that keep regurgitating this back?
18:30 0.999... is equal to 1. And there is no "math trick". You can calculate for yourself. 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 1 right? But you can write 1/3 as 0.333... Then we have: 0.333...+0.333...+0.333... = 0.999... It's the same number written in different ways.
That was... well... you could also say 1/3 + (1/3 + 1/3) = 1, and you could say 1/3 is .333 and 2/3 is .667 but .333 + .666 =/ 1. So 1/3 isn't really .333 unless you're confined to 3 decimal points. Are you *certain* that's the best way to represent the value?
@@cygnustsp No, you don't get it. 1/3 is NOT .333 and 2/3 is NOT .667. Those 3 little points after the last three means "an infinity of threes". At present, there is no single universally accepted notation or phrasing for repeating decimals. So I used the 3 dots.
I have observed that the theist philosophy begins with an assumption and ends in a circular argument. But the theist certainty is believing the assumption is 'absolute' because the theology says so.
The greatest thing you can do is make fun of yourself in a different place to live with a healthy relationship with your child around the world and to be a part of your life and your children will be able to get you to work out.
I would argue that we must posses a nugget of certainty in order to learn and grow. Without this nugget of certainty science would be impossible. We each know this nugget of certainty, but it does not need to be shared.
One can be absolutely certain, but one can't _justifiably_ be absolutely certain. When it comes to belief, I would say certainty and confidence are feelings. As such, absolute certainty is certainly within the realm of possibility (or at least that's more a question for psychology), because all that's required for absolutely certainty is to _feel_ absolutely certain (i.e. to believe something to be true and to not have any doubt whatsoever in your mind about it). You don't need any sort of rational justification for that feeling to exist. But once you realise/accept that you can't justifiably be absolutely certain of anything, you may lose the ability to be absolutely certain of anything. Although I'm not sure to which extent this is arguing semantics (but it is the semantics of how I believe most people would use those words). There are certainly other definitions of confidence and certainty, e.g. statistical confidence levels, for which it would be more reasonable to say you can't have a 100% confidence of anything (unless that thing is conditional, e.g. "if reason is absolute, then...", although for any non-trivial claim, you'd probably still need some doubt to account for human error in applying reason or elsewhere). So I suppose the real question here is: which definitions of "certainty" and "confidence" are you using? Or perhaps the question is what's your definition of "absolute", although I can't imagine there'd be a difference in definition there.
Which is why we automatically get estimates wrong when asked questions like: what are the odds that they won the lottery? If they won, it's 100%, if they didn't it's 0%. Odds don't apply to things that are already determined. Odds apply to things in the future, including finding the answer. For instance an electron has a chance of being found somewhere. We can look for and find a lot of electrons and can calculate the chance of finding it those places. We'll say that it has a chance of being there, but that's wrong. That chance is always 100% or 0% and the possibility applies to where it will more or less likely be or will more or less likely to be found. So, the question: what are the odds that a god exists is not a useful question because the odds are either 100% or 0%. What we can ask is what the odds are that a god came into existence and what the odds are that we will find evidence of a god, the latter one has an answer that approaches 0% and effectively is 0% and the former question is most probably unanswerable since we need evidence of a god first.
@@stylis666 Like you're 100% nuts. What are the odds you can build a campfire out of snowballs? With a wet match in a blizzard? Hydrogen will burn in the presence of oxygen. H2O being the materialist claim as evidence to why there can be campfires of snowballs. Same with abiogenesis, we're here, so we know it happened and there is no God! Never mind we can't demonstrate it. You tell us how it happened but can't duplicate the simplest living cell with a working model in hand? I can throw snake eyes a thousand times in a row if you let me "fix" the results. Why can't you fix the results of abiogenesis? The prebiotic chemistry is completely random. The proteins are constructed of 20 specific types of amino acids by complex molecular machines made of proteins. (enzymes and ribosomes) So the odds are actually 100% there is a Creator, the naturalists/materialist origin of life, 0. What are the odds you'd be described in Romans 1:18-22?
@@VernonChitlen I shuffled a deck of cards. The odds that the cards were in the exact order they are now is 1 in 52!. That's about 1 in 8×10^67. And it all happened without my ordering the cards. The only thing that didn't happen was a miracle that duplicated a card, made one disappear or create new cards out of nothing. Causality. What can happen will happen and what can't happen won't happen. If a god existed, then we'd see cards appear, disappear and duplicate. We don't. We never did and most likely never will, because you are just imagining a god and shoving it in as a placeholder where your knowledge lacks. Your god does nothing but show how little you know. And don't bring Romans into this. The book was written by savages and again, you're just showing how little they knew and how little you know. If your god was loving he wouldn't require or encourage people to take things on faith. Charlatans and abusers require and encourage people to take things on faith because it makes people more vulnerable to the abuse and scams. A loving god would have a better system than that.
I think the general idea of presuppositional apologetics is pretty good and I don't think the general idea is inconsistent. Among many possible axiom systems I can imagine someone using one containing a god or gods. I don't think it's rational for an atheist to reject that god can be a possible axiom. I think the problem is different in this case and more practical. Yes, a god or gods is a possible axiom, but if a theist wants to make it an axiom, they must make it clear what they mean by god, what properties that god has, what laws of logic and reasoning they accept and what other laws can be deducted from the assumptions about that god. In other words, it might be interesting to ask a theist about the details concerning the god axiom. You can imagine the theist is a scientist who presents a different theory of an aspect of reality. Let's say the theist is a scientist who postulates that the string theory is true and they postulate an abstract object (string/god) to exist. Ask them what conclusions can be reached by making this assumptions which can't be reached otherwise. First of course you should check if what the theist says is not inconsistent. If it is consistent, check if there are any axioms or statements which produce wrong conclusions w.r.t. the reality. If not, compare and contrast your theory/world view to the theory of the theist and see if there can be any "experiments" which can make a distinction between your theories/world views. If there are none, you don't need to care, provided that all of that reasoning is about the world of facts and both theories predict the same observable facts. You might read a bit about constructive empiricism. If the theist's theory is consistent and predicts the same observable phenomena as your theory/world view, there is no way to distinguish your atheism from their theism by referring to the observable world. If the theist does not accept Occham razor, you can't convince them to remove god from their axioms this way. Of course if the theist completely rejects any rationality, it's not possible to argue with them on any level. Or e.g. they might claim that whatever they say is true, because god is speaking through them and god always says the truth and god knows everything. You cannot refute that in any way. :P But the moment the theist moves from the world of facts to the world of morality, you should immediately pay attention as this is where the problem with theism is. Unfortunately when you move to the world of morality, there are really no good arguments for or against moral statements. You can only convince a theist by using their own moral axioms. You cannot use yours, because yours are different from theirs and moral axioms are arbitrary. (I know you don't like it and you probably think that some sort of humanism can be agreed upon, but please, think about it. There is no "moral reality" you can compare your moral statements to in the same way that you can compare your statements about facts to the reality.). That's why you cannot really win a moral argument against a fanatic. The only way to win against a fanatic is unfortunately outside of the realm of logic. That's why I think the best way to deal with presuppositional apologetics is to show that it cannot make any rational predictions about the real world based on the god assumption, that you cannot make without it. That's basically what you did in the discussion, when you claimed that you both accept the same laws of logic, even if Sye says they are based on god's mind rules. Who cares, really. If the only claim a theist makes is that god gave them logic, that's fine. :P The problem is of course with the other claims they make, but you can deal with these separately.
It reminds me about the Godel's ontological proof of god's existence. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_ontological_proof The proof is correct. But it's important to focus on the axioms. What do they really say? What can be concluded from them?
@14:43 I don't see any problem with saying "I can't know if the stars are real." The fact that there isn't anything known doesn't mean the definition isn't useful. You've spent hundreds of hours of your life talking about gods that don't exist. What's wrong with talking about knowledge that doesn't exist?
Are you certain or uncertain that A is not also not-A at the same time and in the same respect? Reason, like logic, is self-validating: you'd have to use it in any attempt to invalidate it. This is Aristotle. Showing that denying the laws of logic denies even the possibility of discussion, evidence, and proof is not a weakness Aristotle's case; it's a strength.
Those of you reading this comment can be absolutely, 100% certain of 2 things, that you exist, and that you perceive. How do you know you exist? how can you perceive if you don't exist? How do you know your perceiving? How else are you getting this stimulus if your not perceiving? Now is this perception 100% accurate? You can't say. Now your at 99.9999....% certain or below. But you can be 100% certain you exist and you perceive.
@@kenbrunet6120 You're correct in that in the fact you can't be 100% certain I exist, but even if this post is a fiction present in your perception, the fact that you're seeing it and reacting to it, proves you perceiving, which in turn, proves you exist.
I read somewhere "To know one thing, is to know everything." I don't know whom I'm (mis)quoting or if this is a sound statement. Could anyone help me on the right path?
Even if reason is 100% certain, that doesn't mean you can be 100% certain. Your certainty is limited by the weakest link. Even if reason is not the weakest link, the fact that you can't show reason to be 100% is a link less than 100%. So even if reason is 100%, your certainty is still not 100%.
I was in a debate with a mathematician about 0.99999_ being equal to 1. I didn't think it was possible. He couldn't convince me although he was very patient and tried all sorts of mathematical proofs; some of which were over my head. It wasn't until later when I thought about it in more simple terms that I found he was right and I was wrong. The simple mathematical proof was this: 1/9=0.111111_, 2/9=0.222222_, 3/9=0.333333_, 4/9=0.444444_, etc. all the way to 9/9=1. What? 9/9=1? If 1/9=0.111111_, and 9×0.111111_=0.999999_, and 9×(1/9)=9/9=1, then 0.999999_ must equal 1.
I don't recommend using this outside of debate and philosophy. If I'm on a job site measure 5 times and tell my boss I'm any accurate variation of confidence/certain he'd tell me to go measure again. (I'm reasonably certain.)
I really dislike having this type of conversation in person but still enjoyed the video. :) On another note, "some mathematicians"? Was that just to avoid an absolute statement or is there actually a discussion whether 0.99..=1 or not? As far as I know, there are multiple mathematical proofs that show it's true. If anybody has a link or name, I would be interested in further reading if there's opposition on that.
In terms of confidence level, the way I think about it, you can never have 100% confidence, because whatever level of confidence you have is necessarily based on a limited sample set, and due to the impossibility of ever having a complete sample it is always possible that a contradiction exists somewhere in the unexamined part of the theoretical whole.
I don't think there's really a disagreement with the .99999999 = 1 thing, if we are talking about the context of the real numbers. If we are talking in a different number system that does allow for infinitesimals (wiki: hyperreal and surreal numbers), there is no doubt that 1 /= 0.999999999. It's kind of like saying "well, some mathematicians say 9+9=18 and others say 9+9=6, so there is some disagreement" only it find out later that they are working in N and Z/Z12 ("clock numbers")
@Matt Dillahunty the first 45 seconds shows the flaw in your reasoning. Being absolutely certain there is no absolute certainty or there is absolute certainty is absolutely certain in this case. Such a demonstration is not some "cheap jab", its a proof which should put your mind in a place to understand what we mean when we say absolute certainty. The only way to get out of being absolutely certain is to deny reason itself which is what Dillahunty unfortunatley seems to do. Ironically, If you don't see reason as self evidently existent, then there cannot exist a demonstration that it exists, aswell as the fact that everything conceivable demonstrates it exists... demonstration is reason, and I don't understand how a finite mind can come to any conclusion at all "reasonable or not" if not through reason, for being conscious of something, ie to be mindful, is to exactly hold a set of intelligible properties of a state, and to be conscious of another thing is to exactly hold a distinguished set of properties from the original state, if this law did not hold there would be no consciousnesses at all, yet we clearly are counscious. furthermore, I think it is you have incredibly naive misunderstanding of mathematics, mathematics contains no paradoxes, if it did contains paradoxes it would not be mathematics. Claiming that something like infinite sets causes paradoxes (which some people hold to) only shows that you have insight to a higher form of absolute knowledge which is unattainable, when in reality you are merely engaging in what hegel calls "picture thinking", something empiricists are embarrassingly guilty of
It seems to me that Dillahunty is being ambitious beyond his original intention of religious convictions. _"I don't understand how a finite mind can come to any conclusion at all "reasonable or not" if not through reason"_ Perhaps this will help you understand: doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2013.01.006
@@romithromith No empirical study on epileptic seizures or subjective heightened states of mind will ever touch the notion of reason, because all you are doing in studying this is examining a.) the reported and observed subjective reation to stimuli, which is necessarily passed through the words and language of the patient, and only the patient and b.) the relational and material phenomena that is observable in terms of brainwaves, etc. Never at any moment in time was there a direct observation of a mind in this study, and so far as I believe, you cannot observe a subject other then the one necessarily immediately apparent to you. I've talked with schizophrenic and epileptics people before, I guarantee, given enough time I could map out some sort of graph or mathematical structure akin to a graph which describes a large percentage of their beliefs and corresponds every concept to another and relates everything in a large cohesive system. This is a demonstration that a mind necessarily works by reason, and they only way you can avoid this is by claiming that your definition of a certain concept is the "correct one", which of course there can never be a demonstration. Reason is the bedrock of mind because mind is exactly what reason demonstrates and describes, trying to elevate reason to a upper level contruct by claiming that there is absolute thought content that you conceive which contradicts another epileptic persons absolute thought content is a desultory treatment of reason, because we both know that there must then exist a higher web of reason which explains this disparity, and you even provided the proof of this in the form of a scientific paper.
@@fgc_rewind I take no issue with objective certainty derived through reason (such as the limit of a function), however, this topic also involves subjective certainty, including the non-demonstrable certainty individuals feel about religious beliefs. This isn't about epileptic seizures but about the way the brain functions evidenced in these seizures. You seem so consumed with intellectual models of mind and reason that you forget that mind and consciousness arise from the brain, which evolved not for reason but for survival. These were simply 2 case reports with subjective accounts, not powerful studies or scientific reviews of multiple studies. More comprehensive material is available but this one account (patient 2) was more articulate and addressed certainty. (I posted the article: anonymousfiles.io/p3xSWSVs/ ) Yes, we rely on indirect, subjective observations of our mental experience communicated through subjective language, correlated with objective, perhaps quantitative measures of stimuli and response. Well, scientific methods vary by field and science involves evidence, not proof. However imperfect neuropsychological research is, it has advanced our understanding of the human mind beyond black-box models and purely philosophical conceptions. Certainty is - or can be - a product of reason. But in the experienced process of the human brain, it is also a feeling, or a belief subservient to the narrative of the self, subjective perceptions, internal stimuli, or instincts.
@@romithromith I agree, there are things that are objectively certain preciously because if they were not true, you would fall into contradiction. One of these many truths is the existence of God. You can have beliefs about Jesus, what Good is exactly and so on, but it is undeniable God exists unless you do not take reason and logic as the fundamental essence of truth. One of the main issues with atheists is they are more interested in trying to poke holes in some random laypersons understanding of god, instead of thinking about it themselves. "You seem so consumed with intellectual models of mind and reason that you forget that mind and consciousness arise from the brain, which evolved not for reason but for survival." This is a baseless assertion, at best we know the objects of our consciousnesses correspond with physical states of our body in space and time. For example, I see blue when I orient by body in some certain way, I cannot see when my eyes are damaged, I have feelings of heightened awareness when my brain is damaged in a certain way. None of these prove that then therefore the matter is what is "causing" my consciousness, only that change in space and time, which is only observable by consciousness, seems to correspond with it. You have to demonstrate this to be the case, because as of now you are arguing in circles by saying that the reason you have consciousness is conveniently located as an object in your consciousness. Not to mention the obvious contradiction of why we have minds at all, or why reason works, if the purpose of our existence is survival. All in all I don't consider certainty which is not ultimately reasonable to be certainty. Again you are understanding a notion, in this case certainty, to be something that it is not simply because you think that other people believe this notion in this way. You are thinking much more in terms of a materialist physiologist rather then trying to honestly understand the truth.
@@fgc_rewind You make assertions like a presuppositionalist. I appreciate no necessity for the existence of gods but if so, we might as well call that god or gods the universe. I would certainly not buy the Biblical account of a god. Mind is a product of the brain, shaped by evolution for survival. If an argument is valid, holes cannot be poked in it. _"I have feelings of heightened awareness when my brain is damaged in a certain way."_ Which you may not be aware of when synchronous discharge is not occurring in your AIC. On the other hand, ecstatic seizures may account for the visions of Paul supposedly meeting Jesus (and a temporal lobe personality for hyperreligiousity, hypermorality and hypergraphia). _"None of these prove that then therefore the matter is what is "causing" my consciousness... You have to demonstrate this to be the case."_ Science doesn't prove, it provides evidence. Do I really need to provide evidence of consciousness coming from the brain? Consciousness can be altered or lost by affecting that material brain. I can talk about brain nuclei, stimulation of the claustrom, drugs, errors in metabolism, epileptic foci, tumors, cerebral trauma, electroconvulsive therapy, stroke, nutritional deficiency all of which affect consciousness. When the corpus callosum is severed, two separate consciousnesses result. When a neurosurgeon stimulates a spot on the motor cortex, causing a movement, the patient typically claims he consciously chose to move the muscle. It is unfalsifiable to disprove that consciousness can exist without a brain, but there is no evidence of consciousness existing without a functioning material brain, no evidence of consciousness existing before or after death. _"I don't consider certainty which is not ultimately reasonable to be certainty. "_ I don't consider consciousness or reason to require a god. _"You are thinking much more in terms of a materialist physiologist rather then trying to honestly understand the truth."_ And I likewise think you are in denial.
Easy way to show 1 = 0.999999... (repeats forever): just calculate the difference. You'll see it's 0.0000000... (repeats forever). As for Sye, I'd argue the problem with his position is that his belief in his absolute certainty is simply unjustified.
@Oners82 I agree with the OP's statement but am willing to reassess on the production of more evidence. And so one for any proposition, including assessing the validity of evidence. My answer was entirely correct. How much and what form of evidence will vary depending on the proposition, however. The question is meant to imply that the statement is inherently contradictory. It isn't, as it applies to itself just fine. Actual arguments for the existence of axioms are less tiresome, but that's not what your question was.
@Oners82 Where is the dogmatism? I have no idea what about anything I said makes me a “dogmatist”, whatever that it. I’ve acknowledged that any statement I make is subject to change with the introduction of new information, and if any statements aren’t, then the introduction of new information could show me that they aren’t. I’m not really asserting that no statement could be, only that I cannot really think of one that isn’t. And I’m only talking about statements that aren’t tautologies, though of course one could discover that a supposedly tautology is not one, or vice versa, which also does make them questionable. When did you show I have axiomatic beliefs? What belief exactly, in quotes, are you claiming I hold axiomatically?
@Oners82 If you’re just going to accuse me of being a troll and call me uneducated then there isn’t much point is there? I don’t hold any of what you said as axiomatic. Any of those statements, I could be wrong about, and in fact I don’t even believe some of them, but rather don’t take a position because they are meaningless. Even “induction is reliable”, which is about as close as you are going to get to axiomatic, is only a relative belief. If the future didn’t follow from the past, I wouldn’t have any beliefs about induction. There are beliefs that cannot seem to have evidence one way or another, but I could be misidentifying them, and when there can be no determination of truth or falsity, I don’t hold a belief either way. Just not knowing what evidence would convince me otherwise doesn’t mean I am 100% certain that the belief is necessarily true and I could not be mistaken. One could be unaware of any reasonable evidence to convince them that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead (finding and identifying his bones is not reasonable), yet that doesn’t mean they cannot be convinced that he didn’t. Many Christians who have said that have been deconverted. So just because I don’t know the answer to what the evidence would be, doesn’t mean I am justified in being 100% confident that there is no such evidence possible, which is what it would mean to hold it as axiomatic that evidence could not exist in some cases.
Today I was mocked by a fellow atheist that is absolute certain that god doesn't exist. I told him we cannot be absolute certain of anything and he lost it..😂 He asked me if I wasn't absolute certain that my wife didn't had an affair with Nietzsche! I told him I was 99.999999999999% certain that she didn't cheat on me with Nietzsche but I could not the certain! And then the guy exploded in laughter 🤣
Can God make a square circle? Most people I've heard say no, because then God wouldn't be a foundation for Reason or Logic. Could God make someone certain that He existed? Of course. He could make them perfect. If they aren't perfect then they could, by definition, be mistaken. If they aren't perfect but can't be mistaken then they are a square circle. It's not a limitation on God but a recognition of the limitations imposed by being flawed imperfect beings.
Presuppositionalism: Because once you’ve recognised that reason doesn’t lead to a god, simply claim that a god leads to reason, thereby making yourself unable to be reasoned with on the topic of a gods existence and hope no one notices.
The way presup. apologists use the word certainty in debate, I think they mean it as "Unable to question or doubt", not "very confident". I think you may be talking past them, right now.
You actually don't need infinities to prove that 1 = 0.999... Take 1/3. That equals 0.333... Multiply both sides by 3. Left side is 3/3, or 1, the right side is 0.9999...
The argument that God is the foundation of reason doesn't mean that they are saying God is the foundation of certainty. I think you can still entertain the concept of proof beyond reasonable doubt while still believing God to be the foundation of reason
a believer can state his believes about the objective nature of reality - but on that topic thats also all he can do then. period. him thinking that what he believes the objective to be is *not* him talking about the objective, he is talking about himself. that he thinks what he believes to be the case actually is the case is nice for him (it enables him to believe it, after all), but, alas - its his believe. there is no way out of this. your believe is not to be used as a way to explain the world, since your believe is not talking about the world, it is talking about what you believe about it. religion is for you and in you it has its worth - or lacks it.
I have to disagree with you on this point. People obviously can be absolutely certain. People are absolutely certain of all kinds of things, all the time, often for bad reasons. I think what you are trying to argue is that we *should not* be absolutely certain of anything. That's a completely different argument (one which I may still disagree with, but at least it's not as absurd as claiming that people "can't be" absolutely certain, when clearly they often are).
anything which uses 0, infinity or sqrt(-1) is usually a trick, using mathematics in a way that we know it cannot be used. Infinity \ (infinity-1) is exactly 1, as there is no number small enough to express the difference between it and Infinity \ (Infinity - 0). This is about the same as proving you cannot cut an apple in half, and then whip out a shotgun. It is factual of course, but only because you used a qualifier that is not a reasonable (fit for common belief) solution to fit the verb "cut." Probably why I like logic, and always distrust all things "reasonable." I think Spock should have claimed, "when you remove the impossible, that which remains, no matter how unreasonable, must lead to the most certain solution." Just like "more fair," the fact that you understand what that means points to how non-absolute certainty is by its very nature.
I think people confuse the way the word "proof" is used. There is a difference between mathematical proof and scientific proof. For example, SQRT(2) is an irrational number. We can prove that mathematically and it works for 100% of the time. Meanwhile, general relativity has been tested and re-tested. So far it has held up, but I don't think scientists would be too surprised if there is a point at which it fails, or if a better theory comes along. But we still consider relativity to be proven.
@Feiner Fug I agree completely. What I am saying is that there is a difference between mathematical proof and other "proof". I can prove that SQRT(2) can NEVER be rational. Yet I cannot prove that the theory of relativity works 100% of the time. But it works well enough to be better than anything else we have.
You would have to presuppose that people were flawed individuals that made mistakes during the creation of numbers and the math that goes along with it. Also, The mistakes would have to be such that it wouldn't make sense if the mistakes weren't logical mistakes but were suppositional mistakes instead.
Proverbs 3:5-6 King James Version 5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. 6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Proverbs 3:5-6 King James Version (KJV) 5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
Hilmar Zonneveld How can a person prove a chair is going to hold he or she up?You test it that’s how.So apply that same principle to the Bible. Here it is talking about Tithing,but the same principle apply. Malachi 3:10 King James Version (KJV) 10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
No one holds 100%certainty what I deem to be objective truth because 1. You didn’t create existence to know everything about the thing you claim to be certain about for you to be able to say there is no chance of you being wrong 2. You are fallible and could always be wrong. 3. You are not omniscient
In order to say that you are not absolutely sure you have to stop somewhere however arbitrary large number. 99.999999999% is not equal to 1 obviously and you cannot have an infinite number nines following the decimal point; infinity is not a number - you can't do something an infinite number of times. But it is a concept. Thus, what we can do is to show that a certain iteration approaches a certain value or gets arbitrary high or low the more iterations you caculate. That's why 99. and an infinite number of 9:s after the decimal comma is not a true number, but 1 is. I think the same applies to logic. You may be ever so closely 100% certain, but in order to make room for a possibility to be mistaken however unlikely, you have to aknowledge you can't be 100% sure. You might say that you can be more and more confident the more information you get, but you can never access an infinite amount of information - if you could you should in fact by definition be absolutely sure - 100% - about matters. In reality such confidence levels are nonsense. We might be able to discuss this on paper, but our minds are not finely tuned probabalistic machines.
Dear person I greatly admire, Please get a pack/small herd of competent video production people you can choose from to shoot your presentations. This shoot looks pretty mediocre. Phooey! I realize that, ultimately, how things look don't really matter, but how you look and in what setting, Does! You're mic'd well. Yay! The rest is sad. I recommend against sad settings! You're doing great stuff! The setting should reflect this! Argh! Thank you for existing. Please continue.
I disagree. I could care less about the packaging. The content is the only important thing. In this case the content is audio. So as long as the audio is pleasing to the ear. He could be dressed as a goose swimming in a large bowl filled with punch spiked with tequila and roofies all filmed in a room lit like a cave in afganistan and it woudln't detract from the content.
certainty doesn't describe knowledge, it describes an emotional response to knowledge. of course, absolute certainty is possible, but it doesn't make the bearer right. KEvron
@@SansDeity i defined my terms. i just explained it as an emotional response. i don't hold it as a rational position, just possible that someone may hold the emotion of "absolutely certain," regardless of its rationality. don't confuse "absolutely certain" with "absolutely right." but here's your proof: p1: we are capable of emotional responses to knowledge, regardless of their rationality. p2: absolute certainty is an emotional response to knowledge, regardless of its rationality. c: we are capable of absolute certainty. KEvron
@@SansDeity the first 45 seconds shows the flaw in your reasoning. Being absolutely certain there is no absolute certainty or there is absolute certainty is absolutely certain in this case. Such a demonstration is not some "cheap jab", its a proof which should put your mind in a place to understand what we mean when we say absolute certainty. The only way to get out of being absolutely certain is to deny reason itself which is what you unfortunatley seems to do. Ironically, If you don't see reason as self evidently existent, then there cannot exist a demonstration that it exists, aswell as the fact that everything conceivable demonstrates it exists... demonstration is reason, and I don't understand how a finite mind can come to any conclusion at all "reasonable or not" if not through reason, for being conscious of something, ie to be mindful, is to exactly hold a set of intelligible properties of a state, and to be conscious of another thing is to exactly hold a distinguished set of properties from the original state, if this law did not hold there would be no consciousnesses at all, yet we clearly are counscious. furthermore, I think it is you have incredibly naive misunderstanding of mathematics, mathematics contains no paradoxes, if it did contains paradoxes it would not be mathematics. Claiming that something like infinite sets causes paradoxes (which some people hold to) only shows that you have insight to a higher form of absolute knowledge which is unattainable, when in reality you are merely engaging in what hegel calls "picture thinking", something empiricists are embarrassingly guilty of
@@fgc_rewind *"Being absolutely certain there is no absolute certainty or there is absolute certainty is absolutely certain in this case."* he doesn't have to be absolutely certain in order to make the claim, and he didn't say as much in the first 45 seconds or at any other time. KEvron
When i was 24 years old i was absolutely certain that jehovah's witnesses were the only true religion and God's visible organization on earth. When i was 25 i was absolutely certain they weren't. I'm absolutely certain that while i could have been wrong at age 25, i haven't changed my mind since then, and I'm content with that. I dont go around wondering whether I'm wrong... and if in some insane circumstance i am wrong, I'm totally ok with that too, because that would be the greatest troll job ever and id have to appreciate it.
Maybe I'm not 100 % certain that there is no god or that the Earth is a sphere, but I would say that I'm 100 % certain that Paul McCartney was in The Beatles and Bill Wyman was playing bass in Rolling Stones and not the other way around. But in some matrix there might be a band called the The Beatles that were from Toronto and the members were Justin Bieber, Seth Rogen, Jim Carrey and Donny Trump.
I dislike the standard of "reason" you use throughout here, because reason is what we use when logic either fails us, or our ability to understand that logic fails us. This is actually used for mathematics even, such as limits / derivatives in calculus, it takes the form of special pleadings, which fails logically, but reason allows us to learn how to make ~100% perfect calculations. Reasonably certain is to know you are correct for all cases that you BELIEVE are possible use cases. In this discussion, I would say that certainty needs a better definition: it is that state of belief that we are correct, and only through disproof of one of the facts I used to justify my certainty could taint it. Even the most ardent Christian would question their faith if they found out their congregation were all atheistic actors playing a trick on them. And this shows why it is so critical to to find out WHY a person believes what they believe. Most of us are certain about our beliefs, and as we age, we can usually point to exact things that changed us from being certain to being reasonably certain or uncertain.
"Always treat others as you would like them to treat you" and "Love your neighbour as yourself." These are the Law and the Prophets of the Lord God... “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord.” - (at Leviticus 19: 18) - “Cease to do evil and learn to do right, pursue justice and champion the oppressed; give the orphan his rights, plead the widow’s cause.” - (The prophet Isaiah 1: 17) - “Administer true justice, show loyalty and compassion to one another, do not oppress the orphan and the widow, the alien and the poor; do not contrive any evil against one another.” - (The prophet Zechariah 7: 9-10) - “There must be no limit to your goodness, as your Heavenly Father’s goodness knows no bounds.” - (The prophet and Messiah Jesus Immanuel, at Matthew 5: 48) - “Always treat others as you would like them to treat you: that is the Law and the Prophets. Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it.” - (Jesus Immanuel, at Matthew 7: 11-12) - “An expert in the law, [a leading religious Pharisee] tested him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. That is the greatest commandment. It comes first. The second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself. Everything in the Law and the Prophets hangs on these two commandments.’” - (at Matthew 22: 35-40) -
@Hilmar Zonneveld All such atrocious acts of evil were carried out by men of religion and falsely claiming they were doing it in the name of God. All such acts of evil are an abomination before God. They were not carrying out his commands and laws, but their own made up laws. It is still the same with all religions, even up to this very day!
@Hilmar Zonneveld "Always treat others as you would like them to treat you" and "Love your neighbour as yourself." These are the Law and the Prophets of the Lord God... “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord.” - (at Leviticus 19: 18) - “Cease to do evil and learn to do right, pursue justice and champion the oppressed; give the orphan his rights, plead the widow’s cause.” - (The prophet Isaiah 1: 17) - “Administer true justice, show loyalty and compassion to one another, do not oppress the orphan and the widow, the alien and the poor; do not contrive any evil against one another.” - (The prophet Zechariah 7: 9-10) - “There must be no limit to your goodness, as your Heavenly Father’s goodness knows no bounds.” - (The prophet and Messiah Jesus Immanuel, at Matthew 5: 48) - “Always treat others as you would like them to treat you: that is the Law and the Prophets. Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it.” - (Jesus Immanuel, at Matthew 7: 11-12) - “An expert in the law, [a leading religious Pharisee] tested him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. That is the greatest commandment. It comes first. The second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself. Everything in the Law and the Prophets hangs on these two commandments.’” - (at Matthew 22: 35-40) -
When I attended a Christian Private School, one of the things the apologists were really big on was criticizing the phrase “There is no absolute truth,” then pointing out all the problems with it and why atheism is at best no more valid than theism (and Christianity in particular). It wasn’t until I started watching a lot of Matt’s content that I was able to escape this mindset and understand the much more nuanced view of certainty and truths that my school both failed to teach me and, intentionally or otherwise, succeeded in hobbling.
I went to a private Christian school too, but they didn't really engage in the philosophical arguments for and against religion, and just focused on personal testimonials, and "Look at the trees!" I would love to go back there and debate them.
This dude is dumb don’t base any world views of someone who has to explain why he’s certain about not being certain
O Far -Are you certain of that?
Hobbling 🤣
@@sirbrr "This dude is dumb don’t base any world views of someone who has to explain why he’s certain about not being certain"
Did your invisible fantasy daddy-friend tell you to say this?
I love these thought-sharpening philosophy videos even when they’re outside of religion debate contexts
I Agree As Well 💪👊 💥
I think reason provides a better grounding than religion. Even if I changed my mind tomorrow, and started believing in a god, I (hopefully) would do it because of reason, not despite it.
Trolltician, present the example of him being wrong and we can go through it together
@Trolltician Demonstrate absolutes, craven troll.
Religitardation is a long dead horse Dildohunty has been beating on far too long. Watching the worlds dumbest people be debated is great Jerry Springer / Maury Povich entertainment and it pays the bills, but it also totally dodges the question centered in each debate. Is there a gawd, and what is it's nature.
He argues against gawd, yet never considers the mountains of evidence for universal consciousness which has nothing whatsoever to do with religitardation.
Vedic philosophy, NDE's, 5-MEO DMT, the placebo effect, emotional contagiousness, third hand illusion, multiple personality disorder, net zero energy in the universe, the recognition emerging that materialism is nonsense, the E8 lattice, Donald Hoffman's 'conscious agents', and countless other evidence of varying weight that contribute to the conclusion that the ONLY thing that exists is the mind of god. Taken collectively, it is a mountain that can't be ignored.
The most powerful of evidence is 5-MEO DMT, also known as Bufo Alvarius... the true 'gawd molecule'.
Take the right dosage, and don't fight it, and your experience of a self is completely and entirely dissolved. You find your awareness instantly expands from its cage in your head to encompass every atom in your body, to every atom in the universe. You feel all, see all, know all. You see in all directions simultaneously outside of space and time, all past present and future. While in this state, no questions remain unanswered. You know and recognize it as the truth because it is you... all of it. You know there is nothing more. You know there is nothing more real. When you return from this experience, and your ego in a panic reassembles itself, you're left with several months of mental processing asking yourself "what thaaaa fuuuuuuuk was that" ... and you struggle to some degree with what it means to be human. You permanently lose all fear of death.
In any case, it's way past time to leave the thought disease of religitardation behind and look at actual evidence of the true nature of reality/consciousness/awareness.
Who dislikes these videos?
People that arent absolutely certain about how good it is.
One is a retired professional video production specialist who lives in Houston and wants Matt shot beautifully, as in being well lit in eye-pleasing settings that lend theirselves to Matt's messages.
'Friendly confidence' is something we want put forth in each and every message.
That isn't happening in this video. Matt does it, but the setting doesn't.
@@lancethrustworthy i feel like its being excessive to dislike the video cause it's not up to a professional level of lighting.
@@lancethrustworthy I can't be absolutely certain, but I believe he is shooting these videos from his house.
@@lancethrustworthy That sounds like a fair critique of the video, but you can still not downvote a video as well as leave a comment saying "This would've been much better with some lighting changes"
@@bitcoinweasel9274 I think he might be joking. I think to show the wide possiblity of reasons why someone might dislike a video
Great video as always Matt. Thank you. Hope to perhaps take an exchange year in Austin through my university some day, I’ll visit ACA for sure. Keep up the good work! 🙌
Is it weird to be Christian and an atheist at the same time?
@@robsonalmeida5045 Omg, thats like hilarious, what a joke
@@ChristianNielsenOfficial I know, right?!
"An honest man who discovers he is wrong, either ceases to be wrong or ceases to be honest." [Anon]
Hey Matt. Thanks for all you do. Your content is extremely valuable imo. I'm pretty sure you make more sense to me than anyone else whenever you talk. Well, you and Chomsky. You are super gifted in being able to put into plain English, in a sorted manner, complicated ideas that lay people such as myself can understand.
Anyway, I'm really happy that I have your videos to watch. I have a hard time not getting ahead of myself in actual conversation sometimes. When I ask myself, "what would Matt say", it really helps me compose my thoughts and form a more cohesive and coherent response. Thank you for helping me learn how to use my brain better and in turn my brain is better at helping myself.
I think I am much better at communicating because of you, when I use the skills you've given me. I'm pretty sure your content is my favorite on all of UA-cam and all of media. I think it has been the most valuable. I can't thank you enough. (And others too, but your content is very much next level)
Second that thanks Matt,,
For me it's all in 23:50, i am as confident as the evidence that i have allows me to be. Thanks for the video Matt. Stay safe!
I wish you had covered the fact that we *could* be wrong doesn't mean we are. We very well could be right. hyper-skeptics like to pretend that any amount of certainty means we can't be right, which is absurd. It just means we can't verify it to some unreasonable standard. When we use a ruler and measure something to be 10 inches long, it might be 10.1 inches, 9.9 or dead on the money 10.0 inches. Depending on what we mean by inches, it could genuinely be 10 inches, and we just have no way of verifying it outside of trusting reason. And yet that isn't a problem, because any doubt or alternative scenario proposed, will have as a minimum that same uncertainty rating.
I like Matt's definitions of absolute, maximal, and reasonable certainty. I'd like to add another term to the pot: practical certainty. To define, I have a goal and my level of certainty is enough to practically achieve that goal, thus I am practically certain. When I purchase a frame for a painting, I need to measure to a tenth of an inch (let's say). That level of precision is not practical for someone engineering computer circuit boards but it is practical for my goal of putting a picture into a frame. In this case, you cannot know if you have practical certainty until you have a goal with a clearly defined scope. This idea is similar to the one that states you cannot have a set of moral principles until you have a goal and the most likely goal for our modern principles is that of human well-being. I cannot comprehend all that "reasonable certainty" entails (certain via the use of reason), so I can't tell if practical certainty as described above is the same as (or a subset of) reasonable certainty.
I find it to be more often the case than not that “absolute” truth or certainty are used in place of “unquestionable”.
This very subject sparked a huge debate amongst my peers in college. After much back-and-forth we came to the conclusion that the only thing I (an individual) can be absolutely certain of, is that I am conscious.
Even if I am in the matrix or a brain in a vat or that my entire reality is some sort of weird mental recording, I know that I am experiencing it. Beyond that, there is no certainty.
Really? That was debated? There's no solution to hard solipsism. At least, not yet.
Descartes would be proud of you all, guys... 🙂
@@BigRalphSmith
We were freshman students, on our own for the first time.
And by debate I mean, speaking our minds in an open forum, in the up stairs loft of a rented college house.
And by "back-and-forth", I mean a lot of good Kush being partaken of.
But I have yet to be presented with convincing evidence beyond what we already extrapolated.
@@chefchaudard3580 0 will
That”s why in science, uncertainty is recognized as a crucial part of all measurements. Every measurement has uncertainty, and we need to know what that is and how to account for them.
Best way to dissuade someone from claiming absolute certainty is to explain Bayes rule (which is a theorem with mathematical proof) and show that the claim of absolute certainty is equivalent to saying that literally no evidence would change their confidence even a little. That should be an obviously untenable stance to take.
I'm reasonably confident in reason.
This reminds me of how amazed I am of the human desire not to be wrong; more to the point, perhaps, not to be seen as being wrong. I’m an atheist now, after having taken on my own challenge to find a proof for a god’s existence. I remember feeling a sense of certainty that I hoped to be able to give to others. I remember a sense of fear, having publicly expressed my goal, that I’d be exposed, if only for being one who could not prove the most obvious (to me at the time) and important fact of reality that could be known. Most importantly, I remember the sweet release of being able to say, “I don’t know”.
I guess I’m surprised now at the reluctance of some to say it. But, I remember it being as terrifying as anything, once.
Pray for them, my atheist brothers and sisters, in one hand. Continue to reason with them in the other.
Idk but, appeals to "absolute" certainty always comes across as dishonest. It's a denial of human fallibility, that honest people recognize..
So one plus one doesn't equal 2?
@@lisapriola7927 As a brain in a vat, can you be "absolutely" certain there's any such thing as a 1? Perhaps you made up the concept of addition.
@@mewrenchturner we understand the numralogy of 1+1=2 and we can make sense of it. It's language. We can see that there can be one pair of shoe and how there's also another which makes it two. In order to deny math you would also have to deny words because then words wouldn't be absolutes as well. It would just be a concept. A understanding. If everything was just like that there would be no definite answer. Thus no one could lie and no one could steal because there would be no absolute to tell us if one individual is stilling at all. In order to deny absolute truths you would must have to deny logic and any for of science
@@mewrenchturner how can I know what you said is true? You would only be left with what you know, and how can ik that that's enough? It could just be nothing but molicals after all. How as are we able to decode these messages being sent from one another?
@@lisapriola7927 Lol you and Rod don't understand that I "BELIEVE" the same things you guys do. But this is about ABSOLUTE certainty. Have you not heard of the problem of "hard solipsism" ?
Solipsism:
As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind..
While I find it useless, (we're after all forced to deal with the world we experience) an honest person must acknowledge they have no way of demonstrating that it's not the case.
Matt!!!!! Thank you soo much for everything!
theres a great Horizon programme called "How long is a pice of String?" it's a few years old now but still well worth watching. It shows that depending on how and what we measure with will mean that the answer can very enormously.
I think I'll adopt the term *"Guaranteed Certainty™"* ..
_[Note: this Guarantee is void for all claims arising from Acts of God]_
This is the Pakistan plane crash yesterday on May 22 2020
The last thing Muhammad Zubair can remember before the plane hit the ground is the acrid smell of jet fuel and the cries of fellow passengers as flames began to engulf the cabin.
As he struggled to unbuckle his seatbelt with fire blazing beneath his chair, Zubair said he “followed the light and got to this hole and I jumped out on to the wing, and then to the ground”.
The other survivor was Zafar Masud, the chief executive of Punjab Bank, who escaped with a broken arm and bruising and is being treated at Darul Sehat hospital in Karachi. ’His sister, Zainab Imam, said it was a miracle that he had survived.
Absolutely a miracle. : )
This comment was added for engagement algorithm purposes only.
"Engage" -Captain Picard
I love the part about how one's level of confidence _in_ a claim has no bearing on the validity _of_ the claim. As Darwin noted, "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (See Also: Dunning Kruger Effect) As for certainty itself, I've often described Knowledge in these terms: The logical _default value_ for any assertion is ZERO, and that value is then adjusted, based on the Logical Analysis of Evidence (quality and quantity) upon which the assertion is based. Knowledge is then linguistic _shorthand_ for, "Highest currently determinable level of Probability."
P.S. The hilarious thing is when theists attempt to defeat my Evidence & Logic arguments with, "Well within the limits of our own minds and senses, nobody can be 100% absolutely certain of anything," and I respond with, "I agree, which is why you can't be sure God exists."
@Trolltician Abductive Reasoning can only lead to theism by first _discounting_ Occam's Razor because the conclusion ultimately _demands_ assumption. The fact that something can be _conceptualized_ does not make it functionally possible (let alone probable), especially when there is no objectively observable precedent.
The invocation of, "...indeterminates," is a poorly disguised Argumentum ad Ignorantiam fallacy. "What we don't know can be attributed to God because any imaginary thing can be rationally attributed to any _other_ imaginary thing." The problem is it can be attributed to _any_ other imaginary thing. Abduction just as effectively proves unicorns as it does gods. For abduction to conclude theism _also_ requires a Special Pleading fallacy to arbitrarily exclude all _other_ equally viable conclusions.
That said, when it comes to ANY version of theism yet presented in the history of mankind, there are actually numerous _determinates_ that clearly contradict the _presupposed_ theistic "conclusion". In other words, the only way Abduction leads to theism is if the Abductor already allows for the viability of a completely imaginary conclusion AND ignores any counter-indicative determinates. Not to mention that, even if the Ontological Argument were rationally sound (which it isn't...at least, not demonstrably), one would then have to determine WHICH god(s) _actually_ exist(s). Otherwise, the entire ontological exercise is nothing more than mental masturbation.
I think asking people how confident they are is a superb way of getting one to admit that their belief in X isn’t 100%. It allows the sliver of doubt into their worldview that, in regards to changing ones mind, seems to be a necessary ingredient.
I was absolutely certain that Matt was NOT a flying spaghetti monster, temporarily grounded by the FAA, but after seeing this video, I concede I must allow for the possibility.
I like the Descartes approach to certainty: cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. I can be a brain in a jar, an alien that's being projected into sensations of a body, but that does not negate one single fact: there is something out there self-identifying as "me".
I also like the scientific definition of certainty to the limit of our knowledge. Science is riddled with ideas that were proven wrong after new evidence surfaced - and were rightfully discarded for that reason.
If you want to, say, disprove evolution, first show me evidence that is in accordance with all the other evidence that has been rigorously tested and re-tested, but that somehow puts everything in a new perspective.
Descartes: I doubt, therefore I am thinking, therefore I am.
I stick to the phrase, “I’m as certain as I reasonably can be,” it suggests maximal possible certainty within the limits of reasoning.
@Trolltician How does 'am reasonable' define reason out of existence? Pathetic troll.
@Trolltician The statement in question is a figure of speech, expressing one's feelings. He takes it as brute fact & now the burden would be on us to prove he's lying about how he feels. He only explained the statement itself ergo to demand context where null is is a red herring.
Absolutes are a false concept, demonstrate otherwise. Ofc to ask that would be unreasonable; after millennia we've only an increasing lack of evidence of physical infinities.
@Trolltician Do you have a purpose besides to sow confusion? Are you resolved for anything besides division?
@Trolltician If you weren't talking about absolute certainty, believe you have a few words for yourself about being vague 😋
@Trolltician lol
Demonstrate any possibility 1st.
What shall not be violated? Tell me what I violated that I so hold dear? Or are you that maniac in a western movie that's guns blazing before the cards are even shown? Don't you know that you have to explain how one is cheating IOT make the claim credible?
As a member of the PCMR church I have to say that this video is crisp AF! But the lens make you look like a a caterpillar.
I agree with you Matt on a lot of what you said, but the problem I have is that even after a theist questions my logic again and I give the answer that I am reasonably confident in X, they will still bastardize the argument and ask "yes but are you absolutely certain". Its like they are beating a dead horse. Then if you retort and say you don't believe anything in absolute, they'll ask "So do you believe that nothing can be known as absolute, absolutely?"
Anyone else have any suggestions on how to cope dealing with people that keep regurgitating this back?
Wow!
Brilliant!
Thanks!
18:30 0.999... is equal to 1. And there is no "math trick". You can calculate for yourself.
1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 1 right? But you can write 1/3 as 0.333... Then we have:
0.333...+0.333...+0.333... = 0.999... It's the same number written in different ways.
That was... well... you could also say 1/3 + (1/3 + 1/3) = 1, and you could say 1/3 is .333 and 2/3 is .667 but .333 + .666 =/ 1. So 1/3 isn't really .333 unless you're confined to 3 decimal points. Are you *certain* that's the best way to represent the value?
@@cygnustsp No, you don't get it. 1/3 is NOT .333 and 2/3 is NOT .667.
Those 3 little points after the last three means "an infinity of threes". At present, there is no single universally accepted notation or phrasing for repeating decimals. So I used the 3 dots.
@@humanrightsadvocate yeah but .999... =/ 1. I do get your point though.
@@cygnustsp Actually 0.999... is exactly 1. Read my 1st comment again. You're kind of an idiot. Use the google. Ignored!
0.333 (repeating) is _approximately_ 1/3.
I have observed that the theist philosophy begins with an assumption and ends in a circular argument. But the theist certainty is believing the assumption is 'absolute' because the theology says so.
Is there something wrong with saying "I am absolutely certain I like the taste of red bean mochi at this point In time"...? Can y'all help me out?
To a reasonable level, I'm confident that Russell's teapot is not out there.
The greatest thing you can do is make fun of yourself in a different place to live with a healthy relationship with your child around the world and to be a part of your life and your children will be able to get you to work out.
I would argue that we must posses a nugget of certainty in order to learn and grow. Without this nugget of certainty science would be impossible. We each know this nugget of certainty, but it does not need to be shared.
One can be absolutely certain, but one can't _justifiably_ be absolutely certain.
When it comes to belief, I would say certainty and confidence are feelings. As such, absolute certainty is certainly within the realm of possibility (or at least that's more a question for psychology), because all that's required for absolutely certainty is to _feel_ absolutely certain (i.e. to believe something to be true and to not have any doubt whatsoever in your mind about it). You don't need any sort of rational justification for that feeling to exist.
But once you realise/accept that you can't justifiably be absolutely certain of anything, you may lose the ability to be absolutely certain of anything.
Although I'm not sure to which extent this is arguing semantics (but it is the semantics of how I believe most people would use those words).
There are certainly other definitions of confidence and certainty, e.g. statistical confidence levels, for which it would be more reasonable to say you can't have a 100% confidence of anything (unless that thing is conditional, e.g. "if reason is absolute, then...", although for any non-trivial claim, you'd probably still need some doubt to account for human error in applying reason or elsewhere).
So I suppose the real question here is: which definitions of "certainty" and "confidence" are you using? Or perhaps the question is what's your definition of "absolute", although I can't imagine there'd be a difference in definition there.
Truth is absolute, it's that people don't recognize it or know of the particular example(s).
Which is why we automatically get estimates wrong when asked questions like: what are the odds that they won the lottery?
If they won, it's 100%, if they didn't it's 0%. Odds don't apply to things that are already determined. Odds apply to things in the future, including finding the answer.
For instance an electron has a chance of being found somewhere. We can look for and find a lot of electrons and can calculate the chance of finding it those places. We'll say that it has a chance of being there, but that's wrong. That chance is always 100% or 0% and the possibility applies to where it will more or less likely be or will more or less likely to be found.
So, the question: what are the odds that a god exists is not a useful question because the odds are either 100% or 0%.
What we can ask is what the odds are that a god came into existence and what the odds are that we will find evidence of a god, the latter one has an answer that approaches 0% and effectively is 0% and the former question is most probably unanswerable since we need evidence of a god first.
@@stylis666 Like you're 100% nuts. What are the odds you can build a campfire out of snowballs? With a wet match in a blizzard? Hydrogen will burn in the presence of oxygen. H2O being the materialist claim as evidence to why there can be campfires of snowballs. Same with abiogenesis, we're here, so we know it happened and there is no God! Never mind we can't demonstrate it. You tell us how it happened but can't duplicate the simplest living cell with a working model in hand? I can throw snake eyes a thousand times in a row if you let me "fix" the results. Why can't you fix the results of abiogenesis? The prebiotic chemistry is completely random. The proteins are constructed of 20 specific types of amino acids by complex molecular machines made of proteins. (enzymes and ribosomes) So the odds are actually 100% there is a Creator, the naturalists/materialist origin of life, 0. What are the odds you'd be described in Romans 1:18-22?
@@VernonChitlen I shuffled a deck of cards. The odds that the cards were in the exact order they are now is 1 in 52!. That's about 1 in 8×10^67. And it all happened without my ordering the cards. The only thing that didn't happen was a miracle that duplicated a card, made one disappear or create new cards out of nothing. Causality. What can happen will happen and what can't happen won't happen. If a god existed, then we'd see cards appear, disappear and duplicate. We don't. We never did and most likely never will, because you are just imagining a god and shoving it in as a placeholder where your knowledge lacks.
Your god does nothing but show how little you know.
And don't bring Romans into this. The book was written by savages and again, you're just showing how little they knew and how little you know. If your god was loving he wouldn't require or encourage people to take things on faith. Charlatans and abusers require and encourage people to take things on faith because it makes people more vulnerable to the abuse and scams. A loving god would have a better system than that.
@Hilmar Zonneveld Seriously? What good is knowledge if it isn't truth?
@Hilmar ZonneveldApplies to everyone, yes. Why would you say you would guess that's probably no good? Can lies be true?
I think the general idea of presuppositional apologetics is pretty good and I don't think the general idea is inconsistent. Among many possible axiom systems I can imagine someone using one containing a god or gods. I don't think it's rational for an atheist to reject that god can be a possible axiom.
I think the problem is different in this case and more practical. Yes, a god or gods is a possible axiom, but if a theist wants to make it an axiom, they must make it clear what they mean by god, what properties that god has, what laws of logic and reasoning they accept and what other laws can be deducted from the assumptions about that god.
In other words, it might be interesting to ask a theist about the details concerning the god axiom. You can imagine the theist is a scientist who presents a different theory of an aspect of reality. Let's say the theist is a scientist who postulates that the string theory is true and they postulate an abstract object (string/god) to exist. Ask them what conclusions can be reached by making this assumptions which can't be reached otherwise. First of course you should check if what the theist says is not inconsistent. If it is consistent, check if there are any axioms or statements which produce wrong conclusions w.r.t. the reality. If not, compare and contrast your theory/world view to the theory of the theist and see if there can be any "experiments" which can make a distinction between your theories/world views. If there are none, you don't need to care, provided that all of that reasoning is about the world of facts and both theories predict the same observable facts.
You might read a bit about constructive empiricism. If the theist's theory is consistent and predicts the same observable phenomena as your theory/world view, there is no way to distinguish your atheism from their theism by referring to the observable world. If the theist does not accept Occham razor, you can't convince them to remove god from their axioms this way.
Of course if the theist completely rejects any rationality, it's not possible to argue with them on any level.
Or e.g. they might claim that whatever they say is true, because god is speaking through them and god always says the truth and god knows everything. You cannot refute that in any way. :P
But the moment the theist moves from the world of facts to the world of morality, you should immediately pay attention as this is where the problem with theism is. Unfortunately when you move to the world of morality, there are really no good arguments for or against moral statements. You can only convince a theist by using their own moral axioms. You cannot use yours, because yours are different from theirs and moral axioms are arbitrary. (I know you don't like it and you probably think that some sort of humanism can be agreed upon, but please, think about it. There is no "moral reality" you can compare your moral statements to in the same way that you can compare your statements about facts to the reality.). That's why you cannot really win a moral argument against a fanatic. The only way to win against a fanatic is unfortunately outside of the realm of logic.
That's why I think the best way to deal with presuppositional apologetics is to show that it cannot make any rational predictions about the real world based on the god assumption, that you cannot make without it. That's basically what you did in the discussion, when you claimed that you both accept the same laws of logic, even if Sye says they are based on god's mind rules. Who cares, really. If the only claim a theist makes is that god gave them logic, that's fine. :P The problem is of course with the other claims they make, but you can deal with these separately.
It reminds me about the Godel's ontological proof of god's existence. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_ontological_proof
The proof is correct. But it's important to focus on the axioms. What do they really say? What can be concluded from them?
@14:43 I don't see any problem with saying "I can't know if the stars are real."
The fact that there isn't anything known doesn't mean the definition isn't useful.
You've spent hundreds of hours of your life talking about gods that don't exist.
What's wrong with talking about knowledge that doesn't exist?
I am absolutely confident that I am.
Say that again in 100yrs you can't because you are not,,
Are you certain or uncertain that A is not also not-A at the same time and in the same respect? Reason, like logic, is self-validating: you'd have to use it in any attempt to invalidate it. This is Aristotle. Showing that denying the laws of logic denies even the possibility of discussion, evidence, and proof is not a weakness Aristotle's case; it's a strength.
Those of you reading this comment can be absolutely, 100% certain of 2 things, that you exist, and that you perceive.
How do you know you exist? how can you perceive if you don't exist?
How do you know your perceiving? How else are you getting this stimulus if your not perceiving?
Now is this perception 100% accurate? You can't say. Now your at 99.9999....% certain or below.
But you can be 100% certain you exist and you perceive.
I would disagree with your argument based on the fact that I can't be certain that you exist.
@@kenbrunet6120 You're correct in that in the fact you can't be 100% certain I exist, but even if this post is a fiction present in your perception, the fact that you're seeing it and reacting to it, proves you perceiving, which in turn, proves you exist.
I read somewhere "To know one thing, is to know everything." I don't know whom I'm (mis)quoting or if this is a sound statement.
Could anyone help me on the right path?
ALWAYS CHANGING - IN THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL OF ROMANS 1:18-32 & AS ALWAYS - WITHOUT A CLUE 😇🙏
Even if reason is 100% certain, that doesn't mean you can be 100% certain.
Your certainty is limited by the weakest link. Even if reason is not the weakest link, the fact that you can't show reason to be 100% is a link less than 100%.
So even if reason is 100%, your certainty is still not 100%.
i'm absolutely certain that we can't be absolutely certain about anything
The god of the gaps calls that thousandth of an inch gap "home"
I was in a debate with a mathematician about 0.99999_ being equal to 1. I didn't think it was possible. He couldn't convince me although he was very patient and tried all sorts of mathematical proofs; some of which were over my head. It wasn't until later when I thought about it in more simple terms that I found he was right and I was wrong. The simple mathematical proof was this: 1/9=0.111111_, 2/9=0.222222_, 3/9=0.333333_, 4/9=0.444444_, etc. all the way to 9/9=1. What? 9/9=1? If 1/9=0.111111_, and 9×0.111111_=0.999999_, and 9×(1/9)=9/9=1, then 0.999999_ must equal 1.
I don't recommend using this outside of debate and philosophy. If I'm on a job site measure 5 times and tell my boss I'm any accurate variation of confidence/certain he'd tell me to go measure again. (I'm reasonably certain.)
I really dislike having this type of conversation in person but still enjoyed the video. :)
On another note, "some mathematicians"? Was that just to avoid an absolute statement or is there actually a discussion whether 0.99..=1 or not?
As far as I know, there are multiple mathematical proofs that show it's true. If anybody has a link or name, I would be interested in further reading if there's opposition on that.
Embrace uncertainty. Ask any poker player. Life is about making decisions with imperfect information.
Justified Confidence
In terms of confidence level, the way I think about it, you can never have 100% confidence, because whatever level of confidence you have is necessarily based on a limited sample set, and due to the impossibility of ever having a complete sample it is always possible that a contradiction exists somewhere in the unexamined part of the theoretical whole.
I feel like there's a hole in that logic
@@kenbrunet6120
If there is I welcome you to point it out.
@@joegillian314 I did. What do you think "there's a hole in that logic" means
@@kenbrunet6120
No you didn't. You asserted that there is a hole. Where is the hole?
I want this on VR....except I need you to scream the whole thing loudly and angressively
It is absolutely certain that something exists.
13:31 should you not only recognice that we don't know and thus say: ''I am as confident as reason permits me to be''
Should be called, Peter Ungers thoughts on certainty being repeated in my own voice.
I don't think there's really a disagreement with the .99999999 = 1 thing, if we are talking about the context of the real numbers. If we are talking in a different number system that does allow for infinitesimals (wiki: hyperreal and surreal numbers), there is no doubt that 1 /= 0.999999999. It's kind of like saying "well, some mathematicians say 9+9=18 and others say 9+9=6, so there is some disagreement" only it find out later that they are working in N and Z/Z12 ("clock numbers")
@Matt Dillahunty
the first 45 seconds shows the flaw in your reasoning. Being absolutely certain there is no absolute certainty or there is absolute certainty is absolutely certain in this case. Such a demonstration is not some "cheap jab", its a proof which should put your mind in a place to understand what we mean when we say absolute certainty. The only way to get out of being absolutely certain is to deny reason itself which is what Dillahunty unfortunatley seems to do. Ironically, If you don't see reason as self evidently existent, then there cannot exist a demonstration that it exists, aswell as the fact that everything conceivable demonstrates it exists... demonstration is reason, and I don't understand how a finite mind can come to any conclusion at all "reasonable or not" if not through reason, for being conscious of something, ie to be mindful, is to exactly hold a set of intelligible properties of a state, and to be conscious of another thing is to exactly hold a distinguished set of properties from the original state, if this law did not hold there would be no consciousnesses at all, yet we clearly are counscious.
furthermore, I think it is you have incredibly naive misunderstanding of mathematics, mathematics contains no paradoxes, if it did contains paradoxes it would not be mathematics. Claiming that something like infinite sets causes paradoxes (which some people hold to) only shows that you have insight to a higher form of absolute knowledge which is unattainable, when in reality you are merely engaging in what hegel calls "picture thinking", something empiricists are embarrassingly guilty of
It seems to me that Dillahunty is being ambitious beyond his original intention of religious convictions.
_"I don't understand how a finite mind can come to any conclusion at all "reasonable or not" if not through reason"_ Perhaps this will help you understand: doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2013.01.006
@@romithromith No empirical study on epileptic seizures or subjective heightened states of mind will ever touch the notion of reason, because all you are doing in studying this is examining a.) the reported and observed subjective reation to stimuli, which is necessarily passed through the words and language of the patient, and only the patient and b.) the relational and material phenomena that is observable in terms of brainwaves, etc.
Never at any moment in time was there a direct observation of a mind in this study, and so far as I believe, you cannot observe a subject other then the one necessarily immediately apparent to you.
I've talked with schizophrenic and epileptics people before, I guarantee, given enough time I could map out some sort of graph or mathematical structure akin to a graph which describes a large percentage of their beliefs and corresponds every concept to another and relates everything in a large cohesive system.
This is a demonstration that a mind necessarily works by reason, and they only way you can avoid this is by claiming that your definition of a certain concept is the "correct one", which of course there can never be a demonstration.
Reason is the bedrock of mind because mind is exactly what reason demonstrates and describes, trying to elevate reason to a upper level contruct by claiming that there is absolute thought content that you conceive which contradicts another epileptic persons absolute thought content is a desultory treatment of reason, because we both know that there must then exist a higher web of reason which explains this disparity, and you even provided the proof of this in the form of a scientific paper.
@@fgc_rewind I take no issue with objective certainty derived through reason (such as the limit of a function), however, this topic also involves subjective certainty, including the non-demonstrable certainty individuals feel about religious beliefs.
This isn't about epileptic seizures but about the way the brain functions evidenced in these seizures. You seem so consumed with intellectual models of mind and reason that you forget that mind and consciousness arise from the brain, which evolved not for reason but for survival.
These were simply 2 case reports with subjective accounts, not powerful studies or scientific reviews of multiple studies. More comprehensive material is available but this one account (patient 2) was more articulate and addressed certainty. (I posted the article: anonymousfiles.io/p3xSWSVs/ )
Yes, we rely on indirect, subjective observations of our mental experience communicated through subjective language, correlated with objective, perhaps quantitative measures of stimuli and response. Well, scientific methods vary by field and science involves evidence, not proof. However imperfect neuropsychological research is, it has advanced our understanding of the human mind beyond black-box models and purely philosophical conceptions.
Certainty is - or can be - a product of reason. But in the experienced process of the human brain, it is also a feeling, or a belief subservient to the narrative of the self, subjective perceptions, internal stimuli, or instincts.
@@romithromith I agree, there are things that are objectively certain preciously because if they were not true, you would fall into contradiction. One of these many truths is the existence of God. You can have beliefs about Jesus, what Good is exactly and so on, but it is undeniable God exists unless you do not take reason and logic as the fundamental essence of truth.
One of the main issues with atheists is they are more interested in trying to poke holes in some random laypersons understanding of god, instead of thinking about it themselves.
"You seem so consumed with intellectual models of mind and reason that you forget that mind and consciousness arise from the brain, which evolved not for reason but for survival."
This is a baseless assertion, at best we know the objects of our consciousnesses correspond with physical states of our body in space and time. For example, I see blue when I orient by body in some certain way, I cannot see when my eyes are damaged, I have feelings of heightened awareness when my brain is damaged in a certain way. None of these prove that then therefore the matter is what is "causing" my consciousness, only that change in space and time, which is only observable by consciousness, seems to correspond with it. You have to demonstrate this to be the case, because as of now you are arguing in circles by saying that the reason you have consciousness is conveniently located as an object in your consciousness. Not to mention the obvious contradiction of why we have minds at all, or why reason works, if the purpose of our existence is survival.
All in all I don't consider certainty which is not ultimately reasonable to be certainty. Again you are understanding a notion, in this case certainty, to be something that it is not simply because you think that other people believe this notion in this way. You are thinking much more in terms of a materialist physiologist rather then trying to honestly understand the truth.
@@fgc_rewind You make assertions like a presuppositionalist. I appreciate no necessity for the existence of gods but if so, we might as well call that god or gods the universe. I would certainly not buy the Biblical account of a god.
Mind is a product of the brain, shaped by evolution for survival.
If an argument is valid, holes cannot be poked in it.
_"I have feelings of heightened awareness when my brain is damaged in a certain way."_
Which you may not be aware of when synchronous discharge is not occurring in your AIC. On the other hand, ecstatic seizures may account for the visions of Paul supposedly meeting Jesus (and a temporal lobe personality for hyperreligiousity, hypermorality and hypergraphia).
_"None of these prove that then therefore the matter is what is "causing" my consciousness... You have to demonstrate this to be the case."_
Science doesn't prove, it provides evidence. Do I really need to provide evidence of consciousness coming from the brain? Consciousness can be altered or lost by affecting that material brain. I can talk about brain nuclei, stimulation of the claustrom, drugs, errors in metabolism, epileptic foci, tumors, cerebral trauma, electroconvulsive therapy, stroke, nutritional deficiency all of which affect consciousness. When the corpus callosum is severed, two separate consciousnesses result. When a neurosurgeon stimulates a spot on the motor cortex, causing a movement, the patient typically claims he consciously chose to move the muscle.
It is unfalsifiable to disprove that consciousness can exist without a brain, but there is no evidence of consciousness existing without a functioning material brain, no evidence of consciousness existing before or after death.
_"I don't consider certainty which is not ultimately reasonable to be certainty. "_
I don't consider consciousness or reason to require a god.
_"You are thinking much more in terms of a materialist physiologist rather then trying to honestly understand the truth."_
And I likewise think you are in denial.
Easy way to show 1 = 0.999999... (repeats forever): just calculate the difference. You'll see it's 0.0000000... (repeats forever).
As for Sye, I'd argue the problem with his position is that his belief in his absolute certainty is simply unjustified.
There is nothing that I believe that I am not prepared to reassess on production of fresh evidence.
@Oners82 Yes, it does. This question is tiresome.
@Oners82 I agree with the OP's statement but am willing to reassess on the production of more evidence. And so one for any proposition, including assessing the validity of evidence. My answer was entirely correct.
How much and what form of evidence will vary depending on the proposition, however.
The question is meant to imply that the statement is inherently contradictory. It isn't, as it applies to itself just fine. Actual arguments for the existence of axioms are less tiresome, but that's not what your question was.
@Oners82 Where is the dogmatism? I have no idea what about anything I said makes me a “dogmatist”, whatever that it. I’ve acknowledged that any statement I make is subject to change with the introduction of new information, and if any statements aren’t, then the introduction of new information could show me that they aren’t. I’m not really asserting that no statement could be, only that I cannot really think of one that isn’t. And I’m only talking about statements that aren’t tautologies, though of course one could discover that a supposedly tautology is not one, or vice versa, which also does make them questionable.
When did you show I have axiomatic beliefs? What belief exactly, in quotes, are you claiming I hold axiomatically?
@Oners82 If you’re just going to accuse me of being a troll and call me uneducated then there isn’t much point is there?
I don’t hold any of what you said as axiomatic. Any of those statements, I could be wrong about, and in fact I don’t even believe some of them, but rather don’t take a position because they are meaningless.
Even “induction is reliable”, which is about as close as you are going to get to axiomatic, is only a relative belief. If the future didn’t follow from the past, I wouldn’t have any beliefs about induction.
There are beliefs that cannot seem to have evidence one way or another, but I could be misidentifying them, and when there can be no determination of truth or falsity, I don’t hold a belief either way. Just not knowing what evidence would convince me otherwise doesn’t mean I am 100% certain that the belief is necessarily true and I could not be mistaken. One could be unaware of any reasonable evidence to convince them that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead (finding and identifying his bones is not reasonable), yet that doesn’t mean they cannot be convinced that he didn’t. Many Christians who have said that have been deconverted.
So just because I don’t know the answer to what the evidence would be, doesn’t mean I am justified in being 100% confident that there is no such evidence possible, which is what it would mean to hold it as axiomatic that evidence could not exist in some cases.
By absolute certainty I mean that I'm certain beyond any rational doubt. In other words, it would be irrational of me to be uncertain.
So can we not say something as simple as I'm 100 percent certain that a square has 4 sides and a triangle has 3
Today I was mocked by a fellow atheist that is absolute certain that god doesn't exist. I told him we cannot be absolute certain of anything and he lost it..😂 He asked me if I wasn't absolute certain that my wife didn't had an affair with Nietzsche! I told him I was 99.999999999999% certain that she didn't cheat on me with Nietzsche but I could not the certain! And then the guy exploded in laughter 🤣
I am absolutely certain that Marty McFly had to hit 88 mph in the Delorean to travel back to 1955.
We can be absolutly certain of some things.
I'm absolutly certain i'm not Yawheh for exemple.
Are you absolutely certain that Forest Gump said Life is like a box of chocolates? It is now Life was like a box of chocolates.
Can God make a square circle? Most people I've heard say no, because then God wouldn't be a foundation for Reason or Logic. Could God make someone certain that He existed? Of course. He could make them perfect. If they aren't perfect then they could, by definition, be mistaken. If they aren't perfect but can't be mistaken then they are a square circle. It's not a limitation on God but a recognition of the limitations imposed by being flawed imperfect beings.
When we look at the quantum level, it is all about probability not certainty.
8 & 3/4 inches, what subliminal hint is Matt dropping here ladies.
I scrolled the comments just to see if anyone else thought that XD
I'm not sure about this video... ;)
Presuppositionalism:
Because once you’ve recognised that reason doesn’t lead to a god, simply claim that a god leads to reason, thereby making yourself unable to be reasoned with on the topic of a gods existence and hope no one notices.
Atheism: there is no reason!
...to be a theist.
Correct.
@@gavsmith1980 Are you absolutely certain?
Do I need to be?
@@gavsmith1980 Of course not. Intellectual honesty is merely an option.
Hey Matt, I have been meaning to email u a few questions I have about the nature of supernatural claim etc. Where can I find your email address?
What about the one armed guy that cought a fish this big,,
HELL & THE LAKE OF FIRE - "Certain" & ABSOLUTE - IN THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL OF ROMANS 1:18-32 🙏🤗🙏
The way presup. apologists use the word certainty in debate, I think they mean it as "Unable to question or doubt", not "very confident". I think you may be talking past them, right now.
If there were no mysteries in life, I think it would be a pretty boring experience..
You actually don't need infinities to prove that 1 = 0.999... Take 1/3. That equals 0.333... Multiply both sides by 3. Left side is 3/3, or 1, the right side is 0.9999...
@Hilmar Zonneveld You are correct, though as you said, sort of. The one I believe he was referring to was similar and was 0.999... X 10.
Matt, you are in reality, so very deep, but you are good at keeping it honest and light, so it doesn't sound too 'deepity'! 👍👏💓☮️🎃
14:40 This is the planetarium hypothesis which some people do consider seriously.
The argument that God is the foundation of reason doesn't mean that they are saying God is the foundation of certainty. I think you can still entertain the concept of proof beyond reasonable doubt while still believing God to be the foundation of reason
I would disagree.
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
a believer can state his believes about the objective nature of reality - but on that topic thats also all he can do then. period. him thinking that what he believes the objective to be is *not* him talking about the objective, he is talking about himself. that he thinks what he believes to be the case actually is the case is nice for him (it enables him to believe it, after all), but, alas - its his believe. there is no way out of this. your believe is not to be used as a way to explain the world, since your believe is not talking about the world, it is talking about what you believe about it. religion is for you and in you it has its worth - or lacks it.
I have to disagree with you on this point. People obviously can be absolutely certain. People are absolutely certain of all kinds of things, all the time, often for bad reasons. I think what you are trying to argue is that we *should not* be absolutely certain of anything. That's a completely different argument (one which I may still disagree with, but at least it's not as absurd as claiming that people "can't be" absolutely certain, when clearly they often are).
You missed the point.
Ken Brunet no I didn’t.
@@JamesBlacklock You should watch the video more carefully.
anything which uses 0, infinity or sqrt(-1) is usually a trick, using mathematics in a way that we know it cannot be used. Infinity \ (infinity-1) is exactly 1, as there is no number small enough to express the difference between it and Infinity \ (Infinity - 0). This is about the same as proving you cannot cut an apple in half, and then whip out a shotgun. It is factual of course, but only because you used a qualifier that is not a reasonable (fit for common belief) solution to fit the verb "cut." Probably why I like logic, and always distrust all things "reasonable." I think Spock should have claimed, "when you remove the impossible, that which remains, no matter how unreasonable, must lead to the most certain solution." Just like "more fair," the fact that you understand what that means points to how non-absolute certainty is by its very nature.
I think people confuse the way the word "proof" is used. There is a difference between mathematical proof and scientific proof. For example, SQRT(2) is an irrational number. We can prove that mathematically and it works for 100% of the time. Meanwhile, general relativity has been tested and re-tested. So far it has held up, but I don't think scientists would be too surprised if there is a point at which it fails, or if a better theory comes along. But we still consider relativity to be proven.
@Feiner Fug I agree completely. What I am saying is that there is a difference between mathematical proof and other "proof". I can prove that SQRT(2) can NEVER be rational. Yet I cannot prove that the theory of relativity works 100% of the time. But it works well enough to be better than anything else we have.
What if all people in the history of humamity have made a simple mistake every single time by pure coinsidense so that in reality, 2+3 is in fact 6?
ua-cam.com/video/SG7OVLYDRKA/v-deo.html
You would have to presuppose that people were flawed individuals that made mistakes during the creation of numbers and the math that goes along with it. Also, The mistakes would have to be such that it wouldn't make sense if the mistakes weren't logical mistakes but were suppositional mistakes instead.
Proverbs 3:5-6 King James Version
5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
Proverbs 3:5-6 King James Version (KJV)
5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
Hilmar Zonneveld How can a person prove a chair is going to hold he or she up?You test it that’s how.So apply that same principle to the Bible.
Here it is talking about Tithing,but the same principle apply.
Malachi 3:10 King James Version (KJV)
10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
No one holds 100%certainty what I deem to be objective truth because 1. You didn’t create existence to know everything about the thing you claim to be certain about for you to be able to say there is no chance of you being wrong 2. You are fallible and could always be wrong.
3. You are not omniscient
Anyone could be wrong except Christians, right?
In order to say that you are not absolutely sure you have to stop somewhere however arbitrary large number. 99.999999999% is not equal to 1 obviously and you cannot have an infinite number nines following the decimal point; infinity is not a number - you can't do something an infinite number of times. But it is a concept. Thus, what we can do is to show that a certain iteration approaches a certain value or gets arbitrary high or low the more iterations you caculate. That's why 99. and an infinite number of 9:s after the decimal comma is not a true number, but 1 is.
I think the same applies to logic. You may be ever so closely 100% certain, but in order to make room for a possibility to be mistaken however unlikely, you have to aknowledge you can't be 100% sure. You might say that you can be more and more confident the more information you get, but you can never access an infinite amount of information - if you could you should in fact by definition be absolutely sure - 100% - about matters.
In reality such confidence levels are nonsense. We might be able to discuss this on paper, but our minds are not finely tuned probabalistic machines.
"And in some cases the intuition, what is is gonna be more accurate, what we can do with maths"
Laughs in Quantum mechanics
Dear person I greatly admire,
Please get a pack/small herd of competent video production people you can choose from to shoot your presentations. This shoot looks pretty mediocre. Phooey!
I realize that, ultimately, how things look don't really matter, but how you look and in what setting, Does!
You're mic'd well. Yay! The rest is sad. I recommend against sad settings!
You're doing great stuff! The setting should reflect this! Argh!
Thank you for existing. Please continue.
I disagree. I could care less about the packaging. The content is the only important thing. In this case the content is audio. So as long as the audio is pleasing to the ear. He could be dressed as a goose swimming in a large bowl filled with punch spiked with tequila and roofies all filmed in a room lit like a cave in afganistan and it woudln't detract from the content.
certainty doesn't describe knowledge, it describes an emotional response to knowledge. of course, absolute certainty is possible, but it doesn't make the bearer right.
KEvron
Prove absolute certainty is possible.
@@SansDeity
i defined my terms. i just explained it as an emotional response. i don't hold it as a rational position, just possible that someone may hold the emotion of "absolutely certain," regardless of its rationality.
don't confuse "absolutely certain" with "absolutely right."
but here's your proof:
p1: we are capable of emotional responses to knowledge, regardless of their rationality.
p2: absolute certainty is an emotional response to knowledge, regardless of its rationality.
c: we are capable of absolute certainty.
KEvron
....in short, "absolute certainty" = dogma. are we not capable of dogmatism?
KEvron
@@SansDeity the first 45 seconds shows the flaw in your reasoning. Being absolutely certain there is no absolute certainty or there is absolute certainty is absolutely certain in this case. Such a demonstration is not some "cheap jab", its a proof which should put your mind in a place to understand what we mean when we say absolute certainty. The only way to get out of being absolutely certain is to deny reason itself which is what you unfortunatley seems to do. Ironically, If you don't see reason as self evidently existent, then there cannot exist a demonstration that it exists, aswell as the fact that everything conceivable demonstrates it exists... demonstration is reason, and I don't understand how a finite mind can come to any conclusion at all "reasonable or not" if not through reason, for being conscious of something, ie to be mindful, is to exactly hold a set of intelligible properties of a state, and to be conscious of another thing is to exactly hold a distinguished set of properties from the original state, if this law did not hold there would be no consciousnesses at all, yet we clearly are counscious.
furthermore, I think it is you have incredibly naive misunderstanding of mathematics, mathematics contains no paradoxes, if it did contains paradoxes it would not be mathematics. Claiming that something like infinite sets causes paradoxes (which some people hold to) only shows that you have insight to a higher form of absolute knowledge which is unattainable, when in reality you are merely engaging in what hegel calls "picture thinking", something empiricists are embarrassingly guilty of
@@fgc_rewind
*"Being absolutely certain there is no absolute certainty or there is absolute certainty is absolutely certain in this case."*
he doesn't have to be absolutely certain in order to make the claim, and he didn't say as much in the first 45 seconds or at any other time.
KEvron
When i was 24 years old i was absolutely certain that jehovah's witnesses were the only true religion and God's visible organization on earth. When i was 25 i was absolutely certain they weren't. I'm absolutely certain that while i could have been wrong at age 25, i haven't changed my mind since then, and I'm content with that. I dont go around wondering whether I'm wrong... and if in some insane circumstance i am wrong, I'm totally ok with that too, because that would be the greatest troll job ever and id have to appreciate it.
This guy is confusing confidence level with certainty and vagueness with uncertainy.
@alvarocaso8119 haven't confused a thing. Your confidence level is "how certain are you".
i am ABSOLUTE certain, that 1 + 1 is NOT 3
Only because math told you it was first
Maybe I'm not 100 % certain that there is no god or that the Earth is a sphere, but I would say that I'm 100 % certain that Paul McCartney was in The Beatles and Bill Wyman was playing bass in Rolling Stones and not the other way around. But in some matrix there might be a band called the The Beatles that were from Toronto and the members were Justin Bieber, Seth Rogen, Jim Carrey and Donny Trump.
6:02 something interesting if you don't have patience for the whole thing
I dislike the standard of "reason" you use throughout here, because reason is what we use when logic either fails us, or our ability to understand that logic fails us. This is actually used for mathematics even, such as limits / derivatives in calculus, it takes the form of special pleadings, which fails logically, but reason allows us to learn how to make ~100% perfect calculations. Reasonably certain is to know you are correct for all cases that you BELIEVE are possible use cases. In this discussion, I would say that certainty needs a better definition: it is that state of belief that we are correct, and only through disproof of one of the facts I used to justify my certainty could taint it. Even the most ardent Christian would question their faith if they found out their congregation were all atheistic actors playing a trick on them. And this shows why it is so critical to to find out WHY a person believes what they believe. Most of us are certain about our beliefs, and as we age, we can usually point to exact things that changed us from being certain to being reasonably certain or uncertain.
"Always treat others as you would like them to treat you" and "Love your neighbour as yourself." These are the Law and the Prophets of the Lord God...
“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord.” - (at Leviticus 19: 18) -
“Cease to do evil and learn to do right,
pursue justice and champion the oppressed;
give the orphan his rights, plead the widow’s cause.” - (The prophet Isaiah 1: 17) -
“Administer true justice, show loyalty and compassion to one another, do not oppress the orphan and the widow, the alien and the poor; do not contrive any evil against one another.” - (The prophet Zechariah 7: 9-10) -
“There must be no limit to your goodness, as your Heavenly Father’s goodness knows no bounds.” - (The prophet and Messiah Jesus Immanuel, at Matthew 5: 48) -
“Always treat others as you would like them to treat you: that is the Law and the Prophets.
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it.” - (Jesus Immanuel, at Matthew 7: 11-12) -
“An expert in the law, [a leading religious Pharisee] tested him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. That is the greatest commandment. It comes first. The second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself. Everything in the Law and the Prophets hangs on these two commandments.’” - (at Matthew 22: 35-40) -
@Hilmar Zonneveld
All such atrocious acts of evil were carried out by men of religion and falsely claiming they were doing it in the name of God. All such acts of evil are an abomination before God. They were not carrying out his commands and laws, but their own made up laws. It is still the same with all religions, even up to this very day!
@Hilmar Zonneveld
"Always treat others as you would like them to treat you" and "Love your neighbour as yourself." These are the Law and the Prophets of the Lord God...
“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord.” - (at Leviticus 19: 18) -
“Cease to do evil and learn to do right,
pursue justice and champion the oppressed;
give the orphan his rights, plead the widow’s cause.” - (The prophet Isaiah 1: 17) -
“Administer true justice, show loyalty and compassion to one another, do not oppress the orphan and the widow, the alien and the poor; do not contrive any evil against one another.” - (The prophet Zechariah 7: 9-10) -
“There must be no limit to your goodness, as your Heavenly Father’s goodness knows no bounds.” - (The prophet and Messiah Jesus Immanuel, at Matthew 5: 48) -
“Always treat others as you would like them to treat you: that is the Law and the Prophets.
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it.” - (Jesus Immanuel, at Matthew 7: 11-12) -
“An expert in the law, [a leading religious Pharisee] tested him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. That is the greatest commandment. It comes first. The second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself. Everything in the Law and the Prophets hangs on these two commandments.’” - (at Matthew 22: 35-40) -