AJ, you'll always ignore whatever doesn't fit your preconceptions, as I said a couple of posts up.

Let's call it quits, mate. Good luck in your righteous crusade to destroy all religion with your invincible circular reasoning.

Craig Minns,

I’m afraid I can’t just leave it there. I still reserve the right to defend my claims and ideas (even at the risk of that being mistaken for an evangelism or trying to convince you of something), so I have to at least ask for an example of myself not accepting something that doesn’t fit my preconceptions, despite it being shown to have (successfully) contradicted a preconception of mine.

I don't think you can.

I suspect you’re mistaking my expectation for evidence (proportionate to the extraordinariness of the claim, of course) as "always ignor[ing] whatever doesn't fit [my] preconceptions," but I don’t see why that’s unreasonable given that evidence-based reasoning is the only reliable pathway to truth given what we currently know. That being said, I’d doubt these other models of reasoning that you refer to (whatever they are) are reliable. The “heart” is a common alternative to evidence and reason suggested by theists and dreamers, but we all know how unreliable that is. Personal revelation is proffered by theists, but as I said on the other thread, how could you know that was reliable without evidence?

What are you talking about when you suggest that my reasoning is circular? I think I know what you’re referring to, but it’s easily responded to by simply pointing out that it is an unavoidable circularity (that is not overcome by “the heart” or personal revelation) and is not much of a problem given that we live in a world in which we understand things on probabilistic terms, and in ways that still appear to be reliable. Any suggestion that that is not good enough is an appeal to an unnecessary need for absolute certainty and a red herring.

"It's unavoidable circularity"

Yes, because your view is dogmatic, not skeptical. It assumes the axioms you choose as premises for your reasoning are unassailable.

I'll simply suggest, for the last time, that you have a good read of von Neumann's and Nash's work. Follow that up with Aumann's extension of Nash's great ideas. Take the time to read some of Hameroff and Penrose's, Tegmark's, Susskind's work. Check out Deutsch's work, both on information theory and on constructor theory. Sit down for a few weeks or months and think about the implications of Popper's work. Look at the incredible work being done in artificial intelligence research on resolving the NP hard problem of abductive inference. Learn a little about Markov and the problem of induction with incomplete information. Make an effort to keep up with the work in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, economics.

Read Adam Smith, John Locke, Descartes, Leibnitz. Make a special effort to read Wittgenstein, Maturana (really read Maturana), Shaw. Learn all you can from Feynmann and Einstein about the nature of problems and the way to approach them. Do some serious meditation or at least, spend a lot of time alone.

The list goes on and on.

In other words, do some work. I've spent the past 15 years doing just that, mate and more. The first 13 or so were preparation for actually learning how to overcome the idea that I already knew how to think. I wish I'd started sooner.

Have a go. Assume all you know is wrong and start from there. Or keep going round in circles. It's up to you.

I'm not claiming to be especially smart, mate. You're probably able to do it much faster than I could.

Craig Minns,

My view certainly is sceptical rather than dogmatic.

If it were dogmatic, then it would assert certain principles as incontrovertibly true. It doesn’t, and this is where you keep misunderstanding me. I even went to the length earlier of adding the caveat: “...given what we currently know.”

All I’m saying is that evidence-based reasoning is the only pathway to truth, given what we currently know. But the fact that we can’t know everything with ‘absolute certainty’ (that red herring I mentioned before) doesn’t mean that we just entertain any old absurd notion without evidence for its reliability (and this is where I think you go wrong). It also doesn’t necessitate, however, that we reject it out of hand either, and this is what you are assuming that I’m doing. Believe it or not, it is actually possible to reserve judgement.

And if my tone suggests that I’ve taken it beyond ‘reserving judgement’, then that’s just because the “heart” and personal revelation (I can’t imagine what else you could be talking about) have had thousands of years to demonstrate their reliability and have failed hopelessly thus far. That doesn’t mean that I cannot be convinced otherwise of their reliability though. It just means that I think the possibility of that happening is (at this point) infinitesimally small; so much so that I’m happy to be laughed at in the event that I’m proven wrong because I think I have a pretty good defence.

We need to keep an open mind, but not so much so that our brains fall out.

Hi AJ,
This is going to be my last post on the topic.

Evidence-based (deductive) reasoning is not even close to being the only pathway to the truth. At best it is a means of verifying a guess, at worst it is a stultifying wet blanket on advancing knowledge.

In order for knowledge to advance, it requires the willingness to consider that previous models may be wrong and to consider "what if...?".

I've suggested some reading, which is by no means exhaustive. Enjoy.

Sorry, Craig Minns. I should have said (as I have said many times before in previous discussions) that evidence based reasoning is the *most reliable* pathway to truth. I don’t know why I said *the only* last night. I’ve even acknowledged many times in the past that following one’s “heart” can be a pathway to truth. It’s just not a very reliable one. The same can be said about flipping a coin. Inductive reasoning too can be useful by is only supposed to be probable and is less certain than deductive.

I'm all for considering the "What ifs" and entertaining the fact that current models may be wrong. At the same time though, we need to avoid falling into the trap of thinking that we mustn't know know anything just because we can't know everything,