I’ve just now read these current posts of yours, and also re-read my previous post #280 addressed to you, and I regret the note of discourtesy that had crept in in that post. I think I’d made surmises about your intention in introducing, in your post #273, what I felt were deliberately obfuscating jargon and non sequiturs, and that impression is what I had reacted to -- and after reading these current posts of yours, I’m beginning to think my inference was incorrect. Some disagreements still remain, but those are probably straightforward misunderstandings and/or disagreements, as opposed to deliberate obfuscation. That somewhat trenchant note in my earlier post had not been called for, at all. My apologies, absolutely.
Don’t worry. Let us go to the point.
I suppose the last part of that last sentence there should read : "I will defer to what you could say"? "Defer", not "refer"?
Refer to: speak about, denote something.
With respect, I will ask you to permit me to disagree. You are not speaking of Huxley now, but you did speak of him earlier on.
I only sustain Huxley’s definition of agnosticism quoted here:
Agnosticism (from Greek a-, ‘not’, and gnastos, ‘known’), term invented by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1869 to denote the philosophical and religious attitude of those who claim that metaphysical ideas can be neither proved nor disproved. Huxley wrote, “I neither affirm nor deny the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing it, but on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it.” (Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy).
Sure, I (or you) can argue for some POV without necessarily believing in that POV ourselves. It so happens that I find Huxley’s POV reasonable : but even if I didn’t, surely I could have spoken about what I believed he meant irrespective of my personal POV?
I speak under the assumption that someone that affirms a P.O.V. is postulating his own O.P.V. This is how epistemology and philosophy work. To affirm=to maintain.
But like I said, I don’t understand your larger point here. Perhaps you would explain?
If you’d used that word, “claim”, informally like this, then I suppose my objection to it was in the nature of hair-splitting.
In epistemology no intentions. The subject is the logical subject, not a personal one. I use “claim” as synonym of “affirm”. The subject of the sentence is the subject of the claim.
But of course, if your informal use of the word “claim” was only accidental, and you did not mean to imply that this claim needed to be backed up, then all of this is moot.
In logics, epistemology and dialectics any proposition needs confirmation, axioms excepted. Irrationalism puts its beliefs as axioms.
My point was, Huxley’s meaning for “Agnosticism” was exactly the same as what you seem to mean by “scientist”, so this additional word/qualification seemed superfluous.
This is the problem: you are too stuck to Huxley. There are other kinds of agnostics. Relativists, for example.
Agnosticism (from Greek a-, ‘not’, and gnastos, ‘known’), the philosophical and religious attitude of those who claim that metaphysical ideas can be neither proved nor disproved. Huxley wrote, “I neither affirm nor deny the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing it, but on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it.” (Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy).
No hint of scientism in this definition.
To be clear : I’ll be very happy to discuss fideism with you, if you wish, in a separate discussion. But I do not see, at all, what fideism has to do with agnosticism. Fideism appears to me to be a non sequitur, when what we are discussing is Agnosticism.
I introduced fideism because some fideists like to consider themselves “agnostics”. According the definition of agnosticism they neither prove nor disprove, they only believe. Of course this is —or seems to me— different to Huxley’s agnosticism because he defend his agnosticism in terms of scientism. The difference is that the fideist don’t prove but affirms, and Huxley cannot affirm if there is not a proof.
You don’t understand the problem because you introduce the scientism in the definition of “agnosticism”. This is confusing, because there are relativists agnostics that are not scientists. (By the way: If you don’t like “scientism” use “positivism”: a philosophical system recognizing only that which can be scientifically verified).
The Agnostic -- Huxely’s Agnostic -- does not believe in God because he sees no evidence for God. In other words, Huxley’s Agnostic is a Soft Atheist.
Now you say correctly “Huxley’s Agnostic”. This is a kind of agnosticism. You call it as you want. The rest of your comment depend of your confusing use of the word “agnosticism”.
Not true. (That is, that is not the only meaning of the term ‘atheist’.)
The use of a word is not true or false, it is correct or useful. I won't discuss this with you unless you insist.
The vocabulary I added is how I use those terms. I thought it was helpful for you to know. They are consistent with the definitions of atheism and agnosticism that I have given before. Here a summarised version:
Agnosticism is the philosophical view that neither affirms that God exists nor affirms that God does not exist.* On the other hand, atheism is the view that God does not exist.* (
http://www.iep.utm.edu/skept-th/).
You can talk about hard and soft atheism if you like. I can understand that.
But the Agnostic also “has an argument against” the Hard Atheist.(...)
It is the Hard Atheist (the one who insists always on holding the Hard Atheist position) who doesn’t understand the concept of burden of proof.(…)
The ‘Hard Atheist’ affirms that God doesn’t exist.
Therefore, the burden of proof lies on the ‘Hard Atheist’ to back up his claim.
It is not the atheist that misunderstands the burden of the proof, it is you.
The burden of proof lies on the one who affirms the existence of something. Not the one that “denies” or “affirms that X is not”. You cannot prove that pink dragons doesn’t exist. The burden of proof lies on the one who affirm that pink dragons exist. It he fails you are right in saying that pink dragons doesn’t exist.
The rest of your comment lies on this essential misunderstanding.
