Three Questions (Split from, ‘Vogel Responds …’)

[Physics Guy]

Also, you are assuming that grains are evaluated on their actual content. Many mopologists admit quite freely that the conclusion they are looking for is the same as their (non-negotiable) starting assumption. Adding or subtracting grains is irrelevant if the grain is mis-interpreted, ignored, or arbitrarily devalued based on the requirement that it must support one's starting position.

I'm not sure whether weighing evidence differently is a separate possibility, or whether the idea that belief based on evidence is a multi-valued function is supposed to represent that same thing.

At least up to a point, I think that just having two belief curves could indeed represent the subjective weighing of evidence. The number of grains could be considered an objective fact, corresponding to how much net evidence, (somehow) objectively weighed, one has seen. How it is subjectively by each person weighed would then be their belief response. If you have this kind of "heapsteresis" response, then once you've decided that the pile is a heap and switched to the upper curve, your perception that it is a heap is hardly affected at all by reducing the number of grains, even though before you switched into heap mode you were confident that those same lower numbers of grains were not heaps.

I'm not completely sure that one can absorb the weighing of evidence into belief-in-response-to-evidence in that way. Conceivably there is some important way in which the two processes are independent. I'm inclined to try to go with the simple 2D graph as a model for as long as we can, though.

[Marcus]

...I'm not completely sure that one can absorb the weighing of evidence into belief-in-response-to-evidence in that way. Conceivably there is some important way in which the two processes are independent...

If by that you mean there is not necessarily any correlation between a multitude of individually subjective assessments based on supernatural beliefs and a single agreed upon objective assessment of evidence, i would agree completely. The only correlation might be across religions where members have agreed upon necessary starting conditions. But a generalized corresponding correlation of LDS subjectivity with objectivity? I doubt it. A negative correlation between mopologetic subjectivity and objectivity? Yes, we see that all the time. Sadly.

[MG 2.0]

Once again MG takes an opportunity given to him to actually lay out a proposition, and he chooses to stray from the point.

MG, please "explain just how the heck Mormonism can at all rightly fall under the Sorites paradox."

Sigh. We'll try this one more time.

MG, please "explain just how the heck Mormonism can at all rightly fall under the Sorites paradox."

As a layperson who reads this stuff ‘on the side’ I make my own connections. These are the connections I made in my mind as I read “Black and White Thinking” and then ‘likened it unto myself’ as I’ve thought about it over time.

Correlations, but not absolute one for one parallels. What I got from reading the book may have been more or less a limited view of what the Sorites Paradox is all about.

I don’t expect that you will find anything worthwhile to consider in what I’ve expressed in regards to faith vs. doubt.

I have enjoyed what Physics Guy has had to say. I can see a few connections between what he is rather eloquently saying and some of my own thoughts which I find difficult to express as articulately as I would like. Those that are trained to work and think within the sciences are SO INTERESTING to listen to and try and understand and learn from.

Thanks Physics Guy for taking the time to express your thoughts on this backwater religiously inclined forum. I enjoy reading your stuff.

It helps me as I try to deepen my own understanding of the world we live in and my place in it.

Regards,
MG

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Sigh. We'll try this one more time.

MG, please "explain just how the heck Mormonism can at all rightly fall under the Sorites paradox."

As a layperson who reads this stuff ‘on the side’ I make my own connections. These are the connections I made in my mind as I read “Black and White Thinking” and then ‘likened it unto myself’ as I’ve thought about it over time.

Correlations, but not absolute one for one parallels. What I got from reading the book may have been more or less a limited view of what the Sorites Paradox is all about.

I don’t expect that you will find anything worthwhile to consider in what I’ve expressed in regards to faith vs. doubt.

I have enjoyed what Physics Guy has had to say. I can see a few connections between what he is rather eloquently saying and some of my own thoughts which I find difficult to express as articulately as I would like. Those that are trained to work and think within the sciences are SO INTERESTING to listen to and try and understand and learn from.

Thanks Physics Guy for taking the time to express your thoughts on this backwater religiously inclined forum. I enjoy reading your stuff.

It helps me as I try to deepen my own understanding of the world we live in and my place in it.

Regards,
MG

I see. So, we can infer from your answers that inserting Mormonism into the Sorites paradox wasn't thought through. That's fine.

Taking the example a bit further, it's also difficult to use the paradox with religion, Mormonism in this case, because the heap we're talking about doesn't really have a set value, and each individual grain, whatever it is, might have more value than another for the individual. For one person, removing a few grains makes the entire heap worthless and, I guess, 'not a heap', while another may value the heap to such an extent that you could remove every single grain and it doesn't change the perception of the grains or the heap that was.

In other words, the heap is beside the point. Whether or not it exists or whether or not the grains are 'true', as it were, fails to provide a context through which Mormonism is or isn't what it claims to be.

- Doc

[Gadianton]

If the pile was static, one could make that argument

My observation had nothing to do with whether the pile is static or dynamic. It was about using a skeptical thought tool (the pile) to indefinitely delay any critical blows to your belief. Turning mundane discussions of evidence into tortuous philosphical investigations -- what is truth anyway? -- is a tactic only employed by desperate pseudoscientists, criminals, and snake oil salesmen.

But as far as the pile itself goes, boy, is your pile getting complicated.

According to the paradox, it's difficult to tell when individual grains become a pile or when a pile of grains cease to be a pile. But now not only do we not know when individual grains constitute a pile, but there are static and dynamic piles, and different kinds of grains, some that count towards a dynamic pile forming and some against -- it's really, really confusing MG.

[High Spy]

If the pile was static, one could make that argument

My observation had nothing to do with whether the pile is static or dynamic. It was about using a skeptical thought tool (the pile) to indefinitely delay any critical blows to your belief. Turning mundane discussions of evidence into tortuous philosphical investigations -- what is truth anyway? -- is a tactic only employed by desperate pseudoscientists, criminals, and snake oil salesmen.

But as far as the pile itself goes, boy, is your pile getting complicated.

According to the paradox, it's difficult to tell when individual grains become a pile or when a pile of grains cease to be a pile. But now not only do we not know when individual grains constitute a pile, but there are static and dynamic piles, and different kinds of grains, some that count towards a dynamic pile forming and some against -- it's really, really confusing MG.

GomersPile.space

[Dr. Shades]

GomersPile.space

Your link doesn't work.