Never read a bible that said Adam and Eve were trying to perceive all true things. How did you get that impression?
But if we are meant to pursue truth like Adam and Eve did, doesn’t that lead us to fall into sin?
It seems to me you’re contradicting yourself here.
That’s my exegesis of the text. If man knows evil; he more fully knows the truth, but then he has separated himself from good, that is God. Here: Genesis 2:16: And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Genesis 3:4-7: 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.
I should have said we should be pursuing that truth which is good. That is worshiping God. Not just pursuing truth. Yes, I was contradictory.
I look at how we go about making sense of the world. And it turns out that we have to make pragmatic choices, which implies that we could have made different choices.
Well, sure, there are objective facts of the matter. But “fact” and “objective” are human terms. What we see as objective facts might not matter at all to other organisms.
How could the human meaning of “true” be applicable to cats and dogs if we could not perceive them?
Yes, we can have lots of true statements about numbers, but we do not perceive numbers. We can agree as to true statements about numbers, because we have some clear rules about how to use numbers.
We also make statements about fairies and gremlins. But there’s not much agreement about which statements are true, because we do not have clear rules about fairies and gremlins.
Truth seems to be about our use of rules.
We do have rules about cats and dogs, and about how to use those words. If we did not perceive cats and dogs, we would not have such rules and there would be no true statements about them.
We do have rules about the moon and about craters on the moon. And we can apply those rules retroactively to a time before there were humans. So we can have true statements about that. But if humans never perceived moons, then the word “moon” would have no meaning and there would be no possibility of true statements.
I think he has that covered. According to Hoffman, the illusions are in the form of icons that work well to aid our fitness. And being able to avoid oncoming cars would seem to be fitness related.
I always find these sorts of things downright odd. This falls very much in a class of “universal solvent” arguments – you may know the old riddle. The alchemist comes to the King with a bottle of a universal solvent which instantly dissolves anything it comes into contact with. How do you know that the alchemist is wrong? You know he’s wrong because the solvent would dissolve the bottle.
If our senses cannot perceive reality, then we have no reason to trust any of the judgments they make. But as all judgments we make are ultimately based upon sense impressions, this doesn’t just mean that our scientific views fall away – it means that all of our views toward everything fall away and that we do not know whether anything, from dogs to gods, is real. Created, evolved, whatever – it makes no difference. Our understanding of reality is based upon sense impressions, and so this is always so. The argument, like a universal solvent, dissolves not only its target, but everything including the reason to present the argument.
Now, that forms the subject of many a lecture in freshman philosophy. But it’s not hard to see that it does not form the core of terribly many useful orientations toward the world. All conceptions of the world, theistic or not, rest upon the postulate that at least SOME of what we perceive with our senses bears some relation to some underlying reality. That is a postulate without which one cannot do; without it, you’re down to pure reason, and that pretty well stops at cogito ergo sum, leaving you quite lonely and with nothing at all to think about.
Now, reasoning about the world will always rest upon such unprovable postulates. But that the world does seem to behave in ways that bear out the postulate is some comfort to anyone terribly lost in that particular sort of doubt. Samuel Johnson’s “I refute it thus!” may not work as an application of formal logic, but it isn’t a bad way to look at the matter.
OK, that could be true, and still captures what I was trying to express. As long as reality is related to outcomes we are OK. 
What does it mean for an organism to “see reality as it is”? What, in particular, does it mean in Hoffman’s proof?
Yes, but “but”, and “and”, and “are”, and “human” are also human terms. It’s all human terms. What other language are we supposed to be using? I’m not interested in what matters to other organisms.
I don’t care who’s language we’re using, or whether we’re human, or what you mean by human. Words have referents. My point is the word “moon” has a referent. It is a label, a name, for an entity. The entity is not controlled or shaped or caused to exist by the use of the word, or it’s definition. The entity(the referent, the actual moon) will exist and continue to exist regardless of whether people look at it or use the word “moon”. I hope we can agree on this much.
When I open the fridge and see the milk has gone bad, I don’t think the milk comes back into existence, checks the date, realizes it’s been out of existence for two weeks and then decides to be sour and have clumps in it. I think it was still in existence even while the fridge was closed and I was out of town, and that it(the milk) went through the process of going bad over some span of time while nobody was looking.
I think you’re needlessly focused on the relationship between human language, and the things about which we communicate with that language.
If I go blind tomorrow and I can’t find my keys, are they still made of metal? Is it still true to say they’re made of metal? Yes, yes it is. That’s how it can be applicable to cats and dogs even if we can’t see them. Of all the weird questions pondered in philosophy, this one is to me the least interesting or sensible.
Sure, if we had never before encountered cats and dogs, and never imagined cats and dogs to exist, then we would not be making statements about cats and dogs. Okay, fine. But would that mean that there were no cats and dogs? Or that cats and dogs did not exist, or had no properties? Does an onobserved cat have no weight, and transparent fur?
I’m losing track of what we are arguing about.
We mean something when we use the words “cat” and “dog”.
If you are saying that whatever those words refer actually existed before there were humans to use to words – then I agree.
If, however, you are saying that if no being had ever used “cat” or “dog” and that there was no meaning to be associated with “cat” and “dog”, that nevertheless cats and dogs would have existed – well that seems like nonsense.
I suspect that we somehow got into some sort of miscommunication.
The problem with the first statement is that there is no way to calculate this probability if we cannot “see” reality. Its basically a nonsense statement.
I would agree with @nwrickert with a conditional -
If God did not exist, then there is no Truth (with a capital T) or Reality (with a capital R) which we can see. We see what we see… and other creatures see the same stuff differently… and neither perception is closer to the truth than the other. (Because there is no True way to perceive reality).
I believe Hoffman would argue against you as well - that conscious agents still perceive reality. He still believes in truth without God, as far as I understand him.
yeah i understood his point. He believes some objective truth exists, but it would be impossible to know because of how all organisms are limited in their perception of Truth.
The problem is that, without a conscious arbitrator of truth, there cannot be any objective truth. For example, i could perceive a color as blue, and somebody elese could perceive it as green.
What is the Truth? Both are true, because only sentient beings have a concept of truth and there is no ultimate authority to point to the Truth. (Assuming athiesm).
In a theistic perspective, God is the arbitrator of ALL Truth and hence He is the Truth.
I think we already went over this with later comments, but you’d have to listen to his theories to be able to be “quite certain” of what he’s saying. Until you’ve listened to a couple of interviews or tell me that you have, I’d assume you’re only quite certain because it doesn’t seem very intuitive.
I think I overstated my case a little bit regarding no longer being an atheist. One could decide in another cause (that has nothing to do with God) that in addition to evolution by natural selection somehow sustains life.
I agree with you on the last point, as I am a Christian.
However, I don’t think Hoffman believes that truth is impossible to know. From his interviews I think he believes truth is only known in our consciousness and not in the physical world at all because the physical world is not reality only an interface.
I, as a Christian do not believe that, as the Bible tells me creation gives enough evidence of God for man to be judged. He sustains it; it is real. And since I do not believe that evolution by natural selection is the only cause that sustains life, I’m not compelled by his theorems to believe any otherwise.
Okay, good. That was basically it.
Agreed, if nobody has come up with any definitions for those words (and for the purpose of this discussion, we imagine there is none), then to say that cats and dogs exist would be to speak nonsense. Like saying hlegynapositanners exist.
That doesn’t seem to follow. God’s non-existence does not entail there isn’t some way reality is, and that different organisms don’t percieve things differently where some see more of it than others.
That still doesn’t follow. You need to distinguish there being objective truths, and you being capable of knowing them. There can be objective truth without you being capable of finding out. There may be a fact of the matter with respect to what is inside of some armored safe you can’t open. But your inability to open it and look inside has no bearing on what really is inside that safe. I don’t see why God’s existence is necessary for there to be a true fact of the matter with respect to what really is inside that safe. What you’re saying doesn’t make sense.
Truth doesn’t just involve something existing. It involves identifying its nature.
Same for reality. Reality is not independent of its description. Any concept of reality would involve a description of the reality… and that would require someone capable of making said description.
Both concepts require an observer.Things could exist without an observer, but it would need an observer to qualify them in terms of “reality”; “truth” etc.
Hence the requirement of God as the final arbitrator of “Truth” or “Reality”.
I did listen to the interview, and he’s not saying that. One problem is that both him and the interviewer are being unclear in how they express themselves and overstate certain conclusions, only to then later turn around and contradict themselves by pulling back on the extremity of some of their claims.
For example they start by saying evolution doesn’t allow you to see “the truth” or “reality as it really is”, then later they say evolution only allows you to see the part of reality/truth that you need in order to survive and reproduce.
One problem is they don’t really rigorously define what they mean by these terms like “reality as it is”, or “the truth”, and they don’t give limits or anything. This kind of playing fast and loose with language leads to a lot of misunderstanding and confusion.
But Hoffman seems to have described the same principles as the situation detailed with not seeing the air molecules but instead seeing the bus coming at you behind them. So no, his evolutionary game theory simulation does not show that my statement is absolutely false.
Then you and I understand different things by that word.
I think it is. I’m sure the moon is still there even if you and I don’t exist to describe and label it. If I describe some place I grew up in a book, and then later burn the book, have I changed the place I grew up? Is it then suddenly on fire? I don’t think so.
Okay, well I don’t buy that because it seems like nothing but a blind assertion to me.
Why would it need that?