But I haven’t been, so I do.
That’s why what you describe cannot be called “knowledge” in the same sense that science can be. It is restricted to your own mind and cannot be shared with anyone else.
Everything there is or everything within the future and past light cone of planet Earth
I agree all those things exist, at the very least in our heads. We tell ourselves stories that are models of reality. The accuracy of those models is variable.
Well then, I’m not a scientismist. On the other hand, I see no way forward to explore what lies outside the light cone nor to understand how human minds work. Regarding human cognition, we are limited by the conundrum that human minds are not sufficiently evolved to understand something as highly evolved as the human mind. (Hint: we should start with simpler subjects.)
My question remains: what other ways of knowing (gaining knowledge of what is outside (and inside ourselves) other than our sensory inputs (enhanced by scientific methodology). I’d really like one of PS theist contributors to have a go at a serious answer.
No relation to Thomas Nagel, I hope! 
I think Dennett had him bang to rights over bat consciousness. I see she’s Canadian, teaches at the University of Toronto. I’ll see if it’s available on Kindle.
Just glancing over Daniel/John’s scholar thread and his list:
…there are some things science is incapable of explaining, such as morality, metaphysics, history, the foundations of science itself, and qualia. [my emphasis]
Qualia are a good example of reification, in my view. Science can’t explain qualia perhaps but I have yet to see any coherent definition of qualia that gives the concept any reality.
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13 posts were split to a new topic: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge
I would endorse #2, and further state that, if we can know anything about those areas, it will only be thru those ways of knowing that I listed. There are no others.
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7 posts were split to a new topic: Alan and Dave
No answer to my simple question, Daniel?
What is the question?
Well, this is actually complicated question and goes back to the empiricist vs. rationalist debate. It is not a matter which is simply settled by pointing to “science” and “logic” like Faizal Ali said above. Neither is it simply a question of whether there are more tools than our senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, etc.). The problem is, what do we do with the data we get from our senses? How do we interpret it in relation to reality?
See here: Rationalism vs. Empiricism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
To simplify, the empiricists believed that all knowledge derived from the senses. The rationalists held that there can be innate knowledge. Today, it is common with some people to assume an extreme form of empiricism which reduces knowledge to that only gained by direct sense input - the extension of that which is empirical investigation using the scientific method. This seems to be what @AlanFox is getting at. This is the type of empiricism which often gets accused of being “scientism.”
In this stripped-down picture of reality, metaphysics is no longer relevant. Consciousness is often explained as either an illusion or not-existent (i.e. eliminativism). All knowledge is ultimately a form of empirical science, the gold standard of which is physics.
Needless to say, I don’t hold to this picture of reality. Sense data is important. But I think metaphysics is still a legitimate field of study. One can abstract metaphysical principles based on basic observations, from which one can legitimately argue for true conclusions which might not be verifiable by science. An example of this is the argument for the existence of God based on the Principle of Sufficient Reason. This is not a purely “innate knowledge” argument - it is based on the observation that everything we see around us had a reason for its existence. However, the conclusion - that there must exist a necessary being - is not something that is verifiable by science. We can’t design an experiment to judge the truth of this argument. Does it count as knowledge? I think it does. Is it different from regular scientific knowledge? For sure.
Finally, going back to the original question, I also am reminded of Plantinga’s solution to this problem. Besides the five senses, one could posit that we have a sixth sense - a sensus divinatis, or ability to sense God that God Himself implanted in us. Thus, we could have true knowledge of God just like we have knowledge of various things using our other five senses. Belief in the existence of God becomes a basic belief (or axiom in our worldview), just like belief in the existence of other minds, or belief in the existence of a mind-independent world.
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I’m not really clear why you replied to me based on your original statement in the thread.
For me, the question to ask on your first post would be “how do you know these are the only ways of knowing?” As I see it, answering such a question would require philosophical discussion. The books I listed in my reply to Alan were philosophical intros.
But since you do not list philosophy in your ways of knowing, I am not clear on how we could hold a fruitful discussion.
Thru science, we know the sun is larger than the earth.
Thru math, we know the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
Thru logic, we know the following syllogism is valid:
All men are mortal
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Thru direct observation, I know it is not raining in my city this morning.
Please give an example of something we know thru metaphysics alone.
But we don’t. This is just a hypothetical claim Plantinga has made, with no good evidence thru logic, math, science and direct observation to conclude it is true.
You might disagree. But how would you try persuade me that you are correct, other than thru the ways of knowing I have already listed?
Philosophy is a discipline that attempts to use the ways of knowing that I have listed. It is not, by itself, an additional way of knowing.
If you disagree, tell me of something we know thru philosophy that involved something other than logic, math, science and direct observation.
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You are correct. I feel comfortable with the label of empiricist. And I’d question whether there is such a thing as innate knowledge - unless we are talking of inherited innate behaviour. I’d reject the label of “scientismist” because I don’t think scientific research gives us answers to questions of philosophy or ethics (or basically any "why’ questions).
Here I agree with @Faizal_Ali in thinking this is an impossible challenge. In fact I’m still not convinced that logic tells us anything new about reality; rather it is a useful tool in building mathematical models.
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What does?
Note: I am asking about whether there is something that actually answers these questions, in the way that science answers the question “Which is larger, the earth or the sun?”
I am not talking about generating several possible answers, none of which can be definitively demonstrated to be correct. Nor about generating interesting and intelligent debate which, nonetheless, never arrives at a conclusion that can be agreed upon.
But within logic itself, we can say certain arguments are definitely true, and others definitely not. I am not even talking about whether this knowledge pertains in any other context.
For instance, it has been suggested here that one other “way of knowing” is something called " a sensus divinatis, or ability to sense God that God Himself implanted in us." I would contend that this is not even remotely a “way of knowing” in the sense I am am discussing. If we have a hundred people in a room, we can all look out the window and achieve unanimity in the knowledge that it is raining outside. Can we do the same with this sensus divinatis?
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You know, philosophers wonder about the same question. So they invented a new field – metaphilosophy – to philosophize about it.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=metaphilosophy
However, I don’t think anyone has wondered if one can know something in metaphilosophy. That’s where the spade turns, I guess, as W would put it.
In any event, metaphilosophy is a meta too far for me. I prefer to limit my discussions on philosophical matters to people who don’t use italics as you used in your above when referring to philosophy.
So I am going pass on your invitation.
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As well, some rationalists think that we can gain new knowledge to limit or contradict a scientific domain simply by armchair contemplation.
For example, I think EricMH and other ID theorists are this type of rationalist about biology. They appear to think that doing armchair mathematics about information and probability trumps scientific investigation of how the world constrains the mathematical models that are useful for biological explanation and prediction.
So kudos to the biologists and other scientists in this forum and in others who continue to fight the good fight against the rationalist extremists and their acolytes!
(For clarity: As far as I can see, Daniel has nothing in common with this type of rationalism).
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As I said above, the Principle of Sufficient Reason is an example:
There is an explanation for the existence and attributes of anything that exists.
Related to this (but slightly different) is a more ancient principle, ex nihilo nihil fit:
From nothing, nothing comes.
Now about the idea of sensing God:
I don’t feel I need to persuade you to justify my own position. Imagine if someone has been color blind since birth. What kind of evidence can you offer that person to show that the conscious experience of redness exists?
- Maybe you can point out structural differences in his eyes versus yours.
- You can show him testimonies of many people who can see red and describing their experience of it.
Still, this is all just circumstantial evidence and nothing compared to also having the direct experience of it. A colorblind person could rationally conclude that redness doesn’t exist; that people who think that it does are just seeing an illusion, or misinterpreting their experience of it. Maybe they just have a heightened sense of detecting light and dark compared to colorblind people, or that non-colorblind people have a psychological tendency to overreact when seeing objects like tomatoes, apples, and certain chili peppers. 
Similarly, to show that a sense of God exists to someone who doesn’t have it:
- I can maybe point to structural differences in the brain between people who have this sense and people who don’t. I remember reading that there are studies that religious and non-religious people have different neurological structures.
- I can point to testimonies of people who have sensed God and describing their experience of it.
Note the important point here though: I don’t need to have the ability to argue that redness exists to a colorblind person in order to rationally justify my belief that redness exists! I only thought about the above arguments a few minutes ago, but I’ve been justifying in believing that redness exists since I was a child. The same could be applied to the case of sensing God.
Are you implying that for a statement to be knowledge, everyone has to agree that it is true?
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