I'm going to play with your intuitions a little

[xxrainiaxx]

LOL fatty seems to think he is hot. what a douche bag

[PompousCircumstance]

somehow stumbled across this video last night, and loved it. i haven't followed this youtube debate, but i'm a huge fan of this argument of yours

[TheCartesianTheist]

Hi Michael. Actually I think I'm being misrepresented here. I certainly would not consider myself to be an intuitionist. I am a rationalist but that does not mean that I reject empirical evidence. Not at all. But I do admit its limitations. I certainly do not hold to naive realism as you are exposing with the experiment and in fact use examples like this in my videos such as making reference to the McGurk effect. We may, therefore, have more in common here than you thought.

[socrates856]

Good exposition of the epistemic side of intuition. Sorry I missed the video when the debate was actually fresh.

[Zaunstar]

Very well done! I like how you summarized it at the end.

[MichaelPayton67]

@Zaunstar Thanks man!

[MyPisceanNature]

In a battle of wits, I shall bet on Team B every single time :).

[wisdominnature7]

I'm on team B

[ABARANOWSKISKI]

you have got to be kidding me ! our intuitions about things are TERRIBLE ! our intuitions tell us the world is flat ! :/

[WickedJargon]

Are you still at CFI i havent seen you at any events recently

[Lucem2]

But Intuition can be powerful in that it process raw complex data much faster than pure analytical thinking.

Art is an example of it.

You can deconstruct master pieces of art and submit them under critical analysis and be surprised about its underlying 'logical' structure.

The Muses live in the intuition realm of thinking.

Now is there something called God intuition?

[migkillertwo]

Oh man, I'm gonna have to use Huemer, Craig, Moreland, and Kant in my video response to this. This is gonna be fun as hell!

Anyway, two quick points

1) I really think you are vastly overstating how much weight I give to intuitions, and I think the same is true for Ali. I'm willing to put my foot down and say, absent other data to "test intuitions", a rational subject should rule in favor of his intuitions, and not much further.

2) It still looks, to me, that you are using intuition...

[migkillertwo]

...when testing one intuition with observation. It happens to be the case that I'm using my feeling of "obviousness" when I infer truth from observation, and this inference, I'm sure you will agree, is a justified inference.

Now I absolutely love this video response because it touches on so many issues in philosophy that I care about in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and epistemology. I will enjoy responding to this.

[MichaelPayton67]

@migkillertwo I'm looking forward to hearing back from you. Glad you enjoyed the response.

[Theologica37]

It really wasn't wise throwing me into the intuitionism side, I'm not quite sure why you did this. I don't recall ever defending the epistemological views associated with this position.

[MichaelPayton67]

@Theologica37 It was a guess. That's why there's a question mark beside your name on the list.

[Theologica37]

@MichaelPayton67

Right.. I saw that, I'm just not understanding why you made that guess.

[unixhead101]

Intuitions, or a hunch, or a gut feeling are all meaningless without some form substantive evidence. Intuitions can be wrong, and frequently are.

[belfastfreethinker]

Very interesting I will be following this closely

However, there is an argument that Team A could use:

An entire community or society of believers share the same intuitions The individual faith experience becomes a collective glue This does not make it correct of course But it does reinforce their sense that they are experiencing a collective truth

C S Lewis and W L Craig talk about ; objective moral values; witnessing the Holy Spirit

To me it's a delusion

To them it's evidence

[WilliamPbrane]

When we see a leaf out of the corner of our eye blowing towards us our brains make several false assumptions about it before we finally conclude that it is in fact a leaf.

Acting on incomplete data or our intuition can aid in survival but its usefulness in ascertaining reality is very unreliable without more consistent data.

That's the problem with trusting intuition on very little data it's very likely you could live your life running from dangerous leaf like creatures.

[insidetrip101]

I don't think this is an argument against intuitions, I think it is an argument against merely accepting intuitions at face value.

I don't think any sophisticated view defending "intuition" really disputes this. I think intuitions are necessary to break the fact/theory cycle. This does not mean intuitions should not be tested, but if you don't ever have a new intuition or insight into a set of data, then Copernicus never would have broke out of the geocentric model.

[Gnomefro]

This is obviously true also on an individual level, and to call their nonsense an epistemic viewpoint is to give their embarrassing failure of reasoning far too much credit. It's a mathematical fact(Bayesian decision making) that their decisions will be poor when beliefs in their belief network are not backed by other beliefs, such as empirical data. They simply have no tool to determine the quality of those beliefs. In fact, they even refuse to try to do so.

[Gnomefro]

There's another huge flaw in the argument presented from Dawahfilms and Migkiller. They don't seem to grasp that our experience of reality literally is the definition of what we call reality. Not in the naive sense that would fall apart by some people being color blind, but in the sense that if we can't experience manifestation of a claim in any way, the claim is indistinguishable from the non existent and should therefore be fundamentally irrelevant to our decision making process.

[gothatfunk]

"intuition is a guess that turns out to be right. when it's wrong, its a metaphor" ~ from Babylon 5

[DLandonCole]

I very much enjoyed this video; I'd include myself in Team B. For whatever it's worth, which probably isn't much as I'm only beginning to get my head around this, I like Popper's falsification and critical rationalism.

One of my problems with this debate, though, is how casually people throw around terms like 'rationalist'. This is a philosophical debate, an epistemological debate, and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect participants in it to have a little precision in their choice of

[DLandonCole]

@DLandonCole words. It bothers me when people call themselves 'rationalists' but mean 'empiricists'.

Anyway, good video.

[MichaelPayton67]

@DLandonCole

Thank you! I would actually really like to hear your Team B arguments if you feel so inclined to make a video on this. I really feel like this in the lynchpin for many theist arguments that we've been seeing recently.

[zarkoff45]

I'm on your side, but the term "intuition" is vague - all it means is that you can't put together a chain of logical steps and observations that led you to your conclusion. By those lights walking, picking up a cup, and most everything we do is intuitive. It took robot makers decades to figure out how to make a robot walk - something a child learns easily. So, I think "intuitions" can be trained.

[sonnygll]

I'm definitely on team B. Most of my arguments have a great deal to do with that.

Those are some good points, I quite agree.

[pumkinpi2]

This will be useful in a conversation I'm have with a theist friend. Thanks for the post.

[curlew0609]

What it boils down to is that the universe is not obliged to conform to human thoughts/beliefs/intuitions. There are too many things (like the earth going around the sun) which are contrary to our intuition but are empirical fact for anyone to take human intuition as a serious argument. "We don't need no stinkin' evidence" just means "we know we don't have no stinkin' evidence to support our irrational claims."

[patienceking]

You are looking mighty gangsta today my dear sir.

[MichaelPayton67]

@patienceking Thanks brah, i keep it real

[zarkoff45]

@MichaelPayton67

Was that phrase "justified true belief" your phrase, or migkiller's? Someone's Plantinga influence is showing.

[dropkicktype]

It's been reported (sorry, can't say by whom) that the deeper anthropologists travel into pre-modern hunter gatherer locales, the more current events and other information flowing from the urban periphery becomes explained in terms of animist spirits and other voodoo claptrap. I think it's an understandable epistemic move for "our" theists, in contrast, to simply resist applying empirical thinking to their religion in order to not be lumped in with witch-doctors in Borneo.

[michalchik]

I spent about 5 years studying neuroscience in graduate school. IMHO this is a resolved issue that amateurs just confuse with their own ignorance. There is empirical work on the quality of intuition as a way of knowing. It works pretty well when in the realm of phenomena that we have a lot of experience with. It fails in systematic ways we are beginning to understand and it is almost useless in areas outside experience. "Blink" the book is a pretty good layman's introduction to the subject.

[UncomfortableSilence]

@michalchik Yeah, I'm going to have to agree with you on this one. I may not have the experience you have, but the number of years I have spent in psych have taught me enough about the brain to doubt some of the things we humans seem to just trust.

[PaperNun]

I think CartesianTheist closed his accnt.

[MichaelPayton67]

@PaperNun Why? That's a shame.

[askirojadu]

@MichaelPayton67

I'm guessing its because his "debate" with dark antics got a little too heated.

[MichaelPayton67]

@askirojadu That's unfortunate. It seems like a bad reason to leave.

[PaperNun]

@MichaelPayton67 Do'no. someone told me afew weeks ago.

[beechgrovejoe]

You miss the point, that either everybody is right or everybody is wrong and it doesn't matter which. The place team B always fails is that they cannot prove they are right any more than team A can. Therefore team B is just as deluded as team A when they claim that team A is wrong. It's like two teams of kids arguing over who's daddy has a bigger dick.  The reality is that they are never going to get the daddies together in public naked to do the measuring :-)

[Epydemic2020]

What intuition does you think people have when we look at that illusion? (perhaps we are defining "intuition" differently).

[MichaelPayton67]

@Epydemic2020 People are having the sensation that the yellow dots are disappearing when they really aren't. Under migkiller's framework there is not a clear difference between intuition and observation and that might be where you're getting tied up.

[Epydemic2020]

@MichaelPayton67

I think intuition would be "our senses have the capacity to inform us of reality". The observation would be "The dots are disappearing". That particular example would be showing how our senses mislead us, not our intuitions about our senses having the capacity to inform us of objective reality.

[Skindoggiedog]

@Epydemic2020 So our senses CAN inform us of reality, but do not always do so?

Okay. Under your framework, how do we determine what makes an accurate, or an inaccurate, observation about reality?

[UncomfortableSilence]

@Epydemic2020 Can I just ask what exactly you define an "intuition" to be?

Would an intuition be a intrinsic thought about our senses, cognition, etc?

I mean, what do you mean by "our senses have the capacity to inform us of reality?"

[Epydemic2020]

@UncomfortableSilence

An intuition is any type of hardwired or innate knowledge (not just like a gut reaction). An example of an intuition in reguards to our senses would be that when our senses tell us something, we automatically conclude it is info about an external world (until we come across a reason to doubt that).

when I say "our senses have the capacity to inform us of reality?" I just mean that when I throw a ball at your head, you assume there is really a ball hitting you.

[AlainG80]

@Epydemic2020

Gut has neurons scientificamerican com/article cfm?id=gut-second-brain, what you describe is a philosophical definition. These definitions, including yours, aren't quantified. Unquantified concepts can't be deductively deduced. The only way to reliably and rationally asses them is to use statistics (correlation coefficients). Which is exactly team B's position. At least from the members that understand the quantum revolution. DawahFilms critique is mute, his position is ignorant.

[Epydemic2020]

Intuitions are one way of knowing thing and are relevant in the field of epistemology, but Dawahfilm's argument about not needing evidence for God is still a bad argument.

[migkillertwo]

@Epydemic2020

I'd like to hear your thoughts on Plantinga's reformed epistemology, for Ali's arguments are awfully close to his.

[Epydemic2020]

@migkillertwo

I have never read plantinga. One of the problems w/ dawah's argument is that he is not arguing that we are hardwired to believe in God, or that God's existence is intuitively self-evident, he is ultimately just arguing that "humans have a tendency to infer the existence of God".

[Drgamedood]

@Epydemic2020 Really? I'd have figured a philosophical christian like yourself would have read at least one of Plantinga's books.

[migkillertwo]

@Drgamedood

It's like reading a book by Immanuel Kant, dense as all hell; even we don't have time to read through them.

[MichaelPayton67]

@migkillertwo

Am I getting a response sometime soon?

[migkillertwo]

@MichaelPayton67 sadly, no. I grossly under-estimated the work entailed in these last few weeks of the semester.

But I do plan on responding after finals (or after my last papers are turned in depending on how much work is entailed), so hold me to it.

[MichaelPayton67]

@migkillertwo Yeah, you seemed so excited to reply. I'll be looking forward to it.

[Epydemic2020]

@Drgamedood

I actually don't read much at all about apologetics. Most of the books I read are written by atheists.

[zarkoff45]

@migkillertwo

The ideas behind Plantinga's reformed epistemology seem to have filtered out into the theist meme-sphere without credit much the same way that George McCready Price's and Henry M. Morris's arguments for scientific creationism filtered out and degenerated into the youtube creationism of nephilim-free.

DawahFilms himself is probably not aware of Plantinga's influence on his thoughts. He denied being influenced by Plantinga in the comments section of his video.