Q&A: Basic Axioms
Basic Axioms
Question
You said in one of the appendices of God Plays Dice that if there is a person who truly does not believe in God, there is no way to convince him that God exists, because that does not follow from his assumptions. I wanted to ask: in your experience, are there really such people? If so, it follows that there is a variety of assumptions, and it seems to me that the only conclusion that necessarily follows from that is a postmodern one. Because if there is person A with such-and-such assumptions who reached such-and-such conclusions, and person B with different assumptions who reached different conclusions, how do we know who is right? After all, neither of them has logical flaws, and their assumptions were chosen randomly (according to the structure of the brain, no?). Hope you understood something.
Answer
I understood very well. In my opinion, assumptions are not chosen randomly but through observation with the “mind’s eye.” I elaborated on this in my book Truth and Stability.
Discussion on Answer
Absolutely not. I argue that assumptions are grounded in facts, and the correct facts are the ones that are correct. Someone who does not assume the correct facts is simply mistaken, but I did not say there are no such people.
Right, but if there are such people, then how can you know that you are the one who is right and they are mistaken? Or do you also just assume that your assumptions are the correct ones?
And another question: if there are people with different assumptions, what caused them to have different assumptions if not something random? It seems to me that with this approach you are defending your position because it was the one randomly chosen from among all the positions (on the level of assumption). Where did I go wrong?
That is a meaningless question. If that is what I think, then obviously in my opinion I am right. I may be mistaken, and therefore it is worth checking again. But after I have checked, that is my view, and therefore I think I am right. In every argument you have with someone, don’t you have a position? In every argument do you ask yourself two questions: what do I think? who says I’m right? To my mind, that is the same question.
What causes differing opinions is that one is right and the other is mistaken, as in any factual dispute. In a factual dispute too, you can ask what caused each person to think as he does. And the answer is that there are different reasons for mistakes. So too here.
By the way, in my opinion there is a way to convince people that God exists, but not by means of a logical argument (since that is always based on assumptions). There is a way to change their point of view—and rhetoric is responsible for that. I elaborated on this in Truth and Stability.
Thank you very much! This turned out to be more interesting than I had hoped.
So does that mean that all people have the same assumptions? I just bought Truth and Stability and I’m about to start it after I finish the last appendix of God Plays Dice 🙂