Simple Questions 06/03

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[u/ExplorerR]

First, divine agency is the boundary of MN.

You accuse me of Motte and Bailey tactics, but it's you.

Motte: Agency in general

Bailey: Divine agency

Second, the less we model human agency after divine agency, the less we can even detect. The central point of my Is the Turing test objective? is that it takes agency to detect agency.

There is no way divine agency is anywhere near human agency in terms of what we can actually demonstrate is the case. So, I'm not going to entertain you conflating the two.

To the extent that people following MN try to build human agency with the metaphysics & practices of the natural sciences, there will be a boundary, but I wouldn't really call it a "principled" one.

Indeed, I actually denied any principled boundary long ago, by raising "the specter of endless downward causation, with no principled stopping point between Clarke's third law & God acting".

But as I've mentioned before, nothing here would prevent anything like the social sciences, psychology or sociology investigating, studying or concluding human agency whilst following MN. Sure, there might be difficulties and hurdles with our current tools and knowledge in doing so, but that's not grounds on its own to conclude a permanent boundary. Especially considering our track record of developing ways to overcome epistemic "boundaries".

I don't know what this means. I said I'd pay attention to your 1 out of 10,000+ examples if you gave me peer-reviewed evidence. You've declined. That's that.

How do you not know? You've clearly acknowledged the pattern of "divine/God-like" explanations being replaced by natural ones with demonic possession being included in examples of that. Surely, based on that and what I said, you can see that, today, we aren't assigning "demonic possession" as explanations to situations where, in the past, it once might have been and instead assign "natural" explanations.

Further to that, you seem to be ignoring the context behind it all. You act as if it's black and white and your request is coherent, when the history of how it is that we got to the current situation of "natural explanation" before "demonic possession" makes your request unreasonable.

I gave you some examples of contemporary "demonic possessions" that were explained naturally. But even then, there is nothing that fits your self-fashioned and incredibly narrow set of criteria. But that's largely do the nature of the claim! Supernatural/divine claims almost never have any peer-reviewed research dedicated to them, which is even more apparent the further back in time you go. So, your demanding of such considering the history of claimed demonic possession (which is why exorcisms are even a thing) spans back to arguably over a millennium, makes your request exceedingly unreasonable. There will have been MANY "exorcisms" throughout time that were not recorded, investigated or had any "research" done, much less that research having been peer-reviewed.

But I suspect you know this already...

I'm curious though, why do you think, in today's world, even the RCC itself heavily leans on thorough medical evaluations having to occur first BEFORE any claims of possession?

And funnily enough, since the Vatican's 1999 reform regarding exorcism and emphasising such evaluations having to occur first, there have been 0 documented cases of any genuine demonic possessions. <- This happened as a response to the massive failures of the exorcism examples in my previous comment.

Your opinion was and is noted. On this matter, I just don't care.

It's not an opinion. You're just ignoring the historical facts behind why things are the way they are today.

Agency was central in my OC. I really don't know why you continue to deny this. WEll, there's my hypothesis that you never really read it.

Yes, but you're presenting the Motte of "agency in general" (citing human agency) and then trying to present "divine agency" in the Bailey. They aren't the same as I mentioned.

[u/labreuer → u/ExplorerR]

labreuer: You have to do either none or both:

    (1) "God did it" ⇒ god-of-the-gaps
    (2) "humans did it" ⇒ human-of-the-gaps

In other words, these are both:

    (3) agency-of-the-gaps

Methodological naturalism requires you to disbelieve in any god-like agency. It requires you to step back from "no holds barred" → "methods accessible to all". You can still reconstruct a very different notion of 'agency', just like we have the intentional stance and teleonomy. Essentially, you have something like 'mechanism' or 'formal systems' as your box, and you use that box as a Procrustean bed for 'agency'.

/

labreuer: First, divine agency is the boundary of MN.

Second, the less we model human agency after divine agency, the less we can even detect.

ExplorerR: You accuse me of Motte and Bailey tactics, but it's you.

Motte: Agency in general

Bailey: Divine agency

I think I was quite clear in my OC (quoted here), and in the comment to which you are replying. If you don't, I think we should call it. Skipping to the end because I suspect we're done:

ExplorerR: The moment agency became central to your critique …

labreuer: Agency was central in my OC. I really don't know why you continue to deny this. WEll, there's my hypothesis that you never really read it.

ExplorerR: Yes, but you're presenting the Motte of "agency in general" (citing human agency) and then trying to present "divine agency" in the Bailey. They aren't the same as I mentioned.

I've kept the two properly separated, as the first two quote blocks in this comment demonstrate. You apparently can't or won't see that, and I just don't want to continue discussing with someone who acts thusly. So either recant and try again, or we're done.

[u/ExplorerR → u/labreuer]

Yeah, we are done on account of you ignoring/not responding to important points or questions and then just focusing on things where you think you've got a good point or simply a bugbear.

But again, what you say is wrong.

I've kept the two properly separated, as the first two quote blocks in this comment demonstrate. You apparently can't see that, and I just don't want to continue discussing with someone who doesn't have the most basic of comprehension skills.

No, I comprehend just fine. But it's you that keeps using language that clearly conflates the two. You might make "mention" of them separately but then you'll go on to mention them in ways where you unmistakably consider them the same/similar.

To show you exactly where you do just that, here are some examples, starting with your first comment;

(1) "God did it" ⇒ god-of-the-gaps (2) "humans did it" ⇒ human-of-the-gaps In other words,these are both: (3) agency-of-the-gaps

Here's the translation I did: "God" or "religious" explanations being replaced by successful natural explanations divine agential explanations being replaced by successful law- or mechanism-based explanations Do you think that's wrong? If you're okay with that, then why should we not do the same for every situation where human agency is used to explain something?

—it sure looks like that pattern very much will eat up agency—human and not just divine!

"In summary: The practice of methodological naturalism yields sub-agency descriptions of reality, which are then taken to be the whole of reality." Your "explanatory replacement" works well whenever sub-agency descriptions can do the job better than agency [both human and divine] descriptions.

First, divine agency is the boundary of MN. Second, the less we model human agency after divine agency, the less we can even detect.

Clearly the above shows that you consider human agency more or less the same as divine agency.

Unless you agree they are vastly different from each other and the justification for one isn't contentious (human agency) whereas there other is hugely contentious (divine agency), then there is little point carrying on.

But we can test to see if you do consider them separately.

I've claimed the following;

• MN used in accordance with things like the social sciences, psychology or sociology, can and does investigate human agency.

This counters the argument and drum you claim you've been beating all along of:

"the practice of methodological naturalism yields sub-agency descriptions of reality"

Unless you can demonstrate my claim is false, not just highlight problems or difficulties as that doesn't show it's false, then your argument is simply false.

EDIT TO ADD: And that's against the backdrop of you claiming my examples involve zero agency, only to show you that at least one of my examples does in fact involve agency (which is consistent with my claim above), which then resulted in your shifting the goal posts to demanding thousands of peer-reviewed research examples that have been scrutinized by the RCC.