As for Eliezer’s views, this and the entire sequence it comes from seem relevant.
But that’s not the a priori irrational part: The a priori irrational part is where, in the course of the argument, someone pulls out a dictionary and looks up the definition of “atheism” or “religion”. (And yes, it’s just as silly whether an atheist or religionist does it.) How could a dictionary possibly decide whether an empirical cluster of atheists is really substantially different from an empirical cluster of theologians? How can reality vary with the meaning of a word? The points in thingspace don’t move around when we redraw a boundary.
But people often don’t realize that their argument about where to draw a definitional boundary, is really a dispute over whether to infer a characteristic shared by most things inside an empirical cluster...
That’s very far from a complete answer.
Not every term denotes an empirical object. If you want to find out what an abstraction like “atheism” means you have to look at a definition.
Pure nominaliam doesn’t work. There has to be some metaphysical basis for the ways in which objects have properties and resemblances, even if there is a layer of arbitrary categorisation on top of it.The
“Clusters in thingspace” sounds like an Aristotelean territory-driven theory. “Bleggs” sounds like an arbitrary human made category. So it it not clear which theory he is backing here.
That’s very far from a complete answer.
Not every term denotes an empirical object. If you want to find out what an abstraction like “atheism” means you have to look at a definition.
Pure nominaliam doesn’t work. There has to be some metaphysical basis for the ways in which objects have properties and resemblances, even if there is a layer of arbitrary categorisation on top of it.The
“Clusters in thingspace” sounds like an Aristotelean territory-driven theory. “Bleggs” sounds like an arbitrary human made category. So it it not clear which theory he is backing here.