A question for believers

[DionysianSmile]

That we immediately see reality as it is. If we accept that we see stars X number of years ago, we have to accept we see everything as it was in the past, even if by only an extraordinary small fraction of a second.

Ahh... your thesis is that we have to deny reality?

It's just one more silly thing the materialist claims. We do not see reality now. The world does not really contain colours as perceived (Colours are just a wavelength of electromagnetic radiation). Objects are not really solid, it's just the electrons near the surface of our fingertips electrically repulsing the electrons near the surface of the "touched" object.

When discoveries are made that help clarify what words mean then it is the job of science to help define these terms, but it doesn't mean you can't use the words or that they don't have meaning. Colours are still meaningful for humans because it part of how we communicate. When my girlfriend says to pick up my brown sweater, I know what she means. Science tries to isolate is the most basic properties of a thing-in-itself object. When we find out that that light is just part of a whole spectrum, then it is hard to assume that things like "colour" are universal. Ask a dog where my brown sweater is, it may have difficulties. When we examine matter, its found there is a lot of space that that is inperceptible to us, so then we discover that there is a sense to the word "touch" that does not exactly fit the facts. But my girlfriend knows it when I touch her the right way.

We do not have a self. The self is just a summation of particular experiences. We do not have any more free will than any other object in the Universe, such as Jupiter orbiting the Sun.

Hmmm.... Not sure how I don't have "free will", though I am governed by laws. And I think "materialists" (in whatever arbitrary sense that it seems to be given) might deny that there is a supernatural and/or metaphysical meaning to "self" but does not mean that self no longer has meaning.

To say what I said before:

Well you know my opinion of the matter, which I've stated many times. Objective reality, that is to say the reality that can be measured, abstracts from our experiences. Why should one suppose there is a wholly mysterious reality, which lies forevermore over and beyond everything that we ever see, hear, touch, taste and smell?? Why suppose there is anything more to a peach than its visual appearance, and the feel of it, and its taste etc?

Because others can verify different properties of "objective reality" or your peach that you can't tell from your immediate senses (quick! pick up a peach and tell me the mass in exact grams!). If reality is not beyond our senses then what is real supposed to mean? It must be an object wholly of consciousness. Then who are other people? What is anything? I could only interpret that you must be a solipist or at least accept that as a possibility...

If you are not a solipsist, then you must be entertaining a possibility of an external world (perhaps? evidenced by you speaking in the forum?). You must at least there is some sense that there is a world where there are other beings communicating with you on a bulletin board. We all seem to be talking about the same world. Here's a test: I'll drop a pencil. I bet you can do it too! Now our worlds have something is common. And so on and so on .... keeping testing the world and if we come to all the same conclusions then we must at least agree that there is verifiable epistemology going on in both of our worlds.

If you are solipsist, "Who am I REALLY talking to in this forum? and what am I accomplishing by this devil's advocate monologue?" should be your question!!!

Once we start saying that the peach doesn't really have a colour as experienced but simply reflects a certain wavelength of light; is not really solid but is really the electrons near the surface electrically repulsing the electrons in the tips of our fingers; doesn't really have a taste because that is just a process in ones brain when biting into a peach, then we are engaged in a profound scepticism in all things. Apparently everything that we ever perceptually experience is a delusion. Apparently the "real" world, a world forevermore beyond our direct acquaintance. BTW, is the nightmarish world the scientists and materialists have dreamt up. A world devoid of colour, smells, tastes, in fact a world devoid of all that which we
directly experience!

Oh... so scientists have no aesthetic appreciation? When someone tastes a hamburger and "loves" the taste, they don't have that sensation?? Or enoy a beautiful sunset. Just because science doesn't deal with personal experiences doesn't mean people don't/can't have them. Honestly, you mostly sound like a bigot.

But it's even worse than that. The materialists would have it that we are soulless robots living out our purposeless lives in a purposeless Universe with the added promise that soon we will cease to exist forevermore. They would have it that everything we ever perceive is a comprehensive delusion. That everything that we ever see is a lie. That our loves, hopes, fears, aspirations, everything that we have ever thought, felt and experienced is nothing over and above meaningless atoms in motion or meaningless chemical processes.

How is meaning beyond a human activity? This, I think, is one of your hang ups Ian. You want to assume that there is some big sense of spiritual meaning in the universe. But why do you make that assumption? My mind still creates meaning (in your soul-satisfying sense) when I see a movie that makes cry.... I see things that move me. When I feel that people should know about truth or falsity, it has deep significance and meaning.

They deny everything and anything that appears to be truly real, and which truly matters, and substitute their lies, and then they have the effrontery to deride anyone who calls into question their wholly unwarranted crazy interpretation of reality.

Truly real and which truly matters in the world constructed by Ian.

But do you know what the worse thing of all is? It's that they have no reason or evidence for their grotesque metaphysic! We have no reason to suppose that qualia are somehow unreal, indeed we have no reason at all to even suppose a material world exists!

Yeah we can't suppose that in your Cartesian sense, but so far the evidence better suits a material reality. For a philosopher, you don't dig too deep do you? Maybe a better question is: Since there's a lot of evidence material world, what makes us want to believe that there isn't?

At the end of the day everything we believe we know about the world has to be cashed out in terms of our perceptual experiences. This so called measurable reality is itself something which is only known through experience. But if everything about the external world is only known through experience, then why go over and above what experience reveals? Why do we suppose that science is anything more than discerning the patterns in our perceptual experiences? What warrants us to suppose that this measurable reality, itself only known through experience, has primacy over our experiences, and indeed is the origin of our experiences??

Subjective Experience != Objective Reality

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=reality
Scientists refer to reality in the sense of "being actual or true"
So searching for true claims is in fact finding true claims about "reality"

If Subject Experience = Objective Reality then really talking about any "reality" is superfluous. Ian's reality != DionysianSmile's reality. What's true in your reality need not be true in mine. Then really there is no objective reality. But in that case I might as well say that I live on Mars and make of cookie dough. However we are able to communicate and find that a great deal of things that you have an experience with that I do too. Like the pencil dropping. That event is objective to us because we have verified that is something common or objective between Ian's reality and Dionysian's reality. Science accumlates all these truth claims together for a canon of knowledge. Even it I believe I'm a Martian Doughboy, there is no one else there to verify it (because actually I'm here at the comp), so neither true nor false, it's a belief.

Absolutely crazy!

To repeat what I have said many times:

Doubt thou the stars art fire;
Doubt thou the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.

Ok then. So that's it. That sums up ......?

For a philosopher, you seem not to love wisdom. Science is the best tool we have to find things that true, but you want the universe to be justifiable by only human contemplation. Good luck with the enterprise! Seems like you've missed those philosophical ideas like verification conditions? Science deals with verifiable claims. If science figures out that a claim is true in light of experimental means, then there is justification for this claim as long as it is replicatible. If not it must be false or at least needs to change and/or . Your claims are not matters of determing true and false though you think they are. Your claims seem to be belief claims and those belief claims seem to contradict reality as I know it in what I believe to be a modern sense. Why are you not looking at the wisdom of mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, etc., but instead you want to show that you can how belief statements and put them into the arena of true and false. You want the claim to be verifiable, but all you hold onto some deep emotion that is a wish for something anti-reality and the door will be open for any flight of fancy of imagination. What I think that believers misunderstand is that just because we don't think fantasy is reality that the universe is not fantastic!

 

[Irish Murdoch]

For a philosopher, you seem not to love wisdom.

Whatever led you to the idea that Ian could accurately be described as a philosopher?

 

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian

That we immediately see reality as it is. If we accept that we see stars X number of years ago, we have to accept we see everything as it was in the past, even if by only an extraordinary small fraction of a second.

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Ahh... your thesis is that we have to deny reality?

It seems that your comprehension skills leave much to be desired.

I'm saying the exact opposite. It is the materialists who are denying reality

 

[Irish Murdoch]

It seems that your comprehension skills leave much to be desired.

I'm saying the exact opposite. It is the materialists who are denying reality

Ian,

I think that by "we", Dionysian Smile *meant* materialists.

Now then Ian, how do you feel that your own development of universal love and empathy is coming along?

 

[Interesting Ian]

Ian
It's just one more silly thing the materialist claims. We do not see reality now. The world does not really contain colours as perceived (Colours are just a wavelength of electromagnetic radiation). Objects are not really solid, it's just the electrons near the surface of our fingertips electrically repulsing the electrons near the surface of the "touched" object.

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DS
When discoveries are made that help clarify what words mean

That's strange. How could any scientific discovery help clarify what the word red as commonly used means?? Are you daft??

then it is the job of science to help define these terms, but it doesn't mean you can't use the words or that they don't have meaning. Colours are still meaningful for humans because it part of how we communicate. When my girlfriend says to pick up my brown sweater, I know what she means. Science tries to isolate is the most basic properties of a thing-in-itself object.

Thing-in-itself?? Metaphysical claptrap. We have no reason to suppose a thing in itself.

When we find out that that light is just part of a whole spectrum, then it is hard to assume that things like "colour" are universal. Ask a dog where my brown sweater is, it may have difficulties.

Sure, experienced colours vary. But I would still argue that this doesn't justify the thesis that reality is not as we perceive it. In particular I would reject the notion of a thing in itself. And the task of science is merely to discover the patterns of our sensory experiences.

When we examine matter, its found there is a lot of space that that is inperceptible to us,

Imperceptible space??

so then we discover that there is a sense to the word "touch" that does not exactly fit the facts. But my girlfriend knows it when I touch her the right way.

What sense to the word touch which does not fit the facts??

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We do not have a self. The self is just a summation of particular experiences. We do not have any more free will than any other object in the Universe, such as Jupiter orbiting the Sun.

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Hmmm.... Not sure how I don't have "free will", though I am governed by laws.

You cannot be governed by laws and still have free will. They directly contradict each other. You would have to take the position that physical "laws" is a misnomer, and that they are in fact mere descriptions.

And I think "materialists" (in whatever arbitrary sense that it seems to be given) might deny that there is a supernatural and/or metaphysical meaning to "self" but does not mean that self no longer has meaning.

Any self under materialism would have to be illusionary. There can be no substantial enduring self. If you think otherwise then explain yourself.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Ian,

I think that by "we", Dionysian Smile *meant* materialists.

Oh right. Apologies to you Dionysian Smile if that is so.

Now then Ian, how do you feel that your own development of universal love and empathy is coming along?

Not very well. But this doesn't give any reason to suppose that I am wrong.

 

[Irish Murdoch]

Not very well. But this doesn't give any reason to suppose that I am wrong.

That's true. But it's a bit odd to go on about the development of love and empathy being the very purpose of life, and then to be consistently rude to people.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Ian
[To say what I said before:

Well you know my opinion of the matter, which I've stated many times. Objective reality, that is to say the reality that can be measured, abstracts from our experiences. Why should one suppose there is a wholly mysterious reality, which lies forevermore over and beyond everything that we ever see, hear, touch, taste and smell?? Why suppose there is anything more to a peach than its visual appearance, and the feel of it, and its taste etc?

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Because others can verify different properties of "objective reality" or your peach that you can't tell from your immediate senses (quick! pick up a peach and tell me the mass in exact grams!).

The term mass is one used in physics. Anyway, the point is that even in taking scientific measurements of the peach, everything that we know about it still has to be cashed out in terms of our sensory perceptions. We can never go beyond our experiences, so why suppose there is a reality lying beyond them?? Never mind supposing that this "thing in itself" reality is the only one!

If reality is not beyond our senses then what is real supposed to mean? It must be an object wholly of consciousness. Then who are other people? What is anything? I could only interpret that you must be a solipist or at least accept that as a possibility...

We know other people exist through inferring from our own case and through anomalous cognition. Our experiences whilst we are embodied exhaust what we refer to as the "physical" world, not the totality of reality

If you are not a solipsist, then you must be entertaining a possibility of an external world (perhaps? evidenced by you speaking in the forum?).

Of course there is an external world. The table I am touching now is not part of me. I am just denying the external world is material or that it makes sense to talk of its existence in abstraction from any of our sensory perceptions.

Ian
Once we start saying that the peach doesn't really have a colour as experienced but simply reflects a certain wavelength of light; is not really solid but is really the electrons near the surface electrically repulsing the electrons in the tips of our fingers; doesn't really have a taste because that is just a process in ones brain when biting into a peach, then we are engaged in a profound scepticism in all things. Apparently everything that we ever perceptually experience is a delusion. Apparently the "real" world, a world forevermore beyond our direct acquaintance. BTW, is the nightmarish world the scientists and materialists have dreamt up. A world devoid of colour, smells, tastes, in fact a world devoid of all that which we
directly experience!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


DS
Oh... so scientists have no aesthetic appreciation? When someone tastes a hamburger and "loves" the taste, they don't have that sensation?? Or enoy a beautiful sunset. Just because science doesn't deal with personal experiences doesn't mean people don't/can't have them. Honestly, you mostly sound like a bigot.

Ummm . .you're imagining things if you believe I have said this. I am saying that they do not believe what we directly experience is constitutive of reality. Their scientific description of the world is.

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Ian
But it's even worse than that. The materialists would have it that we are soulless robots living out our purposeless lives in a purposeless Universe with the added promise that soon we will cease to exist forevermore. They would have it that everything we ever perceive is a comprehensive delusion. That everything that we ever see is a lie. That our loves, hopes, fears, aspirations, everything that we have ever thought, felt and experienced is nothing over and above meaningless atoms in motion or meaningless chemical processes.

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How is meaning beyond a human activity?

I said purpose. Of course there can be a purpose to our existence.

This, I think, is one of your hang ups Ian. You want to assume that there is some big sense of spiritual meaning in the universe. But why do you make that assumption?

Well I'm not going to answer that question now. Many many many reasons. Read my almost 10,000 posts.

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But do you know what the worse thing of all is? It's that they have no reason or evidence for their grotesque metaphysic! We have no reason to suppose that qualia are somehow unreal, indeed we have no reason at all to even suppose a material world exists!

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Yeah we can't suppose that in your Cartesian sense, but so far the evidence better suits a material reality.

There is no evidence or reason for a material reality. Only spirits and their ideas exist.

For a philosopher, you don't dig too deep do you? Maybe a better question is: Since there's a lot of evidence material world, what makes us want to believe that there isn't?

There is no evidence. Read Berkeley's
The Principles

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At the end of the day everything we believe we know about the world has to be cashed out in terms of our perceptual experiences. This so called measurable reality is itself something which is only known through experience. But if everything about the external world is only known through experience, then why go over and above what experience reveals? Why do we suppose that science is anything more than discerning the patterns in our perceptual experiences? What warrants us to suppose that this measurable reality, itself only known through experience, has primacy over our experiences, and indeed is the origin of our experiences??

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Subjective Experience != Objective Reality

But

Subjective Experience = Reality

If Subject Experience = Objective Reality then really talking about any "reality" is superfluous. Ian's reality != DionysianSmile's reality. What's true in your reality need not be true in mine. Then really there is no objective reality. But in that case I might as well say that I live on Mars and make of cookie dough. However we are able to communicate and find that a great deal of things that you have an experience with that I do too. Like the pencil dropping. That event is objective to us because we have verified that is something common or objective between Ian's reality and Dionysian's reality. Science accumlates all these truth claims together for a canon of knowledge. Even it I believe I'm a Martian Doughboy, there is no one else there to verify it (because actually I'm here at the comp), so neither true nor false, it's a belief.

None of this is relevant. If you are at the same place and time as me, then you will experience pretty much the same sensory experiences as me. You're mistaken if you think that true reality cannot vary from percipient to percipient.

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Ian
Absolutely crazy!

To repeat what I have said many times:

Doubt thou the stars art fire;
Doubt thou the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


DS
Ok then. So that's it. That sums up ......?

For a philosopher, you seem not to love wisdom. Science is the best tool we have to find things that true,

Science cannot tell us what our experiences will be like. It simply deals with the patterns in such experiences.

but you want the universe to be justifiable by only human contemplation. Good luck with the enterprise! Seems like you've missed those philosophical ideas like verification conditions? Science deals with verifiable claims. If science figures out that a claim is true in light of experimental means, then there is justification for this claim as long as it is replicatible. If not it must be false or at least needs to change and/or . Your claims are not matters of determing true and false though you think they are. Your claims seem to be belief claims and those belief claims seem to contradict reality as I know it in what I believe to be a modern sense. Why are you not looking at the wisdom of mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, etc., but instead you want to show that you can how belief statements and put them into the arena of true and false. You want the claim to be verifiable, but all you hold onto some deep emotion that is a wish for something anti-reality and the door will be open for any flight of fancy of imagination. What I think that believers misunderstand is that just because we don't think fantasy is reality that the universe is not fantastic!

Non-sequitur.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian

Not very well. But this doesn't give any reason to suppose that I am wrong.
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That's true. But it's a bit odd to go on about the development of love and empathy being the very purpose of life, and then to be consistently rude to people.

Well, obviously I am not perfect. I am doomed to be reincarnated many many times

On a more serious note. The feeling of love and empathy has to be intrinsic to you. It's no good just putting on a false front and saying "oh yes that meal you cooked for me was delicious" when it wasn't. OK a trivial example, but you know what I mean.

A person might feel that the ultimate purpose of life is to make a colossal amount of money. They may fail in that endeavour. Does this mean that they were inconsistent in believing that it is the ultimate purpose of life? No of course not! LOL

 

[steenkh]

There is no evidence or reason for a material reality. Only spirits and their ideas exist.

Is there evidence or reason for spirits and their ideas? Utter nonsense to me! I have never seen a spirit and never will. And I certainly do not have any myself.

If I were to give any credence to these philosophers who in a blaze of hazy words are able to argue for anything, it would be the idea that everything is created in my own mind. Only a crazed mind like mine could invent somebody like Ian!

 

[Irish Murdoch]

Is there evidence or reason for spirits and their ideas? Utter nonsense to me! I have never seen a spirit and never will. And I certainly do not have any myself.

If I were to give any credence to these philosophers who in a blaze of hazy words are able to argue for anything, it would be the idea that everything is created in my own mind. Only a crazed mind like mine could invent somebody like Ian!

Just to stick up for philosophers for a moment, the vast majority of them wouldn't agree with Ian. I don't know any philosophers who would, and believe me, I know quite a few. We're quite a sensible bunch on the whole, and try (in the analytic tradition, anyway) to avoid hazy words in favour of very precise ones.

 

[Irish Murdoch]

A person might feel that the ultimate purpose of life is to make a colossal amount of money. They may fail in that endeavour. Does this mean that they were inconsistent in believing that it is the ultimate purpose of life? No of course not! LOL

Quite true. But if they made no apparent efforts to make some dosh, that would be another thing entirely ...

 

[Interesting Ian]

Just to stick up for philosophers for a moment, the vast majority of them wouldn't agree with Ian.

Gosh! That must mean I'm wrong then!

I don't know any philosophers who would, and believe me, I know quite a few.

Perhaps they could give some arguments against my position. Umm . .no . . that's way too much to expect

 

[Interesting Ian]

A person might feel that the ultimate purpose of life is to make a colossal amount of money. They may fail in that endeavour. Does this mean that they were inconsistent in believing that it is the ultimate purpose of life? No of course not! LOL
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Quite true. But if they made no apparent efforts to make some dosh, that would be another thing entirely ...

Not necessarily so. I don't think that follows.

You're also suggesting that I should make an effort to achieve empathy and love for all things. But it don't work like that. It's not something which you can just do. There is no particular activity which will obviously increase my empathy and love. I am content with being a kind decent person of integrity, even if sometimes a rude one.

 

[Irish Murdoch]

Perhaps they could give some arguments against my position. Umm . .no . . that's way too much to expect

Ian,

Here's what you need to do. Get your thoughts published in some peer-reviewed journals. Then they will give some arguments against your position, believe me.

But if you don't mean your own personal position in its entirety, but rather the sorts of things you believe in (reincarnation, dualism, an irreducible, non-physical notion of the self as substance), then they have produced rather a lot of arguments against your position. And you know they have.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Ian,

Here's what you need to do. Get your thoughts published in some peer-reviewed journals. Then they will give some arguments against your position, believe me.

But if you don't mean your own personal position in its entirety, but rather the sorts of things you believe in (reincarnation, dualism, an irreducible, non-physical notion of the self as substance), then they have produced rather a lot of arguments against your position. And you know they have.

But any arguments which have any merit whatsoever?? I have never seen any. Perhaps you would care to provide some links??

 

[Irish Murdoch]

But any arguments which have any merit whatsoever?? I have never seen any. Perhaps you would care to provide some links??

I've never really got the hang of providing hyperlinks to hard copies of books and journals, funnily enough. But even if I could, what would be the point? You would just declare that the arguments of these philosophers had no merit, simply because they disagree with you.

There's a startling lack of humility in claiming that arguments from the likes of Bernard Williams, John Searle, Martin Davies, Quassim Cassam, and others of their stature have "no merit whatsoever". Who knows, they may be wrong, but I'll tell you something, their arguments have merit, as do the arguments of those with whom they disagree (Descartes, Richard Swinburne, Leibniz, and so on). These are professional philosophers at the top of their game, and even when they're wrong, their arguments have merit.

And why do you think they believe what they do? Out of blind prejudice? No: they have thought deeply, carefully, and at length about their positions, and they have well-honed skills in thinking in this way. You claim simply "always to have known" what you believe in. Hmmm.

So go on, Ian, if you're that good, publish some of your stuff in a peer-reviewed journal or two, and take on some of these guys. Why don't you do it?

 

[Interesting Ian]

I've never really got the hang of providing hyperlinks to hard copies of books and journals, funnily enough. But even if I could, what would be the point? You would just declare that the arguments of these philosophers had no merit, simply because they disagree with you.

There's a startling lack of humility in claiming that arguments from the likes of Bernard Williams, John Searle, Martin Davies, Quassim Cassam, and others of their stature have "no merit whatsoever". Who knows, they may be wrong, but I'll tell you something, their arguments have merit, as do the arguments of those with whom they disagree (Descartes, Richard Swinburne, Leibniz, and so on). These are professional philosophers at the top of their game, and even when they're wrong, their arguments have merit.

I don't think so. Do you have any arguments of any merit against my position, or not? If you have then let's hear them.

 

[Irish Murdoch]

I don't think so. Do you have any arguments of any merit against my position, or not? If you have then let's hear them.

Beyond there being no reason to believe it, you mean?

You cut out the bit about your publishing stuff in peer-reviewed journals. I ask you again, why don't you do it? You'll then see arguments against you from people who specialise in philosophy of mind, etc.

So none of the people I've mentioned have arguments of any merit against you? Have you read them all? Have you read Williams on reincarnation, for instance (if memory serves, it's a paper in his Problems of the Self)?

And, since you are (a) insistent on the irreducibility of the self, and (b) a spiritually-oriented kind of guy, do you think too that The Buddha's arguments against that view have no merit whatsoever? Just wondering.

Finally, might it not be the case that you fail to see the merit in these people's arguments because you are incapable of seeing it? Isn't it at least logically possible that you're missing the merit. I'm assuming you have no training in philosophy? Might not some humility be in order?

You have one more chance to answer, then I'm giving up. I have better things to do. I need, for instance, to write papers for publication in peer-reviewed journals. I trust you will be doing likewise.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Beyond there being no reason to believe it, you mean?

You cut out the bit about your publishing stuff in peer-reviewed journals. I ask you again, why don't you do it? You'll then see arguments against you from people who specialise in philosophy of mind, etc.

So none of the people I've mentioned have arguments of any merit against you? Have you read them all? Have you read Williams on reincarnation, for instance (if memory serves, it's a paper in his Problems of the Self)?

And, since you are (a) insistent on the irreducibility of the self, and (b) a spiritually-oriented kind of guy, do you think too that The Buddha's arguments against that view have no merit whatsoever? Just wondering.

Finally, might it not be the case that you fail to see the merit in these people's arguments because you are incapable of seeing it? Isn't it at least logically possible that you're missing the merit. I'm assuming you have no training in philosophy? Might not some humility be in order?

You have one more chance to answer, then I'm giving up. I have better things to do. I need, for instance, to write papers for publication in peer-reviewed journals. I trust you will be doing likewise.

I'm still waiting for any arguments from you. Come on Mr professional philosopher. Let's hear your wonderful compelling arguments against idealism, or for materialism LOL