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Limits of Science

lifegazer said:

That's not true. You interact with sensed-things all the time. They exist within your awareness. You have no idea what an external reality of things is, so how can you interact with it?

I'm interacting with you and everyone else on the internet, but all these things exist within awareness, and my knowledge of them is discerned via my sensation of them. So, my interaction with you and the internet is an interaction of my rational and emotional responses to sensed-things. A completely internal interaction.
Hey, did you notice the use of the word belief in both my first sentence as well as the last which, you didn't bother to comment on? Ha! I even got you fooled! :D


Iaccus said:

However, like you say it's strictly up to our senses to justfiy this belief.
In other words it's totally sensory perceived, right?
 
Yahweh said:

I'm going to go out on a limb and say Iacchus is a person who exists outside of your mind. Or I could use myself as an example, I do indeed exist outside of your mind as well. I think the interaction involves a few external components (myself, Iacchus, your keyboard, computer, world wide information superhighway, etc.).
Hey you're right, I sure don't feel like I exist within the awareness of his mind, in the strictest sense that is. However, I realize that the only way he can perceive of me is through his awareness which, I think holds true for just about anyone. ;)
 
Let's take the faculty of what is considered sight as an example.
Let us assume an exterior world and the existence of a a body as we perceive it.

From that assumed exterior world a certain stimulus we call light enters our eye focuses itself on the retina.

The retina begins reacting to the different wavelengths of the light by firing neurotransmitters across neuronal synapses.

Eventually the pattern of the firing reaches the occipital lobe in the back of the brain and the patterns are interpreted as images of various kinds. This is sort of like what happens with our computer modulators demodulators or MODEMS.

Now, what our mind has received is a pattern of neurotransmissions. Nothing more. This applies to all the senses as well. That is all that the brain has to work with. The brain cannot touch what is out their directly. It must rely on the organs of touch, smell, taste, hearing and sight in order to form a concept. That concept is of an exterior world.

But let's imagine for a moment that our mind itself can produce such a world without the need of the sense organs. Can it? Of course it can. It does so all the time via dreams. When we dream are totally convinced that we are in a real exterior world. Nothing indicates that we are locked within ourselves.

So the question then becomes, if the mind can do this while we are supposedly dreaming, who is to say that it is not doing it all the time but on a more intense mode?
 
Iacchus said:
Depends on what you wish to construe or, misconstrue as evidence.

Only scientific evidence really matters. Your philosophical "evidence" is nothing but a bunch of BS.
 
Perceptions are just interpretations of outside experiences and influences. They do NOT make up reality. This is evidenced in the mere fact that people's delusions get themselves killed. Some people can percieve a nice sweet fluid that they are drinking as being "healthy" when it can be poison in reality. They never percieve the dangers and it kills them. Snipers are experts at getting people killed that don't percieve the threat. This FACT that perception does not make reality has been tested and observed and evidenced a multitude of times over. The belief that perceptions create reality doesn't have any evidence to support it.
 
Iacchus said:
However, I understand that he did a lot of work with dreams as well as archetypes and myths. Whereas if he did not carry this over into the spiritual realm, then that's only the next logical step. Why? Because it does exist.

You've never read Jung, you told me so, so you have no basis to say what his "next logical step" was. Shut the fsck up about it.
 
thaiboxerken said:

Only scientific evidence really matters. Your philosophical "evidence" is nothing but a bunch of BS.
Is this what you claim? You certainly can't prove it to me now can you?

Oh, and if a person is crazy, how do you prove to them that they're crazy? In fact how do you prove anything to anybody, crazy or otherwise?
 
Piscivore said:

You've never read Jung, you told me so, so you have no basis to say what his "next logical step" was. Shut the fsck up about it.
Never knew Christopher Columbus either. Doesn't mean I haven't heard of him though.
 
thaiboxerken said:

Perceptions are just interpretations of outside experiences and influences. They do NOT make up reality. This is evidenced in the mere fact that people's delusions get themselves killed. Some people can percieve a nice sweet fluid that they are drinking as being "healthy" when it can be poison in reality. They never percieve the dangers and it kills them. Snipers are experts at getting people killed that don't percieve the threat. This FACT that perception does not make reality has been tested and observed and evidenced a multitude of times over. The belief that perceptions create reality doesn't have any evidence to support it.
Oh, is that to say what you do (based upon what you perceive) doesn't affect anybody else? Don't you realize that everything is based upon how it functions interiorly? How would it work in other words, if everything existed from the outside in?
 
Piscivore said:

"Heard of" and "knowledgable about his work" are two different things.
Is reading the items on a recipe card the same as the ingredients that go into the loaf of bread? So what if I have intimate knowledge of the bread, but don't have the recipe card? Now am I to be faulted for not going to cooking school? Is that what you're trying to say?
 
Iacchus said:
Is reading the items on a recipe card the same as the ingredients that go into the loaf of bread? So what if I have intimate knowledge of the bread, but don't have the recipe card? Now am I to be faulted for not going to cooking school? Is that what you're trying to say?

Is me telling you my grandma had this incredible piecrust recipe the same as reading it? Will eating the pie enable you to bake it? Will you be able to guess the secret ingredient? The precise ratio of ingredients?

If someone gives you a pie that they claim was made with her recipe, and it wasn't, would you know?

You haven't read Jung, you have second-, third- and fourth-hand knowledge of his work, and thus you have no basis on which to claim that your views are a "logical" progression of his. You cannot be "intimately familiar" with his work without reading it, and your education level is not relevant. As I've said before, I do not have a degree, either, yet I have read his work- not that I'm claiming to be either an expert nor "intimately familiar" with his theories either.

Being that you are willfully ignorant, the only subjects with which you can claim to be "intimately familiar" are your own delusions, which are demonstrably legion. ;)
 
Piscivore said:

Is me telling you my grandma had this incredible piecrust recipe the same as reading it? Will eating the pie enable you to bake it? Will you be able to guess the secret ingredient? The precise ratio of ingredients?
However, we aren't referring to your grandmother's recipe here. And yes, while the notion of Jung may be comparable to going to cooking school, indeed, it still doesn't belie my ability/inability to bake a pie from scratch.


If someone gives you a pie that they claim was made with her recipe, and it wasn't, would you know?
But then again the recipe may not be as important to me, and/or necessary, as you think it is?


You haven't read Jung, you have second-, third- and fourth-hand knowledge of his work, and thus you have no basis on which to claim that your views are a "logical" progression of his. You cannot be "intimately familiar" with his work without reading it, and your education level is not relevant. As I've said before, I do not have a degree, either, yet I have read his work- not that I'm claiming to be either an expert nor "intimately familiar" with his theories either.
I am not standing in your shoes, and neither are you in mine.


Being that you are willfully ignorant, the only subjects with which you can claim to be "intimately familiar" are your own delusions, which are demonstrably legion. ;)
To thine own self be true.
 
Iacchus said:
So tell me (in reference to the last two replies), can you explain to me what chocolate tastes like? It's not possible, unless I taste it for myself, right? But let's say you don't know what it tastes like, and I do. Now, does that make me crazy or, the least bit delusional for having tasted it myself? Not hardly. However, it could mean somebody else who, insists on levying all these charges and additional nonsense, is only out to prove one thing, how much they don't know? If not to anyone else, then at least to me? ...

Also, if one person can experience the taste of chocolate, that means others can experience the taste of it as well. However, it's not up to me to get others to take the first bite. Got it? ;)

Maybe what you tasted wasn't chocolate....

Better bring out science. Because you don't want to leave things you ingest to pure faith.

If I told you chocolate tastes like chicken would you believe me on faith or use science to figure out whether I'm telling the truth or not?

It's funny that you use people's scientifically proven knowledge of chocolate in making your point of the shortcomings of science.
 
The sensory experience argument is a philosophy that, while technically true (to a degree), is irrelevant to anyone except solipsist. (Is that the right word?)

The concept is that no matter what you experience, it's all within your own experience; you have no way of knowing for sure that there isn't some strange source of sensory input that you're receiving fooling your mind (a la Matrix).

However, unless something is about to go horribly wrong with this 'Matrix' the philosophy is irrelevant. Otherwise, no one would ever advance, or even survive, for fear and doubt about the 'real world'.

The simple fact, skimming off the veneer of philosophical nonsense, is that our senses provide us sufficient consistant data that we can make reasonable and fairly accurate assumptions about the nature of the real world - and since we continue to receive consistant details, we can reasonably expect to continue to do so.

As to 'sensory experience of Yahweh"... the fact is, no one currently alive has accurate sensory experience of Yahweh, Yeshua ben Yosef, or any other significant religious entity (internal sensory experience, i.e. a 'feeling' or 'thought' aside). Therefore, Yahweh doesn't fall into the same category as Iacchus or myself.

Furthermore, those who claim the Bible is the 'Inspired Word of God' and therefore proof positive of God's existance, fail to acknowledge or perhaps are unaware of the fact that the Bible is a collection of about 10-20% of the 'holy writings' of the Christians and Jews, the remainder having been rejected at various points by the Church (composed of human beings), and the remaining texts have been analyzed and proven to be written at different times and by different persons that the texts themselves claim. The entire Christ story, in fact, appears to have been written almost entirely after the death of Yeshua ben Yosef, and get more fantastical the longer after his death they were written.

Apparently, God tends to inspire tall fish tales...
 
zaayrdragon said:

However, unless something is about to go horribly wrong with this 'Matrix' the philosophy is irrelevant. Otherwise, no one would ever advance, or even survive, for fear and doubt about the 'real world'.
No, this only pertains if we wish to get to the root of the matter which, apparently we don't. ;)
 
zaayrdragon said:
The sensory experience argument is a philosophy that, while technically true (to a degree), is irrelevant to anyone except solipsists. (Is that the right word?)



Exactly -- and that sums up the whole thing. Good job.
 
Once again, Ian shows his astounding intellect and why he is a true "gift" to civilization. :rolleyes:
 

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