Meeting with Bishop: Faith is a Choice

[_Buffalo]

The colour orange occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum at a wavelength of about 585–620 nm, and has a hue of 30° in HSV colour space.

Wavelength 590–620 nm
Frequency 505–480 THz



Any more Belmont Apples?

[_Hoops]

Buffalo,
Good to know you're not a serious player anymore. Will save me a lot of time in the future.

[_Chap]

So you think it possible that blue is not a color?

What kind of evidence would you need to settle the question of whether it is or is not a color?

No, that's not what I'm saying. There may indeed be a color blue. But the fact that you see blue, call it blue does not make it blue. It exists outside of your experience of it. Your experience of it does not define it, it exists whether you experience it or not.

Ah. You think that if someone says of a color (will you allow us to talk about colors as if we were agreed that they are proper objects of discourse?) "that is blue" I am doing more than simply giving it a name?

I on the other hand don't have any problem with the fact that when I say of your avatar "That is Hoops", all I mean is that "Hoops" is what you and I have tacitly agreed to call it. Your having called that avatar "Hoops" makes it Hoops. No further metaphysical complications about what the avatar may or may not do 'outside my experience' are entailed.

Why can't it be a as simple as that if you and I agree to call a given color 'blue'?

[_Buffalo]

Buffalo,
Good to know you're not a serious player anymore. Will save me a lot of time in the future.

I don't take you seriously. There's a difference.

I have that in common with the entire forum, by the way.

[Guest]

Ah. You think that if someone says of a color (will you allow us to talk about colors as if we were agreed that they are proper objects of discourse?) "that is blue" I am doing more than simply giving it a name?

In a sense, I suppose. But the point is that the color blue exists or does not exist independent of your experience of it. After all, you only see it. Because you experience it in your mind, through the mechanism that allows you to see and interpret blue, does not make blue exist or not exist.

I on the other hand don't have any problem with the fact that when I say of your avatar "That is Hoops", all I mean is that "Hoops" is what you and I have tacitly agreed to call it.

Yep, we agree that in order to have a working society we agree that hoops means....

Your having called that avatar "Hoops" makes it Hoops. No further metaphysical complications about what the avatar may or may not do 'outside my experience' are entailed.

I don't think so. Me calling it hoops doesn't make it exist or were I to not give it a name does not make it not exist. You see the avatar, you read it with your eyes, you read with your eyes what I write under that banner, but you only know hoops through those three experiential points. That experience does not make hoops exist. You are taking it on faith that the reality of hoops coordinates with your experience of hoops.

[_Hoops]

Buffalo,
Good to know you're not a serious player anymore. Will save me a lot of time in the future.

I don't take you seriously. There's a difference.

I have that in common with the entire forum, by the way.

k

[_Buffalo]

In a sense, I suppose. But the point is that the color blue exists or does not exist independent of your experience of it. After all, you only see it. Because you experience it in your mind, through the mechanism that allows you to see and interpret blue, does not make blue exist or not exist.

As I've already demonstrated, "blue" can be determined empirically. You don't even need to see it. There is a specific wavelength and frequency associated with blue that can be measured. You continue to ignore that fact.

[_Chap]

But the point is that the color blue exists or does not exist independent of your experience of it.

After all, you only see it

That's what colors are about. You see them. End of.

Your having called that avatar "Hoops" makes it Hoops. No further metaphysical complications about what the avatar may or may not do 'outside my experience' are entailed.

I don't think so. Me calling it hoops doesn't make it exist or were I to not give it a name does not make it not exist. You see the avatar, you read it with your eyes, you read with your eyes what I write under that banner, but you only know hoops through those three experiential points. That experience does not make hoops exist. You are taking it on faith that the reality of hoops coordinates with your experience of hoops.

I only need one experiential point of access to a screen avatar: seeing it on screen. That's all there is to it.

As with the problem you purport to see about naming colors, you are apparently demanding that experiences should be invalidated unless they give direct access to a metaphysical 'reality' of some kind.

However, you have consistently failed to indicate how one would know that one had succeeded in gaining access to such a 'reality', or what it would be like if we ever got there. In your posts, the word 'reality' seems to function merely to convey the notion of 'something that I am going to demand, but which I shall refuse to describe so that I shall always be able to claim that no-one has yet given it to me.'

I don't see the point of that at all, unless is your aim is always to be able to declare your opponents in the wrong without needing to engage with their positions.

[_Hoops]

That's what colors are about. You see them. End of.

Yep. You are limited by your own mechanisms. You say there is only one aspect (Buffalo has offered another, but the point remains) of blue necessary to experience it. But you don't know that. The REAL blue may involve much more than just seeing it. You don't know that what you see of blue is all there is to blue.

I only need one experiential point of access to a screen avatar: seeing it on screen. That's all there is to it.

And from this experiential point you can determine what? Certainly not that blue actually exists. Or that the color "dquash" does not exist. The only thing that you can determine unequivocably is that you see something that we both have agreed to call blue.

As with the problem you purport to see about naming colors, you are apparently demanding that experiences should be invalidated unless they give direct access to a metaphysical 'reality' of some kind.

Absolutely not. I am saying that the evidence atheists/agnostics use to deny God or miracles is as faith based as a spiritualists claim to commune with God.

However, you have consistently failed to indicate how one would know that one had succeeded in gaining access to such a 'reality', or what it would be like if we ever got there.

I'm not positing anything. You (not really you, empiricists in general) claim that because your five experiential points do not give you any evidence of the metaphysical, then you reject it. Yet, you are relying on proofs that have not been established for your rejection. So your faith, just as dogmatic as mine, by the way, is just placed elsewhere.

In your posts, the word 'reality' seems to function merely to convey the notion of 'something that I am going to demand, but which I shall refuse to describe so that I shall always be able to claim that no-one has yet given it to me.'

I think real would mean: that which exists.

I don't see the point of that at all, unless is your aim is always to be able to declare your opponents in the wrong without needing to engage with their positions.

[/quote]That's up to you. I've engaged this position: science is the only way to determine truth or what is real. That is clearly wrong.

[_Buffalo]

That's up to you. I've engaged this position: science is the only way to determine truth or what is real. That is clearly wrong.

Engaging in lame Simon Belmontisms in order to hide your faith from criticism by denying objective reality is in no way "engaging the position."