Meeting with Bishop: Faith is a Choice

[_Hoops]

I am not sure why you want to keep playing this game. The expereince is the evidence.

Because, apparently, you have trouble thinking this through. I can't help you with that, it's on you.

This may be a concept to hard for you to understand. We evaluate the expereinces/evidence and make assumptions/interpretations of what they mean.

And your assumptions do not stand the test of logic. I can't help you if you can't see that.

This is true for all five of the senses and even internal senses like feelings. From those interpretations we can test to see if they work.

You keep saying this and has no more meaning now than it did 5 pages ago. Works for what? And let's even assume that you can define works. How do you know it works better? You have nothing to test it against.

An example is sight. Does it allow us to navigate successfully to work and back without running into things. The nearly blind person recognizes that their sight is not as reliable with the experience of running into things.

Yeah, that is a great example. Just because you and ten of your friends see a blue cup on the table doesn't mean the cup is actually blue. Blue may only exist in your perception of it. The cup as well. All of you pick it up an drink from it, then I suppose you're saying it works. But you still haven't shown any evidence that the cup exists or that it is blue other than your own interpretation of it. Because the ten of you see it with the same mechanism, the blue cup may in reality be yellow and it may be square. You have no evidence that the cup is any of these things beyond your own internal perception.

Sorry, you just can't get around that. Whether you can think it through or not.

Don't read much do you.

No.

I have never said there is. Only that our expereinces are the evidence, and how well the interpretations work out tells us if something works well or not, and is reasonable to conclude is an approximation of reality.

Why is that. What logical reason do you have for coming to this conclusion? Again, your circular argument is obvious. You use your internal perceptions to concludes something "is" then you use the same percpetions to conclude that your preceptions can be trusted to give you access to external reality.

The problem I see is that you do this as well, but just want to argue against what you already are doing.

No, the problem is that you think you see, when in fact you have no logical reason to conclude this.

I never said that. I said it is reasonable to conclude it is a better approximation of what is real,

How do you know? What logical reason do you have to conclude this? When have you tested this proposition? But even giving you this, your own words betrary you. "Better approximation". Better than what? How close is the approximation?

not that it is in any absolute way. If something works less well, then it is less likely to be accurate approximation of reality. It could still be correct, but we have less confidence that it is, or should have based on results. Not that everyone does.

This is mish-mash of rope grabbing. If your perceptions can not be trusted in an absolute way, then to what degree can we trust them? I've shown that you can not use the same mechanism as evidence that the same mechanism supports any of your claims. So now what do you do?

No there is expereince/evidence, from which we come up with assumptions/interpretations. If the A/I don't work well, then we go back and reevaluate them and adjust them and see of we get better results if possible.

But I'm not talking about what works. I'm talking about what is real.

I think you are lying.

Of course you do.

You wouldn't be here if you didn't have a position, and I have noticed you avoid saying what it is so that one cannot really critique what one has not proposed. Problem is you give enough away for others to see what you are trying to do. You also do not seem to get what I am arguing for, and what I am not arguing against. It's hard to discuss it when you don't spend much time trying to understand and then you will in the end do this little false gem

My position is this: Empiricists have no more access to what is real than spiritualists.

Now why don't you actually make your point of what you are trying to do here in order to have a real discussion. Until then I see no reason to continue playing this game.

I'm assuming you need to be spotted a few points before the game begins. Here, game is 21, you got 15 and it's your ball.

[_Drifting]

Empiricists have no more access to what is real than spiritualists.

Empiricists believe what they see, hear, touch, smell, taste.

Spiritualists believe what dead people tell them.


Anyway Hoops, on the subject of real.
Do you believe the great flood was a literal, global event that happend and that all of today's humankind stems from the eight people that survived it? (as per the Bible)

[_Chap]

An example is sight. Does it allow us to navigate successfully to work and back without running into things. The nearly blind person recognizes that their sight is not as reliable with the experience of running into things.

Yeah, that is a great example. Just because you and ten of your friends see a blue cup on the table doesn't mean the cup is actually blue. Blue may only exist in your perception of it. The cup as well. All of you pick it up an drink from it, then I suppose you're saying it works. But you still haven't shown any evidence that the cup exists or that it is blue other than your own interpretation of it. Because the ten of you see it with the same mechanism, the blue cup may in reality be yellow and it may be square. You have no evidence that the cup is any of these things beyond your own internal perception.

Sorry, you just can't get around that. Whether you can think it through or not.

I am trying hard to get my head round what Hoops can mean by the underlined bit. Are we dealing with:

(a) people with normal eyes , who have previously confirmed (using, say, a diffraction grating to create a spectrum from a white light source) that they call 'blue' light consists of electromagnetic waves of wavelength around 440–490 nm?

and

(b) a cup illuminated by a white light source (i.e. a source that gives a more or less even distribution of energy over the visible spectrum, i.e. from 390-750nm?

If both those are the case, and the viewers say "blue" when they look towards the cup, then the cup is what we call blue - i.e. it preferentially reflects light in the range of wavelengths 440–490 nm. You don't even need any eyes in this experiment: it could be done by a blind person using a spectrometer hooked up to a computer with an audible readout for wavelengths.

I hope Hoops is not simply making an argument of the form 'illusions are possible, therefore the idea of veridical perception is nonsensical'. Such an argument would appear to be self-refuting, since the notion of 'illusion' is incoherent if one does not already think there is such a thing as a veridical perception.

[_Buffalo]

Those are inactive Mormons, not ex-Mormons. :)

Yes. No true Scottish ex-Mormons would leave for anything other than what the internet ex-Mormons leave for.

Ex-Mormon isn't a synonym for inactive Mormon.

[_Buffalo]

Hoops just keeps spewing the same faulty logic over and over again. He/she is immune to better arguments. However, since per Hoops own logic he/she is a figment of my imagination, it's not terribly important anyway. :)

[_Buffalo]

Anyway Hoops, on the subject of real.
Do you believe the great flood was a literal, global event that happend and that all of today's humankind stems from the eight people that survived it? (as per the Bible)

Of course he/she does, but he/she will never admit it, because he/she can't defend it.

[_Hoops]

Empiricists have no more access to what is real than spiritualists.

Empiricists believe what they see, hear, touch, smell, taste.

Yes, they do. Now show me evidence that this in any way gives you access to what is real.

[_Hoops]

I am trying hard to get my head round what Hoops can mean by the underlined bit. Are we dealing with:

(a) people with normal eyes , who have previously confirmed (using, say, a diffraction grating to create a spectrum from a white light source) that they call 'blue' light consists of electromagnetic waves of wavelength around 440–490 nm?

YOu can stipulate what you wish

If both those are the case, and the viewers say "blue" when they look towards the cup, then the cup is what we call blue

Sorry, no. You have no evidence that the cup is actuall blue. All you have is that your internal mechanism sees blue, not that the cup is actually blue.

- i.e. it preferentially reflects light in the range of wavelengths 440–490 nm. You don't even need any eyes in this experiment: it could be done by a blind person using a spectrometer hooked up to a computer with an audible readout for wavelengths.

Assuming that these wavelengths exist independent of your interaction with them - which is a monumental assumption for which you have no evidence -- your eyes interacts with the wavelenghts to give you the perception of blue. The equation is formed and answered in you. Independently, these wavelengths may be yellow.

[_Drifting]

Empiricists believe what they see, hear, touch, smell, taste.

Yes, they do. Now show me evidence that this in any way gives you access to what is real.

I can't because you are not real...

[_Hoops]

I can't because you are not real...

You don't know that.