An Apple

[_Buffalo]

Emotion isn't an external sense organ. Emotions tell you all about what's going inside you. The five senses are what tells you what's going on outside you.

I am not sure I agree with this, but let's say that I do:

Why is what's going on inside less important or less reliable than what's going on outside?

They're both interpreted by that one single organ (point of failure), the brain.

What's going on inside is very important. Your emotions tell you about your current emotional state. But they're not a magical detector of invisible outside forces. Simon's emotions can tell him a lot about Simon, but that's their useful limit. If you want to know about the world outside Simon, you'll have to rely on your five senses like everyone else.

[_Morley]

Emotion isn't an external sense organ. Emotions tell you all about what's going inside you. The five senses are what tells you what's going on outside you.

I am not sure I agree with this, but let's say that I do:

Why is what's going on inside less important or less reliable than what's going on outside?

They're both interpreted by that one single organ (point of failure), the brain.

Emotions are generated by the brain. Like thoughts. These are not the same as sensory input. Sense information can be independently verified by another person, or may be even measured by machine.

Simon, what's the point of this argument? You feel happy about having an apple, so the Church is true? You said this was going to be worthwhile.

[_asbestosman]

Some have said that emotions aren't reliable -- but they are filtered through the mind, just like touch, smell, sight, hearing, and tasting. What makes emotion unreliable while input from our five senses reliable? They're filtered through the same mind -- the same brain.

Who said the five senses are reliable? Hallucinations are a fact, as are deceptions (magic tricks), and even faulty memories. I don't see why emotion is any less reliable than the five senses. One simply needs to understand how to appropriately consider the experience. The fault most people are speaking of with emotions being unreliable is that pleasant feelings are not necessarily indicative of truth. What you likely have in mind is that a particular emotional experience is in fact self-veridical. That may be, but you must first argue on behalf of the existence of self-veridical phenomena.

Keep in mind that while most people may accept the sense of an apple as self-veridical in daily life, they have also verified this experience against other experiences such as memory, other people, and so on. You might argue that you can verify religious experiences against the experience of other fellow-believers. However, doing so opens you up to the objection that others believe in a different faith--some having left yours to join it even though some have left others to join yours. Taken together that calls into question just what the proper interpretation of the religious experience is. I do not believe that truth is discerned by a simple majority vote. However, where there is much disagreement or opposition to one's understanding of truth, it is prudent to investigate the source of those objections (and by source, I don't mean Satan).

[_Simon Belmont]

You feel happy about having an apple, so the Church is true? You said this was going to be worthwhile.

This statement has been repeated more than once, and I am sure I don't need to remind you about the other side of the coin -- namely the lower-rung posters like Joseph, Joey, jon, Polygamy Porter, and The Mighty Builder creating threads like "church spends billions on city creek" therefore the church is false.

So, if you would like to stop oversimplifying my argument we can proceed.

[_Simon Belmont]

Still at it, Simon?

Are you just stupid, or do you have some better answer?

It is difficult to have an answer when one does not know the question.

In other words: what are you talking about?

[Guest]

-- namely the lower-rung posters like Joseph, Joey, jon, Polygamy Porter, and The Mighty Builder creating threads like "church spends billions on city creek" therefore the church is false.

Really? That's what the church spending billions on city creek means?

[_asbestosman]

Ken: Alex, I'll take Life, the Universe and Everything for 400
Alex: 42
Ken: What is the meaning of an apple?

[_honorentheos]

Who said the five senses are reliable? Hallucinations are a fact, as are deceptions (magic tricks), and even faulty memories. I don't see why emotion is any less reliable than the five senses. One simply needs to understand how to appropriately consider the experience. The fault most people are speaking of with emotions being unreliable is that pleasant feelings are not necessarily indicative of truth. What you likely have in mind is that a particular emotional experience is in fact self-veridical. That may be, but you must first argue on behalf of the existence of self-veridical phenomena.

asbestosman hit this nail exactly on the head.

Simon, I think when you honestly examine the question of how you know that you are holding an apple and it is real, you must run into odd gaps in your ability to answer the question. I think serious examination of one's own thinking must reveal a startling amount of mental gap-filling in order to make such simple things as holding an apple efficient so it doesn't take up unjustifiable amounts of energy and time. Most of the process you have asked others to describe is built on assumptions that, upon reflection, are not verifiable.

For example, can you honestly describe to me the moment in your life when you first realized what an apple even was? Is there a real pre-apple moment in your life that you can accurately recall? Leaving the apple for something more recent, we rely on reconstructed memories to form the associations for all things we interact with using our senses. Can you describe a moment from around the year 1999 when you first associated the idea of a thing of your choosing with the thing itself?

I mean the question as a way of exploring your theory, a preliminary question if you will.

Anyway, I think absman came up with a great post from beginning to end.

[_asbestosman]

Anyway, I think absman came up with a great post from beginning to end.

I've got to give credit where credit is due. Tarski has often discussed the problem of self-veridical experiences, hallucinations and even magic tricks with many posts on epistemology and consciousness.

[_Morley]

I was an idiot to think that anything could come of this thread. Sometimes optimism is a bad thing. Please eat the apple, Simon, and put it out of its misery.