The hard problem is not that something cannot be explained, but that it hasn't been. Your OP is mainly assertions that the brain covers subjective experience. But that is not an explanation of how consciousness arises within otherwise non-experiencing matter - as many physicalists think of it.

Saying that the brain is all one needs does not solve the hard problem.

I already did. Brain activity (something physical) both sufficient and necessary for qualia . :chin: — TheMadFool

That doesn't explain the how.

You are arguing in favor of a monist physicalism. That's not the hard problem, that's a different issue.

I also don't think your argument holds, even for that. We do have subjective experiences in sleep. We can even have the experience of non-dreaming sleep. We don't remember that, generally, but memory is a specific cognitive function. Brute experiencing may not need to make memories.

Well, as said, it does not fit with my experience in the Alba emotion training at all. We should have been all over the place in our identification of the emotion, since there was no trigger - like someone being rude to us, or threatening us - so there were no cues as to what we were supposed to feel. The problem with the criticism in the article is it is looking at end products. Of course, given the extreme judgments of emotion in society coupled with individual patterns of suppression expression, you will not find easy to read after the fact 'signs'. But working in the other direction, wagging the dog you get consistent results. Because here you have, which you don't have in most social situations (and being alone, given our training, is still social/cultured), a more pure form of the physiological aspects of the emotion. Or in these groups we as a group won at the roulette wheel hundreds of times in a row betting on red.

It seems to presume, this hypothesis, that any body state can be freely interpreted (via culture, habit, parenting...) to any of the labels. I doubt this. There are specific facial expressions and positionings, breathing patterns, postural changes, gestures associated with the different emotions. Unless what happens is non-specific bodily reaction, interpretation as Emotion X and then these specific bodily patterns are then added, I don't see why these patterns would repeat. You can wag the dog with people, as they do in Alba Emoting (a training that is used for example by actors, but also by people in other professions) to set an emotion going in a person. IOW if you put the body in a specifc pattern you will feel a specific emotion (in fact across cultures). Widen eyes, breath shallowly but rapidly, tilt the neck back and you will feel fear. (note I have taken the training but my memory is not at all perfect). And the details of the breathing, for example, get very specific, such as sharp inhales, but slower exhales and more. And mixed emotions are of course possible, where people have portions of different emotions, and this I also experienced.

And we were not told what emotions we were being 'put into'. We were simply told to change our faces bodies and breathing in the following ways.....and we saw what happened. It was very, very rare that there was any disagreement about what emotion we had. In fact I only remember it with mixed emotions. And we came from a few different countries. IOW there seem to be specific physical patterns with each of the different emotions.

So, I gotta say I don't think this hypothesis is correct.

People can, I know from being a psychologist, misinterpret their emotions, especially if the emotion (in context or in general) is ego-dystonic. Since we were working without contexts and we strongly physicalized the emotions, in ways that are less easy to do in all sorts of social contexts) we rarely had trouble identifying them. But it certainly does happen that people can think they are sad when they are angry - some women have this pattern, especially if they are in traditional subcultures. But here what happens is there is a conversion. The anger arises, it is suppressed and then in reaction to that process (which is habitual, rapid and nearly unconscious) the person feels sad. And can also get some relief from the suppression of emotion by expressing sadness. So in a sense they are not wrong, though they haven't really expressed or notice their initial emotional reaction.

That all said, I just don't buy the hypothesis yet.

But, mathematics and so on can't be understood in those terms. There's simply no way of doing it. If you were engaged in mental arithmetic, there's no response involved - there's no behavioral indicators involved. — Wayfarer

Of course there was. Something go you interested in math books that set up specific neuronal pathways in your mind that you returned to which lead to you studying math more and reading more which led to changing the neuronal pathways. Once this is all in motion of course one set of neuronal pathways can get set off by other neuronal pathways. I am not saying that causation is only external, just that it is all determined, atoms bashing into atoms, chemical machine type stuff as the physicalists conceive of it. Just because it is complex and once in motion, stays in motion doesn't make it any less stimulus and response, it's just a very very complicated version of stimulus and response.

So, what it takes to form a rational idea seems to me to be inextricably linked with language and abstraction. At best what animals demonstrate is a kind of 'proto-rationality', a rudimentary ability to identify actions and results, but calling it 'rationality' is drawing a long bow. (And I also think there's something of an ulterior motive in doing that. ) — Wayfarer

Well, one can attribute motives in all directions on an issue like this. Even 50 years ago, in science it was professionally risky to even view in professional contexts as having motivations, emotions, intentions, etc. Any researcher who found in her research that an animal had cognitive functions has me with dismissal and extreme resistance: whether the animal is a primate, bird, squid whatever. There is a huge bias to keep a huge gap between humans and other animals in how we are conceived. As in thought of, not birthed.

That said, if we define rationality as needing language, well, there you do.

I think it makes sense to say that problem solving in animals and the use of tools, which can be passed on to children, as a couple of examples are rational and required working stuff out.

It's a tendentious article in my opinion. In my view, rationality depends on the ability to abstract and to impute meaning. Most forms of animal behaviour can be understood in terms of stimulus and response, so that some forms of behaviour can be imputed to exhibit a kind of rationality, but in my view it's a kind of projection. — Wayfarer

Could you tell me why the examples I have given in the posts I responded to and in the articles should not be considered examples of animals being rational? I understand you disagree and your definition pretty much defines rationality as language based. Why should we rule out problem solving via non-linguistic processes as rational?

All forms of animal behavior (humans also being animals) can be understood in terms of stimulus and response. The human gets a set of stimulations, and this set of neurons fire, and then.......just like the physicalists view everything. The phrase 'can be understood' with its passive contruction and easy to fit criterion means very little to me.

Animals can also be irrational. They can repeatedy think something is a threat despite experience that it is harmless and not alive. My dog had that with certain objects. Given that many things they do are guided by imprinting or built in programs, the moment then run into new things, there is a strong chance they will be irrational, especially if they do not adapt and learn that though ti triggers their habits it is not what they think it is. Animals have personalities and some are risk takers and don't learn from the consequences of this and then die, despite getting repeated warnings that their tendencies are too risky.

I don't agree that demonstrating learned behaviours or being able to solve behavioural problems demonstrates rationality. Maybe it demonstrates the antecedents of rationality. — Wayfarer

The animal sees the human fiddle with a metal thing and then manages to get through a gate keeping the animal in. The animal decides to fiddle in different ways with the metal thing until it finds the way one needs to fiddle with it and gets out. I think that's rational behavior. Animals can learn to use tools, engage in cross species cooperation. There are other examples. .
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171101151206.htm

I agree that animals reason. Seems to me that human rationality does not differ from the rest of nature simply as cognitive function, but it has been elevated to the status of value system in many cultural settings, an intellectual discipline, which seems to be unique. — Enrique

Sure. I am not saying all animals are the same. Just that animals are rational, often. And language is an incredible tool. We can do things with it animals can literally not imagine. And lucky us, we do not have to choose between reasoning as animals do and reasoning we can do with words. Though often humans do choose to at least try to only reason with words. It's like tying one hand behind are backs. Though these last few sentences are but a tangent in this thread. My main point was that animals are generally rational.

I think rationality cannot exist without language. In the absence of language I think all that is left is the unconscious. — CeleRate

Animals are quite rational about many things. They can even figure things out, like how to open doors, how to work across species to get prey (https://mymodernmet.com/badger-coyote-mutualism/). use alliances to take on a powerful bad leader, solve all sorts of problems including novel ones and more. If they weren't rational, they'd fare poorly. Of course, they are not always rational, but then who is?

For all I know maybe this is the past. and then to come at it another way, the word 'present' carries with it, I think, the idea of past present future otherwise it is contentless. I don't know if that's all the case.

Until, at last, he finally caught it. And to the horror of everyone, he killed that little cat. Tore it to pieces. Then he just sat there, confused. That dog had spent its whole life trying to catch that... thing. Now it had no idea what to do." — interim

So, we read this parable and think, I am the greyhound. Achieving my goal will only lead to confusion. Or I chase my goal and run in circles.

But this doesn't fit the range of my experience. I have experienced in a range of contexts that I can achieve a goal or even more important engage in a new process and I feel more actualized, expression myself in a way that feels, metaphorically, like I have come home. I have experienced this in jobs, relationshis and creative endeavors. With the last I used to be creative and was fairly successful in one art form. It was one that I did not need to collaborate with others. I was drawn to two other art forms that were collaborative at base, but I was afraid. Over time I was able to slowly go through these fears, gently, and begin to engage in the activities.

I do feel much more myself, now. I feel less split. I feel less like I must suppress parts of myself, or set aside yearnings, as I did with previous art forms.

So with my wife. Other relationships were even fairly good, but something was missing. Now I don't have that feeling. Perfections is not here, of course, but I feel 'at home' or 'right' or in my right place. I feel aligned in a way, in a balanced connection. I am more able to express the full range of myself in the relationship.

Of course there are things I still want. These processes can always be learned more about. I can always improve. But there is a marked difference between these and what I have had earlier. There was never this home feeling. The now I am finally engaged in a process that fits me.

Some people call this a calling or use other terms that may or may not carry what could get called metaphysical baggage. I am not saying those terms are incorrect, but I am avoiding that language since it brings in more issues.

Oh, it's you. Well first off, I did not mean that the organism of the person is disconnected from reality, I meant that their ideas about reality are less accurate or even utterly inaccurate when it comes to what their ideas are about. Pardon my use of metaphor, since it threw you, but I am going to use another one. It's as if they are trying to navigate London with a map of Paris and they don't know it. That's what I meant by diconnected. Their map is poorer than a more competent tourist's map is. The map is not connected to the territory. Still a metaphor there, if you're still having trouble. Of course if they are in London then the Paris map in their hands is in London and London air is connected to the map. And they are in physical contact with London also, of course. But they still have a problem, as my post was pointing out. I did not mean physical disconnection. The person I was responding to seemed to think that all maps have the same value. Or didn't and perhaps by responding I could clarify this. I don't think 'it's all realistic' means very much. It certainly is all real. Real and realistic not being the same thing.

As far as anyone being unreal, I never said anything remotely like that. Then my map would be seriously diconnected from reality - though physically present as a part of it. I am trying to be careful by repeating things so you'll keep up and stop being a nag, as you put it.

I don’t follow, whatever the guy without the dog is doing he’s consciously aware of and interacting with something that must exist for him, unless he’s pretending. — praxis

It seems like the implicit argument here would then conclude that we all have the same grip on reality. There are no differences. The man who thinks he can fly on an acid trip and who dies when jumping off a highway overpass, is just as connected to reality as the person who avoids falling or jumping off high places. Even if the first guy wouldn't have wanted to die. He was surprised to be falling towards the highway and the trucks.

Or that when I realize, for example, that I have been telling myself my girlfriend really loves me, despite her behavior, I have not come in closer contact with reality when I finally own up to the fact that she treats me poorly and does not really like or respect me. And realize I was afraid to notice this. No, when this happens I am not coming closer to an undertanding of what is going on. I am just having a different one. There is no way to come to a deeper knowledge of something or to realize a mistake one had in interpretation. There are not mistakes in perception or interpretation.

Even I wasn't wrong in my sense of reality, though oddly you disagreed with me. Was I wrong about the two guys with the dog and no-dog? Why didn't you allow my interpretation to also be real. But it seems like my perceptions are wrong. I feel unfairly treated.:razz:

If I see Amanda on the street and wave to her and wonder why she is looking oddly at me, I have not come any closer to reality when I realize she looks a tiny bit like Amanda, but isn't her at all.

No, in both those instances, I was being just as realistic. One can never gain deeper insight or get closer to a realistic understanding of something.

My first impressions of everyone are just are realistic appraisals of their personality than I would ever get if I spent time living with them.

The picture is a ridiculous example. It is precisely intended to be something that has two possible images in it. If I see a picture of myself and think the artist drew me, am I, perhaps, less connected to reality than those who see the old woman and the young woman and do not think that the image was made for them personally by the artist, just them, as a mirror?

What does that even mean, being much more aware of and consciously connected to reality? — praxis

it depends. I see one guy petting and training his dog and I see another guy petting nothing and actively training nothing in the same park. I suspect the latter probably is less connected in those activities. Of course, maybe I'm dreaming, maybe the latter is making a film. But I think it is a meaningful concept Of course I was reacting to his use of Zen as if the third way of seeing was just a return to the first.

I think we simply tend to be less anxious the closer we get to realizing that there’s no difference between illusion and reality. — praxis

I am not sure Illusion is the best opposite, or at least the only one, to reality. I think one can simply be confused, but there is no illusion. Once can have faulty assumptions. I don't consider dreams illusions, for example.

So, can we explore this and see if there is any truth in this? — Zeus

It would be hard to explore this in some important ways without actually trying to experience what the thread is focused on.

You misrepresented both yourself and me. You made statements like this.....

there is no understanding true reality. — neonspectraltoast

Notice the difference? huh?

So here you cherry pick a less absolute statement of understanding (by the way) that you made...iow you present a less problematic statement than the ones I quoted, as part of a mocking non-response.

Then you misrepresent me as if my position was so simple.

And given how you think we cannot put much truth in language and language is insufficient it's ironic how smug and sure you seem. Pardon me for respectfully challenging your ideas.

Lazyass rudeness. I'll ignore you from here on out.

They took the time to say that they felt a certain positive thing. It's a gesture. The gesture back is to thank them. And it doesn't have to be taken as objective either. THEY like the way you look. Just because you like what you see or like them, doesn’t mean that all do. And you revealed this. In relationships if one person compliments and the other does not there’s a problem. One of the likely ones is that the person who doesn’t, doesn’t notice/support the other as much. The thanking acknowledges attention and interest, awareness of the other person, sometimes care.

- Either you can trust your senses (to at least some reasonable degree) and understand the world around you...or all perception is falsehood. — Aussie

This is the first way you worded it. You worded it a bit differently the second time and it was less problematic that way, but still problematic.

I think Frank is right, this is binary where it is not binary. The first part of the sentence obviously includes the idea that there are degrees of accuracy, the second makes it seem like it is not.

Let's test this: Let's say someone has a mental illness and they know it. And they can't trust their senses (since sometimes or often they hallicinate and can't tell the difference on those occasions.
This does not entail that all their perceptions are falsehood. Perhaps when they went to what looked like a fridge that morning and saw a beer, it was a beer and they drank it. Now perhaps all through breakfast they butterflies that did not exist and heard the voice of God telling them to kill their neighbor...again this does not rule out many of their perceptions being the case.

If you had worded it 'If you can't trust your senses (to at least some reasonable degree) all your perceptions are suspect'. I think that is defensible. It is not claiming that if you can't trust your senses this means all perceptions are false. It does highlight how this situation is extremely problematic in situ, since then one is likely to and perhaps should put an asterisk next to most perceptions. What can one be sure of? Though even then one might be able to create degrees of certainty.

It isn't. Understanding implies language. — neonspectraltoast

And I quoted your language, where you told us your understanding of reality. It's a cake and eat it too situation. You were describing what was possible what was not based on verbal understandings of reality and giving us verbal understandings of reality. You can't then go on to say, which you actually did simultaneously, that one cannot do this. Your own acts in those parts of the post I quoted indicate that you don't believe what you are saying.

As often as language helps us understand, it is a distraction from the truth. — neonspectraltoast

Then why would you tell me this? I am pointing out that your posts are doing precisely what they say is impossible. I'ts one thing to shush someone talking about the forest, babblling, while they walk through it, in the hope they will focus on it. It's another to you can't have understanding of reality becauase......

The latter is self-contradictory. Clearly you think you have unerstanding of reality, since perception and epistemology and what we are like are all parts of reality. You are using works to tell us how things work and do not work. You are even justifying this, again with words.

I don't want to be the grinch here but what if "awakening" is circular in nature: I awake to a state y from a dream x and I awake to a state z from the dream y and then, completing the circle, I awake to the state x from the dream z. — TheMadFool

I'm going to take a non-philosophical type response here and react more intuitively. This seems to me a very heady, hypothetical concern. One that could give anxiety, potentially, to someone. When I say hypothetical, it's very much of the vibe of 'what if my wife has been pretending all these years to love me'. I say heady, because on a lived level we can't get some utterly perfect transcendent viewpoint to relax such anxieties, but really, I think they are about something else. And we can live the in situ experiences of awakening from sleep and awakening in waking life of now having greater perspective than we did.

Now in a way it is not fair to react this way to your post. You are in a philosophical forum and investigating something philosophically. And it's an interesting topic and you've included interesting nuances, now with this cycle idea. So not only is there nothing wrong with doing this, it's interesting and absolutely belongs in this forum as a discussion.

I reacted in the way I did because I am always trying to see what a philosophy or position is in an actual lived person. What is it doing? What are the emotions around it? Not just as possible ideas.

In the world of ideal skepticism, perhaps what you just argued and seems to make sense on paper as it were, actually doesn't. Any argument or conclusion may turn out - in brain in vat scenarios or perverse deity scenarios or simulated universe scenarios - be false even if the empirical evidence is overwhelming. There's always and asterisk, heck even this might be wrong.

So yes to your point in some abstract way, but in any practical sense, I am not sure how it helps us in life, however interesting as speculative philosophy.

]Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment,mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters. — Dogen

Yeah, but it's not as if that Zen thing is saying one is in the same boat, in that third level as one was in the first. In Zen that second mountains are mountains you are, according to that tradition, much more aware of and consciously connnect to reality than in the first.

There is no understanding true reality. — neonspectraltoast

So this sentence is not referring true reality, then?

True reality is experienced. — neonspectraltoast

Nor this one.

It is felt and experienced, but, for reasons that should be obvious, can't be understood. — neonspectraltoast

It seems like this is a claim to understanding reality, including the obvious reasons If there are obvious reasons for something don't we understand it then. And isn't the it in this case a part of reality?

yes, I suppose part of the hope we each have is we get better at explaining and justifying things, calling out bs, and a verbal jujitsu in general. Converts are rare if that's why we're here. And 'the truth' is more likely to be found face to face with another human or training a squid to count, say. Experiences really challenge our positions in ways words on a screen rarely do.

:smile: And for the record I am not an antinatalist. I would find it hard to say if I am a pessimist or optimist, certainly I am a blend. My philosophy is extremely dark in many places, though I think it would have to be classed as optimistic. But then about myself, woh, lots of pessimism, with optimism the dark horse in that race. But saying this I am saying that I am not defending someone because I share their positions. I am just focused on what is happening in the thread and the position the OP and some other posts seemed to imply or state about the lack of need to consider his arguments.

What bothers me at this point is whether any amount of "awakening" is sufficient to permit us to make the claim this, for sure, is true reality.? — TheMadFool

First off when you wake up from dreaming, you get a wider context that includes the dreaming level. IOW you know what that was like and then you place it in a broader context. The dream isn't unreal, it is what is. But it was an experiencing. It would depend on your culture or subculture exactly how you contrasted the two states of dreaming and waking. So even if waking is not the final level, you have still made a gain, AND you don't have to throw away the dreaming.

For example, let's say you're a Freudian or a shaman. You might in the dream been running from a bear. You wake up and I would suppose that even shamans are relieved on one level, even if they take the dream more seriously than those who think dreams have no meaning or reflect anything real relevent to this world. So the Freudian or shaman thinks, glad that wasn't the kind of bear that kills me hear, but both would likely consider the bear real, as symbol of something going on in me, or some message from the underworld or actualy contact with spirits. Even people not formally into interpreting dreams or assigning them sucha formal other reality category that a shaman might, will still, often consider the dream to have meaning and reality, just not that their waking bodies were actually about to be chomped.

I think it is an interesting idea that there could be more awakenings (a bit like the film the 13th floor with simulated universes) but I wanted to emphasize that even if this is the case one could also be getting very useful knowledge and need not be negating a lower level. In this case the lower levels are less aware of the higher ones. They don't encompass them but are encompassed by them. Of course lucid dreaming, for example, can make this more complicated.

Well, there's this term is cognitive science called 'emotional reasoning' that deserves a mention here in my opinion. — Shawn

If he is reasoning emotionally, then demonstate it. That would be a step or steps in his argument. What you are going in this thread is just labeling what he is doing without engaging with it. It is certainly a valid topic, but again, you specified him AND you linked him to the thread.

Do you ever wonder what you might be doing by doing that?

IOW you are talking about someone in front of and to others, in a public space.

What are the emotions driving that? To Schopenaur it amounts to... Hey, I wanted you to know that I am asking others if we can just dismiss your arguments without interacting with them.To other people it amounts to...Hey guys, there this guy here who reasons emotionally. I can just dismiss his arguments, right?

Given your responses here, that all seems rather passive aggressive, another psychological term that might deserve a mention here, to paraphrase you.

If the topic is can people be having emotional reactions that they then project onto reality, sure.

If his reasoning is faulty - which the cognitive science definition of emotional reasoning entails - then that is where the philosophical focus should be if you are involved someone you are criticising.

You could also have a thread discussing emotional reasoning, which is a peachy topic.

I'm not sure if every emotion leads to the right conclusions, but it seems that getting along in or with life in terms of non-dysphoric attitudes results in what philosophers call a good life. Hope that made sense. — Shawn

Any emotion could be involved in a strong argument. Any emotion could be involved in a poor argument. And likewise regarding conclusions.

Look, you asked, I responded. some of my points you haven't responded to. The one about how you should be able to refute his arguments if they are based on emotional reasoning, you haven't directly responded to. IOW I could read your postt and not even be sure you read mine carefully at all. I can see how parts of this last one might be a response to my previous post, but not necessarily.

Anyway, I'm done.

Uhh, I think everyone has emotions, so it seems appropriate here as far as I know. — Shawn

You think what is appropriate?

Such as happiness or joy? — Shawn

So, you are arguing that those emotions invalidate pessimism. This means that emotions can lead on to rational conclusions, which is the opposite of the OP's position.

It seems to me the OP is a way to avoid dealing with S's arguments. Hej, guys can't I just ignore his positions since they are based on emotion.

rg

Regarding, point 1, I have to say that this seems unavoidable if philosophical pessimism is based on emotions. And, if it isn't based on emotions, then I must have, either, am misinformed or comitted some logical fallacy. — Shawn

1) he presents arguments, so these must be defeated. If a specific argument depends on an emotion, then one can criticize that step in the argument, at least potentially. But we are humans who have tendencies, so even including emotions as a step might be justified, if one could show that this is a general reaction. 2) you'd need to demonstrate that your philosophy is not based on emotions. And despair can drive one, for example, to an optimistic philosophy, which one then clings to to hold that emotion at bay. People turn to religion, Stoicism, Buddhism, pollyanish philosophies as a way to get out of despair. They may howeve present perfectly argued positions on things and their positions need to be focused on. 3) you'd also need to demonstrate that the philosopical position did not lead to the pessimism. IOW what is causal here? Emotions caused the philosophical position or rational assessment of X led to pessimism.

Regarding, point 2, I believe that there's nothing wrong with addressing emotions as a source of power towards the notion that life is brutish and harsh, which I myself accept. Just recently, I started wondering why can't humans develop tolerance towards depression, which might as well be the first question I will ask God once I die. — Shawn

That's great but not quite relevant here. It's all to the man, ad hom. You have a metacritique of his philosophy based on an ad hom. And you have a kind attitude towards people who are depressed, which is also to the man, though here appropriately since it is focused not on arguments.

Depression and pessimism are not the same thing by the way. You can be pessimistic without being depressed. And even a depressed person can mount an extremely good argument.

My apologies.

Sure. I am not saying that one should doubt them. Though you might be dreaming. But my point is not so much how one should act in the world or to create some radical doubt or brain in a vat type 'really going on thing'. In the situation with the hand this statement is one where we have vast experience, an internal automatic justification. We intuitively 'look at the justification'. And I think I actually would have a tiny pause if someone said that to me. IOW I might even notice my justification flash through my mind when I finally decided he was asserting the obvious (to me because of my experiential base). It's an odd thing to say. I'd be searching for the context. Though that's tangential for my own amusement.

One might suppose so. The confusion, which we have apparently avoided, is to think that it is the consensus that makes some utterance true. — Banno

Yes, I don't believe that to be the case. I mean, I agree with you. The consensus sure can be wrong.

Of course there are trivial exceptions: "Most folk think Trump is dangerous" will be true if and only if most folk think Trump is dangerous; in such cases the consensus is what makes the utterance true. — Banno

It could also hold for value judgments. If everyone thinks it's rude to put your elbows on the table, well, it is.

It's mostly I am checking, not that I have a different opinion I want to argue for.

evidence need not be binary. IOW you could have some information that make A more likely than B, though we cannot know. We might have deductive or empirical reasons to think B is more likely than A. But in the case of God, you are saying there is nothing deductive, empirical or otherwise that should make anyone think one of those two statements is more likely.

I think you were around when I brought up the example of the new species of feline.

If we shifted that to a not before noticed large species of feline in New England I would be agnostic. I don't know. Perhaps there is one, perhaps there is not. If we are going on a couple of sightings by people I do not know, while I am an agnostic on the issue,

I will consider more likely there is no undiscovered species. I think we would have noticed it before and with much greater regularity than a couple of people.

So, even in some situations where one cannot know, one may have some indications that one of the options is more likely. On the one hand, in this example, we have a couple of sightings. On the other side I have a more deductive based sense that it is much more likely they saw something else, they were drunk, it was a hoax, etc. We could shift around the context like to Manhattan or to a jungle in Borneo or increase the number of sightings, or give the sighters expertise and so on. And shift around the push and pull to one side or the other.

You, in seems to me, feel there is nothing that gives any extra weight at all to either side. This being radically different from anything remotely proving either side. Again, it does not have to be binary. But you are saying there is nothing to indicate at all either side of the coin.

If that is case, and I presume it is, God I wish you would go over to Sciforums and harrass them for a while. I don't know if the particular atheists are still there but likely one or two are. One was always saying that it has been demonstrated there is no God. I always thought that was not just wrong, but kinda funny. Wrong that is has been demonstrated.

although hopefully we are more likely to believe what is true — Banno

That's what I meant and I would guess that as a consensus, we are. If we jump to certain metaphysical issues this might seem wrong, but when one realizes that we deal with millions of much smaller beliefs - how to use spoons, what happens if you run out in the road without looking enough times, how to put on socks, how to turn on the cold water....and so on, most people have, via parenting and school grown up accepting a vast number of consensus beliefs without ever looking into the justifications - though often gaining justification for many as one works from that belief.

But truth and belief are quite different things — Banno

Sure, nothing I said goes against this.

Believing something does not, except in specific circumstances, render it true — Banno

Nor this. My question was whether true statements, when we think of the vast array of them we send around each day are more likely to be convincing and thus become consensus. Given that a true statement is true, it ought to fit reality better and while many will be counterintuitive, many will not be, perhaps more of the latter. That being true is more likely to make a statement sticky.

You might do well to believe the consensus, if only for the sake of a quiet life. — Banno

Yes, this also can be true.

Why would one think we never have access to the truth, direct or otherwise? We have access to lots of truths. — Banno

A true statement
A six-word statement. Or 'a sentence in Russian' or 'A sentence written in blue ink.'

I think that compound adjective in the second phrase is one we can directly assess. We count the words. The statement is enough. We don't have to look elsewhere to decide if the adjective is correct. True, in the first phrase, is an adjective that we must go through a process to see if the adjective is one we want to accept. We look at the justification. If we like that, then we can accept the adjective is a good one.

I did not mean that you and I have no way to find out, by going to the library, say, what the name of the bones in the foot are, or how far Australia is from AFrica. We certainly have direct access in that sence or access. It is not about you and me going and collecting some truths.

My point that true statement don't glow green or something, thus showing their truth. You have to dig. And what you dig into is justification.

We may already feel like we have the justification in us. So a statement that is true may seem obviously correct. That means we've undergone that process already.

A true statement may not be a true statement later on. It may be revised. Or better put 'what we consider a true statement today' might not be considered that later, when better justification comes along for something else. What we have access to is justification and experience. The latter being, in relation to this issue, part of the former.

Again, it's not the consensus that leads to a statement's being true, though, is it? — Banno

Does a statement's being true lead to consensus? (IOW if there is consensus on something is it a better bet than average or on statements that there is no consensus. Obviously consensus has been wrong.)And then if one is pragmatic might it not work to assume, at least until counterevidence or some screaming fault with current models, that X is true if the consensus believes it is? IOW take consensus evaluation that something is true might be a good heuristic, unless you have some strong reason not to.

I suppose underneath this I am getting at 'we never have direct access to truth' we have what works. Things are open to revision.

Bottom line: Either at least one god exists...or no gods exist.

You've got a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right...so...? — Frank Apisa

So, there's a fifty percent chance that there's at least one God?

By that reasoning, we shouldn't consider there to be laws of nature at all. — Relativist

I never said anything about not considering it. I even said, though perhaps not to you that it has been an incredibly useful heuristic. I do not assume that there are no patterns that consistant universally and through time.

I am not ruling out it is the case, or true in many cases. I am simply saying that it not more parsimonious to have one less assumption.

So we infer a law based on observed regularities, then you say we should assume these aren't really regularities. See the problem? — Relativist

No, I am not saying that. In fact several times in this discussion, though perhaps not in posts to you I have made it quite clear that of course one does. But one need not, at the level of cosmology or thinking of science in general, assume that just because we notice regularities that this necessarily entails that these are laws - as the idea has been conceived in science - as something that holds true everywhere and always. That tendency - which is more or less an ontological position - need not be assumed. That's all. And since there has been some evidence that this is in fact not the case, that laws and constants may have been different earlier in time even in our local (though huge) home area, it's good to consider this ontological position and note that it is there. I have also been pointing out in response to one person who thought the law of parsimony meant that laws are eternal that it is in fact an assumption one need not have, when one notes regularities, to assume that we now know an eternal univerals rule. I actually think, as I have said, that it is a great heuristic and has been very useful. But that doesn't mean it is necessarily true nor does it make it more parsimonius.

Right, I agree.

Well, I already explained why "changing laws" are an oxymoron. — SophistiCat

Sure, given the sense that laws have been conceived in science it has become an oxymoron, but when discussing the issue, either raising the possibility or talking about evidence that in fact what have been called laws, one might speak of such things in the transition to realizing that how we have conceived of these patterns has been incorrect. And as a side note i think law, as in the laws of nature or scientific law, came from the term for human made laws and those can certainly be changed.

Laws are revised or retied if evidence calls for it, and not otherwise. — SophistiCat

Right, though that's generally been conceived of as 'now we realize that the law is actually X.' I was talking about when we realize that what has been called a law - in the modern conception of the term as eternal and universal - may be a more local, in time or space or both - pattern. Obviously evidence should be the criterion for new conceptions, including at the level where one realizes and assumption was made about the concept of these patterns.

Anyway, I won't pursue this further, since this has little to do with the OP. — SophistiCat

OK.

Parsimony entails explaining the available facts with the fewest assumptions, not with entertaing the possibility we are missing some facts. — Relativist

Right, it would be an assumption that laws hold for all time and in all places, rather than holding where and when we know they hold.

I guess it contradicts it. — Pantagruel

That people are martyrs (some people) proves that torturers cannot break people`? Cannot force them to give up information. That regardless of the torture some people will never give up information or have their minds broken down through psychic driving?

Could you give me the steps in the argument, instead of just saying it contradicts my position?

I certainly admit that some people intentionally put themselves in situations where they will be tortured. I believe that it true. I just don't think it contradicts what I've said.

He's saying that some people cannot be broken. He used the example of someone tortured for a day. I think that's poor evidence that people cannot be broken because it's not very effective torture. Sure, some people put themselves into a position to be tortured. Taht doesn't mean they wouldn't break under the more sophisticated forms of torture.

I've already admitted that I can't prove my position, and neither can he for that matter. I wanted to leave it there. Your counterexamples are not counterexamples to my position. I never said that other torture wasn't real.

I never said that no one can resist torture, which would be utterly clear if you read my earlier posts. Fine you didn't, but then I pointed out that you did not seem to understand the context, and you keep coming with the same not understanding the context. And you couldn't even be bothered to concede that I was not saying the torture I referred to as poor was not real.

And now you post without even arguing the point, just announcing victory.

I am done with the torture discussion. And.... that was just silly. He was not responding to my positions, he doesn't even understand that you think some people will be able to resist anything and I don't. What the hell. I even conceded that neither of us can prove our positions. Now I am out for good. I mean seriously, I can understand him joining in and not knowing the context, but you've been a part of the discussion with me from the beginning. Jesus.

OK, what does that have to do with one of my positions?