You analyze the conscious mind and conclude it can't come with its a priori thoughts straight from matter. — Gregory

I don't know what you're talking about. This thread is about states of awareness. And I am arguing that we are not capable of being aware of anything if the faculties that create those mental states have been created by blind natural forces.

delete duplicate — Mark Nyquist

Why just the duplicate?

Oh for goodness sake - stop flagrantly begging the question. Optic nerve, retina, blah di blah di blah. Put in as much detail as you like - talk about rods and cones and so on. It makes no blasted difference. Read the OP and address the argument I made.

Agreed but it must have a metaethics of its own i — TheMadFool

No, that makes no sense. There is no such thing as a 'metaethics of virtue ethics'. You can be a divine command virtue ethicist; a naturalist virtue ethicist; a non-naturalist virtue ethicist, a non-cognitivist virtue ethicist.

I think you do not really know what a metaethical theory is. Here are two questions:

"What is moral?"

"What is morality?"

Normative theories attempt to answer the first. Metaethical the second.

Virtue ethics is an answer - a much disputed answer - to the first question, not the second. (And its answer is "that which a virtuous person would do" or some such.

Divine command theory is an answer - a much disputed answer - to the second question. And its answer is "God's commands and approvals" or some such.

With this clarification in place, you might be able to make sense of my previous posts — TheMadFool

No, I do not understand you. Virtue ethics is a normative theory. It is not a metaethical theory. That is, it is not an analysis of what the goodness of a virtue is, in and of itself.

These are metaethical theories: divine command theory; naturalism; non-naturalism; non-cognitivism

These are normative theories: virtue ethics; consequentialism; deontology; pluralism.

The euthyphro attempts to refute divine command theory - a metaethical theory. It does this - or seems to -be drawing attention to the supposed arbitrariness that would infect morality if it were true.

So that's the issue: is morality rendered arbitrary by a divine command analysis?

Maybe explain what awareness means as well. Does this mean purely conscious thought or does this include subconscious thought too? — ep3265

I don't think there are subconscious thoughts - the idea sounds contradictory. But if there are such things, then the same would apply to them as would apply to conscious ones.

As for explaining what awareness means - well, that's too much as a full account of awareness is the end point of philosophical analysis, not the beginning.

But a necessary (though not sufficient) condition on being aware of something, is that one be in a certain sort of mental state - a mental state with representative contents. That much is, I think, uncontroversial.

What I am arguing is that no mental state has representative contents unless an agent has put it there. For representations require representers, and mental states are not themselves representers. That is, mental states are not themselves minds - so they do not, by themselves, represent anything to be the case. Not without external assistance from a mind.

1. Evolution, the process itself, isn't unguided. It's guided by natural selection. — ep3265

I mean guided in the sense of 'being regulated by an agency'. So, for instance, our faculty of sight is not designed for seeing if it is purely the product of natural selection, for it does not express an agent's design. The word 'design' and 'guidance' when used in the context of purely natural processes that do not in any way express an agent's will are metaphors.

So, if our faculties are the creation of blind natural processes - to, processes that do not express any agents plan or purposes - then our faculties are impotent to create in us mental states with representative contents. At best they can only create in us mental states that appear to have representative contents. Though even that would require a faculty of introspection that has not been built by blind processes.

I find no significance at all in it. I don't think that there is an agent behind anything so it makes no difference at all to me. — Sir2u

So why did you ask?

But as you are the one claiming that evolution cannot be responsible I would presume that you have an answer — Sir2u

Why would you presume that? "I think Jane was murdered - there's an axe lodged in the back of her head and axe wounds all over her back". Sir Fit: "I presume that as you think someone is responsible for killing her, you know who it is?" Er, no.

Note as well that I am not claiming evolutionary forces cannot have built our faculties, I am arguing that 'unguided' evolutionary forces cannot be responsible for them, for then they would not be representing anything to us.

"We cannot believe what our senses tell us about the world because it is not presented to us by an agent.
If we accepted that there is an agent that is purposely sending the information then we can believe it." — Sir2u

That's not a quote from me! That's not my view!

Define perception. — Sir2u

Perception denotes that which is involved in perceiving something. And you perceive something when you are subject to a certain kind of mental state known as a perceptual experience. This kind of mental state has 'representative contents' (though it is not the only kind that does) - that is, it represents something to be the case. And when that perceptual experience has been caused, non-waywardly, by its representative contents, then you are perceiving something.

Some philosophers will argue over how closely cause of the experience needs to match its representative contents; some will argue over whether the experience can exist absent the cause of its representative contents. I am not taking a stand on those issues. What I am arguing, in case you didn't know, is that unless an agent has designed the faculty that created that experience in you, it won't have any representative contents at all and thus won't qualify as a perceptual experience (just something that is introspectively indiscernible from one).

Continuing with the same error is not a defense of it. — Kenosha Kid

Yeah, er, I provided a defence of it in the OP. You've not said anything to challenge it. You've just said 'language is different'. Oh, ok. If you say so.

Yes, that is what I'd say - to be a language rather than squiggles and noises it has to be being put to a purpose. And purposes are the sole preserve of agents - minds, with plans and so on. So without that, you just have noises and squiggles. And though another agent who has previously been using those same or similar noises and squiggles to express their own purpose - that is, to try and transmit something to another person - may well take those noises and squiggles to be a language when a Parrot say, or machine makes or produces them, they're not functioning that way in that context.

This applies to all representations. It is not as if just applies to noises and squiggles - for why should that be? So, in order for the content of a percept to 'represent' something to be the case, it would need to be being used by a mind for that purpose - the representative contents, then, comes from its being used to represent something. Used, that is, by a person.

Incidentally, an objection to my view - and I might as well make it myself as it has occurred to me and I don't see anyone else making it - is that we ourselves could be said to be using our faculties to make representations. For though something may originally have been created by blind forces - and thus originally lacked any representative contents - that does not stop it from subsquently acquiring some by being used by an agent. The leaf with squiggles on it that looks like "there is a pie in the oven" does not tell me, or anyone, that there is a pie in the oven (even if some people acquire an accurate belief about it from the leaf). But if I find that leaf and form the plan to convey to you that there is a pie in the oven by showing you the leaf, then the leaf can now be said to bear representative contents, thanks to me. So perhaps the same could be said in respect of our faculties of awareness.

How? Let's say I have a good argument about free will - a good argument that implies free will is compatible with determinism. I should write a novel about it?? Would I just crowbar a scene in where one character gives another a 2 hour talk on it?

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." That's a contradiction Dickens. Which is it?!?

That's not a definition of a Queen.
A biscuit's definition is, I believe, matter of public record. A biscuit - unlike a cake - gets softer with age. Is the queen getting softer with age? Perhaps. Has she been baked twice in an oven? No.

Not a clue matey. Sounds like a bs course on bs. It is to your credit that you find his question confusing. Leave the course and do some proper philosophy, not poseur nonsense. Or just ask your professor what he means over and over again and over again.

And you are wrong. You are confusing apples and oranges. Divine command theory is a theory about what morality is made of. It's the theory that it is made of a god's attitudes and commands. It is not a theory about the content of those attitudes and commands. Thus it is consistent with any normative theory. One can be a DCT virtue ethicist, a DCT utilitarian, a DCT deontologist - you name it.

This is not to deny that the truth of DCT may operate to make some normative theories more likely true than others. The point is that DCT is a different kind of theory to virtue ethics. It's why Ethics - the study of morality - is divided into these two areas of inquiry: normative ethics and metaethics. Rival views to DCT would be metaethical naturalism; non-naturalism; non-cognitivism. Not virtue ethics

What are you on about? Virtue ethics is a normative theory. One of many. It's a 'normative' theory. That means it is a theory about how we ought to behave and what has value (a theory, in other words, about what's right and what's good). Utilitarianism is another; Deontology another; pluralism another.

Divine command theory is not normative. It is a metaethical theory - so a theory about what rightness and goodness are in themselves, as opposed to what has them.

The Euthyphro is supposed - but doesn't- to challenge the credibility of divine command theory.

No Kenosha, I don't. There are different kinds of representation. But all require a representer because they all represent, even if some do so propositionally and others not. Do you understand?
Oo but, but, 'language'. Bartricks is wrong because language. Langwoooidge.
When do we have language use and not just squiggles or sounds, child? Is it, perhaps, when we have a representer trying to represent something with those squiggles or sounds?? Yes.

Which ethics is non-normative, may I ask? — TheMadFool

Metaethics! Metaethical theories are theories about what morality is composed of (so they'd be theories of what 'normativity' is). Normative theories are theories about the content of morality - that is, they're theories about what we ought to do (not theories about what the oughtness itself is) and what has moral value (not what moral value itself is).

Virtue ethics is a normative theory - it is the theory that the right act is the act the virtuous person would do, or something like that.

It's not a theory about what the goodness of a virtue 'is'. That's what divine command theory is. Divine command theory would be the view that the goodness of those character traits that are virtues (where this means no more than a character trait that has moral goodness) consists of them being valued by God, or recommended by God, or some such.

Anyway, you can't deal with the Euthyphro criticism by appealing to the supposed truth of a normative theory, for the whole point would be that the theory in question would be true contingently, not of necessity. And thus even if virtue ethics is indeed true, its being true is arbitrary (that would be the criticism - the misguided criticism - anyway).

Virtue ethics is a normative theory, not a metaethical theory. Divine command theory - at which the Euthyphro is directed - is a metaethical theory. So whether virtue ethics is true of false is orthogonal to the issue at hand.

Never said that, so it must be a thought of your own. — Sir2u

I was charitably trying to figure out why you'd thought it significant that I didn't know for sure who was responsible for our mental states with representative contents. Why did you think it significant then?

I'll hold your hand, Sir Fit, so that you can understand your own reasoning and just how unbelievable bad it is.

I have been arguing in this thread that mental states with representative contents require a representer. That is, absent a representer - an agent of some kind - the mental states in question will lack representative contents, no matter how much they may seem to us to have them. And thus, as perceiving the world requires us to be in such states, perceiving the world is not possible if the relevant mental states are the creation of blind evolutionary forces alone.

So, in my example that's analogous to the thesis that Jane has been murdered. You may disagree with that thesis - you may think the fact the axe murderer wrote "die you bloody bugger!" on the wall 'after' the event seems sufficiently confusing as to cast in doubt the 'she was murdered' thesis. But anyway, the fact is we'd at least then be discussing the plausibility of the murder thesis. Analogously, you might want to try and find some way to call into question my thesis that perception is impossible if our faculties are the creation of blind natural forces.

BUt then you have asked who the representer is. THat's to ask who the murderer is. And that really isn't the issue - it doesn't bear on it. See? No. Well, you are Sir Fit of Ignorance for a reason.

Back to the drawing board everyone - how did she die?
— Bartricks

I thought you already knew the she had an axe in her head. — Sir2u

That was you, Sir Fit. Do pay attention to my parody, for goodness sake. You reasoned that as I can't identify the murderer for you, she therefore doesn't have one and there must be some other explanation for the presence of the axe in her brain.

I don't know for sure who the representer is. I am arguing that there must be one. I am not arguing that she's called Bethany and has red hair. I don't know who she is. I am just arguing that there must be one, for we're perceiving things and we wouldn't be if there wasn't a representer. YOu asked who she is, and I said I don't know. And you think - well, what do you think?

The only crime scene here is your attempt to use bullshit to try to convince people that they are wrong. — Sir2u

No, I am using reasoned argument to show that perception is incompatible with our faculties being the product of blind evolutionary forces.

Most of you seem pretty damned confused, I have to say.

There was a quote from William Lane Craig above that identifies the main supposed problem that 'Euthyphro' is used to refer to (no-one cares what the original text says). And that is, that if morality is made of God's commands, then morality will be arbitrary.

I believe morality is indeed made of God's commands and I think the Euthyphro fails to raise a reasonable doubt about it. However, I must take issue with Craig's solution (though it is not his specifically, as it is as old as the hills). If you say - as Craig is doing - that for a character trait to be a virtue is just for it to be being instantiated by God - then you have not answered the objection. For any character trait that God instantiates will qualify as a virtue. It's that way around. It isn't that the character traits are virtues and thus God has them. It is that God has them and thus they're virtues. But that does nothing to fix them in place or to prevent the metaphysical possibility of, say, sadism being a virtue in the future.

But anyway, what it is to be virtuous is not to 'resemble' God. After all, if that was the case, then really God isn't needed for morality. For one can 'resemble' a virtuous person even if no such person exists. And thus on Craig's strange view, it turns out that God is not actually necessary for morality.

SImilarly, if you insist that I am wrong to say that Craig's view is that a virtue is a virtue by virtue of God instantiating it and maintain that they are virtues independently of God, then once more divine command theory has been abandoned in favour of some kind of metaethical naturalism.

So, although I have the utmost respect for Craig as a philosopher, his solution is no solution at all.

Here's my solution. Moral imperatives are imperatives of Reason. So Reason is God (by which I mean that Reason is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person). Does that mean that it is arbitrary what's right and wrong? No, for 'arbitrary' means 'for no reason'. To think that what Reason commands is arbitrary then, is simply to have failed to understand this is Reason we are talking about - the one against which arbitrariness is measured. It is, then, conceptually confused to think that Reason's imperatives could be arbitrary, for by their very nature they are the opposite.

I've got expertise in ethics and free will. None in philosophy of science and none in logic (I know a valid argument when I see one, but I don't have expertise in that area)

However, you may not like to use me as I am a theist, not an atheist (though I am a theist for philosophical reasons and couldn't care less about religions or supporting religious dogmas). That said, I think most debates between theists and atheists on the internet are terrible as they're almost invariably conducted by people who don't really know their stuff (but are alarmingly confident).

I should also point out that William Lane Craig is a highly respected philosopher. He has published extensively in most of the best journals. He's well known (outside of religious philosophy he's well known as a defender of the A-theory of time - that's where I first encountered his work). And he edits collections for Oxford University press, is on editorial boards and so on. He's the real deal and those - such as Dawkins (who said in his book that he asked a philosopher colleague if he'd ever heard of him...and the colleague said 'no'....which is laughably implausible as he's very well known indeed) - who say otherwise really don't know what they're talking about.

No it isn't.

This is a description of God: a person who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent.

That's all you need to qualify.

You don't have to have created everything (or anything).

Sorry to tell you, but there is quite a bit of dispute about how and what we perceive. — Sir2u

Not about that though. Not about the fact that we perceive by being in mental states with representative contents.

Try building a mental state about how sorry you are that the Trescian Water Mole is extinct. — Sir2u

What on earth are you on about? Good riddance to the little shits.

So all through the thread you have been telling us that the information that we have been perceiving is sent from an agent, but you have no idea what that agent is! — Sir2u

No, I have some idea. What's your point? Are you, perhaps, thinking that if I can't say who is responsible, then somehow that'll magically mean that blind evolutionary forces can create mental states with representative contents? How does that work, exactly?

Here's us at a crime scene:

Detective Bartricks: well, the axe lodged in the back of her head and 'die, you bloody bugger!' written in her blood on the wall makes me think she was probably murdered.

Sir Fit of Ignorance: Who murdered her?

Detective Bartricks: I don't know - I've just arrived at the scene. I'm establishing that she has, in fact, been murdered. We'll try and figure out who later.

Sir Fit of Ignorance: So all this time you've been banging on about how she's been murdered and yet you haven't got a clue who did it!! Back to the drawing board everyone - how did she die? She wasn't murdered until we find someone who murdered her. But until then she wasn't murdered. So, we're not looking for a murderer, because we don't yet know how she died.

Yes, if those premises are true, that follows.
Those premises are not equivalent to these, however:
1. Lane believes Kent can't fly
2. Lane believes Superman can fly

Note: Clark Kent is in the class of people Lane believes can fly (because he is superman and the person of superman is in the class of people she believes can fly), she just doesn't realize this.

This is valid:

1. Kent can't fly
2. Superman can fly
3. Therefore kent isn't Superman

This isn't

1. Lane believes Kent can't fly
2. Lane believes Superman can fly
3. Therefore Kent isn't superman

This is:

1. Lane believes Kent can't fly
2. Lane believes superman can fly
3. Therefore lane believes Kent can't fly and believes superman can fly

If - if - Dilahunty made this argument:

1. If P then Q
2. Not Q
3. Therefore not P

Then his argument was valid. And it sounds as if he did.(if x is an objective truth, then I will care about it; I don't care about it; therefore it is not an objective truth).

I don't see an error (though I have not watched the video).

If it is true that Tom cares about all objective truths, and also true that Tom does not care about Y, then we can conclude that Y is not an objective truth.

If all As are Bs (if all objective truths are cared for by Tom), and C is not a B, then C is not an A.

The superman example is different. Lane believes Superman can fly. Lane does not believe Clark Kent can fly. Ok. What follows from that is not that superman isn't Clark Kent, but that Lane believes Superman can fly and believes that Clark Kent can't.
1.p
2.q
3. Therefore p and q.

Of course, as those beliefs are about one and the same person, they can't both be true. But that's a different point.

So I think the youtube commentator doesn't know what he's talking about and has compared dilahunty's argument to a quite different and obviously invalid one.

Like I say, you don't have a case. You just know that Anscombe is supposed to have used the example of a speak your weight machine to refute an argument made by cs Lewis. I'm not Lewis and you're not Anscombe and the example is rubbish for reasons I have now explained numerous times. You might as well say 'yeah, but you're wrong because I am eating an orange'.
The weighing machine is designed. And, worse, it doesn't make representations. So it does not begin to challenge my case.

Then I refute the idea that reliability has anything to do with whether something is representing or not. And your response? A nay say. Brilliant. Okaaaay Anscombe, you bested me.

I don't know what you mean.
If I am a bot, this isn't a message. It just looks like one. But it won't be.
Our faculties are bots if they evolved by blind evolution. Therefore the mental states that they create in us, like this 'message' if I am a bot, won't have any representative contents. They will appear to. They won't.
They need to have actual representative contents if we are to perceive by means of them. So we won't be perceiving anything ever if they're bot built. We won't be believing anything either. We will just be appearing to perceive and appearing to believe.
We do perceive and we do believe. Thus our faculties are not bot built. Thus they are not products of blind evolution, but design. They are the means by which an agent is telling us about the world.

You don't understand the argument, clearly. I am arguing that in order for something - be it a mental state, a picture, some squiggles - to be said to be 'tepresenting'something to be the case (as opposed to appearing to represent something to be the case) there needs to be a representer.
The clearest way to show this is with notes. This - this here, this 'message' - isn't representing anything if I am a bot. It is if I am a person.

Er, I know what begging the question involves.
Now, final time, the weighing machine example is shit. Why? Because it's DESIGNED.
I am arguing that our faculties need to have been DESIGNED in order to generate representations and not apparent representations. See?

No. Again then: the machine is designed. So it ain't a counterexample. It is designed! And it doesn't even make representations. If it did, it wouldn't be a good example. It doesn't, so it's even worse.When it says hello, it isn't greeting you. It isn't telling you your cat's weight. It isn't doing that either way.

You think the fact the machine enables you reliably to know the cat's weight is what's doing the trick, yes?

I keep refuting that with examples. And so you just repeat the same bloody point. A point that isn't the relevant one.

It has nothing to do with reliability. As I have shown. It has everything to do with design.

Again, you are begging the question throughout by just helping yourself to the idea of a representation, when what it takes for something successfully to represent is precisely what's at issue.

I can perhaps make the point in another way. Imagine I want to convey to you what your cat's weight is (and I do know this). I am, however, thousands of miles away and have no clue where you are. Nevertheless, I write your cat's weight on a piece of paper and make it into a little paper plane and throw it out of the window. By purest fluke, it manages to find its way to your window and to land on your table. YOu read the note, which says 'your cat weighs 15 stone'. Is that a representation? Yes. Is information from me being conveyed to you? Yes. Yet the mechanism I have employed is about as unreliable as it is possible to be.

Now go back to my leaf. The leaf floated in through the window, and by purest fluke its markings cause you to believe that you are being told that your cat's weight is 15 stone. You are not being told that. You are not being told anything. It's just a leaf.

Now imagine that the connection between the leaf coming through the window and your cat's weight is very tight, such that if your cat did not weigh 15 stone it would not have come through the window.

That's not going to make a difference, is it? For to think it would, is to think the tightness of the connection between the apparent representative contents and its object is the crucial matter. But if that was the crucial matter, then my paper-plane case should be one in which it is clear that the note lacks representative contents. Yet the opposite is true.

No, you're just crowing in a pathetic attempt to gaslight me. — InPitzotl

Not sure what that means, but I am just pointing out that to be aware of something essentially requires you to be in a mental state with representative contents, whatever else it may involve. It isn't up for negotiation. There are issues over whether we are directly or indirectly aware of what such states make us aware of (when they make us aware of something). But those are beside the current point, which is to do with how something gets to have representative contents.

Words aren't concepts. — InPitzotl

Erm, yes. I didn't say otherwise. Cows aren't tables. So there.

The symbols "15" represents the weight of my cat. My cat's weight was conveyed to me. — InPitzotl

Question begging. See OP and other representations of the argument above.

There's an infinite number of imagined scenarios where I can see the symbols 15 in such a way that they have no bearing on the weight of my cat. But they have no bearing on the fact that the scale's display showing 15 means my cat weighs 15. — InPitzotl

You've missed the point.

Your leaf example is superfluous. You already have a pie in the oven, and it doesn't refute my cat's weighing 15. A leaf with a 15 stamp isn't going to help you. — InPitzotl

I think you meant 'super' not 'superfluous'. It isn't superfluous because although I have other examples that illustrate the same point, they don't seem to have conveyed it to you, and thus I keep coming up with variations in the hope that by about example 7 or 8 you might get the point. Which is that despite you acquiring a true belief via these mechanisms, the leaf, or clouds, or squiggles or whatever, do not have any representative contents until or unless an agent gets involved.
The leaf is 'apparently' making a representation, but isn't actually. And no amount of tightening the causal relation between what it appears to be making a representation of and the truth-maker of your belief is going magically to make it start representing successfully.

First, perception goes by way of mental states with representative contents. You say you're willing to grant this, like there's an option to deny it. No, they're essential.
— Bartricks
You're just playing games. How you define a word is arbitrary. If I want to say a brainless creature with nerves perceives something, I might want a weaker definition. — InPitzotl

No, you are just showing that you don't really know your stuff. You can't perceive something absent a mental state with representative content. They're essential. Not wordplay, it's just about grasping the concept.

Second, 'conveying' information - as opposed just to acquiring a true belief - requires an information giver and an information receiver.
— Bartricks
And yet, my cat weighs 15. There's no information giver here. So either this is a lingual quibble or it's wrong. — InPitzotl

Once more, you have acquired a true belief. But no information was conveyed to you. For no representation was made.

Imagine a leaf floats in through the window and the markings on the leaf look like the number 15. You form the belief that your cat weighs 15 stone on that basis. Your belief is true - your cat really is 15 stone - yet no one conveyed this information to you.

You are begging the question horribly or not really understanding the argument I am making.

Mental states with representative contents are essential to perception. So, in their absence, we do not perceive anything.

For a mental state to have representative contents (and this is a vulgar way to speak, of course, for no mental state itself represents anything to be the case) it needs to be being used by an agent for the purposes of representing those contents to its bearer.

The leaf that floated in through the window with 15 on it, was not telling you anything about anything, even though you took it to be. If someone knew of this leaf's existence and loaded it into a set of scales such that if anything weighing 15 stone sat on it this leaf would be emitted, then - then - you are being told something about your cat's weight. Otherwise not.

I just find your viewpoint to be incomprehensible. You're going to ignore reasoned arguments whenever doing so is needed to preserve your viewpoint. So, really what you're engaging in is a kind of expressivism, not a search for truth. I think that's a waste of time.

You are the one who is begging the question, not me.

First, perception goes by way of mental states with representative contents. You say you're willing to grant this, like there's an option to deny it. No, they're essential.

Second, 'conveying' information - as opposed just to acquiring a true belief - requires an information giver and an information receiver. And in the case where the sky writing - or 'writing' - is the product of blind natural forces, no information is conveyed, even though you form the true belief that there is a pie in the oven.

You then proceed to beg the question by supposing that it is somehow the squiggles that are doing the representing. No, they're not. Minds represent 'by' using squiggles to convey something to another.

That's what perception does. There's an image on your retina. Something happens, and lo and behold... some mental state is formed about something that is a mental state such that you tend to have it if there were a cat there and not have it if there were no cat there. That is a mental state of "seeing a cat". — InPitzotl

Flagrantly question begging. You need to show there to be something wrong with my case before you can just assert such things.

So you can't offer a proof. Thanks for letting me know. — khaled

Again with the comprehension skills. I can, it's easy. But I don't see the point, given that you'll rewrite everything I say and say "so you think this - that's stupid" and then I'll just have tediously to tell you that's not what I said. Like this.

Why? You don't know what a proof is. I might as well do a sea shanty and post it up here and offer that as my proof for all the careful rational scrutiny you'll give it.

Challenge a premise in my argument or go away.

Say which premise you're challenging and provide a deductively valid argument that has its negation as a conclusion and we'll take it from there.

I didn’t say ‘God’ was a language - I’m saying that you have a particular perspective of Reason as an experience of mind from eternity - one that infinitely prefers logic. I’m arguing that a philosophical understanding of reason would transcend this preference for logic that you attribute to your description. I’m saying that God/Reason as a personality or mind is only one aspect of potentiality. — Possibility

Gibberish.

As for Reason having a flesh and bone body, or wishing anything - while I’m not disputing a relational structure between reason, intentionality and flesh, I will argue that bias or affect does come into this at some point. I’m wondering where you think that point is, and how it arises. I don’t see a clear relational structure here that follows from logic to flesh - not without affect. — Possibility

More gibberish.

Sure, ‘good’ by your limited understanding of reason. This is what I mean about interpreting my words and actions as if my relative position is against reason, just because it doesn’t align with your perspective. I’m not against reason - I’m wary of the inaccuracy of reason bound by logic. I place ‘follow reason’ in inverted commas because I disagree with your limited perspective of reason as bound by logic. I do the same with those who profess to ‘follow God’ by rejecting gender diversity, for instance. It’s just an interpretation of what it means to ‘follow God/reason’ that’s biased against an aspect we both recognise as existing. I don’t believe that reason necessarily excludes the illogical. You do. — Possibility

Gibber. Rish.

You do know there’s a difference between reason and logic, right? — Possibility

Oh do enlighten me.

You are really confused.

Ah careful. Reasons to believe things =/= Imperatives to believe things. As I already said, faculties don't give imperatives. This is the part that's beyond dispute. Does your sense of sight itself tell you to do something? No that's ridiculous. — khaled

Show me saying that faculties issue imperatives.

OUr faculty of reason is the faculty by means of which we gain an awareness of reasons to do and believe things, including imperatives of Reason. That is not - if one understands English - the same as saying that our faculty of reason issues the instruction.

Now, you reason really badly. I have provided a proof that Reason is God. Either challenge a premise or go away.

Do you know what a 'state with representative contents' is?
— Bartricks

Yes.

Perception happens by means of them.
— Bartricks

Are you sure about that, — Sir2u

Yes, as you would be if your first answer was correct. It is not in dispute that we perceive things by way of mental states with representative contents.

if it is not evolution that has made it possible for us to perceive, what is the agent that is sending it to us? — Sir2u

An agent. Do you mean who? Not sure. God probably.