By "ontic" I intended: Pertaining to being, as opposed to pertaining to a theory of it (which would be ontological).. Otherwise I would have said, "ontological" — javra

Sure, I get that. And I'm not trying to be contrary or antagonistic, generally speaking I find in you a kindred spirit. But the vocabulary of 'ontic' and 'ontology' is Greek rather than Buddhist.

Plotinus: Ontological Monism
The One is beyond, yet the source, of all being.

Reality is hierarchy: the One → Intellect → Soul → the material world.

The return to the One is a ascent of soul realizing its divine origin through contemplation, culminating in henosis.

The One is a positive ontological principle—ultimate, simple, ineffable, and yet the ground of all.

Buddhism: No ultimate unitary source

All phenomena (dharmas) are empty of inherent existence (śūnyā).

Even nirvāṇa is not a separate realm but the cessation of clinging and conceptual proliferation.

The highest realization is not union with a supreme being, but insight into the non-dual, inter-dependent, and empty nature of phenomena.

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That's pretty much a textbook description of the distinctions. That said, arguments can and have been made for a 'transcendent unity' among different diverse traditions and the case can be made - I myself often make it. But it has to take into account the real distinctions also.

Why are our thoughts different from our senses in that the content of thoughts cannot be doubted? — Kranky

You can doubt anything, but the fact that you are doubting cannot be doubted, hence the only certainty in the universe. Wasn't it the idea of Cartesianism?

"I think therefore I am" is the first principle of Descartes philosophy. — RussellA

"I think therefore I am" is not an affirmation, but inference. He was still doubting his own existence, and the possibility that he thinks. But his doubt on it couldn't be doubted.

I think X implies I am doubting. For instance, I think God exists, I think there are ghosts, I think the world will end soon, I think I am thinking .... etc are all implications of doubting.

Our senses can be doubted. But if I 'experience' a thought, then it is certain that that exact thought is happening. — Kranky

So if you perceive something, it is not certain you perceived it? Some thing….don’t matter what it is….gets right in front of your eyes, but you doubt that thing made the trip from the front to the back of your eye? Why wouldn’t it? What’s to prevent it? All necessary presuppositions being given, of course, re: awake and aware, intellectually/physiologically functional.

How does your eye know how to deceive you? How….indeed, why….would your fingertips, when sensing roughness (of sandpaper), pass on to your brain the sensation of smoothness (of the fridge door handle)? Why is it always that the odor of bacon is never sensed by the ear?

In the same way it is certain for any thought that exact thought is happening, it is just as certain for any perception that exact perception is happening. By the same token, that the content of thought is impossible to deny, so too is the content of perception impossible to deny.

Nobody said, nor is anyone justified in saying, the mere reality of empirical content of sense, nor the mere rational content of thought, means knowledge of what either one is, and, with respect to the original question, the difference between our thought and our senses cannot be determined by whether or not their respective content is susceptible to doubt.

Since at least Plato…knowledge that is not the same as knowledge of, more recently, in Russell 1912, knowledge by acquaintance vs knowledge by description.

I read this long ago in a book called WHY GOD WON'T GO AWAY - Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. It discusses the posterior superior parietal lobe:

The primary job of the [posterior superior parietal lobe] is to orient the individual in physical space - it keeps track of which end is up, helps us judge angles and distances, and allows us to negotiate safely the dangerous physical landscape around us. To perform this crucial function, it must first generate a clear, consistent cognition of the physical limits of the self. In simple terms, it must draw a sharp distinction between the individual and everything else, to sort out the you from the infinite not-you that makes up the rest of the universe.

It may seem strange that the brain requires a specialized mechanism to keep tabs on this you/not-you dichotomy; from the vantage point of normal consciousness, the distinction seems ridiculously clear. But that's only because the [posterior superior parietal lobe] does its job so seamlessly and so well. In fact, people who suffer injuries to the orientation area have great difficulty maneuvering in physical space. When they approach their beds, for example, their brains are so baffled by the constantly shifting calculus of angles, depths, and distances that the simple task of lying down becomes an impossible challenge. Without the orientation area's help in keeping track of the body's shifting coordinates, they cannot locate themselves in space mentally or physically, so they miss the bed entirely and fall to the floor; or they manage to get their body onto the mattress, but when they try to recline they can only huddle awkwardly against the wall.

And they found that this area of the brain is inactive at the times when Franciscan nuns and Tibetan Buddhists feel the most intimately connected with their respective godheads, which is during prayer and meditation, respectively. They theorized:

What would happen if the [posterior superior parietal lobe] had no information upon which to work? we wondered. Would it continue to search for the limits of the self? With no information flowing in from the senses, the [posterior superior parietal lobe] wouldn't be able to find any boundaries. What would the brain make of that? Would the orientation area interpret its failure to find the borderline between the self and the outside world to mean that such a distinction doesn't exist? In that case, the brain would have no choice but to perceive that the self is endless and intimately interwoven with everyone and everything the mind senses. And this perception would feel utterly and unquestionably real.

So if you perceive something, it is not certain you perceived it? — Mww

I think we're getting confused by different meanings of "perceived". What @Kranky seems to mean is "perceive" as in "correctly identify an object of the senses." So, for instance, when we fall victim to a mirage, then the answer to your question would be, "It is not certain at all that I perceived an oasis, although I seemed to." And this contrasts with entertaining a thought, which is supposed to be immune from that kind of mistake.

But I think you mean "perceive" as in "experience a sense-perception event", in which case the answer to the question is different: "Yes, it's certain that this has occurred, but -- see above -- I could be wrong about the nature of it." Here, as you point out, we're on the same basis with perception as we are with thoughts.

And we should remember that what goes for "objects" goes for the subject too. I can be certain of my subjectivity while holding in question what this "I" might be.

….."perceive" as in "correctly identify an object of the senses." — J

Even if that were the case, isn’t it necessarily presupposed there is an object to identify, correctly or otherwise? If so, then deny that very same necessary object as a content of perception, is contradictory, from which it follows…..barring absurdity….that object itself cannot be doubted.

That is how I read the idea of not being a pilot in Meditations:

Nature also teaches me by these feelings of pain, hunger, thirst, and so on that I am not only residing in my body, as a pilot in his ship, but furthermore, that I am intimately connected with it, and that the mixture is so blended, as it were, that something like a single whole is produced. For if that were not the case, when my body is wounded I would not therefore feel pain, I, who am only a thinking being; but I would perceive that wound by the understanding alone, as a pilot perceives by sight if something in his vessel is broken. And when my body needs food or drink, I would simply know the fact itself, instead of receiving notice of it by having confused feelings of hunger and thirst. For actually all these feelings of hunger, thirst, pain, and so on are nothing else but certain confused modes of thinking, which have their origin in and depend upon the union and apparent fusion of the mind with the body. — Descartes, Meditation 6, pg 81, translated by L.J Lefleur

"I think therefore I am" is not an affirmation, but inference. He was still doubting his own existence, and the possibility that he thinks. — Corvus

It is "Cogito, Ergo Sum" or “I think, therefore I am.” There is a comma between "I think" and "therefore I am"

I agree that the sentences "I think that ghosts exists" and "I think that I am" imply doubt that "ghosts exist" and "I am".

But no doubt is implied in "I think, therefore I am", as these are independent thoughts.

At the start of the Second Meditation, Descartes wrote the following:

“I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No: if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed. But there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me.
In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.”(Cottingham et al, 1984)

I have the thought that nothing exists in the external world
Does it follow that I don't exist?
No, because if I have a thought then I must exist.

….."perceive" as in "correctly identify an object of the senses."
— J

Even if that were the case, isn’t it necessarily presupposed there is an object to identify, correctly or otherwise? — Mww

Yes. Philosophically, I prefer your way of understanding "perceive" to the more common usage in which we can be flat "wrong" about perceptual experiences.

There's more than a few things I disagree with in you previous reply. But I basically want to point out that your observations all the same regard separate ontologies (theories addressing the ontic) and not reasoning regarding the ontic nature of ultimate reality, were such a thing to in fact be. This as per my post to you here.

I like that. So the alleged "pilot" self would receive information about a sense perception in order to assess it ("as a pilot perceives by sight if something in his vessel is broken"), whereas the Cartesian self, intimately connected to the body, is able to affirm the experience directly.

I have the thought that nothing exists in the external world
Does it follow that I don't exist?
No, because if I have a thought then I must exist. — RussellA

If you think that nothing exists in the external world, how your having a thought proves you must exist?
Surely you are a part of the world. No?

I have the thought that nothing exists in the external world
Does it follow that I don't exist? — RussellA

Yes, it does. If nothing exists, then you cannot exist.

Surely you are a part of the world. No? — Corvus

Yes, I am part of the world, but we must distinguish between that part of the world that is external to me and that part of the world that is internal to me.

I am part of the world and the Moon is part of the world, but the Moon is external to me.

I am part of the world and the Moon is part of the world, but the Moon is external to me. — RussellA

But how can the internal exist without the external? Does your skin exist? Your skin is external to you.

But how can the internal exist without the external? — Corvus

This raises the question, how can the Universe exist without there being anything external to it?

how can the Universe exist without there being anything external to it? — RussellA

It follows that the universe has the external somewhere.

It follows that the universe has the external somewhere. — Corvus

How could we ever know such a thing?

The Idealism of Berkeley doesn't think that anything physical exists outside the mind.

How could we ever know such a thing? — RussellA

From reasoning and inference.

The Idealism of Berkeley doesn't think that anything physical exists outside the mind. — RussellA

Mind doesn't have outside or inside. Whatever appears in mind must exist, if they could be observed and verified as existing.

Mind doesn't have outside or inside. — Corvus

Isn't the Moon, something that has a diameter of 3,475 km, outside the mind?

Isn't the Moon, something that has a diameter of 3,475 km, outside the mind? — RussellA

It exists in the physical world with no relation to the mind. However, when you perceive it, it appears in your mind. It doesn't exist in your mind. Your mind just sees it. Seeing is not existing itself.

It exists in the physical world with no relation to the mind. — Corvus

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