@TheMadFool

I'm not really sure. Some people are inquisitive or skeptical and they imagine possible explanations for the existence of our world.

@TheMadFool

Are you saying something like, "you don't know what you don't know?" Meaning, you can never know how much more knowledge potentially lies beyond your current understanding, and so you could always doubt whether, using your example, you are truly awakened?

@Banno

I see. We are operating under different definitions of illusion and reality. I think people use the word illusion in these types of conversations because it implies a deception, that something about our world is not what we expected, there is something else beyond, something unknown. Illusion is just an easy way to summarize all these feelings. When I talk about illusion and reality, in the context of this type of conversation, I am generally talking about a world within a world. The world within the world being the "illusion" and the world beyond it or above it being the "reality." However, this is just the common language that has been used to describe this problem so far. In a strict sense, an illusion of a truck is opposed to a real truck (as you have been stating). The illusion of a truck is different from the real truck because it is missing some important property or properties that are found in the real truck. When I talk about the "illusory" world I am not implying that there is a "real" world that it is copying because that would be to imply that every entity in our world has a more real copy in another world. That would be limiting the problem unnecessarily. In the brain in a vat example, the "real" world only has a brain and a vat. There are no trucks in that world, and so the truck in the illusory world would not, by your definition, even be illusory. It is not necessarily trucks that are illusory. It's moreso the fabric of the universe itself. I'm sure there is a better word to use than "illusory" and "real," but they are the common language when talking about this problem in this thread and I don't know of a more appropriate common set of words.

@Banno

The point of my questions were to show that I disagree with your premise. Of course, even an illusory truck is real in a sense. When we are talking about whether our world is an illusion or reality, our world is still real in the same sense. That is, it still exists, and we still have our experiences in it, etc.

@Banno

Why can you not get hit by the illusory truck? Do you think that illusions do not exist, or are you saying that they are not physical or that they cannot be felt? Are you saying that there is one thing called a real truck and one thing called an illusory truck, and that one can be felt and one cannot? Perhaps I now get what you were saying about positing reality. I'm guessing you were implying that there must then exist a thing called the world of reality and thing called the world of illusion. But these things are not known to exist except in conception. Figuring out which one exists is the problem at hand.

Tell me, given the choice betwixt the illusion of being hit by a truck, and being hit by a truck, which would you choose? — Banno

The problem with this question is that it is not a matter of which one I would want to get hit by, but which one I do in fact get hit by.

Y'see, even in positing the all-encompassing illusion, you are contrasting the illusion with reality; and ipso facto, positing reality. — Banno

I'm not sure what positing reality has to do with whether or not we are in an illusion or reality.

The main question for me is, what kind of evidence do I have that our world is an illusion or reality? And so far as I know, the answer is zero on both accounts.

Then how is it that we happen to have these two distinct words?

There is a difference between being hit by a truck and having the illusion of being hit by a truck. — Banno

There is a difference between what is and what we can perceive. There are two distinct words, illusion and reality, because there are differences between what is an illusion and what is reality. However, that does not mean that we can perceive that difference when we encounter illusions or reality in our lives. If the experience of getting hit by a truck in a world of illusion is the same as the experience of getting hit by a truck in reality then how would you tell the difference? Furthermore, if all you have ever experienced is the world of the illusion then how would you even know what a real truck feels like?

The possibility that reality could be an illusion is predicated on our inability to distinguish reality from illusion (deus deceptor, brain in a vat, simulation). In other words reality is, in every sense, identical to illusion. — TheMadFool

I think what you describe is one possibility, but the one does not necessarily follow from the other. It is possible that both our reality and the more fundamental reality are the same in many ways, but it is also possible that they are not. We can only imagine them as the same because it is impossible to imagine anything beyond the limits of our understanding. That is the only reason the examples we come up with are so grounded in our own reality. However, the real source of the problem is in the fact that we have no way to "look behind the curtain" so to speak and see whether our reality is independent or dependent on another reality.

In both cases illusion and reality, the doctor says I have 50% chance of dying in a week. — Manuel

I think you misunderstand the move @Down The Rabbit Hole is making. He is using the analogy with the doctor to show the weakness of Ockham's Razor in his original post. Ockham's Razor was originally formulated as "entities should not be multiplied without necessity," but it is often used in metaphysics today as "simpler is better." If you are presented with two options that seem equally likely, in Rabbit Hole's example the options are living or dying from the terminal illness, you would not think that one is more likely than the other just because it is simpler (Ockham's Razor). In the same way, it does not seem like the simpler option when it comes to illusion or reality would be any more true just because it is simpler. I haven't mentioned Ockham's Razor yet because as Down The Rabbit Hole has pointed out it is not an immutable law and so it doesn't make much sense to appeal to it as such.

It does if there is an equal amount of evidence. There is no evidence that this is an illusion, but there is also no evidence that this is reality — Down The Rabbit Hole

Good point. Off the top of my head I can't come up with any reason to say that this is reality as opposed to a really good illusion, so the evidence for each is equally zero. However, zero evidence does not lead to likelihood or probability. It is not a 50/50, it is unknown/unknown. For example, what is the likelihood that there is a purple crow? Well, it is very hard to disprove the possibility of anything, let alone the possibility of a purple crow, but with no evidence for its existence you cannot quantify the probability of it existing. Granted, our world being reality or an illusion is a little different because one of the two options must be the case. However, the probability of each possibility is still entirely unknown.

That probably seems nit picky, but apart from that I really can't add anything else at the moment. I don't know of anything that would count as evidence in favor of our world being reality. I have been trying to put together some kind of common sense argument that takes world as reality as the default, but I'm thinking that may only be a pragmatic move.

@Down The Rabbit Hole

I don't entirely disagree with you, but I think there is an important distinction that needs to be made when trying to determine what is true. You seem to be coming from the direction of, true until proven false. I think @Manuel correctly comes from the opposite direction of false until proven true. However, I will make one precondition to this rule. At the end of any claim, a person must implicitly mean "so far as I know" because, of course, no one can know what they do not know. That is to say, some things are beyond our current knowledge, or beyond our capacity to know, and we cannot know what these things are. If you knew what they were, then you could no long say that you don't know them.

There is not any evidence, so far as I know, to support the view that our world is an illusion. The only reason we even believe it is a possibility is because "we don't know what we don't know," it is a question that we can neither prove or disprove and therefore it could be true. However, how can you attribute any sort of likelihood to such a thing? Likelihoods are based on evidence. When there is no evidence, where does that leave us? Certainly not at a 50/50.

I could say, for example, I do not know if all crows are black, but I cannot say that some crows are purple. One is a statement that leaves room for a truth that I am unaware of, the other is a statement that asserts something that I do not in fact know to be true. I can only say the first in so far as I know I am not omniscient, I cannot say the second with any credibility.

@Gregory

There are some quirky aspects to Christian theology, I will admit, but I am not sure I see what you are seeing. I will also say that an apparently quirky and lopsided theology is not necessarily untrue. It is common in stories we tell, and also was a belief of the Jews at the time of Christ, that a God is all about power. However, if Jesus's life and sacrifice tells us anything, it's that God is about giving up power. I would say our free will, if you believe us to have it, is also evidence towards this point. Even though he has all power, he takes this seemingly strange route to our redemption. It is not forced on us, and it is not without a cost to himself. Strange indeed. But untrue? I don't think so. Revelatory is more like it.

@Gregory

I see. Thank you for the clarification.

I agree. There is definitely a level of probability there. Almost nothing is certain. Interpreting ancient texts is far from certain. However, now that you have claimed that you believe Christian philosophy is unsound, and by extension that there is more evidence for one interpretation over the other, I would ask you to present the evidence.

My challenge is mostly rhetorical, since I don't expect you to have any evidence on hand, as I certainly do not have any evidence on hand for either interpretation. My point is mostly this. You seem to have come to the conclusion that the common Christian interpretation is wrong. You doubted that interpretation because it seemed weak to you. But have you been so critical of the side you changed to? Can you say that your new interpretation of Christianity is any different? I feel like we have returned to the realm of no evidence for either side, unless you do in fact have better reasons for being against the common Christian interpretation than for.

Hi @SteveMinjares.

I don't know about pseudocode, but I do know about propositional logic. In propositional logic a statement is valid if and only if when the premises are true, the conclusion is also true. This is to say that a statement which is valid does not have to necessarily be true. It just means that if the premises were true, then the conclusion would be true as well. It's really just a test to make sure what you said even makes sense. It is not a test of the truth or falsehood of a claim.

Hi Gregory. I am going to start at the beginning of your thread, although I have read most of it. My main question is about the matter of interpretation. You seem to consistently use the following ideas as arguments.

In the case of some New Testament verses you say...

Either interpretation is valid. — Gregory

Later on you generally conclude...

Christians say their interpretation is the best with regard to Jesus, but if anyone finds Christian theology itself to be ludicrous, this claim goes right out the window. — Gregory

It seems that in both cases you are assuming that either interpretation is equal because of one of two possibilities. Either both interpretations have equal evidence, or both interpretations have no evidence at all. I think you lean towards the second possibility, but correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think the first possibility is even a possibility anyways because how can you judge evidence as exactly equal, unless it is equally nonexistent?

When it comes to interpreting texts in general, but also ancient texts in particular, I have heard it said many times that it is difficult or impossible. But none of those times did I hear those words from someone who actually has the job of translating texts. Those whose job it is to translate texts often have disagreements about how it should be done, but I have never heard them say that it cannot or should not be done.

I admittedly do not have the knowledge or time to disagree with each of your individual points of interpretation. I can only say that there is definitely evidence that supports interpretations, either for or against any given interpretation. People do not say Jesus is God or God is good without any reason. Nor do people say God is evil without reasons. There is historical evidence, textual evidence, personal experience and the like to be discovered. It all starts with the evidence. A view that there is no evidence is a view that will go nowhere.