In which case it would have to be discussed on what do we class as a life. Consciousness is believed to start developing around 24-26 weeks into the pregnancy. — Samlw

But we're not permitted to kill the unconscious, so that must not be the basis for deciding if someone is a person.

The US Supreme Court, prior to striking down Roe v. Wade, didn't rely upon consciousness either. It relied upon viability, meaning the ability of the fetus to survive on its own outside the womb.

Think about how many teenagers who don’t understand life have managed to have an abortion. Think, if they were forced to have that child would their quality of life decrease or increase? Obviously there would be cases of their life increasing but I believe the vast majority would have a decrease. — Samlw

Now you've arrived at a new criterion, which is to weigh the quality of life of the mother if she has the baby versus if she doesn't. Is this an objective evaluation I can perform for a woman, or do I just trust the woman when she tells me subjectively what she thinks will be a better life for her? Should married women of financial means be required to have the child where ill equipped teenagers should be allowed to abort? Do you use the "quality of life" criterion exclusively or do you also throw in a time period rule correlated to consciousnes of the fetus, where the woman has to decide before 24-26 weeks whether her life will be better or worse with the baby? If a woman says she thinks her life will be better with the baby and all objective analysis shows she's correct, but she feels social pressue to have the abortion, will she be forbidden to have the abortion, or is her choice supreme and unchallengable?

The point here is that this is not a simple question, which is why it is so hotly contested.

If there are more planets than possible words then you can't give each of them a different name. It doesn't matter if you have seen all of them. — Tarskian

I don't understand what it means to have more planets than possible worlds if possible worlds are infinite in number.

But, if you could have infinite planets, you could name each one as a number. I don't follow how there can be an infinite set of planets but not an infinite set of names.

For example, there are uncountably infinite real numbers. Therefore, it is impossible to express all of them in language. — Tarskian

This doesn't work. The fact that you can't express every number at once because there are an infinite number of numbers doesn't mean there is any single number that can't be expressed. That there is a certain number that has not been expressed in fact doesn't mean there is a certain number that cannot be expressed in theory.

That I've not seen all the planets doesn't mean those I've not seen are ineffable. That some are unknown doesn't make them incapable of being expressed once known.

Is here anything language can express? What does it mean to say that language "expresses"? — tim wood

The other extreme is asking whether there is anything that is expressed that is not language. We take language to be the symbolic representation of reality, where "cat" is another way of representing that thing that wakes you up to be fed every morning.

But that thing that looks like a cat is also but a symbolic representation of reality if you subscribe to a representational model where direct access to the cat is not available.

Does anybody have any experience with drafting an AI Code of Conduct? — Benkei

ChatGpt can provide you one if you'd just ask.

I'll dispense with the obvious for your benefit and say it's antii- natalism.

But I do agree with your comments about Witt.

That's nuts. — frank

I know. Now we've got to start over this whole thread now that we learn you don't need eyes or a brain to see.

Plants can see without eyes and without central nervous systems.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8903786/

It's sort of like what we see are the shadows on the wall cast from the fire behind us. We see a a distorted fragment of the world, but not the world itself.

I don't take credit for that analogy.

Are you OK? — Banno

Meh. So so.

Language games do not involve only words. They are locked into the world by what we do. So fortunately or unfortunately, you are not mere words. — Banno

What we do is "debate." What debating is how we use the term. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Hanover is ""Hanover" iff Hanover is "Hanover." What be Hanover without "Hanover"?

Silence!

Who are you talking to? I'm just a perception. — Banno

Don't ask me. I'm just a word in your game, constructed from usage without metaphysical composition.

I do thank you for speaking my name so that I come into existence.

Everything is the product of the brain. The question is what stimulates the brain to cause that perception
— Hanover
If everything is the product of the brain, then what simulates the brain is the product of the brain. Your narrative leaves you unable to interact with the world. But of course for you the world is just a product of the brain.

You built yourself a self-consistent self deception. Solipsism. — Banno

Yeah, and I think it's clear that my use of the term "everything" references perceptions, which is all you experience, not all that there is , as it's clear I've distinguished between the brain and the stimulus, which means I've admitted to something other than the brain, thus denying solipsism.

I'm not a mind monist. There are bodies. Yours and mine.

Speaking of deception and all things Descartes, which many blame for this whole mess anyway. You are aware that the positing of the great evil deceiver did not lead Descartes to solipsism?

Everything is the product of the brain. The question is what stimulates the brain to cause that perception. The stimulus is not the perception, but just the cause of it. All I know is that I see a pen. If you want to call the pen the stimulus, you can, but you can't say the pen looks like the stimulus anymore than you can say the pain feels like the blade.

Maybe that's true, but I'm more arguing against those who seem to be saying that because we say such things as "the box is red" then it must be that the colour red is a property of the box and not a property of our bodies. — Michael

That's my issue as well.

What I actually think linguistic philosophy holds is simply that "the box is red" means the "box" is "red." That is, they're never actually talking about boxes or redness as a metaphysical entity, but they're instead just talking about how we define words and use words. Under this framework, when @Banno says the box is red, his comment is deflationary, meaning to claim "the box is red is true" is meaningfully indistinct from saying "the box is red." All you can do is define your terms and agree on usage.

When you say the box is red and that it's a product of the mind, that attempts to establish a subjective metaphysical reality to the redness, whereas, from the best I follow, Banno attempts to say "the box is red" just means the box is red as defined and distinguishing which part is subjective and which is objective is folly.

The correspondence theory of truth holds no value in this way of thinking, and so the talking around each other follows.

If this weren't the case, then the obviousness of the brain's role in determining perceptions would be conceeded, but the fact it isn't means there's a larger refusal to even consider the underlying metaphysical structure of objects.

All we have are words in this world, which is an interesting puzzle to construct and sort of admire, but it's largely horseshit as far as it is true.

We see a red box and a blue box. The colour is the relevant visual difference between the two. I don't think that this visual difference has anything to do with language. The difference is entirely in how the boxes reflect light and then how our body responds to that light. — Michael

Specifically it would be our neuronal response to the stimulus that determines how we see the color. I'm trying to understand why it matters in this discussion whether our neuronal response to light is altered by our language skills. I admit that it is doubtful the language bone is connected to the seeing bone, but what would the philosophical import be if it was?

As with hearing, for example, I hear someone say "hello" and I would expect that would elicit my language skills despite the word being just air waves. Whether my mind is so constructed to reduce visual inputs into symbols or representations as well so that they're in some way linguistic in the most general sense, I don't know or see what it matters here. That is, maybe I see red and it makes me mad, or happy, or it reminds me of the time I cut my finger and its visualization is imbued with subjective representations.

Or maybe I'm overthinking this and the point of this discussion is just to tell the Wittgensteinians that their assumptions regarding language are non-scientific horseshit?

Sure, but I don't think all that other stuff has anything to do with the colour, and the discussion is about colour. — Michael

But I don't think phenomenal states of a single ingredient exist. The perception is complex, but to the extent you want to hypothesize a perception of red devoid of any other mental activity, then I guess it could exist without language, although I don't think such a thing could exist at all.

All I am saying is that a deaf illiterate mute can see the difference between a red box and a blue box. That visual distinction has nothing to do with language and everything to do with what the brain does (in response to what the eyes do in response to what the light does in response to what the box does). — Michael

I agree with that, but whether I'd foreclose the role of language in the perception of all things, I don't know I'd go so far and I don't know it matters for the purposes of the OP.

My hesitation is in defining the phenomenal state in terms of just raw images in one's brain. It's not like I just see red in a vacuum, but there are all other sorts of things going on in mind, many of which I'm interpreting as I see the thing.

That is, if I see a cardinal, I don't just see the red of the bird, but I see the whole bird and I also have all sorts of thoughts about what that thing can do and what it is at the same time. I don't just get a raw feed of red.

But to say that I must have language to see a bird is equally wrong. Babies see birds. Why the fetish with language as a particular influencer of reality, I don't really know.

It's 'percepts not 'precepts'. Michael has been arguing that colour is nothing but "mental percepts". I formed the impression you were supporting this claim. If I am mistaken then my bad. — Janus

As @Michael argues, color is not within the external object, but it is within brain. That I am agreeing with. If you limit the term percept (which was what I was trying to understand by asking for a definition) to those perceptions you receive solely from your senses, then I suppose I do disagree with Michael to the extent that I allow that some of my interpretation of the external data might arise from language (and all sorts of other mental processes).

That Michael might allow interpretation of the external object by the sense organs alone and not allow it to also be interpreted by language just seems an odd limitation (if that's at all what he's even saying, as that doesn't seem correct). I see no need to limit how the interpretation occurs, whether it be by language or otherwise.

That is, what seems critical here in response to the OP (and we can't lose sight of the fact that the OP asks the question in this thread, regardless of how meandering the conversation might have become) which is:

Does the color “red” exist outside of the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept of “red?” — Mp202020

To that question, the answer is that the color red does NOT exist outside the subjective mind if the color is entirely caused by the senses OR if it is caused by language. An admission therefore that language causes us to perceive red in a way peculiar to our language lands red as a subjective entity.

That was the question, not whether red is in its entirety mitigated only by the sense organs. It can be affected by language as well, and that would result in the same answer to the OP.

Okay, well I have no idea how (2) is supposed to follow from (1). — Leontiskos

You are not following what I've said. My point is only that perception is a mental construct.

At this point it seems like you are trying to continue agreeing with Michael despite not agreeing with him on much of anything. — Leontiskos

When did I adopt Michael's position? It seems you're conflating my position with his.

We specifically disagreed regarding the relevance of this discussion, with him clarifying his sole objective was in identifying the scientific position on perception.

Then red is more than merely percepts. — Janus

Define "precepts" how you're using it here. That's not a term I've used or argued for.

Fair interpretation, which is why I then said, "Is what you're saying simply that sometimes language affects our perception and sometimes it doesn't?"

Is the dispute just over the word "necessary" in conclusion #2?

If it is, then that's sort of obvious. Why would I demand that language not be a factor in how we interpret the world? My position has always been that perceptions are indirect interpretations of reality, which would include how we rationally assess them. It's obvious sometimes we think linguistically. It's also obvious sometimes we don't.

This past 30 minutes of conversation arose from this comment of Banno's:

'Things in the word, and the people around us, also have a say in what colours we see."

You made an argument, I pointed out why it was a bad argument, and then instead of responding you asked a question. Was your argument a good argument or a bad argument? Does your conclusion follow? — Leontiskos

You indicated language was a necessary element in the formulation of a perception and I offered an example of perception occurring without language.

You didn't relent with my example, so I asked why my example was inapplicable, and you said "whatever."

Is what you're saying simply that sometimes language affects our perception and sometimes it doesn't?

I just asked a question.

It does not follow from this that babies do not see. — Leontiskos

Do they see red?

Do cats see red even without words?

How would you know the image contains no red if red were nothing more than a percept? — Janus

Because red was defined in the example as certain wavelengths.

You tell me. I'm not arguing about the physiology. — Banno

I assume babies can't see color because "Things in the word, and the people around us, also have a say in what colours we see." Since babies don't know words and words determine what we see, babies can't see, color or otherwise.

Things in the word, and the people around us, also have a say in what colours we see. The brain is not the sole determiner colour. — Banno

Does a baby see color?

To understand the difference between the two is to understand why sight and hearing are not reducible to the brain. If they were reducible to the brain then everyone with a brain would be able to see and hear. — Leontiskos

No one is arguing brains can hear without input of any sort. The argument is that no can hear without a brain.

This is equivocation on "seeing." For example, a blind person does not see when they dream, as your verbiage would have it. — Leontiskos

The question isn't whether seeing via an electrode, through glasses, through your screen window, or through your naked eye are different. They all obviously are. The question is whether there is an ontological difference that impacts the truth value of the judgment that requires differing descriptive words.

What distinguishes the dream with the electrode example is the claim "there is a chair" does not correspond with reality in the dream, but it does with the electrode.

If you wish to preserve the term "see" only for those instances where it is visualized through the naked eye, then why stop there, but instead create 1000s of gradients of the word "see" to preserve each type of corrective lens or optic surgery someone might have?

That is, to say "I 'see' the chair" with my thick eyeglasses and you to say you "see" the same through your cataracts, then that too would equivocate the term "see" as you're arguing it.

Stimulating a brain with some of the methods indicated is just an artificial way to illicit some of the biological effects of an actual, natural stimulus, but is in fact not the same act. — NOS4A2

If I have a cochlear implant and perceive you say "hello" through my "artificial" means, and I say "Nos said 'hello,'" my statement is true under both correspondence and coherence theories of truth. That is, my saying you said hello corresponds to what actually happened and my use of language is consistent with your own.

We would have a different result if I hallucinated you saying "hello. "

None of this demands a direct realism. To demand a direct realism forces a definition of "artificial" to simply mean "other than typically human, " which in no way can be assumed to be more accurate than other methods. To call one method artificial assumes there is an otherwise natural and correct way, but that assumption is the entirety of this debate. That is, what is contested is whether the world as it appears is as it is or whether it has been artificially manipulated by the internal processes.

My position is that all perception is "artificial" if that term means it is an unaltered representation of reality.

That's also false. The blind can't see anything no matter what their brains are doing. — jkop

The blind can see if their brains are directly stimulated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphene

Similarly, the profoundly deaf can hear using direct stimulation methods.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant

This is due to the uncontroversial scientific fact that perception is created by the brain regardless of whether the stimulus enters the brain through the normal means of sensory organs or whether it is hot wired directly through a probe.

@Michael@Banno

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=8066898573347962

Given that the "empirical proving" is itself an experience, according to Hanover we cannot conclude anything from this experience. His conclusion is self-defeating. — Leontiskos

If solipsism is the only logical conclusion of recognizing some amount of difference between the object and the perception and naive realism is the only practical solution to avoid that slippery slope, then I choose solipsism because at least it is logical.

Naive realism suffers from the same logical failure you assign to indirect realism in that it demands that objects are as they appear, but empirical studies (i.e. the study of things as they appear) prove soundly that objects are not in fact as they appear. In fact, what naive realism teaches us is often we have perceptions that do not correlate with reality, as in hallucinations, direct stimulation of brain cells, and and damage to various nerves and anatomical structures. That is, the system you use to prove that things are as they appear proves that things aren't as they appear. This seems a nice matching bookend to your criticism that indirect realism can't prove things aren't as the are if indirect realism demands the evidence received is inherently flawed.

What we learn is that there is no fully satisfactory answer, which is obvious, as if there were, this would be a physics class and not a philosophy class where there are no answers.

If you scroll up somewhere above, I long ago acknowledged that the difficulty with transcendetal idealism is that it creates an irrelevant sort of realism, where we can only assert an external reality, but we can't ascribe much to that reality. The alternative, which is to just say WYSIWYG suffers from another host of problems.

What does seem clear to me is that the pen is whatever it is, but its redness is not part of the pen, but is part of the person. That is the conclusion demanded of direct realism.

But this is only half of the conversation, the larger part circling around Wittgenstein, words, and beetles, none of which sheds a whole lot of light on the topic, and much of which was so unconvincing I have to believe that it's been poorly presented here because it's so facially invalid I can't see how it can be taken seriously.

How do you know, if a person may ask? — tim wood

I'm circumcised, so I just assume someone had good reason.

As to who gets to call themselves a Christian, as the whole topic is based in nonsense, who cares?! — tim wood

But this was the subject of the OP. It asks what a Christian would do if he were to learn that Jesus was but an ordinary man. If we are convinced that a Christian must accept the divinity of Jesus, then the answer is that person would necessarily cease being a Christian.

I think there's room for the counter-argument, which is that the person could remain very much a Christian because Christianity isn't defined in the brittle way that many demand it be. A common attack on theism by atheists is to point to the most unworkable parts of specific theistic theological systems and then to declare there is no God.

I'm not Christian, but should I one day consider it, it won't be based upon a literal belief that a woman bore God so he could be sacrificed in order to forgive the world of sinfulness, but it would be instead because I might find the primacy that that belief system places upon forgiveness worthwhile of believing in.

But I am pretty sure that insistence on His actual, real material existence, and especially with regard to the consequences of that claim, would be a heresy that might have got up a barbecue, these days an excommunication. — tim wood

" [LDS] Church members believe that "The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Mormonism#:~:text=LDS%20Church,-Latter%2Dday%20Saints&text=Church%20members%20believe%20that%20%22The,is%20a%20personage%20of%20Spirit.%22

On the other extreme:

Maimonides’ conception of God (the Jewish view of extreme monotheism):

"That also means that, in Aristotelian terms, one cannot actually say “God is . . .” and proceed to enumerate God’s attributes. To describe the Eternal One in such a sentence is to admit of a division between subject and predicate, in other words, a plurality. (Maimonides writes in Chapter 50 of the Guide, “Those who believe that God is One and that He has many attributes declare the Unity with their lips and assume the plurality in their thoughts.”) Therefore, he concludes, one cannot discuss God in terms of positive attributes.

On the other hand, one can describe what God is not. God is not corporeal, does not occupy space, experiences neither generation nor corruption (in the Aristotelian sense of birth, decay, and death). For obvious reasons, Mai­monides’ conception of the Supreme Being is usually characterized as “negative theology,” that is, defining by the accumulation of negatives. Maimonides writes, “All we understand is the fact that [God] exists, that [God] is a being to whom none of Adonai’s creatures is similar, who has nothing in common with them, who does not include plurality, who is never too feeble to produce other beings and whose relation to the universe is that of a steersman to a boat; and even this is not a real relation, a real simile, but serves only to convey to us the idea that God rules the universe, that it is [God] that gives it duration and preserves its necessary arrangement.”

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/maimonides-conception-of-god/#:~:text=God%20is%20not%20corporeal%2C%20does,by%20the%20accumulation%20of%20negatives.

And then there is the Catholic notion of the God head, which, candidly, I don't understand:

"In Catholic theology, we understand the persons of the Blessed Trinity subsisting within the inner life of God to be truly distinct relationally, but not as a matter of essence, or nature. Each of the three persons in the godhead possesses the same eternal and infinite divine nature; thus, they are the one, true God in essence or nature, not “three Gods.” Yet, they are truly distinct in their relations to each other.

In order to understand the concept of person in God, we have to understand its foundation in the processions and relations within the inner life of God. And the Council of Florence, AD 1338-1445, can help us in this regard.

The Council’s definitions concerning the Trinity are really as easy as one, two, three… four. It taught there is one nature in God, and that there are two processions, three persons, and four relations that constitute the Blessed Trinity. The Son “proceeds” from the Father, and the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” These are the two processions in God. And these are foundational to the four relations that constitute the three persons in God."

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/explaining-the-trinity

IIRC Mormons hold that JC is the literal son of god and not god himself placing him outside of the nicean-creed understanding of christianity. — BitconnectCarlos

I know the Mormon view of the trinity is distinct in that they believe it to be 3 separate beings, making it a polytheism. It can be argued that the triunity of other denominations ultimately fails and is actually a polytheism anyway.

As to the rejection of the Nicean Creed,

"Non-Trinitarian groups, such as the Church of the New Jerusalem, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Jehovah's Witnesses, explicitly reject some of the statements in the Nicene Creed."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed#:~:text=Non%2DTrinitarian%20groups%2C%20such%20as,statements%20in%20the%20Nicene%20Creed.

The schism between the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church relates to the addition of "and the son" to the Creed:

As the Creed states:

"I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets."

This makes Jesus co-equal to the Father, which is not universally accepted. In addition to Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism also questions the "and the Son" language.

This is the filoque controversy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque

Anyway, the point being that "Christianity" describes a wide range of views and even the the Church's early efforts to crystallize the faith into a concise summary isn't universally accepted.

Just read "How to Start a Worm Bin" by Henry Owen. I ordered 500 red wigglers and I feel I now know enough to start some composting and to build a good supply of fishing bait.

I'll be able to say I raised the worm that caught the fish that fed the family. That's how self-sufficient I'll be.