No, they are not one and the same since the nervous system includes internal and external sensations and the sense of touch only involves contact with external objects. — Thanatos Sand

Right - did you have a look at the Wiki article I posted? What is popularly known as the "sense of touch" is part of the nervous system of the body.

Sense of touch deals with external objects; the nervous system extends throughout the inner body allowing us to feel pain such as stomachaches. — Thanatos Sand

Yes, but fundamentally they are one and the same, and it's important to realise this. The distinction is otherwise arbitrary. The five senses distinction is a bit arbitrary too, since we actually have a few more senses apart from the five mentioned usually - it's a pretty old distinction and not very up to date.

But for the purposes of the conversation, what's important to realise is that both the senses and thought can be directed towards both internal and external "objects".

Could you stop playing stupid so that we could have a conversation? — Terrapin Station

I'm playing stupid? You're the one who denies that the sense of touch is part and parcel of the nervous system.

Asinus... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatosensory_system

The somatosensory system is a part of the sensory nervous system.

That you should get on those white wings of yours and fly to your heavenly homeland, you filthy immigrant. — Heister Eggcart

:-} I am in my homeland already

Conor will be faster and stronger. He has never been knocked out, and has finished 18 of his 21 professional wins by KO or TKO — CasKev

They were saying the same about Pacquiao.

You must have really been confused in school. — Terrapin Station

If you have a hand or foot paralysed, you cannot feel with it. Why not?

Mayweather. He wouldn't fight if he didn't know he'd win, simple as that. That's an advantage of arranging your own fights.

You're getting even more confused by the post. Goodness, Agustino. Perhaps you should get back to shoveling shit like the happy serf you are? :-* — Heister Eggcart

:-d What's your point?

Well I certainly am, because I claim that the West has for a long time sought to intervene in the politics and domestic affairs of many Eastern nations (including Russia for that matter), and you say exactly that, while also denying it and bringing up the liberals red herring BS.

It's as if you think that Russia just poofed into existence in the year 1918, and that all Western efforts to modernize Russian backwardness for the previous several centuries must therefore be evidences of your "liberals are taking over the world" tinfoil hat argument. — Heister Eggcart

Also I'm very surprised you bring the "liberals" into discussion, there was no question of liberals here, but rather Western political intervention in the affairs of other countries/nations. And funny how you even agree with it - "Western efforts to modernize Russian backwardness" ...

You become aware of it via your nervous system. — Terrapin Station

Your nervous system is your sense of touch.

It's as if you think that Russia just poofed into existence in the year 1918, and that all Western efforts to modernize Russian backwardness for the previous several centuries must therefore be evidences of your "liberals are taking over the world" tinfoil hat argument. — Heister Eggcart

:s

Just cut the crap, Agustino. I know you're biased toward Orthodoxy and its traditions in Russia, but please refrain from hamfisting your world view into a history that's never going to agree with you. — Heister Eggcart

There's no crap, that's the history, read it for yourself if you don't believe me. Why do you think Russia is so much anti-West? For no reason? :s

No. That's just nonsensical and would show zero understanding of our senses and how they work. — Terrapin Station

How do you then perceive a stomach ache? Via your thoughts? :s

That would suggest zero understanding of material you were supposed to learn in elementary school. — Terrapin Station

:-}

I can't make any sense out of "thought is external" though. — Terrapin Station

You've said that you perceive external objects via your senses correct? At the same time you can also perceive internal aspects via your senses, true? I take it that thought has the same structure as the senses. You can also perceive internal aspects via thought, as well as external aspects - such as abstract properties of things, etc.

The definition of perception has absolutely nothing to do with any ontological stance. It's simply about word usage only. — Terrapin Station

Sure, but by rendering the word unavailable, you literarily force me to invent a new word :s - which is quite strange if you ask me. We should be speaking with the way language is commonly used, not re-defining it, etc.

The point I'm really trying to drive at is that you obscure the relevance of the intellect/mind vis-a-vis perception by redefining perception as you want to. Perception represents the awareness/consciousness of the mind of something - and that can be via thought or via the five senses. But thought is equally a mechanism, just like the five senses are. Thought is just as much external as the five senses can be. Using the five senses I can sense internal matters - such as pain - and external matters, such as seeing a desk in front of me. My thoughts can be both internal - and self-directed - as well as external when they happen to me without my will or effort.

It's a toddler mistake to conflate perceptions and what's perceived. — Terrapin Station

I'd say that we become aware of objects via our senses of them, but our senses aren't mental. Our awareness/consciousness of them is mental, and the mind reaches out, as it were, to the objects via the senses.

Well, we could simply say something like "Both thoughts and perceptions are mental phenomena" — Terrapin Station

That's still problematic because I wouldn't say trees are mental phenomena, and yet they are perceived via the 5 senses.

Why does it matter to you if I use the word "perceive" in a particular way versus a different way that I'm specifying? — Terrapin Station

What word shall I then use to point to the commonality I have specified above? Should I invent a new word?

"and why isn't your minds capacity to perceive thoughts another sense" — Terrapin Station

Ahh I see - well that's the commonality I was pointing to by that:

They're both perceived via something (which is part of me - my mind, or my eyes, etc.), so in this regard there is no distinction between them, and yet you're trying to draw a distinction. — Agustino

You asked why your thoughts aren't another sense. — Terrapin Station

Quote me where I asked this. As far as I remember I asked this:

There's these things I'm conscious of that I call sights. There's these things I'm conscious of that I call smells. There's this thing I'm conscious of that I call thoughts. Why are thoughts in a different category than the other two, unless you assume, a priori, that they are "internal" - an arbitrary distinction you've drawn, while the others are "external" - another arbitrary distinction based on a metaphysical worldview, which you haven't even established yet in this discussion, so how the hell do you draw these distinctions? :s — Agustino

So that above is a strawman. I was told in my school that I perceive thoughts using my mind, and I perceive objects via my five senses. They're both perceived via something (which is part of me - my mind, or my eyes, etc.), so in this regard there is no distinction between them, and yet you're trying to draw a distinction.

Did you learn about your senses? — Terrapin Station

Yes, I did learn about the five senses. What about them are you inquiring?

Are you claiming here that you're a representationalist or epistemological idealist? — Terrapin Station

I've asked you to explain to me how you draw those distinctions - I don't see what my own position has to do with your explanation.

Didn't you learn about your senses in elementary school? Why do I have to pretend that you're a toddler who hasn't even gone to kindergarten yet? — Terrapin Station

Yes, in my school I learned that I do perceive my thoughts, as well as objects in the external world. I have no clue what school you went to, maybe it was one for the kind of people you accuse me of being, but if you go out for a bit and ask 10 people if they perceive their thoughts, you'll see that more than 50% answer yes.

I made it clear that I reserve "perceive" for external information gained via the senses. — Terrapin Station

That's an ad hoc definition. What the hell is external information, and why isn't your minds capacity to perceive thoughts another sense, just like your eye's ability to perceive sights is a sense?!

There's these things I'm conscious of that I call sights. There's these things I'm conscious of that I call smells. There's this thing I'm conscious of that I call thoughts. Why are thoughts in a different category than the other two, unless you assume, a priori, that they are "internal" - an arbitrary distinction you've drawn, while the others are "external" - another arbitrary distinction based on a metaphysical worldview, which you haven't even established yet in this discussion, so how the hell do you draw these distinctions? :s

Because of the way it fits with how "perception" tends to be used in my experience. — Terrapin Station

So perception is used in your experience in a different way than it is used in the dictionary?! Submit a request to amend the dictionary definition then, but until that time, I'd like you to explain your silly distinctions to me in common language. Are you capable to do that? I want you - in common language - not in goal post moving ad hoc Terrapin Station definitions are whatever the hell I want them to be language - to explain to me why you draw a distinction between the five senses and thoughts (with regards to perception) granted that they're both things that you are conscious of - and please don't redefine being conscious at the moment again - look at the dictionary.

Now hopefully you're playing retard here and not actually being a retard. I just told you that I define perceive in a particular way, and then I defined it. I explained that that's why I'd not say that you perceive thoughts. — Terrapin Station

Why did you define it that way? Do you want me to start defining common words in uncommon ways?! :s

How can that be hard to understand, and how would it turn into whether thoughts and senses etc. are internal or not? — Terrapin Station

Your definition is fucking ad hoc, that's a problem. You're using a word in a way that no one else is using it, and then if I start asking you what you mean by perceive, you say that those are petty details and I'm being a retard - so it seems that either way you're not willing to give an account of your beliefs!

You can only have thoughts you don't perceive, per the definition I use of "perceive." Perception necessarily implies that you're receiving information external to you. — Terrapin Station

LOL. So have you just defined thoughts to be internal and the five senses to be external in that ad hoc manner out of your own fiat? Because my dictionary tells me that to perceive = "become aware or conscious of (something); come to realize or understand"

You see them from a third-person perspective, of course, not a first-person perspective. Anything that you observe that's not you is the same. You observe it from a third-person perspective only. You don't observe it from the perspective of being it. — Terrapin Station

Why not?! Why do I have this mysterious first-person access to my brain, and not to your brain for example?

For them to be external, and not simply something someone else's brain is doing, and to perceive them, they'd have to obtain outside of brains somehow and you'd need to perceive them, at least indirectly, via your normal perceptual senses--vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch. Those senses are the means by which you perceive anything external, again, at least indirectly. — Terrapin Station

Okay right - so external is anything perceived by the five senses, and presumably internal is everything that is perceived via other means than the five senses. If that's the case, you just defined internal and external in a very ad hoc manner. As if perceiving a tree is a very different experience than perceiving (read - being conscious) of a thought! It seems that both the tree and the thought are things I can be conscious of. So why separate some as external and others as internal? As far as I see it, the criteria for that separation would have to be based on what you can control, and what you can't control.

I wouldn't use the word perceive. You don't perceive thoughts, you have thoughts--in other words, it's something your brain does. — Terrapin Station

Can you have thoughts that you don't perceive?

And if thoughts are something that my brain does, will I see them if I open up my brain with my perceptual senses? My brain is physical correct? So presumably if thoughts are what my brain does, then I should be capable to perceive them by looking at the brain no?

Even your internal/external distinction with regards to thoughts is very problematic. By what criteria for example would you distinguish internal thoughts from external thoughts granted that you perceive both with your mind? Is it your control over them? Do you just say internal thoughts are those you control and direct, and external thoughts are those which come to you spontaneously as it were, which you didn't determine consciously?

Again, it's my experience that people engage in philosophcial discussion--especially on message boards and the like--by basically pretending that they're robots or retards (at least I'm hoping they're pretending). So that gets one into the habit of trying to anticipate the retard-like responses you'll receive. — Terrapin Station

They're not retard-like answers/questions at all, but if you want to be thorough in one's discussion, one needs to elucidate all such matters, even though they may be boring. Without such engagement it is impossible to reach any conclusions, and our discussions won't be productive because we'll misunderstand each other. I remember you said in a different thread you're easily entertained, but that doesn't appear to be so now.

Do we have to play the robot/retard game? — Terrapin Station

The reason I'm asking you these questions is because it appears that the distinctions you draw are somewhat arbitrary. For example, you define natural control to be what Joe can do. But why would more powerful ways of affecting matter than those accessible to Joe count as supernatural? Is it just because they're not accessible to average people or what?

Joe has some natural control over things in the world. For example, Joe can pick up a pen and write something on a piece of paper. — Terrapin Station

So Joe has the limited ability to alter some existing matter, by for example spilling ink on the paper. That's natural control to you. So then altering the chemical composition of water to form wine is a natural or supernatural control then, and why?

Yes. — Terrapin Station

Good. Next I have to ask you:

That there's some sort of being with at least some more or less "supernatural" control over events and entities in the world, etc. — Terrapin Station

What does "supernatural" mean? Is the fact of the mere existence of the natural world a supernatural fact? And what does control over events & entities in the world mean?

So re "How could there be such evidence?"--by there being thoughts, emotions, etc. (whatever the list was) that are external to me. That's straightforward enough. — Terrapin Station

It takes your eye to perceive an external tree. Does it take your mind to perceive an external thought?

You agree. So let's move on. — Terrapin Station

Okay, we will move on if that's all you were saying. So you agree that your terms don't imply that God is purely external of you, correct?

If it's simply a synonym for "everything," then I'd say that a lot of the talk about it is nonsensical. — Terrapin Station

No, it's absolutely not, because theism isn't pantheism. But the fact that God is both external and internal is true. For example, St. Augustine writes:

"In my heart of hearts God is closer to me than I am to myself"

So you would be wrong to think of God as external, you'd be wrong to think of God as internal, and you'd be wrong to think that everything is God.

It's some sort of "independent entity" — Terrapin Station

I will take independent to mean separate from you. Well granted that theism generally holds that God sustains everything in existence at all moments, it seems to me that it would be wrong to think of God entirely as an "independent entity" - rather God is both within and without - both dependent and independent relative to you.

Say that that's how I acquire my concept of "being." That does not imply that my concept of "being" includes an implication that beings are created. To assume that it would have to would be to not understand the act of abstraction in general.

For example, we could say that we acquire our concept of "triangle" by observing shapes and angles and relations etc. that we observe. That doesn't imply that our concept of "triangle" necessarily involves non-straight lines, lines that are not one-dimensional, angles that do not add up to exactly 180 degrees, etc.--even though we don't actually observe those things. — Terrapin Station

I thought you were an empiricist but okay. How would you define a "being" then? And does your concept of being apply to God in-so-far as it pertains to real things, or in-so-far as it pertains to abstract matters of the intellect - or both?

If you were to ask me if "being" implies "created," I would say, "No." So that doesn't amount to disagreeing with me. — Terrapin Station

Then how do you get your notion of being if not from the things which you see around you, which are all impermanent and created? :s