Yes, and I have done numerous times. But it is powerless to persuade those who don't already respect reason. So there is little point if you don't think listening to reason is the way to find out about things.

But here it is:

1. Imperatives of Reason exist
2. An existent imperative has an existent mind that is issuing it
3. Therefore the existent imperatives of Reason have an existent mind that is issuing them
4. The imperatives of Reason have a single source
5. Therefore there is an existent mind whose imperatives are imperatives of Reason

By ratiocination. I have reasoned about the nature of an aspect of reality that exists more surely than all else - its rational aspect - and have concluded that it expresses a mind's attitudes. Further reflection reveals that the mind is God, as traditionally defined.
Nobody has yet refuted the argument or said anything to raise even the slightest doubt about any of its premises. And as I am the most committed follower of reason I have ever met, I draw the conclusion and believe in God.
So, no faith. One can know by faith, but I have none in God. I believe in God because i listened to her.

Oh. Thanks. I don't watch the news so I don't know about these things.

I believe in a mind who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. God then.
I am sceptical that they are the creator of all things. They could be if they so wished - they can do anything and thus can retrospectively make it the case that they created everything- but I don't think they actually created everything. Indeed they say as much.

What are you on about? I am not religious. I believe in God. I am not religious. So clearly I have no difficulty separating belief in God from being religious as I have never been religious yet I believe in God.
As for your thought experiment- I have no idea what it is supposed to illustrate.

What are you on about? What u turn?

It's very clear. I cannot make it clearer. There are some whose capacity for understanding is exceeded by the ideas it expresses. There's nothing I can do about that as the problem is their end not mine.
I suggest reading it with a view to agreeing with it. It's much harder to understand a view if you assume it is false at the outset.

The scale example doesn't work. First, they're designed. Second, I have not denied that one can acquire true beliefs from bot-created faculties. You acquire the true belief that there is a pie in the oven from the cloud imagery. Third, you are using the scales - or 'scales' if we suppose them to be a flukey product of blind natural forces - to acquire information about your weight. So what, exactly, are you trying to challenge? I mean, let's imagine that, unlikely as it is, the scales are a product of blind natural forces. So it's a bizarre plant or something. And when you step on it it emits a seed that is paper-like and has squiggles on it that look, by fluke, like 'your weight is 250'. Are you being told your weight? No. That 'note' has no representative contents. You have acquired a true belief about your weight, but you have not been told it. (If the squiggles look like 'good morning' have you been greeted?

As to your second point, so you think the clouds are agents? If they are, then yes, they can tell me about the pie. But this will not challenge my case, for we would have to conclude that evolutionary forces express a will.
If you accept that the clouds are not agents, then once more my case goes through.

I have not, note, assumed that natural forces cannot create agents. Which premise assumes it? I am arguing that our faculties of awareness, if they are to provide us with any as opposed to generating accurate dreams, need to have been designed for that purpose, or installed in us for that purpose. Thus an agent needs to be behind our possession of them if they are to 'represent' anything to be the case. But I have said nothing about how that agent might get to be on the scene, and thus I have left open the possibility that agents can be built by blind natural forces. (I don't think they are, but nothing in my argument rules it out).

Did you read anything I said? There's more than one way to know something. One can arrive at the belief in God via reasoned reflection - as I did. And so I know that God exists. For my belief is true and I have acquired it in a respectable manner.

But someone who has faith that God exists can also know that God exists. For the mere fact they did not arrive at it via reasoned reflection does not preclude their belief from being one they are justified in believing. It is sufficient for a belief to be justified that Reason approves of you having it.

And like I say, that's not special pleading as everyone must agree - on pain of radical scepticism - that we are justified in some of our beliefs without having to be aware of their justification. (Otherwise we are set off on a regress in which no belief can ever be justified as we would have to be justified in our belief in its justification and so on.

If I write you a note saying "The cat is on the mat" is the note telling you that the cat is on the mat? No. I am. By means of the note. The note is telling you nothing. I am telling you something by means of the note.

So, in a way, the note and the inky squiggles it has on it, are not representing anything to be the case. I am doing the representing. I am using the inky squiggles to do so, but that doesn't mean that the inky squiggles or the paper on which they're written are doing any representing.

What if the note was the creation of blind natural forces and you just found it on the floor (so it was not being used by an agent to convey information to you, and nor have the squiggles been created by any agent)? Are you now being told that the cat is on the mat? No. You'll think you are. But you're not. For as noted above, neither the note nor the inky markings are themselves doing any representing. In order for the note to have representative contents it needs to either have been created by a mind for the purpose of representing something to be the case, or it needs to be being used by a mind for the purpose of reprsenting something to be the case. Absent this agential input, the note is not really a 'note' at all, just an apparent one - one that you can and will easily mistake for a note.

Nothing changes if, rather than inky notes, we are talking about mental states. Philosophers talk about mental states with representative contents. So, imagine a visual impression of a cat on a mat. Well, it 'represents' the cat to be on the mat. Though, well, it doesn't. The mental state itself is not doing any representing - that's as confused as thinking that the note itself tells you the cat is on the mat. The mental state represents nothing at all unless it was either created by an agent with the express purpose of representing something to you, or is being used by an agent with the express purpose of representing something to you. If neither is true, then the mental state is not representing anything to be the case and is thus incapable of providing you with any kind of perceptual awareness of anything.

So, the visual impression of a cat on the mat is certainly capable of providing one with a perceptual awareness of a cat on a mat. But it won't do so unless it was designed by an agent to provide you with that awareness, or it is being used by an agent to provide you with that awareness.

but I am talking about faith in the strict religious sense. And in that light, you don't have a clue my little puss-puss. — Merkwurdichliebe

No matey, you're just confused. The word 'faith' has several different meanings. Delineate them.

You're just ignoring the argument I made.
Do you know what a 'state with representative contents' is?
Perception happens by means of them.

This is a representation: I am in a room. Or at least it is if I am not a bot. If I am a bot, it isn't.

So, exactly the same squiggles. But if a bot put them on the screen, they're not a representation. Whereas if I did, then they are.

Any kind of penny dropping yet? Same squiggles. Indiscernible from your perspective. Yet whether they are representing something or not depends crucially on what created them. Not on how they appear to you or on whether they cause you to acquire true beliefs. For if a bot created those squiggles then even if I am indeed in a room, this does not magically make the squiggles express a proposition with representative contents.

So.....and this is pointless, I know and you are just going to make silly assertions again.....that applies to all states with representative contents. They won't be representing anything unless an agent was using them for that purpose. If blind natural forces created them, then though they will be indiscernible from states with representative contents, they won't actually be representing anything and thus will be incapable of being accurate. (You may still acquire accurate beliefs from them, but you won't be perceiving anything).

Thus, we are not perceiving anything if our faculties of awareness are bot-built. We will think we are. But we won't be.

We are, of course. Thus our faculties are not bot-built.

Er, no. You can go left or right. And if you went left, then in principle you could have gone right. That does not imply that you can go right and left. Unless you're you.

Yes, on your part. If you reasoned carefully you'd realize there's no contradiction there. I mean, even if you didn't reason very carefully - for there's fairly obviously no contradiction there. I can only think that perhaps English isn't your first language.

You seem confused about faith and how it works.

Everyone must believe some things on faith, for if every belief has to be arrived at via reasoned reflection, then we will be on an infinite regress.

So faith is not the preserve of religions. Everyone has to have some faith beliefs.

But although to believe something on faith is not to have reasoned to it (though one might do that too, of course), reason has everything to do with it. For there can still be a reason to hold a belief even if one is not holding that belief for that reason. And so one can believe X on faith, and one's belief that X can be an item of knowledge. That is, it can be justified, for it can be a belief that you have reason to hold, even though you are unaware of that reason. (It is no requirement on justification that one must always be aware of what justifies one's belief - for that will set us off on the regress again).

Thus faith is - must be - a source of knowledge. Everyone must acknowledge that, or else sink in a quagmire of radical scepticism.

But the idea that faith is 'required' for religion is absurd. For what one can know by faith one can, in principle, uncover by reason too. After all, to know a proposition is for the proposition to be justified - that is, for there to be a reason to believe it. And reasons to believe things are what our reason - our faculty - uncovers. Thus if X can be known by faith, it can be known by ratiocination too.

I say this as someone who is not religious and has no faith in God (I believe God exists, but on rational grounds).

I thought FW meant fast-forward for some reason. So I'm a clever weasel on a motorbike. I just want to get the imagery right. I'm zooming around the forest floor on my motorbike collecting nuts, presumably.

I couldn't understand what you were saying in response to my proof of God. It didn't make any real sense to me. None of it. Not a single word.

Which premise are you rejecting and why?

I thought I was a weasel. Now I'm driving a car or perhaps motorbike? Is it a little one for weasels?

but what I got a bit worked up about was your view that philosophy is simply about experts being seen as having knowledge because they are the experts. — Jack Cummins

Yeah, I didn't say that though, did I. I didn't say anything about what philosophy is about. But experts know things. And the experts in ethics know that 'ethics' and 'morality' are synonyms.

Pilot: pushing that lever will stall the plane and we'll crash

Jack: I think there's disagreement over whether it will

Pilot: no there isn't. It'll stall the plane and crash it. There's no disagreement over it.

Jack: Well, that's your opinion. But I think there is. When I asked people in the passenger tube some said they thought it would crash the plane and others said it wouldn't.

Pilot: It's not my opinion. It's universally acknowledged among the experts - pilots - that it'll stall the plane and crash it. The people you consulted were passengers, not pilots.

Jack: Well, I think everyone's view is equally valid and just because you spent years learning to fly doesn't mean you know more than I do about what these buttons and levers do.

Pilot: It does mean that. I do know more than you. I fly planes. You don't.

Jack: what annoys me is this idea that being a pilot is just about knowing pilots telling each other what levers do.

Pilot: er, what?

A serious matter, to prove God exists. So let's take a look. — tim wood

Such skill at argument assessment. Such insight. I imagine esteemed philosophy journals must send you work to review for them all the time.

It may be that some of the pipes of the academic elite have become corroded and clogged. — Jack Cummins

You mean someone who knows a lot more than you do told you how things were and you didn't like it?

Ethics means the same as morality. One's Greek, the other Latin.....for the same thing. Easy. Not something experts discuss. Ever. It's just what they mean. Get over it.

I shall try once more to motivate some interest in my profound and beautiful argument.

When are you perceiving something? Well, when the 'representative contents' of your perceptual state matches how things are in reality. (Philosophers currently like to spill a lot of ink debating whether these states place us in direct or indirect contact with reality - it's beside the point, however).

However, for that to work the relevant mental state needs actually to have some representative contents. That is, it needs actually to be representing something to be the case.

Yet it will not be if what produced it in you were unguided processes. For example, this message here has no representative contents if it is the product of a bot. It will appear to, but it won't actually. If I, a real agent, have written it, then it really does have the representative contents it appears to have. But if a bot has produced it, then it does not have the representative contents it appears to have.

Well, if our perceptual faculties are bot-built, then the states they create in us are bot-created. And as such although they appear to have representative contents - and thus appear to be capable of giving us perceptual awareness of a world - they will not in fact have any. For only agents can make representations. Again: this is not a real message if a bot created it. For a bot cannot make representations. And so if those mental states of yours that you take to be giving you a perceptual awareness of the world are in fact bot-produced, then they are not making any representations and thus you are not in fact perceptually aware of a world at all. You are having an accurate dream.

Of course, you are not having an accurate dream; you are in fact perceptually aware of a world. FOr like I say, it is not really possible - not within the bounds of sanity anyway - to doubt that we are aware of anything. And thus we must conclude that our perceptual states are attempts by an agency to communicate to us about the world (this was Berkeley's view, incidentally - he thought the sensible world was a language a god was using to talk to us with). For then and only then would they be capable of giving us perceptual awareness of the world, for then and only then would they have representative contents.

It isn't an 'opinion' and you are not respecting it. Calling it an opinion is disrespectful. For an opinion is unjustified. It is just an opinion.

When I say ethics and morality are synonyms, I am not expressing an 'opinion'. I am telling you how they are used by experts - that is, by those who understand them. They are used interchangeably. I use them interchangeably and no reviewer has yet said 'er, are you talking about morality or ethics in this paper?'. They are used interchangeably by everyone such that switching between the two will go unnoticed and unremarked on. Ethical properties. Moral properties. Utilitarianism is an ethical theory. Utilitarianism is a moral theory. That act was unethical. That act was immoral. And so on.

That's how they're used outside the academy too. I mean, virtualy everyone knows that unethical means the same as immoral. 'He was very moral but totally unethical' makes no sense at all.

It is those in other disciplines who are responsible for muddying the water. For it is they who say things like 'ethics concerns an organization's rules and regulations, whereas morality concerns an individual's conscience' or some such nonsense. I have no idea why they do this. I think they think they're being sophisticated or something, or perhaps they just like making unhelpful distinctions, or perhaps they are just stupid.

Yes. I have that book knocking about somewhere. I think it's quite good.

I am just reporting how the terms are used by those who have dedicated their lives to thinking as carefully as possible about their subject matter (and who are good enough at it to be employed to do it).

They are used interchangeably (though, like I say, ethics has an additional meaning - it can also mean 'the study of morality'). Now and throughout history. Ethics comes from ethos. That was Greek for customs. Morality comes from mores. That's Latin for customs. That doesn't mean that ethics and morality mean customs. But it does show you that the terms have always been used interchangeably.

There can be more than one word for the same thing. Hence, you know, different languages. Morality means ethics and ethics means morality. Unethical means wrong and that's what immoral means. And 'unethical and immoral' is stupid and now you will start hearing it everywhere. And when you hear it you will now know that its utterer is a fool who has no expertise in ethics. They are everywhere.

You said you didn't understand my argument. So I am taking you through it. Or have you already decided that because you don't understand it, there isn't one? That's a 'yes' right?
So okay - you don't understand the argument. What do you want me to do about it? I guess some people just can't get some points. I seem to remember reading an interview with Peter Singer where he said that he used to think everyone could understand this or that argument if it was explained clearly enough. But now, after years of teaching, he's come to the conclusion that some people are just very thick and beyond help (though he may have said it more kindly). I'm fast becoming persuaded of that as well.

Go ask a psychiatrist the meaning of a term in psychiatry. Then contradict their answer.

You have asked a question about whether ethics and morality denote the same concept. That's not a question in philosophy. There's no dispute over it. It isn't interesting. It isn't about reality, just about word use. And the answer is undisputed: they mean the same. One is Greek, the other Latin. Deal with it. You do when it comes to fromage and cheese - or is that a philosophical question too?

It doesn't have anything to do with it.

If clouds form into what look like words, are you being talked to? Don't change the example. Don't imagine there is someone manipulating the clouds. They just formed those shapes unguided by any agent. Don't ask 'how do I know there's no agent behind it?'.
Just imagine the clouds formed those shapes by fluke. Are you being talked to?

So just to be clear: when it comes to what ethics means, you think the authorities on this are not professional ethicists, but psychologists?

Where do you get your car serviced? The dentists? Sheesh.

Yes. And I use the terms interchangeably. Like everyone else apart from those who lack expertise. So, psychologists, sociologists, historians and, well, anyone else who isn't a philosopher seems to think they might be different - cos how is it possible to have two words for the same thing? That never happens does it? - and then they don't listen to experts because as we all know, experts are only worth listening to when they confirm your convictions.

Why will you only find articles by non philosophers on this? Why might that be? Why might it only be sociologists or psychologists or what have you drawing the ethics morality distinction? Why?

You don't seem to be getting the point.

Yes, that's the one.
It isn't an issue in philosophy. Academic philosophers do not debate whether ethics and morality have the same meaning.

When someone contradicts me, ask that person if they have any expertise in ethics. That is, do they have a PhD and/or peer review publications in respectable venues. They won't.

Like I say, anyone who thinks unethical and immoral have different meanings lacks expertise in ethics.
For instance, you are insisting there is a subtle difference. Do you have expertise in ethics? No.

Now go and find the journal 'Ethics'. Read it and notice the terms being used interchangeably.

I remember a linguist colleague came up to me once and asked me what the difference is between the terms. I said what I said here. She then did what you did - she said 'oh I think there's a slight difference'. Well why ask then? Why ask an expert and then just ignore the answer?

Whether our faculties have developed slowly or fast makes no difference to the point. What's important is whether they were designed or the product of blind forces. The speed at which they developed is completely irrelevant.

To see this, imagine once more that this 'message' is bot generated. But imagine it took ages for the bot to generate it. Will that make any difference to whether or not it constitutes a message or a 'message'? Obviously not.

I do not understand why you think that whether or not the states our faculties generate in us make us aware of things will be unaffected by how we came to be in them.

Take this message or 'message'. If it has been generated by a bot and not a person, then it's not a real message and no conversation is occurring here. Whereas if it has been created by an agent - me - then it is a message and this is a conversation (unless you are a bot, of course).

Why is this? Well, because if this is bot-created then it is not a representation, even though it is indistinguishable from one in terms of its intrinsic features.

Apply that to all states of awareness or 'awareness'. If your visual and other sensible impressions are the product of blind evolutionary forces, then they are bot-generated (by definition - for they are blind and so do not express an agent's will). And thus though no different in terms of their intrinsic features from what they would be if an agent was responsible for them, they are nevertheless incapable of giving you any awareness of a world.

So, whether or not this message is a message or a 'message' has everything to do with who or what is generating it. Whether it is me or a bot makes a world of difference, for in one case we are conversing whereas in the other you are being duped.

I still maintain that the choice of the word immoral and unethical are slightly different in connotations. — Jack Cummins

Why? Can an act be unethical but moral? No.

Look, the experts all use the terms interchangeably. It's not an issue. They just mean the same thing (with Ethics having the additional 'study of morality' meaning).

THe only people - the only people - who'll tell you they have a different meaning are those without any expertise in ethics. I guarantee it.

They mean the same thing. If someone tells you different, I guarantee you that person is not an academic philosopher.

Fromage and Cheese - they mean the same thing. Unethical and immoral - they mean the same.

Because you haven't understood the workings of reason. Do you know how i can tell? By your statements. — skyblack

Really? This from someone who thinks you can reject an argument if the one making the argument is a Christian! You really sure you know about the workings of reason?

Had you known the workings of reason you would have understood that reason ultimately turns on itself, — skyblack

Really? What does that even mean? Is your degree (should you have one) in something with 'studies' in the title?

Anyway, you've lost focus - engage with the OP!

Not that it matters but do you know why i came to this thread? Because i felt bad so many were ganging up on you. I will leave you to observe how quickly you turned on me, in spite of your own advice to others about focusing on the OP rather than the person. — skyblack

Er, well stop trying to be my savior - I really don't need one - and focus on the OP!!

You are quite right sir, i amnot a follower.. Be well. — skyblack

I said you're not a follower of Reason. I didn't say you weren't a follower. Again with the phrasing.

I am not religious; not a Christian, not anything. I just uncover and follow arguments where they lead.

Now, if you were like that, then you'd know if wouldn't matter a dot if I was religious - you'd just assess the argument on its own merits. But you're not - you're one of them. Cut from exactly the same cloth. I wouldn't want you going around flattering yourself that you're a follower of Reason - you ain't.

My other question to you is about this "agency/agent" you mention, Is it the christian agent?. — skyblack

Not to my knowledge. Why would it matter? Are you one of those lucky people who knows how things are with the universe prior to investigating it? And if I said 'yes', would that give you what you need in order to be able to know that my argument in the OP was faulty?

Here's a question for you: are you, by any chance, a naturalist?