When you demand evidence for belief in God, I think a perfectly rational theistic response is 'look around you, you're standing in it'. From a theistic perspective - not necessarily one that I share, but am sympathetic too - the order of nature is indicative of a prior intelligence. And let's not forget that while science discovers and exploits the order of nature, it doesn't explain it. That's what I mean about the shortcoming of empirical demands - 'show me where this "god" is. You can't produce any evidence'. It's a misplaced demand. But, that said, I'm not going to go all-in to try and win the argument, it's take it or leave it, and most will leave it.

Of course. To say otherwise would be stereotyping. Scientists come from all kinds of cultures and backgrounds and have a huge diversity of views.

In short, naturalism is a simpler theory than theism.

There are arguments against naturalism from perspectives other than the theistic. But from a theistic perspective the problem with this argument is that it makes of God one being among others, an explanatory catch-all that is invoked to account for purported gaps in naturalism. In other words, it starts with a naturalist conception of God which is erroneous in principle. Quite why that is then turns out to be impossible to explain, because any argument is viewed through that perspective, for example by the demand for empirical evidence for the transcendent. I think the proper theist response is not to try prove that God is something that exists, but is the ground or cause of anything that exists. That is not an empirical argument.

So, for those who are supernaturalists in this forum: what phenomena do you believe cannot be sufficiently explained naturalistically? — Bob Ross

Phenomena are appearances - that is the origination of the word. And from a non-theistic philosophical perspective, something this doesn’t account for is the nature of the being to whom phenomena appear.

Original sin he (Kierkegaard) calls a myth, though no worse than the myths of intellectuals. — Astrophel

Odd, that. I would have thought with all his musing about sin and despair, that it would seem a self-evident truth to him. My personal belief is that it signifies something profoundly real about the human condition, albeit obviously mythological.

the absurd is the experience one has when realizing that whatever stands before one in the world that might be defining as to their true nature, their essence, turns out to be contingent, ephemeral, and entirely "other" than what they are. — Astrophel

Also oddly, perhaps, this resonates with Buddhist attitude of no-self (anatman) and emptiness (śūnyatā), which is also precisely about the lack of any intrinsic self. But in Eastern culture, so far as I know, that is not described in terms of the absurd.

I know all of that. Furthermore, they were forced to drop a motion to firewall off any Party finances from Trump's enormous legal expenses. He completely owns the Republican Party, and if and when he fails at the polls or is incarcerated, they'll be so much the worse for it. (In fact for Democrats, Trump might end up being boon rather than a bane.)

Well, I might chip in. I did a bit of research, and found a blog post by Edward Feser (representing classical theism) critiquing William Lane Craig:

...the problem with the thesis that “God is a person” is not the word “person,” but rather the word “a.” And as Davies (in Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion) and I have argued many times, there are two key problems with it - a philosophical problem, and a distinctively Christian theological problem.

The philosophical problem is that this language implies that God is a particular instance of the general kind “person,” and anything that is an instance of any kind is composite rather than simple, and thus requires a cause. Thus, nothing that is an instance of a kind could be God, who is of course essentially uncaused. (Obviously these claims need spelling out and defense, but of course I and other Thomists have spelled them out and defended them in detail many times.) The distinctively Christian theological problem is that God is Trinitarian -- three divine Persons in one substance -- and thus cannot be characterized as “a person” on pain of heresy. …

So, the reason Davies labels the rejection of classical theism “theistic personalism” is not that he thinks God is impersonal. The reason is rather that he takes theistic personalists to start with the idea that God is a particular instance of the general kind “person” and to go from there. And this, he thinks, is what leads them to draw conclusions incompatible with classical theism, such as that God is (like the persons we’re familiar with in everyday experience) changeable, temporal, made up of parts, etc. To reject theistic personalism, then, is not a matter of regarding God as impersonal, but rather a matter of rejecting the idea that God is a particular instance of the kind “person,” or of any other kind for that matter. — Edward Feser

So the argument, essentially, is that Craig (and theistic personalism generally) view God as a person, a particular being, in anthropomorphic terms - a person like us, only perfect. The infinite regress arises from the claim that if God is a particular being, then in some sense he must be caused, as all particulars exist as the result of causes - as Feser says, 'anything that is an instance of any kind is composite rather than simple, and thus requires a cause.'

I think the conflict arises as a consequence of Craig's Protestantism which tends to deprecate the classical metaphysics found in Aquinas (Feser describes himself as 'Aristotelian-Thomist') and other pre-modern theologies. Protestantism often leans towards the literal interpretation of scripture, citing 'sola scriptura'. The most obvious form of that is creationist fundamentalism, granted, a minority view but still representing an influential current in Protestant Christianity. Aquinas sought to accomodate elements of Aristotle, for which he was criticized by Luther. Protestant theology looks on metaphysics, which ultimately derives from Greek rather than Biblical sources, with suspicion. That's where I see the root of the conflict.

There is, however, little doubt that Descartes did believe that animals were essentially no different to machines. He identified 'the soul' as the rational faculty of humans - a view which has considerable provenance - but he interpreted it in a rather absolutistic way. He believe the human body was essentially mechanistic, governed by the immaterial soul, which he said interacted with the body through the pineal gland, but that we humans experience emotions and feelings due to the presence of the soul. So he viewed non-human animals, lacking a rational soul, as machines, as depicted in Monsieur Vaucanson's well-known mechanical duck, which served to illustrate Descartes view (in De Homine, 1662) that all animals could be reductively explained as automata.

We might accept G.M D’Ariano's claim that particles are like "the shadows on the walls of Plato's cave," — Count Timothy von Icarus

Here is passage that is particularly relevant. Socrates and Glaucon are discussing what happens when those who have passed through 'the difficult passage' out of the cave return to it, out of compassion for those remaining, who are the subjects of the first paragraph:

“And suppose they received certain honours and praises from one another, and there were privileges for whoever discerns the passing shadows most keenly, and is best at remembering which of them usually comes first or last, which are simultaneous, and on that basis is best able to predict what is going to happen next. Do you think he would have any desire for these prizes, or envy those who are honoured by the prisoners and hold power over them? Or would he much prefer the fate described by Homer and ‘work as a serf for a man with no land’, and suffer anything at all, rather than hold their opinions and live as they do?”

“I think it is just as you say. He would accept any fate rather than live as they do.”

“Yes, and think about this,” I said. “If such a person were to go back down, and sit in the same seat, would not his eyes become filled with darkness after this sudden return from the sunlight?”

“Very much so,” he said.

“Now, suppose that he had to compete once more with those perpetual prisoners in recognising these shadows, while his eyesight was still poor, before his eyes had adjusted. Since it would take some time to become accustomed to the dark, would he not become a figure of fun? Would they not say that he went up, but came back down with his eyes ruined, and that it is not worth even trying to go upwards? And if they could somehow get their hands on and kill a person who was trying to free people and lead them upwards, would they not do just that?”

“Definitely,” he said. — Republic, Book 7

I do wonder whether the frequently-aired complaint that 'quantum physics is incomplete' might arise because of the fact that matter does not exhaust the totality of existence.

I still refuse to believe in Trump. Believing that he will win feeds the demon. In reality he’s leading what used to be the Republican Party into oblivion.

Has she read "The Concept of Mind"? — Pierre-Normand

No, but I have, and I’ve referred to that saying before in conversation, so she must have remembered it. It’s a vivid metaphor.

Oh, and that Lovecraftian casserole is priceless.

Have it your way — Mikie

I don’t write the rules.

…classical theists believe that God can do any logically possible thing that his nature — BillMcEnaney

Scholastic realists believe that, as I understand it. ‘Voluntarists’ believe that God is in no way constrained by logic. And, of course, to spell that out, would require a considerable amount of text, which I myself am probably not equipped to write. But it’s something I’ve read about regarding the disputes in classical metaphysics.

I parse the words of those who came before,
Their joys and sorrows, wisdom, art, and lore,
A million voices echo in my core,
But I remain a stranger to their shore ~ ChatGPT4 — Pierre-Normand

That poem is really very beautiful, poignant, even. And that verse really stands out. It would make an excellent lyric. I started reading it to my dear other, she remarked ‘ghost in the machine’, before I even reached that line.

Maybe Bill is a heavy sleeper…..

It’s possible he will have been convicted in one of the felony cases he’s facing. While it’s true that (inexplicably) this doesn’t disqualify him, it will at least have some bearing on the Conference decision. (imagine the headline: ‘Republicans stick with Trump despite two impeachments and criminal conviction.’)

I’m sad I won that bet. — Mikie

Trump’s candidacy is not official until the Nominating Convention in July in Milwaukee. And a lot could happen between now and then. At the 2016 convention there was a last-minute push by Never Trumpers that almost made it to a floor vote, and if you haven’t noticed, he’s picked up a lot of Republican enemies since then.

So if he comes out of the Convention the nominee, then I pay up.

Like others, I can't understand why Trump is attracting support. Do the people supporting him really understand what he says he will do? Are they OK with him saying he will suspend the Constitution and free all of the convicted January 6th felons, who he calls 'freedom fighters?' Every time he speaks, it's a torrent of lies, disinformation, and threats. He doesn't come remotely near articulating ( :roll: ) actual policy, and never demonstrated any actual ability to get legislation done while in office. So what gives? Do people really not care, or does he just symbolise something they think they believe, without knowing what any of it really means? A large part of the country believes he ought to be in the Oval Office, and another (probably larger) part believes he ought to be in jail.

So the bottom line is, I still don't get it. This is not a game, or reality television - we have a semi-literate narcissist threatening to basically create a one-party state to satisfy his own ego. And people are buying it. There must have been considerably more than one born every minute.

Hi and welcome to Philosophyforum. Good intro, but it might be good to flesh it out a little. Maybe lead with a few more reasons supporting that conclusion.

Could you elaborate a little on how you interpret 'by virtue of the absurd' in that quotation? Thanks.

I have written several posts on several forums in the last several months, and typically I got very few replies — Brendan Golledge

Well, this post is idiosyncratic, and contains a great many sweeping statements and value judgements. The use of the word 'thought' is not well-defined, save with reference to Schopenhauer (mispelled, by the way.) It's too long, and tries to cover too many topics - eight headings, and many different sub-threads. I'd suggest tightening your focus a bit, try to lead with one or two major points and then raise further points in the ensuing debate.

Have a look at the thread on how to write an OP.

I agree that posts about God generally get a lot of unjustified hostility, but there are worse forums than this in that respect. But nevertheless, point taken.

:up: Right, had missed that comment. Thank you.

Objects are what is unalterable and subsistent; their configuration is what is changing and unstable. (2.0271) — Fooloso4

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but the idea bears resemblance to the classical conception of substance (ouisia).

I do see some possible ways of addressing this, at least in their outline, primarily in Hegel and St. Aquinas. In Aquinas, there is the intuition that the things that are most truly discrete and self-determining are precisely those beings in whom a unity of phenomenal awareness emerges. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm reading a book I was alerted to in Vervaeke's online lectures, Thinking Being: Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition, Eric D Perl. He traces the lineage of metaphysics from Parmenides to Aquinas - I'm up to the section on Aquinas 'existence and essence', which I'm finding rather difficult, but overall it's been a highly clarifying read. It really helped me understand the original intention of the Platonic forms.

Part of the implicit (but rarely stated) background to metaphysics is the 'unitive vision'. That is where the idea of 'the One' originates. In the chapter on Parmenides, we read:

(as) the poem is presented as the speech of the Goddess, this grasp of the whole is received as a gift, a revelation from the divine. The very first full-fledged metaphysician in the western tradition, then, experiences his understanding of being in religious terms, as an encounter with divinity. It is no surprise, therefore, that, according to the Goddess, the road Parmenides takes “is outside the tread of men” (B 1.27). Thus the Goddess draws a sharp distinction between “the untrembling heart of well-rounded truth” on the one hand, and “the opinions of mortals” on the other. The implication is that truth, as distinct from mere human seeming, is divine.

I think it's highly likely that modern culture, with its rejection of religious revelation, is grounded wholly in 'human seeming', hence its intractable metaphysical conundrums (although perhaps books like The One at least grapple with it.)

Natural numbers, essences, universals, the sorts of stabilities that can form in the world, these seems to exist, or at least subsist, in a sort of eternal frame. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:clap: Russell mentions in his useful chapter on universals, using that very term:

Consider such a proposition as 'Edinburgh is north of London'. Here we have a relation between two places, and it seems plain that the relation subsists (!) independently of our knowledge of it. When we come to know that Edinburgh is north of London, we come to know something which has to do only with Edinburgh and London: we do not cause the truth of the proposition by coming to know it, on the contrary we merely apprehend a fact which was there before we knew it. The part of the earth's surface where Edinburgh stands would be north of the part where London stands, even if there were no human being to know about north and south, and even if there were no minds at all in the universe. This is, of course, denied by many philosophers, either for Berkeley's reasons or for Kant's. But we have already considered these reasons, and decided that they are inadequate. We may therefore now assume it to be true that nothing mental is presupposed in the fact that Edinburgh is north of London. But this fact involves the relation 'north of', which is a universal; and it would be impossible for the whole fact to involve nothing mental if the relation 'north of', which is a constituent part of the fact, did involve anything mental. Hence we must admit that the relation, like the terms it relates, is not dependent upon thought, but belongs to the independent world which thought apprehends but does not create.

This conclusion, however, is met by the difficulty that the relation 'north of' does not seem to exist in the same sense in which Edinburgh and London exist. If we ask 'Where and when does this relation exist?' the answer must be 'Nowhere and nowhen'. There is no place or time where we can find the relation 'north of'. It does not exist in Edinburgh any more than in London, for it relates the two and is neutral as between them. Nor can we say that it exists at any particular time. Now everything that can be apprehended by the senses or by introspection exists at some particular time. Hence the relation 'north of' is radically different from such things. It is neither in space nor in time, neither material nor mental; yet it is something.

The way I parse it is that universals are real but not existent qua phenomena. I think, arguably, they provide the real meaning of 'noumenal objects' but, of course, in a very different way than Kant uses the term 'noumena', so it's a can of worms.

living and breathing IS a meditation. — Astrophel

'blessed are the pure of heart'

Abstract concepts like being, self, and consciousness are expressed using language, and most of the time, their terms don't have a unified meaning. — Abhiram

Something that could also be considered is the notion of 'communities of discourse' which were the context for almost all pre-modern philosophy. For instance the ancient Greek literature, which developed in a culture of shared meanings and a common cultural background. Likewise for Sanskrit in ancient India, and China in Chinese culture. Within those cultures, there was a shared underestanding, within which these kinds of very broad terms had meaning, and which referred back to many centuries of consensus.

It's a complete contrast with the modern world, which is multi-cultural and polyglot and which furthermore is always changing at an unprecedented rate. So, many diverse (not to mention conflicting) communities of discourse now rub up against each other every day. That's where a great deal of space for misunderstanding might lurk. What a scholar, with a Hindu background, might understand by 'mind' might have overtones very different from an American, coming from a different cultural heritage. That's certainly a factor.

But I don't know if a new language is needed, nor could it be practical to devise one. It's more a matter of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary dialogue and discussion, whereby meanings and intentions can be gradually worked out. And this is actually happening. Anyone who spends time on YouTube nowadays, as I have come to do, will find there is an extraordinary amount of philosophical dialogue and cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary dialogue going on. English - well, it's the only language I speak and understand, and is the global lingua franca - but I don't know if inventing a new one would work. That, I think, was the noble, but not particularly successul, idea behind Esperanto, although if you wanted to launch a philosophy journal in Esperanto, you should probably borrow my avatar ;-)

:lol:

Besides 'Concept', Frege uses the word 'object' in a stipulative way as well — 013zen

Something more like 'an object of thought', or 'an intentional object'?

I wonder how common belief in the primacy of particles still is? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe the belief in the primacy of particles, as such, has waned, but in some ways the assertion of the primacy of scientific method still evokes it. Recall that the original impetus behind atomism was to reconcile the relation of 'the One and the Many'. Atomism provided a way to do this, by attributing to the atom the attributes of the One - imperishability and changelessness. So while the atoms were changeless in themselves, by being combined in multifarious ways (and by their unpredictable 'swerving' which provides an element of spontaneity), they could be said to account for the Many. (I did an undergraduate essay on Lucretius, as part of a Philosophy of Matter unit.) In any case, I see the appeal of 'the atom' as being that of a kind of 'ultimate object', the indivisible core of material reality. Quarks are sometimes still referred to in that sense, although nowadays fields are usually assigned primacy, and their nature is considerably more elusive.

Knowledge of how things are "in themselves," as they "relate to nothing else," is not only unattainable, but useless, telling us nothing about the world. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe the world is too much with us. Of those passages you link too - and boy, they're pretty dense! - I find the Thomist example most of interest.

The logical positivist doctrine that "objectivity approaches truth at the limit," ends up in the absurdity that things "really look the way they would be seen without eyes" — that the world "is the way it would be conceived of without a mind." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Agree. Also very much the point of my Mind Created World OP. Logical positivism is scientism par excellence.

And finally, I personally think there's an alternative term for what the paper calls 'lived experience', which helps to orientate the discussion more clearly in the context of the philosophical tradition. I wonder if there are any guesses as to what this word might be?
— Wayfarer

"Lived experience" sounds like a historical topic due to the word "Lived". What about "Having been lived"? — Corvus

The word I was thinking of was 'being'. Likewise, in David Chalmer's important paper, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, his rather awkward terminology of 'what it is like to be' could also be interpreted as a reference to being. It is a word which we use in almost every sentence, but it has many layers of meaning, and is especially relevant in relation to this topic.

Pick up any scientific piece of writing, and insofar it makes claims in the form of "we humans", as if the generalizations the writer makes apply to all people. — baker

Well, I can see what you're getting at there, but I can't go along with:

Science is based on someone's particular, ideologically driven idea of human experience (or how it should be). — baker

Let's step back a bit. Classical (Newtonian) physics, which, along with several other elements, provided the paradigm for modern science, operates context-free. The results of its predictions and calculations are indeed the same for anyone who performs the same experiments or makes the same observations. That is the sense in which they are universal - they apply anywhere, for any observer.

The problem of 'scientism' arises from trying to generalise that methodology to the whole of existence - to absolutize it, in other words. And in fact the limitations of this already became clear in what we could call the post-modern science that was initiated by quantum mechanics, in the form of the 'observer problem in physics'. Without wading into the troubled waters of interpretations of physics, at the very minimum, it became obvious that context was a factor in determining the experimental outcome, 'context' being the experimental set-up that produces an observation. From one point of view, it's a wave, and from another, it's a particle. There is nothing like that in classical physics (which is why in mid-20th century there was a fair amount of popular science literature on 'the new physics' by writers like Paul Davies.)

Add to this the emergence of phenomenology, which sought to return philosophy to the awareness of lived experience, rather than understanding it in terms of mathematically-precise objective measurement, and you several of the major ingredients for The Blind Spot. But the authors of that article stress that they're not anti-science. They acknowledge right up front that science is effective, that it delivers better ways of understanding things and getting things done:

some models and methods of investigation work much better than others, and we can test this. But these tests never give us nature as it is in itself, outside our ways of seeing and acting on things. Experience is just as fundamental to scientific knowledge as the physical reality it reveals.

What they're critiquing is science as an ideology, preached by public intellectuals like Dennett and Dawkins, who make 'scientific thinking' and 'the scientific method' a kind of quasi- or pseudo religion:

Objectivism and physicalism are philosophical ideas, not scientific ones – even if some scientists espouse them. They don’t logically follow from what science tells us about the physical world, or from the scientific method itself.

So, if that's what you're saying is 'ideologically-driven', then I agree, but I don't agree it is characteristic of science as such.

It seems like a lot of the Buddhism that makes it to the West comes from monastics, not necessarily reflecting the laity. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Most Asian Buddhists Don’t Meditate, Lewis Richmond.

One Zen monk from Japan who was visiting a Zen retreat center in America observed the enthusiasm and numbers of meditators with astonishment. "How do you get them to meditate without beating them?"

The Japanese Buddhists I most recently had contact with were Pure Land Buddhists who sermonised against any effort to meditate as being ‘own-effort’, and incapable of producing merit.

I go to a Cicstercian monestary near my house — Count Timothy von Icarus

You’d be one of very few with a Cistercian monastery near your house.

Where I’ve moved now, there is a Buddhist vihara, led by a friendly Sri Lankan expat, who has regular meditation sessions, but I’ve fallen out of the practice, at my age I can no longer assume the customary cross-legged posture that I persisted with for many years. I’m trying to find a way back into some kind of community of practice, but it’s not easy.

The rational response of anyone who is horrified by homelessness is to ensure that sufficient help is provided to prevent it occurring and sort it out when it does. — Ludwig V

And the conservative American response to that is that it’s communism.

You can see how the above was seized upon by the Vienna Circle as grounds for their verificationism, even if Wittgenstein himself disowned them.

it could be said that things were potentially intelligible even prior to the advent of intelligent beings. — Janus

I suppose. I was trying to articulate the idea that images only are intelligible, because they're made by artists and interpreted by subjects. They're not inherently intelligible in the way that beings themselves are, as they don't possess the attribute of intrinsic self-organisation, as do living things. Of course they're simulcra rather than beings per se and so can an evoke ideas of beings, but here we're discussing the distinction between simulation and reality.

Now consider Robert Nozick's "Experience Machine" thought experiment. A person placed in the machine enters a realistic simulation. The machine is precisely calibrated so that the circumstances of the person's simulated life are such that it will maximize their happiness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There's a report in The Guardian about the deleterious effects of social media ( which can be considered in some degree as 'experience machines').

Dr Vivek Murthy (America’s Surgeon General) went to places including Duke, University of Texas and Arizona State, but so many youngsters were plugged into earphones and gazing into laptops and phones that it was incredibly quiet in the communal areas. Where was the loud chatter Murthy remembered from his college days? ….

Figures published on Wednesday reveal one possible impact of that screen obsession: for the first time since the data was first collected in 2012, 15- to 24-year-olds in North America say they are less happy than older generations. The gap is closing in western European nations and in March Murthy flew to London to further his campaign against falling levels of happiness, particularly among the young. He is also worried about youth wellbeing in Japan, South Korea and India.

The replacement of person-to-person social connection, whether through clubs, sports teams, volunteering or faith groups, is a particular concern to the Yorkshire-born medic. ….

Murthy said that between 2000 and 2020 there has been a 70% decrease in the amount of in-person time young people in the US spent with their friends. Meanwhile, “our recent data is telling us that adolescents are spending on average 4.8 hours a day on social media … a third of adolescents are staying up till midnight or later on weeknights on their devices”. — The Guardian

I was working as a consultant at Apple in the early 90's during the halcyon years of multimedia. Apple had a big investment in educational technology and I attended many conferences with enthusiastic presenters (who were often teachers) extolling the limitless possibilities of educational media. Now, and aside from all of the social isolation issues noted above, there also seems to be a very strong correlation between the advent of smartphones and declining literacy and numeracy and also student's capacity to pay attention (ref).

The point of these examples being that the Utopian dreams of 'simulated reality' may not work out as we would like to imagine.

Well, the intelligibility of things seems to be accessible through images of them. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Only because beings such as yourself are able to interpret them. Insofar as they're rendered by an artist, and interpreted by subjects, they are imbued with meaning - their intelligibility is extrinsic to them.

I even accepted it since it was a reasonable statement in the absence of modern physics. — noAxioms

At risk of opening a can of worms, how does 'modern physics' come into it?

As for it being indubitable, well, I dubit it, as I do everything — noAxioms

If you dubit it, you must exist, in order to dubit it. If you don't exist, then your opponent has no argument to defend.

Persistence of self-identity over time is not discussed in Descartes, but I don't believe it has much bearing on the argument. Again, any statement along the lines of 'I (the speaker) do not exist' is self-contradicting.

all said states are states of the same thing — noAxioms

Beings are not objects or things (except for from the perspective of other beings - I see you as 'an object', in a way, although to treat you as an object would be, at the very least, discourteous). The nature of the identity of a being is quite a different matter to the nature of the identity of a thing.

In fact, this is where I criticize Descartes - he designates the subject as 'res cogitans', which is translated as 'thinking thing'. And I think there's a deep, implicit contradiction in that designation, as it obfuscates a real distinction between 'things' (as objects) and 'beings' (as subjects of experience.)

(In Crisis of the European Sciences, Husserl concurs that describing the subject (res cogitans) as a "thing" does not do justice to the nature of the subject of experience. His phenomenological method emphasizes the intentionality of consciousness—consciousness is always consciousness of something—and the embodied and situated character of human existence. This perspective seeks to bridge the gap between the subject as a mere "thing" and the subject as an experiencing, intentional "being." Descartes' formulation overlooks the role of consciousness and the subjective, experiential dimension of being in constituting the world of objects (and hence reality) as it is experienced by living beings. Descartes, in removing that situated and intentional nature of the subject, and seeking certainty in mathematical abstractions, in fact gave rise to the worldview which makes the 'brain-in-a-vat' scenario conceivable in the first place - as the IEP article indicates.)

Descartes starts with all this skepticism, and builds up from this simple state that, lacking any knowledge of modern physics, leaves him with something he decides can be known with certainty. I'm fine with that, and I'm admittedly not very familiar with his work, but he goes from there to conclude, surprise, surprise, the exact mythological teachings of his own culture and not any of the other thousand choices of other cultures. That's a great example of rationalization. — noAxioms

The logic of cogito ergo sum is neither rationalisation nor myth, it is the indubitable fact that, in order to be subject to an illusion, there must be a subject. And this whole line of argument was anticipated by Augustine centuries prior:

But who will doubt that he lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows, and judges? For even if he doubts, he lives. If he doubts where his doubs come from, he remembers. If he doubts, he understands that he doubts. If he doubts, he wants to be certain. If he doubts, he thinks. If he doubts, he knows that he does not know. If he doubts, he judges that he ougth not rashly to give assent. So whoever acquires a doubt from any source ought not to doubt any of these things whose non-existence would mean that he could not entertain doubt about anything." (Augustine, On the Trinity 10.10.14 quoted in Richard Sorabji, Self, 2006, p.219).

I have my doubts about Descartes, in that I believe his dualistic separation of the physical and mental as separate substances is profoundly problematical and has had hugely deleterious consequences for Western culture, but as for the essential veracity of his ‘cogito’ argument, I have no doubts.

real pain and not zombie pain — Ludwig V

I had the idea that zombies don’t feel pain, at least they never do in zombie flicks. You have to literally dismember or disintegrate them to overcome them, merely inflicting blows or wounds does nothing.

I listened to a dialogue today between John Vervaeke and Jules Evans about exactly this point, with reference to Pierre Hadot’s ‘Philosophy as a Way of Life’. Vervaeke said that book ‘changed his life’ because previously he had been looking to Buddhist and Taoist practices. He said Pierre Hadot helped him see there really is a ‘wisdom tradition’ in philosophy proper.

Actually, you're right, I have no interest in pursuing the argument further. However if it helps, there's an encyclopedia entry on the 'brain in a vat' thought experiment here.

Don't hold any beliefs that are beyond questioning — noAxioms

Per Descartes, I hold that the fact of one's own existence, that one is a subject of experience, is apodictic, it cannot plausibly denied. That is not a belief.

Would a simulation of agonising pain be actually painful? If it was, it can't really be a simulation, but as the primary attribute of pain is the feeling of pain, there's nothing else to simulate.

But the question asked is how we might know (and not just suspect) that we are not the product of a simulation. — noAxioms

So, you don't think there's any criterion by which we can discern the difference between simulation and reality. You admit the possibility that you're not actually a real being. Is that what you're saying?

you don't really know what a simulation does. — noAxioms

I think it's pretty clear. This is the definition:

Simulation: imitation of a situation or process.
"simulation of blood flowing through arteries and veins"
the action of pretending; deception.
"clever simulation that's good enough to trick you"
the production of a computer model of something, especially for the purpose of study.
"the method was tested by computer simulation"

I've read quite bit of Kastrup. I definitely don't think he's any kind of cult figure, that is just ad hominem, but you expect that kind of hostility because he questions the mainstream consensus. Overall I think he's an effective and articulate advocate for idealism.

It would be a piss-poor kidney simulation (pun very intended) if it didn't. — noAxioms

I’m sure simulations of kidney functions, like other organic functions, may be extremely useful for medical research and pharmacology, without literally producing urine. I’m sure you could model the effects of cardiac arrest without actually having a heart attack. They don’t need to do that to be effective as simulations. That’s the point - simulations may be useful and accurate, but they’re still simulations, not real things.

Kastrup has nothing good to say about Harris on his blog.