Please let me know what you think! — amber

...but just read this back to yourself. You're a troll, and what you're doing here is trolling, and we know you're a troll, and we know that there is no good reason to throw pearls before trolls. ...but apparently to your mind the religious are simply afraid of subjecting their personal inferences to your superior rational skills, lol. — Leontiskos

A third-person example has already been provided: link. Feel free to address it. — Leontiskos

(I won't "make it personal," no. That is a terrible approach in general, especially when it comes to contentious religious debates.) — Leontiskos

- Someone who has interacted with God on a number of occasions is similarly situated to the child. — Leontiskos

The Gideon example is also interesting because in general it's not considered to be a good sign of his character that he "puts the Lord to the test." — Count Timothy von Icarus

You shouldn't be saying it, you shouldn't even be saying it if you were right. It's so disgustingly self righteous and haughty. — flannel jesus

I am certain that if our senses pointed inwards our so-called inner lives would be less of a mystery. In there is a multiplicity of parts and movements we just aren’t privy to in the present arraignment. — NOS4A2

ASSISTANT: (Opus, Third answer, temperature still set to 0.3) — Pierre-Normand

[quoting Opus(?), Second answer, temperature set to 0.3]
On the core topic of direct and indirect realism, I am struck by the way our conversation has highlighted the richness and complexity of perceptual experience. While the dichotomy between direct and indirect realism can serve as a useful starting point, it seems clear that a truly comprehensive account must go beyond such simple categorizations.

As Haiku eloquently expressed, perception is an embodied, dynamic process of organism-environment coupling. It is not merely a passive reception of sensory inputs, but an active engagement with the world and its affordances. This holistic perspective resonates with the phenomenological tradition, which sought to describe the lived experience of perception in all its nuanced depths.

At the same time, Opus's rigorous analysis reminds us of the importance of precision and logical clarity. The physiological and causal underpinnings of perception cannot be ignored, even as we acknowledge the directness of the perceptual act itself. A truly satisfying account must find a way to integrate these different levels of analysis without falling into reductionism or oversimplification.

Perhaps what is needed is a kind of "transcendental empiricism" – a philosophical framework that can do justice to both the first-person, phenomenological dimensions of perception and the third-person, scientific insights into its underlying mechanisms. Such an approach might draw inspiration from thinkers like Merleau-Ponty and Wilfrid Sellars, who sought to bridge the gap between the manifest and scientific images of the world. — Pierre-Normand

Thinking is a private mental event. It has nothing to do with being in any shape or form. — Corvus

Indeed! Although your detractors may rather feel vindicated in their intuition that you are a bot ;-) — Pierre-Normand

[quoting Claude 3 Haiku]Perhaps the most constructive path forward is to resist the temptation to declare a decisive victory for either direct or indirect realism, and instead focus on developing a more holistic understanding of the human experience of the world - one that acknowledges the complexities and ambiguities inherent in our perceptual faculties. — Pierre-Normand

From my perspective, the question of the thread looks like an attempt to address a complex subject (actually a diverse set of subjects) with a false dichotomy. — wonderer1

2. Early Christians were willing to die for their belief in the content of the New Testament — Brendan Golledge

Although we might doubt that we exhaustively know what it is to be human. — Janus

I think there are many things all of us take on faith because it seems more beautiful to do so. It makes life seem more human. — Janus

In particular, there is the question as to whether the mind is a 'blank slate', as suggested by John Locke and Stephen Pinker. — Jack Cummins

If there's anything resembling intellectual integrity in there... — flannel jesus

Craig's view is incoherent... — Walter

Oh, I see - you just wanted to join in the kick fest. — Banno

Here's a seperate point, made by Corvus, Beverly and myself, and pretty much unaddressed by others: It has not been shown that the Cogito is valid. — Banno

Newton's account was non-scientific or non-naturalistic insofar as it disregarded the prevalent canons of scientific reason. — Leontiskos

so can reason itself explained in terms of 'natural laws'? — Wayfarer

Interestingly, there are a preponderance of congenitally blind people with autism. — Joshs

In this way, a virtual form of high-level, reflective cognition gets bootstrapped from the basic, dumb mechanism of pattern recognition. The model doesn't just represent objective facts about the world, but also incorporates a model of itself as a rational subject navigating the space of reasons. It builds an implicit capacity for self-critique and error correction into its own functioning. — Claude

I do not blame you at all. I would have bowed out much sooner! You lasted for pages without agreement from anyone but didn't give in. I am really impressed! — Beverley

All, can you see that the Cogito does not provide the certainty you crave? — Banno

If this persons truth-discovering tools like reason and logic are compromised in such a way, how could this person *discover the truth* that his truth-discovering (or filtering instead of discovering, if you prefer) tools are compromised and unrelaible? — flannel jesus

Do you have a link and timestamp to the YouTube video, or a quote from Craig? We need more than hearsay. — Leontiskos

I want to suggest that we think of eternity, like the singularity, as the boundary of time. God is causally prior, but not chronologically prior, to the universe. His changeless, timeless, eternal state is the boundary of time, at which He exists without the universe, and at the moment of creation God enters into time in virtue of His real relation to the created order and His knowledge of tensed facts, so that God is timeless without creation and temporal subsequent to creation. — William Lane Craig

But I do genuinely believe that humans are hardwired to live in cults. This is most of our social organization. — Brendan Golledge

Comment - this possibility high-lights for me a question about Bostrom's first two hypotheses. They seem to me to be empirical. But I don't see how one could ever demonstrate that they are true or even plausible without some sort of evidence. Without that one could never demonstrate any consequence of them as sound, as opposed to valid. En masse simulations could provide such evidence. — Ludwig V

Fully agreed — flannel jesus

Sounds very sensible as far as a single enterprise goes, and might even give the participants greater confidence to tackle inequalities on the political front. — Vera Mont

Is this you confirming that you won't post the pictures if they don't confirm your beliefs? I truly hope that you can be better than that — flannel jesus

You obviously don't even understand what the core problem is. The core problem is proving "Cogito ergo sum" is correct or incorrect.

It shows you are also one of the copy-paste internet info without even knowing what it is, but not even knowing what we are trying to prove here. — Corvus

Now it give me an impression FJ is a robot machine set up for keep replying automatically without even knowing what it is talking about. :roll: :chin: — Corvus

Can anyone think of alternative arrangements that might work better? — Vera Mont

Hell, I don't even want him to admit that. — flannel jesus

You can choose bravery at any moment. — flannel jesus