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Evidence...

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Here is a version that seems to float around:

I can use evidence in a positive sense for all of the everyday world.

Well, I can't. Now I have been asking how that is explained and it so far always end in an opinion:
I am of that opinion that what everybody else actually do for the everyday world is irrelevant.
That is all fair and well, but as fas as I can tell, that it is irrelevant is an opinion and without evidence.

That is it. We can nitpick the words, but as I understand the usage it always ends here:
Not everything in the everyday world can be done with evidence of all human behavior.
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
We make reasonable assumptions about the everyday world, based on all sorts of things. Primarily, on whether or not they work, and whether or not we are comfortable with them. It's good to question everything, it's okay to doubt everything, but in the end it makes sense to take certain things on faith; and to trust our own perceptions, though these can be misleading.

19th Century French writer Hippolyte Taine said that we may think of objective reality as a confirmed hallucination, which I think makes sense in a way. But it's good to feel connected to the world, it's the sense of our own detachment and otherness that I think is the illusion.

There is a zen perspective whereby the enlightened man or woman awakens to discover the world just as it appeared in their dream - the same in every detail, yet different in every way.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
We make reasonable assumptions about the everyday world, based on all sorts of things. Primarily, on whether or not they work, and whether or not we are comfortable with them. It's good to question everything, it's okay to doubt everything, but in the end it makes sense to take certain things on faith; and to trust our own perceptions, though these can be misleading.

19th Century French writer Hippolyte Taine said that we may think of objective reality as a confirmed hallucination, which I think makes sense in a way. But it's good to feel connected to the world, it's the sense of our own detachment and otherness that I think is the illusion.

There is a zen perspective whereby the enlightened man or woman awakens to discover the world just as it appeared in their dream - the same in every detail, yet different in every way.

Yeah, I have general faith in the world being fair in epistemological terms and for personal faith I believe in humanity. And, yes, that is in a sense no different than believing in a loving God. :)
 

A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
Here is a version that seems to float around:

I can use evidence in a positive sense for all of the everyday world.

Well, I can't. Now I have been asking how that is explained and it so far always end in an opinion:
I am of that opinion that what everybody else actually do for the everyday world is irrelevant.
That is all fair and well, but as fas as I can tell, that it is irrelevant is an opinion and without evidence.

That is it. We can nitpick the words, but as I understand the usage it always ends here:
Not everything in the everyday world can be done with evidence of all human behavior.
Unfortunately for your little rant here, there remains a glaringly obvious point (if one takes the time to think it over) that casts your ideas in doubt. That is, the idea you have that the "material" world of evidence and measure cannot stand as the foundation of various abstracts, and so it is somehow deemed "deficient."

You ready? Because based on how lively you throw around the ideas of solipsism, you should be ashamed if you haven't thought this one out to its obvious conclusions.

Pretend there is literally a mind being kept alive in a vat. In this scenario, however, this mind, receives zero external input. None. No sound. No sight. No touch. No taste. No sensations of any kind.

As this mind develops, I would ask that you think of the kinds of thoughts this mind would be capable of having. Without access to a MATERIAL world of "things" - what sorts of thoughts could the mind come to? Could it come to the abstract idea of something like love? How could it, with zero understanding or knowledge of even a single target? No physical touch. No ability to see and read the expressions on someone's face. No sound waves affecting the matter of the world around them to hear various intonations and perceive them as positive or negative. Nothing like that. "Love" could not be come to, I am afraid, without the material realm supporting the various aspects of that abstract. The abstract is literally built on material interactions! The best this "vat mind" might be able to muster is some rudimentary form of "what is this?" There wouldn't even be an understanding of what "where" meant - for it has not seen or experienced "placement" of any kind.

So now what? Can you honestly posit that it doesn't take a slew of sensory inputs for us to learn nearly any and all abstract concepts? And doesn't a sensory input serve only as an interpreter to the MATERIAL world? Oof. There goes your ideas in a puff of smoke, I believe.
 

Stevicus

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Here is a version that seems to float around:

I can use evidence in a positive sense for all of the everyday world.

Well, I can't. Now I have been asking how that is explained and it so far always end in an opinion:
I am of that opinion that what everybody else actually do for the everyday world is irrelevant.
That is all fair and well, but as fas as I can tell, that it is irrelevant is an opinion and without evidence.

That is it. We can nitpick the words, but as I understand the usage it always ends here:
Not everything in the everyday world can be done with evidence of all human behavior.

I think many of us might look at the world and just take it "as is," looking at the evidence around them and say "this is what it is."

One thing that should be noted is that evidence is not the same thing as proof. If one is attempting to prove someone guilty of a crime, they need to have a lot of evidence, not just circumstantial evidence or hearsay. Science seems to have an even higher standard in that regard.

In other areas, it might be a bit less formal or rigid, as long as one prefaces one's observations accordingly. People might speculate or guess about things, but as long as they qualify it as such and explain their reasoning, it's certainly not out of bounds or wrong to do so.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Unfortunately for your little rant here, there remains a glaringly obvious point (if one takes the time to think it over) that casts your ideas in doubt. That is, the idea you have that the "material" world of evidence and measure cannot stand as the foundation of various abstracts, and so it is somehow deemed "deficient."

You ready? Because based on how lively you throw around the ideas of solipsism, you should be ashamed if you haven't thought this one out to its obvious conclusions.

Pretend there is literally a mind being kept alive in a vat. In this scenario, however, this mind, receives zero external input. None. No sound. No sight. No touch. No taste. No sensations of any kind.

As this mind develops, I would ask that you think of the kinds of thoughts this mind would be capable of having. Without access to a MATERIAL world of "things" - what sorts of thoughts could the mind come to? Could it come to the abstract idea of something like love? How could it, with zero understanding or knowledge of even a single target? No physical touch. No ability to see and read the expressions on someone's face. No sound waves affecting the matter of the world around them to hear various intonations and perceive them as positive or negative. Nothing like that. "Love" could not be come to, I am afraid, without the material realm supporting the various aspects of that abstract. The abstract is literally built on material interactions! The best this "vat mind" might be able to muster is some rudimentary form of "what is this?" There wouldn't even be an understanding of what "where" meant - for it has not seen or experienced "placement" of any kind.

So now what? Can you honestly posit that it doesn't take a slew of sensory inputs for us to learn nearly any and all abstract concepts? And doesn't a sensory input serve only as an interpreter to the MATERIAL world? Oof. There goes your ideas in a puff of smoke, I believe.

Fair enough.
Here is a material world as the brain in a vat.
You are in a Boltzmann Brain variant.
It is a system of a computer and power source, all of it material in nature. You are a subroutine and the rest is an simulation run by the computer.

Thus I have meet your demands as the rest of the world is material, yet not real. So you might be real, but us. you as another person than "I" and so on are not.
See, since you know solipsism, you know there are 4 variants and you know that I am only 2 of them and even that is not the whole story.

So here is what I believe with faith: I trust objective reality in a limited sense to be epistemological fair.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
I think many of us might look at the world and just take it "as is," looking at the evidence around them and say "this is what it is."

One thing that should be noted is that evidence is not the same thing as proof. If one is attempting to prove someone guilty of a crime, they need to have a lot of evidence, not just circumstantial evidence or hearsay. Science seems to have an even higher standard in that regard.

In other areas, it might be a bit less formal or rigid, as long as one prefaces one's observations accordingly. People might speculate or guess about things, but as long as they qualify it as such and explain their reasoning, it's certainly not out of bounds or wrong to do so.

Yeah but guilty is not the same as gravity.
So I can understand science and I accept this: https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_12
 

A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
Fair enough.
Here is a material world as the brain in a vat.
You are in a Boltzmann Brain variant.
It is a system of a computer and power source, all of it material in nature. You are a subroutine and the rest is an simulation run by the computer.

Thus I have meet your demands as the rest of the world is material, yet not real. So you might be real, but us. you as another person than "I" and so on are not.
See, since you know solipsism, you know there are 4 variants and you know that I am only 2 of them and even that is not the whole story.

So here is what I believe with faith: I trust objective reality in a limited sense to be epistemological fair.
Whether the "material world" we seem to experience is truly a fundamental "material" or not doesn't change the fact that the perceptions brought to us by our senses literally "reading" this "material world" (whatever it ultimately is) are necessary to hold almost any thought we have ever held. Which means that this "material world" is extremely important to our ability to "do" anything. Even if "doing" things is ultimately some form of illusion abstracted from what we might otherwise expect.

I get where you are coming from, and if there were compelling evidence that we were all just part of some simulation, then I would be forced to consider it, and literally couldn't discount it if the evidence were strong enough. But I see absolutely no reason to act within the world as if it is a simulation without such evidence. For the time being I must go with what I am presented with. Much like the men in Plato's cave. But like those men, I can only be faulted if I deny overtly compelling evidence brought to me that exposes that such a world exists beyond my current perceptions. Otherwise, I am just an actor in the reality we appear to inhabit. To act outside of that capacity would be to adopt an untenable position, based on the caliber of the evidence that has thus far been presented for any such "outer realm."
 

epronovost

Well-Known Member
Here is a version that seems to float around:

I can use evidence in a positive sense for all of the everyday world.

Well, I can't. Now I have been asking how that is explained and it so far always end in an opinion:
I am of that opinion that what everybody else actually do for the everyday world is irrelevant.

I don't see the logic here. How does ''I think the everyday world is irrelevant'' has any impact on ''I can use evidence in positive sense for all of everyday world''? That be like saying to someone ''a non-stick pan is useful for cooking'' with ''I don't cook''. That you don't care about a position doesn't have any bearing on the accuracy of a prior statement. Was it what you were trying to say? That you don't care about he everyday world and what happens in it and thus have no interest in discussing it?
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Whether the "material world" we seem to experience is truly a fundamental "material" or not doesn't change the fact that the perceptions brought to us by our senses literally "reading" this "material world" (whatever it ultimately is) are necessary to hold almost any thought we have ever held. Which means that this "material world" is extremely important to our ability to "do" anything. Even if "doing" things is ultimately some form of illusion abstracted from what we might otherwise expect.

I get where you are coming from, and if there were compelling evidence that we were all just part of some simulation, then I would be forced to consider it, and literally couldn't discount it if the evidence were strong enough. But I see absolutely no reason to act within the world as if it is a simulation without such evidence. For the time being I must go with what I am presented with. Much like the men in Plato's cave. But like those men, I can only be faulted if I deny overtly compelling evidence brought to me that exposes that such a world exists beyond my current perceptions. Otherwise, I am just an actor in the reality we appear to inhabit. To act outside of that capacity would be to adopt an untenable position, based on the caliber of the evidence that has thus far been presented for any such "outer realm."

For the bold one: The see is not external sensation, it is an understanding in you. You have your opinions and I have mine.
Now if you could see as see through external sensation, I would listen to you.

But there is where it ends. Objective reality is that what it is, but that it is epistemologically fair is something else.

I am a skeptic and a part of that is epistemological, not metaphysical or ontological as such.

I don't know that objective reality is epistemologically fair, I act as if it is so.
I don't know that objective reality is natural, I act as if it is so.
And I can't do any of this that science can't do, https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_12 in an objective sense.
That goes down to the subjective meaning of being a human.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
I don't see the logic here. How does ''I think the everyday world is irrelevant'' has any impact on ''I can use evidence in positive sense for all of everyday world''? That be like saying to someone ''a non-stick pan is useful for cooking'' with ''I don't cook''. That you don't care about a position doesn't have any bearing on the accuracy of a prior statement. Was it what you were trying to say? That you don't care about he everyday world and what happens in it and thus have no interest in discussing it?

No, sorry for the bad wording. Relevance is in humans. There is no objective relevance. There are parts of the world which are in practice objective, but the relevance of that is subjective as far as I can tell.
 

A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
There are parts of the world which are in practice objective, but the relevance of that is subjective as far as I can tell.
Of course humans valuate various items in a manner subjectively relevant to humans. Of course we do. Hailing to the "objective" (and any lack of care or connectedness to these subjective valuations) has its uses - but by no means does it negate the entirety of what is important to humans. So, for example, I find evidence extremely important toward the goal of picking the useful ideas out from those I find to be less useful. Doesn't mean someone else can't find them more useful - it just means that I am going to probably question them on the utility of their chosen idea, and yes, I am going to judge their response based on how well I feel it matches their description of utility! And then they may be asked to provide the evidence they have that demonstrates the utility, etc. etc. etc.

No one is saying that isn't a subjective process, and that the valuations of utility aren't subjective. But the reality, too, is that we can push something into the realm of objective valuations if we can establish a "goal" by which to form judgmental criteria. For example, who is "fastest" between two people has a real and verifiable, objective truth to it within what we are perceiving as our reality. We have established a goal, and one person is going to finish whatever task it is before the other. The weight of objectivity has been injected into that scenario. So that when someone says something like "my religion makes the world a better place" - we can then go on to establish what we agree that "better" means, and actually evaluate that piece of information, using that criteria, against the outward signs in the real world.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Of course humans valuate various items in a manner subjectively relevant to humans. Of course we do. Hailing to the "objective" (and any lack of care or connectedness to these subjective valuations) has its uses - but by no means does it negate the entirety of what is important to humans. So, for example, I find evidence extremely important toward the goal of picking the useful ideas out from those I find to be less useful. Doesn't mean someone else can't find them more useful - it just means that I am going to probably question them on the utility of their chosen idea, and yes, I am going to judge their response based on how well I feel it matches their description of utility! And then they may be asked to provide the evidence they have that demonstrates the utility, etc. etc. etc.

No one is saying that isn't a subjective process, and that the valuations of utility aren't subjective. But the reality, too, is that we can push something into the realm of objective valuations if we can establish a "goal" by which to form judgmental criteria. For example, who is "fastest" between two people has a real and verifiable, objective truth to it within what we are perceiving as our reality. We have established a goal, and one person is going to finish whatever task it is before the other. The weight of objectivity has been injected into that scenario. So that when someone says something like "my religion makes the world a better place" - we can then go on to establish what we agree that "better" means, and actually evaluate that piece of information, using that criteria, against the outward signs in the real world.

Yeah, you are conventional in your "we". I do that differently in some cases. That is where it ends.
 

A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
Yeah, you are conventional in your "we". I do that differently in some cases. That is where it ends.
So, what you're saying, in essence, is that you would just refuse to accept or establish a goal in the first place that would make evaluations between us more objective, is that it? That's just you being stubborn because you like to see the look on people's faces when they can't prove they actually inhabit reality.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
So, what you're saying, in essence, is that you would just refuse to accept or establish a goal in the first place that would make evaluations between us more objective, is that it? That's just you being stubborn because you like to see the look on people's faces when they can't prove they actually inhabit reality.

Well, you hit the nail on the head. Now ask how I justify that and why? And if I know the limitations of what I do?
 

A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
Well, you hit the nail on the head. Now ask how I justify that and why? And if I know the limitations of what I do?
Good luck with whatever it is that you EVER end up on the road to accomplishing in collaboration with others. Sounds an awful lot like you just don't "play nice." I honestly (and I mean this with all sincerity) DO NOT CARE how you justify this and why. Do not care. Save it for one who does - if you can find such a one.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Good luck with whatever it is that you EVER end up on the road to accomplishing in collaboration with others. Sounds an awful lot like you just don't "play nice." I honestly (and I mean this with all sincerity) DO NOT CARE how you justify this and why. Do not care. Save it for one who does - if you can find such a one.

Yeah, I know. I am not subjectively like you. So if you cut me, I don't bleed but you do in reverse. So if you don't care, is that nice?
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Good luck with whatever it is that you EVER end up on the road to accomplishing in collaboration with others. Sounds an awful lot like you just don't "play nice." I honestly (and I mean this with all sincerity) DO NOT CARE how you justify this and why. Do not care. Save it for one who does - if you can find such a one.

#2 You don't understand that nice and don't care is not that simple for all cases of humans and that you are not the objective standard, no matter how much your limited "we" might seem objective to you.
You know it when other people use a "we" that you don't agree with. But of course that is different in your case. Well, that is my story. I live under a "we" that you might consider objective.
 

A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
Yeah, I know. I am not subjectively like you. So if you cut me, I don't bleed but you do in reverse. So if you don't care, is that nice?
Haha... sounds to me like you need to realize that YOU STARTED THIS.

For example... I don't go around hugging everyone. It takes my getting into a particular stage of a relationship with a person before hugging is appropriate. I also don't go around telling people I don't care about their justifications for things unless they first tell me they don't care about mine (like a theist does when they insist that, as an atheist, I must not have any solid foundation for morals). Or perhaps more like, when someone punches you in the face, you get the idea that, between you and that other person "face punching" is an acceptable practice, and so you might strike back. I don't go around punching everyone in the face... that wouldn't be prudent, practical or productive.

In short - welcome to the relationship you have fostered with me, Mikkel.
 

A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
#2 You don't understand that nice and don't care is not that simple for all cases of humans and that you are not the objective standard, no matter how much your limited "we" might seem objective to you.
You know it when other people use a "we" that you don't agree with. But of course that is different in your case. Well, that is my story. I live under a "we" that you might consider objective.
You know what I absolutely LOVE? When someone is so incensed by something I have written that they reply TWICE to the same post before I even have a chance to respond to their first attempt. So thanks for this. It is just so invigorating. That you were thinking about this, likely fuming, for 21 minutes after your first reply. So much so, that you had to come back and say more. You made my day.
 
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