The posts don't physically say anything. They are just a collection of colored pixels on a screen. For them to "say something" the pixels have to be conceptualized in our minds.
You are playing a semantic game. Yes, we have to be able to read, which requires our brains, to verify what words are on the screen. However, you can still see those colored pixels on the screen, and using our common understanding of the language we both speak, confirm what those words are.
Communication is a conceptual phenomenon.
Again, "communication" is a concept. The act of communicating is more than merely conceptual.
Flat and round are human conceptualizations.
With operational definitions we can, and do, apply to our experiences. If we couldn't, they'd be useless and functionally meaningless.
The "Earth" is just an elaborate collection of physical phenomena, some of which we humans can perceive, and some of which we (probably) cannot. How we conceptualize it's "shape" depends on the phenomenal criteria we are using to do so.
Correct, and if we agree on the phenomenal criteria for the Earth being "flat," we can observe and measure the Earth to objectively determine if it matches that criteria. If the phenomenal criteria for the Earth being flat aren't met by our observations and measurements, we can accurately say that the Earth is not flat (or at least, that no good evidence supports the conclusion that it is).
We delude ourselves into thinking that the shape of the Earth is a "objective fact" when it's really just a subjective conceptualization based on phenomena that we are currently able to perceive and how we choose to quantify it.
"Flatness" is a conceptualization. The objective criteria we use to operationalize it aren't just conceptual. They are physical. This is the ongoing disconnect in your thought process.
There are many other dimensions from which the collective phenomena we call "Earth" may appear as something quite apart from a sphere.
This is a tortured rationalization. The whole point of independent verification is that the individual perceptions of how things "appear" to us individually at a certain time can and are often inaccurate. Therefore we use independently verifiable, objective measures to check them.
The point is that data portal is subjective, limited, always changing, and as a result, quite misleading.
But it's all we have. This is why scientific conclusions are always probabilistic - we recognize our methods are not infallible. That said, physical perceptions, confirmed through scientific measurement and analysis, are extremely effective at enabling us to navigate and accurately understand the world.
No such construct exists.
Great, then what's the physical correlate of God we can use to verify it?
We cannot conceptualize non-existence.
We can't? I'm doing it right now, I think. I can imagine what it would be like if this conversation didn't exist.
The fact that we can conceptualize "God" means something exists and is being conceptualized in this way.
The fact that I can conceptualize "three-headed pink unicorn" means a three-headed pink unicorn exists? Outside my head?
"God" is not a perception. It's a conceptual construct based on a whole collection of perceptions, like "reality" is. "God" is a label we give to specific kind of "conceptualized reality".
What conceptualized reality? What does it mean? Classically, it means an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent conscious being who exists outside of time and space and created the universe. That's more than a concept. That implies something outside our imaginations (indeed, most theists in the world would be incensed if you declared their gods to be mere concepts). Does anything verifiably real outside our heads match that description?
The experience is the content. That's why no one asks, "what does beautiful mean?"
Huh?? The question of how to define beauty is a centuries-old debate. The Scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages had a whole classification system.
Every professional artist on the planet is obligated to grapple with the definition of beauty - they often seek to change it.
When someone tells us "X is beautiful" they are not defining "X", they are defining their experience of "X". There is nothing there to debate, or 'verify'.
Sorry, but there is. If what they experience bears no relationship to what the rest of us experience, that's potentially very problematic for that person (and for the rest of us). How do you think we diagnose color blindness?
You cannot perceive what I perceive. You can only perceive something similarly, and then presume that 'similar' means 'same'. But it never does. Ever. Because the only way we can perceive the same thing the same way is to be the same person. Which is why if you do not perceive the same things the same way as someone else, their perception is not "wrong", or invalid. It's simply not l aligning with yours, conceptually.
If what you perceive doesn't align with objectively, independently verifiable physical information, then yes, sorry, your perception is wrong. If you think you can fly, and you jump off a building and fall to your death - sorry, you were incorrect. To deny this is definitionally delusional.
The Earth is whatever we determine it to be.
LOL, no, it isn't, not in any meaningful sense. Think through what you're actually saying. It renders reality completely incoherent and rationalizes delusion/hallucination.
That's as true individually as it is collectively. So if one individual determines it to be flat, while everyone else determines it to be spherical, then so be it. To the individual it's flat. To everyone else it's a sphere. The collection of phenomena we call "the Earth" and conceptualize as this or that remains just a designated collection of phenomena (by us), from within a much bigger collection of phenomena.
You're not interacting with the obvious point. If you claim you caught a fish that's 20 feet long, and show us the fish, and we hold a ruler up to it and it's actually 1 foot long, then sorry, your claim is not true. It's absurd to say, "it's true for you." That makes "truth" completely incoherent and meaningless.
Conceptual phenomena is generated and effected by perceived/experienced physicality, and then in turn effects that physicality, through us. This is as true of the god concept as it as of the love concept, the justice concept, the beauty concept, the compassion concept, and so on.
Concepts don't affect/change physical reality, they simply help us define, analyze, and categorize it. What physical reality does the concept of God correspond to?
