Becoming the Right Person vs. Doing Right for Right Reasons

[JimL]

What? Again, what would that evidence look like?

I don't know, you're the one that believes it, what does it look like to you?

Yet you could still be deceived as to what that reality is.

How so? If reality is mind independent, then you'll know it by contact with it.

[seer]

I don't know, you're the one that believes it, what does it look like to you?

Well Jim, you said there was no evidence for an immaterial mind, so you must have some idea what that would look like.

How so? If reality is mind independent, then you'll know it by contact with it.

Again, if you were in the Matrix what you think is reality is really an illusion. When you dream what you think is really happening, and real, isn't. These are deceptions.

[Tassman]

Why not? We all act on that assumption - that is the whole point of this.

Exactly! We live in a material universe and act on the assumption that it is real and that we're not being deceived. This is all that needs be said.

Well Jim, you said there was no evidence for an immaterial mind, so you must have some idea what that would look like.

Nonsense! Jim would no more have evidence of what a non-material mind would look like than what my non-existent stamp-collection looks like. Why do you lot always put the onus on us to prove that what is NOT so, is so?

[Charles]

Why not? We all act on that assumption - that is the whole point of this.

But why does one assumption appear more likely than the other?

[Charles]

Seer, let me see if I got this right.

1) You claim we have to assume reality because it cannot be proven
2) You do not actually know if you assume reality because, according to you, the assumption could be imposed
3) You do not have any specific reason for assuming what you call "awake" to be more real than your dreams and you do not know if it is real?
4) You said we know of deception when waking up from a dream but you don't really know how you can make that claim, because you don't know that you actually wake up to reality but could still be deceived.

Let me know if I am mistaken in any of this.

[seer]

But why does one assumption appear more likely than the other?

Charles why don't you tell us why you assume reality rather than deception, since you are making the same assumption without logical justification. Or do you have proof that you are experiencing reality rather than a deception?

[Charles]

Charles why don't you tell us why you assume reality rather than deception, since you are making the same assumption without logical justification. Or do you have proof that you are experiencing reality rather than a deception?

In other words no reason for your assumption?

I guess I have made my position rather clear, but if I get the time in the coming days I will write some more.

[seer]

In other words no reason for your assumption?

I guess I have made my position rather clear, but if I get the time in the coming days I will write some more.

And where have you offered anything more than assumption? Like I said, I will assume, believe, presuppose that I experience reality until I have good reason not to. And why would you write more Charles? After all these pages you have not made one positive argument. And your argument against Solipsism does not tell us, or prove, or logically demonstrate, that deception is impossible. So what exactly do you have that is more than assumption Charlie?

[Charles]

And where have you offered anything more than assumption? Like I said, I will assume, believe, presuppose that I experience reality until I have good reason not to. And why would you write more Charles? After all these pages you have not made one positive argument. And your argument against Solipsism does not tell us, or prove, or logically demonstrate, that deception is impossible. So what exactly do you have that is more than assumption Charlie?

Seer, relax... Like I have said, you cannot know that you assume, believe, presuppose that you experience reality until you have good reason not to. The reason you cannot even say this is because you hold you can always be decieved. So it may be that someone exposes another assumption into your brain and then you will hold that without any good reason. So all your claims have fallen apart.

The fact that I have shown your skepticism cases to be self refuting is a very good start for me. It reduces the possible options to a very large degree, then there is the point about consistent language. But we will look further into that later, seer. Don't have the time right now. So you will have to wait before the proof is "imposed into your brain".

[seer]

The fact that I have shown your skepticism cases to be self refuting is a very good start for me. It reduces the possible options to a very large degree, then there is the point about consistent language. But we will look further into that later, seer. Don't have the time right now. So you will have to wait before the proof is "imposed into your brain".

Nonsense Charlie, Solipsism may be inconsistent, but saying that it is impossible to be deceived is not, not by a long shot. You are just assuming that you are not deceived, you had no logical argument then and you will have no logical argument forthcoming demonstrating otherwise. And BTW - point me to where you showed that being deceived in dreams is self-refuting?

[Charles]

Nonsense Charlie, Solipsism may be inconsistent, but saying that it is impossible to be deceived is not, not by a long shot. You are just assuming that you are not deceived, you had no logical argument then and you will have no logical argument forthcoming demonstrating otherwise. And BTW - point me to where you showed that being deceived in dreams is self-refuting?

I have never claimed it is impossible to be deceived in dreams. That is a straw man. What I have shown is that it is self refuting to claim that reality is a dream. That is something quite different, seer.

[seer]

I have never claimed it is impossible to be deceived in dreams. That is a straw man. What I have shown is that it is self refuting to claim that reality is a dream. That is something quite different, seer.

No you haven't, how do you know that your reality is not a dream? Perhaps you have been in a coma for the last two years and every thing you experience is in a dream world. Remember all you have is your own subjective mind, if your mind dies, your world, and everything in it, dies. And the question from the beginning was about us, as individuals being deceived. Can I prove that what goes on in my mind or can you prove that what goes on in your mind correspond to reality? That is what I have been claiming can't be proved, that it must be assumed or presupposed.

[Charles]

I will try to make my position clearer below. These are very complicated matters and what I give here is just a very, very, very short presentation of thoughts that can be accounted for to a lot more detail. That goes both for what I say in favour of realism and for what I say against other theories. Depending on how discussion evolves I may write even more.

When considering different theories of knowledge and their claim to truth one might initially find it very hard to determine how anyone of them could be more likely than any other. I have often gone through the process of considering arguments for and against the existence of a mind independent reality. And most of the time I find the skeptics initially have a very good case and I am rather reluctant to make any claims feeling I could easily be proven wrong.

However, for any theory to be consistent it cannot contradict itself and it cannot undermine itself. A satisfactory answer in philosophy would also have to be one that you could actually make sense of and thus mysticism or theories that cannot be presented in language are out of scope. (People are of course free to believe them nonetheless).

Circularity

[Charles]

No you haven't, how do you know that your reality is not a dream? Perhaps you have been in a coma for the last two years and every thing you experience is in a dream world. Remember all you have is your own subjective mind, if your mind dies, your world, and everything in it, dies. And the question from the beginning was about us, as individuals being deceived. Can I prove that what goes on in my mind or can you prove that what goes on in your mind correspond to reality? That is what I have been claiming can't be proved, that it must be assumed or presupposed.

You know extremely much about reality and make so many statements about reality, how we know it, when our experience stops, what we base our assumptions on and so on. It seems you forgot that you claim you need to assume reality since you could be deceived. What happened to that possibility in all the claims above? Why the certainty? What proof do you base it on?

[Charles]

"One can imagine a computer simulation of the action of peptides in the hypothalamus that is accurate down to the last synapse. But equally one can imagine a computer simulation of the oxidation of hydrocarbons in a car engine or the action of digestive processes in a stomach when it is digesting pizza. And the simulation is no more the real thing in the case of the brain than it is in the case of the car or the stomach. Barring miracles, you could not run your car by doing a computer simulation of the oxidation of gasoline, and you could not digest pizza by running the program that simulates such digestion. It seems obvious that a simulation of cognition will similarly not produce the effects of the neurobiology of cognition."

John Searle