How is it that We Can Trust Our Faculties?

[Prof Bulani]

In order to claim that God cannot be detected or measured by scientific means requires that you first agree that God is defined...

<yawn> One problem with discussing God is that I know of no useful and usable definition of God that would allow discussions such as this one. Your thinking is too rigid and limited to discuss these things. And when I say "limited" I refer to your (apparent) exclusive reliance on science and logic. These excellent tools are not appropriate for all circumstances, as this discussion clearly illustrates.

This discussion in no way illustrates that logic is inappropriate with regards to the existence of God. You'll have to do better than merely dismiss logic and blankly assert that it doesn't apply.

[Terrapin Station]

My point was that there is grounds for saying something is an illusion. I described those grounds. We could define "wrong" as something like "not fitting the patterns that we've established from our past experiences".

You could define it as a lint ball, but then we're simply not talking about the same thing.

[Pattern-chaser]

<yawn> One problem with discussing God is that I know of no useful and usable definition of God that would allow discussions such as this one. Your thinking is too rigid and limited to discuss these things. And when I say "limited" I refer to your (apparent) exclusive reliance on science and logic. These excellent tools are not appropriate for all circumstances, as this discussion clearly illustrates.

This discussion in no way illustrates that logic is inappropriate with regards to the existence of God. You'll have to do better than merely dismiss logic and blankly assert that it doesn't apply.

How can it apply when there is no evidence? That's the point. It's nothing to do with God, as such. God is merely being used here as an example of something for which there is no evidence. It could as easily have been 'we are brains-in-vats'. So, my question to you is as it was, all those posts ago: how does your position deal with the case of a thing being investigated, where there is no evidence? How can you then apply logic, or any other similar tool, when there is nothing to consider; nothing from which to make deductions; nothing to allow any useful conclusion to be drawn, apart from 'we can draw no conclusion'?

[Prof Bulani]

How can it apply when there is no evidence? That's the point. It's nothing to do with God, as such. God is merely being used here as an example of something for which there is no evidence. It could as easily have been 'we are brains-in-vats'. So, my question to you is as it was, all those posts ago: how does your position deal with the case of a thing being investigated, where there is no evidence? How can you then apply logic, or any other similar tool, when there is nothing to consider; nothing from which to make deductions; nothing to allow any useful conclusion to be drawn, apart from 'we can draw no conclusion'?

You're going around in circles here.

God is a special case outside of logic because there's no evidence of God.
There's no evidence for God because God is a special case outside of logic.

I suppose since we're throwing out logic anyway, you don't even need a logical reason to throw out logic.

Before you consider if evidence can be obtained or not, you need a definition. The "what" of the question comes before "how we know what". The argument "we don't know what a God is, but we know we have no evidence for God" is an utterly absurd one. There is no way you come to such a conclusion from such a premise. Not to mention the irony of making absolute statements about something you are at the same time claiming cannot be known. If you don't know what God is, then you don't know what would constitute as evidence for God. What's the difficulty in that?

[Pattern-chaser]

How can it apply when there is no evidence? That's the point. It's nothing to do with God, as such. God is merely being used here as an example of something for which there is no evidence. It could as easily have been 'we are brains-in-vats'. So, my question to you is as it was, all those posts ago: how does your position deal with the case of a thing being investigated, where there is no evidence? How can you then apply logic, or any other similar tool, when there is nothing to consider; nothing from which to make deductions; nothing to allow any useful conclusion to be drawn, apart from 'we can draw no conclusion'?

You're going around in circles here.

God is a special case outside of logic because there's no evidence of God.
There's no evidence for God because God is a special case outside of logic.

I suppose since we're throwing out logic anyway, you don't even need a logical reason to throw out logic.

Before you consider if evidence can be obtained or not, you need a definition. The "what" of the question comes before "how we know what". The argument "we don't know what a God is, but we know we have no evidence for God" is an utterly absurd one. There is no way you come to such a conclusion from such a premise. Not to mention the irony of making absolute statements about something you are at the same time claiming cannot be known. If you don't know what God is, then you don't know what would constitute as evidence for God. What's the difficulty in that?

God is only being used as an example here, and your reaction would indicate it wasn't a good choice of example. So let's move to 'we're all brains-in-vats', something that is possible, along with other possible explanations. The point here is that if we are brains-in-vats, we have no way to tell. And if we aren't, we also have no way to tell. We cannot distinguish between the two, because there is no evidence that we could obtain that would allow us to do so. Where does this leave you and your position?

Oh, and no-one (that I have seen) is suggesting that we discard logic. [Not in this topic, anyway. ] I am applying logic to this problem, and it is leading me in one, and only one, direction. Where there is no evidence, there can be no analysis, and therefore no conclusion, except perhaps 'logic does not allow us to draw any conclusion, as there is insufficient information available to do so'. Where does this leave you and your position?

[Karpel Tunnel]

Yes you can.

No, you can't, because the whole gist of idealism (at least ontological idealism) is that things do not exist independently of your mental experience of them. So they can't be some way that you got wrong. There's nothing to get wrong (or at least no way to know that you got anything wrong, because you can only know mental phenomena, which is what the "illusion" would have been).

You perceived it, whatever it was, and that was a correct perception. But you could be wrong about how that real thing you saw relates to other things. You would still have anomolies in idealism. You would still have faulty conclusions about what things indicate. Some impressions/views of you wife would be central and good evidence of what to expect in general from your wife. Some perceptions of whatever anomolous experience would correlate with many future perceptions, some would not. You would no longer have illusions, but you would have experiences that are not good information about future experiences as compared to others. Strong patterns and weak ones. All running in parallel with a realism.

[Terrapin Station]

You perceived it, whatever it was, and that was a correct perception. But you could be wrong about how that real thing you saw relates to other things.

There are no "real things" if one is an ontological idealist. There is no way that things relate to other things that is independent of your mental experience.

[Karpel Tunnel]

You perceived it, whatever it was, and that was a correct perception. But you could be wrong about how that real thing you saw relates to other things.

There are no "real things" if one is an ontological idealist. There is no way that things relate to other things that is independent of your mental experience.

Right in the idealist schema you would be noting patterns of experiencing. Some would be more telling about future experiences than others. I was not assuming that there were 'things', that is stuff that is outside of experiences stimulating those experiences. I'm not an idealist, but I do not think one is restricted in idealism from noticing that some experiences have more predictive value about future experiences. In precisely the same ways one can deal with anomolies within realisms. It just lacks the idea that 'things out there' are involved. IOW there can still be patterns and anomolies and one can glean information about future experiences from patterns. All in parallel to realism.

[Karpel Tunnel]

You perceived it, whatever it was, and that was a correct perception. But you could be wrong about how that real thing you saw relates to other things.

There are no "real things" if one is an ontological idealist. There is no way that things relate to other things that is independent of your mental experience.

Or in case that wasn't clear. Your mind might well have regular patterns of experiencing. The mind might have patterns and anomolous ones thrown in. One could still learn about experiencing. Oh, I experience what could get called a sunrise and attributed to 'the sun' over and over. There is no reason that a mind cannot have regularities and thus expect certain experiences because of what has been already experienced with regularity.

[Terrapin Station]

There are no "real things" if one is an ontological idealist. There is no way that things relate to other things that is independent of your mental experience.

Right in the idealist schema you would be noting patterns of experiencing. Some would be more telling about future experiences than others. I was not assuming that there were 'things', that is stuff that is outside of experiences stimulating those experiences. I'm not an idealist, but I do not think one is restricted in idealism from noticing that some experiences have more predictive value about future experiences. In precisely the same ways one can deal with anomolies within realisms. It just lacks the idea that 'things out there' are involved. IOW there can still be patterns and anomolies and one can glean information about future experiences from patterns. All in parallel to realism.

That's all fine for what it is, but it doesn't allow getting x wrong at time T1, when one experienced x at time T1, because to get x wrong at time T1, x would need to be some way different than what was experienced, which means that x is independent of the experience, but an ontological idealist can't posit that.

[Karpel Tunnel]

Right in the idealist schema you would be noting patterns of experiencing. Some would be more telling about future experiences than others. I was not assuming that there were 'things', that is stuff that is outside of experiences stimulating those experiences. I'm not an idealist, but I do not think one is restricted in idealism from noticing that some experiences have more predictive value about future experiences. In precisely the same ways one can deal with anomolies within realisms. It just lacks the idea that 'things out there' are involved. IOW there can still be patterns and anomolies and one can glean information about future experiences from patterns. All in parallel to realism.

That's all fine for what it is, but it doesn't allow getting x wrong at time T1, when one experienced x at time T1, because to get x wrong at time T1, x would need to be some way different than what was experienced, which means that x is independent of the experience, but an ontological idealist can't posit that.

Agreed. However one can draw false conclusions from that experience about other experiences. The realist can say the perception of X was skewed/projected/simply wrong/hallucinated and give the immediate experience, in a sense, a reduced ontological status. The idealist has no illusions as experienced. They are all equally real. However, he or she can still have a kind of science, where certain experiences become good predictors of other experiences. Other do not. They are one-shots: real but not indicators. And of course errors could be made in these assessments just as their can be such things in realism. What seems a mere one-shot - which the realist would attribute to the person not actually having experienced object X or thinking it is object X when it was actually (the more commonly known object Z) - might turn out in either ontology to have in fact be either (in realism) a correctly interpreted experience or in idealism an experience that is part of a regular pattern.

If I go back to what I originally responded to....

No, you can't, because the whole gist of idealism (at least ontological idealism) is that things do not exist independently of your mental experience of them. So they can't be some way that you got wrong. There's nothing to get wrong (or at least no way to know that you got anything wrong, because you can only know mental phenomena, which is what the "illusion" would have been).

The idealist can incorrectly assume that they can expect an experience to come back, they can be kinda supersitious also. Like the pidgeons who end up making certain motions when they think that's what they got rewarded for, when in fact they were rewarded randomly. (Skinner, pidgeons, superstition will google one to this). Here the idealist need not go through rituals to cause the experience, but mght assume and expect that it will return after experience X or the experience of wishing for experience Y. One can make predictive mistakes and associative mistakes. One cannot be wrong in ways we attribute to faulty perception since what one experiences is real. So, there I agree with you. But one can still make mistakes.

[Terrapin Station]

That's all fine for what it is, but it doesn't allow getting x wrong at time T1, when one experienced x at time T1, because to get x wrong at time T1, x would need to be some way different than what was experienced, which means that x is independent of the experience, but an ontological idealist can't posit that.

Agreed. However one can draw false conclusions from that experience about other experiences. The realist can say the perception of X was skewed/projected/simply wrong/hallucinated and give the immediate experience, in a sense, a reduced ontological status. The idealist has no illusions as experienced. They are all equally real. However, he or she can still have a kind of science, where certain experiences become good predictors of other experiences. Other do not. They are one-shots: real but not indicators. And of course errors could be made in these assessments just as their can be such things in realism. What seems a mere one-shot - which the realist would attribute to the person not actually having experienced object X or thinking it is object X when it was actually (the more commonly known object Z) - might turn out in either ontology to have in fact be either (in realism) a correctly interpreted experience or in idealism an experience that is part of a regular pattern.

If I go back to what I originally responded to....

No, you can't, because the whole gist of idealism (at least ontological idealism) is that things do not exist independently of your mental experience of them. So they can't be some way that you got wrong. There's nothing to get wrong (or at least no way to know that you got anything wrong, because you can only know mental phenomena, which is what the "illusion" would have been).

The idealist can incorrectly assume that they can expect an experience to come back, they can be kinda supersitious also. Like the pidgeons who end up making certain motions when they think that's what they got rewarded for, when in fact they were rewarded randomly. (Skinner, pidgeons, superstition will google one to this). Here the idealist need not go through rituals to cause the experience, but mght assume and expect that it will return after experience X or the experience of wishing for experience Y. One can make predictive mistakes and associative mistakes. One cannot be wrong in ways we attribute to faulty perception since what one experiences is real. So, there I agree with you. But one can still make mistakes.

Yeah, definitely I agree that they could make incorrect predictions.

I was talking about claiming that one got something wrong in a particular experience (a la illusions, etc.)