I’ve told you why they aren’t valid many times, but you ignore it.
Your definition may be useful, but it may also is fundamentally flawed.
I don’t ignore it. You keep say I’m ignoring it but I’m not. In fact, you admit that it’s impossible to quantify.
You say that my definition of “evidence” maybe fundamentally flawed but you say that you can’t think of anything that would SHOW, without a doubt, that it is flawed.
I’m sorry, but until you can provide evidence that my senses ARE flawed, I am done with this conversation.
Colour blind people see no colour. Can a colour blind person, on that evidence say with confidence that colour does not exsist? A deaf person hears no sound. Can he, on that evidence say with confidence that sound does not exsist?
You are assuming your senses are accurate. You provide evidence that your senses are accurate USING your senses to gather results. How is that NOT flawed?
You have no way of verifying your senses without using your senses. Just because you don’t like that answer doesn’t mean it’s not a valid response. I’m not sure what else to tell you now. You refuse to approach the conversation without that basic assumption, so you aren’t even participating in the same conversation…
Because they’re 100% accurate all the time and others corroborate it.
SHEESH.
Now, you tell me that MY senses may be flawed when others are seeing the same exact thing I am. And I’m the one with the problem?
Provide evidence that my senses are flawed or I’m done.
Just because colorblind can’t ‘see’ the color or deaf people can’t ‘hear’ the sound doesn’t mean that there isn’t corroborating evidence that these things are real.
(By the way, I’ve heard stories about completely deaf people going to concerts. Why would they do that? They say they can feel the music.)
Wow, this is a really simple argument.
Our senses are all we rely on to interpret the world. Therefore all we can really know is that we receive impulses and interpret them. However, we make the assumption that our senses are at least somewhat accurate some of the time, which allows us to make the best isomorphic model of reality possible, that always changes.
The first point is something you simply can’t look past, daniel.
assume: to take for granted or without proof; suppose; postulate; posit
I always class “assume” in with the word “guess” and “faith”. I don’t have faith that my senses are accurate. I don’t “assume” that my senses are accurate. As you say, our senses are ALL WE HAVE to to interpret the world around us.
There is NO evidence that these senses are inaccurate. They can be fooled sometimes, yeah, but other impulses, but that doesn’t mean that they’re inaccurate. An optical illusion where you either see a white vase or two silhouettes in a picture is only due to the ambiguity in the picture. That doesn’t mean that my eyes are presenting an inaccurate representation of the picture to my brain. Or this picture might be interpreted by my brain as having curved lines but upon closer inspection, I can determine that the lines are straight; I can open the picture in Photoshop and examine the picture closely and find that the squares are not curved, though it appears that they are when looked at a picture as a whole.
Think of it this way, bur, Max:
If there’s billions of pieces of evidence that our senses are accurate and ZERO pieces of evidence that our senses are inaccurate, WHY DO PEOPLE SUGGEST THAT WE CAN’T RELY ON OUR SENSES? It’s not ASSUMPTION when there is CORROBORATION.
I never assumed this theory, I just make terrible jokes about it.
I’ve come to realize that there is no intent to acknowledge the premise. He is comfortable with saying that because it’s what we have that it is true. It’s faulty logic, as much as the statement that we have all these sources of evidence.
I can’t acknowledge it because the statement implicit in this is that we cannot trust our senses or that our senses are flawed in some manner; that we have to “assume they’re correct, without evidence that they are” before we can even function…that “we have to have faith that they’re correct”.
Please.
I can’t accept that. I can’t accept, without evidence, that our senses are incorrect or flawed.
No, again, it’s not assuming an outcome either way. They may be accurate, they may not be. If you don’t ASSUME they are correct, you must find some way of providing evidence.
So you would rather assume than be intellectually honest with yourself?
But you are prepared to base a conclusion about your senses from the backward standpoint that they ARE accurate instead of the neutral position that they may or may not be accurate.
You are being intellectually dishonest with yourself, and it’s your own loss.
I’m sorry, why should I have the “neutral” position when EVIDENCE BACKS ME UP?
:rolleyes:
You are really being thick, Daniel.
Perhaps I am. I continue to fail to understand why evidence isn’t valid. If something is cylindrical, open at the top, black, contains a lining of plastic and filled with discarded items such as boxes, food, and such, you’re telling me that you can’t be sure that this is a “trash can full of trash”…even after corroboration by multiple sources.
Call me thick if you want, but if NO ONE CAN EXPLAIN IT instead of just insisting that I’m wrong (somehow), then am I the thick one here?
You think your senses are accurate because they are all you’ve ever known.
Maybe nothing of what your senses perceive as being real actually exists, maybe you are just plugged into the matrix, and all that you think that you see is merely an illusion.
I’m not saying that the matrix exists, I just can’t know for sure that it doesn’t.
If you don’t have any evidence that this “matrix” exists, then why should it be elevated at all beyond the realm of fiction? It’s not that I think my senses are accurate…it’s that I have evidence that they are.
I see three choices here:
A. Our senses are accurate.
B. Our senses may or may not be accurate.
C. Our senses are not accurate.
Now, until someone, ANYONE, can provide evidence that they’re wrong, why can’t we definitively put the marker into choice A? I mean, if this were a needle, it’d be firmly buried in the “are accurate” side of the meter.
To date, there has been nothing to show that the meter should even dare to move.
See also “Burden of Proof” fallacy.
I’d choose B.
You don’t have any evidence for it, but you also haven’t got any evidence against it. I don’t believe (and am not saying) that the matrix exists, I’m saying that it could exist , as could millions of other different possibilities and alternate universes . I’m not asking for you to prove its existance, either.
I’m sorry, but I don’t have any evidence FOR it?
No, you don’t.
At least if you do, you aren’t presenting it.
All you are doing is presenting circular logic.
Your postulating that your senses are accurate because they say so.
THAT is not good logic.