but we’ll defend your right to make them! 
So is all this errudite silliness actually applicable in “Reality”?
I mean, if I cannot prove my own existence, then I must question everyone else’s as well. Thus, if I conclude that none of what I believe exists actually exists then my social contract with the rest of my unprovable society is moot. I therefore can choose to act completely anti-socially believing that there will be no consequences. If as a result of my anti-social actions I am forced to stand up in a court of law to defend my actions, I can with imputinity scoff at the idea of judgement because in order to judge me the judge must first convince me that he exists.
Of course I do not have to act anti-socially. I can choose to behave as a model citizen and continue to fullfill my imaginary contract with society and continue to live moraly and responsibly as I have up until now.
My only question is this, do I or do I not have control of my construct? It seems to me that I have very limited control of some aspects and not others. Of course in my reality, only I can answer that question. Right?
So what purpose does this idea of subjective reality actually serve. Is it simply an unsolvable dilema for us amateur phylosophers and self proclaimed thinkers to mull over in our heads like so much cudd?
Surely if a logical statement brings one to a logical dead end, the usefulness of that statement or assertion becomes pointless and self defeating. It is of course usefull to recognize that all epistemology is tautological, however, how do we keep from throwing out the baby with the bath water? Seems to me that we cannot put too much faith into that idea afterall.
QuickSilver
Well, I suppose it is possible that it might serve various purposes, but there is one in particular that readily comes to mind, at least from the point of view of my own reference frame.
It is an excellent way to implement moral free-will. Each consciousness stands on its own as a separate reference frame, acting out whatever it pleases in the amoral context of the physical universe. Since it cannot prove (or disprove) the existence of a Perfect Moral Reference Frame, it sustains only whatever influence from that Reference Frame that it is willing to allow. If you can’t prove that God exists, it means that ultimately you are acting on your own. Thus, you are free from the intervention of His will upon yours.
I think it absolutely necessary to keep in mind that all could be false. If you never question your own existence or perception of reality, you are blandly buying in to the illusion.
For example, think of your senses. When you touch a desk, regardless of the reality or not of the desk, all of the touching and feeling and texture-gathering is going on inside your head. The reason that these sensations seem so real is that we have a whole redundant range of them, some that clarify others and some that just back others up. I feel the desk, and see it only a few feet away from me, you know?
As to seeing, that is the most fascinating illusion of them all. We know for a fact that we only see a small wedge of the electromagnetic spectrum. We know that we only have receptors for red, green, and blue. We know that we don’t really have two gaping holes in the front of our faces, but that’s the way it seems. It’s hard to imagine a full 360 degree view, but that would represent reality better than ours.
In short, much of what we perceive is an illusion, albeit an illusion shared by most of humanity. Not illusion in the sense that the perceived is fictional, but an illusion because we are not seeing the whole reality of the perceived’s existence.
And hell, even if nothing is any different from the way we know it, I personally think it’s healthier to keep in mind that it may be false.
**
And what illusion is this? I know that you later defined it as images, yet the way you state it here, it sounds quite negative. Is there something wrong with percieving the images of things around you?
**
Well not exactly. A physical object is having a physical effect upon physical sensory organs contained in another physical body.
**
They seem real because they are, they are physical objects interacting with other ones.
**
I prefer the term image. We are seeing images of real objects. The images we percieve don’t correspond exactly to the actual object, but it’s close enough for passing.
oldscratch, you’re either being very contrary or else you have missed the whole point of these posts. true, the desk is outside of your brain. but the processing and the data-collating and the actual feeling is taking place in the brain.
you take the example of one piece of matter touching another and trump it up, but don’t realize the two situations are quite different. My computer is up against my desk, but I think it safe to say it doesn’t feel the computer. You feel the computer because of cellular reactions in your fingertips which are conveyed via impulse up into your brain and processed and felt, and then the sense of touch is projected via your kinesthetic sense into your hand.
it is an illusion. it doesn’t make the desk unreal.
**
No no no. I’m not missing the point. It’s taking place inside of the brain. Exactly. Inside of a physical object. It’s not happening in the “mind”, in some spirit outside of the body, it’s a physical process.
and my question was "Is there something wrong with percieving the images of things around you? "
**
I do?
Again I object to your use of the word illusion. It carries conotations of unreal. What you are percieving is an image or a copy of the desk as object.
for one thing, if there is in fact a desk there, all the input that you are receiving is very biased and very very incomplete.
for another, this phenomenon is happening in the mind. just because you disagree with those who believe the mind is some transcendant soul controller of the brain does not mean you should do away with the concept of mind (I realize I am putting words into your head and mouth, and please realize that’s not my intention- I’m trying to communicate a point to you and that’s the best way I can say it).
and finally, you are missing the point. this conversation has center on the concept of the mind as a subjective closed reference frame of the universe. by trying to point to the fact “but I am touching the desk” you are completely and totally missing the point.
**
True. Which is why I refer to perceiving an image of the true object. NOT the object itself.
**
Right now we’re quibbling over semantics. I’m not disagreeing with the concept of a mind. I’m disagreeing with those who argue against the physical object of the brain, as needed, to percieve objects. I’m not sure that’s what you were arguing, but that is what it seemed like when I made my earlier post.
You are missing the point. I haven’t been pointing to touching the desk. I’ve been questioning what is wrong with accepting the images around you. You talked of “buying into the illusion”. I asked, what illusion? Although I must confess I do not understand what point you are trying to make with the above quote.
OldScratch
I have been told that my experiences with God are synaptic discharges. Are you saying that my experience with my chair are outside those discharges? Is the chair supernatural? And if my brain is “real”, how do I know this? With what instrument am I perceiving my brain?
The Bible is true because the Bible says that it is true.
My brain is real because my brain says that it is real.
We cannot escape the tautologies.
**
This we know. Removing the brain from a human being will cause the human being to stop functioning. The brain is needed for normal functioning. The chair exists as an object outside of those discharges. We percieve in every sense an image of the chair that is not the chair itself. We may not percieve the chair without those discharges, but it still exists. If you deny it’s existence without those discharges you have eliminated time. For if nothing can exist without my perception of it, nothing in the past has existed.
You are not percieving your own brain but the brains of others.
**
You know, I’m interested. Where does it actually say it’s true. I haven’t followed the Christian debates too closely, so I’ve probably missed the specific passage.
**
God save me if my brain starts proclaiming it’s own existence.
Yes and no. Again, we can accept two possible ideas. Either there is a reality outside of us. Or there is not. If there is not, nothing outside of you, Libertarian, exists. There is no past, or future outside of your perception. Everything is and must be a construction of your mind.
Oldscratch, this is getting old to the point of getting insulting, but I must say that you are MISSING the POINT. Take your quote:
You have no proof that that human being has stopped functioning. The point has been reiterated in this post over and over, that you can only know that the brain is essential for the mind or normal functioning or whatever ONCE your own mind is removed and you cease to perceive or function or whatever.
Further missage of the point is the reference to the chair. You are right, that the chair exists outside of the tautology of the mind. If you understood why this tautology of the mind is the point of the conversation, you would have seen that the chair is outside of not just the ‘discharges’, but the discussion too.
**
And here is where we get to the difference between materialism and idealism. The materialist says, of course he’s not functioning you idiot. The idealist speaks of tautologies and the idea of a closed frame of reference. Give me materialism any day.
**
But then you can’t know it. For if you cease to function you can no longer judge if you are functioning or not. The materialist points out that we can know that a bee will look for honey even if we are not our selves bees. That we can know that if I step on a rock it will not fly, regardless of wether I have stepped on that particular rock or not. If I place wings on a rat, it will not fly, no matter how much it wants to. These are objective truths to the materialist. To the idealist there is no reason why the rat can’t fly if you wish it enough. And so I ask of you, make rats fly. Once you have proven to me that ideas can control matter, and not vice versa, I will become a commited idealist.
But does it? What is your proof?
Lib - I agree with you, completely! You can’t prove that anything exists objectively, and all epistemologies are tautological.
However, my subjective reality includes a set of internal states which can be roughly categorised as “positive” or “negative.” I’m not just talking about pleasure and pain here but hunger, thirst, warmth, cold, embarrassment, guilt, joy, satiation, loneliness, shame, self-esteem, smugness, triumph, pity, boredom, empathy, a whole set of carrots and sticks which affect me.
It’s axiomatic that the positive states are superior to the negative. The states I experience are very much related to my interactions with my subjective reality - e.g. I experience more positive states when I eat, drink and bother to come in out of the rain. I also use these states to make value judgements on everything I experience. I have no other means by which to make value judgements.
If we assume for the moment that I’m really a brain in a jar in some objective reality, it makes no difference to me. The fact that my jar-brain is not harmed by my not eating is irrelevant - hunger hurts and stuffing my greedy little face with pasta-and-salmon-in-cream-sauce is nice!
Now, let’s assume that someone starts tinkering with the settings in my virtual reality so I experience the same internal state irrespective of my interactions. E.g. I feel continuous boredom/pleasure/thirst and nothing else irrespective of whether I’m having sex, watching the Simpsons or being fed feet first into a garbage compactor. (I don’t even feel fear of death in the last situation.) Chances are I would soon cease to interact with my subjective reality altogether.
Even worse, let’s say someone inverts many settings in my virtual reality so I feel pride and satisfaction instead of shame and guilt, and my empathy and pity were replaced with disgust. My interactions with my subjective reality would change to those which I would currently call “evil”. There is absolutely no way I could prevent this, or would even want to. What’s more, the “new” me would rapidly come to regard my old behaviours as evil, since the memories of being nice to people would evoke feelings of shame.
I submit that in my case at least, the metaphysics of reality are irrelevant. If you were to attempt to prove your existence to me in some crude physical manner, say, with a cattle prod, I would be forced to act as if your existence was objective, metaphysics be damned! Similarly, the tautological nature of epistemologies is irrelevant - I have to judge epistemologies based on their usefulness in my interactions with my reality, measured in terms of the internal states I experience. I have no other yardstick.
I also submit that hypothetical other conciousnesses such as yourself are in the same situation. You can philosophise all you like, but everything you do, say or think is subject to the resulting positive or negative feelings you experience. Ultimately you have no other guide, not metaphysics, not ethics, not even God.
OldScratch
You couldn’t beg the question more if you got on your knees and pleaded!
Okay, the Bible says, “This [John] is the disciple who testifies to these things [John 1 through John 21] and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.”
Well, that settles it, doesn’t it? I would like to be the first to welcome our new Christian, OldScratch, to the fold.
No, it doesn’t. So there! 
How will you prove that it does? Oh, yeah. Right. You just know.
And now, as always happens, you have come full circle. What you postulated (that the chair is real) is what you have concluded (that the chair is real). And in the course of it all, you have premised that time is not real (deny the chair, eliminate time). Those who find that the physics epistemology is valid might likely disagree.
Regarding the past, you have no proof whatsoever that anything existed, other than hearsay and induction.
The point, OldScratch, is that you must depend upon the validity of your selected epistemology to validate whatever conclusions you draw. Your whole argument about the chair is a blend of (very very loose) deduction and a stubborn induction.
In other words, what you have reasoned you present as right because you postulate (assume) that reason is right.
Tautology.
(Spare us any wailing about how you know reason is right because you see it work all the time. That’s just another circle.)
And in whose brain does that perception take place?
Whoa, Nellie! You mean you disbelieve the Bible, though you have never read it for yourself?! Wow, you’re just like I was.
Where does it say it? Practically everywhere. Here’s a couple:
[ul]
[li]For the word of the LORD is right and true. Psalm 33-4[/li][li]All your [God’s] words are true; all your righteous laws are eternal. Psalm 119:160[/li][li]This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. 1 Corinthians 2:13[/li][li]This testimony is true. Titus 1:13[/li][li]These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. Revelation 3:7[/li][/ul]
There ain’t no if about it. Your whole argument has been produced by your brain.
Either or, huh? Sounds logical.
Now, explain what makes logic a valid epistemology. (Warning, you can’t use logic to do that, not without that dreaded tautology.)
Matt
You are exactly right. Moral free-will is thus assured.
That makes for a wonderful paradox, doesn’t it? The most compelling argument for God’s existence as a Free Moral Agent is the inability to prove His existence objectively!
:eek:
I must say that this SDMB offshoot of the old {i]Eliza* computer response program is amazing! Sometimes I even respond as if there really are people on the other end.
To prove the existence of OldScratch
he looked for a logic escape hatch.
But what he kept finding
as his reason kept winding
was that nasty tautology catch.
Slythe
I do the same with God. Does that make God real?
And, although I am not highly educated in the sciences, in my mind it makes sense that were there a god, and indeed this god did create all living creatures and the entire universe, this god would also be able to do it undetectibly, if that were its wish.
So even though within current scientific paradigms, a deity is unexplainable, I hold out that there is still the posibility of its existence (we humans don’t know everything and maybe never will). This is why I classify myself as an agnostic rather than an atheist.
[a little side note, whaddya think of the sig?)
[and didya know there are two correct spellings for detectable? I found that out when I checked]