[Mr. Vega]

It is, for any logical perfectionist theologian, an abomination of chaos, disorder, "untruth". And yet, it moves. It works! Better than that, it works better than any perfect system ever thought out by any armchair philosopher (impale Descartes now!).

I relent! I relent! I just can't handle being called names!

That whole post was invective.

[Mr. Vega]

Is a thought part of physical reality? By what sense do you become aware of it? Touch, taste, smell, sound, sight? Which one? What is its physical source? None.

Hint, the source of thought starts with a B and ends in RAIN. And no, it is not completely composed of water.

The thought itself, not the percieved material object whose activity correlates with it.

Ah yes, the "though itself". Like the "rock itself" and all the numenous things we never "really" get to see.

You are assuming the existence of a different plane of existence "the Real itself", to conclude the existence of a different plane of existence.

I am not impressed. Had you exemplified with "God" or "Ghosts" or "Demons", etc., it would be exactly the same.

Thoughts exist. How do you know? Because you are aware of their existence right now. Not through senses, but you are aware of them. The same cannot be said of God. At the very least, not directly. You're not helping yourself by making such blatant strawmen.

[Mr. Vega]

Also:

1. Truth as I have used it is synonymous with knowledge. Any knowledge.

2. "Just shut up and observe" works fine until you start making statements that are not justified by these observations. You use logic to check. Are you going to bash logic as an instrument of the evil theologian? It needs to be consistent. That's why we need rationalism.

[Luis Dias]

Are you saying that I cannot sense my thoughts? I can hear them. When I express them sounds or actions come about.

Written words are physical.

You know, try to think without sounds in your head. Perhaps pictures come to mind. Or feelings, you know like dopamine-induced, or adrenaline, etc. Try to formulate a thought without the words you learned with your eyes. Are you using spatial geometry now? Like the one you learned when you were a toddler playing with legos? Or are you thinking about touch?

Again, where is this "unsensorial" thinking thing? I cannot find it. Without the material, I am nothing.

[Mr. Vega]

You hear them? You hear them?! With what? Your ears?!!!! You percieve the thoughts in your head by the movement of your eardrum?

If not, you can hear without using your ears. Wow.

[Luis Dias]

Also:

1. Truth as I have used it is synonymous with knowledge. Any knowledge.

2. "Just shut up and observe" works fine until you start making statements that are not justified by these observations. You use logic to check. Are you going to bash logic as an instrument of the evil theologian? It needs to be consistent. That's why we need rationalism.

No, sometimes theologians misuse logic to mountainpalm-worthiness heights, but that's not logic's fault.

Reason is fine. It's our brain linking one phenomena to the next. And then voilá, maths is born.

[Luis Dias]

You hear them? You hear them?! With what? Your ears?!!!! You percieve the thoughts in your head by the movement of your eardrum?

Does it matter if I hear them with my eardrums, if I hear them anyway? Of course not. What matters is that the signal is carried through to the important channels inside my brain. I can hear my thoughts. Everyone can.

You can't? That's what you are hiding now? In sheer comical denial of the obvious?

If not, you can hear without using your ears. Wow.

Yeah, I'm just super like that. I can even hear full songs in my head as if the real singers were inside my brain! Isn't that like super magical?

Oh, wait, people usually can do all this? Oh man, I thought I was magical...

[Mr. Vega]

Nevermind, misread what you said.

[watsisname]

@Mr Vega:

Why should I need to define thought itself?  Obviously it's related to electrochemical impulses and neuron firing, but is much more complex than anything we can yet quantify in a completely satisfactory way.  However, that doesn't mean it's not 'real', or not part of 'physical reality'. 

I believe we can safely define 'what is real', as everything that has or can have a testable effect on something else.  Gravity (despite being referred to as a 'fictitious force' in physics -- that's another matter entirely), is demonstrably real.  It causes things to accelerate in a predictable way.  The sun is real.  It gives off EM radiation and warms our planet in a predictable way.  Thought is real.  I can tell you to not visualize a tree, and TOO LATE, for unless you've never seen a tree in your life, you just did.  What if you were given a dose of hallucinogenic substance?  Then you'll start having hallucinatory thoughts.  Thus, thought is real, because we can affect it, and it can affect us, and these interactions are testable.

The prior point I was making is that our five senses are not the only means of detecting what is 'real' in this world.  Would you like another example?  Which of your five senses detects the billions of neutrinos that are currently passing through your body?  None of them?  Oh dear, clearly neutrinos aren't real, then!

[Luis Dias]

Mr Vega, now you are being silly. I was saying that you can hear your own thoughts, not mine. I understand you want to divert attention to the lack of actual replies on your part, but try not to troll me too much .

[Mr. Vega]

Watisname, you can detect neutrinos by getting them to collide with hydrogen in water, causing a flash. You gain knowledge of their existence by sensory means. Doesnt matter if you observe them directly, or by observing them effect other objects.

I wanted to actually have a debate against you guys, but you just keep turning my position into something it isn't. Bye. Go strawman something else.

[Mr. Vega]

Mr Vega, now you are being silly. I was saying that you can hear your own thoughts, not mine. I understand you want to divert attention to the lack of actual replies on your part, but try not to troll me too much .

You equated recalling a sound and hearing it for the first time as being materially identical. I would point out the problems with that, but, you know, I'd be a troll.

[Luis Dias]

I was answering well, I think. Never strayed off topic or into strawmans.

I know that the Big C (Consciousness) is mostly where the metaphysical "non-material truths" theories reside now, since all the other stuff is just immediately doubtful nowadays, but even then you should at least admit that this Big C's immaterial existence is quite in check with all the data that is flowing in in the neurosciences, showing how we can manipulate it with quite material tools. Some people have, for instance, been inserted with metallical micro wires that were pinpointed to very specific spots in the brain, in order to change their feelings. One woman who constantly battled with feelings of depression and sadness in agonizing levels was treated like this and then she said that she was feeling happiness for the first time in years. She gave this wide smile while at it, and I was amazed.

Yeah, it's quite disconcerting, but reality rarely isn't.

[Mr. Vega]

When I ask you to describe anything mental, you give me observed phenomenon that correlates with the mental thing. You didn't describe the thing itself, what the color red is. What the sensation actually is. Not what is happening from the perspective of an outside observer while the sensation is occurring.

[Luis Dias]

Mr Vega, now you are being silly. I was saying that you can hear your own thoughts, not mine. I understand you want to divert attention to the lack of actual replies on your part, but try not to troll me too much .

You equated recalling a sound and hearing it for the first time as being materially identical. I would point out the problems with that, but, you know, I'd be a troll.

No, that would be more interesting. I'll skip the passive agressiveness (I understand it), and focus on the issue here. While it is true that the material phenomena of "sound" is non-existent when you think about a song, for instance, the electrical signals that a part of your brain channels is exactly the same, "virtualizing" the signals that would have come from your ears if you had heard them from actual sounds that your hear had received.

This is why allucinations happen, for instance - something goes wrong in this interaction and you actually confuse stuff that you are imagining with the actual inputs from your eyes. Mostly, we don't confuse them and we are aware when we are hearing our thoughts or actual sounds.

[Mr. Vega]

And that doesn't lead you to doubt sensory input? Like say, the very sensory input saying that your brain can be manipulated? The end result of materialism is total skepticism.

[Luis Dias]

When I ask you to describe anything mental, you give me observed phenomenon that correlates with the mental thing. You didn't describe the thing itself, what the color red is. What the sensation actually is. Not what is happening from the perspective of an outside observer while the sensation is occurring.

Because, as I said, I don't think that anyone can say what anything *really is*. This is a Kantian "thing in itself", the noumena. It's completely unachievable. We simply agree that X is red, that red is a color that ranges from wavelenght X to Y, more or less, and that it is the signal that is formed in the brain that is correlated with the input from the Red sensors. This is all that is required.

I feel the red, and that "feeling" is unsharable directly. Of course, you can express it. With art for instance.

[Mr. Vega]

It doesn't unnerve you that your knowledge of reality is dependent upon the validity of the actual feeling, a feeling that by your description, is unsharable and apparently unstudiable?

For your theory of reality, you focus on the results, while I focus on the process of arriving at those results and finding them trustworthy. I determine that in order for the process to work there must be things present which the results do not show. But they have to be there. That's my position.

[Luis Dias]

And that doesn't lead you to doubt sensory input? Like say, the very sensory input saying that your brain can be manipulated? The end result of materialism is total skepticism.

No, it isn't. It makes "total skepticism" possible, but this possibility is also meaningless to me, since I was never interested in the "absolute truth" in the first place. We live in our empirical reality and we form our theories in this world, about it and nothing else.

Is it possible that we are all wrong and we are actually "brain in the vats"? Why yes, of course. But I don't care about that. If I don't have any evidence that my brain is being manipulated, I won't care about it and behave as if it isn't, because it is more parsimonious to just assume it isn't. If I have evidence that it *is*, then I'll worry about it at that point.

Not before.

[Luis Dias]

It doesn't unnerve you that your knowledge of reality is dependent upon the validity of the actual feeling, a feeling that by your description, is unsharable and apparently unstudiable?

We can share its qualities, traits and characteristics. For instance, I can share with you the feeling of RED. Just imagine RED. Bang, see? I just shared a feeling with you. What I cannot do is directly transmit it, but the internet link is behaving tonight just fine, and is doing a perfect indirect job at it .

For your theory of reality, you focus on the results, while I focus on the process of arriving at those results and finding them trustworthy.

Well, I don't think that assessment is a good one, since I did describe the process and the importance of it. "Trust" is built with success. If you have a given "result" of some hypothesis, the measure of its quality is the actual use of it, that is, the predictive power of it.

For example, one has a theory that the sun "rises" every 24 hours more or less. Because the theory has proven itself with its prediction power so often and so precisely, it's really trustworthy. If you use a method that has worked 100% of the time earlier on, then that's a safe bet.

How can you arrive at any result without any check and balance to the actual subject at hand? Without it, you'll end up thinking that the universe is actually composed of 4 elements, because your logic dictated it, or some such...