Back to the beginning: the cave

[Aroura]

While I agree with you, I'm pretty sure every theist on this forum will think it't the other way. They are out in the light of reality, and we are the ones in a cave refusing to see it. I mean, they call it enlightenment for a reason, they feel as if they have discovered some secret truth. They are special, chosen, enlightened. Like Harry Potter finding out he's a wizard!

It's pretty hard to realize the whole universe is just muggles all the way down, and accept we aren't really special at all.

[Silver]

I gave what I believe to be a very accurate and scientifically defensible model of how our brains end up producing our experiences. I don't know what else to tell you, so I'll leave it there.

Fair enough.

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Our senses pick up information, convert it into electrical impulses, which then get sent to our brain, which analyses it and produces our experiences. So our experience is twice removed from the initial information. We'd have exactly the same experience from a fake source which could replicate those initial impulses. We couldn't tell the difference.

I'm uncertain how you're differentiating the experience.  

It seems to me that if I see a rock, touch a rock, it IS a rock.  How is me experiencing a rock not experiencing it?  Is there such a thing as experiencing a fake rock?

Please, explain.

[robvalue]

While I agree with you, I'm pretty sure every theist on this forum will think it't the other way.  They are out in the light of reality, and we are the ones in a cave refusing to see it.  I mean, they call it enlightenment for a reason, they feel as if they have discovered some secret truth. They are special, chosen, enlightened. Like Harry Potter finding out he's a wizard!

It's pretty hard to realize the whole universe is just muggles all the way down, and accept we aren't really special at all.

Sure, yes. I often think that one or other of us is insane. But I know it's not as simple as that. I believe they are just interpreting things in ways they have been programmed to think, and adding significance to things that we would not. They rely on emotions, and then try and rationalise after the fact which is why their arguments are always flawed.

They also mistake their internal dialogue for external, and so on.

[vulcanlogician]

What constitutes concrete, in your estimation?

Something that doesn't resemble word salad.  Sorry, but even we atheists are not free from it's green grasp.

What I want is an example: concrete means providing a proper example.

I think what Rob was getting at is that we are limited in our perceptive abilities. For instance, if there lay a garden outside your window, you could simply look outside and know what was there. But what if you didn't have a window? What if you could only peer through a tiny hole in the wall and observe a patch of green? Could you ever figure out that a garden was on the other side of the wall? Maybe it's a forest... maybe something else... after all, a patch of green doesn't tell you much.

That adequately describes our predicament as knowledge-seeking beings. With time and effort, we can perhaps learn that there is an assortment of different plants on the other side of a wall. But so much else is hidden. 

Our capacity to know is finite. Can we ever discover the ultimate nature of the universe/reality? Probably not. We may never come to know a great many things. In some cases, such knowledge may simply be impossible.

[Silver]

I think what Rob was getting at is that we are limited in our perceptive abilities. For instance, if there lay a garden outside your window, you could simply look outside and know what was there. But what if you didn't have a window? What if you could only peer through a tiny hole in the wall and observe a patch of green? Could you ever figure out that a garden was on the other side of the wall? Maybe it's a forest... maybe something else... after all, a patch of green doesn't tell you much.

That adequately describes our predicament as knowledge-seeking beings. With time and effort, we can perhaps learn that there is an assortment of different plants on the other side of a wall. But so much else is hidden. 

Our capacity to know is finite. Can we ever discover the ultimate nature of the universe/reality? Probably not. We may never come to know a great many things. In some cases, such knowledge may simply be impossible.

No, that is a poor analogy.

It's akin to the falsehood of "if a tree falls in the forest and no is around to witness it, does it still fall?"

Of course, it still falls. Logic and what we know of trees falling dictates this.

It is no different than any other perceptions we know to be realistically accurate.

Therefore, equating what we know to be perceptively accurate with faith-based interpretation just doesn't fly.

[The Grand Nudger]

That adequately describes our predicament as knowledge-seeking beings. 

Does it, though?  When you describe the hypothetical limitation you've used a tiny hole in the wall..but that's not -our- limitation.  Conceptually, if the hole were bigger we'd see more.  Personally, while I doubt we have a full south wall of windows, I think it's equally misleading to characterize our perceptive apparatus as a peephole..I'm willing to posit that we have a floor to ceiling bay window.  Sure, there are things we don't have a view of, and what we do have a view of may be distorted in subtle and serious ways by the lens of the glass...but we can stick our head in and look around - still knowing that there are some thing we cannot see from this vantage point in addition to understanding the ways in which our perceptions can be faulty (itself another expression of our perceptive ability).

I find myself saying it alot..but..sure, we don't know everything, that doesn't mean we know nothing or that we know very little.  There's just alot to know, and the majority of it may be beyond our individual possession, but that doesn't mean that it's beyond our individual capabilities or our collective possession.

Personally, I think that the allegory of the cave would have been much more compelling in the late bc's...lol eh? Those poor fuckers really were stumbling around...but so far as we know nothing has changed within us, from that day to this day. Transport any one of those people to the present and they might have a wholly different view of existence. What we've learned since then..has, after all, given -us- a different view from theirs.

[Silver]

Does it, though?  When you describe the hypothetical limitation you've used a tiny hole in the wall..but that's not -our- limitation.  Conceptually, if the hole were bigger we'd see more.  Personally, while I doubt we have a full south wall of windows, I think it's equally misleading to characterize our perceptive apparatus as a peephole..I'm willing to posit that we have a floor to ceiling bay window.  Sure, there are things we don't have a view of, and what we do have a view of may be distorted in subtle and serious ways by the lens of the glass...but we can stick our head in and look around - still knowing that there are some thing we cannot see from this vantage point in addition to understanding the ways in which our perceptions can be faulty (itself another expression of our perceptive ability).

I find myself saying it alot..but..sure, we don't know everything, that doesn't mean we know nothing or that we know very little.  There's just alot to know, and the majority of it may be beyond our individual possession, but that doesn't mean that it's beyond our individual capabilities or our collective possession.

Those who prefer to see through a peephole always will. There's always a way to broaden one's perception, and that is key.

[The Grand Nudger]

Any hole can be made bigger with the proper application of force , will, and persistence.  

[Silver]

Any hole can be made bigger with the proper application of force , will, and persistence.  

Now you're just being sexual rather than philosophical.

[purplepurpose]

Heh. Theists say that atheists sit in their cave of sin by rejecting God.