Seeing red

[bennyboy]

A semantic difference that makes no difference.  You are in your vehicle, your vehicle is out there.  You know that's not going to go far with me.

What can I say? That is, in fact, how people perceive things.

[quote]
Your claim is irrational, so I disregard it.  That you have stolen concepts is -why- it's irrational (in part)..and I'd hardly consider that pointless.  

You keep parrotting about stolen claims, and haven't addressed the fact that all the observations upon which your world view, from which you claim I'm stealing concepts, are purely experiential. You've placed an IDEA at the top of the food chain as much as I have.

Sure, I may be a brain in a vat.  As I've already said..while this may be true it's not a very good foundation for knowledge or truth claims.

False gnosticism is just religion by another name. I'm not trying to make truth claims where none can be reasonably established. I'm making claims of agnosticism, where the only reasonable position is agnosticism. I'm arguing for Idealism, because it's the only monist position based on experience rather than ideas inferred from experience.

-and that's fine...but it's an irrational criticism.  There is no requirement that either of us possess full knowledge.

Weren't you about 3 lines ago talking about knowledge or truth claims? You are taking a position which claims knowledge, then qualifying that position by saying you don't really need knowledge.

-yet another flourish of semantics that makes no difference.  

It's a non-trivial position, in fact, and not merely a semantic one. The material world view is NOT at odds with idealism, except where you unnecessarily assert that the objective interpretations of shared experiences (i.e. of objects and their properties) consist ALL reality. Mind, on the other hand, is so completely foreign to the material world view that all you can do is wave toward the brain and say "See? There it is. That's the explanation," when it is nothing of the sort.

Hold the phone...that's just  a vehicle, remember?

I'm talking about the experience of subjective agency, not about a dualism. You should be able to infer that without me explicitly stating it.

A more thorough endorsement of my position on the matter could hardly be imagined.  A more explicit example of your special pleading could not be asked for.  Just one breath ago, you were telling me about other people seeming to be like you.  Well, an android that seems to be conscious, like you...satisfies -that- criteria...and there's no sense in pointing at the differences in the vehicle given your previous comments.

Other people seem to have brains of a particular structure and chemistry, and to have their origins in the mating of two already-conscious human beings.

It's just a name I've given the humonculus you feel confident that I possess, and that an android does not. The immaterial "me" inside the vehicle of my body.  Soul seems to fit, don't you think?  I don't know why the religious connotations would bother you, you decided to describe your "mind" in a manner indistinguishable from their "souls".

You're really running with this "vehicle" idea, but falsely. I'm saying that the subjective agent does not equate itself with the body, and it is only to this degree that I use the term vehicle. To talk about a homunculus is to speak dualistically: that there is a physical (as in, material) body, occupied by a magical fairy. That's never been my position, though you will continue persistently with your ventriloquy, I'm sure.