(November 19, 2016 at 5:51 am)robvalue Wrote: The thing is, if you define something in such a way that it must be happening, then it's simply a tautology. It's always true. [1] The extra parts you then add onto this thing are what is in question, and they are not evidently true.
For example, it's true that I am me, and the way I act is the way I act, and so on. This is the law of identity, which we assume to be true for the purposes of logic. [2] It's difficult to care about tautologies, and a thing that is defined off the back of them. [3]
If we do grant you that these other properties you say it has are real, those are the things that would be worth caring about. So far, I'm not understanding them well enough to have an opinion. Your own experiences with this seem easily explainable by the placebo effect, and I don't know how/why you're assigning such meaning to your feelings.
This is why feelings are unreliable when it comes to finding the truth about reality. They are so wildly open to interpretation. They act as guidance to us, but we must approach them with caution if we're trying to come to concrete conclusions. A belief that something is true when it isn't can trigger the same emotions as when it is true.
1) I'm not defining it in the sense that it MUST be happening. I'm defining it in the sense that it IS happening. That is a definition, after all.
2) Is it an assumption or is it a law?
3) Well, I think you do care about the way in which you-are-you. If you-are-you through a participation in god, that may carry some meaning for you. Maybe not.