(March 21, 2014 at 9:04 pm)Hezekiah Wrote: Yea, as illogical as that sounds, I suppose that is close to the route I'm trying to present an argument for. Maybe I should phrase it better this way: If I know something to be true through evidence provided (no matter what it is) that evidence still needs to be understood through my own mind. But how can I trust my own mind when it is faulty, and full of errors? I have to "believe" or "trust" in my own logically ability to think, in order to come to any conclusions, despite knowing that logic makes mistakes.
Is that better worded?
Man, I always shudder a little when I hear arguments like this one, because it's just a stone's throw away from presuppositionalism, which is the most profoundly dishonest position I've ever encountered. In your case though, I think you're just missing an important factor.
We don't trust our brains, or at least, we are wise not to. An honest person always leaves open the possibility of being wrong, or of new evidence altering what we think we know right now. That willingness to change removes any need to merely believe whatever your mind intuitively tells you is correct, and places your trust solely on the evidence.
Hell, whenever you see an atheist bring a theist to task for a logical fallacy, that's what you're seeing; you're seeing someone directing the theist to look at the evidence, and not just what their brain deems seemingly true. There are whole segments of the scientific method devoted to stripping away the biases and lazy shortcuts of the brain, after all.
We may never have a solution to the problem of hard solipsism, but so long as we actively attempt to defy our cognitive biases, we can hardly be considered to be laying belief in our brains, can we?
"YOU take the hard look in the mirror. You are everything that is wrong with this world. The only thing important to you, is you." - ronedee
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