(October 14, 2014 at 7:11 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Let's say I make this logical inference: "The things I experience represent an objective reality." According to you, I must use empiricism in order to validate this idea.
Rather, as an alternative, try something novel -- merely start from the biggest special plea that there is -- namely, that we both accept, from the start, that there is a fundamental shared reality that we both preceive and exist within. Is that a possible starting reference point that you might consider instead?
Once that big special plea is out of the way, the rest of this rather turgid and boring line of reasoning that nitpicks each constituent part of this agreed upon reality as a case of "special pleading"-- like logic, reason, empiricism, inference, the notion of time and the "true" starting point, et al. -- can just be said asside. We agree on the special pleading issue, but due to simple pragmitism, we also accept this line of argumentation doesn't really have much bearing on this discussion.
I agree this is a fascinating philosophical idea (the first time round), but I don't see how, having now been lead to acknowledging reality as just one big, giant special plea, in anyway, makes another special plea -- like a Christian quantity "x" -- worthy of consideration? After all, we aren't talking about two separate views of reality -- a case of "person A who believes reality X" vs "person B who believes in reality Y" but, rather, its the case of "person A who believes in reality X" vs "person B who believes in reality X plus something else" right? Thus, no one is realistically challenging empiricism in this discussion as a fundamental part of our shared reality.
Moreover, If there is some special Christian quantity (x) out there that is entirely immune to empiricism itself, that *quality* would place this 'quantity (X)' into the category of something entirely inconsequential to humanity. If, on the other hand, as Christians claim, such a quantity interacts with us in some way, it would have to leave behind something that would be empirically testable (making it not entirely immune).
