(November 18, 2018 at 1:36 am)LadyForCamus Wrote:(November 17, 2018 at 2:51 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: Anyways, we've discussed this argument endlessly. It's been clarified and can be summarized in two premises:
If God doesn't exist or see us exactly as we are, we are an illusion.
We aren't an illusion.
A few additional thoughts. I think there might be some equivocating going on here with the use of the word “illusion”; not that fixing the problem is going to save your argument from its larger flaws, but I think it’s worth noting.
In the first premise you seem to be insinuating that if a god doesn’t exist, then this notion of a perfect, objective self would be illusory to us. But, in the second premise (we are not an illusion) you seem to be talking about our very existence as beings not being an illusion; as in, ‘we do in fact exist, therefore we are not an illusion.’ Almost everyone here disputes the former, but I can’t imagine very many people disagreeing with the latter. That can appear sneaky. You have to be clear about what you mean when you choose words to use in an argument, because things like this can come across as dishonest.
I think this stems from him not having a good theory of the self, much like he doesn't have a good theory of consciousness, so his ideas and use of these concepts varies wildly without any limiting factor because they aren't based in a definite, limited concept of them. If your ideas are fuzzy, your use of them is going to be fuzzy, too.