A question regarding proof

[Fred]

Fred, you are missing two rather important issues.

Heh. Holy shit, Ryft. Where the fuck have you been? Oh, hell, never mind that. I'm just damn glad you showed up because a Logic Enforcement Officer is just who I have been looking for.

First, whether or not Rhythm has objective evidence of your dream pony is entirely irrelevant to the existence of your dream pony.

Certainly. I was playing Rhythm's advocate back there with my insistence that there was no evidence. I left out the "objective" qualifier on purpose, because it's a given in some circles that the two are synonymous when they aren't.

One is an epistemological issue regarding Rhythm, the other is a metaphysical issue regarding your dream pony—and throughout this thread (and consistently everywhere in these forums) these two issues are being conflated.

Ok, metaphysical is one of those terms that has been stretched all out of shape, so to be clear about my take on it for this discussion, let's use this:

"Metaphysical studies generally seek to explain inherent or universal elements of reality which are not easily discovered or experienced in our everyday life. As such, it is concerned with explaining the features of reality that exist beyond the physical world and our immediate senses."

I'm all good with that, but as you can see, translated into quick and dirty materialist terms, that amounts to "concerned with explaining what doesn't even even exist." That, I'm not at all onboard with, so you can see that it's problematic terrain.

For whatever it is worth, that is one of the most ironic things about metaphysical naturalists: they never hesitate to abandon the metaphysical question as quickly as possible.

Yup. That's a huge part of my point. It's best used as a club to beat off challenges, but it's put away quickly when it comes to navigating actual experience.

Whether or not your dream pony exists (metaphysics) is distinct from whether or not there is evidence for the existence of your dream pony (epistemology). Even if we were to suppose that there is zero evidence for it (as we seem to have done), what has that to do with the existence of it?

Uh, depends on who you ask. Me, I don't think the fact that there is no objective evidence has any bearing, since I find the notion that only objective evidence is real is one that has no merit whatsoever beyond being a pacifier for those who need it.

Again, to be clear, I believe there is ample evidence, but it's not objective evidence and cannot be by it's very nature.

"Without that evidence, I have no reason to believe him," says John Q Materialist. Not to put too fine a point on it, but so what?

Heh. Well, there's that aspect, yes.

Second, while people have been making noise about the causal relationship between the neurological activity of your brain and the dream pony of your mind, have you noticed there has been zero evidence provided to substantiate that causal relationship?

Hell, yes. Have you ever wondered why that doesn't seem to have any effect on their stance? Just wave the "it's merely" magic wand over it, and--poof--the whole problem disappears just like that. Like the wag said, Dennet's book would have been far more accurately titled as Consciousness Explained Away.

There is evidence of your neurological activity on the one hand, and your testimony about dreaming of a pony on the other, and a causal relationship between the former and the latter is concluded based on... err, wait, how do we know there is a causal relationship?

We don't know, sir. That's the part that gets left out when the "it's just an artifact of brain activity" chorus starts singing. No matter how beautiful the sound or their harmonies, if you look at the libretto closely you will see that for all that's there, the only thing missing is the damn pony. It's the ghost in their machine they cannot account for, but that doesn't seem to bother them, so they just keep on singing.

Perhaps you might pursue that issue.

Officer, I'm trying as hard as I can, but I'm getting drowned out by the choir. Can I lodge a noise complaint, because if they would just pipe down for a bit, maybe we could continue this discussion under more reasonable conditions. Flash your badge, sir.

(P.S. It also seemed a little ironic that you were asking whether objective evidence could exist for a subjective object.)

Heh. A little ironic? Uh, I can swing with that in the sense that Hurricane Irene was a little bit of moisture. Nobody even challenged that simple point, yet it's a hole big enough to drive a bus through.

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You can have evidence of a dream, but you don't have evidence of its content.

Yes, there is no evidence of its content, at least if you mean objective evidence. As to the evidence for the dream itself, we have objective evidence that brain activity is taking place, but that's all. That that evidence is connected with the actual dream itself, has not been nailed down by objective evidence.

By that I do not mean that it's not true, but that the acceptance of it being true was not reached solely by the means of objective evidence. It's not a small point, no matter how much some folks want to jump over it.

The only reason anyone at all knows what a dream pony is springs from their subjective experience of dreams and ponies. That this knowing has been supported by the objective evidence that brain activity corresponding to dreaming takes place may be true, but the knowledge of the dream pony that every one here readily attests to being possible was not obtained via objective evidence.

Take away that subjective knowledge, and nothing in the objective evidence of brain activity can demonstrate that a dream pony exists.

The fact that we all have no difficulty whatsoever in accepting the possibility of dream ponies is a given, but it was the subjective evidence that provided that acceptance, not the objective evidence.