Berkeley's argument for the existence of God

[The Grand Nudger]

Endless fiat reassertions are endlessly reasserted by fiat.

So, let's explore that.  If you positively need that to be the case........if you just can;t get to where you want without it..then it not being true is QED when it comes to refuting his argument.

Don;t you think?

Amusingly, if you have that..then you don't need to get anywhere anyway, you're already there.

[Pat Mustard]

PS: I have plenty of refutations for Berkeley, but I kind of like him so I'm doing devil's advocate duty here...

Can you pm me them.

I don't see a possible flaw in his argument.

The whole immateriality thing is a huge unsolveable flaw. It's like building a boat while neglecting below the waterline.

[Mystic]

Tell me what is the material nature of the color red? It's vibration doesn't matter, you perceive it differently that how it would look if material existence was the default. There you go, immaterial.

You can even sleep and imagine the color red, and it you can see red paint in your dreams, none of that would make it material haha.

So immaterial we know exists. Dualism is killed, yes. So what's the conclusion?

[robvalue]

Hmm. It reads like, "Conflation, conflation, conflation, GOD". Charles Barkley appeals to incredulity at the end and pulls God out his ass.

I would agree that we strictly never experience reality at all. We experience our own experiences, generated by our brain. We are forever trapped in a VR of our own making. Whether or not there's anything else out there can only be inferred and not tested. I have no idea where a SUPREME BEING enters into this though.

[FatAndFaithless]

@MK sure man, I'll PM that to you if you'd like.

True F&F but your hand does not register 200 degrees celcius, right? Instead it registers "Ouch! Hot!" There is a specific sensation that heat has... and a specific sensation that cold has... just like the color "blue" has a certain appearance. These are the mind's interpretation of color and temperature. There is no equal sign between the SENSATION of warmth and a thermometer reading. That's what Locke and Hume call a "secondary quality."

Shape and size are different. Shape is a "primary" quality because it is not the result of the interpretive powers of the mind... it is a direct representation of an actual quality of the object.

I'm not sure how that answers my question.  We have explicit, non-subjective definitions of heat, the lack thereof, and the physical effects on reality when heat increases or decreases.  It's not my mind interpreting heat, it's a tool that we've all used a bazillion times specifically to AVOID relying on subjective perception and interpretation.  Same thing with the color blue - it's a specific range of light wavelength.  That wavelength would exist whether or not we could see it - just like I can say "Infrared light exists, even though I cannot perceive it."  Shape and size are defined by angles, lengths, volume, etc - just the same way heat and color are.

But my bigger question again - how is this useful?  How do we verify this if not through using the very sort of data + evidence that Berkeley seems to be disparaging?  

You may as well post your refutations, because I still don't see any way this argument holds any water to begin with.  Or...is it simply the idea of water? 

[Mystic]

Hmm. It reads like, "Conflation, conflation, conflation, GOD". Charles Barkley appeals to incredulity at the end and pulls God out his ass.

I would agree that we strictly never experience reality at all. We experience our own experiences, generated by our brain. We are forever trapped in a VR of our own making. Whether or not there's anything else out there can only be inferred and not tested. I have no idea where a SUPREME BEING enters into this though.

Read the argument carefully.

[The Grand Nudger]

Tell me what is the material nature of the color red? 

Light within 650-720nm, 400-484THz, and 1.65-2.0eV. Give us a hard one.

@FF/Vul..technically, you register a rate of change when you feel "ouch, hot". That's why incredibly hot and incredibly cold things are confused. Similar rates of change. It's an indirect and imprecise measerement of temperature with a known mechanism and known flaws. We don;t have a little vial of mercury in our hands..so we work with what we have.

There isn;t a sense that we posess that doesn;t have an explanation like this. Touch is mechanoreceptor pressure, for example.You never actually "touch" the object(in the way we conceptualize it, at least)...it simply repulses your tissue and we have specialized nerve endings that register the compression.

[Mystic]

@MK sure man, I'll PM that to you if you'd like.

True F&F but your hand does not register 200 degrees celcius, right? Instead it registers "Ouch! Hot!" There is a specific sensation that heat has... and a specific sensation that cold has... just like the color "blue" has a certain appearance. These are the mind's interpretation of color and temperature. There is no equal sign between the SENSATION of warmth and a thermometer reading. That's what Locke and Hume call a "secondary quality."

Shape and size are different. Shape is a "primary" quality because it is not the result of the interpretive powers of the mind... it is a direct representation of an actual quality of the object.

I'm not sure how that answers my question.  We have explicit, non-subjective definitions of heat, the lack thereof, and the physical effects on reality when heat increases or decreases.  It's not my mind interpreting heat, it's a tool that we've all used a bazillion times specifically to AVOID relying on subjective perception and interpretation.  Same thing with the color blue - it's a specific range of light wavelength.  That wavelength would exist whether or not we could see it - just like I can say "Infrared light exists, even though I cannot perceive it."  Shape and size are defined by angles, lengths, volume, etc - just the same way heat and color are.

But my bigger question again - how is this useful?  How do we verify this if not through using the very sort of data + evidence that Berkeley seems to be disparaging?  

You may as well post your refutations, because I still don't see any way this argument holds any water to begin with.  Or...is it simply the idea of water? 

Do you see size in your dreams? Is it material?

---

Tell me what is the material nature of the color red? 

Light within 650-720nm, 400-484THz, and 1.65-2.0eV.  Give us a hard one.  

Yes so I'm sure that it's how it's created in your dreams when you see that beautiful woman in red, that I'm sure you dreamed about lol.

[Pat Mustard]

Tell me what is the material nature of the color red? It's vibration doesn't matter, you perceive it differently that how it would look if material existence was the default. There you go, immaterial.

You can even sleep and imagine the color red, and it you can see red paint in your dreams, none of that would make it material haha.

So immaterial we know exists. Dualism is killed, yes. So what's the conclusion?

The material nature of the colour red is that certain materials absorb light at certain wavelengths while reflecting others. The things which reflect more light at the red end of the spectrum than other visible spectrums appear in different shades of red.

MK this is basic physics, stuff that Newton mostly figured out.

[FlatAssembler]

Look, guys, dualism (the existence of both material and immaterial things) requires the laws of physics not strictly applying to our brain (or the pituitary, or wherever we assume the material and immaterial communicate with each other) because of the immaterial things applying "forces" to the material things there, do we agree?
The ideas obviously exist, that is, the thoughts and emotions obviously exist, so why assume the material things also exist? Why it can't be that our whole bodies, including the neurons in our brain, as well as the other things we usually take to be material, such as chairs, are, in fact, immaterial? The only problem I see here is whether it implies the existence of God. Berkeley thinks it does. I think that our world being immaterial, but without a supreme being, is actually conceivable.
Much like the cellular automata. Turing-complete cellular automata arise naturally all the time, and they are able to (theoretically, with very low probability of it actually happening) simulate all the other Turing-complete systems, without having to be simulated themselves. Our universe may not actually be a cellular automation, but I think the analogy is applicable.