An appeal to physics cannot in anyway resolve Cartesian doubt. The law of the conservation of mass-energy is not an indubitable a priori truth, but rather was derived from sensory perception and some kind of scientific methodology. Thus, your reasoning is entirely circular. This is the point of epistemology, to lay a sturdy foundation for natural sciences, and assure the the possibility of valid sensory perception without faith in God, or anything else.
I wasn’t trying to disprove Cartesian doubt. I was showing how believing in physical reality (as you do) and believing in a soul that effects the physical body (as you do) are incompatible. As for Cartesian doubt, it does not prove that you can exist without a body (as some kind of nonphysical entity) because it is impossible to coherently conceive such a situation.
Well I have some objection to what we are trying to figure out, in so far as that by attempting to figure it out, we both concede my point. He cannot believe anything and still act, as anyone who believes anything has admitted the possibility of truth. It seems to me that you are trying to divorce the possibility of truth from the performance of belief. Insofar as this is a discussion of making a case for libertarianism, the performance of belief is. This is what “making cases” is, exchanges or mutual refinements of beliefs between people.
Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum” answers “what do I know?”, but the question he’s begging is “what do I do?” I believe I have made the case that rational non-subjective answers for “what do I do?” can exist without divinity as a necessary the assumption. If that is not what you were after, then I hereby rest.
A free society, where I am not stolen from, murdered, enslaved, imprisoned, beaten, raped, and dehumanized isn’t in my own interest? A free society is something that I benefit from and gain selfish pleasure from living in. Even if I fail in changing it, that I acted with integrity and that my ideas and actions were non-contradictory makes me feel pride in myself, another form of pleasure.
"Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth. "
I see that you (along with nirgrahamUK, on the previous page of this thread) just apodictically proved that the imaginary friend which I truly believed to be existent and therefore talked to during my childhood was actually externally existent. I will, now that I understand that he does exist in a location, have to relocate him.
In the beginning of this discussion, Esuric provided the example that, within the circumstances of a dream, one usually interprets the surroundings as completely normal and interprets himself as completely reasonable; but, once one awakes, one often realizes that the dream, the surroundings and the actions, were completely ridiculous. In the context of that example, it becomes obvious that, via his skepticism, he does not “engage in a performative contradiction”; although he does believe that you exist and reflects that belief in his action, he may, as he already mentioned, simply exist in a ‘dreamworld’ of his own creation in which your image is one of the constituents.
In the passage of yours which I quoted above, your argument assumes that the proposition that “we’re communicating” is true. But your argument is thereby circular because the word “communicate”, atleast in your assertion, implies that “we” are both existent. If I were to talk while I imagine that a person exists, an “imaginary friend”, would I, in that case, really be “communicating” with ‘him’?
Although that that proposition is true is apodictically certain, it, if your intention were to disprove the skepticism of Esuric via it, begs the question. It assumes that the structure of your mind, which determines that what exists has to exist in a certain medium, is a reflection of an external world which exists, not just a set of arbitrary rules which contradict each other.
It is impossible to ‘disprove’ his skepticism because his skepticism is basically agnosticism concerning certain metaphysical questions, questions which no person can answer.
The point is that objective truth requires postulation, and your posits are no more justifiable than my posits, at least in kind. I’m not a nihilist, I believe in objective truth and natural law.
either you and your friend communicated or you did not communicate.
it seems you are committed to your understanding that you never did. you are committed to your position that you never communicated with your friend but only spoke outloud to nothing; and enjoyed your imagination. And this is somehow supposed to be a problem or puzzle?
speaking at a wall is not communicating.
To repeat; you are making the same error that Esuric made when he first claimed to be doubting the concept of ‘external’ and also denied that the force of his argument was limited only to doubts over whether any particular configuration of the external could be true or knowable. Of course, he then proceeded to give nothing but examples of the latter whilst implicitly accepting the concept of ‘external’
The issue of whether a unicorn exists or not, is different from the question over whether there are things that exists at all, and different again from the question of whether there is anything external ‘to you’. if you assert that you do communicate with unicorns; you would be a fool to deny that unicorns exist given that you maintain dogmatically that you did communicate with them.
If you wish to conclude your musings on the issue in a denial of the existence of unicorns (a contingent matter), the rational way to adopt such an attitude congruently, is not to dogmatically cling to ‘the fact of having communicated with the non-existent’ ; rather the rational way to be congruent would be to deny both that unicorns exist and that you communicated with them. (assuming that they don’t exist)
I have to admit that I don’t know what a “posit” is or a “postulation”. I’m not even sure I know what you mean by “objective truth” so I cannot make sense out of its requirements. This is not a rhetorical denial of any of these things, but a plea of my ignorance. I am speaking in plain language, and as you and I clearly have different training and backgrounds, I’ll not be able to understand you unless you are more plain. If you could take the time to elaborate, perhaps I could learn something about the weakness of my position.
I merely responded to and thereby counterargued the counterargument which you and Knight_of_BAAWA provided. You and Knight_of_BAAWA tried to claim that, because his action reflects that he believes that you exist, his actions contradict his skepticism concerning whether the external world exists and, therefore, whether you, as a constituent of the external world, exist. I then showed that that argument is absurd because it implies that that a belief exists implies that that the belief is true.
I believe that X exists.
Therefore, X exists.
That argument is clearly ridiculous. But, as persons, our action, at every moment of our lives, assumes that it is not ridiculous. It is the only thing that we can do.
As I already mentioned, it is impossible to ‘disprove’ the skepticism of Esuric because his skepticism is basically agnosticism concerning certain metaphysical questions, questions which no person can answer.
At the very least, certain metaphysical beliefs are still better than others, even if they are based on faith. For example, you cannot believe in the law of conservation of mass-energy while believing in an immaterial soul that effects the physical body. In fact, it is debatable whether or not an immaterial soul is even coherently conceivable. So it seems that physicalism is superior to dualism (assuming you don’t have any objections to physicalism). Also, I would not go so far as to say that it is impossible to disprove the skeptic.
how can you be clear about something you don’t even know about yourself? and you agree that these “questions which no person can answer” have been “perfect(ly)” answered. basically you’re stuck, but don’t sweat it.
A posit is something you assume to be true. Basically, it’s a fancy way to say faith, something “rational” scientists and mathematicians use all the time (irrational numbers, for example). Objective truth is truth which exists whether I believe it or not, and it’s universal. For example, if you increase the money supply in excess of the demand for cash holdings, prices will rise. This is true always and everywhere, and “it” doesn’t care if I believe it or not, nor does it depend on certain social circumstances (as Marxists and Historicists proclaim).
It is always amusing when (a) one person provides an argument and, then, (b) an other person restates a portion of the argument radically differently in order to attempt to reveal a flaw and, then, (c) the first person dogmatically declares it to be a straw-man.
In other words, I did not attempt to restate your intended argument; instead, I merely attempted to reveal an absurd but implicit component of your intended argument.
yet you don’t know what you are talking about. so who’s really confused? I’ve asked you to explain yourself and you have begun to simply skip explaining yourself inserting comments that are no longer engaging with honor. no point in me continuing in this thread.
I’m not going to waste my time explaining the dream argument to you, or the other positions put forth by later philosophers. If you want to learn, go fucking look it up. I gave you a link.