Rise of atheism: 100,000 Brits seek 'de-baptism'

[appolose]

donathos said:

appolose said:

A.  You can't have a worldview that says your senses are accurate; only one that says your judgements are accurate.

 I don't think we're on the same page. The essential issue is that as we both agree sense data is evidence for any worldview (or rather, particular beliefs), this irrevocably means that sense data does not offer a means of establishing the correct worldview/beliefs, amidst equal options. In recognizing this, one should know that any chosen worldview/belief is, therefore, arbitrary (the opposite of a method of truth).

B.  I meant "why you have to" as in "the most practical choice" or "most likely to be correct choice". 

But we're not getting input that just supports "living, eating, breathing" (VGChartz, essentially).  All of our input, sense data, supports anything, because, as we've agreed, it says nothing for itself and our judgements on sense data are arbitrary.  In other words the input, sense data, indicates everything, whether it be the Matrix or the real world (and the real world can have several of it's own positions; the moon is made of cheese, for example).

@ Final-Fan:  If I may attempt to paraphrase appolose's point B, I believe he's saying that we are getting INPUT that we're in the Matrix, if we choose to interpret our INPUT in that way.

And that there's no reason not to interpret it that way (or at least, no more or less reason for interpreting our INPUT any given way).

(Is this a good approximation, appolose?)

@ appolose:  I believe that if you were to push the reset button on humanity, our generally-agreed upon judgements of sense data would eventually come to about the same places.  In this alternate reality, eventually people would decide that the moon was not made out of cheese.  (They'd probably have different words for rock, moon, cheese, etc.; hell, they might even use the word "cheese" for the moon's substance, but they'd still distinguish it from the substance that we mean when we refer to cheddar or gouda.)

I believe that such a result would point at the conclusion that our judgements are not arbitrary.

Now, obviously, it's impossible to perform such a test.  I imagine though, that even if we could and did, you would call "foul" because I would have made judgements based upon sense data in assessing the results--it would get back to your general skeptical argument, that any attempt I make to prove empiricism relies on empiricism being true, and thus is a circular argument.

So, now I'd like to put the question to you: how did you come to believe that judgements based on sense data are arbitrary, and cannot be trusted?

Yes, that's a pretty good of way of putting it.

 "Now, obviously, it's impossible to perform such a test.  I imagine though, that even if we could and did, you would call "foul" because I would have made judgements based upon sense data in assessing the results--it would get back to your general skeptical argument, that any attempt I make to prove empiricism relies on empiricism being true, and thus is a circular argument".  Yeah, I'd pretty much do that :p

"So, now I'd like to put the question to you: how did you come to believe that judgements based on sense data are arbitrary, and cannot be trusted?"

Through definition and logic: when considering the question, "How can I know?", I would answer "Because of...", but when I examined that because of, I realized it contained propositions that I didnt know for certain, either.