Ah, sorry about that, Final.  I didn't see this up here... rats, I thought the conversation had died.

Perhaps we can drop points 1 and 3; we don't seem to be getting anywhere with point 1, and it won't matter who's right about it, since if point 2 supports you or me, it encompasses point 1.  For three, same thing, I think.  And I just finished it with Donathos.

2.  By being 0% trustable, I mean sense data is evidence of any and every possible interpretation.  One cannot get around even the simple and trite possibility of the Matrix, for instance.  In this scenario, everyone has the same sense data experience now, yet they all believe something totally false, and there's no indication otherwise.  Certainly, there are many possibilities, simple or complex, but this one is particularly clear.  What test can one impose, what consistency can one measure, what law can you formulate?  The nature of reailty would be entirely beyond one's grasp, and left to the control of something completely unknown.

Pardon me if I'm being redundant with respect to previous points; I feel the need to reuse and restate somethings.

A.  It's possible that we're talking past each other a bit.  It's possible to interpret sense data however you want, but what I was arguing was the fact that sense data can contradict a worldview that, for instance, holds that sense data is accurate, and cheese is soft and yellow, and the moon is made of cheese.  If the sense data says that the moon is made of gray and hard rock that is not cheeselike at all, then either the sense data is wrong, or cheese is not soft and yellow, or the moon is not made of it.  So that worldview has been disproven because, given the sense data, it contradicts itself. 

Before you had said that sense data can be used to support any worldview, and that is not in fact the case.  That's what I believe point 2 was originally about. 

B.  As for what it turned into, with the mountain, the reason I hold that sense data being untrustable isn't like having no indication of which way is up is this: 

The sense data is utterly untrustable, given.  But we do HAVE it.  So it's really like there is a direction your senses are telling you is up, but you know it's still too scrambled to give it any merit.  

If we have to pick a direction for up to be, and we know our senses are not at all reliable, but we have absolutely no other indications -- why then, there's no reason NOT to.  It's as if you were going to pick a direction at random, and somebody already picked for you.  How convenient! 

A.  But since we can interpret sense data any way, we could also interpret what we sensed about the moon to support the idea of it being cheese, correct (and I don't think we could even say what color it was, as the color we perceive may not even be from the moon (colorblindness, anyone?)?  And with this ability to interpret sense data any way, so does it follow that sense data could support any world view (e.g., "All that I sense is consistent with what the real world would be" or "All I sense is consistent with what a Matrix world would be")

B  Perhaps I've misunderstood your analogy.  Just to be clear, by "up", you mean reality, by "fog", unprovability, and by "picking a direction", taking a method of truth,  and sense data is not represented, correct (more or less, or is that reading into it too much?)?  If that's the case, yes, you can pick a direction to go (assume a method of truth) and hope it leads you up (gives truth), but there's no indication which way is correct.  You could go left (empiricism), you could go right (non-empiricistic theism*), or someway else (the M4tr1x), or you could just sit there (assume nothing).  If I'm getting you right, you're saying with this there is no reason not to assume someway, which I agree with, but it doesn;t have to be empiricism.

*I use this term to show I don't think empiricism and theism are mutually exclusive, just in case it seems otherwise.

A.  No.  Incorrect.  You are speaking of denying that your senses are telling you what they are telling you -- asserting that what you are sensing as rock is REALLY cheese -- which is explicitly contradictory to the hypothesized worldview.  I'm sorry, but there's no way to weasel out of this IMO.  If you change it to a Matrix interpretation, that is no longer the original worldview. 

B.  I guess it's more or less good, except I thought that I included sense data pretty explicitly by the unreliable sense of "up" I provided. 

For me, it seems like a natural and sensible "default" position to accept the input I am given, even if I know it is unreliable, if it is ALL I have to go on, which in this case it is; and that would be "empiricism" (exclusively so). 

A.  You and I have both said that the senses say nothing, that it depends on what we make of them.  So how could they contradict us?  It's only our judgements that could contradict, and you and I have said you could amek your judgements whatever you wanted.  And what is that bolded objection about?  Why is that an objection?

B.  If sense data is represented by an unreliable sense of up, then I don't see it in the analogy, as we don't even have that (being completely dizzy and practically blinded).  And, unless you mean empiricism to be "Making judgements of of sense data" (which would make the idea that the Matrix is reality an empirical one), I still don't see why you have to chose it, as opposed to any other belief.

A.  If you HAVE a worldview that involves your senses being accurate, and they TELL you something that contradicts another part of your worldview, then PART of your worldview is wrong.  I really, really don't see how you disagree with that. 

[edit:  Wait, wait!  "Why is that an objection?"  Because you said that the sense data supports ANY WORLDVIEW.  If I said "this bridge will support any vehicle", and then a big-ass truck was coming and I said "hold on, let me add extra supports", I've CHANGED THE BRIDGE.  My original statement was not true (presuming that I strengthened it because it would have failed).  If you CHANGE the worldview from what it previously was (into Matrix, or changing the definition of cheese, etc.) then you FAIL in your argument that the ORIGINAL worldview was supported by the sense data.  Thus your assertion "ANY worldview is supported by the sense data" lies undefended against my objection.  Don't you see?!]

B.  Short version:  you don't HAVE to. 

"Or, suppose I'm literally "so dizzy I can't tell which way is up".  Well, if I'll never stop being dizzy, I just have to pick the direction I THINK is up and see how it works out."  You objected to "think" because you thought it implied more than 0% reliability, but in actuality I was only trying to convey that one is getting INPUT as to "up", not that it is at all reliable -- just as we get INPUT as to the world (that may be ) around us. 

All I'm saying is that we are getting INPUT telling us about the world that has appolose, Final-Fan, donathos, etc. etc. living, eating, breathing, and going to VGChartz.  Maybe we're in the Matrix, but there's no INPUT to that effect.  One could be a bodiless entity dreaming the universe, but there is no INPUT implying this. 

The difference between empiricism and all the others is that there are two camps:  "this is real" and "this is not real", and the first camp consists solely of empiricism-based worldviews.  For me, "this is real" is the default position.  That is all.

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.

All right.  But you could just as well have accepted my point of view--empiricism, couldn't you?  (You've already agreed that my views are also "logical" in the sense of being internally consistent.)

On what basis do you choose your views over mine?

(Also, what would it mean to "know for certain"?)