I need to rephrase my metaphysical statements...So if someone wants to go outside and examine a tree, they must first believe that there is at least a possibility of certain things being true about observation, and data, and movement, and causal-effect relationships, and other such things. The discussion of the nature of such subjects is metaphysical, and one must hold beliefs about the nature of such things before they can perform certain actions. For instance, one can not make an observation without first knowing what an observation is. The discussion of what an observation is - or what its "nature" is - is a metaphysical issue.
Not really. I know with Cartesian certainty that I experience qualia. I have empirically constructed a working theory to account for them. As for metaphysics, from this standpoint I couldn't give a hoot whether or not I am, for example, a "windowless monad".
They are perhaps done apart from God, but not outside of the will of God, nor outside of His sovereign rule. The terms , "apart", and, "not in accordance", do not coincide.
At this point you've watered down your original claim until it has no predictive or evidential power.
Unfortunately, no, they don't.
Thank you.
Exactly. Please explain how something that is merely a product of human thought is universally true, and universally applicable.
I don't believe I said that they were "merely a product of human thought".
In like manner, the Laws of Logic exist (not in the literal sense) ...
Quite. You might try to answer my question about lemons and limes, by the way.
Let's ask an even simpler fruit-related question. Could an omnipotent God create a universe which
contained apples and oranges but did not
contain apples?
Suppose an artist wants to do a self-portrait. And we will also suppose that this is a very handsome artist, and that he looks very dignified, and that he is a very good painter. So the artist proceeds to paint a portrait of himself. Once the portrait is done (assuming it is a good portrait), one might look at the painting and say "the man in the painting is very handsome, and very dignified-looking".
Now, let us suppose that you came along and said: "I can see that the painting resembles the man. This means that there is
a resemblance between them. I know that the artist made the picture using brushes, canvas and paint, but with what additional tools did he make this third thing ---
the resemblance? What would happen if God (while leaving the man and the painting both exactly as they are) used his powers of divine omnipotence to destroy
the resemblance? What would the painting look like then --- when
it still looked the same and
the man still looked the same but
the resemblance between the two no longer existed?"
This is what happens when you reify things that aren't things.
1. - Would you consider it honorable for someone to cannibalize their dead relative?
That depends. Let's grant that it is proper to honor one's dead. Curiously,
we do it by dropping them in a pit in the ground and letting worms eat them. Some people have found it more reverent to eat them themselves. If one's society says that that is how one honors people, then that is, in fact, how one honors people in that society. (If there was a language in which the phonemes "your royal majesty"
meant "you cretinous pig-faced git", then it would not be an honorific in that society.)
I might add that millions of Christians ritually eat what they think is the actual flesh and blood of Jesus, and consider this about the most sacred thing one can do.
That was just one reason. The most important however is that we are created in God's image, and so the honoring of one's dead body is simply the honoring of the body of God's creation.
Why do people hold funerals for pets? (Few people, I think, ever toss the remains of a beloved family dog into the garbage.)
If I were to give an account of funerary customs, it would go something like this. When someone dies, we are sad. They leave behind them the most intimate possible memento we could have of them --- their body. Yet practical considerations force us to dispose of it (or, if we are a nomadic society, to leave it behind). In any case, to
throw it away. Funerary customs help us to cope with that --- we wish to throw it away with respect, rather than like trash.
Once again: could you please detail why my specific argument was a fallacy.
I happened to mention things which were man-made, and you overgeneralized from that. I might just as well have asked whether a rose decomposed into its constituent atoms would smell as sweet.
You assumed that actions do have effects ...
Not necessarily. If you wish, add to my list of things that could happen when I eat the pie the possibility that it has no effect at all.
... you assumed that your reasoning is uniform
Please expand on this point. So far as I can see, to the extent that your claim is true or even meaningful it would be another instance of the wager.
you considered the possibility of nature being uniform - which relies on the uniformity of nature itself, because if nature was not uniform, then we would have no comprehension of what nature would be like if it were uniform
In the first place, this is obviously not true. For example, I can imagine what it would be like if the weather was the same every day even though the weather changes.
In the second place, I don't see what this has to do with my supposed metaphysical assumptions.
- , you assumed the uniformity of relationships between your mind and body
Again, we can throw that in to our hypotheses about the non-uniformity of nature. Suppose that I attempt to perform the series of actions that experience tells me will result in the eating of the pie, only this time I punch myself in the face. That could happen too.
---
Really, if people needed a set of metaphysical assumptions to get a grip on reality, how would babies learn to do it? Somehow they manage to learn to associate cause and effect without ever thinking about the
Ding an Sich. In practice, metaphysics is what people jaded with reality entertain themselves with
after they've learned every practical fact they need to cope with what life is likely to throw at them. An alternative entertainment, which I myself prefer, is to learn facts that I don't really need to know.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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