Refuting the Matrix Argument (Or: Why Stoned College Kids Make Bad Philosophers)

[R_Daneel]

I’ll provide a link in a moment.

I believe, in fact, that you started a thread on that subject. I responded there, I have nothing to say about it here.

EDIT: Here you go. It unfortunately wasn’t as popular as I hoped it would become, so you might need to ask sme questions to get answers.
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=487019

Thank you, I found it. Isn’t it interesting that the very first reply was a reference to the verse I quoted? And the poster even said that faith is blind… amazing.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

Thank you, I found it. Isn’t it interesting that the very first reply was a reference to the verse I quoted? And the poster even said that faith is blind… amazing.

For them, the term blind meant something different than what it did for you. The term used was “blind but NOT [emphasis mine] ignorant.”

 

[Prodigal_Son]

No, you might just express your opinion.

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

These are merely assertions. I propose that widespread agreement about certain standards of beauty give us reason to believe that **some **things are objectively beautiful. I don’t care to deductively prove this proposal, nor would such a proof be effective.

I agree that statements about beauty *might *be just expressions of opinion, but statements about astronomy also *might *be just expressions of opinion. I don’t think they are, but they “might” be.

But I am not interested in that. We are talking about how to justify a belief, so it can be called “knowledge”.

Well, we simply cannot know what should be called knowledge, unless we first know what’s true. This is obvious enough. The epistemological question of importance is not “What do we know?” but rather “How might we know?” The source of our knowledge (if we have any) is the critical thing.

That would require a long conversation on its own right.

Since I expect that your base assumptions are at error, I should like to have such a conversation. So I’ll ask again: how do you choose basic assumptions? We may discuss this in a separate thread, if you like.

Because physical interaction is done by physical means, and not magic. All physical interactions are performed by exchanging semi-elementary particles.

And all such exchanges are detectable? Why should we expect such a thing to be true? If physicists came back tomorrow and said that some physical interactions are not, in principle, detectable, would you really be all that surprised?

What is a “true” explanation, as opposed to an explanation?

Well, it depends on how you define “explanation”. A hypothesis is a “potential explanation” – it would explain, if it were true. So you might say that actual explanations are necessarily (analytically) true.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I have this ongoing problem with the quotations from the Bible. No matter, what I quote, I never get a meaningful reply. The only types of reply I receive “you are not qualified”, or “you cannot possibly understand”, or “your interpretation is wrong”, etc… That would be fine, if these posters would also present the “correct” interpretation, hopefully based upon some official teaching of the Catholic Church.

Why does it matter what the Church officially says, for our purposes here? Are you here to assume that every Catholic must hold a certain fixed opinion on a passage, and then pin them down to it? I can see how this is appealing, for it’s shooting at a sitting target.

But it’s also insulting. As I’ve shown in our discussion of divine simplicity, I’m not utterly entranced by everything any Catholic theologian has said, and I’m open to changing views. The question ought to be: what is the true interpretation of the passage, not what is the the Church’s official teaching on it?

We find out more about correct interpretation by looking at the Greek words, and by considering the circumstances of the author. Would you like to do this?

 

[Betterave]

From Spe salvi, Pope Benedict’s recent encyclical letter:

1. We must return once more to the New Testament. In the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews (v. 1) we find a kind of definition of faith which closely links this virtue with hope. Ever since the Reformation there has been a dispute among exegetes over the central word of this phrase, but today a way towards a common interpretation seems to be opening up once more. For the time being I shall leave this central word untranslated. The sentence therefore reads as follows: “Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen”. For the Fathers and for the theologians of the Middle Ages, it was clear that the Greek word hypostasis was to be rendered in Latin with the term substantia. The Latin translation of the text produced at the time of the early Church therefore reads: Est autem fides sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non apparentium—faith is the “substance” of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen. Saint Thomas Aquinas[4], using the terminology of the philosophical tradition to which he belonged, explains it as follows: faith is a habitus, that is, a stable disposition of the spirit, through which eternal life takes root in us and reason is led to consent to what it does not see. The concept of “substance” is therefore modified in the sense that through faith, in a tentative way, or as we might say “in embryo”—and thus according to the “substance”—there are already present in us the things that are hoped for: the whole, true life. And precisely because the thing itself is already present, this presence of what is to come also creates certainty: this “thing” which must come is not yet visible in the external world (it does not “appear”), but because of the fact that, as an initial and dynamic reality, we carry it within us, a certain perception of it has even now come into existence. To Luther, who was not particularly fond of the Letter to the Hebrews, the concept of “substance”, in the context of his view of faith, meant nothing. For this reason he understood the term hypostasis/substance not in the objective sense (of a reality present within us), but in the subjective sense, as an expression of an interior attitude, and so, naturally, he also had to understand the term argumentum as a disposition of the subject. In the twentieth century this interpretation became prevalent—at least in Germany—in Catholic exegesis too, so that the ecumenical translation into German of the New Testament, approved by the Bishops, reads as follows: Glaube aber ist: Feststehen in dem, was man erhofft, Überzeugtsein von dem, was man nicht sieht (faith is: standing firm in what one hopes, being convinced of what one does not see). This in itself is not incorrect, but it is not the meaning of the text, because the Greek term used (elenchos) does not have the subjective sense of “conviction” but the objective sense of “proof”. Rightly, therefore, recent Prot- estant exegesis has arrived at a different interpretation: “Yet there can be no question but that this classical Protestant understanding is untenable”[5]. Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future.

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html

 

[mcteague]

Making groundless claims as you have done here is actually “a way of avoiding real argument and reason.” Care to ground any of your claims? It sounds like you’re criticizing a straw man here.

What exactly is groundless about recognizing that a framework where no premise can be accepted is one where rational discussion is impossible?
Once this, as I said, passingly interesting, idea about the possibility of nothing being real is articulated all that can be done is repeat it in various forms.
If you think I am being anti-young; I am not. It is simply a fact that this kind of thinking appeals primarily to young people.
There is value in questioning basic premises. These ideas have some use. But they can not, by their very nature, lead anywhere.

 

[R_Daneel]

These are merely assertions. I propose that widespread agreement about certain standards of beauty give us reason to believe that **some **things are objectively beautiful. I don’t care to deductively prove this proposal, nor would such a proof be effective.

I agree that statements about beauty *might *be just expressions of opinion, but statements about astronomy also *might *be just expressions of opinion. I don’t think they are, but they “might” be.

You are very close to universal skepticism here. Which is a not a good place to be.

Well, we simply cannot know what should be called knowledge, unless we first know what’s true. This is obvious enough. The epistemological question of importance is not “What do we know?” but rather “How might we know?” The source of our knowledge (if we have any) is the critical thing.

Yes, I agree 100%. The question of “how do we know something?” is what epistemology is all about.

Since I expect that your base assumptions are at error, I should like to have such a conversation. So I’ll ask again: how do you choose basic assumptions? We may discuss this in a separate thread, if you like.

Ok, then. In a nutshell: basic principles and axioms are assumptions which are self-evident.

And all such exchanges are detectable? Why should we expect such a thing to be true? If physicists came back tomorrow and said that some physical interactions are not, in principle, detectable, would you really be all that surprised?

Yes, I would be.

Well, it depends on how you define “explanation”. A hypothesis is a “potential explanation” – it would explain, if it were true. So you might say that actual explanations are necessarily (analytically) true.

An explanation can cover two different processes. In the abstract sciences it means to find a logical line which leads from the axioms to the theorem. In the natural sciences it means that based upon the explanation, we can make predictions, and the result of the experiment is the same as the predicted value.

 

[R_Daneel]

Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future.

Ouch! Reverse causation? The future already “exists”? The future can “touch” (or influence) the present? If that would be case, we could influence the past… maybe make the Holocaust nonexistent. Holy cows! Never have I seen such utter nonsense… unless, of course all that is merely an allegory, not to be taken verbatim, and thus it needs to be interpreted as well.

 

[R_Daneel]

Why does it matter what the Church officially says, for our purposes here? Are you here to assume that every Catholic must hold a certain fixed opinion on a passage, and then pin them down to it? I can see how this is appealing, for it’s shooting at a sitting target.

If that target is correct, then it has nothing to fear. Only an incorrectly formed reply needs an “escape route”

But it’s also insulting. As I’ve shown in our discussion of divine simplicity, I’m not utterly entranced by everything any Catholic theologian has said, and I’m open to changing views. The question ought to be: what is the true interpretation of the passage, not what is the the Church’s official teaching on it?

I am not talking about different theologians. I am interested in what the Church’s official teaching might be. Then your disagreement would not be with me, it would be with the Church.

We find out more about correct interpretation by looking at the Greek words, and by considering the circumstances of the author. Would you like to do this?

I am definitely not in the position to make statements about the meaning of 2000 years old Greek words. Maybe you are, I don’t know.

 

[AntiTheist]

I agree that one does not have sufficient reasons to believe in Christianity if they were to go solely by the natural knowledge we have available to us (historical information, etc.).

Agreed.

Now, the real crux of the matter is whether this theological faith (if it exists of course) can be considered evidence.

Your parenthetical remark gives the game away – what makes you think that this knowledge actually has been “imputed in your mind directly by God”?

Why can’t an ideal world be consistent? Many idealist philosophers say that the phenomenon has a consistency to it.

Of course it can be. I’ve said: it’s possible that this world is a consistent Matrix created by a computer to dupe me while the machines drain my life-force. It’s also possible that this world is a consistent Matrix created by Zippy the leprechaun while I am his prisoner in the Land of the Leprechauns.

But nothing would lead us to think that either of those things is true.

My point is this: if this world that we experience is consistent – and if there is no way to determine that it is, in fact, a Matrix – then we have absolutely no reason to think that there’s some other reality. Thus, when we talk about reality, we’re talking about the consistent reality that we experience, whatever its metaphysical status.

Really, if you don’t believe our ability to perceive reality as it really is (i.e. realism) then you are an idealist.

I do believe our ability to perceive reality as it really is (“reality” here defined as the consistent world revealed to us by our senses). But people also perceive the contents of their own minds, and they’re not very good at distinguishing the two.

A good example of this is proofreading errors: when reading over their own writings – especially when it’s fresh in their minds – people tend to miss their typographical errors. The reason for this is that they’re not paying attention to what’s on the page: their mind is actually perceiving what it expects to be there – they’re seeing a pattern of expectation rather than reality.

But there actually is a typo on the bloody page, one that they would see if they would pay attention or get someone else to help them. And there actually is a page there – it’s a page and not a hamburger.

That’s what I mean by “the world in your head” versus “the world outside of your head.”

When I say there’s “actually” a page there, all I mean to say is that our senses report the consistent existence of a page there, a page that has marks on it that we can be wrong about, that we can discover that we are wrong about by investigating the world outside of our heads.

These facts remain true whether or not we’re in a Matrix, something we could never possibly know anyway.

I can explain it no better than that, I fear.

But how do you know that there is anything the senses report that has any basis in reality.

Because when I say “reality,” I’m talking about the consistent world that my senses report to me and that other people appear to share, whatever its “ultimate metaphysical status” happens to be.

It is an intuition that must be accepted on faith.

It’s not an “intuition” – it’s a definition. I define “reality” to be the consistent world reported by the senses and apparently experienced by others as well.

If it turns out to be a dream, then I’ll adjust my definitions accordingly, but I can find no indication that it’s a dream.

This is totally different than faith, which I define as the acceptance of a claim about that consistent world reported by my senses and apparently experienced by others without sufficient evidence.

For the zillionth time: When I say things like “the real world,” I’m not making a claim about the consistent world revealed by my senses (I"m not claiming “It’s not the Matrix”)…I’m labeling that world.

 

[AntiTheist]

As far as I know, nobody has ever just woken up and randomly says, “Today I think I’ll be Catholic!” But … that’s just to my limited knowledge.

Your knowledge on this subject appears to be limited, yes.

Likewise, a conversion to Catholicism is because of one’s experience plus the application of reason.

Right. In the same way that one “converts” to believing in psychic powers or in Bigfoot or in Hindu gods or in alien abductions and lots of other nutty stuff by virtue of their “experience plus the application of reason.”

But as I pointed out above – when talking about the relatively common experience of proofreading errors – people make mistakes about reality. So the question before us is this: is there a consistently reliable way to determine whether or not a claim about reality should be accepted?

And surprise, surprise, what do you know, there is! It’s called – break out the trumpets – evidence-based inquiry. It’s through this method that our proofreader can determine that his writing contains a typo, and it’s through this method that those of us who are not gullible saps can determine that psychics can’t really see the future or talk to the dead.

And it’s clear that you agree with all of this (unless you’re actually completely out of your mind, a supposition which I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt about): you yourself don’t go around believing in fairies and psychics and UFO abductions (complete with brutal probings that always seem to be a component in those weirdo fantasies). It’s only when you’re backed into a corner that you have to hem and haw and say “Gee golly whiz! That suff could all be true, I just don’t have the experience!”

This is a perfect example of what I mean when I say that matrix-mongers walk around in a fog and that they worship ignorance.

If your “philosophy” has got you so mixed up that you can’t know basic things, like the fact that “psychics” can’t really see the future or talk to the dead, then nothing I say is ever going to convince you otherwise.

So, you’re saying that psychic and magical phenomena are only believed in by nutjobs, eh?

Yes. Well, nutjobs and the gullible, of course.

You have no proof to say that they didn’t experience such things, however, right?

I have no doubt that many – if not most – of the poor saps who are duped into believing in psychics believe in them because they have experienced (or been the victims of, depending on how you look at it) a “cold reading” at the hands of a psychic.

Look it up if you want to learn something about how these charlatans make their living, but basically, it’s a set of techniques that these con-artists use to pretend that they have psychic powers. They’re the kinds of techniques that stage magicians use to make believe that they have psychic powers.

How do I know that psychics are cold readers and frauds and crooks? Because there has never – not once – been a single psychic capable of passing even one double-blind test…that is, a test under controlled conditions that prevent the psychic from cheating.

Sure, a psychic is going to seem awfully impressive when he says that he’s getting the impression of a strong male presence who passed within the last year who had a problem in his chest – especially to a poor, grief-striken individual who is desperate for comfort, who’s going to say, “Gasp! You mean Uncle Harold! Psychic powers are real!!” – but when you sit these frauds down and do an actual test, they can’t do anything at all.

For example, there have been tests where they’ve given a “psychic” a bunch of diaries that belonged to recently-deceased people – and all the diaries were wrapped up to look identical, of course – and she was supposed to tell from the “psychic imprint” on the books what the gender of the person who owned each diary was (no opening the books…just the “psychic imprint”).

How do you think the psychic fared in that little experiment? Want to take a wager?

See, we know that they’re frauds because whenever they’re not fleecing grieving people like the vultures that they are with vague claptrap from the “other side,” they’re utterly failing actual tests.

I have no doubt that poor Aunt Merle really did have the experience of (what she thought was) an honest-to-goodness psychic delivering messages from dear, departed Uncle Eddy. But I also happen to know – thanks to good, ol’ evidence – that she was duped by a cruel con-artist who makes money off of human misery.

See, this is the advantage of actually having knowledge about things: you can actually figure out whether something is likely to be real or not.

But when you start pretending that there is no real world and that maybe everything boils down to faith, you run into nonsense like your entire argument. If I hadn’t read trash like this before, I might even be a little disgusted by it this time around.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

“psychics” can’t really see the future or talk to the dead

Regardless of whether an individual chooses to believe in these things or whether you think they are insane or not, it is still an epistemological fact that we cannot know that all such experiences are false. We choose not to believe them because we do not see it in our benefit to believe in such things. Its not because we know that there are no ufo’s abducting people. The reality is, sceptics have gotten so good at explaining these things away with just-so-stories, that if an encounter was really to take place tomorrow it still wouldn’t matter because there isn’t anything left to distinguish between a real encounter and a false one. The sceptic has made them conceptually identical, merely as a matter of personal principle rather than as a deductive fact. While I don’t put much stock in Ufo phenomena my self, it seems to me that this attempt to blank out anything that seems to break away from the social norm of our experience, is revealing of a different type of obsessive insecurity, and that is the fear that there are more powerful beings than ourselves who hold sway over our destinies; thus the rabid desire to explain anything away that remotely smells like the supernatural.

a “cold reading” at the hands of a psychic.

Perhaps somebody really has had physic experiences; I cannot discount that possibility. But is it reasonable for me to accept somebodies testimony of that experience? This is a different question, and it all depends on whether you know the person well enough, and if you did, would you be willing to trust them.

Look it up if you want to learn something about how these charlatans make their living, but basically, it’s a set of techniques that these con-artists use to pretend that they have psychic powers.

This is the fallacy of composition. Thus the idea that because there are con artists in the world, therefore any claims concerning extra-mental activity must be viewed with blank arrogant scorn. But you don’t have to believe it, so why are you so insecure that you require everybody else to believe what you believe?

They’re the kinds of techniques that stage magicians use to make believe that they have psychic powers.

I am sure that there are.

How do I know that psychics are cold readers and frauds and crooks? Because there has never – not once – been a single psychic capable of passing even one double-blind test…that is, a test under controlled conditions that prevent the psychic from cheating.

There hasn’t been one yet. But if you find only white ducks, this does not mean that there are no black ones.

but when you sit these frauds down and do an actual test, they can’t do anything at all.

Well, that’s because the particular person or people that were tested for psychic powers were frauds or failures.

How do you think the psychic fared in that little experiment? Want to take a wager?

See, we know that they’re frauds because whenever they’re not fleecing grieving people like the vultures that they are with vague claptrap from the “other side,” they’re utterly failing actual tests.

Yes, I agree, the ones that fail the tests implies that they are frauds. Does that mean that psychic phenomenon is impossible? No.

But when you start pretending that there is no real world .

Most people who appear to be idealists, in reality, are only epistemological agnostics. This means that they are realists in practice, but they admit (out of honesty) that they cannot know for certain that the world beyond there minds is not a contrivance of either some brute mental fact about minds, or an outside influence feeding us false information through some means or other to make us think that we are “in” a physical world of objects; when really they are nothing more than virtual illusions made to appear as if they have an extension beyond the mind. You cannot make a deductive argument to the existence of extra-mental physical objects. You can perhaps argue that there has to be a mind outside of your own doing the trickery if you are not somebody who is convince by the idea of a brute fact. But you cannot infer the necessity of physical reality without falling in to an epistemological fallacy.

 

[Areopagite]

I apologize to AntiTheist and R Daneel for not responding to your posts yet. My teaching job has just begun again (and this time I’m teaching six classes … 2 of which I haven’t taught before). At the very least, I’ll try to worthily respond by the beginning of this weekend.

 

[R_Daneel]

I apologize to AntiTheist and R Daneel for not responding to your posts yet. My teaching job has just begun again (and this time I’m teaching six classes … 2 of which I haven’t taught before). At the very least, I’ll try to worthily respond by the beginning of this weekend.

No need to apologize. RL (real life) always comes first. Curiosity: what classes do you teach? I used to be a math prof at the beginning of my adult life.

 

[Betterave]

But as I pointed out above – when talking about the relatively common experience of proofreading errors – people make mistakes about reality. So the question before us is this: is there a consistently reliable way to determine whether or not a claim about reality should be accepted?

And surprise, surprise, what do you know, there is! It’s called – break out the trumpets – evidence-based inquiry. It’s through this method that our proofreader can determine that his writing contains a typo, and it’s through this method that those of us who are not gullible saps can determine that psychics can’t really see the future or talk to the dead.

Doh! Beg the question much? You ask these general questions and give these general answers and they feel great to you, they just feel right, right? You have this great assurance that you’ve asked the appropriate question and paid attention to the appropriate context in posing and answering it. But let’s ask your question again, but sharpen the context a little: is there a consistently reliable way to determine whether or not such “I’m-right-about-this”-feelings reliably indicate an ‘acceptable’ (adequate) apprehension of the reality in question (and, prior to that, an ‘acceptable’ apprehension of the question about that reality)?

 

[Betterave]

Ouch! Reverse causation? The future already “exists”? The future can “touch” (or influence) the present? If that would be case, we could influence the past… maybe make the Holocaust nonexistent. Holy cows! Never have I seen such utter nonsense… unless, of course all that is merely an allegory, not to be taken verbatim, and thus it needs to be interpreted as well.

Now RD: I know you’re trained in mathematics, not in reading and understanding texts, so your ineptitude can be forgiven to some extent. But I get the impression you’re really not sincerely trying to understand when you write foolish nonsense like this. Maybe I’m wrong and you just have really poor reading skills, but please try again:

Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future.

Now do you honestly think that the Pope is talking about reverse causation here, or that any of what you wrote in response to this made sense??

 

[R_Daneel]

Now RD: I know you’re trained in mathematics, not in reading and understanding texts, so your ineptitude can be forgiven to some extent. But I get the impression you’re really not sincerely trying to understand when you write foolish nonsense like this. Maybe I’m wrong and you just have really poor reading skills, but please try again:

Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future.

Now do you honestly think that the Pope is talking about reverse causation here, or that any of what you wrote in response to this made sense??

Well, it is hard to read it otherwise.

It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for…
this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen…
Faith draws the future into the present…
The fact that this future exists changes the present…
the present is touched by the future reality…
things of the future spill over into those of the present…

Utter, sheer nonsense. The future does not exist in any meaningful sense of the word. The future does not influence the present, though of course the expectations and wishful thinking of some people influences the current attitude of those people.

On the other hand, your writing skills are absolutely extraordinary when it comes to not-so-hidden insults and innuendo and those skills are clearly visible throughout all your posts (and there is nothing else in them). Your taunting, insulting and condescending style is almost unparalleled. I have to give you some credit, your obnoxious attitude is truly “catholic”, you are an equal opportunity insulter toward everyone, who does not toe the line. That is the reason that I usually do not bother to answer your BS. As far as my reading and understanding skills go, I speak several languages, and English does not happen to be my mother tongue. So much for your “assessment”. I would suggest to drop your “criticism” of my skills. and concentrate on what I actually write. A little humility is a Chrisitian virtue, you might as well practice it sometimes.

 

[Betterave]

Well, it is hard to read it otherwise.

It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for…
this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen…
Faith draws the future into the present…
The fact that this future exists changes the present…
the present is touched by the future reality…
things of the future spill over into those of the present…

Utter, sheer nonsense. The future does not exist in any meaningful sense of the word. The future does not influence the present, though of course the expectations and wishful thinking of some people influences the current attitude of those people.

On the other hand, your writing skills are absolutely extraordinary when it comes to not-so-hidden insults and innuendo and those skills are clearly visible throughout all your posts (and there is nothing else in them). Your taunting, insulting and condescending style is almost unparalleled. I have to give you some credit, your obnoxious attitude is truly “catholic”, you are an equal opportunity insulter toward everyone, who does not toe the line. That is the reason that I usually do not bother to answer your BS. As far as my reading and understanding skills go, I speak several languages, and English does not happen to be my mother tongue. So much for your “assessment”. ** How does this disconfirm my assessment?] **I would suggest to drop your “criticism” of my skills. and concentrate on what I actually write. A little humility is a Chrisitian virtue, you might as well practice it sometimes.

I’m sorry if your English reading skills are lacking. What is your first/best language? The Vatican website has Spe salvi in the following languages: Byelorussian, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish.

Humility is a philosophical virtue, not just a Christian virtue, and it is one which you are sorely lacking and apparently may not even know the meaning of. Please note that there is a difference between an insult and a well-founded comment. If you take issue with my comment, please indicate what part of what I said you found to be objectionable and why.

As for your comment about “utter sheer nonsense”, you were close to saying something accurate when you wrote: “though of course the expectations and wishful thinking of some people influences the current attitude of those people.” More accurately, the expectations of each person - including but not limited to their “wishful thinking” - profoundly influences the current attitude of each person. This is obviously what the pope was talking about and your claim that it is “utter sheer nonsense” is itself obviously utter sheer nonsense.

 

[Betterave]

RD, maybe I should spell this out for you a little more:

When someone suggests that you either have poor reading comprehension skills or you’re simply not trying to understand, this is probably a comment on what you have written, not an insult. In response you ought to either grant that you have poor reading skills or that you’re not really trying to understand, or you ought to explain how your comments were in fact justified, despite appearances to the contrary. You should not launch into an off-topic ad hominem rant.

p.s.: just for fun I’ll guess that your first language is… Polish?

 

[Betterave]

What exactly is groundless about recognizing that a framework where no premise can be accepted - how is that the case?] is one where rational discussion is impossible?
Once this, as I said, passingly interesting, idea about the possibility of nothing being real is articulated all that can be done is repeat it in various forms.
If you think I am being anti-young; I am not. It is simply a fact that this kind of thinking appeals primarily to young people.
There is value in questioning basic premises. These ideas have some use. But they can not, by their very nature, lead anywhere - mightn’t they at least lead us to a better knowledge of our own basic premisses? - that’s pretty significant, isn’t it?].

What is groundless about it is that what you claim to simply ‘recognize’ is not obvious, i.e., needs to be grounded. Your so-called ‘recognition’ itself is groundless. It seems obvious that what you ‘recognize’ does not apply to the argument in question.