there is absolute truth without appeal to a deity

[PratchettFan]

No, it takes a woman or a man to BE a person, it takes a woman AND a man to MAKE a person.

I gotta like a man who truly enjoys the nuances of language.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I am not omniscient.

That is an absolute truth.

If I were, I'd know that I was as an all knowing entity.

No. There is not. You have that knowledge precisely because there is an absolute mind of origination. You would not have such absolute knowledge in the absence of that absolute mind of origination because you wouldn't exist otherwise.

Mind precedes matter. Only doofuses imagine that mindless matter could create something greater than itself.

That is not logic it is an appeal to an improvable deity.

Nonsense. Non sequitur. Error.

There is no appeal to anything in my assertion residing beyond the reaches of logic.

Any given conclusion may be perfectly rendered, i.e., logically derived without any inherent fault, and still be false due to false presuppositions. Consistent logic is not synonymous with absolute certainty, let alone synonymous with materialism.

You are as confused as you can be, aren't you? All you're really saying is that God's existence cannot be logically asserted . . . because He's not, by definition, a material entity?! That doesn't follow.

Zoom! Right over you head.

Atheists are notoriously bad thinkers.

Logic goes to sound reasoning prefaced on rationally and/or empirically demonstrable premises. Yours is not sound at all, and it is you who unwittingly leaps over a number of obvious and inescapable imperatives: (1) the first principles of human cognition concerning origins (see below), (2) the limitations of scientific inquiry and (3) the potentialities of being.

I am conscious of these imperatives, while you apparently are not or have not soberly considered them.

The ultimate justification for your deity is indemonstrable, strictly a matter faith: your scientifically unfalsifiable presupposition of metaphysical/ontological naturalism.



If there be no absolute mind of origination, all is necessarily chance variation and happy coincidence, albeit, within the parameters of what the laws of nature permit. Our minds as well as the reckonings thereof would be no more reliable than that as far as we could tell, and our internal reckonings of external things are not one in the same entities, now, are they? External things and our physical sensations of them are not the essence of our immediate experience of them or the essence of our immediate calculi about them.

The atheist unwittingly undermines his position when he allows for any instance of absolute certainty, particularly with regard to any absolute moral declarations as Pennywise observed.

Notwithstanding, the sensible person concludes that God must be, for that is the Occam's razor of certainty. It's a rational ground for existence, not mindlessness, that best explains the apparently absolute rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness, and the apparent synchronization of external phenomena and our internal reckonings of them.

Hence, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that God must be. The insinuation to the contrary is tiresome. It's the silly talk of the intellectually dishonest.

And again, essentially the same observation, albeit, from first principles: Prufrock's Cave

I am a trained logician, philosopher and theologian. You are out of your league.

 

[G.T.]

All you're really saying is that God's existence cannot be logically asserted . . . because He's not, by definition, a material entity?! That doesn't follow.

Zoom! Right over you head.

Atheists are notoriously bad thinkers. .

#1. nope, not asserting that
#2. not an atheist

damn, wrong on two accounts already and look at the walls of text below to sift through still.....sheesh!

Logic goes to sound reasoning prefaced on rationally and/or empirically demonstrable premises. Yours is not sound at all, and it is you who unwittingly leaps over a number of obvious and inescapable imperatives: (1) the first principles of human cognition concerning origins (see below), (2) the limitations of scientific inquiry and (3) the potentialities of being.

I am conscious of these imperatives, while you apparently are not or have not soberly considered them..

The ultimate justification for your deity is indemonstrable, strictly a matter faith: your scientifically unfalsifiable presupposition of metaphysical/ontological naturalism.



If there be no absolute mind of origination, all is necessarily chance variation and happy coincidence, albeit, within the parameters of what the laws of nature permit. ..

And it is the observation of those parameters which makes "all knowing" entities, if any shall ever exist, necessarily KNOW that they are ALL KNOWING.

Our minds as well as the reckonings thereof are subject to the very same regiment of chance variation and happy coincidence, and our internal reckonings of external things are not one in the same entities, now, are they? External things and our physical sensations of them are not the essence of our immediate experience of them or the essence of our immediate calculi about them.

The atheist unwittingly undermines his position when he allows for any instance of absolute certainty,..

No, that is not true and you have not demonstrated it. First, I'm not an atheist but leaving that aside, absolute certainty does not assume a deity of any sort, so I'll stop you there as making grandiose claims with no reasoning or merit backing them.

particularly with regard to any absolute moral declarations as Pennywise observed. ,..

particularly with regard to nothing. Absolute certainty does not assume a deity.

Notwithstanding, the sensible person concludes that God must be, for that is the Occam’s razor of certainty. ,..

It’s a rational ground for existence, not mindlessness, that best explains the apparently absolute rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness and the apparent synchronization of external phenomena and our internal reckonings of them.,..

^ that right there is sound reasoning? God makes sense of things thus god must be? Fallacy, its an appeal to a god of the gaps, i.e. "anything I cant explain? God."

Hence, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that God must be. The insinuation to the contrary is tiresome. It's the silly talk of the intellectually dishonest..,..

It's not reasonable at all. It is the intellectually dishonest opinion. The only honest opinion is agnosticism.

And again, essentially the same observation, albeit, from first principles: Prufrock's Cave

I am a trained logician, philosopher and theologian. You are out of your league
..,..

An argument from authority is a fallacy.

Your trainers should be fired immediately and any licenses revoked.

 

[Capstone]

When we agree upon what certain words mean, it has no bearing on reality except to create an established way to communicate it. ...

I'm not so sure that communicating about the world we perceive "has no bearing on reality". That human communication has had significant bearing on humanity's part in shaping reality ...seems an intuitively justifiable belief to me. True, language itself is more abstract than the actions of those who use it to accomplish things cooperatively 'IRL' -- things that could never be accomplished otherwise -- but an indirect bearing is not quite synonymous with no bearing at all.

...The object is neither red n'or blue, it simply has an attribute and red or blue is a term used to describe said attribute. The term we chose and what we chose to ascribe it to cannot be right or wrong, it is an abstract that we created ourselves in order to communicate.

Not that I disagree entirely, but much of our descriptive language has a concrete basis in sense perception. This is how a color commonly associated with fire can be used to describe warmth (red hot). In this case, the attribute of heat has an indirect correlation to color on the basis of our perceptions of a 'real world object' that emanates both the attributes of heat and redness. Apart from our descriptions of them, whether or not those attributes have any meaning outside of the minds equipped to process data gathered by the senses, they must have some semblance of objective autonomy in order to have been gathered and processed by us. Granted, the description of an object is distinct from the object itself; but I don't believe that precludes the possibility that our descriptive language happens to comport to the "absolute truth" where the nature of that object is concerned.

Knowledge is a term we created to communicate something: all that is perceivable or learnable. Perceivable or learnable are also terms we created. [...] These terms cannot be right or wrong, they're simply descriptive terms we're using in order to advance the conversation. ...[emphasis Capstone's]

Now, here, I couldn't disagree more.

In my view, we needn't bother with objective 'rightness' or 'wrongness' where such subjectively influenced notions are concerned. Obviously, what's perceivable, learnable, and knowable will vary from individual to individual, and from specie to specie (most of which engage in far more primitive forms of communication than advanced language). For those of us who do use language, though, the notions of rightness and wrongness are requisite to understanding the intentions of our fellow communicators.

Does that constitute an evocation of "absolute truth"? -- That, I don't know, and I suggest that neither do you.

...If we don't agree on their definitions, we can go from there - but if we do, then the statement that an all knowing being knows whether or not it is all knowing is absolute truth. ...

I'm inclined to agree, at least in part, but the matter is far from settled in the minds of most philosophers. For some, the fact that this proposed "absolute truth" of yours is subject to a definition of "omniscience" that may or may not be objectively true ...undermines the proposition from the very start.

...If truth and reality are abstracts and cannot even be established by human beings through reason, then there's no point in the conversation which gets back to the absurdity of having it.

Then I guess we'd better not deny that truth and/or reality can be established through reason and other human faculties. I certainly haven't denied that, explicitly or implicitly.

Can you say the same?

 

[Capstone]

I disagree the wavelengths compose the objective reality. If I am dreaming (and I dream in color) I perceive red without any outside stimuli. Redness is our attempt to make sense of something, but how we do that has nothing to do with that reality. We perceive the reaction, not the stimuli. It is entirely internal.

I think you're right in holding that what's going on in your dreams is primarily internal; but I strongly disagree that you're perceiving color, ETC., while dreaming. Together, the brain's capacity for memory and its ability to function during lesser conscious states are sufficient to account for dreams, no matter how closely they seem to mimic the scenarios born of fully conscious sense perception. That's just my opinion, of course, but I don't think it's lacking in scientific support.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

All you're really saying is that God's existence cannot be logically asserted . . . because He's not, by definition, a material entity?! That doesn't follow.

Zoom! Right over you head.

Atheists are notoriously bad thinkers. .

#1. nope, not asserting that
#2. not an atheist

damn, wrong on two accounts already and look at the walls of text below to sift through still.....sheesh!

Logic goes to sound reasoning prefaced on rationally and/or empirically demonstrable premises. Yours is not sound at all, and it is you who unwittingly leaps over a number of obvious and inescapable imperatives: (1) the first principles of human cognition concerning origins (see below), (2) the limitations of scientific inquiry and (3) the potentialities of being.

I am conscious of these imperatives, while you apparently are not or have not soberly considered them..

And it is the observation of those parameters which makes "all knowing" entities, if any shall ever exist, necessarily KNOW that they are ALL KNOWING. No, that is not true and you have not demonstrated it. First, I'm not an atheist but leaving that aside, absolute certainty does not assume a deity of any sort, so I'll stop you there as making grandiose claims with no reasoning or merit backing them. particularly with regard to nothing. Absolute certainty does not assume a deity.


^ that right there is sound reasoning? God makes sense of things thus god must be? Fallacy, its an appeal to a god of the gaps, i.e. "anything I cant explain? God."

Hence, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that God must be. The insinuation to the contrary is tiresome. It's the silly talk of the intellectually dishonest..,..

It's not reasonable at all. It is the intellectually dishonest opinion. The only honest opinion is agnosticism.

And again, essentially the same observation, albeit, from first principles: Prufrock's Cave

I am a trained logician, philosopher and theologian. You are out of your league
..,..

An argument from authority is a fallacy.

Your trainers should be fired immediately and any licenses revoked.

Your response is a litany of mindless slogans in response to arguments you don't really follow at all.

What you're calling the logical fallacy of the appeal to authority, for example, is actually the classical argument of infinite regression, the same observation made by the likes of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin and many others.

It's object is self-evident, axiomatic. It's ramifications are irrefutable. As applied to origins, it merely demonstrates the ontologically irrefutable alternatives. It's nature is propositional; it is not an absolute declaration. Only someone who doesn't grasp it would imagine it to be a logical fallacy of any kind, let alone an appeal to authority.

In response to the observation about the absolute rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness and the apparent synchronization of the external world and our reckonings of it, you make baby talk, something about the God in the gaps fallacy, a non sequitur.

You're utterly lost. You understand nothing. You have no idea how embarrassingly stupid your responses are.

Clearly, you imagine that the observations in the above are asserting things they do not, but what exactly your feverish, reactionary mind is imagining about them is not clear; for you never actually make any arguments, just statements.

You're just another sophomoric, second-rate intellect blathering banalities in the face of universal imperatives flying right over your head.

Now, Capstone is worth reading and engaging, but why he's wasting his time on you is beyond me . . . seeing as how his stuff, profound and solid as a rock, is mostly flying right over your head as well.

You don't fly anywhere near the altitude of my intellect, boy. It's not even close. When you're ready to have a serious discussion, let me know.

ta ta.

 

[G.T.]

I'm inclined to agree, at least in part, but the matter is far from settled in the minds of most philosophers. For some, the fact that this proposed "absolute truth" of yours is subject to a definition of "omniscience" that may or may not be objectively true ...undermines the proposition from the very start.

I skipped through the language debate entirely, and will focus on the one point you made here that is pertinent to me, as my time is finite and the rest quite frankly doesn't interest me.

You can say that the truth of the original statement depends on how we define omniscience.

And that's fair.

The way I'd define it is: a being possessing "all knowledge," and I'd define knowledge as "justified true belief." And in my opinion using those definitions, a non omniscient (not all knowing) being knows for absolute certain that it is not omniscient - & By virtue of the definitions being used, it is absolute truth.

But to say the terms are undefinable would be absurd in the fact that it makes conversation from the onset pointless, as every post you type following such a claim necessarily then says: purple yesterdays drop east pizzas, and also if we cannot agree on a definition within our conversation the conversation serves no purpose other then to establish that we cannot agree on language.

 

[G.T.]

All you're really saying is that God's existence cannot be logically asserted . . . because He's not, by definition, a material entity?! That doesn't follow.

Zoom! Right over you head.

Atheists are notoriously bad thinkers. .

#1. nope, not asserting that
#2. not an atheist

damn, wrong on two accounts already and look at the walls of text below to sift through still.....sheesh!


And it is the observation of those parameters which makes "all knowing" entities, if any shall ever exist, necessarily KNOW that they are ALL KNOWING. No, that is not true and you have not demonstrated it. First, I'm not an atheist but leaving that aside, absolute certainty does not assume a deity of any sort, so I'll stop you there as making grandiose claims with no reasoning or merit backing them. particularly with regard to nothing. Absolute certainty does not assume a deity.


^ that right there is sound reasoning? God makes sense of things thus god must be? Fallacy, its an appeal to a god of the gaps, i.e. "anything I cant explain? God."
It's not reasonable at all. It is the intellectually dishonest opinion. The only honest opinion is agnosticism.

And again, essentially the same observation, albeit, from first principles: Prufrock's Cave

I am a trained logician, philosopher and theologian. You are out of your league
..,..

An argument from authority is a fallacy.

Your trainers should be fired immediately and any licenses revoked.

Your response is a litany of mindless slogans in response to arguments you don't really follow at all.

What you're calling the logical fallacy of the appeal to authority, for example, is actually the classical argument of infinite regression, the same observation made by the likes of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin and many others.

It's object is self-evident, axiomatic. It's ramifications are irrefutable. As applied to origins, it merely demonstrates the ontologically irrefutable alternatives. It's nature is propositional; it is not an absolute declaration. Only someone who doesn't grasp it would imagine it to be a logical fallacy of any kind, let alone an appeal to authority.

In response to the observation about the absolute rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness and the apparent synchronization of the external world and our reckonings of it, you make baby talk, something about the God in the gaps fallacy, a non sequitur.

You're utterly lost. You understand nothing. You have no idea how embarrassingly stupid your responses are.

Clearly, you imagine that the observations in the above are asserting things they do not, but what exactly your feverish, reactionary mind is imagining about them is not clear; for you never actually make any arguments, just statements.

You're just another sophomoric, second-rate intellect blathering banalities in the face of universal imperatives flying right over your head.

Now, Capstone is worth reading and engaging, but why he's wasting his time on you is beyond me . . . seeing as how his stuff, profound and solid as a rock, is mostly flying right over your head as well.

You don't fly anywhere near the altitude of my intellect, boy. It's not even close. When you're ready to have a serious discussion, let me know.

ta ta.

ad hom


ad hom


ad hom



ignored

 

[G.T.]

I disagree the wavelengths compose the objective reality. If I am dreaming (and I dream in color) I perceive red without any outside stimuli. Redness is our attempt to make sense of something, but how we do that has nothing to do with that reality. We perceive the reaction, not the stimuli. It is entirely internal.

I think you're right in holding that what's going on in your dreams is primarily internal; but I strongly disagree that you're perceiving color, ETC., while dreaming. Together, the brain's capacity for memory and its ability to function during lesser conscious states are sufficient to account for dreams, no matter how closely they seem to mimic the scenarios born of fully conscious sense perception. That's just my opinion, of course, but I don't think it's lacking in scientific support.

I think a dream is a defragging of our computer, and that's why it's usually convoluted as the files are shuffled about.

 

[PratchettFan]

I disagree the wavelengths compose the objective reality. If I am dreaming (and I dream in color) I perceive red without any outside stimuli. Redness is our attempt to make sense of something, but how we do that has nothing to do with that reality. We perceive the reaction, not the stimuli. It is entirely internal.

I think you're right in holding that what's going on in your dreams is primarily internal; but I strongly disagree that you're perceiving color, ETC., while dreaming. Together, the brain's capacity for memory and its ability to function during lesser conscious states are sufficient to account for dreams, no matter how closely they seem to mimic the scenarios born of fully conscious sense perception. That's just my opinion, of course, but I don't think it's lacking in scientific support.

Color is perception. It has no existence beyond the brain. Perceiving color in a dream is the same thing as perceiving it awake. It is nothing more than a biochemical reaction inside my skull.

 

[sealybobo]

Wow! It just dawned on me. All these anti gay christians who insist it takes one woman and one man to make a person, they somehow can put that out of their heads when it comes to god(s). Shouldn't there actually be two gods? The mother and father? Wow I just blew my own mind. LOL.

It take a woman or a man to make a person. It takes two persons to make a couple. Three persons make for an interesting evening.

How does a man by himself make a person?

 

[PratchettFan]

Wow! It just dawned on me. All these anti gay christians who insist it takes one woman and one man to make a person, they somehow can put that out of their heads when it comes to god(s). Shouldn't there actually be two gods? The mother and father? Wow I just blew my own mind. LOL.

It take a woman or a man to make a person. It takes two persons to make a couple. Three persons make for an interesting evening.

How does a man by himself make a person?

Well, you take them out for dinner and a movie perhaps. Alcohol helps.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

#1. nope, not asserting that
#2. not an atheist

damn, wrong on two accounts already and look at the walls of text below to sift through still.....sheesh!


And it is the observation of those parameters which makes "all knowing" entities, if any shall ever exist, necessarily KNOW that they are ALL KNOWING. No, that is not true and you have not demonstrated it. First, I'm not an atheist but leaving that aside, absolute certainty does not assume a deity of any sort, so I'll stop you there as making grandiose claims with no reasoning or merit backing them. particularly with regard to nothing. Absolute certainty does not assume a deity.


^ that right there is sound reasoning? God makes sense of things thus god must be? Fallacy, its an appeal to a god of the gaps, i.e. "anything I cant explain? God."
It's not reasonable at all. It is the intellectually dishonest opinion. The only honest opinion is agnosticism.
An argument from authority is a fallacy.

Your trainers should be fired immediately and any licenses revoked.

Your response is a litany of mindless slogans in response to arguments you don't really follow at all.

What you're calling the logical fallacy of the appeal to authority, for example, is actually the classical argument of infinite regression, the same observation made by the likes of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin and many others.

It's object is self-evident, axiomatic. It's ramifications are irrefutable. As applied to origins, it merely demonstrates the ontologically irrefutable alternatives. It's nature is propositional; it is not an absolute declaration. Only someone who doesn't grasp it would imagine it to be a logical fallacy of any kind, let alone an appeal to authority.

In response to the observation about the absolute rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness and the apparent synchronization of the external world and our reckonings of it, you make baby talk, something about the God in the gaps fallacy, a non sequitur.

You're utterly lost. You understand nothing. You have no idea how embarrassingly stupid your responses are.

Clearly, you imagine that the observations in the above are asserting things they do not, but what exactly your feverish, reactionary mind is imagining about them is not clear; for you never actually make any arguments, just statements.

You're just another sophomoric, second-rate intellect blathering banalities in the face of universal imperatives flying right over your head.

Now, Capstone is worth reading and engaging, but why he's wasting his time on you is beyond me . . . seeing as how his stuff, profound and solid as a rock, is mostly flying right over your head as well.

You don't fly anywhere near the altitude of my intellect, boy. It's not even close. When you're ready to have a serious discussion, let me know.

ta ta.

ad hom


ad hom


ad hom



ignored

Check out this link, doofus. This guy must be related to you: http://www.usmessageboard.com/relig...did-the-universe-get-here-85.html#post9418156

BTW, insult, backed by argument and duly deserved in this case, is not the logical fallacy of ad hominem, you moron.

 

[G.T.]

rahh rahh im right youre wrong rahh rahh you retard moron blah blah blah


take a walk dude

 

[Capstone]

I skipped through the language debate entirely, and will focus on the one point you made here that is pertinent to me, as my time is finite and the rest quite frankly doesn't interest me. ...

Well, in my own defense, all those irrelevant and uninteresting points were made in direct response to the quoted statements above them. -- So, what can I say?

...You can say that the truth of the original statement depends on how we define omniscience. [...] And that's fair. [...] The way I'd define it is: a being possessing "all knowledge," and I'd define knowledge as "justified true belief." And in my opinion using those definitions, a non omniscient (not all knowing) being knows for absolute certain that it is not omniscient - & By virtue of the definitions being used, it is absolute truth. ...

Even by your own definitions, not necessarily. The fact that you've admitted to a degree of uncertainty (via the phrase "in my opinion"), should be enough to make you want to steer your "truth" claim away from the "absolute".

As to your preferred definition of "knowledge" as "justified true belief", if history has demonstrated anything it's that belief justification has been a piss poor arbiter of truth, primarily because of its common reliance on unproven principles that were eventually proven false. If we can't even be sure that a given a belief is both justified and true, then what basis do we have to claim it as knowledge by your definitions? Before Copernicus came along, the best science held that the world was the center of the cosmos. However false that widespread tenet was, those who believed it to be true felt perfectly justified in doing so. As it turned out, they were wrong, so they didn't really know what they thought they knew, all because their justified beliefs were simply untrue all along. As this applies to your "absolute truth" claim, no matter how justified you feel in holding that your relevant beliefs and definitions are true/accurate, if a single aspect of any one of them happens to be false, then your entire epistemological house of cards would teeter and fall to the ground.

More importantly, in line with the definitions you've mentioned, if the personal possession of all that is knowable is itself unknowable, then an omniscient being could posses "all knowledge" without realizing it -- a fact that renders omniscience impotent as a determinant of the veracity of truth claims insofar as the unknowable is concerned. If an "all-knowing" being can't even know whether he, she, or it actually knows it all, then how can a non-omniscient being know with "absolute" certainty that he/she/it is not omniscient? One might readily point to his or her apparent deficiencies in many fields of expertise, from computer science to comparative religions, ETC., but without an irrefutable explication as to just what constitutes "knowledge" (and what distinguishes it from merely functional belief/theory), it may be the case that the whole of conscious existence (human and non-human) possesses all that is actually knowable as a rudimentary aspect of conscious awareness. As counter-intuitive and distasteful as this may seem to conscious beings that like to see themselves as the pinnacle of evolutionary intelligence, in light of the volumes of erroneous ideas that have packed humanity's libraries of the past and present with so-called knowledge, it seems to me that a modicum of modesty is called for in our present day approach to truth claims.

...But to say the terms are undefinable would be absurd in the fact that it makes conversation from the onset pointless, as every post you type following such a claim necessarily then says: purple yesterdays drop east pizzas, and also if we cannot agree on a definition within our conversation the conversation serves no purpose other then to establish that we cannot agree on language.

I haven't argued that the terms are undefinable; I've simply advocated for the wisdom of tempering our claims to things like "knowledge" and "absolute truth" with the understanding that our opinions, beliefs, and theories should be seen as intrinsically suspect and thereby too weak to justify certain types of claims.

There's a major difference between:

• A) acknowledging the possibility that our descriptive language and claims happen to correspond to the objective truth in some cases
  ...and
• B) claiming outright possession of knowledge of the absolute truth in those cases.

Having a handle on that distinction is what separates the claims that should be taken seriously from those that shouldn't.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

I am not omniscient.

That is an absolute truth.

If I were, I'd know that I was as an all knowing entity.

Bad example. If omniscence doesn't exist anyway, saying you aren't doesn't mean much.

There are very few if any absolute truths which are still true in every other reference frame. Usually, by simply altering the frame of reference a truth can be made false.

The sky is blue.

True.

But if you change the frame to another planet with different chemical composition in the atmosphere, or no atmosphere as on our own moon the statement is demonstratably false.

Only absolute truth I can think of spur of the moment is this:

The universe is a great place to live.

 

[Capstone]

Color is perception. It has no existence beyond the brain. Perceiving color in a dream is the same thing as perceiving it awake. It is nothing more than a biochemical reaction inside my skull.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, at least where the distinction between waking sense perception and dreaming conceptualization is concerned. In my view, there's little doubt that the "biochemical reaction(s) inside the skull" are at least as much dependent on 'external stimuli' during fully conscious sense perception as they are on the inner workings of the brain itself; and dreams are simply the by-products of memory, imagination, and the brain's capacity to function during the lower states of consciousness (I.E. sleep).

I will say this: to place 'perceived reality' on the same level as dreams is not only completely lacking in practical significance, it's potentially detrimental in terms of its psychological ramifications. Going through life as if it were all a dream is ultimately the stuff of solipsism in all of its anti-social glory.

 

[Toro]

To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And, at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between, plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing." This is truth, to me.

 

[G.T.]

I know as an absolute truth that I am not omniscient.