Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxd.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxd!rlr
From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Dr. Emmanuel Wu)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Personal experience and Rosen's dream
Message-ID: <775@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 27-Mar-85 08:28:31 EST
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.775
Posted: Wed Mar 27 08:28:31 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Mar-85 06:27:17 EST
References: <382@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Organization: STRONGARM COLLECTION AGENCY:  We have no slogan
Lines: 56

> If your point is that it's possible for somebody to make it
> impossible for others to know whether he's lying or not, then you've
> demonstrated it very well, I think.  You've flip-flopped so many
> times between claiming that you're lying and that you're telling the
> truth that I don't really even care anymore.

I slit my own throat by deciding to put that disclaimer about satire at the
end there.  If I hadn't, I would have been pounced upon as a "vicious
attacker of personal beliefs" by one and all.  Since I did, I get Scott
Deerwester finding an "out" for not accepting my claims.  Fine.  Don't.
I asked you previously where Mike Huybensz's claims (substantiated by
Yosi Hoshen) about having ice cream with god fit in to your scheme.  But
you can't answer that one, so you avoid and choose to stick to my claims
which you can only debunk by saying that I was lying/being satirical.
You can't do that with Mike's experience.  So why don't you try pinning
them to the mat?  ANSWER:  Because you can't.  If that's not true, let's
hear what your basis for not believing Mike Huybensz's claim about eating
ice cream with god one fine night.  We're all waiting...

> The point that I was trying to address in my original response still
> stands though.  The situation that I was addressing is where somebody
> says something like,
> 	"Well people who believes in {fill in your favorite religion}
> 	have exactly the same experiences that you describe.  How
> 	come yours are more valid than theirs?"
> The argument is empty.  If the experiences that you're talking about
> are just your conjectures about what might be possible, that's not
> the same thing as first person accounts of real experiences.  In
> saying this, I'm making no arguments at all about what the personal
> experiences of actual people might or might not mean.  I am neither
> saying (at least not here) that my experiences do mean anything or
> that yours don't.  I am, however, asserting that a particular
> argument that you and others have made doesn't have any meaning.

YOUR argument is the one that is empty.  Huybensz has repeatedly done a fine
job of explaining just what is wrong with "subjective experience" as evidence
of a "real" (i.e., not just "in the mind") phenomena.  Given its flawed
nature, there is no way to take a selected subjective experience on its own
and "proving" its veracity, either in relating it to others OR in convincing
oneself.  To do either, the audience (the others or the self) must already
presume the nature of the experience to be a particular thing.

> You've made it pretty much impossible to judge whether your dream is
> real or invented.  As a matter of fact, since you have at times
> asserted that it was invented, assertions to the contrary are pretty
> hard to believe.  It seems to me that what you're saying is, "Well,
> okay, the dream was made up, but it *might* have happened.  So
> pretend that it really did and respond that way."  No dice.

I'm NOT saying anything of the kind about Mike's escapade with god at
Swensen's (or was it Farrell's?).  Are you?  CAN you?  The point is that
it is EQUALLY impossible to judge your OWN or OTHERS' experiences as being
real or invented (deliberately or otherwise).  And that still holds.
-- 
Anything's possible, but only a few things actually happen.
					Rich Rosen    pyuxd!rlr