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Sure, but your brain is telling you your leg is in pain, when in fact you have no leg. That’s what I mean when I say that you have to have trust at nearly every

by awb 5y ago

Sure, but your brain is telling you your leg is in pain, when in fact you have no leg. That’s what I mean when I say that you have to have trust at nearly every level of belief since our own brains can deceive us. Very few things are knowable without faith somewhere in the chain because our own brains are not infallible observers. “I am” is a famous exception.

Maursault 5y ago
Phantom pain is interesting, neurologically, but it does not change what pain is, nor that it is unmistakeable. If you think you are in pain, no matter the source of the pain, then you are in pain, whether you believe in the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen, or not.
- awb 5y ago
  > If you think you are in pain, no matter the source of the pain, then you are in pain That sounds like a philosophy where thinking an experience is real is equivalent to it being real. Which sounds a lot like faith.
  - Maursault 5y ago
    > That sounds like a philosophy where thinking an experience is real is equivalent to it being real. Which sounds a lot like faith. Fascinating observation, as flawed as your reasoning is, because pain is not at all like, say, experiencing a bird flying past, which could be real, could be virtual, it could even be a dream that the individual can not determine is not real, but that does not make it real. Pain does not work this way, so the fallacy you've employed is false equivalence, because you are claiming that if I say "pain is unmistakeable whether it is phantom pain or conventional pain," you've conflated that specific example to a generalization where it no longer holds, that experiencing real x or dream x is equivalent, which is not necessarily true for anything but pain. Again, "if you think you are in pain, then you are in pain" is true, even if it can not be true for all things that could replace pain in that true statement, like if you think you are in Florida, then you are in Florida, which might not be true. But "if you think you are in pain then you are in pain" is always true in all cases, everywhere, always, and most people can immediately intuit this, because it is true. One must have deeply flawed reasoning if one expects anything else to be able to fit in place of pain as though the word were a variable. It is not. I made a specific claim and I made no other. You're making those new claims and arguing against your new claims, making it not only false equivalence, but also the venerable straw man.

by awb 5y ago

Maursault 5y ago

Phantom pain is interesting, neurologically, but it does not change what pain is, nor that it is unmistakeable. If you think you are in pain, no matter the source of the pain, then you are in pain, whether you believe in the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen, or not.

awb 5y ago
> If you think you are in pain, no matter the source of the pain, then you are in pain That sounds like a philosophy where thinking an experience is real is equivalent to it being real. Which sounds a lot like faith.
- Maursault 5y ago
  > That sounds like a philosophy where thinking an experience is real is equivalent to it being real. Which sounds a lot like faith. Fascinating observation, as flawed as your reasoning is, because pain is not at all like, say, experiencing a bird flying past, which could be real, could be virtual, it could even be a dream that the individual can not determine is not real, but that does not make it real. Pain does not work this way, so the fallacy you've employed is false equivalence, because you are claiming that if I say "pain is unmistakeable whether it is phantom pain or conventional pain," you've conflated that specific example to a generalization where it no longer holds, that experiencing real x or dream x is equivalent, which is not necessarily true for anything but pain. Again, "if you think you are in pain, then you are in pain" is true, even if it can not be true for all things that could replace pain in that true statement, like if you think you are in Florida, then you are in Florida, which might not be true. But "if you think you are in pain then you are in pain" is always true in all cases, everywhere, always, and most people can immediately intuit this, because it is true. One must have deeply flawed reasoning if one expects anything else to be able to fit in place of pain as though the word were a variable. It is not. I made a specific claim and I made no other. You're making those new claims and arguing against your new claims, making it not only false equivalence, but also the venerable straw man.