[Avodah] Proving the Existence of G-d from the Existence of Self

[Zev Sero]

On 4/3/20 1:59 pm, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
 > A transcendental argument does not appeal to anything factual. Instead,
 > asks what must be true if certain features of human experience are
 > accepted as given.

One trap to avoid, though, is to assume that ones own experience is
universal.  "Kol echad be`atzmo shi`er", and assumed everyone else must
be the same.  If that assumption is not true, it can lead to utter
confusion, as people debate at cross-purposes, each completely unable
to understand the other's arguments.   See, for an example,

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-from-one-example

     There was a debate, in the late 1800s, about whether "imagination"
     was simply a turn of phrase or a real phenomenon. That is, can
     people actually create images in their minds which they see vividly,
     or do they simply say "I saw it in my mind" as a metaphor for
     considering what it looked like?

     Upon hearing this, my response was "How the stars was this actually
     a real debate? Of course we have mental imagery. Anyone who doesn't
     think we have mental imagery is either such a fanatical Behaviorist
     that she doubts the evidence of her own senses, or simply insane."
     Unfortunately, the professor was able to parade a long list of
     famous people who denied mental imagery, including some leading
     scientists of the era. And this was all before Behaviorism even
     existed.

     The debate was resolved by Francis Galton, a fascinating man who
     among other achievements invented eugenics, the "wisdom of crowds",
     and standard deviation. Galton gave people some very detailed
     surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and
     others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did,
     and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the
     point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were
     lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum
     of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect
     eidetic imagery to three percent of people completely unable to
     form mental images.

     Dr. Berman dubbed this the Typical Mind Fallacy: the human tendency
     to believe that one's own mental structure can be generalized to
     apply to everyone else's.

-- 
Zev Sero            Have a kosher Purim and a happy Pesach
zev at sero.name       Seek Jerusalem's peace; may all who love you prosper