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

[Micha Berger]

On Sat, Mar 07, 2020 at 09:25:10PM -0500, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
> 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....

Of course, Kant was speaking of phenomena like space and time, time
having an arrow... Things pretty surely universal.

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

And yet today, aphantasia is found in only 1%-3% of the population.
https://www.livescience.com/61183-what-is-aphantasia.html
Slightly less common than legal blindness or visual impairment in the US.
https://www.cdc.gov/visionhealth/basic_information/vision_loss_burden.htm

But no one would say that making deductions about reality based on how
sighted people experience the world is flawed because there are
non-sighted people.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 When one truly looks at everyone's good side,
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   others come to love him very naturally, and
Author: Widen Your Tent      he does not need even a speck of flattery.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                      - Rabbi AY Kook