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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (59671)	9/24/2002 1:53:06 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

I agree. However I think you may get some argument from CH or Solon on your position. You and I allow the use of the term "fact" in a way that others do not. A fact may be viewed as you described it, which only involves internal confirmation to qualify as an absolute known fact. A fact as solon describes it must be validated by external observations and tests. In this case it may pass tests of significance to a level of acceptability for practical science but the challenge from CH was "Absolute Facts."

To: Neocon who wrote (59671)	9/24/2002 2:04:53 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"I exist.... I especially liked this part... "; and so forth. of your description of the "I exist" explanation. Does your son do or say things as a result of your influence? (rules, advice, modeling, etc) If so does your influence count as part of your existence? Can you define the limits of your existence?

To: Neocon who wrote (59671)	9/24/2002 2:40:40 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

I would submit that you know none of these things. Almost everything you claim to know can happen in your imagination in dreams. You wake from those and recognize them as dreams. But there is no guarantee that what we call real life isn't also itself a dream from a higher level of truly real life. You may not think so, but you can't know so. It won't, I believe, be long before we can plant electronically in peoples' minds memories of things that never happened. Already we can do an excellent job of creating false memories, and biologically the false memories are indistinguishable from memories of "real" events. Biologically indistinguishable. That's one of the problems with eyewitness testimony in the law. A person can KNOW absolutely that something happened that never in reality, as we interpret reality happened, but it can be just as true for them as though it had happened in reality. When for example a witness testifies as to a recovered memory, they may be testifying to something that never happened but is totally real to them. And there is test -- not lie detectors, not brain wave tests -- that can distinguish the memory of the false event from the memory of a true event. Everything you think you remember could in fact never have happened, and you have no way to prove otherwise.