The thought that killed a "source of knowledge"

Posted by m082844 10 years, 1 month ago to Philosophy
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Here is one of the most damning thought experiments regarding religion as a means to knowledge. If you were to start over today; take many infants and raise several different isolated colonies starting from complete ignorance. After several hundred generations in isolation and growth you'll have a unique religion per colony -- not one will be the same -- yet all the science and math they discover must be the same.


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  • Posted by mminnick 10 years, 1 month ago
    Let's do a little figuring and assumption stating and condition setting. First need to ask a few questions.
    1. What is the environment the children are raised in?
    2. What tools etc. do they have?
    3. Initially, are here any adults present?
    4. What is the generational length?
    The answers to these questions plays an important part in how the tribes develop and what they develop. To generate the results you describe, all technology except hunting and fire are absent.
    My thought experiment follows. Not all details are included, just the general outline.
    If we assume a generation length of 20 years, then 100 generation = 2000 years. If the current understanding of human development is correct, 2000 years after starting your experiment, you may, just may, have a flourishing hunter/gatherer society. Another 100 generations you will have the start of cities and agriculture. Now you may start to generate religious thought and the sciences and mathematics. True philosophical thought is another 20 to 50 generation away from be formulated,
    There will be various forms of religion established. Atheism will be considered aberrant thought. After the cities and agriculture are established, advancement will proceed at a geometric rate. The more you learn, the faster and more you learn. It is only after the society/civilization has been around for 8 to 10 thousand years does aberrant thought like atheism and agnosticism really start to grow and spread.
    When the Greeks, Persians, Indians and Egyptians (and the Hittites, Babylonians Meads, Arcadians etc.) exist, we are well into the 50 century mark of the human development story.
    At some point in this development, religion, in its attempt to explain things generates science and mathematics. It is only in the later stages that science replaces religion or attempts to. This is the stage of the current human society. Even now, the inroads of science are relatively small, but they are growing.
    Your statement that the religions are all different is also not totally true. Consider the religions of today. Almost all have a variant of the Golden rule (Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Shinto). At their basic roots they have the same fundamental ideas about humanity. [Feel free to differ].
    Your thought experiment will yield various results depending upon the answers to the questions above, but there is a well know process societies follow in there development. Your thought experiment has been done in the real world several times, following the same pattern with very similar results.

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  • Posted by $ Abaco 10 years, 1 month ago
    Actually, their science would also be different. As a man of science there is one thing I was shocked to realize. We don't know what we're doing when it comes to science, but we think we do. I hope that makes sense. When we were drilling holes in peoples heads to let the demons out to cure a headache we were absolutely sure we were right. Does that makes sense? See the 60 Minutes on Sunday? One of the segments was about the big "oopsy" of us failing to run clinical studies with female rats - only corrected recently in response to us figuring out that the results of drug tests have not been valid. So, my point is that science, like philosophy, is in flux. Their science would not all be the same. What is something that might hinder the progress in science for one or more of the colonies?...religion.
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    • Posted by 10 years, 1 month ago
      Sure, religion will hinder scientific progress, but the scientific discoveries they do make must be the same.

      Objectivism holds that the laws of nature are not in flux so if our ideas are true then neither will they be in flux.
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      • Posted by $ Abaco 10 years, 1 month ago
        Their scientific discoveries "must be the same"? How can that be? And, you're assuming that "our ideas" are linked to the laws of nature. Nothing could be further from the truth. I understand your point, though. But, the reality just doesn't jive. I want it to be true, I really do.

        Societies repeatedly get it wrong when it comes to science. This is because our thoughts and ideas are often not linked to the laws of nature...EVEN in the halls of science. I hope I'm making sense. As I said before: In short, we repeatedly get it wrong when it comes to science. Just look at our recent history. We aren't as smart as we think. This doesn't mean we should stop trying - quite the opposite.

        And, I agree that the laws of nature are not in flux. I based my income and my profession on that.
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        • Posted by 10 years, 1 month ago
          I was implicitly assuming true scientific discoveries when stating that scientific discoveries must be the same. If you think reality is not in flux then how can our ideas be if they are consistent with reality (the hallmark of a true idea)?

          Error is possible and present, but not essential to the thought experiment. True scientific and mathematical concepts must be the same. False concepts may obviously be different, but this does not change the nature of true concepts.
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        • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 1 month ago
          genetically mutate the children in one of the groups to only have 3 fingers and 1 thumb on each hand (or perhaps 12 total fingers). This will cause them to think in base 8 instead of 10. Will this cause a different understanding of science?
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          • Posted by 10 years, 1 month ago
            Not really 2 + 2 will always be 4 no matter the notation or the base system. How else do you think converting from one system to the other is possible if they don't produce essentially the same answer?
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          • Posted by jrberts5 10 years, 1 month ago
            This reminds of one of the Amazonian tribes that first made contact with the outside world back in the 70s or 80s. It was discovered that they did count to ten by switching at 5 and counting on the other hand. They counted to 5 on one hand then pointed to the wrist of that arm for 6, then to the inside of the elbow for 7, then the base of the deltoid for 8, then the top of the shoulder for 9, and then pointed to the neck for 10. Without a doubt, they have been integrated into Brazilian society by now and this has disappeared. I have often wondered if this pointing method indicated if they were living on a mostly perceptual level and their conceptual ability was greatly underdeveloped.
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  • Posted by rlewellen 10 years, 1 month ago
    Do you have evidence to support that claim?
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    • Posted by 10 years, 1 month ago
      Sure, all the religions of the world throughout history. The fact that every Christian/Muslim/Jew/et al. has a slightly different view and will find something to disagree about should they decide to think at all and form their own judgement.

      And the fact that 2 + 2 will always equal 4, or that gravity is always a force that affects mass and energy et al.
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      • Posted by gonzo309 10 years, 1 month ago
        Your second sentence makes Abaco's point that science (or math) would be different. If tribe A uses the base 10 (decimal) system, but what if tribe B came up with a base 3 numbering system? Wouldn't 2+2 = 11? My point is that totally isolated tribes would discover different things at different times and different ways that would alter their perception and affect their inventive genius.

        One tribe thinks the world is flat while the next thinks the earth is round. Since they don't communicate with each other, they will continue to believe that. The reason we can advance science today is the fact that we all try to communicate new discoveries.

        I'll give you an example of science being counterproductive because of vested interests in the outcome. Global warming, now called climate change, where scientists can show the proof or lack of proof of data to support their position. No one can doubt that climate changes constantly, but scientists felt it necessary to alter the data in the famous hockey stick chart of global warming data and email back and forth that it is better to change the data to ensure their position would be accepted as fact.

        As to gravity, its effects are suspended when magnetism enters into the equation, such as plasma or antimatter magnetically held in mid-air so it won't touch anything. If gravity always works the same way, the universe wouldn't be expanding and accelerating away from other planetary bodies.

        Things are not always black and white but varying shades of grey, both in science and religion.
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        • Posted by 10 years, 1 month ago
          In short, no. 2 + 2 is always 4 no matter the notation or base system used; it may only look different, but that is not essential to the concept.

          The rest of your post is similar so I repeat what I said to EconFree.

          I'm not saying they'd all colonies would use the same language/notation or discover at the same rate or in the same categories of science or that they are impervious to error -- which are all likely to be false and most importantly they are all inessential to the thought experiment. The essential is that the mathematical/scientific concepts they do discover that are true are necessarily the same and could be demonstrated in reality.

          I'll ask you the same questions, if you don't mind. Do you think reality is objective in the sense Objectivism means? Do you think we can form concepts that are consistent with reality? If yes to all the above, then why do you think it is possible to have two different ideas that are contradictory be true?
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          • Posted by gonzo309 10 years, 1 month ago
            I haven't studied objectivism being new to Ayn Rand's concepts. If I belong to tribe A and I run across a notepad dropped by tribe B, I can only go by what I see and would consider it jibberish but valid in the eyes of the writer.

            When a photon can act as a particle or a wave, depending on who is looking at it, but not both at one time, I see it as a contradiction in its defining properties, yet they are both realities of the observation. I have yet to clearly understand how that could be, but it can be demonstrated true over and over.
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            • Posted by 10 years, 1 month ago
              A contradiction is something that is and isn't at the same time in the same respect.

              When the photon is viewed as a wave, does it cease to be a particle? When it is viewed as a particle does it cease to be a wave? If no to both, then it's not a contradiction. If yes to both, is it observed at the same time to be both a particle and a wave? If yes, then by definition it's a contradiction and cannot physically exist. If no, then it's not a contradiction.

              My guess is the observed is never a contradiction, but the ideas derived from it are -- making the ideas falsely derived, and therefore, false.
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          • -2
            Posted by EconomicFreedom 10 years, 1 month ago
            >In short, no. 2 + 2 is always 4 no matter the notation or base system used; it may only look different, but that is not essential to the concept.

            Except your wrong. 2+2=4 in mathematical systems that permit 2+2 to equal 4; in systems that don't permit 2+2 to equal 4, then 2+2 does not equal 4.

            See:

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_ari...
            Modular Arithmetic.

            Clock arithmetic need not premit 2+2 to equal 4. If you have a clock divided into thirds, with each division marked 0, 1, 2, respectively, then going 2 units clockwise puts you at "2", and adding another 2 units clockwise puts you at "1". So in "Modulo 3 Arithmetic", 2+2=1.

            Clearly, you grew up in a colony whose ultra-fundamentalist religious fervor stunted your intellectual growth.
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            • Posted by 10 years, 1 month ago
              I see you likely think your argument is insufficient if you feel like you must revert to name calling.

              Yes, if you change the base number system the symbols no longer mean the same thing -- no body is arguing otherwise. The "tags" assigned to the concepts change while the concepts remain the same. In binary the "tag" 10 represents the same concept as the "tag" 4 in a base ten system, which represents the same concept as the tag "3" in a base three system. In other words, 10 cows in binary will always equal 4 cows in a base ten system -- your equivocations not withstanding. Your insessent focus on the tags and forgetting what they actually represent -- the concepts -- is causing you to be confused.

              You might as well be saying 12 inches doesn't equal 1 foot.
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              • -1
                Posted by EconomicFreedom 10 years, 1 month ago
                >The "tags" assigned to the concepts change while the concepts remain the same.

                "Tag"? What tag? I don't remember Miss Rand mentioning "tags" in ITOE. Are you inventing your own system?
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        • Posted by $ Abaco 10 years, 1 month ago
          When we thought the world was flat we were absolutely sure of it. Religion had nothing to do with that. We just saw ships sailing away and going down over the horizon. When we bled patients as a way of healing them we were sure that was the proper method. Why? Because it was done several times and, lo-and-behold, the person's illness went away. Believe it or not, a lot of medical science today is just as weak. Hell, we had doctors in a local hospital putting human feces in people's brains to try to cure them of cancer. Didn't turn out very well. That was just in the past year or so, in America!
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          • Posted by gonzo309 10 years, 1 month ago
            That's because some of those doctors had s*** for brains, like some of my daughter's past dates. Blood letting didn't work out quite so well for George Washington. If it didn't work well enough the first time, let's do it again; oops!
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  • -1
    Posted by EconomicFreedom 10 years, 1 month ago
    >If you were to start over today; take many infants and raise several different isolated colonies starting from complete ignorance. After several hundred generations in isolation and growth you'll have a unique religion per colony

    According to your thought experiment, atheism would not naturally develop in any of the colonies; only religion would. If so, it suggests that religion is both natural and necessary to human society, and that therefore, they are, at root, not so very different from one another (since people's psychological needs are determined by the kind of consciousness they have). Religious *practices* would vary a great deal, but the root religious experience involving a Creator might very well be similar.

    >yet all the science and math they discover must be the same.

    Not sure what you mean by that. Obviously, notation systems would differ, as would basic assumptions about the universe. There's nothing in your model disallowing one colony from thinking up the idea of "zero" and developing a system of scientific notation similar to our own, and another colony having a counting system comprising "one, two, three, many" and ending there.

    There's nothing in your model preventing one colony from assuming that there are two kinds of blood, arterial and venous, while another colony figures out that there's only kind of blood which at one moment is oxygenated and at another not.

    >Here is one of the most damning thought experiments regarding religion as a means to knowledge.

    You could just as easily damn philosophy as a means to knowledge, since each colony would be just as likely to think up its own unique system.

    Instead of being a religion-hater for its own sake, why not be a lover of intellectual history for its own sake, and realize that there's no such thing as a big, homogeneous fund of something called "knowledge" to which only science has access, but rather that knowledge is heterogeneous — there are different kinds of knowledge and different methods of access: religion gives religious knowledge; science gives scientific knowledge.
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    • Posted by 10 years, 1 month ago
      It depends on what you mean by atheism and naturally develop. If by atheism you mean without belief in a supernatural being, then all infants are atheists. If by natural you mean seems to just happen, then sure. It may be natural for people to place religion where they are ignorant, but it's still not a valid source of knowledge. There are many ways to be wrong, naturally. Yet at root many wrong ideas share one thing in common -- they are false.

      Notations are not essential -- they can be different -- to scientific discovery. A colony only able to count to three shares that much in common with all colonies able to count to higher numbers. Regarding blood types, different colonies share ideas in common to the degree of their discovery.

      I'm not saying they'd all colonies would use the same language/notation or discover at the same rate or in the same categories of science or that they are impervious to error -- which are all likely to be false and most importantly they are all inessential to the thought experiment. The essential is that the mathematical/scientific concepts they do discover that are true are necessarily the same and could be demonstrated in reality; I'm surprised that any rational person would deny this much -- then again I am assuming you're bing rational.

      To clarify whether or not you're rational, do you mind answering a few questions? Do you think reality is objective in the sense Objectivism means? Do you think we can form concepts that are consistent with reality? If yes to all the above, then why do you think it is possible to have two different ideas that are contradictory be true?
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      • -2
        Posted by EconomicFreedom 10 years, 1 month ago
        >If by atheism you mean without belief in a supernatural being, then all infants are atheists.

        And so are sleeping theists — not to mention clouds, rocks, and chickens. Try not to be trivial, OK?

        By "atheism" I mean the positive belief that all phenomena in the universe are explainable as material effects from material causes, and that a non-material First Cause (or Prime Mover) is redundant to such explanation and can therefore be dropped from consideration. You were the one who assumed that no colony would develop such a belief.

        >If by natural you mean seems to just happen, then sure. It may be natural for people to place religion where they are ignorant, but it's still not a valid source of knowledge.

        "Natural" does not mean "just seems to happen." "Natural" means "developing as a result of an entity's identity."

        >There are many ways to be wrong, naturally. Yet at root many wrong ideas share one thing in common -- they are false.

        There are many ways to be wrong, scientifically and mathematically. Yet at root many scientifically and mathematically wrong ideas share one thing in common — they are false.

        >Notations are not essential -- they can be different -- to scientific discovery. A colony only able to count to three shares that much in common with all colonies able to count to higher numbers.

        Religious practices and dress are not essential — they can be different — to the root religious experience. All colonies that share the insight that the universe required a First Cause or Prime Mover have, at least, that much in common.

        >Regarding blood types, different colonies share ideas in common to the degree of their discovery.

        But that isn't what you asserted previously. You asserted that ALL colonies — not just "different colonies" — would have identical science and math.

        >The essential is that the mathematical/scientific concepts they do discover that are true . . .

        A "true" mathematical/scientific concept is one that hasn't **yet** been put through a proof or an experiment rigorous enough to disprove it. Except for trivially true tautologies ("A is A"), no mathematical/scientific concept is true for all times and in all contexts.


        >To clarify whether or not you're rational, do you mind answering a few questions?

        It's a bit like the blind asking the sighted if they can really see by means of asking a few questions. But go ahead. I'll do my best to answer using as few polysyllable words as possible so that you'll grasp what I'm saying.

        >Do you think reality is objective in the sense Objectivism means?

        In what sense does Objectivism mean that reality is objective?

        >Do you think we can form concepts that are consistent with reality?

        Yep. Math, science, religion, art, etc., can all form concepts that are consistent with reality. No one single tool of inquiry — math, science, religion, art — has a monopoly on forming concepts consistent with reality.

        >If yes to all the above, then why do you think it is possible to have two different ideas that are contradictory be true?

        I have no idea what you're talking about. Neither do you. You've said nothing about ideas being "contradictory." You claimed that all of the mathematical/scientific concepts developed by each colony would be consistent with one another. That's false. The truth is that the mathematical/scientific concepts developed by any one colony need not be consistent with those developed by any other colony. In fact, the mathematical/scientific concepts developed by one colony at time X in its history need not be consistent with mathematical/scientific concepts developed by the same colony at time Y in its history.

        Again: you said nothing about contradictory ideas in your thought experiment, so why bring it up now?
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        • Posted by 10 years, 1 month ago

          It is not trivial. Atheism is commonly defined as without or lacking a belief in a supernatural being. "A" meaning without and "theism" meaning a belief in a supernatural being. Also, belief isn't something that exists only when consciously focusing on it -- that's just silly. That is not what I meant either.

          I don't believe I said I assume that a colony wouldn't develop atheism (as you mean the term).

          If that's what you mean by natural, then no religion doesn't have to develop, since belief is a choice and what one bases a belief is a choice.

          I was implicitly saying true mathematical and scientific concepts. So no there aren't many contradictory concepts when they are true.

          I find the rest as more of the same so I'll skip to the questions.

          Objectivism's position on objective reality: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/object...

          Or my personal favorite:
          http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Ep...

          So you are the master of what I know and what I don't? How condescending. If you know what a contradiction is, then you know that two ideas that are contradictory cannot both be true. I brought up contradictory now because I was implicitly including it in the original post. I haven't the time or the interest to guess what any ready may need me to expound upon, nor do I wish to right an encyclopedia in order to avoid implicit ideas.
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          • -1
            Posted by EconomicFreedom 10 years, 1 month ago
            >It is not trivial. Atheism is commonly defined as without or lacking a belief in a supernatural being. "A" meaning without and "theism" meaning a belief in a supernatural being. Also, belief isn't something that exists only when consciously focusing on it -- that's just silly. That is not what I meant either.

            You claimed that infants are atheists because they lack a belief in God (not being fully conscious on the conceptual level yet, they lack any belief in anything — so would you therefore call all babies "Nihilists"?). It makes no difference what the cause of the "lack of a belief" is: it could be because they are not yet on a conceptual level of consciousness; it could be because they are not on any level of consciousness — which would include sleeping imams and anesthetized rabbis. It would also include anything not having consciousness at all (because these things, too, lack beliefs), such as clouds, rocks, and stars.

            Since lots of things "lack beliefs" for lots of different reasons, it may be true to specify that babies, too, lacking ANY belief, therefore lack the specific belief in God, and must therefore be called atheists. But by the same reasoning process, you must also include sleeping imams, etherized rabbis, comatose priests, stones, stars, and clouds. That is why your point is trivial. TRUE, but TRIVIALLY TRUE.

            >I don't believe I said I assume that a colony wouldn't develop atheism (as you mean the term).

            You said that each colony would necessarily develop a religion (or religions) unique to itself, differing from the religion (or religions) of each other colony; but that mathematical and scientific concepts would necessarily be the same across all the colonies. Since you mentioned nothing about atheism (however meant), it was clear that your thought experiment excluded it by definition. I thought it was a significant omission, since in fact — in human history, that is — atheism arose nowhere in antiquity or pre-antiquity; atheism is a late arrival philosophically.

            >If that's what you mean by natural, then no religion doesn't have to develop, since belief is a choice and what one bases a belief is a choice.

            The details (customs, practices) are by choice; the essential religious experience is not. That's why all human societies begin with some sort of religion; atheism, as I wrote above, is a late arrival. Read "Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James.

            And that's also why "atheism" might be informally described (not defined, but informally described) as simply lacking a belief in God; but since you cannot define a concept by what it is NOT but only by what it IS, then the specific difference of "atheism" cannot be a "lack of something". It has to substitute something for God as the unifying principle of existence. For atheists, that principle is materialism: i.e., all events in the universe are, at root, material events (including psychological events such as thinking, reasoning, imagining, dreaming, etc.) with immediate material causes, and those causes are themselves material effects with immediate material causes, etc., ad infinitum.

            >I was implicitly saying true mathematical and scientific concepts.

            And I pointed out that "true mathematical and scientific concepts" are simply "tentatively true"; i.e., true for the time being, until we disprove them.

            >I find the rest as more of the same so I'll skip to the questions.
            >Objectivism's position on objective reality: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/object......

            You couldn't summarize the Objectivist position in your own words?

            (sigh)

            You asked for it:

            >"Objectivity is both a metaphysical and an epistemological concept. It pertains to the relationship of consciousness to existence. Metaphysically, it is the recognition of the fact that reality exists independent of any perceiver’s consciousness."

            Except, of course, those big chunks of reality that absolutely RELY on consciousness to become manifest, such as the entire realm of perceptual qualities — QUALIA, in Aristotelian terms — "color" is a subjective experience that becomes real INSIDE consciousness. The only thing that exists apart from consciousness that correlates with the experience of color is something that itself does not have color: wavelength, or any quantum-mechanical refinement of that idea.

            The basic idea that the reality of QUALIA resides in consciousness, not "objectively" in material existence, goes back to Galileo.

            What applies to color as a quality also applies, of course, to sound, texture, smell, taste, force, weight, and perhaps others.

            Physics proves to us that the desk I'm working on right now is actually mainly empty space. My experience of it is anything *but* empty space: it feels solid, weighs a lot (i.e., exerts what I feel as force on my arms when I try to lift it, etc.). But a neutrino wouldn't even know it was there; it would pass right through it as if it didn't exist, because a neutrino is so much smaller than the spaces between the atoms comprising the desk. So why is my experience of the desk "more true" than the neutrino's?

            Returning to the Official Lexicon's definition of "Objectivity": only some aspects of reality exist apart from consciousness. Much of it — all qualities, for example — manifest themselves AS qualities only IN consciousness. A photon exists outside of consciousness; light does not. "Light" is a qualitative experience; photons are not. Photons CORRELATE to the experience we call "light".

            The real relationship between consciousness and matter/energy is one of *inter-penetration*, not one of a Great Divide, with consciousness a kind of evanescent "something" bouncing around in your head between your ears, and "existence" outside of that.

            And I should also point out that I have always strongly objected to the Objectivist habit of calling one side "consciousness" and the other side "existence." Obviously, consciousness exists and is part of existence — a natural, *irreducible* part of existence: it's not reducible to little particles behaving according to physical law. So I divide things up by calling one side "consciousness" and the other side "matter/energy". Both comprise Existence.

            Continuing:

            >Epistemologically, it is the recognition of the fact that a perceiver’s (man’s) consciousness must acquire knowledge of reality by certain means (reason) in accordance with certain rules (logic).

            The function of logic is not to acquire knowledge; it never has been and it never will be. The function of logic (in science, at least) is to ensure coherence between new knowledge and old knowledge, so that there are no (glaring) contradictions or anomalies. The acquisition of scientific knowledge is a creative act, no different from artistic creation. Logic is useless for that. The main tool of knowledge acquisition is imagination, not logic. Logic comes in *after* the fact.

            I could go on, but I've digressed long enough. It's your fault, by the way. Had you summarized all of this in your words, I could have replied to your summary. Instead, you linked to a site with a long, detailed explanation, putting me in the position of answering everything point by point (thus risking a long excursus), or answering only one or two points (thus risking your replying with something like, "Yeah, but you forgot THAT point! And you omitted THIS point! And you didn't say anything about the OTHER thing!" etc.)

            You can a start a separate thread if you wish with that link to the Official Lexicon and I'll answer everything point by point.

            >I brought up contradictory now because I was implicitly including it in the original post.

            It might have been implicit to you, but it certainly wasn't implicit to me. See how "reality", per se, cannot be the arbiter of anything? "Reality" is silent and "truth" is NOT manifest, but subtle and elusive. So why not try being explicit, instead of omitting things and pretending later on that your meaning was clear but "implicit"?
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            • Posted by 10 years, 1 month ago
              You really ought to exercise some self control. No body asked you to disprove Objectivity, I merely asked you if you think reality is objective (as objectivism means the term). It's clear to me that you don't think it, and your equivocations and context dropping hardly functions as a disproof. It is time for me to say so long to you, I do not wish to administer medicine to the dead -- or to do anything that's equally a waste of my time.
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              • -1
                Posted by EconomicFreedom 10 years, 1 month ago
                >You really ought to exercise some self control.

                You should live up to your responsibilities when debating ideas.

                >No body asked you to disprove Objectivity,

                I'm glad you think I disproved Objectivity, but I did no such thing. You were too lazy to summarize the article at the Lexicon site so you merely posted a link to it, hoping that would be enough. Instead, I read the article and pointed out some flaws in it. That doesn't mean I "disproved Objectivity." And by the way, if you knew anything about epistemology, you would know that "to prove something" or "to disprove something" rests on an assumption of objectivity.

                >It's clear to me that you don't think it,

                I don't think anything is clear to you. Your posts, so far, have been a muddled mess. You make arbitrary assumptions in your grand "thought experiment" and when weaknesses are pointed out, you pretend that you meant "implicitly" the opposite all along.

                >It is time for me to say so long to you

                So long! Don't go away mad. Just go away.

                :)
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