Or, we can tentative conclude that we have established methods and/or instruments to successfully augment our ability to ascertain accurate results until we have information that they do not. No need to invoke "faith".
I did have some misgivings about using the term “faith” there because of the fideistic baggage it tends to carry with it. My point is that there are some beliefs we hold -- indeed, that we
must hold if we're to be rational -- that can't be justified by any other beliefs that we hold, and one of those beliefs is that our cognitive faculties are generally reliable for producing accurate/true (not quite seeing the accurate/true distinction you're trying to make, I don't think) beliefs.
Ultimately, all of the beliefs we hold -- including all the beliefs we have regarding the established methods and/or instruments we use, and any beliefs we might come to hold that would lessen our confidence in them -- are founded upon a belief that our cognitive faculties are generally oriented toward producing accurate/true beliefs (if they're working as they should, that is). If we didn't hold this belief, then we'd have to relinquish confidence in our faculties to deliver to us genuine knowledge.
Which simply begs the question, how do we determine the way the world actually is?
Well, first of all, what I'm talking about there is a necessary condition for a belief to be true, not how we determine whether or not a belief is true. But that aside, I think that there
is some way that the world actually is, and I trust that my cognitive faculties are generally reliable to discover it, even if they need to be assisted by certain methods and/or instruments.
I agree, other than your inclusion of the word "truth". The accuracy of a term depends on context in which it is used.
Again, I don't think I quite understand your distinction between truth and accuracy.
Not at all, as we need not rely on only our own faculties, we rely on those of others, to repeat and replicate our findings.
But we need to rely on our own faculties to tell us whether those of others are reliable and trustworthy.
I do not have that faith. The more I learn of cognitive science and philosophy of mind, the less "faith" I have in what my faculties hand off to my "phenomenal self".
See
this thread.
I'll admit that I'm not very familiar with Metzinger's work, but I'm not quite seeing its relevance to what we're discussing here. Regardless of whether your faculties hand your beliefs off to your “phenomenal self” or not, I still submit that you confide in their ability to deliver beliefs that are accurate/true more often than not, generally speaking.
Indeed. This brings to mind the book I heard about yesterday,
The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction.
link
I just don't wan't to make the [fallacious] argument that the nastiness of the god portrayal has any correlation to the likelihood of its existence.
Gottfried Leibniz once remarked that “in fact, metaphysics is natural theology, and the same God who is the source of all goods is also the principle of all knowledge.”
It can hardly be denied that God is portrayed in a less-than-savory manner in parts of the Bible, but those who would take such passages and use them to formulate twisted theologies that turn Him into a tyrannical monster would do well to realize that the fundamentals of goodness and reason aren't learned from the pages of any book -- not even the most hallowed of books. A God truly worthy of worship would have to be as Leibniz says -- the ultimate source of all goods and principle of all knowledge -- and any theology that doesn't comport with a healthy foundational understanding of reason and goodness, as gleaned from God's self-revelation through nature, should be consigned to the flames.
I do consider debates to be a poor means of exploring reality. You can win the debate, and still be wrong.
Yes, I agree.
But he does have the outfit to go with the argument:
I have to admit, that outfit does suit him!
I don't see why describing them as "wholly imagined" is not accurate, from the observer's perspective.
I'll take it that by “observer” you mean someone other than the person who's had the experience firsthand. If so, then I think such an assessment can be justified (from that perspective, that is). It might even ultimately be correct as well. For someone who's had such an experience firsthand, however, I think trying to convince him that it was “wholly imagined” would be a rather difficult task, to say the least.
Exactly how does one know if one has had such an experience?
I think in much the same way as one knows that the world he perceives around him is really real, and he isn't just a brain floating in a vat being experimented on by aliens (or what have you).
I believe that the world I perceive with my natural senses is real and not some illusion, but I can't strictly
prove that it's real. It's at least
possible (or at the very least
conceivable) that it's just an illusion. I'd account for my religious experiences in much the same way, and if you were to have such an experience, I think you would too. You'd have an unshakable conviction that what you'd experienced wasn't just an illusion or hallucination or something of the like, but that you'd experienced something real, even if you couldn't strictly prove it.
That is still not where I was going. Try this:
You encounter two complete strangers -- both of whom could be pathological liars or prone to fantastical delusions/hallucinations, for all you know -- who both tell you a very similar (if not identical) fantastic story of perpetual motion machines and immortality drugs. Ultimately, it does not matter to me if one or both of them are lying, or delusional, if neither of them can substantiate their claims.
If such claims fail to convince you, then they fail to convince you, and in such a case as this, it seems to me you'd be perfectly justified in not being convinced. Tales of perpetual motion machines and immortality drugs seem to be of the sort that can be scientifically tested, whereas it has been my experience that claims of religious experience tend not to be of the sort that can be scientifically tested. If they claim their experiences to have relayed to them information on how to make such things, and if that information turns out to be demonstrably false, then I think we can safely say that those experiences were not genuine.