Percy writes:
Notice that my definition said "directly or indirectly". Things that are real have the power to affect us through our senses.
Whether directly or indirectly, you are (I assume) limiting things to 5 sense involvement. What is real, in other words, is what involves the 5 senses: directly or indirectly. This is issued as if a truth statement.
Would you acknowledge that it is best described as a philosophical statement?
That blind people's eyes can't perceive light doesn't mean light isn't part of reality for them. Certainly photocells still work for blind people, and a spectrometer rigged to print braille or to speak could tell them the color of things.
We shouldn't confuse "bleeper of pitch X" (which goes off whenever RED enters a blind persons room) with the blind person detecting the quantity RED. What they are detecting is what someone else has told them is quantity RED. Not RED itself. 2.5D is only representitive of 3D
The key question for you is that if there are portions of reality that our senses can't detect, then how do you detect them?
A person can detect only that which they have the senses to detect. If they have 4 senses (as in a blind person) then the 5th quantity(RED) they will not detect. If they have but 5 senses then not the 6th quantity. If 6th then not the 7th etc.
What is real is not limited to what a person can detect. This is where your philosophy errs in suggesting to tell truth
(I wouldn't be too quick in trying to force parallels about a 4th being able to apply science to strain to perceive the 5th - whereas the 5th cannot do so to strain to perceive the 6th (so say the 6ths). There is nothing that says the 6th need be approached this way.)
What I said was pretty clear, but I can rephrase it for you. Science is the best way we have by far for establishing what is most likely consistent with or representative of reality.
OK. Sorry for being snippy. The basic point remains. There is this suggestion that science somehow determines the boundaries of reality - rather than "science comments upon what it can comment upon".
(aside: I'd go so far as to agree that what science comments upon forms part of reality. But I would have to call that reality a mere subset of the bigger picture - the extent of which I can only guess at)
Then start a new thread. This thread is about the best way to debunk, which I believe is to seek evidence of a claimed phenomenon to see how well the claims stand up against reality.
I understand the threads goal. And I have no issue with it. My issue is with your assumption of higher ground.
If you suggested/implied/hinted that: "...claims that stand up against a materialistic and naturalistic philosophical take on reality" then I would have no issue with you. But this is not the case. Take this:
But you and LindaLou keep making vague statements like this without ever telling us how you're going to detect anything that your senses can't detect. As long as you continue to avoid addressing what appears to everyone else as a very basic logical contradiction, it's a pretty safe assumption you're wrong.
I haven't read LindaLou to comment. The issue is not me demonstrating my case but you explaining yours. You suggest (in terms that render it a-claim-by-any-other-name) the extent of reality. It is yours to demonstrate that that is the extent. This of course you cannot do. Anymore that any other claimant of any other extent can do. LindaLou for example.
If you are happy that reality can exist beyond 5th sense then you might say so - rather than strongly imply it is not the case. This might be a bridge to far so why not agnosticism? Why cast "probably" and "likely" around like so much Dawkinsian confetti. There is no foundation for those statements other that assuming the assumptions on which they are based are actually true.
And you don't make truth statements. You said so yourself.
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