There is a difference between skepticism toward the tools of thought, which cuts down the tree it is standing on, and skepticism about sensory systems.

The idea in the question is that if every sensory system (reliable or not) would develop a feeling of trust in itself, then one cannot use the sense of trust we place in the system as evidence in its favor.

B. I would be glad to know what the Rabbi means by an immediate experience. This is a concept the Rabbi raises often in these topics.

A. I do not see any difference.
B. What is unclear?

A. There is a huge difference. When a person challenges the system of thought, he is challenging it by means of thought itself. So if he challenges it, he cannot actually do so. (He cuts down the tree he is standing on / using.)
But when a person challenges the sensory system, he can challenge it by means of a proper thinking system.

So if almost all sensory systems would develop in us a feeling of trust in them, then one cannot use the claim that what I experience seems correct to me in order to try to prove that it is probably indeed correct!

B. Do you mean that there is some sort of control system that experiences the object that exists in reality, and also experiences the output of its sensory system and sees that they are identical, and thus concludes that it is correct?

As long as it is consistent, it does not really matter whether it is reliable or not, whether it represents reality or an illusion. What practical difference does it make?

A practical difference for a woman’s betrothal. And for truth. And for meaning. And lots more. If you have a reasonable and serious understanding that everything is wrong, would you not see any practical difference in that? If you truly do not see one, it seems to me that you are ill.

Yair,
A. A person can neither challenge nor validate the sensory system by means of thought. We learn about the world through observations. Either you trust them or you do not. Even the challenge based on evolution is based on facts (evolution is a scientific field, and a product of observations). Therefore there is no difference between challenging thought and challenging the senses. Both are mere skepticism, and there is no point in discussing things with skeptics or discussing skepticism.
B. I mean that I have an immediate perception of something, and that is that. The wording about a control system making comparisons is not helpful here, because you can now ask the same questions about the control system itself. Again I tell you that this is a skeptical question that I see no point in engaging in.

A. If so, why does the Rabbi trust observations? After all, you have never encountered the thing in itself, only through the prism of the eyes.
In practice, you are accepting an arbitrary basic assumption with no basis whatsoever.
B. Indeed. But why do you not see any point in engaging in it?

A. Every basic assumption is accepted “without a basis.” Whoever wants a basis for all his assumptions will remain without any assumptions at all (because the basis itself is baseless). Intuition is my basis, and if you wonder at my trust in intuition, I already answer: just because.
B. Because of what I explained. See section A.

As stated, I will not discuss the question of skepticism. If you are a skeptic—then good health to you. And if not—then even better health.

I can understand someone who says: it seems to me that my sensory system is more reliable than unreliable. After all, in the end we have no other tools to rely on, and a judge has only what his own eyes can see.

But simply accepting an observation about the world as reliable for no reason at all sounds completely arbitrary.
The point is that my attack here is aimed at that very person for whom it seems reasonable that what he sees is correct, and he justifies it by saying that it seems correct to him. Here my claim is that every sensory system would develop that same feeling of reliability—after all, one can never distinguish between truth and falsehood when one has never encountered both. Consequently, one cannot use that capacity.

A somewhat strange parable for this: if whenever a person comes to the seashore he sees a bird in the sky (even when it is known that there is no such bird). Now when he is at the seashore and sees a bird, does he have a reason to trust that there really is a bird in the sky and that this is not just a hallucination?

Did the Rabbi accidentally skip the message? Do you disagree with my seashore parable?

The seashore parable is irrelevant, because there (by your own words) it is known that the bird does not really exist. By contrast, no one knows that the world is an illusion.
By the way, it is strange that you ask the Rabbi whether he skipped the question. After all, he is an illusion too (according to your seashore parable, may it live and endure), so what is there to expect from him reading comments here?

D, that was not a question to me, but to himself. Apparently his imagination betrays him from time to time. 🙂

When people do not know how to answer, they move on to mockery.
Pluralism at its finest.
And I will say again: if every system creates the same feeling of reliability, then one cannot rely on the fact that there is a feeling of reliability regarding an observation and assume that it really is such.

Hello Yair.
I am sorry if you were hurt, and I am even more sorry that you think this was done because there is nothing to answer.
I can only say regarding what you wrote in the last message that I never said I was a pluralist. How many times have I already explained that I am not? I am tolerant, but as I have also explained, even tolerance has a price at which one buys or gains it. See my article about this here:

מחירה של הסובלנות

Beyond the fact that I already answered you, and beyond the fact that you were also already answered by D (and that is a completely serious answer and not mockery, except that it was written sarcastically), I have already explained to you several times, and I will repeat again, that I will not discuss ordinary skepticism. What you keep raising again and again and again is, once more, ordinary skepticism.

Ordinary skepticism is when a person simply raises a doubtful claim with no basis at all.
Here the skepticism is completely different. True, there is indeed no basis for skepticism (just as there is no basis at all), but it claims that one cannot use the assumption that a basic assumption seems reasonable. And I will explain:
There is a very important parameter in accepting a basic assumption, namely that we think these assumptions are indeed reasonable.

But my attack is directed precisely at this point: if every system, even an unreliable one, develops a feeling of trust, then one cannot place trust in the reasonableness of the basic assumption.

Perhaps in order for the Rabbi to understand this, one can say that there are two levels of basic assumptions. A. That I exist and that I possess understanding and judgment. B. Assumptions that come by way of observing things external to me. My whole attack is here on B. The assumptions in B are accepted by means of A. They do not stand on their own, and the Rabbi also agrees with this, since he mentioned that this is a matter of observation.
I think this is simple, and it seems to me that Descartes also argued this when he challenged everything around him precisely.

The simple answer is that our default is to accept the senses, and apparently your argument is not strong enough to make us move from that.

But the default, as I mentioned, would be to accept any sense, however fake it may be. (Seemingly, as long as it is coherent.)

The term “fake” comes from the product market. There are genuine products (Polo shirts), and there are fake products (Turkish shirts that look like Polo). Transferring the terminology to reality is strange. And if your senses are fake, what are you going to do—ask for a refund? File a complaint with the authorities? Invalidate the ruling?

The senses are your working tools. That is what there is. To claim that they are fake is to assume that they are replaceable. They are not, and there is nothing to add to that.

That is semantic terminology. So call them defective. The local authority here keeps making exactly this claim morning and evening about anyone who does not accept that there is free will… (also in his books on his upgraded skepticism) and also in the column against determinism. (This is ad hominem, but I do not know whether you attacked him for it there. If not, then you are not coherent.)

By the way, if the senses are defective but still have some connection to the world and give a coherent picture, then it is not clear that this has much practical significance. Because it may very well be possible to get along with them. A parable for this is the philosophers’ chestnut and someone who needs glasses. I am talking about senses at the level of hallucination, which do not present a picture connected to the world.

Yair,
If the question is philosophical—do our senses give us reliable information?—then it depends on the possibility of alternatives on the basis of which you make a judgment (false versus reliable, defective versus sound, and so on). For my part, I am not familiar with alternatives, and therefore I do not see any theoretical possibility of judging my senses.

If you are asking a neurological-psychological question, then there is quite a bit of research on the subject, with interesting insights in books by neurologists, but that is unrelated to the philosophical dimension.

What do you mean you are not familiar with alternatives? Just now you mentioned four more. I think you are simply denying the alternatives.

I assume the insights are that there is indeed no way to know whether the observation is reliable or not.

I am asking a philosophical question that rests on a psychological assumption. The observing person cannot distinguish between a reliable system and an unreliable one. Consequently, there is no basis whatsoever for saying that the existing system is reliable. Just as someone in a mirage cannot distinguish between a lake of water and a desert.

Yair,
To distinguish between truth and falsehood is an intellectual trait. It is a choice of the mind whether to trust the senses or not. “The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord made both of them.” The Malbim explained: these two senses, sight and hearing, are the most helpful in cognition, and a person must use these two senses for the honor of their Maker: that he should hear the words of Torah and wisdom from sages, and see and discern the works of God through examination of created things. Notice that it does not simply say an ear and an eye, but “a hearing ear” and “a seeing eye,” implying that in order truly to see and to hear, one must learn how to hear and how to see.