Me: Siri, set my alarm for 7am.

Siri: Here is a list of videos titled Tom Tom Solo by River Banks!

This sandwich tastes weird

I found your cat, call me if you want it back

I've actually not read Descartes myself, and I'm due to! But I was going to suggest Russel's chapter on Idealism from The Problems of Philosophy. Most of everything I said here was really regurgitated Russel.

>To me it would make more sense to say you believe your senses than to say you have faith in them

Yes, but let's draw a line in the sand here. Even though your senses probably do not accurately reflect objective reality, your experience of your senses is absolutely certain. So there would not be much "believing" involved.

After that... Things get a little fuzzy in terms of certainty... Less and less certain... Emotions and thoughts are the runner-up... Immediate memories... Further memories... Universal laws... And so on...

This is not the realm of philosophy, really. But even a psychologist will tell you that trusting your emotional instinct wouldn't be helpful all the time.

There's not a 100% certainty of the world not being a creation of my own mind or a mirage of some sort, but that conclusion leads to a bit of a dead end in terms of further philosophizing or further anything really... It would involve too many mental gymnastics and isn't a very "evident" idea... Can I suggest a reading?

Yes, you figured it out. We all live in Descartes' dream.

>Similarly, I do not have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, as I understand that the sun is a celestial object that could be subject to any number of extremely rare astrological phenomenon that would destroy it.

Yes, but why do you expect astrological phenomenons to be the same tomorrow? Why do you expect gravity to function as it functions today tomorrow?

>Why not accept both of them as they are along with their epistemological uncertainty? Why even bring faith into the picture? You can't know anything with absolute certainty other than the fact of existence.

This! Pretty much where the line should have been drawn. Both our sensory information and our emotional experiences reveal things about the world with different degrees of certainty. Period.

So, just to recap a little here. The principle of induction is a principle that animals have as well as humans and it is precisely that we trust or believe that if things happened a certain way repeatedly, then they will continue to do so in the future. There is not really a "reason" to expect that but there is the fact that when things happen repeatedly, we expect them to keep happening the same way.

Yes, "I think therefore I am" is the famous quote by Descartes which illustrates his ideas about reality. Even if everything is a dream, there remains the fact that he is dreaming, and so there must be something to contain that dream.

There's a difference here. If you want to make sure that a fruit you are holding is what was described to you as the guava fruit, then yes, you do make a certain leap of faith. But you do not need faith to actually experience a guava if that makes any sense. The sensory experience is the most certain and vivid experience that we all have.

I think the leap of faith Goff is claiming is pertaining to the principle of induction rather than our sensory experiences. I don't need faith to smell a guava for example. But I do take it on faith that the sun will rise tomorrow because it has done so every day in the past.

>Sensory experiences do not necessarily logically reflect a world out there - they could very well be akin to a mirage.

This is one of the most basic questions of philosophy famously presented by Descartes. He answers it by saying that even if our sensory experience is a mirage, our experience of the mirage is real, and so there has to be "a" world.

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>There’s no good argument against external world skepticism.

"External world skepticism" denies the very platform of logic on which it stands asking to be dispelled.

I'm laughing at all the people who sold their GOOG stocks right now.

The definition of consciousness in the article is lacking. The distinction between human and AI consciousness presented is dubious. Claims of AI achieving consciousness is questionnable and AI advancements in various fields remain in development but yes, this is a very exciting time to be alive.

The argument here seems to be "Cultivate self-awareness for rational decision making" rather than "choose irrationality"

As a native Arabic speaker, I find that the sound and shape of Arabic words make the meanings they describe incredibly vivid. There is an element of iconicity in this relationship that I don't experience with other languages like English, French, or Spanish.

To be honest, this is pretty funny.