How about giving up magical thinking? I don't know if it would be possible though as it seems to creep in at the margins.

The map is not the territory. The 'self-evident' nature that you identify is a map; it is an artifact of a process. That process, even though it is you in some sense, has only a perspective limited access to what it is to be you.

Within the walls identified by this process you feel justifiably confident in the existence of your experience, in its 'self-evident' nature. But yet there is no escape from the territory, which includes the as yet unexamined foundational substrates of your perspective.

Only one perspective is possible: one's own perspective.

But even one's own perspective is a dynamic, living and changing perspective; and quite probably it is non-unitary in some ways. We are not locked into the mind we are born with, and the experience that you identify is only a limited and conditional aspect of what goes into the making and modification of the experience of 'what you think you are'.

And.. the description implies that is not the case?

What you have said seems like a straightforward consequence of indirect realism.

To put it another way:

If dishonesty is occurring, what, exactly, is being concealed?

Nothing can be learned or tested except through sensory experience.

This claim also requires a perspective from which it is identified. The implementation of this perspective is a source of uncertainty if left unexamined.

Thus outside verification is impossible.

There is no need to talk about outside verification. All verification is done from a perspective--it does not limit my argument to assume a 'sensory experience' interface for that perspective.

I don't see how your response supports your claim that 'experience itself is certain to exist', which is the claim that I am challenging. Would you try to clarify this for me?

but the experience itself is certain to exist.

From what perspective is it certain to exist? When you identify 'the experience', this identification is an explanation from a particular perspective. By your argument it is subject to uncertainty.

I only see the certainty you refer to when I adopt a perspective that assumes there is no uncertainty in its own basis. For example if you establish as an axiom that 'primary sensory experience can be confirmed to exist by the experience itself'.

Otherwise I need a method to identify 'primary sensory experience', a method to identify 'the experience' related to it, and a method to verify that the former can be confirmed to exist by the latter. These methods have their own basis of implementation; which introduce uncertainty if left unexamined.

its formulation strikes me as dishonest, as only primary sensory experience can be confirmed to exist by the experience itself. All other facts about the world are subject to uncertainty.

...

"Indirect realism is broadly equivalent to the accepted view of perception in natural science that states that we do not and cannot perceive the external world as it really is but know only our ideas and interpretations of the way the world is." -- linked wikipedia page

I'm having difficulty seeing what you mean. It seems, while awkwardly phrased, a straightforward proposition with much evidence and little counter-evidence behind it. What seems dishonest about its formulation to you?

IMO, it is extremely naive to think that brains are so perfect that primary sensory experience is not subject to uncertainty

Indirect realism may have some use value but its formulation strikes me as dishonest, as only primary sensory experience can be confirmed to exist by the experience itself. All other facts about the world are subject to uncertainty.

In many cases, religions provide a being/entity/cosmic absolute/"intrinsic property" which is

• Outside of conventional human understanding

• A source emotional significance, labelled "transcendent"

• Emphasizes emotional experience of the transcendent over intellectual understanding, due to it being outside of conventional human understanding anyway.

Do singularitarians have a such a "transcendent constant"? Is there an "instrinsic property" which was compatible with hard materialism? What would a "cosmic absolute" be? What would "babyfucking" be?

Not necessarily. One of the big protective aspects of religion is its community. Singularitarians, by vice of their small numbers, have less of that.