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Personhood is a Religious Belief
lucky13-3-3

You're getting heavily ratio'd, and with good reason tbh. 

If you aren't advocating any particular god, you really aren't saying anything. Your point is just "the idea of other human minds existing independently" is as unverifiable as "the idea that our universe was created". If you ended your commentary there then fine, but trying to add any meaning to that is where you go off the rails.

While personhood and a creator are both unverifiable, one does not use something being unverifiable as a reason to believe in all unverifiable things.  Do you bel... (read more)

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2jan Sijan
You added more meaning by interpretation. All the power to you. But it is your power, not mine. I wrote according to my intentions, and you may interpret according to yours, or you may try reading with a critical lens that looks at what I mean. Point to where in the post where I suggest one should believe in all unverifiable things. Rather, the post notes that one can. Personhood is one of those unverifiable things that are fairly free to believe in, even though one could adopt a mechanical materialist description of humans instead. I agree that people have different ontological warrants for believing different things. For me, believing in God is similar enough to believing in humans that I tried it out, and now I have a relationship with God (or, if you want to be picky, my God). I perceive you as a person though we have only exchanged a few comments, and I perceive the processes generating my world as another person, a non-human abstract person to which I ascribe all possible good intentions and which speaks to me through my own neurochemistry and bioelectricity.
Personhood is a Religious Belief
lucky1331

Sorry but I'm not buying it.

For one thing, you're playing super loose with definitions. Even if we accept everything you wrote, this doesn't even remotely verify the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or any other version of a deity. It would simply mean there's as much evidence that "something created the universe" as there is that "other persons exist".

Secondly, you randomly assert that there is as much evidence for one than the other, and yet you didn't even reference the human senses, which are the means we have for verifying evidence. We can verify the existe... (read more)

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1jan Sijan
I am not arguing for any specific version. In fact, I know multiple gods. I have prayed to Athena, and had a close relationship with her. I do not consider her a theistic creator God though. More like what Christians call an angel. There is no burden of proof because I am not trying to propose an argument. I am discussing the ontological warrants surrounding believing in personhood, which is an unverifiable and unfalsifiable thing. The only real standard for believing in personhood is “seeing” it in someone, the same way I now “see” God. You have no need to believe in a god or in angels and demons. You seem to have good reasons not to. As I stated many times elsewhere, no amount sight, touch, smell, hearing, or taste verifies the personhood of human beings. (They help with eating humans, though!)  Personhood is fundamentally a model / form we impose on the inputs that our mind experiences. Human people exist to me, and so do all my imaginary friends, including God! Note: this joke is funny because all the "human people" I know are actually also imaginary friends. I have no idea if they have sentient experience. I may well be watching and interpreting characters in a film, and hallelujah for that. The human senses are still part of a filter between the self and the outside world. They are still things that only help your mind simulate the outside world. You can never actually “interact” with the outside world, if we consider that everything we experience is the product of neurochemistry and bioelectricity. Brain in a vat, the Descartes demon, pick your thought experiment.  You and many other people decided at some point that claims about material are “objective” and claims about spiritual are “subjective”, when really they are both “subjective”. Everything experienced is “subjective”, processed through a self. Objective claims refer to standards created by subjects, but are only true in the sense that the subjects outline those standards. I used to worship the