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What a lovely straw man argument (the sarcasm you requested). Your arguments oversimplify and twist the logic of the situation I presented in an attempt to draw it to a situation that is patently ridiculous, in the process ignoring and brushing aside all of the nuances of the situation I presented. </p>
<p>1) The fact remains that you did use ad hominem in one of your descriptions of how you perceived me; mocking the fact that I pointed that out will not roll back your use of a logical fallacy. Not to mention you again repeat your use of ad hominem in calling me “silly.” This is not helping the credibility of your arguments.</p>
<p>2) Now let us examine exactly why your presented situation differs from my situation.</p>
<p>In your situation, goats and pigs are mutually exclusive categories. A goat is by definition not a pig. Furthermore, in your situation, there is certainity. We know for certain that the goat in front of us is a goat, and the pig in front of us is a pig</p>
<p>The situation I present is a hypothetical situation in which what we perceive as sensory reality is in fact not a valid reality. What we perceive as our sensory reality (the sum total of our eyesight, our hearing, our touching, our tasting, and our smelling) is merely a series of electical impulses sent to our brain, which fools our optic nerve, our olfactory nerves, etc. into perceiving an illusion.</p>
<p>You seem to think that what my situation claims is “reality” is “not reality,” which are mutually exclusive.
However, what the situation actually says is “perception of reality” is “not reality,” which are not mutually exclusive. There is also no certainty. We do not know for sure whether our perception of reality is actually reality - just like a man in a desert cannot be sure if the lake they see is actually a lake or simply a mirage.</p>
<p>Finally, you seem to think that I actually truly believe that our perception of reality is not reality. I never made such a claim. I merely provided a hypothetical situation because that the situation had more scientific merit than the solipsistic point of view that someone else presented. </p>
<p>The only insight meant to be gained is the realization that what we say is “reality” is in fact only our “perception of reality.” When you see an apple in front of you, what is actually happening is that your brain is telling itself there is an apple in front of you, via electrical impulses. The insight is that we can never be 100% sure that what we perceive is true.</p>
<p>Again, I never actually made the claim that our perception of reality must necessarily be false. This is merely one possible situation in which our perception would be false.</p>