Which brings us to a central question: "What is it to value something?" — Mitchell

But why is that the central question, with "value" being a verb and not a noun. That is, why isn't the real question, what is value? To ask it as you have triggers my same objection as before, which is that if you ask what is it to value something, you simply ask the subjective question, making the most logical response a psychological one, as in "to value something is to hold it in high regard." It's likely I value things of no value and ignore things of value, thus ignoring the deeper question of what value is.

I'd offer a slightly different definition of "intrinsic value" as being that which has value in itself as opposed "to be desirable in and of itself. The use of "desirable" forces us to your example of hedonism because it suggests that achievement of desire is of value. Removing the desire element from the definition leaves us with more worthy results, like justice, morality, love, and things we'd have stand alone as valuable, even should no one happen to desire them.

There is a reason why you use the particular arbitrary symbol which you do, rather than some other arbitrary symbol. The reason is that you have faith that the other person will understand better, what you want to say, by your use of that particular symbol rather than some other. — Metaphysician Undercover

If there's a reason I use "2" and not "3" for 2, then "2" is not arbitrary. The definition of arbitrary is that it is not based upon a system or reason, but it's just random or whim. Not every symbol is arbitrary, but some are based upon prior similar usage (as when we adhere to roots) and some languages attempt to make the word look like the thing it represents (like hieroglyphics). Regardless, though, I would agree that whatever the basis for why we have chosen a particular symbol, the typical user has no idea what it is. All of this is terribly irrelevant though because none of this requires any degree of faith. The reason I believe "2" represents 2 is through empirical evidence. Every time someone uses "2," I know they mean 2. If someone starts using "2" to mean 3, I'd correct the person because it would be contrary to what I empirically knew to be true, and the argument would consist of empirical examples of usage.

This reliance upon empirical evidence is not limited to language usage, and I wonder why you've chosen to use it as example, but it is used to know most things about the world. And, as I've said, I fully acknowledge having faith in the truth of empirical evidence (and in my ability to reason) as those things are foundational to any understanding of the world.

. How do you define faith? I would define it as confidence inspired by trust. Do you agree with this? — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you've defined "belief" and not "faith." I would define faith as belief inspired by something other than proof. It is a belief often the result of spiritual apprehension but sometimes the result of necessity.

What 2 means is that there is one distinct object and another distinct object, two distinct objects. — Metaphysician Undercover

This categorization of two dogs as two objects and then on the other hand categorizing them as a group isn't mysterious and has nothing to do with transubstantiation.

Without the measurement system, there is no procedure. You cannot proceed without accepting on faith, these arbitrary assumptions, the numerals. You could draw me circles, and whatever shapes you like, showing me how they are related, but these are useless without the numerals. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not following your argument that "arbitrary" = "faith." I don't see the correlation and I don't understand why I can't accept that we use all sorts of arbitrary symbols to describe reality without having faith.

The argument is that faith underlies all we do. To reject something simply because it is faith based, is an unjustified rejection. — Metaphysician Undercover

There are foundational beliefs that anchor us into reality, sure. We might accept that our senses report to us what is occurring in the real world, and we might accept that reason and logic provide us insights into reality. Those foundational beliefs might at some level have to be accepted on faith, simply because a foundational belief can't have a further foundation; it's the origin of our belief.

If you're saying that your foundational belief is whatever the Catholic Church happens to tell you is true, I'd say that foundation is a much less rudimentary foundation than mine that no doubt relies upon many other more rudimentary beliefs, thus making it not truly foundational.

I say that it is a mystery as to how one individual is grouped with another individual to make one unit. Why are they one unit under the symbol "2", which is what is declared in mathematical proceedings, and they are not two distinct units, as the meaning of "2" indicates? Now how is your mystery any more mysterious than my mystery? — Metaphysician Undercover

You find it mysterious why people notice similarities among things and group them into categories?

I told you to accept the definitions of the theist, for the sake of progress, and because, the theist studying these aspects of reality more, is likely more aware than you what God refers to. — Agustino

This is wrong for a number of reasons. First, it suggests that the theist has some superior method of understanding God, as if the skeptic lacks the capacity at the same understanding, that the skeptic hasn't spent just as long as the theist in considering these issues, and that the skeptic might not have reached a very different conclusion than the theist. It's also very wrong to think that there is some monolithic thought process among theists, ignoring that the definition of God that one theist might have from another may vary widely even in the same church and same pew on any given Sunday. And, of course there are very different views from one church to the other, one denomination to another, and certainly one religion than another. Then there are those who take the idea of God very seriously but who find that no religious doctrine does it justice and who find that the study of religious literature is not the avenue to enlightenment in that area.

Your assertions that you know exactly what God is and that you stand with some authority on that question speaks loudly that your views bear no relation to my own, as I see one's relationship with God as personal, subjective, unprovable, and unverifiable by definition. To present God as this object fully subject to a complete knowable definition candidly feels to me like you have no idea what god is, but are instead just trying to define another object. Consistent with what I've said though, you may have that belief, and it is certainly yours to have, but it offers nothing for me, seems overly simplistic, and by positing yourself as a guru of sorts, it makes it impossible for me to take you seriously.

Yes, we've been using the same words, BUT with different meanings. That's exactly the problem. You understand by "literal change" something different than I - or other believers - understand by a literal change. — Agustino

By literal change, I mean not symbolic. The bread is the same in substance than it was before and after the prayer.

If you think that the reasons for making the particular steps which are made, in these mathematical proceedings having concrete references, then I think you are hallucinating. The reasons why the steps are performed, are complex, often ambiguous, and in no way constitutes a concrete reference; just like the Church's reasons for performing their rites cannot constitute a concrete reference. In mathematics, the reasons for the steps of procedure being as they are, are extremely vague, and sometimes completely arbitrary. That the circle has 360 degrees for example, is completely arbitrary. — Metaphysician Undercover

I really don't understand this comment. I could draw you a unit circle, show you tangents and whatever else you need if you really want me to graph out the basis of trigonometry. That the measurement system is arbitrary (360 degrees as opposed to 100 degrees in a circle) hardly impacts the validity or usefulness of the conclusions. And, even to the extent that mathematics is abstract, it hardly puts it in the same epistemological class as religion.

The best I can decipher this argument is that you're saying that the world's a complex, confusing place, and there are things none of us understand in the physical world, so it's just as acceptable to posit religious truths as explanations.

That these symbols, 1,2,3, etc., are the symbols which are used, to signify what they do, is just as much of a mystery, or more, as the mystery of transubstantiation. — Metaphysician Undercover

The reason "2" means 2 is because someone declared it a while ago. How's that mysterious? The reason we refer to transubstantiation as "transubstantiation" is for the same reason. That's not where the mystery lies. The mystery lies in how bread becomes the flesh of a guy who died thousands of years ago.

The argument is that your rejection is unjustified. If you are so smug in your rejection, that demonstrating this to you requires humility, then the blame for this humility is your smugness, not the argument. — Metaphysician Undercover

My point remains that your argument was from the point of view that we ought be humble regarding those things we don't understand and try to understand them. The concept of humility when faced with otherwise preposterous beliefs if often presented by theists as the best way to try to understand them.

I assume that I know better what the word "God" refers to, and I've cited why. So at the very least, my definitions (or the believer's more generally) ought to be accepted as a starting point. — Agustino

This isn't the starting point for a conversation about God, it's the ending point. What you've done here is no different than it would be if I simply declared myself an authority on any subject, declared I knew better than you, and then proclaimed that you should defer to me for guidance. That posits you as Socrates, where I suppose I'm supposed to listen carefully to your comments and questions and try to obtain your wisdom. Anyway, this entire line of conversation hinges upon the fallacy of appealing to authority, although in this case, you appeal to yourself as the authority.

The statement transubstantiation happens and the statement transubstantiation doesn't happen are both true at the same time, since there is an equivocation on the word transubstantiation. — Agustino

I don't agree with this. We've all been relying upon the Catholic definition of the term throughout.

You're not a believer, you used to be one. So you don't understand, at least anymore (maybe you never have, I wouldn't know that) how the term "God" is best to be used, and what it refers to. I, who am a believer, am more likely, by the fact that I devote more time to study and understand this than you do, to understand what "God" refers to. — Agustino

The problem is that you assume superiority in your position. It would make as much sense to argue that you should open your mind to the enlightenment of atheism by someone who insists they have had ineffable experiences of the lack of a supreme being as it makes for you to argue the opposite.

And I think this conversation has changed objectives to something far more moderate, which is simply to argue for the possibility of a higher power, which, from my perspective, is far more defensible than arguing for the validity of transubstantiation. The vagueness of what God is allows plenty of room for acceptance, whereas transubstantiation is a very specific doctrine clarified by the Catholic Church that does not offer much wiggle room for skeptics to take it seriously.

But to the extent that we're now just arguing that there might be some higher power out there, there seems not to be much controversy in accepting such a claim other than by pretty committed atheists. I'm not saying atheists have nothing significant to say in that regard, but I do know that if that were the focus of the OP, we wouldn't be in the 28th page. It was the outlandish attempts to defend transubstantiation to a secular crowd that generated the discussion.

The lack of a concrete referent troubled me, so I could not proceed to the level of abstraction required because I was unwilling to accept the articles on faith alone, I needed to understand through concrete reference. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see how this is analogous. Algebra and trigonometry do in fact have concrete references, and I agree that it's a poor way to teach to simply itemize the steps the students are to perform without offering an understanding as to why those steps must be performed. The problem I have with transubstantiation is not that the teacher has failed to provide the underlying concrete basis for it, but it's that the teacher has specifically told me that it's a mystery.

The argument is a resort to humility, to argue I should just accept there are certain things beyond my comprehension, and instead of smugly rejecting them, I should take pause and recognize it is my limitations that keep me from understanding it. If you were trying to explain to me some complex physics problem, I'd agree with you, but it's a bit hard to accept the same with reference to transubstantiation when the explanation you offer is to tell me that it's just one of those mysteries. I think a better response would be to take pause and then declare that the emperor wears no clothes. That often takes more courage than blind acceptance.

And so this conversation ends with a lame insult like most.

And, I believe that it is reasonable to have more faith in ancient books than modern books because they have stood the test of time, by demonstrating their consistency. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your test for validity uses a stopwatch, not a petri dish. Monarchies have existed longer than democracies, so let's stick with that.

Your cat is an emaciated bug eyed dwarf. Throwing a blanket over it doesn't make it a grizzly bear. It just makes it more tolerable to be around.

The shared core argument you're making is the same flawed argument that gets dragged out in Philosophy 101 classes every semester as proof against moral relativism: There must be absolutes because every culture shares the same basic moral truths.

Don't get me wrong, I do hold there are moral truths, but I also think some cultures think wrong is right. The same holds true of religion, and you can't arbitrarily reject those you feel are too primitive or that hold to satanic beliefs.

You're also departing the crux of this thread, and that is the question of the validity of the Euchrist. I'm pretty sure the Jewish faith, for example, rejects that to the core.

Well, we're not talking about Nazism here. It's Catholicism - a world view followed by hundreds of millions of people over two thousand years. It would take monstrous hubris to claim it has nothing of value to offer. To come to a discussion without that understanding is the sign of a poor philosopher. — T Clark

The question isn't whether it has nothing (as in zero) to offer. The question is whether its fundamental beliefs are true, from the resurrection to transubstantiation. It takes no hubris for me to say those things are false. It takes blind faith for you to say they are true.

But sure, if the Catholic Church had a food drive, I might throw a can of green beans in the bin and be thankful to the Church for offering something of value to those in need. And to the extent the institution survives by offering a strange mythology to a susceptible people, I'm in favor of it, so long as it keeps having food drives and the like. But to the extent anyone should argue that the mythology has a value outside of its political influence in creating group cohesiveness, as in suggesting that the mythology must be rooted in reality, I say such simply does not logically follow.

The problem is that faith is something very real, it is just as real as the food we eat, and we all partake. That someone can't handle the proposition that faith is real, and we all partake, so we as good philosophers ought to try to understand it, doesn't make faith go away, it just makes that person a lesser philosopher. — Metaphysician Undercover

I stepped away a minute and a few pages went by, so sorry if I've missed a point here or there.

I'd draw a distinction between faith generally and religion specifically. To the extent there's an underlying current of "physicalists and Catholics both rest on faith at some fundamental level, so neither can assert greater validity," I don't find that at all persuasive. To a large degree, the foundational beliefs of a physicalist (or someone generally non-religious) are things like there being an objective reality that is knowable through our senses, as opposed to fairly specific and structured claims like transubstantiation. If attempting to decipher the nature of reality, I rely upon my senses and reason and you rely upon the five books of Moses, surely you can see that we don't just have different foundational anchors, but they are of a significantly different type altogether. My point being that I am relying upon some fairly basic means of acquiring information, whereas you are relying upon some old book, and I therefore can say that we are not using faith in the same way.

I also don't find it all useful to refer to the antiquity of a doctrine to determine its validity, nor do I think it matters much how many good or bad things a faith has cast upon the world when assessing its value. Religion generally, and most certainly Catholicism, is as much a political institution than anything else, and just like a government can feed the hungry, it can engage in wholesale murder. Its success or failure to speaks also to its political pull in gaining and keeping adherents, not to its inherent rootedness in truth. It's clear that there are all sorts of religions worldwide with tremendous diversity among them, many thousands of years of old and many with hundreds of thousands and even millions upon millions of followers. Surely they can't all be right, which would indicate their being right has little to do with their success.

No, it simply points out the obvious, which is that some find the business of living a positive experience.

No one's trying to pass you I don't think. If I wanted to, though, I could crush your spirit and leave you helpless with the bat of an eye (yes, I can bat a single eye in complete badassery).

You may have built your body and the sacred balls of your frozen canuck feet, but your spirit is weak and exposed, ripe for destruction.

I like hard work. On Saturdays I volunteer planting trees, tearing out invasive plants, and carrying water buckets. It beats office work. I get that some people enjoy being lazy, but that just describes some people. Feel free to go about being lazy, and I'll go about feeling superior, and we'll just carry on as always.

With all due respect, what the fuck are you talking about? I ask because I want to be a part of the convo, but I'm not sure if you're talking about kicking footballs, doing an Irish jig, or you're training to be a ninja.

No, I wasn't referring to that sort of scenario. I was referring to the sort of scenario where, say, someone saw a murder, but the murderer later threatened to kill all witnesses, and this person nevertheless comes forward to testify. In that light, his testimony, because he is willing to risk his life, has greater weigh — Agustino

I would agree that statements against interest carry greater weight, the most significant being a confession (which is precisely why they must be given freely to be admissible). In your scenario, perhaps someone in fear for their life who offers testimony that places them in greater danger might be considered more honest, although exaggerating the testimony might also occur in that situation in an effort to assure the conviction. That is, once you've taken a swing, make sure you win the fight. I guess the point is that it really depends on all the facts.

I'd think bias would count against the witness, offering a motive to fabricate.

And don't be silly now - if you were a judge and a man risked his life to testify something, while the other didn't risk anything, who would you believe? — Agustino

The one telling the truth?

To state categorically that some people think better than others makes no sense. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

It does make sense. You're just measuring an overall score. Restaraunt A is overall better than B even though B has better fries.

You don't need to know any langauge other than English when traveling to other countries. Just speak really loud and slow and point a lot and speak in their accent.

I know exactly what this means. You're worried about all sorts of shit you can't control so you're trying to assure yourself that you're doing exactly what you ought to be doing and that you're exactly in the right place and you're using as evidence of this some completely irrelevant things that you're trying to convince yourself are important, but you know deep down they're really not, and this is so not what you want to hear.

It's all self deception to alleviate your sense of hopelessness. It's distressing to me. I can't imagine what it's like to you.

That's interesting. It does have some force against the comparisons some people have made with things they have made up on the spot and that have no meaning or function. But I think ideas can be persistent because they are functional without being true. — unenlightened

Longevity can be the result of all sorts of things, from it being true, to it being functional, to it being a way to manipulate the masses, to it being just something that stuck and became local legend, to whatever. The point being that longevity offers us nothing in terms of proof of value or whether it'd be better to finally abandon it and move on.

This all seems an argument for tradition for tradition's sake. And they call me conservative.

Isn't any type of word use essentially the same type of "faith based belief"? So if you reject transubstantiation, you make the statement, "I have no faith in the way that they use words". — Metaphysician Undercover

This is the part of the discussion I disagree with you the most I suppose, which I'll get back to in a second.

As it relates to transubstantiation and the references to arcane Aristotlian philosophy, I'll acknowledge you simply wore me down. I don't really think anyone truly adheres to those views and his various categories and so it seemed an exercise in learning a purely historical system for academic purposes. I couldn't really sort out all the distinctions, and so when I began reading up on it online, it became clear that the issues of concern for me were concerns for everyone.

One thought I did have, for example, from a Cartesian perspective, is that I am composed of two substances: mind and body. It would make sense to say therefore that the properties of the person-object are that it is composed of those two things. That would make a substance a property, and while the identification of the mind substance/property could not be empirically shown by putting it under the microscope and seeing it, it could certainly be identified behaviorally in the person through the display of consciousness. This whole issue made me question your claim that the interjection of the body of Jesus into the wafer could not be known by the person except by faith because it is not the case that substance changes are per se undetectable.

In fact, the way I saw it is that you simply divided the world into two sorts of properties: those that were detectable and those that were not. A wafer therefore has things you can know about it and things you can't. In fact, I'd go as far to say that the real words one should use instead of essential versus accidental properties is undetectable versus detectable, at as it relates to this discussion.

Whether I'm a better person for having thought about this, I really don't know.

But to your over-riding point that this is all some sort of language game and that I am just rejecting their word usage, I'm really not. I'm being offered no evidence whatsoever of the claim they're making, and when I ask, I'm being given an explanation based upon a thousands year old antiquated logic system that no one really adheres to. What happened was that the Church arrived at a notion based upon biblical passages and then used the contemporary logic to try to explain how it could be.

Your decision to reject as "nonsense" a system which has allowed ideas to persist for hundreds, even thousands of years, is not a rational decision. — Metaphysician Undercover

And so the difference between a system that I make up on the spot and the Catholic one is simply they came up with theirs first? We can pretend its longevity is based upon its validity, but that would simply overlook certain political and historical realities.

The problem is that transubstantiation is no different than any other faith based belief, where followers just accept the impossible as a tenet of their faith. Some might have studied the underlying justifications for the beliefs, most not. The basis presented for it seems to be a biblical passage or two then supported by some Aristotelian philosophy then in vogue, which draws upon distinctions not really supportable.

We would need to split off into another thread if we wanted to really break down Aristotle's theory of substances. It's not clear why my substance isn't one of my properties, but I grew tired of reading about it online last night, so I gave up for now.

My point is that I don't agree that the path to enlightenment is paved with being open to the legitimacy of all other beliefs, but more often the opposite: rejecting nonsense and moving on. So , coming to the party with no preconceived notions about the legitimacy of the Church, these beliefs strike me as no more or less valid than a faith based system I could create on the spot.

Ok, now you've distinguished between accidental properties and essential properties. A change to essential properties doesn't constitute a change in substance, it constitute a change in the type of object, the substance would stay the same. — Metaphysician Undercover

Alright, so you have an object, a cracker. It's accidently made of wheat and essentially made of crackerness. The priest says his prayer and now it's essentially made of Jesusness and accidently made of wheat. The substance has changed. It's now made of Jesusness and wheat whereas it used to be made of crackerness and wheat. I get that Jesusness and crackerness aren't necessarily made of matter because essences are a bit mysterious, but it's not a regular old cracker any more, right?

Since "substantial change" is something we judge, and somewhat arbitrarily, according to our principles of judgement, I don't see how you can support that claim, unless you appeal to God to support this type of substantial change. Then like I said, God could make a substantial change which we wouldn't even notice. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't know that we can never judge a substantial change, mostly because I don't know what happens when you pepper something with essence.

We created the same analogy cross posting where I used the blood of Moses and you used the blood of Zeus in an amazing moment of synchronicity. I now believe in transubstantiation. There's more out there than either of us know.

If the 'substance' of your claim is that 'substantial' means 'material' then I think you are substantially mistaken. — unenlightened

It doesn't have to be material, but it has to be some substance in the wafer that changed. If wafers have spirits or some non-material composition, that has to actually change. No one says a man changes in literal substance when married (except maybe he gets fat and gives up the notion of happiness). As I see it, you're changing from a literal to a figurative definition of substance. I'm using it literally, but I'm not committed to it being material.

You are making Michael's mistake, mixing up properties for substance. — Metaphysician Undercover

Nope, I've got that straight. The accidental properties remain unchanged but an essential change to the substance occurs, thus rooting this whole discussion in ancient Greek philosophy, I assume to offer an explanation for why there is nothing empirically verifiable when transubstantiation occurs.

Regardless, I don't see how this is responsive to what I said, which is that a substantial change can occur without a name change, as I don't see how linguistic theory impacts metaphysical change.

In fact, I don't know you deal with the problem that any time anyone says any set of special words over a physical object that changes the attitudes of those hearing it that something mysterious won't happen to that physical object.

If I say "Alacazam" over a rock and everyone thinks I have a rock that contains the blood of Moses, is the rock now different?

If God changed the substance of something, and the name for it didn't change, we would have no way of knowing that the substance changed. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's an epistemological issue, not a metaphysical one, but not even correct. We could know the substance changed by its behavior prior to altering its name.

By "substantial," I mean something changed to the actual substance of the bread and wine, or, in my analogy, the substance of the man and wife. It is not just a change in status.

"The Catholic Church understands the real, objective presence of Christ as coming about by the replacement of the substance of the bread and wine with the substance of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, with no change in the accidental properties of the bread and wine—such as its appearances, color, and shape; the change in substance is known as transubstantiation.[9"

"The Catholic Church understands the presence of Christ in the Eucharist as real, that is to say, objective and not dependent on faith."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_presence_of_Christ_in_the_Eucharist#Catholic:_Objective,_substantial_and_entire

As I said with Hanover, I don't recognize the distinction you are making. To assert the proposition "this item is the body of Christ", is nothing other than to name the item as the body of Christ. A proposition is by nature a proposal, and no matter how it is asserted, it may be rejected. So your use of "asserting" here is just a red herring. — Metaphysician Undercover

That you don't recognize the distinction doesn't mean there's not one though. You're just indicating your inability to understand. The Catholic Church claims that the utterances of the priest result in the metaphysical alteration of the bread in an actual way. Those utterances would alter the substance even if the name remained the same and the substance would be whatever it is even if it lacked a name.

So, it strikes me that the philosophical grounds for this argument (as I really don't think anyone here is considering changing their minds on the idea of transubstantiation) is what originally was presented in the Shoutbox.

The question is: Do those accepting of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation employ a different epistemological standard for their beliefs than the materialists?

It seemed the thrust of much of the previous debate was that there was some level of logical inconsistency on the part of materialists in rejecting (and even ridiculing) transubstantiation as not being properly rooted epistemologically because both sides are using inherently faith based systems.

Not only do I think this is wrong, but I think the Catholic Church doesn't even present this argument. The official doctrine is described as follows: "The manner in which the change occurs, the Catholic Church teaches, is a mystery: "The signs of bread and wine become, in a way surpassing understanding, the Body and Blood of Christ."[5]:1333 The precise terminology to be used to refer to the nature of the Eucharist, and its theological implications, has a contentious history especially in the Protestant Reformation.[6]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation

That is to say, transubstantiation surpasses understanding, meaning it does not make sense to us mere mortals. It's a mystery. It cannot be known. It therefore is accepted just as a doctrine, not subject to invalidation, and not something that can be derived by observation of the world. It is distinct among events, and it is therefore logical and consistent for a materialist to reject it on the basis of it lacking the epistemological basis consistently relied upon by the materialist.

This is the exact conversation that I've been having with MU, although he doesn't seem to accept the analogy you've provided. I don't necessarily see a problem with the way you've characterized it to give the event personal meaning, but from what I've read about the Catholic doctrine, the Church isn't so willing to back away from there being an actual physical change to the bread and wine.

If a priest says "I now pronounce you man and wife," he has changed the status of the parties, but he hasn't changed the parties in any substantial way. Part of religious doctrine related to marriage is that the man and woman become a single flesh, which might have metaphorical implications, but certainly literally they do not. While we can say that the priest is fully empowered to change the legal relationship between the man and woman, he cannot change their physical state by melding their flesh by his simple utterance.

And I don't so much have a problem with that, and have pointed it out previously (indicating he was referencing relativistic notions of reality), but that attempt to describe transubstantiation is antithetical to official Church teaching. The Church is saying something actually changed in the bread and wine, even if it can't be empirically verified.

I really do no not see any difference still, perhaps you could try again. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you assess the facts and believe there to be a dog, you will have that belief even if you don't utter it.

If you are a judge and believe the witness to be in contempt of court, he will not be if you don't utter it.

I've said it every way I can. You're going to have to go online and look up the distiction between performative utterances and declarative statements because the distinction is real and not one I've concocted.

The act definitely accomplishes something. So you are very wrong on both counts here. — Metaphysician Undercover

The question isn't what the priest's words do to the minds of the congregants, but what it does to the wine and bread. Either the congregants stand in the presence of a miracle or they've been tricked. Are you saying transubstantiation might just be that event where a priest bullshits believers into thinking wine becomes blood?

It is very clear that something tangible changes in transubstantiation, and this is the attitude of the people toward the items. As I said, "substance" is an assumption we make. So if the substance of the object changes, then this means that the people's assumptions concerning the object change. And that is what we see in the change of the people's attitude toward the objects. Therefore there is real tangible evidence that transubstantiation has occurred. — Metaphysician Undercover

This doesn't follow. I get that folks can be tricked into thinking that iron is gold, but the iron doesn't change because they were tricked. Their behavioral changes about the iron doesn't say anything about the iron. It just says something about them and maybe the guy who tricked them.

You have expressed your concern over sexual jokes before, and it's not that you've been ignored. My view is that this board is an adult oriented board and that the discussions contained on this board are not intended for children. The mission of this board is not to create any particular sort of impression when it comes to sexual jokes and whatnot. If there are children wandering about the internet unsupervised there are far less safe places they could come across than this philosophy forum.