[crgt]

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a dogmatic thinker responds with an ad hominem attack when their assumptions are questioned. I am, I assure you, quite sane. Sane enough to allow for the possibility of the reality of karma, which you do not, simply because you do not have evidence in hand at this moment in time.

Do some reading. Start with this: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html It's a probability-based argument for the notion that we are in fact inside an ancestor simulation. Would love to hear your thoughts on how you know it to be incorrect. Then go read some Descartes and tell me a cool story about how he's insane.

Trust me, I understand that your sandwich feels real to you. But that doesn't make it so. Any more than your opinion that karma doesn't exist makes that the case.

[jlgreco]

Simulationism is completely irrelevant.

Reality is defined as what our senses permit us to perceive, any other definition is not productive. Honestly rejecting it is insanity; if rejecting ones own senses is not insanity, then what is? If we are in a simulation then sandwiches are real in all meaningful ways if the simulation presents sandwiches to our senses. The simulation, if we live in one, does present sandwiches to us, but it presents absolutely no evidence for karma.

Why do you believe in karma more than leprechauns? Or karma instead of anti-karma? Or narwhale fighter pilots? The supposed simulation presents equally little evidence for any of these. Yes, a rational mind allows for the possibility of karma, but no more so than the possibility of leprechauns, anti-karma, and unicorns. That is to say, in practice, a rational mind rejects all of the notions if "the simulation" has not presented reasons not to do so.

So, in the sense that you "allow for the possibility of the reality" of karma, do you similarly "allow for the possibility of the reality" of unicorns? Yes? No?

[digitalvictor]

"Reality is defined as what our senses permit us to perceive"

if this is some sort of fundamental truth, it means that reality is subject to the rate at which our technology evolves. the overwhelming majority of the sonic spectrum skips right past our perception, unless we use technology. so how might one conclude that there were sounds beyond our perceptions, say 1000 years ago? he or she might look at the EFFECTS of sound on animals, and infer that something beyond our senses was at work.

"if rejecting ones own senses is not insanity, then what is?"

so your advice to a pilot in a cockpit is to go with one's senses at all costs? one's senses are never trumped by reason? lol.

we have plenty of evidence for cause and effect, most of which you've already stated you buy into. we can't perceive (AKA measure) gravity, but we can measure the EFFECTS of gravity. according to your tidy little definition, gravity isn't real. i'm sure you're shocked every morning when you step out of bed and don't float away.

why is karma any more relevant to talk about it than unicorns and leprechauns? from psychology to medical science, we have lots of evidence that belief and intention can directly affect reality.

an understanding that all actions have effects in the world and that we can attract things in our lives which we choose to focus on, empowers people to be active, positive and fearless agents in the world rather than passive, negative and victimized ones.

and to conclude:

"Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject"; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as "pure reason," absolute spirituality," "knowledge in itself": these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective "knowing"; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity," be. But to eliminate the will altogether, to suspend each and every affect, supposing we were capable of this -- what would that mean but to castrate the intellect?"

- Nietzsche