[Man in Black]

Way to break it down, Verk.

"all conceivable experiences are innately devoid of meaning until a consciousness engages them."

Brilliant. This is the essence of a priori (pure) reasoning. Your beliefs and ideas which are gained through experience, while they may or may not be empirical they are not tautologies. That is, they are not true under any/every possible valuation. A priori knowledge is that which is self-evident and does not need to be based from experience.

No matter how much you believe in what you may happen to believe in, it is based off of inductive logic, i.e. it is not universal. Your beliefs may be valid for you but they are not universally true.

To quote Immanuel Kant:
"But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means
follows that all arises out of experience. For, on the contrary, it
is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that
which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of
cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely
the occasion), an addition which we cannot distinguish from the original
element given by sense, till long practice has made us attentive to,
and skilful in separating it. It is, therefore, a question which
requires close investigation, and not to be answered at first sight,
whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience,
and even of all sensuous impressions? Knowledge of this kind is called
a priori, in contradistinction to empirical knowledge, which has its
sources a posteriori, that is, in experience."

JVB, get down off your high horse. Your Jainist/Buddhist beliefs are no more valid than my Christian ones.

Oh and JCP, as far as being confused about eating anything ever again..have you heard of sun eating? I was watching either Wife Swap or Trading Spouses (my guilty pleasures) and one of the wives was a lady from Arizona who rose very early in the morning and basked in the sunlight as a source of nutrition and food. But she also ate a very strict diet of nuts and berries and the like. It seemed a little silly to me but if it works for her, more power to her.