(May 16, 2017 at 8:33 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(May 16, 2017 at 5:09 am)Sal Wrote: I can pretend something to be true, but in doing so, I've created a cognitive dissociation in doing so, defeating its utility. I don't see how thinking, something that's unfalsifiable, as true will make its utility desirable.
I presume you believe that other people have subjective interior mental states i.e. minds. I also imagine you tacitly accept that your senses reveal information about the a world that is objectively external to yourself. You might even believe that round objects are actually round in some meaningful sense. These beliefs are useful and unfalsifiable.
There's a world of difference between minds, seeing agents and their behaviors and a god - and no, both those examples are not unfalsifiable. I can easily draw a circle, 2 pencils and a piece of string, without arriving of some idealist state of "roundness". As for minds, the falsifiability of minds is easy, I can just ask people what's on their minds without arriving at some idealist state of being in the minds, thinking their thoughts, and conclude what they're thinking, even if they're lying - I just need to be able to detect that.
