(January 1, 2019 at 8:28 pm)bennyboy Wrote: You have accepted quite a complex collection of philosophical assumptions in arriving at your "simplest explanation."
This is good! This is an important thing to recognize!
On another thread recently I was severely scolded for suggesting we have reasons to believe the things we believe. That when we hear a claim, we evaluate it and accept or reject it based on things we hold to be true. It was angrily suggested to me that when we hear about unicorns, we can in fact reject claims of their existence with no reasons whatsoever -- as if somehow we have direct access to some sort of truth.
The criteria we use to evaluate what we hear or read are often taken so much for granted that we just assume we are right. And of course this is dangerous, and exactly the sort of thing that skeptics like us should be working on.
