Proving What We Already "Know"

[bennyboy]

I don't think it's accurate to say that you have no rational reason for accepting me or anyone else as real.  Whether or not you accept any of them is another story.  

Let me clarify. I can, once I have a working world view of some kind, use it and its axioms to rationalize further. I live within a model of an external world-- objects with properties doing things, situated in space and changing over time. That being a pretty much inbred world view, I can say something like, "Well, I have no recollection of creating people as figments of my imagination, and no awareness of any capacity for doing so, so I think it's likely that they are truly objective to my perspective." Or, I can just ask someone to hit my hand with a sledge hammer.

But that rationale isn't what allowed me to believe in the reality of the other. It's a reflection back onto the world view I have already developed.

It's important to know this, because I can see to what a great degree other people's world views are intrinsically faulty, and I have some ideas about how they got that way. It would be pretty brazen to say, "All those MFs have got it wrong, but luckily I stumbled onto a perfectly functional world view." They are stupid and delusional to a degree that borders on malfunction. Am I so confident that I am not? If so, then I don't really believe in "seems like therefore like" after all; actually I believe I'm a kind of god while "those other idiots" are chimps.


One more thing-- you may wonder why I keep talking about the views of others when I cannot establish a rational basis for their existence? Why do I keep chatting online with you?

The reason isn't rational-- it's that I'm defined by my place in this world model. If I turn out to be in the Matrix or the Mind of God, that will be surprising news, but it defines what I am so much that I will continue living in that model regardless-- much as knowing that a table is 99.9999% empty space (or at least is a collection of fields rather than a discrete object with contiguous surfaces) has very little impact on my willingness to accept a desk as a place upon which to rest other objects.