(August 10, 2009 at 8:35 pm)LukeMC Wrote: Then what are you babbling about complexity for?That positively affirming the existence of an independent reality, is to affirm more complexity than does solipsism, and is to positively affirm more than is empirically or epistemically needed from the same data.
(August 10, 2009 at 8:35 pm)LukeMC Wrote: Either way, regardless of whether or not we can know the universe, I still find my point valid. A universe which exists objectively with us contained within it contains far less complexity than any other hypothesis.It contains far more complexity than solipsism; for it affirms far more and far more complex entities and realities than solipsism, out of the same empirical data.
(August 10, 2009 at 8:35 pm)LukeMC Wrote: Solipsism has no role to play in this debate, for as you have said, it posits nothing of where the sense data comes fromIt exactly does not, because it posites that it is fundamentally unknowable, that all we actually know is our conscious experience, and that anything else requires a leap of faith in reality.
(August 10, 2009 at 8:35 pm)LukeMC Wrote: and in such a case, it cannot be used to demonstrate how an objective universe is more complex than an imaginary one.It can be used to demonstrate that the proposition of an objective universe proposes much more ontological complexity than does the proposition of a conscious mind which doesn't affirm anything outside of that mind.
The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.
-G. K. Chesterton
-G. K. Chesterton