The fallacy of this question is that it takes the Postmodernist perspective that nothing, not evidence, not logical proof, not even personal testimony, which is tenuous at the best of times, can be taken as certainty that we or anything else exist.
It summarily eliminates every aspect of naturalistic exploration, leaving use questioning whether anything, even ourselves, is real, leaving the only fraying rope to climb the murky prospect of a faith rope-ladder climbing, or descending, into still further murkiness, maybe going up, maybe going down, maybe going no where. It's all solipsistic nonsense in the end.
Let's consider the point for a moment: If we aren't real, and everything we know and believe are just illusions, then we might as well go on believing in our illusions, because they're part of us anyway. And it's a consistent illusion at the very least. I don't ever get up in the morning and my imaginary bed has suddenly turned into an imaginary elephant. Except once, I'm pretty sure that might possibly have been a dream. Maybe.
To equate believing the evidence to putting our faith in something is simply nonsensical. I'm sitting on a chair right now. I can see it, feel it, if I lean it back I can hear it, I can smell it since it has that leathery tinge to it, and I just licked it, so I can taste it too. I've had other people come in and sit in the chair, remark on the chair, complain about the chair, and my cat has been so obliging as to scratch at it from time to time.
I take it as a foundation that these pieces of evidence are sufficient, since I've used them many times, and they're consistent and reliable in my discovering things about the world. I apply that to everything, even myself.
Of course there's also the "Cogito ergo sum" by Descartes, who came to the realisation that the individualistic nature of the mind is granted freedom, or so he thought, from the strings of illusion.
It summarily eliminates every aspect of naturalistic exploration, leaving use questioning whether anything, even ourselves, is real, leaving the only fraying rope to climb the murky prospect of a faith rope-ladder climbing, or descending, into still further murkiness, maybe going up, maybe going down, maybe going no where. It's all solipsistic nonsense in the end.
Let's consider the point for a moment: If we aren't real, and everything we know and believe are just illusions, then we might as well go on believing in our illusions, because they're part of us anyway. And it's a consistent illusion at the very least. I don't ever get up in the morning and my imaginary bed has suddenly turned into an imaginary elephant. Except once, I'm pretty sure that might possibly have been a dream. Maybe.
To equate believing the evidence to putting our faith in something is simply nonsensical. I'm sitting on a chair right now. I can see it, feel it, if I lean it back I can hear it, I can smell it since it has that leathery tinge to it, and I just licked it, so I can taste it too. I've had other people come in and sit in the chair, remark on the chair, complain about the chair, and my cat has been so obliging as to scratch at it from time to time.
I take it as a foundation that these pieces of evidence are sufficient, since I've used them many times, and they're consistent and reliable in my discovering things about the world. I apply that to everything, even myself.
Of course there's also the "Cogito ergo sum" by Descartes, who came to the realisation that the individualistic nature of the mind is granted freedom, or so he thought, from the strings of illusion.
