(January 29, 2015 at 9:01 pm)bennyboy Wrote:(January 29, 2015 at 8:41 pm)AFTT47 Wrote: i don't know about confident assertion but it looks like the default assertion to me. If we find evidence to the contrary, we'll go there. Otherwise...The evidence is treated as objective support for a claim. However, we still have the same problem: the supposedly objective evidence is collected using purely subjective means: looking through microscopes, holding a stopwatch in your hand, etc.
Put it this way: what would be the difference between the Matrix running a simulated world in which all our physical commonalities are as we now experience them, and our "real" world? Unless you know where your experiences come from, we're looking at circular reasoning: I know where experiences come from, because I experience things, and based on those experiences, it seems most likely that they come from _____.
There is no way to rule out "The Matrix" that I'm aware of. Similarly though, as our theistic friends will happily point out, there is no way to rule out God. It's an interesting intellectual exercise but why would you go there in the absence of evidence?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
