Are all forms of religious faith indicative of insanity? (My counter example.)

[Pyrrho]

...  Radical skeptics need to explain to me why they accept the existence of other minds and the existence of a 'real world' that is not a subjective construct. ...

Whether other minds really exist or not is unimportant, and whether there is a 'real world' or not is also unimportant.

Let's look at these one at a time.  Let's suppose that everyone else in the world is really an automaton, and has no mind at all.  You are the only person with a mind.  But everyone else always acts as though they have a mind.  Now, what would you do differently in such a world?  There is no reason to do anything differently, because you interact with other people all the same, regardless of whether they really have minds or not.  The question is completely irrelevant to any choice you need to make.

This reminds me a bit of an argument I had with someone some years ago, about whether someone "really" loves you, or just always pretends to do so (around everyone, all of the time, with no exceptions ever).  I say, someone always acting like they love you is indistinguishable from them loving you, and so we would all say, the person loves you.

In real life, when someone pretends, to be pretend, it involves them sometimes not pretending in some circumstance.  Otherwise, it is not called "pretend."


As for whether there is a 'real world' that exists or not, that, too, is completely unimportant.  If you are a disembodied mind, whose experience is identical to a person in a real world, your options are precisely the same.  If you stick your imaginary hand into the imaginary fire, and you feel the burn, and you later on have to deal with the perception of having a burnt hand, you still will be well-advised to keep from putting your imaginary hand into the imaginary fire, just the same as a man in a real would would be well-advised to not stick his real hand into a real fire.  The experience is identical, and so it makes no difference whatsoever for how you should live your life.


In other words, it makes no difference whether you accept the real existence of other minds or not, and it makes no difference whether there is a real world or not.  It is all irrelevant to every decision you ever make.  You can, of course, spend your time thinking about it and arguing about it, but the thinking and arguing are the same whether there are other minds or not, and whether there is a real world or not.


All of this reminds me of this quote:

"Ah! that is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and like most metaphysical speculations has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them."  

— Gwendolen, in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.