(March 28, 2018 at 10:24 am)bennyboy Wrote: Give me evidence that reality isn't idealistic, or that we're not in the Mind of God or the Matrix. Give me evidence that you're not a figment of my imagination.
You're using the vocabulary of a world view that's already decided. You've made your philosophical choice, and now all the semantics of that choice point back to it. But circles aren't really conclusions.
I'd say this: show me a single bit of evidence that you have that has not been processed through the agency of subjective experience. There's no such thing. The physical world is, so far as you are concerned, an idea which you've experienced. The brain, so far as you are concerned, is a collection of images and sense impressions. Your teacher who taught you-- is that person really existent in the sense that you treat him?
We believe that the truth of the Universe is that it is made up of suirrely little buggers aka quantum particles, which have no definite shape, location, or even position in time. That's 100% of the Universe as we currently understand it: all nothing more than wave functions which cannot be represented unambiguously in either space or time. Are you so sure that your world view of stuff and properties of stuff is really better than a world view in which everything, including "stuff," is a collection of ideas and experiences, and nothing more?
Sure there's always that possibility. In the same way there's a possibility that if I jump out the window I won't become a two dimensional smear on the pavement below. But I'm not going to take that risk. I take the stairs or the lift because I know that they work and can understand how and why.
You can wonder all you like about non-falsfiable non-definable ideas, but if you actually want to make any sort of progress and achieve something that is even vaguely useful to someone else, you need to deal with reality as best can be measured and reproducibly tested and not make any implicit assumptions not born out by the evidence. You also need to use unequivocal definitions. Because that's the only way that you can make any progress. By using what works in practice.
If you disagree with this, you tell me how you would determine whether you exist in the Mind of God, exist in a Matrix or that everyone else is a figment of your own imagination to the point where you could reliably convince everyone else enough to find out for yourselves and come to the same conclusion. Because the more people with their own individual subjective experience who can critically examine the same evidence and hypotheses and have it still survive, the more confident we can be that they are correct.
There are reasons why the scientific method works.
