Devil's advocate for why ontology is meaningless and vacuous.

[robvalue]

Yes, everything depends on experience. It's all we have. The evidence for my claim (which isn't meant to be absolute) is that it has consistently proved to be the case. Any deviation results in total failure.

[Mudhammam]

Yes, everything depends on experience. It's all we have. The evidence for my claim (which isn't meant to be absolute) is that it has consistently proved to be the case. Any deviation results in total failure.

Is there an escape from solipsism that can be had by means other than intuition? Can experience tell us anything about the world as it exists outside of our consciousness? It seems that anything we might know or speculate about such realities is derivative of our intellectual properties and can go as far as those, rather than our senses, are able to take us.

Not to mention, a body of scientific knowledge such as mathematics is wholly dependent on axioms that can be known apart from experience, that is, they don't much seem to require any verification outside of their own definitions, and the functions or qualities that these involve, to be understood as true or false.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Objective only really means that there is an independent object to which a subject refers. Does it mean something to be human? If it does mean something to be human then that essential human nature is the object to which subjective values refer.

[robvalue]

Yes, everything depends on experience. It's all we have. The evidence for my claim (which isn't meant to be absolute) is that it has consistently proved to be the case. Any deviation results in total failure.

Is there an escape from solipsism that can be had by means other than intuition?  Can experience tell us anything about the world as it exists outside of our consciousness?  It seems that anything we might know or speculate about such realities is derivative of our intellectual properties and can go as far as those, rather than our senses, are able to take us.

Not to mention, a body of scientific knowledge such as mathematics is wholly dependent on axioms that can be known apart from experience, that is, they don't much seem to require any verification outside of their own definitions, and the functions or qualities that these involve, to be understood as true or false.

I would say no, there is no escape from solipsism. All we can do is make pragmatic assumptions. But we needn't even make all of them, really. For example, I don't have to assume anything is "real". It's real to me, and that's as good as it's ever going to get.

Yes, mathematics is an abstract system which is defined by strict rules. Such systems only need to be internally consistent. They may or may not relate to reality in any useful way. Mathematics is not scientific knowledge, though. It's a tool. It's used to describe scientific knowledge.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I would say no, there is no escape from solipsism. All we can do is make pragmatic assumptions. But we needn't even make all of them, really. For example, I don't have to assume anything is "real". It's real to me, and that's as good as it's ever going to get.

Yes, mathematics is an abstract system which is defined by strict rules. Such systems only need to be internally consistent. They may or may not relate to reality in any useful way. Mathematics is not scientific knowledge, though. It's a tool. It's used to describe scientific knowledge.

Just an observation...it seems to me that in order to maintain your position you feel it necessary to 1) deny that the universe has an intelligible order and 2) that reason cannot revealing facts; but rather, merely provides useful subjective opinions.

[Mudhammam]

I would say no, there is no escape from solipsism. All we can do is make pragmatic assumptions. But we needn't even make all of them, really. For example, I don't have to assume anything is "real". It's real to me, and that's as good as it's ever going to get.

Yes, mathematics is an abstract system which is defined by strict rules. Such systems only need to be internally consistent. They may or may not relate to reality in any useful way. Mathematics is not scientific knowledge, though. It's a tool. It's used to describe scientific knowledge.

Is mathematics only a tool? For the most part, from what I have gathered, it has been thought of as a science, and one of the few in which any certain knowledge about reality can be had. The physical sciences, on the other hand, have more or less been thought to amount to but educated guesswork and opinion, given what you concede about the nature of consciousness and subjectivity.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The value of pi is not determined by averaging empirical measurements of circular objects.