On 4/8/2014 8:45 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Tue, Apr 08, 2014 at 06:05:44PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
Then why claim that there is an external ontological reality at all,
if all you're banging on about is intersubjective consistency? It
doesn't buy you anything, except unanswerable questions.
It's like Bruno's 'comp', it's a model or assumption from which you
reason. It's a good model for explaining why there is
intersubjective consistency. I suppose you might also have a
solipist model which would explain the consistency as, "I thought of
it all and I'm consistent and I want people to agree with me so
that's the way I think'em."
I can see that, but it is also equally valid that one doesn't need
either hypothesis. Certainly it is sufficient that if the properties
of observed reality is constrained by one's act of observation, then
any other observed putative observers must report observations of a
reality constrained in the same way.
Aren't you assuming other putative observers are the same as yourself and subject to the
same constraints, and that the constraints are quite strong so that they enforce
consistency with there being a common external reality? So I might say, with apologies to
Lagrange, what a beautiful hypothesis it is.
I can imagine beings that would see the world in different terms (as mystics claim to, or
Nagel's bat) and yet still see it as consistent with the same reality that I do.
Brent
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