by Henryk Fantazos http://fantazos.us/pages/Bat-Frogs%20of%20Merchants%20Millpond.htm ... Some possible support for "everything's an opinion". Let's reformulate the hypothesis, placing it in the context of a "Brain-In-A-Vat". (BIAV) ... This is a metaphor for a Matrix-type world in which one's physical body may be in one place, while the mind-entity of the person is in an exterior fantasy world, claiming to be completely happy. ... A variant would be the movie with Jim Carey in which everybody play-acted around him, making him falsely believe that his world was "real". I believe the movie was "Truman". ... In any event, given any number of variants of the Brain-In-A-Vat worlds, or Jim Carey fantasy worlds in which the inhabitants believe they are happy; we attempt to counter the claims of happiness by exploiting some flaw; thus enabling us to conclude that the TB are not "really" happy. Example - the E. people are "happy" but those not-Enlightened are not, but mistakenly believe they are. ... Philsopher David Chalmers in his critique "The Matrix as Metaphysics" comes up with the phase "Global Skeptical Hypothesis" (GSH), as a hypothetical counter to the supposed happiness of the fantasy worlds (variants of the Brain-In-A-Vat scenario). ... Chalmers concludes that "To obtain a global skeptical hypothesis, we have to go all the way to the Chaos Hypothesis. But this is a hypothesis on which the regularities in our experience have no explanation at all. Even an extremely weak version of inference to the best explantion justifies us in ruling out this sort of hypothesis. If so, then this sort of reaoning may justify our belief in the existence of the external world". ... In other words, Chalmers is concluding that in all cases he's examined, only the completely Chaotic world (events happen helter-skelter with no explanation) may be countered by the GSH (Global Skeptical Hypothesis). ... That is, as I interpret his article, the Chaotic world as a type of "Brain-In-The-Vat" imaginary existence has such a flimsy chance of standing up to the arguments of the GSH, that we can cross it off of our list, leaving essentially no Brain-In-A-Vat world that can be countered through logical means (the Global Skeptical Hypothesis). ... Now applying the arguments to some of the propositions of some contributors to this forum, placing their world views into the context of Matrix worlds; we then examine the other contributors attempting to counter the first group. The 2nd group members will say something like: "I'm Enlightened and you're not, and the hypothetical fantasy world you're living in is a bunch of crap. So even though you say you're happy, your really unhappy". ... Given the Matrix-world context, I'd say that the Chalmers line of reasoning sides with group #1 (i.e. the Enlightened group has by no means effectively rebutted the first groups stance on logical grounds). ... To the extent such Group #1 arguments are effectively countered using other means may be open to question. One such example might be the Charlie Lutes line of attack going something like. "If you mediate long enough, you'll experience [so and so...] as true". But even this approach is subject to error.
