Super quick and dirty response: I believe it exists, you believe it exists, and everyone you’ve ever spoken to believes it exists. You have massive evidence that it exists in the form of memories which seem far more likely to come from it actually existing than any other possibility. Is there a chance we’re all wrong (or that you’re hallucinating the rest of us, etc.)? Of course. There always is. If someone demands proof that it exists, they will be disappointed—there is no such thing as irrefutable truth. Not even “a priori” logic—not only could you be mistaken, but additionally your thoughts are physical, empirical phenomena, so you can’t take their existence as granted while denying the physical world the same status.
If anyone really truly believes that the empirical world doesn’t exist, you haven’t heard from them. They might believe that they believed it, but to truly believe that it doesn’t exist, or even simply that we have no evidence either way and it’s therefore a tossup, they won’t bother arguing about it (it’s as likely to cause harm as good). They’ll pick their actions completely at random, and probably die because “eat” never came up on their list. If anyone truly thinks that the status of the physical world is questionable, as a serious position, I’d like to meet them. I’d also like to get them help, because they are clinically insane (that’s what we call people who can’t connect to reality on some level).
Basically, the whole discussion is moot. There is no reason for me to deny the existence of what I see, nor for you to do so, nor anyone else having the discussion. Reality exists, and that is true, whether or not you can argue a rock into believing it. I don’t care what rocks, or neutral judges, or anyone like that believes. I care about what I believe and what other humans and human-like things believe. That’s why philosophy in that manner is worthless—it’s all about argumentation, persuasion, and social rules, not about seeking truth.
Your argument is about as valid as “Take it on faith”. Unless appealing to pragmatism, your argument is circular in using the belief of others when you can’t justifiably assume their existence. Second, your argument is irrational in that it appeals to “Everybody believes X” to support X. Thirdly, a source claiming X to be so is only evidence for X being so if you have reason to consider the source reliable.
You are also mixing up “epistemic order” with “empirical order”, to frame two new concepts. “Epistemic order” represents orders of inference- if I infer A from B and B from C, then C is prior to B and B is prior to A in epistemic order regardless of the real-world relation of whatever they are. “Empirical order”, of course, represents what is the empirical cause of what (if indeed anything causes anything).
A person detects their own thoughts in a different way from the way they detect their own senses, so they are unrelated in epistemic order. You raise a valid point about assuming that one’s thoughts really are one’s thoughts, but unless resorting to the Memory Argument (which is part of the Evil Demon argument I discussed) they are at least avaliable as arguments to consider.
The Foundationalist skeptic is arguing that believing in the existence of the world IS IRRATIONAL. Without resorting to the arguments I describe in the first post, there seems to be no way to get around this. Pragmatics clearly isn’t one, after all.
Super quick and dirty response: I believe it exists, you believe it exists, and everyone you’ve ever spoken to believes it exists. You have massive evidence that it exists in the form of memories which seem far more likely to come from it actually existing than any other possibility. Is there a chance we’re all wrong (or that you’re hallucinating the rest of us, etc.)? Of course. There always is. If someone demands proof that it exists, they will be disappointed—there is no such thing as irrefutable truth. Not even “a priori” logic—not only could you be mistaken, but additionally your thoughts are physical, empirical phenomena, so you can’t take their existence as granted while denying the physical world the same status.
If anyone really truly believes that the empirical world doesn’t exist, you haven’t heard from them. They might believe that they believed it, but to truly believe that it doesn’t exist, or even simply that we have no evidence either way and it’s therefore a tossup, they won’t bother arguing about it (it’s as likely to cause harm as good). They’ll pick their actions completely at random, and probably die because “eat” never came up on their list. If anyone truly thinks that the status of the physical world is questionable, as a serious position, I’d like to meet them. I’d also like to get them help, because they are clinically insane (that’s what we call people who can’t connect to reality on some level).
Basically, the whole discussion is moot. There is no reason for me to deny the existence of what I see, nor for you to do so, nor anyone else having the discussion. Reality exists, and that is true, whether or not you can argue a rock into believing it. I don’t care what rocks, or neutral judges, or anyone like that believes. I care about what I believe and what other humans and human-like things believe. That’s why philosophy in that manner is worthless—it’s all about argumentation, persuasion, and social rules, not about seeking truth.
Your argument is about as valid as “Take it on faith”. Unless appealing to pragmatism, your argument is circular in using the belief of others when you can’t justifiably assume their existence. Second, your argument is irrational in that it appeals to “Everybody believes X” to support X. Thirdly, a source claiming X to be so is only evidence for X being so if you have reason to consider the source reliable.
You are also mixing up “epistemic order” with “empirical order”, to frame two new concepts. “Epistemic order” represents orders of inference- if I infer A from B and B from C, then C is prior to B and B is prior to A in epistemic order regardless of the real-world relation of whatever they are. “Empirical order”, of course, represents what is the empirical cause of what (if indeed anything causes anything).
A person detects their own thoughts in a different way from the way they detect their own senses, so they are unrelated in epistemic order. You raise a valid point about assuming that one’s thoughts really are one’s thoughts, but unless resorting to the Memory Argument (which is part of the Evil Demon argument I discussed) they are at least avaliable as arguments to consider.
The Foundationalist skeptic is arguing that believing in the existence of the world IS IRRATIONAL. Without resorting to the arguments I describe in the first post, there seems to be no way to get around this. Pragmatics clearly isn’t one, after all.