My only objection is to your use of the word “we”. Who is this “we”?
I exist; and my models of other minds exist; but I never have direct, unmediated access to another mind. What would it even mean to say that there are ‘other people’, as opposed to models of other people inside my mind? How could I possibly be justified in thinking there are any experiences had by someone, that aren’t had by me? Or any models employed by agents, other than the models I myself am employing?
Judgements of existence are model-relative. I believe electrons exist because I have an excellent (highly useful) model that involves ontological commitment to electrons. Same for other minds. Same for my own mind, for that matter.
I don’t first determine what exists and only then build models of those things. My models tell me what exists.
Our access to the external world is entirely mediated by models, either models that we consciously construct (like quantum field theory) or models that our brains build unconsciously (like the model of my immediate environment produced in my visual cortex). There is no such thing as pure, unmediated, model-free access to reality. But we often do talk about comparing our models to reality. What’s going on here? Wouldn’t such a comparison require us to have access to reality independent of the models?
You made the point that there is no pure, unmediated access to mind-independent reality; and you think this is an important insight that calls for some sort of reform to naive views of truth. That may be true relative to very naive views, of the sort that correspondence theorists also reject; in which case correspondence theory and the-view-that-we-lack-unmediated-access-to-mind-independent-reality can both win. But who are the flesh-and-blood correspondence theorists who think that their theory gives us a practical way to directly compare Ultimate Reality to our models, as opposed to just giving us a pragmatically useful desideratum? Who are the correspondence theorists who deny “I don’t first determine what exists and only then build models of those things. My models tell me what exists.”?
Skepticism about the existence of Ultimate Model-Independent Reality is analogous to skepticism about the existence of Other Minds; and thinking that ‘truth’ is a dubious concept if it relates Ultimate Model-Independent Reality to a model, is analogous to thinking that relationships between my mind and Other Minds are dubious.
… Which makes sense, since minds are just a special case of Ultimate Model-Independent Reality, albeit at a much higher level of complexity than a quark. Anger and models-of-anger are two different things; if they weren’t, then there would likewise be no distinction between models-of-anger and models-of-models-of-anger.
Truth is just a resemblance relationship between (assertion-like) mental maps and stuff. This includes maps of maps in my head, maps of maps outside my head, maps of non-maps outside my head, and maps of non-maps inside my head. It works like other resemblance relationships, like ‘being the same color as’ or ‘occurring on the same continent as’. Some concepts are hard or impossible to verify (e.g., ‘existing exactly 100,000 years apart in time’), but there’s no deep philosophical puzzle about the meaning of those concepts.
Judgements of existence are model-relative. I believe electrons exist because I have an excellent (highly useful) model that involves ontological commitment to electrons.
Reliable judgments of existence are evidence-dependent. We agree about that, I think: my model’s success is likelier if electrons exist, so it constitutes evidence that they do exist. What evidence did you acquire that convinced you of the further claim ‘judgments of existence are model-relative’, if that claim is distinct from ‘reliable judgments of existence are evidence-dependent’?
Do you have “direct, unmediated access” to your own mind? Its state in the present is separate from its state in the past and has to be communicated in time, in a way similar to observation of others’ actions taken in the past. What makes accessing something “direct, unmediated”, and why is it an interesting concept? (Being identical seems more interesting, for example.)
How can you know that you exist (and in what sense)? Knowing you don’t exist seems easier. If you are in a hypothetical taking an action that makes your existence impossible (e.g. acting on a threat that proves unnecessary), then you don’t exist, and yet your thinking (including thinking about own thinking) should be reasoned about in the same way as if you exist, to make accurate predictions. You don’t necessarily know if your past (hypothetical) existence is proven impossible by your (hypothetical) future actions, so asserting own existence at present can be invalid with respect to logical uncertainty.
Relative claims of existence may be more interesting, such as “Assuming I exist, then this particular future scenario I intend to enact also exists, while that other one doesn’t”. But the conclusion of own conditional existence would be trivial: “Assuming I exist, then I exist”.
My only objection is to your use of the word “we”. Who is this “we”?
I exist; and my models of other minds exist; but I never have direct, unmediated access to another mind. What would it even mean to say that there are ‘other people’, as opposed to models of other people inside my mind? How could I possibly be justified in thinking there are any experiences had by someone, that aren’t had by me? Or any models employed by agents, other than the models I myself am employing?
Judgements of existence are model-relative. I believe electrons exist because I have an excellent (highly useful) model that involves ontological commitment to electrons. Same for other minds. Same for my own mind, for that matter.
I don’t first determine what exists and only then build models of those things. My models tell me what exists.
My comment was in response to:
You made the point that there is no pure, unmediated access to mind-independent reality; and you think this is an important insight that calls for some sort of reform to naive views of truth. That may be true relative to very naive views, of the sort that correspondence theorists also reject; in which case correspondence theory and the-view-that-we-lack-unmediated-access-to-mind-independent-reality can both win. But who are the flesh-and-blood correspondence theorists who think that their theory gives us a practical way to directly compare Ultimate Reality to our models, as opposed to just giving us a pragmatically useful desideratum? Who are the correspondence theorists who deny “I don’t first determine what exists and only then build models of those things. My models tell me what exists.”?
Skepticism about the existence of Ultimate Model-Independent Reality is analogous to skepticism about the existence of Other Minds; and thinking that ‘truth’ is a dubious concept if it relates Ultimate Model-Independent Reality to a model, is analogous to thinking that relationships between my mind and Other Minds are dubious.
… Which makes sense, since minds are just a special case of Ultimate Model-Independent Reality, albeit at a much higher level of complexity than a quark. Anger and models-of-anger are two different things; if they weren’t, then there would likewise be no distinction between models-of-anger and models-of-models-of-anger.
Truth is just a resemblance relationship between (assertion-like) mental maps and stuff. This includes maps of maps in my head, maps of maps outside my head, maps of non-maps outside my head, and maps of non-maps inside my head. It works like other resemblance relationships, like ‘being the same color as’ or ‘occurring on the same continent as’. Some concepts are hard or impossible to verify (e.g., ‘existing exactly 100,000 years apart in time’), but there’s no deep philosophical puzzle about the meaning of those concepts.
Reliable judgments of existence are evidence-dependent. We agree about that, I think: my model’s success is likelier if electrons exist, so it constitutes evidence that they do exist. What evidence did you acquire that convinced you of the further claim ‘judgments of existence are model-relative’, if that claim is distinct from ‘reliable judgments of existence are evidence-dependent’?
Do you have “direct, unmediated access” to your own mind? Its state in the present is separate from its state in the past and has to be communicated in time, in a way similar to observation of others’ actions taken in the past. What makes accessing something “direct, unmediated”, and why is it an interesting concept? (Being identical seems more interesting, for example.)
How can you know that you exist (and in what sense)? Knowing you don’t exist seems easier. If you are in a hypothetical taking an action that makes your existence impossible (e.g. acting on a threat that proves unnecessary), then you don’t exist, and yet your thinking (including thinking about own thinking) should be reasoned about in the same way as if you exist, to make accurate predictions. You don’t necessarily know if your past (hypothetical) existence is proven impossible by your (hypothetical) future actions, so asserting own existence at present can be invalid with respect to logical uncertainty.
Relative claims of existence may be more interesting, such as “Assuming I exist, then this particular future scenario I intend to enact also exists, while that other one doesn’t”. But the conclusion of own conditional existence would be trivial: “Assuming I exist, then I exist”.