On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 1:16 AM, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote: > On 5/12/2010 9:48 PM, Rex Allen wrote: >> >> I commented on Sean Carroll's position on "Cognative Instability" in >> "The Past Hypothesis" thread. Cognative instability is only a problem >> if you refuse to relinquish the starting assumption that an >> independently existing physical world is the cause of our experiences. >> > > But you seem to stop short of the last step. Assume physicalism: this leads > to the inference that all the evidence for physicalism and for an external > world is unreliable and all perception and thought that seems to refer is > unreliable and so your only reliable knowledge is that of ephemeral thoughts > that in all probability have no meaning.
That "last step" is one of the points I try to make in my posts. BUT, I have a further point. Which is: Let's say we add two more supplemental "axiomatic" assumptions: 1) "The Physical World Hypothesis" - a physical world exists independently of us and causes our experiences. 2) "The Honest Universe Hypothesis" - our experiences tell us something true about this physical world...we're not in a "Matrix" universe. Now we can claim to have reliable knowledge about the physical world. But so what? This knowledge is purely a function of the initial conditions and physical laws of this world. Either the initial conditions were just right to allow us this knowledge, OR the physical laws are such that a wide variety of initial conditions will ultimately "converge" with the result that conscious entities have this knowledge. Either the initial conditions were fine-tuned or the physical laws were fine-tuned to produce reliable knowledge. Regardless, why is this kind of "reliable knowledge" more desirable than the reliable knowledge of ephemeral thoughts? You seem to imply that it is "better". Why? It seems to me that both kinds of knowledge are equally meaningless. In either case, the only possible meaning is subjective. A meaningless physical world, or meaningless ephemeral thoughts. Take your pick. So...you'd rather be a material cog in a (deterministic or probabilistic) rule-driven physical machine than an insubstantial entity composed entirely of ephemeral thoughts. I wonder why you have that preference? What causes you to be that way? I don't see any significant difference in the two options. I incline towards the later because I know that my conscious experiences exist, and I don't see how positing an inferred-but-unexplained physical world which somehow causes my experiences adds anything "useful". >> Tangentially: isn't your claim that you are only interested in theory >> to the extent that it is "useful", essentially a skeptical position? >> > > That's not my only interest in theories, but it's one. What are your other interests with respect to theories? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
