Liz, No, you are referring to two different categories of ontological assumption.
There are some things we don't directly observe that we DEDUCE by logic from what we can observe. That is true. But my point is that everyone assumes we can directly observe empty space because our mind makes an internal model of things existing IN such an empty space. But those are purely mental constructs based on continuous INTERPOLATIONS between actually observed dimensional relationships, and there is no evidence that empty space actually exists outside of our internal models of it. Edgar On Friday, March 7, 2014 5:08:40 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: > > On 8 March 2014 10:10, Edgar L. Owen <[email protected] <javascript:>>wrote: > >> Liz, >> >> You have a point and I devote an entire part of my book on Reality to >> discussing these kinds of interactions of mind and external computational >> reality of which individual minds are just subsets of. >> >> But you have to be careful to understand how mind and reality interact. >> When you do you don't get solipsism. >> >> If your view above were strictly true you would get solipsism not just iN >> MY THEORY but in standard physics as well. So your point doesn't just apply >> to my theories but to all science.... >> > > That's right, that's my point. That's why we can't just say "we never > directly observe X" to invalidate any of our existing hypotheses. We make > ontological assumptions - you can't just start by saying THIS particular > fact isn't true because we have made a hypothesis about it, because if we > do that, by contagion we have to doubt all of our hypotheses. > > Hence you can't start from the basis that... > > "Because we cannot establish its existence by any observation whatsoever. > We NEVER observe such an empty space. " > > ...without casting doubt on all our hypotheses based on observations. > > Instead you will have to find some other reason to show that space doesn't > exist (assuming it doesn't). > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
