On Fri, Mar 07, 2014 at 05:46:58PM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: > Russell, > > Now that is true solipsism. A rather strange view of two projectors, each > viewing what it projects and taking that as reality. But in that model each > observer is a reflection of the projection of the other. So how do they > confirm similarity since for two things to be similar they must be > independent, and each here is just a refection of a projection of the other? > > O, now I get it. Only the reflection of the projection by Russell is really > real! His projection is just nice enough to project imaginary other > observers as being similar to himself? > > Somehow I think this model leads to consistency problems. At least it seems > awfully lonely.... > > Edgar >
I don't think you do get it, because solipsism is not the endpoint of such a view. An example of such a "reflection" is the conservation law of energy, which turns out to be a consequence of our requirement for physics to be invariant through time, ie a "reflection" of how we see the world. See Noether's theorem. To argue your case, you would need to come up with some physical property that is indubitably _not_ a consequence of how we perceive the world. I don't think you can do that. It is a very high standard of proof. Consequently, it does not follow that intersubjective consistency necessarily implies the existence of some external ontological reality. Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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.
