Solipsism and “it's all an illusion” can both explain all available data completely. But most of us reject them. Empiricism is very fashionable since C18, with naturalism/physicalism just now being challenged by a resurgent panpsychism but likely to stay ahead for a while. …
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Replying to @chrisfcarroll @Plinz and
…Cartesian dualism meanwhile is completely out of fashion. But they all have difficulties. My particular hobbyhorses is to point out that all these philosophies—and hence all knowledge acquired with them—are _choices to believe_, not statements of fact.
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If we know multiple theories to have the same explanatory power, we are not free to pick one as our preferred belief, but are rationally forced to remain agnostic. (Pragmatically, we may be forced to make bets, though.)
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So, as with believing in other minds in preference to p-zombies, I believe in a string of things that are neither tautological nor empirical; for instance that I live in a universe that is so stable and reliable I can meaningfully study it.
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Replying to @chrisfcarroll @Plinz and
But notions like explanatory power & scientific methodology can only come into play after making the prior choice to believe in the existence of things to which they apply?
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I would say that they have the existence of a ground truth that manifests as some regularity in observable phenomena as a prior, but this prior does not need to be taken on faith.
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–What about them makes 'ground truth' a more accurate name for them than 'ground belief'? –When you mention priors, you're thinking we can apply bayesian reasoning from our evidence of other minds & a reliable universe and hence have something firmer than mere belief?
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Once a belief is entirely conditional on its priors, it ceases to have any element of faith in it. I see rationalism as a Kantian program of reducing all beliefs entirely to priors, so all statements are conditional, and you know these conditions.
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Replying to @Plinz @chrisfcarroll and
Ground truth is the objective nature of the system that you are observing. If you are in a dream (like the characters in Twin Peaks), there won't be a ground truth that manifests as observable regularity; a dream universe is not mechanical, and so it does not yield to science.
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Replying to @Plinz @chrisfcarroll and
"a dream universe is not mechanical" - maybe so. But dreams have a coherent internal logic (even though often a acausal one) which can be scientifically analysed.
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Dreaming tends to disrupt the coherence of the observing system, too. Even if they don't, the dream may for instance change based on your theory, which makes analysis very difficult, but if you have enough stable resources you may be able to come up with a dream generator theory.
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