Wednesday, June 08, 2016

The case against reality

Here. 

This is Welty's post, that Steve is referring to.

6 comments:

Gyan said...

Idealism, very comforting to theists of VR's persuasion,

unkleE said...

Does Hoffman give a definition of "reality"? I don't recall seeing one. If this is so, what does any statement containing the word "reality" actually mean? I'm not sure how anyone can understand, still less assess, some of his conclusions.

oozzielionel said...

Why no just say that we verify our perceptions of reality through communication with other agents? We test our perception first by using our own multiple senses. Then we test those perceptions with the perceptions of others. When multiple strains of evidence keep getting the same result, we have confidence that our initial perception, even a single sense perception, accurately reflects the real world.

Hoffman abandons the quest for knowledge of the external real world for truth as existential experience. Instead of concluding that our perceptions are accurate (or accurate enough), he changes the nature of reality, "The experiences of everyday life—my real feeling of a headache, my real taste of chocolate—that really is the ultimate nature of reality."

steve said...

i) Apparently, Gyan misread the post. Welty isn't arguing for idealism. Rather, he's pointing out the difficulty of establishing realism given naturalistic evolutionary psychology. And he's basing his argument on concessions by secularists like Hoffman.

ii) Why would idealism be comforting to theists of VR's persuasion? VR is not an idealist.

BTW, an atheist can be an idealist, viz. McTaggart.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

Hoffman abandons the quest for knowledge of the external real world for truth as existential experience. Instead of concluding that our perceptions are accurate (or accurate enough), he changes the nature of reality, "The experiences of everyday life—my real feeling of a headache, my real taste of chocolate—that really is the ultimate nature of reality."

the atheist pretense of objectivity is a sham. it's the laws of the Orwellian ideology that grounds Dawkamemtlism.

Anyway I gave up on reality last summer. There is no rationality in the cosmos and I can prove it. Argument: Stupide Donald could actually be President.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

Why no just say that we verify our perceptions of reality through communication with other agents? We test our perception first by using our own multiple senses. Then we test those perceptions with the perceptions of others. When multiple strains of evidence keep getting the same result, we have confidence that our initial perception, even a single sense perception, accurately reflects the real world.

Is that really your reading of reality? Or of the basis for epistemic judgment. That's the premise of my favorite God argument that I made kin my book.