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Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot  ... and if you try to just grasp some of the stuff that he's tackling, you'll see that standard notions of objective reality are really quite shaky. |
And the belief in solipsism/SR is quite shaky as well. Science would have not advanced an inch in the last thousand years if that belief had been dominant.
For thousands of years, we believed the sun was a little disc in the sky that went round the earth every day, rising in the east and setting in the west. This is what is termed 'phenomenological reality'. That's what we saw in the sky and it looked real, so we believed it.
Now, if science had not gone beyond that and other similar beliefs, we would still be living in the Middle Ages (I am not saying that is necessarily a bad thing). But, there would have been no advancement in physics and technology. We wouldn't be here now, communicating on the internet.
So, the logic goes:
Reality is very rich and complex.
Various scientists are doing really interesting work in investigating quantum theory, which the rest of us couldn't possibly understand.
Therefore ... if I believe the moon is made of cheddar cheese, it is.
When's the next boat back to Fantasy Island? I want a piece of that cheese!
