I was into pomo back in the day, though Zizek would disagree with such a label. The fact that he labels himself a Lacanian, makes it difficult to not attribute to him a kind of postmodern philosophical orientation, not to mention his discussions of Deleuze, Foucault and occasionally Derrida.

I saw too many of his lectures, documentaries and read his big book Less Than Nothing. His thought is difficult to summarize and his categorization of ontology/epistemology as the symbolic, the imaginary and the real, is arbitrary to me.

But, concerning the OP, I believe he has mentioned that he thinks that consciousness arose to detect when something goes wrong.

He gives interesting, if somewhat exotic examples of paradoxical situations, but his scholarship is quite bad and his obsession with Hegel makes him like counterintuitive thought way too often in a manner that, if taken too far, might be distorting to rational thinking.

He is best taken as a person who occasionally says something useful, but I wouldn't look for a systematic philosophy in his thinking, despite his many attempts to lay it out.

Perhaps his best stuff are his documentaries, they are fun, especially his Perverts Guide films. All to be taken with grains of salt.

You are supposed to disagree for us to have a discussion. :shade:




Anyway, good thread, looking forward to see what others think.

That's exactly right, which is why Bernardo Kastrup now has a decent following, he has many videos on YouTube.

To my mind, the best original philosopher I've read is Raymond Tallis.

Neither are from academia.

But I think that an argument can be made that original thinkers can be spoiled (not to say damaged) by going through the academic process. They get stuck in the current zeitgeist and are unable to get out. Instead of producing original ideas, they become followers of the Churchlands' or Derrida, etc.

You would know, I only briefly engaged with academia, it left a lot to be desired, despite having some nice aspects.

But knowing this, as you do, then how can we expect original work to arise? It's risky to develop a new original system in philosophy that may be a total failure. But there's also a small chance that some of these risks pay off, but this is not encouraged.

It's a great question, one that Susan Haack (surely an exception to the current norm) writes about in several papers.

There are many reasons, including more burdensome bureaucracy in university departments, the publish or perish incentive which often sacrifices originality for prestige, a lamentable tendency to stick to recent philosophers' ideas (Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Quine, Kripke, Derrida, etc.) instead of wrangling with hard questions found in the older tradition and other factors.

One issue - pointed out to me by a distinguished figure - is that modern philosophy is more sophisticated than before.

We have significantly advanced our knowledge in science since the scientific revolution, but (and this is my formulation) we discovered that we understand nature much less than was originally anticipated, so instead of having something like Hume's Treatise or Schopenhauer's World, we now have experts in biology focusing on the neurons of a worm, instead of looking at the whole of nature. Which is not a critique of biology, just a fact of ever more specialization, which leaves out most of the world.

Similarly, instead of devoting a section to language (as Locke did) or even a few pages (as Reid did), we have philosophers writing entire books about reference, and leave out, say, the study of how ideas are involved in language, and other larger concerns.

Even with that caveat, I agree with your OP, and suspect that unless the incentives of university departments change from being oriented towards "prestige" and profit, back to gaining knowledge for its own sake, this current tendency in philosophy will not change.

Thanks, will check those out. :up:

Metzinger is very good, one of the more interesting people working in neuroscience. I think the hard problem can’t even be properly formulated, since Newton showed that we don’t understand what bodies are, how can a mind-body problem even be posed? As far as I can see minds are found in very specific configurations of body- whatever body ends up being. I wouldn’t mind calling myself an idealist so long as I add the caveat that I believe there’s an external world which exists independent of mind. But sure, after that, everything is a mental construction. I think your view is quite sensible.

Well it seems to me to be a factual case, the so called “hard problem” - which should include the problem of appearances in general. I can drop the “could be” in this case. But this view is hardly new, Locke and Hume ooze “mysterianism”, but people misread them - especially Hume, pretty badly. Again, the alternative to this view would have to be a form of super-naturalism: we aren’t part of nature, so we have no cognitive limits.

Can you briefly comment on how real naturalism understands logical absolutes and math and how do we understand an idea as physical? — Tom Storm

These things can only be grasped - so far as we know - by matter modified in a specific manner, which, when interacting with an environment, gives rise to these ideas.

Is there some other way to know about math and logic than through experience, which is at bottom a specific configuration of physical stuff? There may be, but if so, I don't know what it is.

How do you determine whether something can in principle not be known? — Tom Storm

On the basis that we are creatures of nature and not supernatural beings. If this is the case - which can be debated - then it follows, that there are things we can perceive and understand and things we cannot.

A given nature - be it eagle nature, dolphin nature, moth nature or any other animal, must be quite restricted in order to arise. If these restrictions are lacking, no creature can develop any nature. Dolphins can't walk, moths can't help themselves from flying into lightbulbs, which is often suicidal, etc.

Something similar must be the case for human cognition. It could be the case that we are so constituted that we can do science and some arts, for instance, yet are unable to explain how the stuff science studies (particles, photons, energy fields) leads to the stuff we enjoy in a painting (say, Van Gogh's Starry Night or a majestic vista from the topic of a mountain).

Another creature might have no problem in understanding, intuitively, how colorless photons could lead to the blueness of the sky, or the redness of a rose, etc.

It's a good question, but difficult, in so far as having a "philosophy" is a complicated matter since it covers many areas, some of which certain people may not be interested in. Some may like to talk about ethics and politics, but dislike metaphysics and epistemology, others are the opposite. Some like all.

I belong to the group that likes metaphysics and epistemology. Metaphysically, that is, concerning the nature of the world, I am a Strawsonian "real physicalist". A real physicalist is one who takes consciousness to be a wholly physical phenomena, not reducible to what we can say about the brain in the sciences.

It's a very broad view that takes it that there is only one kind of stuff - physical stuff, and it incorporates everything: history, literature, stars, ideas - everything is physical. This goes to show how baffling the nature of the physical is.

When it comes to epistemology, which focuses on our knowledge of the world, I'd call myself a "rationalistic idealist", in the tradition of the British Neo-Platonists, Kant and Chomsky. I believe experience conforms to our mode of cognition and that we do not know, the inner nature of things, our experience being a partial exception.

Most of all, I'm a card carrying "mysterian", who believes that there are many aspects of the world and ourselves that we simply cannot know in principle, and from this it follows that, at bottom, everything is a mystery to us. The universe is what it is, but to us it's mysterious. We will never be completely satisfied in such a manner that we will cease to want to stop asking "why" questions.

I prefer to speak concretely on politics, instead of ethics. However, if there is a label I'd use for what I believe is a correct ethical view, it would be "universalism", the idea being that the standards we apply to ourselves, we should apply to others, or more importantly, the opposite formulation.

It's working fine for me.

Honestly, I think we are too far apart to extend this discussion much further. We seem to come from very different backgrounds with very different notions such that we don't even coincide in what should be basic terminology, methodology and orientation.

We don't agree on what language is or what it even does, what mind-independence implies, I don't follow what you are saying when you speak of dualism or some variety of extreme Cartesianism. We disagree on monism, ghosts, machines and more.

Which is all good, it's good to have different perspectives on these things.

In any case, it does look like the topic has gone a bit astray in terms of your OP.

I believe I follow some of it, though other points seem to me somewhat dubious. It feels a bit strange to say that one is to be held responsible for making a judgement - I don't think that must follow. It seems to me as if we make judgments much the same way as we breathe in oxygen, that is automatically.

As for the revision of commitments given new data and judgements, that sounds radical, but in my personal experience it's not too frequently that I stumble upon an idea or an argument that makes me revise all or even most of my previous "commitments". That whole idea is strange to me, which is not to say it can't be useful.

As to the plausibility of Brandom's reading of Kant, I may have some doubts, but for that @Mww is your guy. He knows his Kant better than most scholars, as far as I can see. And he's quite a character to boot.



Weird rhetoric? Only if you think it'll make your point clearer. This is already rather dense.

If I understand you correctly, I think rationality (more so than norms) goes significantly beyond stop-signs or handshakes, it's an innate characteristic of a very peculiar creature, namely, human beings.

Its claims are independent of this or that observer. What's negated is not mind but personal perspective. In my view, this kind of dualism is hopeless and yet so often projected on physics, for instance. — plaque flag

That's a fair way to phrase it.

By mind-independent I mean what the word says. If we did not exist, there would still be planets and suns - in some fashion - as would there be photons and fossils. I don't believe that we literally created the world, that there was nothing here prior to homo sapiens.

But without us, these distinctions couldn't be made and what would remain as far as we can tell, is at best a bunch of fields of energy and a worst (from our want of understanding) a "I know not what" Lockean substance, or a noumenon in the negative sense, in Kant's philosophy.

That may be the case, gestures are a big form of communication. But it's also quite sophisticated, a bit more so than animals, in terms of the circumstances in which a specific gesture can mean many, many different things to different people.

As to the evolution of language, or cognitive faculties more broadly considered, here's a paper Richard Lewontin, who Chomsky often sites concerning the topic, which is quite interesting:

https://langev.com/pdf/lewontin98theEvolution.pdf

I have his 3 collected works volumes. Besides the mandatory Meditations (including part of Objections and Replies) and Discourse on Method, I'll probably read his Rules for The Direction of Mind, Principles of Philosophy and Comments on a Certain Broadsheet.

I'll probably skim some of his personal correspondence. And I'm unclear if I'll finish the entire Rules, but that's more or less what I have in mind. Although I want to understand his general thought better, I want to put special focus on innate ideas.

Thanks for the heads up. Descartes is up next on my re-read list, so once I finish that I may be able to answer some of the questions you pose.



They can't because dogs don't have a language faculty. Communication and language are frequently confused, they are not the same. All animals (or most of them) have some form of communication, but they don't have language.

the notion of them learning button-pushing communication is not far-fetched — Gnomon

They can be taught many tricks, no doubt. But I wouldn't go as far as saying that a dog knows it's pushing a button. More likely the dog reacts to a very specific environment, which we interpret as the dog pushing a button.

I really don't understand what's controversial about the idea that biological creatures have limits. It would be a miracle if they didn't. I mean, it should be completely uncontroversial, a truism.

But, apparently, it's giving up on enquiry or being arrogant or something. Oh well...

What, you come here asking for proof? What's up with that?

:nerd:

As I understand him, it is not a mark but the thing that thinks. The 'I' asserts itself. Claims its place and authority. — Fooloso4

I see. Although it has a certain intuitive appeal, it is kind of nebulous. Which occasions the question you ask:

Does he make this distinction between self and mind? — Fooloso4

I don't know. It looks like an important distinction though. Also important is to see what differences there are (if any) between "I" and self.

Sure. The "I" is a mark of mind (along with creative language use and thinking), which according to him, could not be explained by appeals to materialism, which is why he postulated res cogitans.

The issue for me is, was he aware, maybe inexplicitly, that the self is a creation of the mind, or if he took it to be a literal thing, or both? Then again, by arguing for dualism, one can take it to imply that he took it as a literal thing, maybe unconstructed...

Putting the issue in a modern way, was he aware that the given, which includes the self, is as much as a construct as the external world, which we construct on the basis of sense data?

I'll need to read him in more detail to see if this specific topic is addressed by him.

I agree, but I’m putting it more strongly: they can help, but they can also positively hinder. — Jamal

Sure, especially if you insist that if the other person is not sticking to your own definition, then that person is not talking about the same subject you have in mind. You (or I) could be wrong, or we could be misleading people.

Though we do need some common point of anchor, otherwise we can't enter into a conversation.

I don't know how simply saying that the self is a kind of fiction or a necessary social construction is any less clear than adding the aspect of a "tradition we perform", nor do I see how a scientist or a philosopher is "to accept the selftranscending bindingness and legitimacy of these norms."

What norms? If a scientist is speaking about astronomy, she is specializing in a specific branch of science, attempting to clarify what exists in the mind-independent world. I'm not sure I am seeing the rest of what you are arguing. I suppose I am missing something.

It's late here so I can't reply to your longer post.

I don't understand your problem with Descartes. What do you mean by "whence the rational norms?"

Beingthere? That's the Heideggerian critique, which is interesting, though Descartes had a specific problem in mind, to account for the mental, since for him and his contemporaries, the physical was well understood. Outside his experiment, in ordinary life he didn't live like a skeptic, nor did he act as if an evil demon was an issue.

The "I" is a construct, I am re-reading Descartes soon, but I believe he was aware of this.

If you could perhaps phrase the post in a different manner, I could better understand your criticism or concern.

Sure, I could be called a property dualist, though I think it can be misleading to think of experience and non-experience as separate metaphysical things.

God was used back then by almost everybody, Descartes had no special claim in relation to others in using God as an explanation.

As for the rest - It's a bit complex, I could perhaps follow some of it, maybe word things differently in other areas, such as the self.

As for the ghost, Ryle had it wrong, and Chomsky right, so far as I can see. What Newton got rid of was the machine. The ghost remained, and is still here.

I hear you. It's a wicked problem. Even the notion of consciousness is something I'm pretty sure we couldn't conceive of without language. — Tom Storm

We would need something within experience to be able to point out that we have experience in an explicit manner. Otherwise, we are stuck with analyzing behavior. Thus we postulate other mammals to have experience, though they lack language, based on how they behave.

It struck me listening to Chomsky recently, in his lambasting of postmodern relativism, that he seems to invoke a structural version of Platonism as a foundational grounding to avoid relativism. In other words, humans seem to have innate limitations or capacities inherent in our cognitive apparatus (is this neo-Kantian?). Not everything is possible or endlessly open if we have such limitations. I wonder also if this is an analogue for some kind of notion of human nature. Thoughts? — Tom Storm

It's a long story. The short version is that he was influenced or found enlightening the arguments given by Ralph Cudworth, a 17th century Cambridge Platonist, who essentially articulated Kant's arguments in almost the exact same words, almost 100 years before Kant published his Critique.

Difference among these two being, Cudworth give a much richer account of innate ideas, Kant seems to deny them, arguing that we have certain "filters" that are innate, but not ideas per se.

You could put it in your manner and he might agree, though he would put less emphasis on Plato per se. I think he'd simply say that, we are biological creatures like any other - albeit with unique properties (like language). For us to be able to have any nature, we have to be constrained to give shape to our experience.

If we had no constraints, we would have no nature, we would be kind of like lumps of malleable clay. Just like a dog will never understand how to use a laptop, or a dolphin never be able to learn how to drive, there are things we will never understand. Otherwise, we are not natural creatures.

Then you can add the philosophy.

Seems appropriate. But at some point experience becomes language and visa versa. Experience ends up being understood through language and I struggle to understand to what extent I 'process' through language. — Tom Storm

There is an intimate relation between language and thought, that much is crucial. And a great deal of our language capacity is unconscious and inaccessible to experience. Nevertheless, absent that layer of experience, there could be language going on in a hypothetical Martian, but it'll stay stuck in the relevant organ. So explicitness in experience is important.

I just want to avoid the po-mo orientation in which everything is language and nothing is ever complete. But, I see your point.

But hypothetically without preconceptions, ideas or language, what exactly is a planet? It seems to me to be an act of constructionism, not merely raw experience. There are understandings, if you like and then we seem to order, contextualize, name. — Tom Storm

I can't do a hypothetical if you ask of me to do away with the only things I have that I can use to relate to an object.

Yes, a planet is a construct - in large part. But if you do away with ideas, preconceptions, language, I wouldn't even be guessing.

But based on what I do have, it seems more reasonable to me to say that a planet is made of non-conscious matter, than to say it is made of ideas, which requires a subject. When things become this abstract, one is poking in the dark.

I mean, I'd say here with Russell, that we do not know enough about the external world (or physical stuff) to say if its nature is like or unlike "mental stuff" or the world of mind.

Yes, I think the case is that we know discover the world through experience, I literally can't think of another way, it all leads back to experience and how we interpret data.

But I wouldn't go as far as to say that an object, say, a planet, is literally made up of ideas. These things are discovered through experience but are made up by matter. Just like brain activity is made up of physical stuff, that leads to experience, I wouldn't say that the brain is made of experience, although we discover things about it using consciousness.

Again, these things may not be as different as our ordinary intuitions imply.

What's interesting to me is that dictionary definitions barely scratch the surface of the definition of a word. They give a hint as to what the word means, but the application of most words goes way beyond anything given in a dictionary.

Which hints at something which I think is quite profound, and not well understood, because it is obscure. We already know the gist of the meaning of the word, before knowing the actual word. Put in another way, the words add a kind of structure to what we already knew.

As Leibniz said, replying to Locke:

"[Locke]: The crime of killing an old man, not having a name as parricide does, is not taken for a complex idea. [complex idea, roughly meaning=concept]

[Leibniz]: The reason why there is no name for the murder of an old man is that such a name would be of little use... ideas do not depend upon names [words with definitions, in this context] ... If a... writer did invent a name for that crime and devoted a chapter to 'Gerontophony', showing what we owe to the old and how monstrous it is to treat them ungently, he would not thereby be giving us a new idea."

(Emphasis mine.)

I think this applies rather broadly, but there is room for exception.

So, in general, I think that we most of the time, have a decent idea or notion of what we want to communicate. The failure of communication has more to do with the ideas behind the words, than the words themselves. So, I'm inclined to agree that philosophy shouldn't be primarily about definitions, though these can help.

Hard to say. It appears as if a kind of mind or at least a central nervous system, is needed to register sensations.

Nevertheless, it does look as if plants have some type of sensation, or at least, behave as if they do. Perhaps sensation is somewhat broader than what we take it to be.

Or perhaps they're not, and they do depend on mind.

There may be such entities. I don't think it torpedoes it though.

Thanks for expanding, but I'm still not quite clear on your position. Is experience material in your view ? Why is the subject familiar with experience as opposed to simply familiar with the world ? I guess I'm a direct realist in some kind of postHegelian sense. So for me there's no image between us and the world. — plaque flag

Sure, experience is material, or physical. I distinguish here an epistemic claim with a metaphysical one. Everything we are familiar or acquainted with is through experience, this is an "idealist" claim. The metaphysical side is that everything is physical stuff.

One is top down (the epistemic claim), the other bottom up (the metaphysical claim). I think that we have an idea of the world, which is provided by the world. So, there is mediation, but it's also a direct realism, I don't understand indirect realism, despite looking at examples or definitions.

Sorry, my views sound strange given the philosophers I tend to think are correct. I take it, following Galen Strawson, that consciousness is a wholly physical phenomenon, it arises from configurations of matter. So, there is no "immaterial"-material problem.

Nor a mind-body problem, as these terms are used of today. I agree with Chomsky (and Locke and Hume and Priestley) that we don't know what "bodies" are. Until we know that, we can't formulate a mind-body problem.

Another issue is considering matter as described by modern physics, not much in it is "material" as that word is taken to be associated with "tangible stuff", but that's another conversation...

But what is this subject ? — plaque flag

It's a hard topic, though I agree with Descartes in so far as he takes it that experience is the phenomenon, we are most familiar with out of everything. I drop the dualism, especially the substantive kind.

A self is a "fiction" (as Hume says) of a kind - a very useful one. But is a self a subject? Probably not in all respects.

It's very dense territory.

I do think insisting on the mystery of consciousness can be done in an interesting way (forgetfulness of being), but I also think Dennett is right to be frustrated with those who block the road of inquiry. — plaque flag

I understand that perspective. But I don't see any contradiction or roadblock here by saying that experience is mysterious for us, in terms of how it arises from matter and letting neuroscientists and cognitive scientists do the hard science.

There are important discoveries to be made in these fields no doubt and even if I think they won't be able to explain the so called "hard problem", they can prove me wrong or find some other way of answering the question.

One last comment on Dennett, he has interesting things to say (outside consciousness), but regarding this question he was once asked about it in relation to other animals, and he replied, roughly, by saying "do monkeys and chimpanzees use English or any language? can they ask questions?"

I take this to mean that if monkeys or chimpanzees were capable of asking questions, then they would be capable of answering. It doesn't follow.

So perhaps you and I aren't too different in perspectives. Maybe different emphasis.

It's not that I take the issue too personally, it's that arguing against it - as Dennett does - seems to me to be irrational in the extreme. The point about limits is too trivial, a bit like denying that when we see the sky during the say, it doesn't look blue. That's what I find annoying.

But you grant it as an empty platitude. OK, better than not granting it, no doubt.

There is a fine line between arrogance in terms of saying what we can't achieve, that's correct. On the other hand, it's even more arrogant to think that we can achieve everything, if only we tried enough.

I think it's perfectly clear that we won't be able to learn much, if anything, about free will (and will actions more generally considered). Why do I say something so presumptuous? Intelligent people have been discussing it for over 2000 years without an iota of progress. Now, if someone denies that we have free will, OK.

The idea of matter thinking is one we can make no sense of, how brain matter produces thought seems to me to be a conceptual issue that we cannot understand, for similar reasons as the free-will issue.

There are other issues: in physics for instance, we still have a lot to discover, but we do have to keep in mind practical considerations when it comes to feasible experiments.

But there's obviously still a tremendous about to learn.

That's not knowledge. I'm talking about (conceptual) knowledge not sniffs and glances. — plaque flag

There's no reason to believe that we happened to evolve into a species that happens to know everything there is to know about the universe. That's simply wishful thinking.

But if you think this is wrong, because we went to the moon, then OK. You seem to believe that we are not creatures of nature. Because if we were, there would have to necessarily be limits to what we can and cannot know. In order to know something, some aspect of reality, one must be ignorant of other parts of it, otherwise, no cognition could possibly develop.

An organ like the brain and a faculty, like our minds, depend on constraints for possibility, otherwise they would have no shape, we would be very much "a blank slate", as Locke argued. That's just not true, we aren't blank slates.

Again, if this doesn't sound at least plausible, then I have nothing more to say, we are too far apart on this topic.

I predict that dogs won't understand laptops for at least 1000 years. Why? They currently don't have such a capacity. Maybe by then they will be a different species who can use a laptop, but they won't be dogs anymore.

Still, we should be skeptical, we do have good evidence that ever since humans domesticated with dogs 15,000 years. In those 15,000 years, the only evidence of change in the species is one of phenotype, not one of cognitive capacities.



If such a being exists, it would know. Not a semantic issue. Dogs understand/know/are familiar with smells we cannot, that's just a biological fact. Same with Cats and night vision.

It sounds semantic because there are no other animals that possess symbolic representations associated with language use, therefore we use the best words we can to approximate what they do that we can't.



Thanks!

His point is really not hard to understand and the opposite view, that we can in principle know everything if we "learn enough" is anti-scientific in the extreme. I won't use his words, because apparently, they aren't clearly stated.

Either we are natural creatures, or we aren't. If we are natural creatures there are things we can do and things we cannot do. We cannot fly like eagles, we don't have the visual acuity of a mantis shrimp, we don't have the capacity to smell as much as dogs and so on.

Continuing with the case of other animals, suppose someone says "dogs will learn how to use laptops, it's just a matter of "learning more" and eventually they will understand it".

That is a silly argument.

Likewise, we as human beings, while possessing properties and capacities which are unique in the whole history of life (as far as we know), are still creatures of nature. Like the dog never being able to use a laptop, there will be things we will never be able to do or understand.

We won't learn to breathe underwater like fish, nor can we understand how it is possible for matter to think. We know it can, but we don't see how it's possible. Likewise, we cannot comprehend the idea that the universe is as large as it is. Sure, we can draw a symbol representing infinity or alternatively, a very large number, but our brains quite quickly "shut down" when we start contemplating galactic distances.

But there's no reason why another, intelligent being somewhere else in the universe would have any problem understanding how matter thinks or have any issues contemplating gigantic distances.

Either something like this is true, or we are completely separate from nature and possess powers given to us by God, or whatever supernatural explanation you would like to invoke.

We actually do though, but that is not why you can't refute those ideas. Rather those are ideas science cannot test, as metaphysical claims we just cannot. Solipsism cannot be tested or proven because it says only your existence is certain and everything else is either doubtful or non existent. So it can't use any metric to support it's argument. — Darkneos

How? What you are arguing doesn't at all go against what I'm saying. You say that because these views are metaphysical (which isn't clear that they are, some are epistemic, as solipsism is about our knowledge of the world, not the world itself -as would be claim made by materialists or idealists) hence science cannot test them.

I agree science cannot not test them. If we knew more, if we had a more sophisticated and elaborate understanding, I don't see why we couldn't know enough to say for certain "solipsism or skepticism is false." We can't say they are a-priori necessarily metaphysical views.

For an advanced civilization, they may be trivial questions.

Nevertheless for us, the issues will remain problematical, so it's not as if I'm trying to refute these ideas, we can only go by probability and likelihood here, in my opinion.

Well - in a sense yes. We wouldn't have a brain if there was no gravity, nor electromagnetism, nor proteins or anything else which emerges from physics, as almost everything does.

But we look at the relevant organ to study the phenomenon. From that, we can focus on the cognitive aspects, the neurological aspects or even the phenomenological aspects, many ways to treat this topic as you say.

But I think it makes more sense to study brain behavior than looking at what physics does. So, some approaches are slightly more relevant than others.

:cool:

I think I may have an idea of what you're saying.

:scream:

Mon dieu!

You take ideas seriously? How could you?




:wink:

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Extreme_space/What_is_the_Universe_made_of#:~:text=The%20Universe%20is%20thought%20to,visible%20object%20in%20the%20Universe.

Also we can make a ton of sense of the external world, that’s how we have modern society. — Darkneos

Yes, because more often that not, our perceptions and conceptions are similar enough that we understand each other more or less.

But we don't understand the external world enough to refute solipsism or skepticism, or idealism and many other ideas. If we did have a better understanding of it, these problems need not arise.