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They can be used as evidence, though they don't definitively prove anything (Popper style). What you stated is basically post-modernism in a nut shell, but the
by ZeroFries 8y ago
They can be used as evidence, though they don't definitively prove anything (Popper style). What you stated is basically post-modernism in a nut shell, but the problem with post-modernism is there's only a limited number of parsimonious explains those which can account for all observations. Everything could be brain-in-a-vat delusion, but it's not the most parsimonious explaining because it drags with it a bunch of other complications and assumptions. It's true, though, that one can only be sure of one's own existence.
- pmoriarty 8y agoSuch evidence is useless, as in the brain-in-a-vat scenario (for example), this evidence could be generated by whatever controls the vat. It may have absolutely no relation to what's in the external world, and one has no way to get to the external world to verify it. Similar objections could be made based on other possible scenarios. Furthermore, one's own reasoning capabilities might be compromised. Once again, whatever controls the vat could be making you conclude whatever they want, so whatever the evidence might be, you might be drawing the wrong conclusions from it because your reasoning capability is impaired or subverted. As for parsimony, that's just a heuristic that's been useful to science in the world of experience (ie. the world of appearances or the phenomenal world, to use Kantian terminology). The external world is under no obligation to conform itself to it, nor to anything else that might come from or to human minds.