by Little Idiot wrote:Nicko wrote:Little Idiot wrote:The significance of an individual X being shot in the head while being asleep or otherwise unaware is that the individual so treated is now dead, the world does not stop in a solipsistic 'poof' but continues as it would in a materialist model, sans-individual X.
How is this so?
Simply that the cosmos does not depend upon the observation or experience of any one individual, duh!
In my model, the World Idea which individuals interact with is not sole property of any individual.
You are, however, running into the same problem that all people who reject the existence of a reality that is non-contingent upon being observed encounter and fail to surmount. Namely, you reject that model of reality as being based on an undemonstrated - and undemonstrable - assumption. This is only a valid criticism if the model you are advancing is based upon fewer than one - that is zero - undemonstrated assumptions. Every "non-materialist" model I have ever encountered - including yours - fails this test.
Good point, and well made.
However, my response is two fold;
1. that my model does not require any assumptions at all to explain my own experience.
2. is it really 'an assumption' at all?
I think it does require assumptions; and a good few of them.
Try to look at it this way.
You have doubtless heard the old saw, "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then its probably a duck."
We can expand this - as apparently it isn't clear enough for you already - to say that if one experiences the perception of a duck and that perception is indistinguishable from a duck, one's perception of a duck is probably caused by the presence of a duck. It's just the simplest explanation.
Does this mean that one's perception of a duck is definitely beyond all doubt caused by the existence of a duck?
Of course not.
One could be suffering from a form of mental illness that causes the sufferer to perceive ducks when there are no actual ducks present. The perceived duck could be a machine cunningly constructed to look, walk and quack like the genuine article. It could be a hologram. It could be an illusion created by a magical fucking wizard. Or a shapeshifting alien or pixie or some shit like that.
One could create an infinite number of theories that would render the assumption that one is currently confronted with an avian of the family Anatidae - or any other perceived experience for that matter - false if they were true. They would all share something in common, however: they are all more complex and convoluted than, "Hey! There's a duck over there." This is because all of them would have to explain the perception of the duck's presence plus some other stuff.
Similarly, one can create all sorts of weird non-falsifiable hypotheses in the vein of Idealism and solipsism. They all require more assumptions than the contention that our perceptions of a world that appears to exist independently of our perceptions are pretty much accurate, as they have to explain why our continued experience of those perceptions being accurate is "really" false.
We can each know that we ourselves exist (cogito ergo sum).
Moreover, we know that we experience perceptions. These perceptions are of a world that appears to conform to the - to use your term - "physicalist" paradigm. That is, we can study the behavior of the world using that paradigm and get reliable, useful results thereby. Any paradigm that said that this was not what was "really" going on would need to account for why it so consistently appears to be going on. You actually admit this when you say:
Only when I wish to explain other experiencers and intersubjective agreement between subjects do I need to make 'the assumption' you refer to.
The point is that it is not a matter of you "wishing" to do these things. If you are proposing a system that purports to account for reality, then any ad hoc assumptions that need to be tacked on in order for that system to account for reality become integral to the system. One might as well argue that petrol is not needed in a car unless you wish to drive it somewhere.
Of course I want to drive it somewhere; it's a fucking car.
Of course your system needs to account for reality; it's a system that purports to do just that.
This idea that your undetectable, self-deceiving, self-deluding, multiple-personality-disordered "World Idea" - or something similar to it - is not an integral assumption of Idealism just beggars belief. Idealism does not work without such an entity.
And assuming that a bizarrely-incomprehensible entity not revealed by our perceptions exists is a far bigger assumption than assuming that the world revealed by our perceptions exists is.
After which, your continued existence is of no consequence.
