mumblethrax
Species traitor
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2004
- Messages
- 5,186
It can be, but there's a distinction between attempting to model the world and accidentally modeling the world.
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Merged Is Scientism Really Justified?
- Thread starter Gubiosak
- Start date
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Asking what it means for something to exist is a topic in metaphysics, which is why the OP wants to talk metaphysics. If I can hit something with a hammer, it exists in the most straightforward way we can imagine. But do abstract things like happiness or red exist without there needing to be something that's red or happy? Sooner or later you get to questions like whether certain things can exist (whether or not any do) or must exist.
Skeptics are not always as interested in philosophy as one might think. Skeptics are interested more in what we know and how we know it. That's epistemology, not metaphysics. So when you bring up the subject in a skeptics forum, the skeptic is likely turn first to epistemology and isn't very interested in the metaphysics of what merely can exist abstractly. What reason do we have to think there might exist something that doesn't depend on the physical world? If there were such a thing, how could we obtain evidence of its existence? Those are questions that skeptics think of first.
The parsimony argument is the best. "Thou shalt not multiply causes unnecessarily." What problem does non-physical existence solve? Why does it need to be there? The best theories emerge not when there is nothing left to be added but instead when there is nothing left to be crossed out.
Skeptics are not always as interested in philosophy as one might think. Skeptics are interested more in what we know and how we know it. That's epistemology, not metaphysics. So when you bring up the subject in a skeptics forum, the skeptic is likely turn first to epistemology and isn't very interested in the metaphysics of what merely can exist abstractly. What reason do we have to think there might exist something that doesn't depend on the physical world? If there were such a thing, how could we obtain evidence of its existence? Those are questions that skeptics think of first.
The parsimony argument is the best. "Thou shalt not multiply causes unnecessarily." What problem does non-physical existence solve? Why does it need to be there? The best theories emerge not when there is nothing left to be added but instead when there is nothing left to be crossed out.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
Personally I think the question of what's real and what's not is the most important question in the world. If I were to write a manifesto, it would be on that.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
I think it's pretty important too. But that doesn't mean I fret a lot over the metaphysics of, "How do you do know that's real?" If you have to hit a blunt or wave your hands wildly to tell me why you think something is (or might be) real, then I'm less likely to agree that it's a reality that needs a lot of my attention.