ANightmareOnBakerSt
ANightmareOnBakerSt t1_ja7cy2l wrote
Reply to comment by Otto_von_Boismarck in Reality is an openness that we can never fully grasp. We need closures as a means of intervening in the world. | Post-postmodern philosopher and critic of realism Hilary Lawson explains closure theory. by IAI_Admin
Things either exist or they do not. It’s seems incoherent to say the bottle does not exist except in my mind and also to claim that thing in my mind exist as a bunch of fundamental particles. This seems to me what you are claiming is the case.
It is almost like you are saying the thing I am calling a bottle exists but not in the way I think it does. But, I do realize that the thing I am calling a bottle is made of a bunch of fundamental particles. It is just that is of no utility to me or anyone else to describe individual objects as a collection of fundamental particles, because that is such a general description that it could be used for any thing.
ANightmareOnBakerSt t1_j9wsg3m wrote
Reply to comment by Otto_von_Boismarck in Reality is an openness that we can never fully grasp. We need closures as a means of intervening in the world. | Post-postmodern philosopher and critic of realism Hilary Lawson explains closure theory. by IAI_Admin
I call it a bottle only so that others may know what I am talking about. The actual word or wording I use for the name is irrelevant it could be bottle or botella if I was in Mexico. Saying it is a collection of particles, is just another way of describing the thing I am calling a bottle. If a less common used way of describing the thing that I am calling a bottle. It seems to me that your comment further proves that this is essentially a semantic issue.
Further, I would insist that the thing I am calling a bottle exists and I only describe it with the language I have using the data from my senses.
It seems to me though, that you seem to think, that the language I use, and the data I collect, from my senses are what the thing I am calling a bottle actually is.
The world around us is not the data from our senses. The data from our senses only informs us of what the world around us actually is.
ANightmareOnBakerSt t1_j9uffnz wrote
Reply to Reality is an openness that we can never fully grasp. We need closures as a means of intervening in the world. | Post-postmodern philosopher and critic of realism Hilary Lawson explains closure theory. by IAI_Admin
I think this comes down to semantics. Just because I come along and describe a bottle as a weapon and someone else describes it as an environmental disaster doesn’t mean that bottle is actually separate things.
There is a thing that bottle actually is. Though language may not be able to describe it wholly. And, just because we might come along and find different uses for the bottle or think up different ways to describe it, or maybe we even learn some new thing that is essential to its botttleness, this does not mean the bottle has changed in some fundamental way. The only thing that changes is the way we look at it, and describe it.
ANightmareOnBakerSt t1_jas223z wrote
Reply to comment by interstellarclerk in Our emotional experiences reveal facts about the world in the same way our sensory experiences do. Trusting in either requires a leap of faith to some degree. by IAI_Admin
There is also no good argument for external world skepticism. It is nothing more than a hypothetical possibility, with zero empirical evidence to support it. Nor, is there any good reason to believe it to be the case.