If God Ever Stopped Intervening In Nature....

Even the solipsistic axioms include such things as reality and awareness. Solipsism climbed out of it's own asshole and smells like it too. How did my consciousness manage to create itself?We can be absolutely certain that there is such a thing as reality. You cannot use real things to disprove the existence of real things. As, I think, Descartes said, you need a doubter to doubt.

What you believe to be true - what you believe to be true - is in your mind. Where is there any concrete link between what you believe to be true and some hypothetical thing that "is" absolutely true?

A hallucination is the condition where our perception doesn't match somebody else's perception of reality. But whose perception is the hallucination? And why not both?

Let's consider Descarte's starting point. Let's consider doubt.Everything one senses is an illusion. An illusion of an external world, including other minds, where in fact there is no such external world in existence. The illusion also includes one's "senses", a complete illusion of one's own body, including all bodily sensations, when in fact one has no body. Mathematics and the fundamentals of logic are also part of the illusion.Existence/reality/whatever-you-want-to-call-it in it's entirety is all in one's mind. It has no external existence.How can anyone disprove absolutely this level of perfect illusion?
One cannot.
That's the point. Which is pretty much the same as "I think therefore I am". Where "I" can be some disembodied consciousness.And before you get too happy there are brands of philosophical skepticism which would quibble even that base conclusion as unjustifiable.

So the mind itself could be an illusion? Held by what exactly?

"I" is one's mind."I think therefore I am" is about the existence of one's mind. It is one's mind and one's mind alone that Descartes concludes cannot be an illusion.All else, all sensory input all physical existence, is subject to doubt. Not really.

What is the mind without the senses? The senses are integral to the mind. A mind is a thing that processes sensory input. We do not see with our eyes. The eye receives the information and we see with our mind. If one is born without sight, hearing, taste, touch or smell then I would suggest that one does not have a mind that is capable of contemplating anything.Descartes, like the rest of us, used his senses to develop his mind. The mind is nothing without the senses. I was expecting that jab a few posts ago.

They don't match anybody else's perception. Because when everyone is having the same hallucination we call it reality.

Exactly. What you call "reality" is an Appeal to Popularity.

While there is some truth to that it is a bit of a misrepresentation . There is a difference between popular and unanimous. What option beside multiple perspectives could you possibly use to verify a conclusion?We cannot exist without a reality to exist within. The concept of truth only has meaning in relation to an observer. To describe the way that reality interacts with the observer is the equivalent of the truth. The fact that we cannot be sure of the uber-reality has no bearing on the fact that it must exist.

Neither Descartes nor I are advocating solipsism. The reason Descartes is important is because of his approach. He set out to try and rigorously explore the limits of certainty and doubt.The point with regard to certainty and doubt is that sensory evidence cannot lead to absolute truths because one cannot know absolutely that sensory evidence itself isn't illusory.That's not an advocacy of solipsism. It's an important point about the limitations of truth statements derived from sensory evidence. That's what the evidence strongly suggests.But how do you absolutely know that the evidence in question is actually indicative of truth?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

The position you are taking is not unanimous. I have no problem with using consensus to "verify" conclusions. If enough of us agree that the problem is solved, then the problem is solved. What I object to is the claim that the consensus necessarily corresponds to some absolute "reality". That applies to fictional realities as well.Yesterday I perceived the doorbell ringing, which woke me up. There was nobody at the door. Was the doorbell "real" or a dream? That is your belief. It's equivalent to the belief that Long John Silver died for our sins.

You offered it as a possible alternative to the generally accepted notion of reality. I think that it is not a possible alternative unless some mind imagined itself into existence fully formed and working. You should at least be able to offer a possible alternative.I see the main point as being that, regardless of the nature of reality, reality must have a nature. That point is denied because there is a point where sensory evidence is absolutely true for the observer. Feedback. If I drink a glass of water and my thirst is quenched then that much is absolutely true. In order for it not to be you must deny that the observer exists.

Is there unanimous agreement that we see a sun in the sky on a routine basis? Seems to me that even the rocks and plants agree. I don't see how what we call reality could possibly get any more real. As long as it applies to real realities. You should hear what this sounds like in my head.

We perceive a sun in the sky. I also perceive my parents, who are long dead, in my dreams. Rocks perceive nothing. Plants "perceive" only light and have no ideas about its origin. Maybe you shoudn't be comparing yourself to them. Outside your head you sound just like a theist who can't conceive of any belief but his own. You believe that it's turtles all the way down. I'm suggesting that somewhere down there there may be a turtle that's standing on nothing.