Prove An Independent Reality-in-Itself Exists

[Skepdick]

It might not work because fuses blow and components wear out. I believe eventually the toaster will fail. Not today, as it happens. Bon appetit.

And yet you don't actively perform experiments to implicitly vindicate that.

You keep making toast. Till it breaks.

[tillingborn]

Bullshit.

You're upset, I can tell. I should stop playing with you.

[Skepdick]

Bullshit.

You're upset, I can tell. I should stop playing with you.

It's trivial to infer that for you the word "Bullshit" connotes the set of emotions you associate with "being upset", but I wasn't using it like that....

I was using it to imply that you are being intellectually dishonest

[tillingborn]

You keep making toast. Till it breaks.

I believe I already said that.

[Skepdick]

I believe I already said that.

You did.

What you haven't said is why you might want to make your toaster work if you believe that it already works.

The answer (you might find) is something I already said. There's no such thing as unmotivated reasoning.

That's why what "works" for you doesn't "work" for me.

[Skepdick]

You keep making toast. Till it breaks.

I believe I already said that.

Said differently....

That you don't care about coherence doesn't change the fact that your beliefs about beliefs are incoherent.

[tillingborn]

What you haven't said is why you might want to make your toaster work if you believe that it already works.

You're stupid, I can tell. Whether I believe my toaster works or not has no bearing on whether it will make toast.

The answer (you might find) is something I already said. There's no such thing as unmotivated reasoning.

Could you possibly mean that people believe things because that's what they want to believe? Fancy that.

[Skepdick]

You're stupid, I can tell. Whether I believe my toaster works or not has no bearing on whether it will make toast.

You are much much stupider. Anyone can tell.

In what universe does a non-working toaster make toast?

Could you possibly mean that people believe things because that's what they want to believe? Fancy that.

No. I don't mean that at all!

I mean that I believe that my toaster works because it hasn't broken yet.
I have no reason to believe otherwise. BECAUSE it hasn't broken yet.

[tillingborn]

Much much stupider.

Much more stupid.

[Skepdick]

Much much stupider.

Much more stupid.

Muchest of the stupidest. Ef yo ar korrektin me yo anderstand me.

Dumb Linguistic prescriptivist

Language (as a system of communication) already has built-in error correction/parity checking. There's no need for your efforts.

They cover this stuff in any basic lecture on Information/communication theory - if you were a scientist you'd know this.

[Terrapin Station]

I'd say that unless you have reasons to believe that your toaster might not work--say that it's been very unreliable in the past...

It might not work because fuses blow and components wear out. I believe eventually the toaster will fail. Not today, as it happens. Bon appetit.

Sure, we could say that you believe it will probably work today, but you also don't believe that it will work indefinitely -- which is really the standard belief with stuff like that.

[Terrapin Station]

Re proof, if we've proved that P, then it shouldn't be the case that possibly not-P, but for empirical claims, both P and not-P are always possibilities.

But yeah, I think we're getting at the same thing. There are reasons, based on evidence for example, that people believe one possibility over a contrary possibility. This, as I noted earlier, is what we should be focusing on rather than certainty, proofs, etc.--the reasons that we believe one possibility rather than another.

I think the thing to bare in mind is that there are all sorts of things that can count as evidence, all sorts of interpretations and all sorts of personality types. Fundamentally, the last 60 or so years of philosophy has been about dealing with that. Just take one aspect of the personality type thingy. There is a sliding scale of conservatism to progressivism. Generally, conservative types are more comfortable with fewer ideas; they are more inclined towards things being 'true', thereby dismissing a whole bunch of other stuff as 'not true'. There are those who are more inclined to take logic or mathematics as 'true', as opposed to those who rely more on physical evidence. Add to that there are different fields which very often describe the same things but in different languages, and the whole world looks vastly more complicated than it already is.

Sure. I pretty much agree with all of that.

[Skepdick]

Sure, we could say that you believe it will probably work today, but you also don't believe that it will work indefinitely -- which is really the standard belief with stuff like that.

That's not a belief of any sort - I don't expect this universe to work indefinitely either. And my toaster - by deduction.

But I sure expect one to outlive the other. That's why we have confidence intervals on life expectancy. Predictions.

If my toaster outlives my need/use for it - it's as good as it working "indefinitely". I won't get an opportunity to observe falsification.

[tillingborn]

That's not a belief of any sort...

Hang on a mo; what's the word? Ah, here it is:

Dumb Linguistic prescriptivist

[Conde Lucanor]

It is never my contention that knowledge concerning disentanglement from reality, such as knowledge of things that don't exist or ceased to exist, arises from something different than entanglement with reality.

The contention here is 'does the universe exists if there are no humans'. Your claim is 'yes' while I claim 'no' in the sense of no disentanglement from human conditions.

It seems you missed that the contention 'does the universe exists if there are no humans' can be inverted to 'do humans exist if there is no universe'.

When it comes to your own answer, you add a conditional: "no, if by existence we mean disentanglement from human conditions". But you never say if you mean necessary entanglement (for which there can't be disentanglement) or contingent entanglement/disentanglement. Things can be entangled at a given moment and disentangled at another, maintaining their independence and what they are. Things can also be entangled so that they cannot be separate without ceasing to exist completely. So you mean this: that in order for the universe to exist, it cannot be disentangled, separate from humans.

But your claim that the universe exists only if there are humans, comes with a self-defeating feature: you claim "there are" humans, that they do exist. Let's revisit the two criteria mentioned above: 1) do you mean that humans exist in the sense of being themselves necessarily entangled with humans, so that if they were separate they cease to exist? That evidently cancels humans, the proposition being self-referential, and you're in trouble. 2) Do you mean that humans exist in the sense that while they are contingently entangled with other humans, they can disentangle at any given moment, and maintain their independence and what they are? This will get you in more trouble: since any human would be a mind-independent reality for the perceiving subject, and each perceived human is a contingent being that begins and ceases to exist, the perceiving mind is faced with the possibility that all perceived humans ceased to exist, and yet the domain where all these humans used to exist would remain. Voilá, the universe, thrown out through the window, comes back through the door to haunt you!! But of course, you can still find an escape route, the only one left, by claiming that only one human exists, necessarily entangled with himself, and that this one and only human, being all there is, is at the same time the universe. Hello, solipsism!!

This is reducible to the the contention between Philosophical Realism versus Philosophical Anti-Realism, mine is Empirical Realism aka Transcendental Idealism.
I am arguing Philosophical Realism is not realistic nor tenable.
I believe I have raised a thread for my claim and in various threads.

Yours, as it is easily shown, is good old phenomenalism, but there are different forms of phenomenalism. In a general sense, everyone, even the hardcore realists and materialists, acknowledges the basic epistemological principle of phenomenalism that reality is not directly given to the subject, but indirectly through the senses. We all know Kantian phenomenalism identified itself as Transcendental Idealism, which you say you endorse, however it is interesting to note that not even Kant denied the existence of things in themselves (as mind-independent objects), he was kind of agnostic about it. So, your Transcendental Idealism and Kant's don't seem to be compatible, and you take a contradictory stance when you say you believe there's an empirical reality, and then proceed to argue for solipsism.

At the same time, to assert the ontological status of everything is mind-independent must also be dependent of a particular framework.
The epistemological framework is the most credible, e.g. the scientific framework.
Thus if you are not relying an an epistemological framework then you are likely to be dependent of a lesser credible framework which in a way is still of human construct.

When you "assert the ontological status of everything is mind-independent" you are relying on the groundless "Speculative Philosophy" framework which is from a human construct.

As such whatever which way, you are stuck with the human conditions.

All systematic modes of inquiry and research have an epistemological framework in which they are grounded. When you are in epistemology, you're already in philosophy. But not all epistemological frameworks are credible and reliable. The one that departs from the first-person view of phenomenical approach and denies any ontology beyond that, is the least reliable, least credible framework, the least fruitful for our practical entanglements, and it only leads to solipsism.

Not all anti-realism are the same.
Mine is transcendental idealism which is Empirical Realism. It is likely you are not aware of this sort of anti-realism.
Empirical Realism is not "anything goes" but claim what is real must be verified and justified empirically. But since the human conditions are involved in this verification and justification, what is empirically real cannot be independent of the human conditions.

Anti-realism leads to solipsism and epistemological nihilism. Even if it ultimately refuses to acknowledge it, it ends up in the "anything goes" field.

You may not be aware,
a realist so claimed is actually a true idealist, i.e. an empirical idealist.
Because if you are either a naive realist or indirect realist, what is real to you empirically is only upon the sense-data in the mind.
You are never in touch with the supposed-real-object out there which is assumed to send waves to your brain via an intermediary which can mislead and corrupt.
There is always a reality-gap between you and the supposed[assumed] object.

Phenomenalism is not the antidote to realism and materialism that idealists crave for. Besides being a failed philosophical project, it ends up killing itself with its own poison. Kind of a systematic, slow poisoning, in which the phenomenalist in vogue destroys the previous one, starting with Kant and ending in Derrida.

Note the term 'realist' is a hijacking by some philosophers to represent their view of reality, but it does not necessary confirm what they claim as real is really real.
As I had stated, my anti-realism [opposing philosophical realism] acknowledge empirical reality of an external physical [Physics] world but this reality is overridingly encompassed within the human conditions.

The one-man universe as explained above. Solipsism.

Note my point above, whatever is ontological [mind-independent or mind dependent] must ultimately fall within a human constructed framework, i.e. in your case a speculative philosophical framework.

Nothing more speculative than the phenomenical approach. Isn't that what the epoche is all about? Your approach fits within the hermeneutic circularities and self-referential frameworks of all phenomenalists. It always leads to epistemological nihilism and solipsism.

Note this argument,

• Reality is ALL-there-is.
  All-there-is intricately included human beings.
  Reality is entangled with human beings.

The second premise is false. We have to look at the nature of our entanglements, either epistemological or ontological. Humans construct the knowledge of all there is, but this does not entail that all there is, as it is, is constructed by the human mind.

I did not claim all there is is constructed by the human mind.
What I claimed is all there is cannot be disentangled from the human mind[s].

It is not the point whether you made that claim explicit or not. It is necessarily implied in your argument, as I explained above. You claim there are humans, you claim there are human minds...the rest follows from there. Can human minds be disentangled from human minds? In your own project, they can't, but if they can't, they immediately fall into a spiral of complete annihilation.

My point is, both the physical realists and theists believe things exist independent of the human mind. ''Things" in the loosest sense can be entity of physical or otherwise as long as there is no contradiction. The majority of theists, i.e. the Abrahamic believe in a God that has agency to listen and answer their prayers and promise them eternal life in heaven.
In both cases, there is a reality-Gap.

That's a pointless "point". It points at a meaningless correlation, as if saying both opera and WWF wrestling matches have a public, they are both spectacles, therefore one necessary leads to the other. In any case, while physical realism makes sense, theism does not.

But your acknowledgement of "the existence of one and only mind-independent, physical reality" is based on assumption and speculation and there is a reality-gap between you and that physical reality.

No, only idealism is grounded in pure speculation. Realism and materialism is grounded on the evidence that our systematic inquiries reveal about the universe using reliable methods of research, aka science. Every discipline of knowledge has an epistemological base with basic assumptions, but science in particular is the only one that actually includes in its core principles the challenge and test of its presumptions.