Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sat May 14, 2022 5:59 am
Re the existence of independent external world, the majority will default to counter the philosophical anti-realists with "The Moon & dinosaurs Pre-Existed Humans."
But as explained below such a counter is a non-starter hypothesis.
popeye1945 wrote: ↑Sat May 14, 2022 12:12 am
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri May 13, 2022 1:40 pm
That which exists is that which is experienced?
And if no life form had been on or seen a part of some moon somewhere in the galaxy, it doesn't exist?
Was there nothing before experiencers arose?
Even if there were things in the absence of conscious life forms they could not be then known if there is no knower.
This is a bit tricky.
There should not be any concession to the above question.
The pursuit and impulse for things in the absence of humans is a psychological and evolutionary psychological issue.
As such the hypothesis "things in the absence of humans" e.g. "The Moon & dinosaurs Pre-Existed Humans" is a non-starter which is very evident since humans first proposed such a non-starter hypothesis.
As such, we should address the psychological issue rather than try to find an answer to a non-starter hypothesis. This is what Buddhism [& others of the likes] does.
This is the same as the God exists hypothesis which is a non-starter.
An analogy is 'a square-circle exists' which is glaringly a non-starter.
Right off the bat you idiotically imply that I made a claim that the moon pre-existed humans, when in fact I challenged someone who was claiming it did not and other things not experienced do not exist.
The next fundamental but related problem with your post is you are changing to the burden of proof to me and not the person making the assertion I responded to. To say that only experienced things are real is a very strong claim. It means that the person knows that dinosaurs did not exist or the moon did not exist before life on earth.
Then the third problem, which you share with those responding to me in the other thread, is to confuse their ontological claim with an epistemological claim. To say that we cannot know if things exist that have not been experienced is an epistemological claim.
To say that they do not exist is an ontological claim, and one that I was challenging. Because you don't read posts well or think about context or because always present things as false dilemmas means that you spew out threads (and thread after thread) like this without really noticing important things.
The person who originally made the statement needs to demonstrate that nothing exists that has not been experienced.
But you can't even wait to see if their claim can be defended, the ontological one.
You leap in, while reading poorly, assign onus where it isn't and generally add more noise to the forum.
I did not say the Moon preexisted humans, as just one example of either your incompetence or your disingenousness.