RCSaunders wrote:
I'm sorry, I really do not understand what you are asking. If the answer I provided does not explain what I mean well enough, then it doesn't.
I understand well. Your stance is materialist(physicalist). I guess most people in Europe and America are materialists, I myself was, once.
No fact depends on human existence, except the facts that human beings do exist and those facts produced by human beings like machines, buildings, food, and medicine. The rest of the universe is what it is, independent of any human awareness, knowledge or activity--that is, every existent there is and their nature are the, "facts," of reality.
I do understand your theory of existence. It is common sense.
I'm sorry, bur I was explaining what I mean by, "fact," not what you are or anyone else means by fact. What I mean is what it means to most people who use English, according to the dictionary, (but it would be what I mean, even if no one else did). Of course you can mean anything you like when you use the word, but if you don't mean the same thing they do, you won't be talking about the same thing.
As I said, above, your theory is a common sense one, and the common usage of 'fact' is explained by the social theory of language.
So earlier when you accused me of being, "rude," since the words you were looking at did not even exist until you saw them, interpreted them and gave them meaning, and I did not even exist until then, to whom, exactly, were you giving advice? When I put water into the ice tray and put it into the refrigerator and later my wife takes out the ice cubes for her drink, where did they come from, since they didn't exist until she saw them?
I have a certain attitude towards you that you are a mind like my mind and that we can communicate, unlike for instance if you were a dog and could not communicate via complex symbolic media, or more importantly unlike as if you were a robot or a
zombie. These particular ice cubes are created by you, and also separately by your wife, and they carry a unique history about her and your intentions and actions, all all created by you and your wife. Spouses are a specially good example of social reality.
I know it's no problem for you, apparently, but I just cannot believe things pop into and out of existence depending on my perceiving them. The things you write simply seem like nonsense to me.
"When you write, "You may object that that coil of rope in the dark shed that I perceived as a snake is not a snake but really is a coil of rope," if the rope is not a fact, how could it be a mistake to think it was snake? If, "However what is 'out there' apart from perceptions is vague, and like existence according to statistical probability." how can any statistics be established if there are no facts to actually observe and count?
It is a problem for me as idealism (immaterialism) is not intuitive.
The coil of rope was for a brief duration a snake, for me. If I had told you there was a snake in the shed, and you believed me to be sane, there may have been a snake in the shed for you until you went to investigate. If both of us had had our lives cut off before we has a chance to investigate further, that was forever a snake in the shed, for us two. For all the other people who entered the shed and saw the coiled thing it may have been a rope. However if nobody else ever went into the shed, ever, except God, what was within was a mystery and a possibility. As you will know some apparent sheds are disguises for underground bunkers.
And for the record, my wife is very disappointed to learn she wasted her time making the bed this morning that did not even exist until I perceived it later this evening.
You and your wife seem to be normal tidy people. However there are people who do not differentiate between a made and an unmade bed, and indeed others who have no concept of 'bed'.
And for the life of me, I cannot understand how someone who does not believe
animals even exist until you perceive them could care what someone else does or does not do with or to them. It's not like they actually exist as facts, is it?
They exist as sentient beings somewhat like you and me. We can even communicate with them as they recognise us as sentient beings. Please see what I wrote (above)about our attitude toward other human and other sentient beings. Sentient beings are different from things like the Atlantic Ocean , or a diamond, because sentient beings' relationships are two-way. There is nothing that says an idealist does not love the world he creates, and detest evil in the world he creates.