Thursday 24 May 2018

G.E. Moore's Hands.

Just read the following article:

G.E. Moore’s Hands Roger Caldwell takes a sceptical look at scepticism.

The author doesn't understand all the underlying issues. Especially where he effectively says that we can trust what scientists tell us about reality!

Also people tend to be inconsistent here. They rail against idealism (the notion that matter doesn't have a consciousness-independent existence), yet are quite happy to suppose that colours, sounds and smells don't actually exist out there, but are creations of the mind. They are also happy to take our scientific theories literally so that, for example, we never actually touch anything since the sense of touch is allegedly the repulsive forces between the electrons in my fingertips and the electrons in the "touched" object. And that all matter is mostly empty space etc.

With idealism, at least subjective idealism, colours, sounds and smells are really out there in the world, even though the world is mind dependent.

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