h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's not that I disagree with what you say, P-c, but rather that it's not what I was getting at.

Which was that the concept of our internal world as a model of an external world seems to rely on more assumptions than just the bare existence of an external world.

I think in philosophy we are not called on to prove or disprove such assumptions, but to show what role they actually play in our model, and what the consequences of particular models may be.

Noggin

Our reliance on assumptions is not avoidable, I don't think. All the more reason, surely, to avoid any assumptions that can be avoided? Or, given that so many assumptions are unavoidable, should we just add as many as we want/need to the collection? My gut feeling is to go with the former. And then, as you say, to illuminate carefully and clearly the assumptions that we have had to make, and the consequences of making them. Just how far, if at all, is our thinking valid in its own right, and how much does it depend on our assumptions being correct for it to have any validity?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"