Surely there is no escape from solipsism but since it's all-encompassing then how much actual value does it provide?
I mean, we can annotate every observation and every thought ever with "for all we know it could be just an illusion" and live as if we were constantly being tricked by a deceitful daemon Descartes-style but why should we do it, what is there to gain?
I could agree that monism / strict materialism is as baseless as any other view but I think its terseness deserves a bit more respect than being called "comical", if only for the sake of its elegance.
It's trivial to provide a longer description / a more complicated model of reality that will have as much explanatory power as a simpler one.
It's much more challenging to find a shorter / simpler one that will work just as well.
Yes, I am aware that my assumption that challenging things are somehow more commendable than non-challenging things is completely baseless too :)
I mean, we can annotate every observation and every thought ever with "for all we know it could be just an illusion" and live as if we were constantly being tricked by a deceitful daemon Descartes-style but why should we do it, what is there to gain?
I could agree that monism / strict materialism is as baseless as any other view but I think its terseness deserves a bit more respect than being called "comical", if only for the sake of its elegance.
It's trivial to provide a longer description / a more complicated model of reality that will have as much explanatory power as a simpler one. It's much more challenging to find a shorter / simpler one that will work just as well.
Yes, I am aware that my assumption that challenging things are somehow more commendable than non-challenging things is completely baseless too :)