Theli

And seeing two moons does not reflect reality?
What you see is only light recieved by your eyes. It only presents a reflection (a small part of the information) to your brain. If you saw one moon instead of two it would still not be the actual moon. Just a "presentation".

jpbrooks

Ok. Let's assume that we can only "know" that we (each individually) exists. Where did our knowledge of how to use terms such as "I", "you", "me", "one", etc., in statements that are intersubjectively meaningful for the purpose of communication have come from, if not from a reality external to ourselves? How could we even know of a boundary that divides that which is inside us from that which is external to us, if we couldn't consider the information that we (each indvidually) receive from the world to be generally reliable, (i.e., that we can place trust in our ability to use sense experience in combination with logic to get to the truth about the real world)?

I somewhat agree with those who argue that because it may be the case that we each perceive things in the world in a different way, it may be the case that we can perceive "no objective reality". But that hardly rules out the existence of an objective reality and our ability to learn the truth about it.

Again, how could we ave learned to use language in a way that is meaningful for communication with others if we had no way to differentiate an intersubjectively meaningful term from one that had no meaning at all? How could we even come to learn the use and meaning of the term "meaning" if we only knew of our own existence? Thus, it is difficult to see how language can be something that is simply the product of one's imagination.

VivaHedone

Let's say life is all a kind of dream... you would know nothing about the real you, other than that you exist in some form. The real you may have a totally different mind structure from the one we experience in the 'dream', and therefore you cannot state that the mind of the real you, about which you know nothing, could not imagine language.

jpbrooks

I'm extremely sorry for overlooking your reply, VivaHedone.

That's a good modification of the original scenario. But if the observer in your modified example has genuine knowledge that s/he exists, s/he already knows as much as s/he would know (initially, at least) about herself/himself as s/he would know if life were not a kind of "dream". So not only do we (as before) have to account for where the observer's knowledge comes from, we now additionally have to account for how the knowledge acquired by an observer living in a "dream world" could be genuine.