@Setanta,
This gives me the opportunity to emphasize that my perspective here is not that of solipsism.
I do not claim that objective reality is an irrelevant consideration, but I do think that all experiences we have are subjective.
Therefore, all claims about an objective reality are assumptions. That doesn't make such claims irrelevant, only unknowable according to the criteria of natural science and philosophy (the only context in which "objective" has any meaning).
What I mean by "objective" is not the same thing as what Frank and Fil put into the word.
I am talking about a consensus among us about that which appears to be the same to all of us.
They are talking about some background reality which exists independently of our experiencing it. (It would still exist even if no sentient thing did). However likely that sounds, such a reality is a figment of our imagination. We have never seen it, so we cannot say for sure that it is.
Those are the rules of natural science, and I think it is arrogant to disagree the way Frank is doing.
The rules are that no matter how obvious something seems, it isn't considered fact until we have empirically verified it.
I don't know how the hunt for the Higgs boson goes, but last I heard they were almost completely certain that it existed. They won't claim that it exists for sure until they've seen it.
That is how they maintain credibility.
Making the claim "reality is objective" is in itself fallacious. There is no method to test it.
For the record, making the claim "reality is subjective" is equally fallacious. We cannot test it. The best we can do is demonstrate that
experience is subjective.
So then it comes down to how we define reality.
Materialistic thinking has us defining it as an object.
Some alternatives to materialism define reality as experience.
Both approaches have their merits, and both have their problems.
From the perspective that reality is experience, we acknowledge that all contact with the object comes
through experience, making experience itself something more fundamental than the object.
From the opposite perspective, the object exists, and that is what enabled us to come into existence and have these experiences. The object itself is more fundamental than the experience of it.
Like I said, both approaches are problematical. But it seems to me that asserting "experience is" is less assuming than the assertion "reality is".
But how can we even prove that there is a difference between "experience" and "reality"?
