I mentioned Occam’s.
However, it was in the context of making a specific point, rather than vague “makes you think” talk about how we don’t know anything.
In fact…I don’t really associate Occam’s with stoners. But people do boil it down differently. IMO the most accurate concise description is: remove any entities/concepts from a hypothesis that have no explanatory power.
Schoedinger, WTF? Schrödinger.
It worked on The Simpsons. 
I have no belief that the external world exists, but it still makes sense for me to live my life as though other minds* live their lives as though it does.
I have beliefs about other minds, but it does not make sense for me to live my life as though other minds live their lives as though I* exist.
Other minds don’t believe in you. So why should you believe in other minds?
Seems somewhat fallacious to suggest a thread is moribund because people are using technical jargon in it, especially jargon appropriate to the thread. The concepts listed are relevant to the subject.
Go and discuss baseball…and don’t use any terms like “innings” or “shortstop.”
You no doubt live your life as though the external world is real. Yes?
I don’t understand why you insist on beginning at a couple levels of indirection and won’t face up to that more direct and important point.
And have you not seen footnotes before? I used a single one in a single post – I hardly abused the device.
Using is to actually get somewhere is fine, of course, but Beware of Doug simply sending a drive-by shout out to Plato (keepin’ it old school!) and Kozmik awarding him a high-five is as about meaningful as Radar O’Reilly stroking his chin and sighing “ah, Bach!” And if you don’t get what I mean, I’m-a bash you with Wittgenstein’s poker, yo!
If you crumple up this map and throw it on the ground, some point will map itself to itself. So you will be forced to resolve: is the map different then the territory (how?), or is it the same (how?). Imperfection implies a measure of perfection—what is the measure? Some point will be the metaphor for what it is. How?
Pick the red pill Neo.
Which is…
Forget footnotes. Just consider my three points:
I have no belief that the external world exists, but it still makes sense for me to live my life as though other minds live their lives as though it does.
I have beliefs about other minds, but it does not make sense for me to live my life as though other minds live their lives as though I exist.
Other minds don’t believe in you. So why should you believe in other minds?
The second point is a very important point. It goes without saying that *some *other minds live their lives as though I exist. For example, family members and co-workers. However, it does not follow that all other minds live their lives as though I exist. For example, a billion people in China and a billion people in India. The third point may be even more important and it has an intriguing question. Other minds believe in the external world. As Beware of Doug wrote, “Fuck them and the reality they rode in on.” What would it mean if other minds did not believe in the external world and instead believed in you? The first point is no less important. However, it is written out in a way that seems complicated. Simply put, other minds live their lives as though the external world exists and, therefore, even though I do not believe in the external world, the external world makes sense.
I think you’re tying yourself in knots by beginning at several levels of indirection – do I believe that you believe that I believe…
Just begin with what you believe. And the fact that you keep mentioning what other minds believe implies that you yourself do believe in the existence of an external reality.
It may not be the kind of external reality we see – perhaps we’re all jacked into the matrix, say. But for other minds to exist that already means there is something external to you.
How do you live your life when no other minds seem to be around?
When you’re alone in a house, do you live your life as though the microwave oven can heat up the cold food in the refrigerator? As though you can’t walk through solid objects in general or the walls in particular, but an open doorway is fair game? As though water will drain out of the bathtub if you pull the plug? As though that’s air you’re breathing?
If the external world does not exist, what makes you think other minds exist?
Why do you have “beliefs about other minds”? Why does it not make sense to live that way?
Why do you think “other minds don’t believe in you”? Why wouldn’t they? My mind believes that there’s an external entity calling itself Kozmik who is essentially typing gibberish, regardless of whether he believes in my mind or not. Next theory?
Pointless: if you crumple the map up in a different way, a different point will correspond to reality. All you seem to be demonstrating is that no map can ever be totally wrong. And even that fails, if I’m allowed to tear the map apart, rather than merely crumpling it up.
It’s a nifty mathematical note, but has no relevance to the “map” of perceived reality and its relationship to that (disputed) reality.
It does for someone who wishes the map and territory to be wholly distinct, so to speak. You said, “What about an in-between notion: the external world exists, and the internal world is an imperfect model of it.” But this isn’t really a third way, because we’re not talking about real maps—presumably we’re talking about brain states or something somehow representing (imperfectly?) the external world. And it was brought about by my saying that that there’s probably just this one thing (mind, matter). So an unremovable fixed point is metaphorically quite relevant, don’t you think?
Um… I guess I’m not following you… I’m not being deliberately dense; I just don’t get what you’re saying…
I do admit that the idea that we have a mental map of the real world isn’t actually a “third way.” It isn’t really a new idea, separate from realism and from idealism.
I mostly favor it because it threads a narrow course between the Scylla (no, not the Doper!) and Charybdis. It avoids the worst of both realism and idealism. And it seems to describe the actual working situation. For instance, it allows for us to be deceived by optical illusions, memory lapses, simple mistakes of cognition, and so on – without going as far as to declare that “my reality is different from yours.”
i.e., if I sit down and insist that the capital of Nevada is Reno, few people going to say, “Well, Trinopus just lives in a different reality than you do.” Instead, the much more workable explanation is, “Well, that’s just wrong. Look it up in an Atlas.”
(I have actually met people who say that their own reality – while under the influence of drugs, for instance – is “every bit as real” as our consensus reality. But our consensus reality has one really big advantage over their drug-reality: we can reach a consensus. We can pretty much agree that Reno isn’t the capital of Nevada.)
If I’m kinda talking past you, I apologize. My reality is, I do confess, pretty commonplace.
In case you, Kozmik, or anyone else for that matter, missed the point of my quoting the jnani, let’s consider a quote from your cite:
bolding mine
The jnani claims to have access to absolute knowledge of (or immanent experience of) reality itself, and claims to teach you how to get that for yourself. If you are having issues with the existence of the external world and other minds &etc., I thought you might be interested in this perspective.
The external World is a construct made up of the ideas, actions and beliefs of those involved. Hence it is, so to speak, an illusion in that it does not have an independent existence.
Why would they? Why should they? Other minds don’t believe, among other things, that I am their saviour. Other minds don’t believe, perhaps, that there is someone who is going down a certain path in life. That someone has a certain view of meaning. That someone has a certain personality. As Adam Duritz sang in the song, Mr. Jones:
Believe in me
Help me believe in anything
I want to be someone who believes
But I don’t think the typical idealist would suggest that reality is mind-dependent in that way. You could look at it as a question of knowledge, for instance: mind-independent knowledge is impossible. This is not a binary choice, for what is left after we cast aside mind-independence is mind-correlative and mind-dependent. We needn’t go so far, as you say, to suggest that reality is different for different minds. This position has been criticized as being merely tautological (see wiki). I am not sure I agree with that but who am I to disagree with Bertrand Russel.