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Eugine_Nier comments on Rationality Quotes July 2012 - Less Wrong
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There's a reason we use the same word for both of them. They have a lot in common, for example being extremely objective in practice.
Certainly, they have a lot in common, as well as a lot of differences.
But this discussion doesn't seem profitable. We shouldn't be discussing the probability that "another kind of fact" exists. Either someone has a suggestion for a new kind of fact, which we can then evaluate, or else the subject is barren. The mere fact that "we've not ruled out that there might exist more things we would choose to apply the word 'fact' to" is very weak evidence. We've not ruled out china teacups in solar orbit, either, but we don't spend time discussing them.
So if I understand your meta-theory correctly, anyone living before the scientific method, or simple hasn't heard of it, should be a Cartesian skeptic.
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean. By "Cartesian skeptic" do you mean a Cartesian dualist who is skeptical of pure materialism? Or a Cartesian skeptic who does not wish to rely on his senses, who is skeptical of scientific inquiry into objective reality? Or something else?
Someone who doesn't believe his sense inputs necessarily reflect any reality.
That's not physical anti-realism, but it's a sort of skepticism about physical realism. However, nothing can "prove" physical realism correct if you don't already accept it.
If someone doesn't believe his sense inputs reflect something with independent existence, then any new information they receive via those very same sense inputs can't logically influence their belief. Learning about the scientific method would not matter. Living today or at Descartes' time or ten thousand years ago, there are still exactly the same reasons for being a physical realist: the world just seems that way, we act that way even if we proclaim we don't believe in it, we can't change or escape the world we perceive via our senses by wishing it, and we have a strong instinct not to die.