TimS comments on Intuitions Aren't Shared That Way - Less Wrong

31 Post author: lukeprog 29 November 2012 06:19AM

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Comment author: TimS 03 December 2012 08:00:01PM 0 points [-]

Suggesting that there's something out there which our ideas can accurately model . . .

Simply put, there's no one who disagrees with this point. And the correspondence theory cannot demonstrate it, even if there were a dispute.


Let me make an analogy to decision theory: In decision theory, the hard part is not figuring out the right answer in a particular problem. No one disputes that one-boxing in Newcomb's problem has the best payoff. The difficulty in decision theory is rigorously describing a decision theory that comes up with the right answer on all the problems.

To make the parallel explicit, the existence of the external world is not the hard problem. The hard problem is what "true" means. For example, this comment is a sophisticated argument that "true" (or "meaningful") are not natural kinds. Even if he's right, that doesn't conflict with the idea of an external world.

Comment author: thomblake 03 December 2012 08:18:58PM 0 points [-]

Suggesting that there's something out there which our ideas can accurately model . . .

Simply put, there's no one who disagrees with this point.

I'm trying and failing to figure out for what reference class this is supposed to be true.

Comment author: TimS 03 December 2012 08:25:49PM 1 point [-]

Who thinks that there isn't something out there which our ideas can model?

Comment author: BerryPick6 03 December 2012 08:46:21PM 1 point [-]

If I understood you correctly, then Berkeley-style Idealists would be an example. However, I have a strong suspicion that I've misunderstood you, so there's that...

Comment author: thomblake 03 December 2012 08:41:54PM 1 point [-]

Solipsists, by some meanings of "out there". More generally, skeptics. Various strong forms of relativism, though you might have to give them an inappropriately modernist interpretation to draw that out. My mother-in-law.