It's funny, I meant to type 'Surely it is not universally obvious'. To which I assume your answer would be 'no.'
Funny, for a minute there before responding, that's what I thought you meant.
Yes, you're right, I would say "no" to that.
But then one must really think and perhaps write differently as a phenomenalist. I think your 'obvious' is misleading. An 'I agree' is better, since obvious tends to give the object - his assertion - a quality which it does not really have (in your belief system). Or, perhaps better put, it reinforces notions of objects and things out there.
I'll still hold to my thinking it is obvious.
When choosing between 2 options, if one is impossible, then the other must be obvious.
Again, it's obvious to anyone who has thought on the subject.
Oh, they are getting up, they are gettting up sir, and beginning to talk about the university's accredidation and who interviewed this upstart post-modernist - I know, you are not really a post-modernist. The post modernists would be yelling something else about you.
Any thoughtful scientist would be quite ready to grant this position. A model seeks to describe our experienced environment so as to make it predictable, not to define 'what things are really like'.
As are all scientists; see above. All science values probability; there is no other criterion.
but seriously, how does a phenomenalist achieve the assumption that other people are also phenomenalists (really even if they won't admit it). For all you know I have access to certainty - some of the time, quite a bit of the time, and am not limited in the ways you are). Aren't you presupposing the objective qualities (abilities) of subjects or experience from your own subjective experience? It all sounds rather universal. Instead of 'this is the truth', it is 'everyone can only know the probable'. This sounds like a universal ontological claim - that would seem to undermine itself.
Well, to be quite honest, this is an entirely different discussion, to wit: the old 'Other Minds' problem.
For now though, I'll say this: I cannot be certain of other's experiences, but it's not certainty I'm after (that would be silly). I can however, make inductive inferences based upon observation. Observation has indicated to me that other people tend to experience similarly to me. No assumption needed.
So in the example of 'reality' what is red, what is dancing and what are the categories?
lol
I don't understand what you mean here...
I, sort of, agree. I also think this relates to the idea of transcendance which I see as not limited to the religious community. I think belief in this vantage is belief in transcendence.
In fact, I believe that 'God' is a poor criterion to use when dividing religious belief out from others. I think the question is 'do you have a notion of transcendence'. If you do, then you are religious. Even if that notion is about your own or some community's objectivity.
I'd be happy to describe this kind of vantage as transcendent.
I still think that actually attaining such a vantage is a near impossibility.