this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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Occam's razor is a rule of thumb not an absolute rule of the universe.
If you go with Cogito Ergo Sum, I think that's the stance Mickey is taking. You only know for sure of your own consciousness, everything else could be a delusion of the senses. You know, like shadows on a cave wall or whatever.
Yes, and my response to what Mickey said was that why would we think that we're in the cave looking at shadows? Why should I complicate my view of the world with the added baggage of metaphysical idealism when materialism works just fine to explain everything I see? Sure our perception of the world is limited to our senses and measurement techniques, but the scientific framework we've built onto that base appears very consistent and functional with its predictive power. It's definitely not omniscience, but it works.
I only brought up the Cogito argument to point out that Mickey is incorrect in saying that no certain knowledge exists.
I think one of the points Mickey would make is you can't entirely trust the scientific framework because it's still coming from our flawed senses. Even if everything adds up, it could still be a lie. Solipsism and all that.
I don't think anyone is talking about metaphysical idealism, but conceptual things shouldn't be written off because they are inconvenient. Numbers aren't physical, but I doubt you'd say they don't exist and therefore should be ignored, unless you're the most extreme materialist.
Eliminative materialism isn't my thing no. Emergent materialism is what I roll with. So the human mind and culture and numbers are things that exist as emergent properties of other things.
Sure it could all be a lie with us living in the matrix or so on, and it's fun to entertain such thoughts every now and then. But I won't accept it as truth without a better reason than "but technically it's possible".
Now I'm not sure you get what the allegory of the cave is about. It's literally trying to explain that our perception can't be 100% trusted.
I know. The matrix (or any other metaphysical idealism for that matter) is an example of a situation where we cannot trust our perception for knowledge about the true nature of the universe (much like the allegory of the cave), although taken to the extreme. The epistemological and metaphysical aspects of Plato's cave are very much intertwined.
But you're assuming, from what I'm reading through your comments, that these shadows are cast by metaphysical forces, and I'm interpreting the allegory as how our senses are ultimately something we can't trust completely.
As accurate as science may seem, it is ultimately based on these senses. It's the best way we can understand the physical world, but science, wisely, always has a caveat at the end of every law and discovery: "... As far as we know."
This is a good thing, it means that nothing is held sacred and everything can be tested and questioned again.
Our senses and measurements (or are those the same thing, with one merely augmenting the other?) tell us that we live in a purely material universe. I'm not claiming that our senses are perfect or that science is over with every secret revealed, but questioning the validity of our observations on such a foundational level invokes questioning the validity of the worldview (metaphysical materialism) built on top of them. That's what I interpreted Mickey was on about in the meme.
Donald is despairing about the inherent meaninglessness of a purely material universe, so I assume that Mickey, with his radical rejection of all that Donald says, represents at least some sort of metaphysical dualism or idealism which would allow for inherent cosmic meaning.