http://mashable.com/2016/06/02/elon-musk-simulated-reality/#sdLXHm2_jsqB
2,657 thoughts on “Elon Musk Thinks Evolution is Bullshit.”
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The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
keiths, I think I see the disconnect between our views (and also between mine and Glen’s) at this point. You both have us in a Cartesian theater (or Platonic cave) observing sensa and then inferring the existence of trees from them. Then you notice, as Descartes did, that your sensa are just as much evidence for a demon (etc.) Maybe you’re getting this cool play (so full of verisimilitude!) not because of causal stuff scraping your sense organs: maybe the show is produced in some other radically different way. The point is that the same result is consistent with different causes–and there’s no way to choose between them. So you make a disjunction to be safe.
I have a couple of questions about that conception. First, what’s the basis for thinking that we infer the tree from our “sense-data”? Second, why do you not (as Russell suggested one always ought to do) construct rather than infer? I take it that’s what you do with values: you take them to be constructs out of your feelings and deny an inferences to “another realm.” Why not do the same thing with with your sensa?–say that if a bunch of people have the right conglomeration of them, that’s just what being a tree is? That makes the demon hypothesis vanish (and I think that’s what Neil does). Phenomenalism would seem to beckon!
I think it’s only with a Cartesian indirect realism that we get the result that any demon hypothesis is just as warranted as the tree. That alone seems to me to suggest it can’t be right, but that’s as may be.
Anyhow, like KN and Neil, I’m not an indirect realist myself. So I don’t have to depend on either God or disjunctions to get out of demon worries. And I’m not a phenomenalist either. But, like a used car salesman, I’m only noting the nice, common-sense exterior here. What the “Philosophy Fax” isn’t revealing is that I could be accused of relying on a kind of magic too–where KN and Neil don’t. KN puts his money on a hope of finding a broad scientific synthesis that supports direct realism, while what Neil calls “realism” is what everybody else calls “idealism.” But they’re both safe from the demon without any need of God or other magic.
In my own case, as I said early in this thread, I rely on the magic of foundationalism. I make cogitation depend on an original intentionality that provides evidence for externality–with nothing more. In my view, we’re not originally aware of sense-data–as Sellars said, THOSE are what we infer.
In my view, what we ARE originally aware of is what thoughts and perceptions are OF. And those thoughts and perceptions just come with a smidge of original evidence, without which no communication, science, etc. can ever get off the ground: we can never reason our way out of Cartecinema. I admit to hoping that Noe’s and KN’s (and Bruce’s?) researches into cognitive psych will lend support to my view here. But I mostly take the magic and leave the work to them.
Boltzmann, of course, isn’t really in my wheelhouse, but I take it that natural selection–and biology generally–moves the world from being looked at as an array of otherwise indifferent molecular states–this one in equilibrium–that one more unlikely because of its lower entropy, etc. Someone at redit posted the following explanation on it which I found helpful:
That’s intuitively appealing to me as a response to the Boltzmann hypothesis. But again, this isn’t really an area I know anything about, so if you say we actually need to consider “infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, including semiclassical quantum gravity with false vacua or complementarity in theories with at least one Minkowski vacuum” to find a path out out of an instantaneous world of false memories, I’ll take your word for it.
My own version of philosophy tends more to “Life is like a glass of tea.”
What does being catholic have to do with it? Ever hear of Paul Tillich it’s a major theme of his writings. In fact this is a common theological thread in general. It’s found in all traditions of Christianity that I’m aware of. The quote I linked was not even about the Roman church but about the general practice of the churches of the east
In fact even you as an ID debuncker unfamiliar with theology should know that Dembski wrote a whole book about the subject.
This is not some obscure topic it’s bread and butter Christian theology.
quote:
Jesus said to them, “My time (kairos) has not yet come, but your time (kairos) is always here.
(Joh 7:6)
and
But when the fullness of time (kairos) had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,
(Gal 4:4)
and
and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it, that there would be no more delay (kairos),
(Rev 10:6)
end quote
Maybe the reason you missed it is because it does not have a lot to do with rude bathroom humor
peace
“Subjects” is meant to refer to the Keith’s in each of the possible worlds of your disjunction, all of whom would utter the disjunction. I thought that was interesting, but it is at best a set-up for my main point in the rest of the post you reference.
I can reword that point like this. It seems to be that your know* and the asterisked disjunction amount to the same thing as
I know* p
* assuming p is true and I am justified in believing p.
Can you help me understand the difference?
(It seems you and KN and having an exchange on a similar point, but I have not read those posts in detail yet).
I agree the findings of science seem strange but that is the point. Everything that we learn is leading to the conclusion that the world that we perceive is not the world as it is.
As for being purposefully ignorant of biology the opposite is the case. If we know nothing of evolution we know that it does not care if we know anything about objective reality it only cares that we have lots of babies that live.
peace
I don’t understand this post.
That’s a fair point, so let me try to rephrase the idea I was trying to put forward. I think there are two types of case we should separate.
1. Cases where there is no causal structure for the mind (regardless of its substrate) to perceive. These include the Boltzmann brain, since its perceptions are just random events within the brain, and the demon-controlled mind, since the demon is supernatural and so not a causally-explainable entity.
2. Cases where the mind has a separate causal structure to perceive: These include the reality of ordinary objects and the reality of Putnam’s BIVs (where the causal structure is in the controlling machine as well as the interlinked other sentient brains). Assuming well-designed (ie decoupled) software, it is also the case for the simulation scenario.
ETA: In case 1, I think you can provide an argument for the incoherence of each scenario. Roughly: Boltzmann brains assume our current science is correct, but that makes no sense in the context of the scenario. Demons preclude the possibility of rational explanation.
In case 2, I think the scenarios are coherent and you have to rely on something like Walt’s categorial argument.
check it out
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160421-the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality/
peace
I’d put it this way. Some worlds are worlds in which stuff that seems F really IS F. Others not so much.
A very interesting post which I want to study in more detail.
I am unsure about how it relates to your earlier post referencing categorials which I understand as saying (roughly) that any discourse about perception must first assume one of the scenarios in Keith’s disjunction (based on your Wiki article on Hall for my understanding of categorials.)
I was trying to make a similar point in asking about whether the hologram in your earlier post was a an isolated misperception or meant to suggest a completely different ontology.
I think the isolated misperception case could be studied by cognitive science, which for me includes philosophy, since many scientists are content for now with a naive causal explanation for representation and ignore the philosophical issues of naturalizing representation in a way which allows for the case of misperception.
On the other hand, if it is meant to suggest a completely different ontology, then I understand the issue as accepting categorials as a presupposition for any science (or refusing to part with assumptions at the centre of a Quine web of belief due to the global impact of doing so, or perhaps first accepting a Putnam conceptual scheme).
Thanks. I’ve seen that article. It’s a great example of what happens when scientists jump into philosophy and start making proclamations without looking at very much of what has been written on those issues before.
It’s supposed to be consistent with it. The idea is that the difference between common-sense realism and some sort of phenomenalism/idealism according to which we see images and think of ideas is basic. Accepting my realistic categories or version of the world, we have original evidence for trees, and any “evidence” we have for demon theories is parasitic on that.
Keiths and Glen are starting with different categories, though. Given their Cartesian orientation, the demon theory is just as warranted as the tree theory.
The hologram as one-off is, of course, consistent with a common-sense theory, but as omnipresent requires dropping the whole thing for a new set of categories.
So now you have two world-views or sets of categories, one Cartesian, one intentional realism: how do you choose between them? For me, one advantage is losing the asterisks and using “know” the way most people do. But I’m guessing that for Keiths, there will be a feeling that indirect realism (or the phenomenalism I recommended) is more “scientific” and common-sense ought to be damned as it’s generally wrong about everything. There are no proofs–so long as each position is internally consistent. We basically commit to what we’re more comfortable with, what we feel is most parsimonious, fruitful, consistent with science and talking to our neighbors, etc.
And then we die.
I don’t see a lot of philosophy. I do see a lot of evolutionary game theory.
Regardless I’m not sure how that refutes the points he makes based on evolutionary biology. I think that it deserves more than a casual brush off.
Do you honestly think he is being willfully ignorant of biology?
peace
It’s chock full of bad philosophy. It doesn’t follow from the fact that we got our perceptual systems this way or that way that they are or aren’t accurate. That’s just the genetic fallacy. If they’d been designed specifically to be accurate, they still might have been like the Corvair–unsafe at any speed.
I want to make it clear that I’m a big fan of Reid and common sense.
Where he falters IMO is that he does not make the foundation for common sense realism explicit enough. I think this is because he lived in a time where the foundation was obvious to most common folks. At this point in the twenty first century the philosophers among us are often even further removed from that foundation.
That is why it’s important to ask “how do you know” from time to time.
peace
It just follows that if they are accurate it’s simply an unlikely coincidence
peace
I happen to think the Corvair fulfills it’s purpose pretty dang well it’s just that it’s purpose was not safety.
peace
It’s explicit. It’s just not your foundation. It’s basic–not derived from God or anything else.
Not sure. Depends on the aspect, I’d think. I mean, things feeling hard or sharp that ARE hard or sharp seems kind of sensible.
LOL no. The boltzmann brian paradox states that it is much more likely on thermodynamic grounds that we should exist as a single brain in a void, rather than as a huge collection of brains on a planet in a universe full of stars and galaxies.
Dude, just shut up about the physics, you are galactically clueless about it.
Actually nobody claims evolution would put you in contact with “objective reality”. It only puts you in contact with your environment, whether that is a simulation or whatever.
Nobody has ever claimed evolution solved the problem of solipsism.
But there are other grounds besides thermodynamic ones, aren’t there? That’s the point the guy at redit was trying to make.
Given the claims that people have made over the years, it’s hard to believe nobody has claimed that (not even Spencer?). I mean, people have claimed pretty much EVERYTHING not only for evolution but for, you know, EVERYTHING! I mean, I’ll bet there’s a paper on how rice pudding solves the problem of solipsism. 😉
Here you go:
http://philosophy.elte.hu/oldsem/2000/Marcius/Sober-paper.htm
Why Descartes, why demon? Why not a schizophrenic Daniel Schreber, or just a dreaming human? We know of how people can think that they’re observing things when they’re not, and even if there are some differences between hallucinations and dreams on the one hand, and the full perceptual experience on the other (number of pixels, it seems), I don’t see how we’re supposed to be certain that only causal forces (trees, etc.) do cause the latter when they needn’t cause the former. Call it what you will, you’re receiving sensory data, not “reality,” within your brain.
Seems like that’s the issue, all right. We’re sensing, but what are we sensing? Ding an Sich, Berkeley’s idealism, or what? Just labeling it the Cartesian theater gets you nowhere.
What if we are brains in vats, with extremely knowledgeable beings in command of high levels of technology and knowledge in charge of us? How do we know? What this is supposed to have to do with the Cartesian theater I’m not at all sure.
I used the term “construct” at one point. Construct, infer–both likely referring to largely unconscious processes. You’re lumping myself in with Keith here, for no good reason in fact (Keith strangely says things that I’ve written as if they were counter to my points), so why have you come up with a disjunction between “infer” and “construct”? I can refer to things either way, it doesn’t seem that there is any real difference in fact.
Well of course it does. But then we’re still not sure that there are a bunch of other people, or if they’re just constructs. People in dreams might or might not agree with me, what of that?
The point isn’t the demon hypothesis, certainly not for myself anyway. The problem is that we have sensory data and not the tree getting into our heads. One can take that as a problem in philosophy, or at least recognize that it’s a cognitive and psychological issue that we don’t really understand very well.
So did they find the tree behind the sensory data?
Awareness of the sense-data isn’t the point. Reliance upon them is.
Sounds a lot like presuppositionalism.
In a practical sense, of course, sure, we’re oriented to our environment by evolution. But that’s one reason I went to evolution, while you’re just sort of rambling on with philosophical tripe that doesn’t really refer to anything but presuppositions and prejudices. What is it even supposed to mean that we’re originally aware of what thoughts and perceptions are “OF”? That we know the Ding an Sich? You can go to evolution and state that we’re oriented to a world that we evolved to understand in a fashion that tends to knowing the world in the way that it “really is” in some manner or other, but to suppose that we somehow know “what it is” beforehand seems like so much magic to me.
I’d like to see that worked out meaningfully, rather than as a faith statement.
Well, you certainly didn’t work out a number of things to which you referred.
I don’t know much about supposed Boltzmann brains. Pretty sure we evolved, actually.
Or at least like the sensory data coming from a glass of tea.
Glen Davidson
What did you do, just make that up?
A lot easier than dealing with the issues, I guess.
Glen Davidson
I’ll just respond to a couple of Glen’s points. First, he asks, why do I say he’s a Cartesian rather than a Humean or Berkleyan or whatever. The answer is that those details don’t matter to my point. The question is what one thinks we have immediate access to. All of his last few posts make clear that he thinks we have immediate access to stuff like sense-data, pains, ideas, etc., but not to trees, chairs and the like. Those require a leap, which I take it he considers more or less questionable. That’s the Cartesian theater picture. I don’t think we have immediate access to sensa from which we infer or construct physical objects. That’s the non-Cartesian approach and the difference between our views. (There’s also the tone difference, but I won’t get into that except to say I don’t really understand why Glen gets so pissed off whenever anybody disagrees with him about anything. Weird to be so touchy.)
The other thing I wanted to respond to was his question about the difference between inferring and constructing. Way back when Russell and Whitehead were writing the Principia, they came up with the principle that, wherever possible, one should construct entities from things we know exist rather than try to infer from stuff we know to stuff we think might explain it. Hence, no metaphysical numbers and no metaphysical physical objects (or ding-an-sich). Just sets, identity, etc. Instead of the former and logical constructions of sense-data for the latter. That seemed to them a less profligate way to be, and as I mentioned to Keiths, if you take the route tat trees just ARE arrangements of sense-data, the demon drops out of the picture. Glen asks how you get the other people. Russell devoted three books at least partly to that problem: our Knowledge of the External World, Analysis of Matter and Analysis of Mind
Oh, one other thing. Glen mentioned that he saw connections between what I said and FMM’s presuppositionalism. I think that’s right. The difference is that I don’t claim that any kind of truth follows from my presuppositions. I do agree that we can’t step outside of all our categories and look at the world from a “God’s Eye View” –that we’re, in a sense, stuck. But I don’t make that a good thing, just the human condition.
It doesn’t matter to mine either, the point is that you’ve got your slots and you’re throwing in whatever and whomever you wish into them with little regard for thefacts. Quit babbling about the “Cartesian theater” as if it’s the problem. It isn’t, the problem is constructing the world out of the data.
There simply is no excuse for putting my position into the dualistic schema of the Cartesian theater.
Yes, you said that, you didn’t in the least justify it. Argument by repetition. You believe stuff. Who cares?
Quit making things up. The point is your gross misrepresentations, not disagreement. It’s one thing to disagree, it’s quite another for you to mischaracterize my position with your “Cartesian theater” bullshit. It’s just completely false to say regarding myself and my statements with this nonsense: “Given their Cartesian orientation, the demon theory is just as warranted as the tree theory.” I never wrote anything to warrant that nonsense.
It’s convenient for you to make up the “tone difference” instead of you confronting the lack of truth in your simplistic distortions. You don’t refer to what I write, you just make it up, pretending it’s the same as Keith’s. Unsurprisingly, I don’t care for your misrepresentations. Keith at least got it more right (while weirdly disagreeing on lesser facts by saying what I’d said), recognizing that I was disagreeing far more with him.
Yay, more magic and reference to “authorities.” Useless.
I know you can get to people, the problem is that it requires those pesky data (and evolutionary predilections) again.
Glen Davidson
I take the whole reddit article as trying to explain how evolution makes us possible with more than a vanishingly small probability, explaining something that Boltzmann could not. That post at reddit may also be gesturing at comparing the probabilities of BBs versus evolution, I am not sure, but if so I don’t think it is possible as we haven’t enough information to do so.
For the purposes of the discussion here, however, I think all we need is that BB’s are metaphysically possible. In fact, many scientists say they are nomologically possible.
On sense data: my suspicion is you are assuming philosophical context for the concept which other posters may not share (for example, some may take the term as meaning simply phenomenal experience).
I myself have never understood how to fit “inference” into a combined philosophical and scientific picture of perception. If the science says perception involves Bayesian inference (at a sub-personal level of course) does that have anything to do with inference in the philosophical concept of perception? I understand the philosophy to be at the personal level, for starters.
I’m not a phenomenalist. But, otherwise, I mostly agree.
Once again, keiths displays a theistic outlook.
To the theist, words like “tree” and “real” were given their meanings by god, so those meanings are independent of us. And that seems to be what keiths is assuming.
For me, words such as “tree” and “real” get their meaning from usage within the community. So if the community says that the tree is real, then the tree is real, because that’s what the words mean.
I just said “presuppositionalism,” not mentioning FMM. You seem not to be much constrained by the evidence.
You just make a lot of truth claims from it, while making false claims about my position. The result is the same, distortion.
No, the problem is that you seem to indeed think that a “God’s Eye View” is possible, at least to a degree. The sense-data are inferred, or some such thing.
That’s presupposition.
Earlier above, keiths asked why I don’t accept Cartesian skepticism, now that I have conceded that it is conceivable (since we are talking about it) and logically possible (it does not violate the rules for deductive validity in any logical system).
I think that Cartesian skepticism rests upon a grave and profound error, and one that everyone here (with the possible exception of walto) has happily accepted in some version or other
The error is the priority of inner experience over outer experience: the idea that there is nothing problematic about how we can and do know what our thought and language are like, and how we can and do use them, while thinking that there is something problematic about whether or how we can think about, discuss, or know the world or portions of it.
Only if one first accepts internalism about justification and meaning does the priority of inner experience over outer experience make any sense, and only as a result of that does it make sense to say such things as “I’m aware of my sense-data but I cannot know if my sense-data correspond to the objects that supposedly cause them”, etc. Likewise the attempt to drive a wedge between the environment relative to an organism’s cognitive abilities and objective reality presupposes something like this Cartesian distinction, transposed into a Darwinian key.
This priority involves internalism about both justification and meaning, thereby distorting our understanding of both. Justification, at least in non-formal domains (including both science and ethics) is a social practice that involves how we negotiate a shared real physical and social environment with other real persons; the game of giving and asking for reasons cannot be played solely by oneself, though one can play it by oneself once one has been taught how to play it. Likewise meaning depends on the normative pragmatic statuses that institute propositional contents that our speech acts contain.
Indeed, one can even show on transcendental grounds (following Kant’s argument in the Transcendental Deduction and the Refutation of Idealism) that our very ability to identify and classify individual episodes and episode types or kinds of inner experience for self-conscious beings depends upon being able to also and at the very same time reliably identity and classify individual episodes and episode-types of outer experience. The fact is that we can almost always distinguish between changes in subjective appearances (moving closer to the boat) and changes in objective appearances (the boat moving farther away).
In short, the subjective and objective are interdependent, logically and experientially, which means that there is no priority of the subjective or inner over the objective or outer.
When I first made this point a few weeks ago, Glen objected to Kant’s Ding an sich and idealism. In fact I think that the point I’m making here can be vindicated independently of the doctrine of transcendental idealism, that transcendental idealism is incoherent based on a solely internal critique of the Critique of Pure Reason, and that the point being made here is separable from the parts of the Kantian system to which Hegel and Nietzsche rightly rejected, such as the necessity and universality of the categories.
KN:
KN,
Your position is changing by the day, if not by the hour.
Yesterday you stated your agreement with Cartesian skepticism:
Now you claim that “Cartesian skepticism rests upon a grave and profound error”. Slow down, dude!
keiths,
You misread my agreement. My agreement was only that Cartesian skepticism is conceivable and logically possible. One can think a position is conceivable and logically possible while still thinking it is false.
I think there’s a solid possibility that Glen will call you some names for suggesting this…..
ETA: Fixed it so it doesn’t look like keiths was the one who said this. He was just quoting KN
Really? You figured that out about nearly all of us, with the possible exception of Walto? Mind-read much?
Actually, the issue is that, for better or worse we don’t have much choice but to use our “inner selves” to consider the “world” (as Kant notes, everything might be vastly different from how we “see the world”). Meanwhile, it’s pretty clear that there are issues involved in whether and how we can think about, discuss, and know the world and/or portions of it. We note illusions, people do hallucinate, and we do dream. We also can deal with these matters, apparently competently, but when we do we realize that visions of the Grand Canyon are in our heads like dreams are, and we do have to deal with this fact.
I don’t know, what do you suppose knows “the world”? Might it be the brain? Wouldn’t it make sense to ask how the brain knows “the world” (represents it internally)? We’re dealing with basic causality here, not some philosophic category.
Oh God, not the Cartesian nonsense again. Why must it be Cartesian, not neuroscience or something else? Not the same disparagement value? Indeed, I would typically resort to evolution to say that we do know the environment in some meaningful fashion, rather than resort to your Cartesian strawman.
No, the point is that we know via our brains, and they’re at the mercy of the sensory data they receive. It’s not philosophic mumbo-jumbo, it’s analogous to the fact that in making computers deal with reality we have to treat the input properly. Garbage in, garbage out. It’s a fact.
Yes, that’s the problem with your tendency to focus on justification as somehow more important. We best know “the truth” about most things–indeed, we establish the bases for discussion and justification–by simply seeing them, and remembering and processing what we see. Justification is important, of course, but in the end it relies upon the senses.
Again, you’re privileging the linguistic over what is sensed. Meaning in language depends on all that, but meaning to the animal does not.
So…it does matter that we distinguish between the “inner,” more “subjective” and the “outer” or more “objective”? I thought so.
Why would there be? It’s you who wants to make a big deal about the subjective vs. the objective. I don’t even believe in the distinction “fundamentally,” but only as a useful result of the capacity for abstraction.
Doesn’t change the fact that the brain just lies in the skull, dependent upon information flows to operate properly.
Whatever. It’s still an issue of brains depending upon sensory data in order to produce the appropriate outputs.
Glen Davidson
And Walto will just go on making things up, and blaming the victims of his misrepresentations.
It’s just his way…
Glen Davidson
walto,
That quote is from KN, not me.
ETA: I see that you fixed it. Thanks.
GlenDavidson,
Hunh. I thought your last post confirmed my expectation.
WTHDIK?
keiths,
Yeah, I already fixed that. Sorry.
KN,
No, your agreement was with an actual statement of Cartesian skepticism:
God, that’s stupid.
Glen Davidson
keiths, let me ask you: Do you take your position to be a kind of Cartesianism (and for your assertions regarding under-determination to follow from that view)? Do you see what I mean when I put Glen in the same boat? I’m just distinguishing taking trees as what is immediately known from taking sense-data as what is immediately known. But Glen seems to think I’m insulting him by putting him with you there.
It’s a very popular cruise ship, and, as I’ve said, I’m not in any position to sink it.
keiths:
fifth:
Jesus, fifth — you are one clueless dude. The ‘Catholic’ bit was just a joking reference to ‘Hail Mary pass’:
Joke aside, my point was that your bringing up kairos was an act of desperation. Let’s review:
keiths:
fifth:
keiths:
fifth:
keiths:
fifth:
keiths:
fifth:
keiths:
Two acts of desperation: invoking relativity theory, and then invoking kairos.
Neither of them solves your problem, which is to explain how, within chronos time, Jesus had a body before the incarnation.
Other Christians don’t have this problem, because they don’t insist that God had to have a physical body within time in order to interact with the world.
As I asked yesterday:
GlenDavidson,
Glen, FWIW, I really don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as touchy as you are about being disagreed with. I certainly haven’t meant to misrepresent you.
walto,
‘Cartesianism’ is ambiguous. I’m certainly not invoking the Cartesian theater, and neither is Glen. That would just lead to a homunculus regress.
I am a Cartesian skeptic, but Glen is not.
Gee, just make up Cartesianism while you’re at it.
You don’t really understand much, apparently. The fact is that I said that our view of the world is justified, I just disagreed with your tree nonsense. That’s clearly not Keith’s position.
Now you’re ignoring what I wrote again about the entirety in order to try to get Keith to agree with you that I’m “Cartesian” because I don’t swallow your tree swill. It doesn’t work because you’ve never cared about what I wrote overall, merely sticking with your unintelligent ramblings about the “tree.”
It’s your position to ignore what I wrote overall in order to focus on your inability to see the problem I addressed in particular.
Glen Davidson
You did all of that out of ignorance and stupidity?
OK.
But I can hardly discuss things while you’re grossly misrepresenting what I’m writing. You should be bright enough to figure that out.
Glen Davidson
Regarding the underdetermination question: no, my views on that are orthogonal to my Cartesian skepticism.
Theories would still be underdetermined by observation even if sensory information were perfectly reliable.
Really? I disagree. I think that IS Keiths’ position. So I asked him. I’m sorry you don’t like that tactic, but it seems reasonable to me nevertheless.