Daniel Ust has graciously contributed,
> In particular, I believe one should avoid just taking what one knows to be
> true and reclassifying it as axiomatic. For instance, my eye color, which I
> see every time I look in the mirror is not, for me, an axiom. Surely, I
> know it. I know it's true -- in the context of my knowledge. But it is not
> an axiom. It doesn't underly all of my knowledge.
Well, would you consider "2 + 2 = 4" as true knowledge or as axiomatic?
If "reality = all that exists" isn't axiomatic, but rather a universal truth,
that's okay with me.
I just think of it as a definition.
> I think Jason Joel Thompson meant something more than that. Though I agree
> with you that reality is unitary, I think he meant that the unification
> might only take place in the mind. In other words, that collecting all real
> things into "reality" is no more than a mental shorthand and that
> metaphysically reality -- all the real things -- might be separate and
> unrelated. I would take this to include stuff not perceived or known and
> therefore not unified by any mind.
I think this conversation originated with Jason Joel Thompson contradicting
Eliezer's statement:
"There is only one reality" -- which disagreement I took for obstinance, because
Eli's statement seems to me as self-evident as the statement that 2 + 2 = 4.
I mean, of course someone could argue that 2 + 2 = 5 (for very large values of
2). But to spend more than a few sentences voicing disagreement seems
extravagant if not confrontational.
--J. R.
"We participate, therefore we are."
--John Seely Brown, _The Social Life of Information_
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