[ExI] Belief in maths (was mind body dualism)

[The Avantguardian]

Samantha wrote:

>>Lack of evidence is a perfectly fine reason to not think something is so.  If it 
>>
>>also has logical inconsistency problems and/or has no explanatory theory that is 
>>
>>sufficiently sound then that is more reason to disbelief it.<

What constitutes "evidence" is entirely dependent on an observer's personal 
history. If Galileo Galilei and Richard Feynman were to be resurrected into an 
empty room, closed off from the rest of the world, Feynman would have a devil of 
a time convincing Galileo of the existence of neutrinos. Any theorectical 
explanation would have to start from scratch up to and including teaching 
Galileo the calculus. Now the philosophical kicker here is the question did 
neutrinos exist in Galileo's time? Much of our current reality had no evidence 
for its existence for most of human history. And while Galileo might be 
epistemologically justified in not believing in neutrinos and black holes, was 
he ontologically *right* in doing so?


Stuart LaForge 

"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through 
love."-Carl Sagan