It is my default position that they do not exist, even as absent constructs, unless otherwise noted (with the usual lowered threshold of standards of evidence for more evidently ordinary claims). That’s the whole point of default positions; they inform us how to react to new criteria or phenomena as they arise.
By bringing up the issue of non-topics you’re moving the goal-post. I asked you how it could be that a person could have no defaults on a given topic.
If I tell you that there is a flugmizzr, then you know that certain things are ‘true’—at least, you presume them to be until shown otherwise: one, that flugmizzrs are enumerable and two, that they are somehow enumerable by people, and three, flugmizzrs are knowable, discrete phenomena.
Those are most assuredly amongst your defaults on the topic. They could easily each be wrong—there is no way to know—but if you trust my assertion of “a flugmizzr” then each of these become required defaults, useful for acquiring further information.
I asked you how it could be that a person could have no defaults on a given topic.
To clarify—my answer is that “there are topics I’ve never considered, and before consideration, I need not have a default belief.” For me at least, the level consideration to actually form a belief is nontrivial. I am often in a state of uninterested impartiality. If you ask me whether you have a friend named Joe, I would not hazard a guess and would be about equally surprised by either answer.
To put it more abstractly: There’s no particular computational reason why the mind needs to have a default for every input. You suggest some topic X, and it’s quite possible for me to remain blank, even if I heard you and constructed some internal representation of X. That representation need not be tied to a belief or disbelief in any of the propositions about X under discussion.
It is my default position that they do not exist, even as absent constructs, unless otherwise noted (with the usual lowered threshold of standards of evidence for more evidently ordinary claims). That’s the whole point of default positions; they inform us how to react to new criteria or phenomena as they arise.
By bringing up the issue of non-topics you’re moving the goal-post. I asked you how it could be that a person could have no defaults on a given topic.
If I tell you that there is a flugmizzr, then you know that certain things are ‘true’—at least, you presume them to be until shown otherwise: one, that flugmizzrs are enumerable and two, that they are somehow enumerable by people, and three, flugmizzrs are knowable, discrete phenomena.
Those are most assuredly amongst your defaults on the topic. They could easily each be wrong—there is no way to know—but if you trust my assertion of “a flugmizzr” then each of these become required defaults, useful for acquiring further information.
To clarify—my answer is that “there are topics I’ve never considered, and before consideration, I need not have a default belief.” For me at least, the level consideration to actually form a belief is nontrivial. I am often in a state of uninterested impartiality. If you ask me whether you have a friend named Joe, I would not hazard a guess and would be about equally surprised by either answer.
To put it more abstractly: There’s no particular computational reason why the mind needs to have a default for every input. You suggest some topic X, and it’s quite possible for me to remain blank, even if I heard you and constructed some internal representation of X. That representation need not be tied to a belief or disbelief in any of the propositions about X under discussion.