For a first point, I kind of thought the commenter was asking the question from within a normal theory. If they weren’t, I don’t know what they were asking really, but I guess hopefully someone else will.
For a second point, I’m not sure your theory is meaningfully true. Although there are issues with the fact that you could be a brain in a jar (or whatever), that doesn’t imply there must not be some objective reality somewhere.
Say I have the characters “Hlo elt!” and you have “el,raiy”. Also say that you are so far from me that we will never meet.
There is a meaningful message that can be made from interleaving the two sets (“Hello, reality!”). Despite this, we are so far away that no one can ever know this. Is the combination an objective fact? I would call it one, despite the fact that the system can never see it internally, and only a view from outside the system can.
Similarly to the truth, agents inside the system can find some properties of my message, like its length (within some margins). They might even be able to look through a dictionary and find some good guesses as to what it might be. I think this shows that an internal representation of an object is not required for an object to exist in a system.
I started replying to the aliens and the snow bit, but I honestly think I was going to stretch the metaphor too far.
For a first point, I kind of thought the commenter was asking the question from within a normal theory. If they weren’t, I don’t know what they were asking really, but I guess hopefully someone else will.
For a second point, I’m not sure your theory is meaningfully true. Although there are issues with the fact that you could be a brain in a jar (or whatever), that doesn’t imply there must not be some objective reality somewhere.
Say I have the characters “Hlo elt!” and you have “el,raiy”. Also say that you are so far from me that we will never meet.
There is a meaningful message that can be made from interleaving the two sets (“Hello, reality!”). Despite this, we are so far away that no one can ever know this. Is the combination an objective fact? I would call it one, despite the fact that the system can never see it internally, and only a view from outside the system can.
Similarly to the truth, agents inside the system can find some properties of my message, like its length (within some margins). They might even be able to look through a dictionary and find some good guesses as to what it might be. I think this shows that an internal representation of an object is not required for an object to exist in a system.
I started replying to the aliens and the snow bit, but I honestly think I was going to stretch the metaphor too far.