It’s on par with cogito, ergo sum. I don’t know everything, therefore something else exists. I don’t feel obliged to cater to people who are unwilling to go along with this.
No obligation on your part was implied. I only suggested tabooing the word “exist” and replacing it with what you mean by it. I bet that you will end up either with an equivalent term, or with something perception-related. So your choice is limited to postulating existence, including the existence of something that isn’t your thoughts (the definition of realism), or using it as as a synonym for territory in the map-territory model created by those thoughts. There are fewer assumptions in the latter, and nothing of interest is lost.
It’s on par with cogito, ergo sum. I don’t know everything, therefore something else exists. I don’t feel obliged to cater to people who are unwilling to go along with this.
No obligation on your part was implied. I only suggested tabooing the word “exist” and replacing it with what you mean by it. I bet that you will end up either with an equivalent term, or with something perception-related. So your choice is limited to postulating existence, including the existence of something that isn’t your thoughts (the definition of realism), or using it as as a synonym for territory in the map-territory model created by those thoughts. There are fewer assumptions in the latter, and nothing of interest is lost.