| Actually, there are a lot of things that I know as fact: I exist (Descartes only mistake was leaping to a conclusion about the kind of substance he was); experience is fundamentally presented to consciousness spatio- temporally; that logic is efficacious, that is, I can predict things and make things happen as a result of reasoning; that things exist independently from me, insofar as my will has no power over them, and that they often act in ways that surprise me and that I could never imagine, based upon the application of prior patterns from experience; that I am embodied, relating to the world primarily through my senses, and acting upon the world primarily with my limbs and mouth; that there are other beings similarly situated in the world, who look and behave enough like me for me to suppose we are roughly the same interiorly, with such a supposition confirmed through intimate contact, showing the ability to understand and behave appropriately to one another's thoughts and feelings, granted a margin for misunderstanding; and so forth. |
