Re: virus: Consensus Reality

Corey A. Cook (cookcore@esuvm.emporia.edu)
Mon, 14 Apr 1997 18:53:14 -0700

I wrote:
Consensus Reality! What a wonderful phrase. The truly amazing
thing is that nobody mentioned the idea of Consensus Reality a
few months ago,when the big Objective-Subjective War broke out.
How odd that this kind of idea wasn't presented then, when nearly
every post seemed to be about Objectivism. Of course, quite
possibly nobody knew about Consensus Reality, but the idea of that
sort of thing should have been mentioned by somebody, as much
thought that was going along those lines. Perhaps we are witness
to the "Can't see the forest for the trees." effect in action, and
that we literally couldn't have come to such a conclusion until we
backed off a bit.

Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>I'm not sure why you should be so surprized. The idea is an
>ancient one well known to all philosophy students, has been
>fashionable at various points in history--but those who like
>the idea and support it, and those who repudiate the concept,
>are well-known to each other and are unlikely to ever convince
>each other. It's one of the many possible metaphysical models,
>like solipsism, that can't really be disproved, so it isn't really
>anything interesting.

I wasn't surprised by the idea of Consensus Reality, I was surprised
by the idea that nobody mentioned it before now, especially since
that was the sort of thing that was being discussed so heatedly
a few months back. And, as a matter of fact, the idea of Consensus
Reality is rather interesting.

Corey A. Cook
cookcore@esuvm.emporia.edu

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