🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep29.152225.1174@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough) writes:
>>Plausibility arguments are really all that one has to go on in
>>theorizing about consciousness.  Solipsism, to take another
>>position, is consistent with the evidence, but doesn't seem at all
>>likely.
>
>I'm not sure what you mean by "likely" here. I think that the argument
>against solipsism is more based on esthetics or practicality than on
>likelihood (since there is no a priori probability distribution on
>possible worlds). Either we argue: For the world to be like that seems
>arbitrary (which is an esthetic judgement, as far as I can tell), or
>we argue: Assuming I act on the hypothesis that solipsism is right,
>and it turns out to be wrong, then the consequences are much worse
>than the other way around (which is a practical argument). I don't
>see where likelihood comes in.

I'm not sure it helps here, but it seems to me that people often
say "likely" as a sort of rough indication of how many other beliefs
would have to change.  So something unlikely would require that
many things be false that we think are true.