Yes, I hope so. What has that to do with it? We arrived at the conclusion that table salt is NaCl by using our minds. What has that to do with table salt? The fact that we know that table salt is NaCl by using our minds does not imply that table salt is "mental", whatever that would mean.

I am only suggesting that your mind is involved in everything you think and my mind is involved with everything that I think, and there is no way that I can see to disentangle the observer from the observed. In other words, there does not seem to be a mind independent truth.

What ever you perceive is based upon your senses and your mind and what ever you transmit is dependent upon the same, and whatever I perceive from you or otherwise is the same. It is all completely entangled. It would be like trying to separate the light waves/particles that are creating the hologram from the source waves and the hologram itself. They all seem to be entangled to produce the ultimate image.

Rich:01 PM ----------

Ken,

Okay, then that is a unversally understood fact. No one will argue that point. But I also thnk it a bit trivial as it relates to those "facts" that will lead to a better understanding. Don't forget there are those who do not understand the word "raining"; they have a completely different word that constitutes that meaning. How will you communicate with them? Cooperative communication is everything, IMO. Let's not get bogged down in trivialities, for it only makes effective communication even worse. IMO. Try to explain to a blind person that has never seen an apple, what "the apple is red" means. That boggles the mind. Let's not try to boggle it even more.

William

That my mind is involved in everything I think is a tautology. So I would not deny that. But that does not mean that my mind is involved with whatever is the object of my thinking. That would be a non-sequitur.
For instance, my mind is involved with thinking about a rock, but it does not follow that my mind is involved with the rock I am thinking about. I can certainly think about something that does not exist, just as I can search for something that does not exist, like Ponce' de Leon, and The Fountain of Youth.

But is it possible, that there is an underlying, universal truth that is unaffected by people's beliefs? Surely if there is a universal reality that applies to everyone whether they know it or not (the alternative being solipsism), there must be a universal truth. In other words if stuff is real regardless of what people think, then stuff is true regardless of what people think. It is almost as if people are suggesting that it is impossible to be wrong in anything! In which case, why do we even have words like "false" and "true" when "belief" sums it up perfectly! If there is only one universal truth, and there are two conflicting ideas of the truth, then at least one person is false.

I don't know if other stuff besides me exists, I think it does, and if it does then there is a universal truth, thus one can either be true in a statement, or false, and two conflicting ones can't both be true if their implications are that they exclude each other. It's like putting a snake and a mongoose togethar and expecting them to play nicely.