"What if we're ALL in the matrix?"

So, one of the stereotypes of philosophy is that it's a field that trades in justifying counter-intuitive things that nobody actually would seriously believe. Like, nobody believes that we live in a matrix or that experience is some dream. Right, yeah, but can you, you know, prove it? Well no, and I don't really care to, is the response that comment probably deserves.

But the truth is that the defense of counter-intuitive claims constitutes a lot of philosophy. I mean, that's predictable in a way. If something's intuitive, there's a good chance that it'll be said pretty early on in the discussion and won't be so interesting. And after a while, if you study a field long enough, you begin to lose your intuitions. This is a feeling familiar to philosophers of language and to linguists--you spend hours trying to explain why an analysis of language is bad because it runs counter to our intuitions about language, and by the time you're done you can't remember which one was the intuitive analysis and which was the non-intuitive one.

My introductory textbook in philosophy of math starts by saying that mathematics stands out because its a priori--that is, you don't bring empirical evidence to support the claims of math. And that's standard, and that's intuitive. After all, has anyone here ever looked outside to see if their math problem was correct? That having been said, Quine makes the claim that math is empirical, and there is no such thing as a priori knowledge at all. So math is not a priori, and you do figure out what math is correct by looking at the world. (As a matter of fact, Quine uses this method to throw out large areas of math as being fictional).

One reason I like philosophy is because I like engaging in the practice of shifting my perspective. I think it's really cool to see a plausible version of something that I used to think was really crazy (like empiricism and mathematics, the claim that mathematics constitutes a posteriori knowledge). Moreover, it's important for figuring out where the stable resting points are in philosophy. If you restrict yourself to what seems intuitive, you'll be missing out on a lot of stable points in philosophy, a lot of viable positions.

So I don't mind when somebody says "Maybe we're all in the matrix" even though it's really counter-intuitive and there's very little chance that I'll believe it. OK, that's not true. I do mind. But not because I don't like dealing with possibilities that run counter to my intuitions. I do, and I think it's fruitful, but the matrix thing has just been overdone already. So, lesson: wild ridiculous claims=good. Talking about the matrix=bad.