OK, here it is. "The existence of independent reality" is not a foundational position (at least as I interpret it). It is the opposite. It is a recognition of the limitation of the idea (of mind, of cognition, of consciousness) and as such it is not useful for anything. It's just true. The alternative is a form of idealism, of either the subjective or absolute varieties (nor the Platonic variety). The demand that things are only real if they are useful is solipsistic a notion as you can get.
Reduction of the world to our knowledge of it, or to the extent to which in principle it supposedly could become known, to "the world as knowable," is in fact the form of idealism that curiously lies coiled, unware of itself, at the heart of materialism.
--- On Thu, 9/3/09, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
And if reality is
> independent of
> our knowledge of it but we can only have the knowledge we
> have of it, how is
> this claim not effectively useless as anything other than
> an unfounded and
> unfoundable but nevertheless foundational position?