Right, well I like your position a lot more than Westbrick's. Not sure how complete that link was as far as your beliefs go, but it's pretty solid as things are. Anyways, I think it's time for me to enter this, because honestly I'm interested in what people think about my philosophy. I have a good chunk if it written down, and most of it relates to why I believe science to be the best path to truth. Before I get into that though, a couple thoughts on why taking things at the basest face value doesn't work. First of all, if you saw chairs as mostly being empty space, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you. It would be nigh impossible to survive like that. Our senses developed to enable our survival, not to directly observe the underlying nature of our universe. For example, we're programmed to see faces in damn near everything, because it's safer to see a face on a mountain, than to not see a face on a lion. We're hardwired for a lot of things like that, including not understanding probability (we're less afraid of standing under a coconut tree than seeing a shark for example), and various other things I can't rattle off the top of my head. That said, on to my worldview.
I'll start everything off with a tricky definition, namely that of truth. My personal definition for the word truth is this:
All properties of all that exists, and the properties of non-existence itself.
My reasoning is as follows. Every true statement can be boiled down to an accurate description of something, be it an object, event, or what have you. The more accurate, the more truthful the statement. The statement “I saw a bird today” is true if it accurately describes a change in the properties of a being, namely me, within a specified time period. When you see the bird, you gain the property of having seen a bird. I added the additional clause about the properties of non-existence counting as any non-existent thing can be described as having certain properties. However, other than what you refer it as, these properties are always exactly the same as the properties of non-existence itself. Note however, that fictional or hypothetical constructs do exist, just they exist as fictional or hypothetical constructs. What all this means is the truth can only be pursued for that which exists.
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Sig space for rent. Got something you'd like to see spread around? Give me a shout out, I'll probably sig it.