@Jeff: I'm not sure if your comments are directed at Touka specifically or the topic generally, but I was hoping to interject on a few things. If you don't really care about what I have to say, just let me know and this will be a one-time deal!
Right, well I like your position a lot more than Westbrick's.
There's likely a reason for this: my thoughts come from the continental tradition of philosophy, whereas Touka's are pretty plainly more analytic. I rarely recommend Wikipedia, but it's a decent starting point here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy
Note that such categories are rarely absolute. Think of them like the labels "Democrat" and "Republican": no one school or thinker is going to fit perfectly into one or the other, but they reflect certain philosophical trends and emphases. You may find it interesting to look at some philosophy which doesn't consider its role the propping-up of natural sciences, which it is in the analytic tradition.
2: I think, therefor I exist.
I'll just turn to Nietzsche here:
"There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are 'immediate certainties'; for example, 'I think'... When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove; for example, that it is I who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' and, finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking-- that I know what thinking is... [the cogito sum] assumes that I compare my state at the present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to determine what it is; on account of this retrospective connection with further 'knowledge,' it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for me." (BGE §16; italics original, bold added).
In short, whatever "immediacy" the cogito sum appears to have at first blush is illusory. Best not to base too much on it.
Simply put, if one aims to pursue truth, one must therefor be constrained to look at that which is relevant, as they cannot find the truth of that which is not relevant.
This is the crux of the problem with Touka's argument: that what is useful corresponds with what is true.
In accordance with my "name-dropping" ways, allow me to provide some background on this phenomenon. Aristotelian philosophy understands the highest truth as metaphysics, or the contemplation of the forms of the universe. Unsurprisingly, this idle approach to truth didn't sit well with some, but it took time for an alternative to develop. Machiavelli was the first philosopher to introduce the term "effectual truth" into the Western lexicon; the term was developed extensively by Montaigne and then used as a springboard by Bacon. Most of us today first learn about effectual truth through Hume.
Why bring this up? For two reasons: not only is the understanding of truth as "effectual truth" relatively recent- certainly more recent than the Aristotelian conception which has defined thousands of years of philosophy- it was also endorsed by thinkers utterly unconcerned with metaphysics, i.e. the grounding of truth as truth. Bacon and Montaigne are skeptical that such truth can be reached in the first place, while Machiavelli and Hume seem relatively unconcerned about it; Hume famously condemns any and all "abstruse metaphysics" as deserving of being "cast into the fire" (even while he himself was participating in abstruse metaphysics! A great historical irony).
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Kobe XX
http://tinyurl.com/7n46st9