lol, im sorry. i seem to have come across as more sarcastic than i intended to be. i wasnt saying that you were cranky, simply that you had a valid objection to any thread of this nature.
i actually was expecting that someone would raise the issue of the meaninglessness of asking the question. to this, i pose the non-doxastic foundationalist answer of: if i have a white sense impression of that wall in my house, no one can tell me that it is not the way the wall actually is. if we cannot define the world outside of our own perceptions as reality, it seems a logical deduction that we must treat our inner perceptions as reality.
ultimately, i agree with you in many respects csfilm, but i am playing devil's advocate here, and i must ask this: if there is no reality outside ourselves (assuming, of course that i am not a solipsist and i am actually talking to other people), how is this thread being discussed?
the simple "fact" that we are talking about reality destroys the concept of there being no real reality at all.
......unless of course we are talking about fruit or something, and i am just interpreting this all wrong