Oh, I DO admit that 'agreement' is not the prime determanent. We can all name things that were agreed on, that later needed some UNagreement.

Now...as to "... someone can step forward and assert that others' images, hopes and thought-constructs are not "real" because they do not meet that person's criteria. That is not exactly what the gentleman said. He said that **Descartes** committed a logical fallacy. Descartes hisself weren't American, so....

"...the sovereign ownership of the individual mind and its contents." I'm not eggactly sure how a tautology shows "arrogating". Of course each of us 'owns'...whatever that can mean... the content of our minds. The philosophical point refers to the concept qua concept! Is it a reasonable concept to attribute 'reality' to "images, thoughts and hopes"? Obviously, we have referents when we use those terms, but many (yeah, like me) kinda think we need more flexible linguistic terms to clarify what 'reality' means when comparing 'hopes' and 'unicorns' and 'rocks' buckyballs. (Did you ever hear Bucky speak? I did... he makes this discussion seem dull...)

What IS my position? The shortest form at this hour...(remember, it's 3 hours later here).. is that there are words bandied about that have purty shaky credentials! My position is that the is a WHOLE lot of equivocation going on, and we need to be a lot more careful.

Further, (at this hour) deponent sayeth not