|
Post by mrsonde on Dec 16, 2013 10:35:25 GMT 1
I know. But you don't seem to appreciate the point, however many times I say it. This is it: the above metaphysic is able to produce rational explanations of our experience; yours can't. See? "Explanations of our experience." Thank you, you have seen the light. Science attempts to elaborate "explanations of our experience" of reality, that's the difference between us. Or should be, if you had the courage of your convictions. It is highly controversial to elevate a colloquial use of "reality" as referring to one's subjective experience of the world into a definition that declares this is solely what the word means, and can only mean. That's saying: forget science, and rationality, the deluded and dangerous ramblings of Timothy Leary and R.D.Laing are all we need to understand the universe.
|
|
|
Post by abacus9900 on Dec 16, 2013 10:45:20 GMT 1
Are you saying we should just give up thinking? Berkeley's dead, alas, and besides he had the excuse that he had not yet been adequately responded to. You could begin, though. I suggest your first step should be what he would have done: respond to the points put back to you. Try to take on board that very fine minds have been cogitating and arguing about what we're talking about here for thousands of years, that what you're saying is not new but was all said centuries ago, in a far more convincing manner, and has since been thoroughly answered. This is just dogma, I'm afraid. We know a lot more about certain characteristics of the universe than people did in the past and so are in a better position to make bolder statements concerning the nature of reality. Philosophers in the past did not know anything about QM or black holes or dark matter/energy or the Higgs field, etc. so it would be wrong to compare what was thought many years ago and today. How could thinkers in the past have anticipated ideas such as string theory, for example, or any of the other modern ideas physicists have proposed in order to accommodate experimental data. You seem to be a little out of date. All this has shown what a very odd universe we live in and my particular ideas are no more odder than this.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Dec 16, 2013 10:50:35 GMT 1
So all we have are our models, nothing more. No - there's this something more called reality. That's what we try to model. Often we get it right, to some degree. New York City is in New York State. Define reality.[/quote] I already have, in #15 and #17 and a range of other posts. It is that underlying structure that independently and existently gives rise to the patterns that we experience. "Being aware of" does not bring something into "a higher level of reality". You're talking gobbledygook - largely because, I suggest, you take such liberties with the language. How exactly did this "bringing into a higher level of reality" occur? What does it mean? I paraphrased your position earlier by saying that Galileo brought Saturn's rings into existence. That is what you would claim, isn't it? At least - "into actuality from this mysterious realm of "potential possibilities"' at any rate? By receiving a few photons through his telescope, Galileo "crystallised" these "potentials" - which could as far as we've been manage to explicate the term have been anything whatsoever (flying dragons, swimming turtles, perhaps) - into billions of pieces of ice and coagulated dust, held in synchronous orbital resonance, thereby looking rather like "rings". Or did that "crystallisation" only happen when our probes got a closer look? Have you ever heard of the principle of Occam's Rasor?
|
|
|
Post by abacus9900 on Dec 16, 2013 11:27:01 GMT 1
"Being aware of" does not bring something into "a higher level of reality". You're talking gobbledygook - largely because, I suggest, you take such liberties with the language. How exactly did this "bringing into a higher level of reality" occur? What does it mean? I paraphrased your position earlier by saying that Galileo brought Saturn's rings into existence. That is what you would claim, isn't it? At least - "into actuality from this mysterious realm of "potential possibilities"' at any rate? By receiving a few photons through his telescope, Galileo "crystallised" these "potentials" - which could as far as we've been manage to explicate the term have been anything whatsoever (flying dragons, swimming turtles, perhaps) - into billions of pieces of ice and coagulated dust, held in synchronous orbital resonance, thereby looking rather like "rings". Or did that "crystallisation" only happen when our probes got a closer look? It doesn't work like that. Our perceptual abilities have been shaped by our evolutionary past, therefore, they are attuned to certain aspects within our environment that have and remain crucial in promoting our survival. So, for example, things like shapes, colours, smells, sound and so on are picked out by our senses. When Galilelo looked through his telescope, therefore, his senses attuned to Saturn's physical characteristics such as its general shape and colour and of course its rings. He certainly wouldn't have seen flying dragons or swimming turtles given he was in a sound mind. This is just introducing silly arguments that are irrelevant. Occam's Razor is a rule of thumb device but is only useful within the context of the current level of knowledge it is being used in. For example, if you tried to apply OR before the development of modern medicine you would be compelled to fall back on using leaches to cure a whole host of medical problems because at the time this was thought to be the simplest form of treatment. How do you apply OC in order to resolve the double slit experiment? It had to be extended in order accommodate the facts involved.
|
|
|
Post by fascinating on Dec 16, 2013 11:35:01 GMT 1
Prove what? Reality is just the way things are. Look, we are here having a discussion. What is the discussion about? You say things in the Universe are a certain way. We say things in the Universe are another way. So we are discussing two views of reality. That is really the only, very simple, point that I am making. Do you not see it?
Still you fail to grasp a simple point. From my point of view, I have no absolute proof that you exist or even the keyboard I am typing on now exists. The entire Universe might consist wholly of my own (deluded) mind, with all my memories and so-called perceptions being false, everything is just dreamt up by me. However let's move on from that, because I have reasons (not proofs) to believe that is not true.
There is some truth in what you say there but you are jumping to unjustified conclusions when you insist that something cannot exist without someone being there to define it. If you insist on us imagining a Universe consisting entirely of an oven, then, given that an oven is basically a functional object for human use, there would be no people around to say "there's the oven" so in one sense the object will never have the functional aspects of an oven. But the most important aspect of that Universe, the fundamental and inescapable reality of that Universe is that there are atoms and molecules there that go to make up what you call an oven. How do I know that? Why because you have stated that that is what your Universe consists of.
Similarly, I don't think I like Mrsonde's example of New York City being indisputably part of New York State. Cities and states are human inventions. Without humans there would be no NY state or city. But the fundamental reality of the atoms and molecules that go to make up that part of the land mass of North America, do in fact exist, and they existed millions of years before humans arrived to name them.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Dec 16, 2013 11:36:55 GMT 1
Your claim has been that this current model could feasibly be replaced, and I'm pointing out that nevertheless by this process we discover truths about an existent universe - so that our "paradigm" (accursed term!) could not be replaced by one that contradicts it: by one that, for example, presents a model of water that says it is not composed of hydrogen and oxygen; or one that says the Earth is not approximately spherical.
I keep pointing out to you that your metaphysic entirely ignores and leaves unexplained this crucial feature of our understanding - of what knowledge of reality is. If you ever responded to points put to you, we wouldn't have to keep going round and round in circles like this.
No - it's true full stop. It's a fact.
No. Read the post again, and try to respond to it, rather than merely repeating and repeating your bald unsupported axiom. I said:
That was not rhetorical. Therein lies the whole answer to your self-created knot. Our "simulated way" - our process of perceiving and rationally analysing those perceptions - does in fact enable us to interact with the independent existent universe, and thereby formulate truths about it. As I've tried to point out to you several times already, it's because of your totally mistaken anaylsis of this process that you - and before you, Berkeley, and before him a host of others - have predetermined the absurd conclusions that you think you've discovered about the world.
This particular proposition about the world would be, yes - and all the other propositions about primary qualities we observe in the world would be too; or for an alien, or for someone in the future. A spider in New York City is also in New York State and is also in North America and is also on a spherical planet in a solar sytem in a spiral galaxy...
Exactly. It's a logical conclusion drawn from false premises. Try to analyse those premises, and you'll discover where you've gone wrong. Then you'll replace those premises, and produce a completely different conclusion - one that is able to make sense of the world, and doesn't lead you into these absurd and self-contradictory implications.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Dec 16, 2013 11:42:40 GMT 1
Who cares? What difference does it make? In this case, we're trying to work out what dinosaur fossils mean. Whether there were human beings about when these fossils were alive is irrelevant. Because it means reality changes depending on who or what is watching. Balderdash. Provide evidence please. What is this evidence from "Neuroscience", for example?
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Dec 16, 2013 11:52:53 GMT 1
Reality is what is. We are arguing about the nature of the way things are, what the situation is in reality. You believe that, in reality things are not real until they are made real by some self-aware being becomes aware of them. We believe that you have objects first and beings arise out of them. That is our view of reality. Well, it can only be a belief because how would you ever be able to prove it? Do you not see the point here? I've answered this confused point several times already - again! It is proved by the overwhelmingly abundant evidence it successfully explains. It is proved by the fact there is not a single counter-example that disproves it. This is what proving something means, in the empirical world. What in hell is it that you would prefer it means? If we didn't already know what absurd implications you blithely draw from these commonplace observations, they would be completely unobjectionable statements of the obvious, I think. There you go again, logically leaping all over the place. The facile point that for brain activity to occur requires a brain has been conceded - move on!
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Dec 16, 2013 12:35:03 GMT 1
Berkeley's dead, alas, and besides he had the excuse that he had not yet been adequately responded to. You could begin, though. I suggest your first step should be what he would have done: respond to the points put back to you. Try to take on board that very fine minds have been cogitating and arguing about what we're talking about here for thousands of years, that what you're saying is not new but was all said centuries ago, in a far more convincing manner, and has since been thoroughly answered. This is just dogma, I'm afraid. The hell it is. It's a fact. Just one you happen to be ignorant of. I can say that, and make sense; I cannot see how someone who holds the views you have thus far propounded could possibly do so. It has been your position thus far that we do not "know" anything about these matters either. You have asserted that all they are are models of our experiences, and have no relation to an independent existent reality at all. It has been your position thus far that there is no such thing as experimental data that gives any access to an independent reality - they are merely yet more entirely "subjective experiences". No one has disputed we live in an odd universe. The problem with your odd ideas are they're self-contradictory, without rational support, and can account for none of our observations of that universe. Any proposed scientific theory that dared to share any of those characteristics would get no further than the bin.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Dec 16, 2013 13:12:03 GMT 1
Not irrelevant at all, because you haven't yet said how it does work, what you mean by it, and therefore what it excludes or doesn't. All you've been able to say so far when asked has been: how would I know?
Please pay attention to the following point that I've made several times but which you've yet to respond to. You need to answer it if you want to untie this knot you've unnecessarily created for yourself.
Our sensations of colours, smells, sounds and so on are termed secondary qualities. They depend on brain activity. What their relation is to the outside world is a fascinating question but need not concern us here - not immediately at any rate - because they are not what science and rational explanation - the vast majority of its activity at least, the activity concerned with understanding the independent universe, rather than brain activity - is concerned with.
It is our sensations of primary qualities that science and rational explanation deals with when "building models" of the outside world - and testing them. It does so because these provide access to the nature of that world. enabling us to exress facts in propositions about it, and formulate hypothetical underlying structures that explain - would produce - those sensations. This is because primary qualities are mathematical in nature, as is the universe, by necessity, as I've previously explained to you.
Now, like Berkeley before you, and certain schools of Greeks before him, you have confused the distinction between these types of "sensation", and as such hopelessly predetermined the conclusions you've been forced to logically infer. For example, shape in your list of "sensations" above is a primary quality - we may pick it out and concentrate it for our survival (we'd better!), but this has no implication on whether we do so correctly, factually or not (we'd better!) Shape is an objective feature of the universe - it's extension in space and time. Our "sensations" - perceptions, more accurately - of shape are able to correspond to these objective features. To be "true", or false. And we're able to test for this correspondence, by examining its objective characteristics, including its other primary qualities, and the objective implications they have on the rest of the universe.
So Galileo wasn't interested in the least in Saturn's colour, except as an aesthetic consideration. He was interested in knowing about it, and that, correctly, for him meant measuring and elucidating the implications of its primary qualities. We know this, because he was the first to draw this crucial distinction, and expressly said so.
Now, Berkeley presented an argument that had convinced himself that this distinction couldn't logically be drawn - hence his esse est percipi conclusions logically followed. He was mistaken in this, as has been very persuasively argued by many philosophers since - most conclusively, by Kant. You however haven't bothered with this step - with presenting your argumentation for your axiom. And you need to do so, both for your own comprehension, and so we can actually progress this debate.
|
|
|
Post by abacus9900 on Dec 16, 2013 14:39:07 GMT 1
Prove what? Reality is just the way things are. Look, we are here having a discussion. What is the discussion about? You say things in the Universe are a certain way. We say things in the Universe are another way. So we are discussing two views of reality. That is really the only, very simple, point that I am making. Do you not see it? Still you fail to grasp a simple point. From my point of view, I have no absolute proof that you exist or even the keyboard I am typing on now exists. The entire Universe might consist wholly of my own (deluded) mind, with all my memories and so-called perceptions being false, everything is just dreamt up by me. However let's move on from that, because I have reasons (not proofs) to believe that is not true. Well, if you have no proofs you should really be more sceptical about assuming the universe exists regardless of whether there are observers present or not. The problem here is that you can never know what the universe would be like if you were not observing it because of that fact - viz: that you are not observing it! Again, you are assuming there would exist atoms and molecules in an unobserved universe but how do you prove it? Well, the difference is that you can prove that New York City exists because we can experience what New York city is like but in the case of assuming the atoms and molecules that constitute the land mass of North America existed for millions of years, it cannot be logically proved.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Dec 16, 2013 14:53:45 GMT 1
When I wrote that, I felt sure no one would be quibbling enough to argue that point! Obviously, append the modifying "the part of the globe that we call..." to the New Yorks, if you feel you must. But consider this point, before we get too narrowly focussed on atoms and molecules, and the physical sciences in general. The universe, and what we can know about it, contains very much more than that, despite what physicists smugly like to believe. It is true, it is a correctly expressed fact about the existent universe, that New York City is in New York State - even granted that cities and states are human "inventions". It is true, a correctly expressed fact about the existent universe, that what humans generally refer to by the concept "dragon" is a flying reptillian creature that breathes fire. An invention of fiction or not. It is similarly true that Hitler hated Jews, whether we can specify what hate means in molecular terms or not. Intentional states, aesthetic judgements, institutional and societal structures, statements about general nouns, and so forth, are also capable of being true descriptions of the universe - what grants this ability is our ability, as another feature of that universe, to specify and confirm and test the observations of primary qualities that validate those statements. In the case of New York - the area of physical territory that is called "New York". Slightly more complicated with dispositional states and intentionality, but not radically so; nor with aesthetic judgements, (though there remains a somewhat more complex question in those cases to do with whether there is anything more to these than inter-subjectivity.)
|
|
|
Post by abacus9900 on Dec 16, 2013 14:56:12 GMT 1
You are not saying anything different than before. I know. But you don't seem to appreciate the point, however many times I say it. This is it: the above metaphysic is able to produce rational explanations of our experience; yours can't. See? This process of "discovery" by deductive means does not mean there has to be something pre-existing in its fully developed state before somebody focusses on it. Yet again, how can you actually prove that Saturn existed before somebody came across it even though they were led to it through other clues? It's impossible. If I don't use language how am I supposed to communicate?
|
|
|
Post by abacus9900 on Dec 16, 2013 14:58:30 GMT 1
Are you saying we should just give up thinking? Berkeley's dead, alas, and besides he had the excuse that he had not yet been adequately responded to. You could begin, though. I suggest your first step should be what he would have done: respond to the points put back to you. Try to take on board that very fine minds have been cogitating and arguing about what we're talking about here for thousands of years, that what you're saying is not new but was all said centuries ago, in a far more convincing manner, and has since been thoroughly answered. We all have the right to our own opinions.
|
|
|
Post by abacus9900 on Dec 16, 2013 15:07:14 GMT 1
"Explanations of our experience." Thank you, you have seen the light. Science attempts to elaborate "explanations of our experience" of reality, that's the difference between us. Or should be, if you had the courage of your convictions. But science must be tempered by logic, which is the role of philosophy. You still seem to be labouring under a serious misunderstanding of my position. I have never stated that reality simply constitutes what we human beings experience, no, what I have maintained is that reality consists of something external to our perceptions plus our interpretation of this source of what gives rise to our perceptions. Please do not misrepresent me. Now what would be correct to say is that our subjective experience of reality is generally what is meant by the term "reality."
|
|