Representational Realism
andy-k
Transforming the World Into Experience
JCS 8.1 (2001)
*Conceptual* experience encompasses the paradigmatic belief that the
organism's *perceptual* experience is "mediated by the sense organs and
nervous system. The very _dependence_ of perceptual experience on the sense
organs invites a representative theory . These experiences provide
representations of external objects, although the representations need not
be resemblances and not all perceptual contents need be representational.
It is also tempting to suppose that the world is far more extensive than is
revealed in the contents of a perceptual experience: perceptual
_incompleteness_ implies more extensive, unperceived tracts, and ultimately
a whole universe of objects. The 'external world' gives formal expression
to the assumption and allows us to suppose that a universe of structures
and processes exist and continues to exist whether or not we enjoy
perceptual representations of it. It is this resource -- an enduring,
comprehensive and orderly world -- that is held to be responsible for the
_orderliness_ of perceptual experiences ... Many features of perceptual
experience (such as time-lags between visual and auditory perceptual
content) point to the activity of representational processes and the
simplest way to account for these features is to suppose that there really
is an external world that comes to be represented in perceptual experience
by causal processes . The more natural explanation is that perception seems
to be representational because it _is_ representational", but Marshall
concedes that "The physical conception of the external world is a piece of
speculative philosophy, not an established truth, and may be disputed."
==================================================
The stumbling block for my train of thought is that, in some manner that
defies explanation, an experiential visual field is putatively generated
that is a facsimile of the original field of light that impinged upon the
retina (so the vision of a monitor in front of you right now is supposedly
not the monitor itself, but merely a reconstruction of it 'in your head' so
to speak). I think this still reduces to what Chalmers called the 'Hard
Problem' of consciousness. Marshall's solution is to make the external
world experiential too (as implied in the title of his paper), but I
question the sense in which a part of the putative external world that is
not the data of perceptual experience for anybody (or anything) can be
'experiential'. It seems far simpler to reject the idea that there is
anything other than multiple instantiations of perceptual (and conceptual)
experience. We end up with something not too dissimilar to Leibniz'
monadology, or a better example might be Whitehead's panexperientialism.
Marshall moves towards this approach, but it seems at odds with
representationalism and I wonder why he is so reluctant to relinquish that
aspect -- he seems to want it both ways.
BS
"andy-k" <spam.free@last> wrote in message
news:enzPc.2104$kX6...@newsfe1-gui.ntli.net...
(1) You really give away your objection when you add 'conceptual' to
'perceptual'. Many aspects of the world (both "internal" and "external")
are grasped only conceptually and not perceptually. I.e., they are
conceptual constructs whose validity and worth are based on their capacity
to explain or account for the order found in experience. But many of them
are not even, from a conceptual standpoint, capable of being experienced (to
some extent this is dependent on technology, but it seems unlikely that any
technology will enable us to even indirectly experience a quark, though we
do have indirect experience of a quark's alleged effects, or a string, if
there are any such things).
(2) Your Whitehead reference seems also to negate your objection. For any
actual occasion (entity) prehension (experience) is selective. Many aspects
of the past of a particular occasion are "negatively prehended", i.e., they
are not included in the totality of experience which is the actual occasion.
To put that another way, the actual occasion is a PARTIAL incorporation of
the past into itself; would that not be a "representation" of the past?
And, notice, an actual occasion has NO prehension (experience) of its
contemporaries (by definition: if you prehend it, it is in the past; if you
are prehended by it, it is in the future; what is neither prehended by it
nor prehends it is its contemporary). For Whitehead all direct experience
is of the past; we are presented a picture of the contemporary world by
construct out of prehension of the past. Quite apart from Whitehead, that
seems to me to be a fundamental truth of experience.
(3) Finally, what is the final analysis the difference between perception
and conception? I.e., between what is experienced and what is conceived.
If Kant is correct (and I suspect he is), perception itself involves
conceptualization. While I do not buy Kant's account of the basic
conceptual structure underlying perception (it is far too dependent on the
Aristotelian categories), I do believe that acquired categorization
(acquired from the acquisition of language and other socially conditioned
factors) gives structure and significance to our perceptions. "Direct"
experience, if it ever exists, would be (a la James) a "blooming, buzzing
confusion" which would notbe as perception at all.
Bill Snyder
Sir Frederick
Representationalists must back up to the non representationalism
of folk psychology in order to talk with most other people.
This is a significant cultural
hurdle. I try a work around by drawing on
the "virtual reality" concepts of engineering.
--
Best,
Frederick Martin McNeill
Poway, California, United States of America
mmcn...@fuzzysys.com
http://www.fuzzysys.com
http://members.cox.net/fmmcneill/
*************************
Phrase of the week :
There are living systems; there is no "living matter".
-- Jacques Lucien Monod (1910-1976)
:-))))Snort!)
*************************
Keynes
Scientific and cultural realities are really matters of faith.
There is nothing more sure than experience of sensation.
Physicalists assert this and deny it at the same time.
To draw abstraction over abstraction is the curse of so-called
rational thinking. We no longer talk of angels dancing on pinheads,
but of the 'unreality' of human experience in favor of an arbitrary
model that can never be experienced by any means. There is a
cultural consensus on this that does not differ from previous belief
in demons and witches. Evidence must be forever lacking by definition.
But faith in the conjectures of others must be our gospel, and
never trust in ourselves. Authority moves from the church to
the university and the laboratory, but it is authority just the same.
We can not know even ourselves without passing through the barrier of
unknowable 'physical reality'. The paradigm of materialist physicalism
has removed us from human reality and made us think we are machines
denied even the possibility of any useful truth. Right or wrong, whatever
we think is no more than a chemical reaction producing just another delusion.
This is the ultimate revelation of the materialist position. Hallelujah.
Instead of the indirect approach of passing everything through the 'scientific'
filter, why not examine human experience directly at it's source where it
is yet fresh and not contorted into modern theological pretzels?
andy-k
>
> Representationalists must back up to the non representationalism
> of folk psychology in order to talk with most other people.
> This is a significant cultural hurdle. I try a work around by drawing
> on the "virtual reality" concepts of engineering.
What you seem to be saying here Fred is that most other people operate as
naive realists, so when the representational realist communicates with them
he must dumb things down for them. Did I get that right?
andy-k
<snip>
> Instead of the indirect approach of passing everything through the
> 'scientific' filter, why not examine human experience directly at
> it's source where it is yet fresh and not contorted into modern
> theological pretzels?
There do seem to be invariants in that source experience, even if they are
only relatively invariant, and even if we choose not to investigate them
further. For myself, I'm intrigued as to why they should be there at all.
andy-k
> "andy-k" <spam.free@last> wrote in message
> news:enzPc.2104$kX6...@newsfe1-gui.ntli.net...
Marshall is at pains to point out that his 'experiential realism' is
consistent with scientific realism -- it's just that most people are
prejudiced in regarding the external world as non-experiential, though to
do so would not invalidate scientific realism.
> (2) Your Whitehead reference seems also to negate your objection.
> For any actual occasion (entity) prehension (experience) is
> selective. Many aspects of the past of a particular occasion are
> "negatively prehended", i.e., they are not included in the totality
> of experience which is the actual occasion. To put that another way,
> the actual occasion is a PARTIAL incorporation of the past into
> itself; would that not be a "representation" of the past? And,
> notice, an actual occasion has NO prehension (experience) of its
> contemporaries (by definition: if you prehend it, it is in the past;
> if you are prehended by it, it is in the future; what is neither
> prehended by it nor prehends it is its contemporary). For Whitehead
> all direct experience is of the past; we are presented a picture of
> the contemporary world by construct out of prehension of the past.
> Quite apart from Whitehead, that seems to me to be a fundamental
> truth of experience.
There seems to be confusion here between two different uses of the word
'representation' Bill -- we certainly do represent to ourselves other parts
of our own experience, but this is completely internal to our own
experience (James talks about the way we represent our destination --
Memorial Hall in his own example -- when we make a journey, in order that
we may know when that journey has reached its terminus). This seems to be
quite different to postulating the existence of an external world to which
we have no unmediated access, and then claiming that we have indirect
access to it by virtue of our representations of it. It seems to me that
this latter idea is just the kind of conjecture that James' pragmatism
rejects because it has no way of returning to perceptual experience, or of
'terminating'.
> (3) Finally, what is the final analysis the difference between
> perception and conception? I.e., between what is experienced and
> what is conceived. If Kant is correct (and I suspect he is),
> perception itself involves conceptualization. While I do not buy
> Kant's account of the basic conceptual structure underlying
> perception (it is far too dependent on the Aristotelian categories),
> I do believe that acquired categorization (acquired from the
> acquisition of language and other socially conditioned factors) gives
> structure and significance to our perceptions. "Direct" experience,
> if it ever exists, would be (a la James) a "blooming, buzzing
> confusion" which would not be as perception at all.
In my rather vague analysis I envision conception as the capacity to
entertain an entity in mind in the absence of any perceptual trigger for
that entity. I know a little about horses, and I doubt that they have this
capacity -- i.e. judging by their behavior I doubt that they stand around
in the field entertaining the notion of a pig when there is nothing in
their sense data to trigger any such association. What I don't doubt is
that once such a capacity has evolved, it feeds back into the perception
system and influences how entities are perceived. I conclude, then, that
conception is a capacity available only to very few species of animal, and
in our case it confers upon us the capacity to create hypotheses. But these
hypotheses only have cash value if they can return to the data of
perception, and realism (and anti-realism) as a metaphysical postulate
fails to do this. All one can do in such a case is to try to minimize the
associated problem set, and it is in this respect that I find myself
balking at representational realism (because it either bumps up against the
Hard Problem or else necessitates the idea of the external world being
experiential when it is not the data of perception for anybody.)
Immortalist
"andy-k" <spam.free@last> wrote in message
news:enzPc.2104$kX6...@newsfe1-gui.ntli.net...
Something corresponding to representations necessarily exists and we will call
this the external world. This is analytic apriori not synthetic aposteriori.
"...a peice of speculative philosophy" presupposes the existence of ([a] external
world) or some world for these representations to happen in!
BEGIN YO MASTA SPEAKITH
Now, also, we are in a position to determine more adequately
our concept of an object in general. All representations
have, as representations, their object, and can themselves in
turn become objects of other representations. Appearances are
the sole objects which can be given to us immediately, and [A109]
that in them which relates immediately to the object is called
intuition. But these appearances are not things in themselves;
they are only representations, which in turn have their object
-- an object which cannot itself be intuited by us, and which
may, therefore, be named the non-empirical, that is,
transcendental object = x.
The pure concept of this transcendental object, which in
reality throughout all our knowledge is always one and the
same, is what can alone confer upon all our empirical concepts
in general relation to an object, that is, objective reality.
This concept cannot contain any determinate intuition, and
therefore refers only to that unity which must be met with
in any manifold of knowledge which stands in relation to an
object. This relation is nothing but the necessary unity of
consciousness, and therefore also of the synthesis of the
manifold, through a common function of the mind, which combines
it in one representation.
Since this unity must be regarded
as necessary a priori -- otherwise knowledge would
be without an object -- the relation to a transcendental object,
that is, the objective reality of our empirical knowledge, rests [A110]
on the transcendental law, that all appearances, in so far as
through them objects are to be given to us, must stand under
those a priori rules of synthetical unity whereby the (P 138)
interrelating of these appearances in empirical intuition is alone
possible.
In other words, appearances in experience must
stand under the conditions of the necessary unity of apperception,
just as in mere intuition they must be subject to the
formal conditions of space and of time. Only thus can any
knowledge become possible at all.
Page 137, (critiqu of pure reason)
> http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/07td-a.htm#137
> http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
> ==================================================
>
> The stumbling block for my train of thought is that, in some manner that
> defies explanation, an experiential visual field is putatively generated
> that is a facsimile of the original field of light that impinged upon the
> retina (so the vision of a monitor in front of you right now is supposedly
> not the monitor itself, but merely a reconstruction of it 'in your head' so
> to speak). I think this still reduces to what Chalmers called the 'Hard
> Problem' of consciousness.
Physics Envy: a widespread malady in 20th century science and the academy in
general and some recent religeous thinking. Many of these labor in apparent
jealousy of the hard and fast truths discovered by the physicists and
chemists and matemeticians. Especially in physics in which discoveries have
established it as the purvayer of Truth with a capital T and these other
areas of research "want in on the action."
from: Inside the Animal Mind page 29
Theories of Everything! "WOW - We Want One Too!" Even some religionists
shout this through philosophies of creationism ans quantum mechanics and
even complexity theory.
The theorists that interest me here are "the new stuff" theory and "the
juice theory" of the quantum effects emerged out of the brain by its
arrangement of nerve cells and their combined activities.
Doubly interesting is how religionists try to use one of two parts of the
materialist camp to support dualism or dualistic interactionism. THey
confuse these "new stuff" theorists, who themselves claim to be
non-dualistic materialists, and then use their statements to support an
immortal soul as something other than simply a possibility in this universe.
Penrose, Chalmers, and Searle are on one side of and within the materialist
debate that believes that all that the self is, emerges from the activities
in the brain and whatever quantum effects it triggers by nerve cells and
more importantly their organizational location and relationship with each
other. They are simply claiming that "current" computer technology cannot
duplicate what happens within the quantum realm within the brain. The brain
they claim consists of cells, molecules, atoms, and quantum forces, all
working in concert to produce the self, soul, or whatever you want to call
it.
These three theorists agree that it is possible to arrange molecules, atoms,
and quantum forces into nerve cells because nature has discovered how to do
it.
These three theorists would agree that it is possible to arrange nerve cells
or "near identical entities" that in turn arrange molecules, atoms, quantum
forces, into networks and or brains, because nature has discovered that this
is posible at least on this planet in this universe.
I have been reading the book by Rodney Brooks; Flesh and Machines - how
robots will change us. On page 176 he begins a conversation about Penrose,
Chalmers, and Searle. This made me think of many other things I have read
either for or against them.
These three people are materialists who think that "everything" that the
self is, emerges somehow from the brain as it manipulates and organizes
impulses and quantum forces. Brooks calls this the "new stuff" or "juice"
theories. I guess because "current" computer chips don't arrange quantum
fields like neurons and brains do.
I think that all materialists believe in quantum forces since ALL matter is
a concern of quantum mechanics.
Penrose thinks that the "new stuff" made of quantum effects emerges from the
activities and qualities of the brain and it's networked processes based on
cells, molecules, atoms, and quantum fields. In animal cells there is a
skeletal structure made of micro-tubuals on which 100s of thousands of cell
organelles are transported hither and yonder within different regions of the
cell. At one point Penrose thought that this is where the "new stuff"
emerges within nerve cells. He has shown no evidence of these field effects
yet.
Chalmers gives this "new stuff" or "juice" a name; qualia. Most processes
are constructed upon quantities of elements and through time sequences
sometimes these processes display qualities. I guess that "qualia" are
supposed to be some sort of "unobservable" quantum effect that emerges from
at least human brains through a mechanistic process performed by nerve
cells, only through time durations and sequences. He claims that at least
"current" computers cannot produce the arrangement of atoms that emerges
this "quale stuff." Again there is no evidence offered for the existence of
these qualia except inference to other inferential math data.
Searle believes that nothing but real neurons can produce consciousness and
human understanding. So accourding to Searle, when we make computers out of
nerve cells and arrange them in "structures" like in our brains, then we can
make consciousness emerge from them, "new stuff" and "juice" included.
Religionists who use these three materialists to support their theory of the
soul that exists before or after life, will find themselves sorely
dissappointed. Materialism is not dualism nor dualistic interactionism.
Selves are just what brains do accourding to these theorists and all they
are saying is that it is not possible to duplicate this with "current"
arrangements of atoms (computer chips)
But it must be noted that they are not saying that the structure of further
or future computers will not be able to arrange quantum effects as brains do
now.
Because the self is always a possibility in this universe does not mean that
it exists at any of those times in this universe or wherever it is possible.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Not to be confused with PENIS ENVY:
Penis envy - An aspect of Sigmund FREUD's developmental theory. Freud
believed that during development girls had to switch from having the mother
as the love object to having the father as the love object: and also switch
from the clitoris to the vagina as the main genital zone. At about the age
of four, Freud believed that girls first discovered they lacked a penis. The
girl will blame her mother or the lack of a penis and the consequent hurt to
her own self-esteem. This causes the girl to give up clitoral sexuality, and
turn to the father as love object. This aspect of Freud's theory has
received a great deal of criticism, particularly from feminist
psychoanalysts.
phallic: boys and girls pass through the oral and anal in a similar fashion,
where the mother is the chief love object. During the phallic stage (3-5
years) the genders diverge. Primary source of gratification centers on the
genitals. The small boy focuses on the penis and develops the fantasy of
possessing his mother sexually (Oedipus complex). During this stage the boy
becomes increasingly attached to the mother and resents the father as a
rival. Fear the father will retaliate leads to a castration anxiety. This
anxiety is essential to the boys development. Fear of the father leads to a
repression of his desire for his mother and identification with the father.
The female equivalent is the Electra complex. For girls, the realization
during this stage that they do not possess a penis, leads to envy. This envy
for male genitalia leads to feelings of inferiority, a predisposition to
jealousy, intense maternal desires and a less mature sense of conscience or
morality.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
OR MISSLE ENVY:
Military and national jealousy of phalic like symbols of power.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.carleton.ca/~dmills/marx_thinker.jpg
> Marshall's solution is to make the external
> world experiential too (as implied in the title of his paper), but I
> question the sense in which a part of the putative external world that is
> not the data of perceptual experience for anybody (or anything) can be
> 'experiential'.
Therefore the analytical facts of space and time are experimental? This is the a
violation of the law of contradiction.
Beyond Kant it is pretty obvious that the brain is an organization of part of the
world who's activities are identical to subjective experiences thus solving the
"hard question."
> It seems far simpler to reject the idea that there is
> anything other than multiple instantiations of perceptual (and conceptual)
> experience. We end up with something not too dissimilar to Leibniz'
> monadology, or a better example might be Whitehead's panexperientialism.
> Marshall moves towards this approach, but it seems at odds with
> representationalism and I wonder why he is so reluctant to relinquish that
> aspect -- he seems to want it both ways.
>
A solopsist who wishes for no place for solipsism to happen in? (no pie and don't
eat it too?)
>
andy-k
Craig Franck
> The stumbling block for my train of thought is that, in some manner that
> defies explanation, an experiential visual field is putatively generated
> that is a facsimile of the original field of light that impinged upon the
> retina (so the vision of a monitor in front of you right now is supposedly
> not the monitor itself, but merely a reconstruction of it 'in your head' so
> to speak). I think this still reduces to what Chalmers called the 'Hard
> Problem' of consciousness. Marshall's solution is to make the external
> world experiential too (as implied in the title of his paper), but I
> question the sense in which a part of the putative external world that is
> not the data of perceptual experience for anybody (or anything) can be
> 'experiential'.
Gregory Bateson addressed this by viewing the mind as part of a circuit
that included the outside world. So if you blind fold yourself and take
a pencil and run it over various surfaces, you can determine the types of
surfaces by how the pencil feels in your hand (you might need to put on
head phones with music so as not to let the sound give you clues).
Here the pencil is actually part of your perceptual apparatus. But then why
not the surface you're rubbing it on, as well? The data of the experience
appears at various parts of the mind/world circuit. It's on the surface as
well as in your head, even though it's represented internally in your brain.
The representation is simply the form one part of your brain can process.
The Gestalists agree with this in that I remember from that Pearls/Hefferline
book that "experience occurs at the organism/environmental boundary."
(A Batesonian Holist would say it occurs throughout the entire environmental
field/circuit, your mind being part of the environment for the pencil.)
This is true even if you are a pure representationalist, because, for example,
if you stab yourself with that pencil, the contact is with the skin, not with
the representation inside your head. This grounds the representationalism
in realism in that you are an organism in an environment, not a representation
in your head, even though your body is represented there. So you are "both
places."
This must be the case since your visual field is actually half a dozen
representations, each part of the brain that knows what to do with it having
one. But you experience one consolidated object. Having a seventh
representation on the retina or skin or along your nervous system is in
keeping with this way of looking at things.
--
Craig Franck
craig....@verizon.net
Cortland, NY
Sir Frederick
As long as the "dumber" paradigm still
works. As the situation changes, it may
not work.
Keynes
wrote:
>A solopsist who wishes for no place for solipsism to happen in? (no pie and don't
>eat it too?)
>
>>
>
How about a shave from Brother Occam?
People think and experience as a matter of natural course.
Non-thinking and non-experience cannot be demonstrated
either in humans or in minerals. The assumption that only
living humans experience conscious life is based on what
evidence? It's a matter of materialist faith of course, but why?
Edgar Svendsen
"Keynes" <Key...@earthlinkspam.net> wrote in message
news:9190h0lqfst6iomib...@4ax.com...
non-experience cannot be demonstrated?
There is a correspondence between putative thinking and behaviour. The way
we distinguish live people from dead people, for example, is by the
difference in their behaviour. If "Cogito ergo sum" strikes a chord with
most people it's because the opposite seems true, being, in the sense of
being a human or a dog, displays thinking. Being a rock is different from
being Stephen Hawking, mostly in that the rock's behaviour does not
encourage us to think it's thinking. Thinking and the conscious life are at
the root of what it means to be animate.
I think the idea of thinking and experiencing as purely passive and
invisible processes is an artifact of philosophy. For non-philosophers
thinking and experiencing are inextricably linked to animate behaviour.
Parents do not wonder if inert children are secretly experiencing and
cogitating, they know that when the children are experiencing or thinking
they move!
Even when they dream they twitch and moan. Experiencing and thinkng are
not things that happen to us, they are things we do!
Ed
>
>
>
Immortalist
When did I make the claim that "only living humans experience conscious life?"
I merely claim that it is likely that the "activities of the brain" are identical
to subjective exeriences and this claim in no way excludes the possibility that
other "activities" that emulate the ideal type, of activities making possible
subjectivity through -time-, with different materials.
>
>
>
>
andy-k
i.e. whether or not he thinks that the world would still exist in the
absence of any perceivers whatsoever?
Craig Franck
> Thanks Craig. Does Bateson say anything about the unperceived world? --
> i.e. whether or not he thinks that the world would still exist in the
> absence of any perceivers whatsoever?
I don't recall him directly addressing this, but his philosophy was a
combination of ecology and cybernetics. Whether perceived or
unperceived, any system attempts to achieve and maintain homeostasis
by passing around information and optimizing its variables. This implies
a kind of self-awareness, not necessarily in a conscious sense, but in the
sense that matter is constantly interacting with itself and is therefore in
some way "self-realizing."
Physical reality admits an "equivalency of descriptions," that is a number
of different ways of describing reality, the only requirement being they
are internally consistent. So it really comes down to how you want to
define existence. Bateson would probably say unobserved objects
behave similarly to observed objects on a macro and non-psychological
level. All perception does is put the observer into the loop. This does
alter the loop, and when it comes to subatomic particles or self-aware
entities, it does so significantly.
Also, the question itself is problematic from Bateson's POV in that he
saw most problems with society today coming from man's attempt not to
optimize variables in an ecological way, but to maximize certain ones and
obliterate others. Here an idealist is maximizing the observer variable to
the point that existence itself is a function of observation: all that *really*
exists is *my* part of the circuit. His work was an attempt to reintegrate
mind back into nature in a holistic way.
andy-k
>
> I don't recall him directly addressing this, but his philosophy was a
> combination of ecology and cybernetics. Whether perceived or
> unperceived, any system attempts to achieve and maintain homeostasis
> by passing around information and optimizing its variables. This
> implies a kind of self-awareness, not necessarily in a conscious sense,
> but in the sense that matter is constantly interacting with itself and is
> therefore in some way "self-realizing."
>
> Physical reality admits an "equivalency of descriptions," that is a
> number of different ways of describing reality, the only requirement
> being they are internally consistent. So it really comes down to how you
> want to define existence. Bateson would probably say unobserved objects
> behave similarly to observed objects on a macro and non-psychological
> level. All perception does is put the observer into the loop. This
> does alter the loop, and when it comes to subatomic particles or
> self-aware entities, it does so significantly.
>
> Also, the question itself is problematic from Bateson's POV in that he
> saw most problems with society today coming from man's attempt not to
> optimize variables in an ecological way, but to maximize certain ones
> and obliterate others. Here an idealist is maximizing the observer
> variable to the point that existence itself is a function of observation:
> all that *really* exists is *my* part of the circuit. His work was an
> attempt to reintegrate mind back into nature in a holistic way.
Thanks again Craig. The question as I see it is not whether anything exists
apart from *my* perceptions (I reject solipsism out of hand), but whether
or not objectivity is anything more than inter-subjectivity. It might be
argued that from a pragmatic standpoint it makes no difference whatsoever,
but I beg to differ -- surely a belief one way or the other influences the
way one lives ones life?
Craig Franck
> Thanks again Craig. The question as I see it is not whether anything exists
> apart from *my* perceptions (I reject solipsism out of hand), but whether
> or not objectivity is anything more than inter-subjectivity.
I meant it from the POV of idealists as a group of thinkers, so I didn't
mean to imply solipsism. My part of the circuit means anyone who fills
the role of an observer.
I think whether the world exists unperceived or not and the nature of
objectivity are two slightly different things. The objective, Gods-eye-
view of scientific realism may not make any sense since all perception
is subjective, but you may still wish to consider things unperceived as
existing the same way they do when you perceive them. They exist as
potentials for perception, and the thing itself doesn't normally change
just because it is being perceived.
Some people may say I'm missing the point of Idealism because all
I really have access to is my ideas (in the old-fashioned sense of the
word), and the statement "the thing itself doesn't normally change just
because it is being perceived" might elicit the response "How the hell
would you know? How many unperceived things have you seen to
compare them to?"
However, using probabilistic induction, I should be able to go from
my ideas to the things behind them. The entire concept my ideas being
correct or incorrect seems to imply an objective reality of some sort.
Saying something "exists in a closed box" just means if you open it,
it will be there. Asking if it actually exists when the box is closed is
not to understand what the word "exist" means, or to make a strictly
verbal distinction that has no correspondence in reality.
> It might be
> argued that from a pragmatic standpoint it makes no difference whatsoever,
> but I beg to differ -- surely a belief one way or the other influences the
> way one lives ones life?
I don't see much difference between how an idealist and a realist live
their lives. People who give such things much thought are different
from those who don't, but it's not a difference like between being an
animist or a pantheist or a theist.
andy-k
>
> I think whether the world exists unperceived or not and the nature of
> objectivity are two slightly different things. The objective,
> Gods-eye- view of scientific realism may not make any sense since all
> perception is subjective, but you may still wish to consider things
> unperceived as existing the same way they do when you perceive them.
> They exist as potentials for perception, and the thing itself doesn't
> normally change just because it is being perceived.
Then a better way of putting my question would be to ask if these
potentials for perception can be considered to exist in the absence of any
perceivers whatsoever -- not just whether they exist while being
unperceived by any of those perceivers that do exist.
> Some people may say I'm missing the point of Idealism because all
> I really have access to is my ideas (in the old-fashioned sense of the
> word), and the statement "the thing itself doesn't normally change
> just because it is being perceived" might elicit the response "How
> the hell would you know? How many unperceived things have you seen to
> compare them to?"
>
> However, using probabilistic induction, I should be able to go from
> my ideas to the things behind them. The entire concept my ideas being
> correct or incorrect seems to imply an objective reality of some sort.
> Saying something "exists in a closed box" just means if you open it,
> it will be there. Asking if it actually exists when the box is closed
> is not to understand what the word "exist" means, or to make a
> strictly verbal distinction that has no correspondence in reality.
This would still be the case if there were no objectivity other than
inter-subjectivity -- I'm not really asking about an object in a closed box
*in a world that contains perceivers*, but rather whether a world could
be considered to exist *at all* in the absence of a multiplicity of
perceivers.
>> It might be
>> argued that from a pragmatic standpoint it makes no difference
>> whatsoever, but I beg to differ -- surely a belief one way or the
>> other influences the way one lives ones life?
>
> I don't see much difference between how an idealist and a realist live
> their lives. People who give such things much thought are different
> from those who don't, but it's not a difference like between being an
> animist or a pantheist or a theist.
I'm not contrasting idealism with realism in the way that philosophers of
science do -- I think that even if it were the case that there is no
objectivity other than inter-subjectivity, what you call the 'potentials
for perception' could still be considered to 'really exist' as
*inter-subjective principles* (rather than as non-subjective objects).
Either way, inter-subjective principles or non-subjective objects, these
would impose order upon perception (or constrain the way that perception
unfolds) in much the same way.
John Wilkins
...
> I'm not contrasting idealism with realism in the way that philosophers of
> science do ...
This is a real non sequitur on my part WRT this thread, but this caught
my eye, and I wanted your opinion.
I have come to proper metaphysics from philosophy of science. I'm
presently reading R. I. Aaron's _The Theory of Universals_ (David
Armstrong's copy, no less! He must have liquidated his library - I got
it on abebooks.com), and I have been catching up on academic, as it
were, metaphysics (Loux, for example; I did epistemology 20 years ago,
as an undergraduate).
I note that philosophers of science do tend to use philosophical
concepts, and in particular metaphysics, in a different way to the
purists. For example, the term "kind" is held to mean an intensional set
in biology, and "essence" is a purely verbal definition.
Now I just completed my thesis on species concepts in biology, and
decided to trace the idea pre-biologically, as it were, through the
middle ages. I note that a number of modern views are called "realism",
and others "nominalism". But the traditional account, until around 1700,
was that realism was a realism of universals - kinds - and nominalism
was actually an account about words, not concepts. So species nominalism
is properly and historically understood as the claim that species is a
word, nothing more.
Species realism is a claim that there are universals (in biology) that
individual organisms fall under. What most people mean by species
nominalism is better called species conceptualism (like Locke's account,
which crosses both traditions); and the "individualist thesis" of
Ghiselin and Hull is on fact a particularist account - each species is a
particular, and the notion of "species" is still a universal.
Have others noticed non-standard uses of traditional conceptions in
science and philosophy of science? or have I tricked on one that happens
to be a homonym across two traditions.
--
John Wilkins
john...@wilkins.id.au http://wilkins.id.au
"Men mark it when they hit, but do not mark it when they miss"
- Francis Bacon
andy-k
<snip>
> Now I just completed my thesis on species concepts in biology, and
> decided to trace the idea pre-biologically, as it were, through the
> middle ages. I note that a number of modern views are called
> "realism", and others "nominalism". But the traditional account,
> until around 1700, was that realism was a realism of universals -
> kinds - and nominalism was actually an account about words, not
> concepts. So species nominalism is properly and historically
> understood as the claim that species is a word, nothing more.
>
> Species realism is a claim that there are universals (in biology) that
> individual organisms fall under. What most people mean by species
> nominalism is better called species conceptualism (like Locke's
> account, which crosses both traditions); and the "individualist
> thesis" of Ghiselin and Hull is on fact a particularist account -
> each species is a particular, and the notion of "species" is still a
> universal.
>
> Have others noticed non-standard uses of traditional conceptions in
> science and philosophy of science? or have I tricked on one that
> happens to be a homonym across two traditions.
John,
since your post is a reply to mine I will stick my unqualified oar in. I
find 'realism' to be a word that throws conversations into confusion
because there are so many different ways to interpret it. However, if one
accepts a Darwinian-style account of evolution (and I haven't come across
anything better) then how can species realism be a goer? As for your
specific query, it may be more profitable to start a new thread.
BuddhaThu
Ok... I have a limited amount of time. I will be brief and detailed as
possible.
First, by the title, you know something is wrong. Donald Davidson
would have called this the "third dogma of empiricism." The belief
that there is an inner and outer sense of your experience. To him,
since everything that you are experiencing is the ***directness of
experience,*** where is your inner, or outer? Where is your
representation? One would have to resort to the notion that one can
"see the unseen", which is a grammar issue, not an issue of
experience.
To divide the world in this way is based on a Kantian error. Although,
he did away with subject/predicate ontology, he somewhat repeated the
same mistake in his epistemology. We can no longer deal with this
mysterious **unseen*** "noumena" carrying and transforming our
experience than we can deal with this mysterious ***unseen***
substance that causes us to see things. It was weird.
To me, there is no distinction between substance/predicate ontology
and phenomenal/noumenal distinction. They are basically the same
issue. But yet, philosophers today reject one and accept the other
without really thinking about it.
This postmodernist position of no inner or outer, and everything is
the directness of your experience has a long history, and did not
originate from the point of view of today's postmoderns. Berkeley had
the same idea. To him, empiricism is not the knowledge of objects and
things, rather it is the ***experience of**** the knowledge of your
objects and things. Taken in this instance, he cut off the "physical"
world because it represented to him a redundancy. I mean, what *is*
the difference between tables and chairs and our experience of tables
and chairs? None. It changes nothing in our grammar of talking about
them. The chair is the chair I am sitting in. The table is the table
that I am using to type my posting out.
So no representation. Therefore, no inner or outer distinction.
Therefore, everything is by your direct experience. No transformation.
Berkeley's position also has the added benefit of doing away with the
notion of causal powers and the metaphysics of substances in giving
you your perceptual ability. This was Locke's problem, and he
relegated the problem of substance to a placeholder category until
scientists can figure it out.
J.L. Austin in his support for ordinary language usage does the same
thing. To him, we do not "perceive tables and chairs," we "see them."
To use the word, "preceive" seems to have this added connotation of
this inner/outer issue, to which normal, ordinary, everyday, people do
not really deal with, but for some reason philosophers deal with.
John Dewey, and probably along with William James also worked along
the same line of "radical empiricism." Again, this was knowledge in
terms of your ***experience*** of the world, and not the world itself.
For you cannot see behind what you are seeing to get to the world, so
why speculate further? Deal with what you are experiencing. What you
are experiencing is the only world you can have access to, so why
speculate beyond that? To Dewey esp., our concepts in terms of words
and numbers have everyway of being a part of our direct experience as
tables and chairs.
But I disagree. While they are a part of a category of experience,
they can to a certain sense be differentiated from our perceptual
experience. Numbers and words can be a part of your direct and
immediate experience, but in a way also mediate your experience
depending upon the relativity of time usage. When I tell my student
associates, look at the grammar, don't think. "To see the unseen" is
impossible not due to your perceptual skills, but by the directness of
***observing*** and experiencing the grammar, I am telling them to
bracket off that part of perceptual experience, and to see the
experience of words on their own merit. I am thus deploying Husserl's
phenomenology. Words can represent tables and chairs, and at the same
time be a part of your direct experience, esp. if you are dealing with
grammar issues.
I hope that I am clear. Sometimes, when I find that I am overly
experienced with something, I assume that other people will have the
same knowledge to understand, like it was common sense. But these
things are not common sensical, which is the reason why I hang around
with ordinary people. They keep me grounded.
I have to run.
"andy-k" <spam.free@last> wrote in message news:<enzPc.2104$kX6...@newsfe1-gui.ntli.net>...
andy-k
bothers me though is my conviction that there are other "fields of
experience" besides the one that I am -- should this also be dismissed as
an erroneous representation, a derivative entity abstracted from the actual
entities of "other people", and a product of the "fallacy of misplaced
concreteness"? I ask because this conviction is accompanied by the notion
that these other fields of experience most certainly *are* external to the
field that I am, and this notion sustains the impression of an
internal/external division.
Craig Franck
> Craig Franck wrote:
> >
> > I think whether the world exists unperceived or not and the nature of
> > objectivity are two slightly different things. The objective,
> > Gods-eye- view of scientific realism may not make any sense since all
> > perception is subjective, but you may still wish to consider things
> > unperceived as existing the same way they do when you perceive them.
> > They exist as potentials for perception, and the thing itself doesn't
> > normally change just because it is being perceived.
>
> Then a better way of putting my question would be to ask if these
> potentials for perception can be considered to exist in the absence of any
> perceivers whatsoever -- not just whether they exist while being
> unperceived by any of those perceivers that do exist.
I see. I think this is related to the sentiency question: In a universe with
no sentient creatures, can anything be said to "happen," good, bad, or
indifferent?
Reasoning from the anthropic principle, if the universe couldn't support
life, we wouldn't be here. But does it follow that if the universe couldn't
support life, it couldn't be said to exist? I think it could be said to exist
in that events could be said to be occurring, in the same way events
occurred in the first few billion years of our universe, even though, at
the time, it couldn't support life, and hence had no perceivers and may
never have had any if life didn't happen to evolve.
I see from what I snipped below you agree with this. The only snag as
I see it is the exact relationship between the unperceived universe and the
statement that it exists. In Kant's thought experiment about a universe
containing only a human hand, and whether one could determine if it was
a left or a right, statements about the universe are meaningful because
we observe it in our imagination.
So you could probably introduce the distinction that a universe we had
no way of interacting with is epistemologically nonexistent for us, even
though it exists for itself. For example, the set of all things that exist would
contain universes with no perceivers, even though you could never verify
any statements about such universes. This reconciles the epistemological
and existential aspects of the question.
andy-k
are two possibilities: firstly that a non-experiential cosmos existed,
initially devoid of experiential awareness, and in which experiential
awareness eventually appeared as an emergent property. Secondly that
experiential awareness existed, initially devoid of content, and in which
the experienced world arose as part of the data of experience. Both options
are philosophically challenging so I think the latter option is well worth
investigating despite the modern prejudice against it. This is what
Marshall sets out to do but I think his route is highly unsatisfactory.
Craig Franck
> First, by the title, you know something is wrong. Donald Davidson
> would have called this the "third dogma of empiricism." The belief
> that there is an inner and outer sense of your experience. To him,
> since everything that you are experiencing is the ***directness of
> experience,*** where is your inner, or outer? Where is your
> representation? One would have to resort to the notion that one can
> "see the unseen", which is a grammar issue, not an issue of
> experience.
I don't believe it necessarily comes down to that. The major advantage
of representational realism is how it handles illusions and perceptual
artifacts.
For example, due to size-constancy of vision, the space of your visual
field is strongly non Euclidean. Lines moving away from you don't act
like they should. (This is a link to a visual experiment demonstrating this:
http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/hallway/hallway.html ) But we know
space is Euclidean; therefore, the space of your visual field is a highly-
processed representational version of what you see around you.
We also know from functional MRIs that it is the representations of your
environment in your visual cortex that interfaces with the rest of the brain.
Representational realism is a scientific fact. I believe your auditory
environment and body feel are also represented in a similar way.
So it's not a case of seen vs. unseen, but representation vs. physical
reality. But I do agree it is a separate issue as to how well it works as a
metaphysical system.
> I mean, what *is*
> the difference between tables and chairs and our experience of tables
> and chairs? None. It changes nothing in our grammar of talking about
> them. The chair is the chair I am sitting in. The table is the table
> that I am using to type my posting out.
The difference is tables and chairs retain certain qualities that they should
lose if we were apprehending them directly. A table should (roughly)
double in size as I half my distance to it, but the size seems relatively
constant. I see it as round even though it should be oval due to the angle
of apprehension, etc.
> So no representation. Therefore, no inner or outer distinction.
> Therefore, everything is by your direct experience. No transformation.
I consider myself something of an amateur phenomenologist, but I see it
as a mode of cognition, one I would have to switch out of frequently if I
were a neuroscientist or a perceptual researcher.
There is also the issue of qualia, but that would just be complicating the
discussion unnecessarily.
John Wilkins
Species cannot be real because they evolve? That was what Agassiz said
as a counterargument to Darwin. He thought species *were* real,
obviously, so evolution was false. Darwin's response was "as if anyone
thought that species were not temporarily real".
And here is the problem - people seem to think that if it isn't eternal
it isn't real. But *I* am temporary and real, and so are you. Why then
are species not? In fact this is what people say these days,
philosophically. Species are particulars - individuals, with a
historical beginning and ending. This is hardly a reason to think that
they don't exist, surely. Are you wanting to go down that track?
andy-k
>
> Species cannot be real because they evolve? That was what Agassiz said
> as a counterargument to Darwin. He thought species *were* real,
> obviously, so evolution was false. Darwin's response was "as if anyone
> thought that species were not temporarily real".
>
> And here is the problem - people seem to think that if it isn't
> eternal it isn't real. But *I* am temporary and real, and so are you.
> Why then are species not? In fact this is what people say these days,
> philosophically. Species are particulars - individuals, with a
> historical beginning and ending. This is hardly a reason to think that
> they don't exist, surely. Are you wanting to go down that track?
Ha! See what I mean about the word 'realism' being confusing?
You mentioned the realism/nominalism contrast (or more appropriately
realism/conceptualism). As I understand this particular pairing, the
question is whether species are concepts that we abstract from particular
cases of flora and fauna (and subsequently confer names upon), or whether
they have some kind of distinct and separate eternal realities beyond the
physical world (as in Plato's Forms). I was questioning whether the latter
can be the case under Darwinian evolution, since the upshot would seem to
be that there are no hard and fast boundaries between species -- when
envisioned in block space-time they would appear as a single organic whole
that branches like a tree.
If I'm under a misapprehension in any of this then I would greatly
appreciate your input.
John Wilkins
Hoist by my own petard, I see.
In the "species realism/nominalism" debate (which surely *is* about
conceptualism), "real" means "a real object of nature". The subsidiary
question is whether they are real in the Platonic sense, or in something
like the Aristotelian sense, or what. As forms (eide, which is th Greek
word translated as "species" in Latin), species might be real
classes/universals, or as Aristotle would have it, forms are only real
when instantiated. The modern view is that species are not intensional
classes, but extensional sets. How that plays out is another matter. For
my money species are groups, and so fall under Aristotle's definition of
a universal in the Metaphysics, but are not kinds.
Anyway, assume a Darwinian tree of continuous intermediate formal
transitions over time (an unrealistic simplification). Are species real?
There are two, and only two, nonarbitrary senses in which one might say
that they are. Here's a tree:
A B C ^
\ / / |
\<m1>/ <m2> / |
------\--/------/----t2
\/ / ^
D <m4>/ |
\ / |
----------\-/--------t1
E |
One way is to say that a species is a cross-section of the tree at a
time t. Above there would be three species at t2, A, B and C, each kept
separate by some mechanisms m1...m2 (and m3 between A and C). At t1,
though, there are only D and C, separated by m4.
The other is to label any undifferentiated segment of the tree a
species; this is the Hennigian Convention. So we have here E-D, E-C, D-A
and D-B. No matter what happened between the segments, they remain the
species.
Of course the Hennigian account means that the ancestral species cannot
persist past the speciation of the daughter species, and so for that
reason I think it is a claim about names (what do we label - the segment
or the lineage at ti?).
Formal definitions, such as "bears set of essential
characters/properties X", which is the pre-biological definition, fail
with Darwin, yes, because the sets are neither constant, nor sharply
defined, nor uniform. But this is a logical/classificatory sense of
"species", and hence is a homonym, although a good many biologists
return to it under the baleful influence of Aristotle or Goethe or
Kripke, or whoever.
I used the example of my lifetime because it indicates a significant
sense in which we mean species are individuals - they too have no hard
and fast borders (no matter how hard you try, there are no absolute
qualitative thresholds crossed in my life or a species), and they are
historical spacetime worms both of them.
andy-k
distinction between species realism and species nominalism clear.
Keynes
wrote:
>
>"Keynes" <Key...@earthlinkspam.net> wrote in message
>news:9190h0lqfst6iomib...@4ax.com...
>> On Tue, 3 Aug 2004 08:45:25 -0700, "Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >A solopsist who wishes for no place for solipsism to happen in? (no pie and
>don't
>> >eat it too?)
>> >
>> >>
>> >
>>
>> How about a shave from Brother Occam?
>> People think and experience as a matter of natural course.
>> Non-thinking and non-experience cannot be demonstrated
>> either in humans or in minerals. The assumption that only
>> living humans experience conscious life is based on what
>> evidence? It's a matter of materialist faith of course, but why?
>
>When did I make the claim that "only living humans experience conscious life?"
>
Right.
You make the claim that machines can be people,
since people are just machines anyway.
>I merely claim that it is likely that the "activities of the brain" are identical
>to subjective exeriences and this claim in no way excludes the possibility that
>other "activities" that emulate the ideal type, of activities making possible
>subjectivity through -time-, with different materials.
As long as a materialist basis for mentation and consciousness are accepted,
then experience and thought are products of electro-chemical processes that
are not themselves thoughtful experiencers. There is a leap of blind faith
involved in the imaginary generation of mental from physical.
Accepting the physicalist explanation must grant the powers of reason to
all the ubiquitous chemical reactions in the universe, which after all behave
so rationally that we can predict and direct their regular lawful behaviors.
If it is the particular complexity of a human brain that does the magic,
how about the quantum entaglement of all matter from the big bang?
That's pretty complicated and integrated too maybe.
I think the mind-matter duality problem only arises when we take the
mind for granted and concentrate on the antics of matter. If you had
to choose a monism, which is more palatable, mind or matter?
If you say matter, then with what mind do you say so?
Keynes
wrote:
We can't perceive imperceptible universes, so for us they don't exist.
If there were universes that had no internal or external perceivers,
how could they be said to exist?
jillar...@webtv.net
Hello Andy,
Here is a comment in 1) and a criticism in 2) on this text that you
quoted:
1) Comment: The statement that the agencies of perception are
'incomplete' in sensing, and the assertion that there exists 'structure'
and 'orderliness' in the rest of the possibly under-perceived external
world, invites a negation by absence.
A paradigm using only mediates to traverse the remaining under-perceived
externality indicates logically that transformations are necessary in
this methodology to rid the negation. And it must allow for a process of
conceptual improvements and perhaps, this is Marshall's case to make.
A possible over the stumbling block solution to your question would be
then to consider the dialectic as the process of choice?
The dialectic seems to me to be a logical choice for resolving the
steps of transformation:
1) Identity - representationalism
2) Negation - absentialism
3) Totality - order/structure
Also 'critical realism' uses a four step dialectical method and
scientific approach. I will not list those.
But the dialectic as a philosophcal process has been demonstrated for
various far reaching (hard problem) contexual applications from Hegel's
Consciousness-Unity to Marx and Engels' Materialism.
2) Criticism: An inquiry that initiates its point of departure in the
sense organs and classifies the threshold of knowledge as mediates, as
representational realism does, shifts the inquiry away from the things
themselves. It marginalizes the other resources of faculty and agency
available for inquiry.
We have more than one agency to employ during encounters with a thing
which can shift the attention into the immediacies where the threshold
of thingness is reconstituted in intuition.
The intuition is a faculty that is flexible and facilitates a synthesis
of observation and imagination. It multi-shifts an experience into an
'epoche' of temporality with many reconstitutions. It is not static nor
singular in nature. It reconstitutes the thing in a correlation of sense
and structure, in the attention to the thing. Because this faculty is
based in correlations and horizons the meanings of 'immediate' and
'mediate' are not conceptually based.
The meaning of what is mediate, or what is immediate, should be based on
temporality and proximity, and not on a 'paradigmatic belief' that
classifies a 'perception' for conceptual convenience. Since
representational realism as portrayed in Marshall's text does the
latter, I find it unconvincing as a starting point for an inquiry into
reality.
Jillar
andy-k
<snip>
> Since representational realism as portrayed in Marshall's text does
> the latter, I find it unconvincing as a starting point for an inquiry
> into reality.
I agree but the problem is that there is widespread prejudice in support of
it, so it seems to have become enculturated. The first task, then, is to
recognize this prejudice and try to even up the balance by entertaining the
alternatives and by assessing each of the possibilities in terms of the
inherent problems.
BuddhaThu
What you are worried about is solipsism. No, you should not worry
about solipsism. The experience of many in terms of cultural norms,
language or biological takes is not solipsism. It is decisively
shared. Whitehead in his Process and Reality would have called this
his "Reformed Subjectivism." Subjectivism that is shared among
communities of humans.
But while individual solipsism does not exist, human solipsism might
be a possibility, at least on a hypothetical scale. Think of aliens
who do not have eyes but use some other sense organ. How can they
experience what we see and what we see to them? Inter-subjectivity
takes care of this issue.
What is key to rememeber here is that while your experience of words
and numbers and your experience in terms of your five organs are
direct, they should be differentiated. Remember Rene Magritte "This is
not a pipe" painting? You can look it up on the web. It is about
"representationalism" of different scales. The early modern mistook
representationalism on one scale, (that is picture), but there are
many others.
Anyway, the point of the painting is to illustrate that the object
pipe is not the painting pipe, is not the word "pipe." Hence, "it is
not a pipe." It would be a mistake to collapse them together, since
they can all develop and change ***co-independently *** from each
other. But you equally share your ***experience*** of all three with
others. So where is the solipsism?
As an aside note: Derida separated the word "pipe" from spoken and
written, thus making the levels of "representation" more complex, but
still can all be deeply and directly experienced. You just have to
"bracket" them off and analyze them individually and on their own
merits. Such is my example of grammar. It is Husserl's phenomenology,
only applied backwards and directed at words and concepts. They are
experienced things too. Husserl's methodology works. So in a sense the
do mediate representationalism, and in a sense they do not when you
bracket them out and study them on their own terms.
When Wittgenstein states in his P.I. that one should "Look" and not
"think", he is making a decisive break from Cartesianism. He is
applying empirical/descriptive forms of understanding directly onto
the grammar itself, bracketting it off and taking a look at the words
and its logic on its own, not what it is representing or mediating
toward.
"andy-k" <spam.free@last> wrote in message news:<mIvQc.473$um1...@newsfe4-gui.ntli.net>...
Immortalist
"John Wilkins" <john...@wilkins.id.au> wrote in message
news:1gi3uid.1k4bw3v4j4d6wN%john...@wilkins.id.au...
I found this conversation interesting. But isn't a species any group of organisms
that can breed and produce offspring, generally?
Like Darwin's Island example of the Finches where those near each other could
interbreed but at further ends of the island they had speciated merely because
some trait, like a different feather, stopped them from breeding and then genetic
drift made so even if they did they wouldn't reproduce?
Immortalist
> On Tue, 3 Aug 2004 22:07:27 -0700, "Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >"Keynes" <Key...@earthlinkspam.net> wrote in message
> >news:9190h0lqfst6iomib...@4ax.com...
> >> On Tue, 3 Aug 2004 08:45:25 -0700, "Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >A solopsist who wishes for no place for solipsism to happen in? (no pie and
> >don't
> >> >eat it too?)
> >> >
> >> >>
> >> >
> >>
> >> How about a shave from Brother Occam?
> >> People think and experience as a matter of natural course.
> >> Non-thinking and non-experience cannot be demonstrated
> >> either in humans or in minerals. The assumption that only
> >> living humans experience conscious life is based on what
> >> evidence? It's a matter of materialist faith of course, but why?
> >
> >When did I make the claim that "only living humans experience conscious life?"
> >
>
> Right.
> You make the claim that machines can be people,
> since people are just machines anyway.
>
Because people are machines. Bio-machines. And of course any machine is only
emulating the possible.
> >I merely claim that it is likely that the "activities of the brain" are
identical
> >to subjective exeriences and this claim in no way excludes the possibility
that
> >other "activities" that emulate the ideal type, of activities making possible
> >subjectivity through -time-, with different materials.
>
> As long as a materialist basis for mentation and consciousness are accepted,
> then experience and thought are products of electro-chemical processes that
> are not themselves thoughtful experiencers. There is a leap of blind faith
> involved in the imaginary generation of mental from physical.
>
In ALL inductive reasoning there is a "mental leap" for instance;
Every day the sun has risen
The sun rose yesterday
The sun rose the day before that
The sun rose the day before that, etc.
Therefore, the sun will rise tommorow.
...why should we have the right to belive conclusions that we arrive at through
inductive logic? Nothing can be proved in an accurate and undenaible way through
induction, and therefore we have no reason for beliving that the sun will rise
tommorow.
> Accepting the physicalist explanation must grant the powers of reason to
> all the ubiquitous chemical reactions in the universe, which after all behave
> so rationally that we can predict and direct their regular lawful behaviors.
>
> If it is the particular complexity of a human brain that does the magic,
> how about the quantum entaglement of all matter from the big bang?
> That's pretty complicated and integrated too maybe.
>
> I think the mind-matter duality problem only arises when we take the
> mind for granted and concentrate on the antics of matter. If you had
> to choose a monism, which is more palatable, mind or matter?
> If you say matter, then with what mind do you say so?
>
We have many "reasons" for believing that the "activities of the brain" are
identical to "subjective experience." You merely brush these reasons aside and
more or less tell us to forget about the possibility that the sun will rise
tommorow because it is not analytic apriori.
As for quantum entanglement, we have discovered it and can manipulate matter to
make it occur, hence we are well on the road to organizing matter in such a way
as to emulate any quantum effects as evolution by natural selection has done.
>
>
Immortalist
"BuddhaThu" <softspok...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:d984cfeb.04080...@posting.google.com...
> Hi Andy-K,
>
> What you are worried about is solipsism. No, you should not worry
> about solipsism. The experience of many in terms of cultural norms,
> language or biological takes is not solipsism. It is decisively
> shared. Whitehead in his Process and Reality would have called this
> his "Reformed Subjectivism." Subjectivism that is shared among
> communities of humans.
>
> But while individual solipsism does not exist, human solipsism might
> be a possibility, at least on a hypothetical scale.
Do you mean that "individual solipsism" is refuted and there is no chance for
error in the refutation? Or that it is analytic that other minds exist?
andy-k
are other minds. The idea that the contents of my mind are my own creation,
or are self-generating and drift in from nowhere, is just simply too absurd
for me to take seriously, so I am a realist of sorts. But I am still
concerned about this inside/outside distinction -- taking other minds as
axiomatic seems to foist this distinction upon me.
Nils-Erik Forsberg
Wilkins) wrote:
>And here is the problem - people seem to think that if it isn't eternal
>it isn't real. But *I* am temporary and real, and so are you. Why then
>are species not? In fact this is what people say these days,
>philosophically. Species are particulars - individuals, with a
>historical beginning and ending. This is hardly a reason to think that
>they don't exist, surely. Are you wanting to go down that track?
>--
>John Wilkins
I am existent and act in different temporary ways and so are you.
That is real.
Darwin missed to think about that and also the real continiously
acting origin we live in.
Nils F
Craig Franck
> "Craig Franck" wrote:
I thought I addressed both the epistemological and existential aspects.
Prior to the development of perceivers, our universe had to undergo an
enormous amount of evolution. It had to exist back then, with no
perceivers, or we wouldn't be here.
Now imagine a number of universes essentially like ours, but in which the
likely development of sentient creatures was 50%. Prior to the development
of life, all the universes were essentially the same. How can the ones that
developed sentient creatures be said to exist, and the one that didn't not
to exist, when they are essentially identical prior to the development of
such creatures?
I resolved this by saying we can't know the unperceived universes exist, but
things can exist that no one knows about. There might be a planet beyond
the limits of our visible universe inhabited by super-intelligent unicorns, but
we can't possibly know this. In both instance it's impossible to know.
It is true that the unicorns know they themselves exist, but impossibility of
knowing on are part in and of itself shouldn't render things non-existent in
the existential sense of the world. If it did, that would tie all existence to
knowledge.
Craig Franck
> "Keynes" wrote
> > As long as a materialist basis for mentation and consciousness are accepted,
> > then experience and thought are products of electro-chemical processes that
> > are not themselves thoughtful experiencers. There is a leap of blind faith
> > involved in the imaginary generation of mental from physical.
> >
>
> In ALL inductive reasoning there is a "mental leap" for instance;
>
> Every day the sun has risen
> The sun rose yesterday
> The sun rose the day before that
> The sun rose the day before that, etc.
> Therefore, the sun will rise tommorow.
>
> ...why should we have the right to belive conclusions that we arrive at through
> inductive logic? Nothing can be proved in an accurate and undenaible way through
> induction, and therefore we have no reason for beliving that the sun will rise
> tommorow.
I think Keynes meant why should we believe one class of events should be
considered as instances of another seemingly totally different class.
I happen to believe that some events are physical, some events are physical
and biological, and some events are physical, biological, and mental. But,
for example, my belief that the sun will rise tomorrow has no atomic weight.
You could argue that the physical-ness of the belief is distributed over neural
nets in my brain, but to say my belief weighs .04 grams is meaningless since
beliefs don't have that particular property. Likewise an atom can't be true
or false. Why some events have intentional aspects to them while others don't
is a huge question.
> > I think the mind-matter duality problem only arises when we take the
> > mind for granted and concentrate on the antics of matter. If you had
> > to choose a monism, which is more palatable, mind or matter?
> > If you say matter, then with what mind do you say so?
> >
>
> We have many "reasons" for believing that the "activities of the brain" are
> identical to "subjective experience." You merely brush these reasons aside and
> more or less tell us to forget about the possibility that the sun will rise
> tommorow because it is not analytic apriori.
A great many people don't consider this a minor problem. Not everyone
believes Identity theory is a logically coherent theory.
Keynes
wrote:
>"Keynes" wrote
So goes the materialist creed. But it is a faith.
Probably based on the supposed reality of physical time.
The curious thing about measurable physical time is that it
is totally conceptual and never a real matter of experience.
>Now imagine a number of universes essentially like ours, but in which the
>likely development of sentient creatures was 50%. Prior to the development
>of life, all the universes were essentially the same. How can the ones that
>developed sentient creatures be said to exist, and the one that didn't not
>to exist, when they are essentially identical prior to the development of
>such creatures?
>
>I resolved this by saying we can't know the unperceived universes exist, but
>things can exist that no one knows about. There might be a planet beyond
>the limits of our visible universe inhabited by super-intelligent unicorns, but
>we can't possibly know this. In both instance it's impossible to know.
>
>It is true that the unicorns know they themselves exist, but impossibility of
>knowing on are part in and of itself shouldn't render things non-existent in
>the existential sense of the world. If it did, that would tie all existence to
>knowledge.
Is it profitable to insist on the existence of unverifiable things?
IMO knowledge-perception is a prerequisite for existence.
A consequence of this is that we can believe in things that don't
exist IF they are a part of our conceptual world-view.
False knowledge is enough to generate your unicorns.
andy-k
>
> Prior to the development of perceivers, our universe had to undergo an
> enormous amount of evolution. It had to exist back then, with no
> perceivers, or we wouldn't be here.
This is not a fact but a metaphysical postulate Craig.
Anthony G. Rubino
To Keynes, who said:
> . . . . . . . The curious thing about
> measurable physical time is that it is totally
>conceptual and never a real matter of
> experience.
How can there be any experience which does not include an experience of
time as duration?
For example:
It is difficult to imagine a pain that has no duration which is marked
by its beginning and its end (i.e., the experience of time).
Tony, philosopher
http://www.trisector.net/
So many misconceptions, so little time.
Craig Franck
> "Craig Franck" wrote:
> >Prior to the development of perceivers, our universe had to undergo an
> >enormous amount of evolution. It had to exist back then, with no
> >perceivers, or we wouldn't be here.
> >
>
> So goes the materialist creed. But it is a faith.
> Probably based on the supposed reality of physical time.
> The curious thing about measurable physical time is that it
> is totally conceptual and never a real matter of experience.
Perhaps you could expand on that. I experience time, and constructions
such as F = MA require the concept of time.
My rational for the above was there was a state of the universe S0 which
contained the first perception. There was S1 which followed, and S-1 which
came before. S-1 and S0 are casually related; therefore, S-1 had to have
properties that would lead one to believe things existed at that point in time.
> Is it profitable to insist on the existence of unverifiable things?
It depends. Imagining other solar systems than our own prior to the
discovery of extra-solar planets was profitable, even if it might have been
theoretically impossible to check for them. I believe in life on other planets
even if the odds are we will never be able to confirm or deny this.
The question WRT things which are impossible to perceive under any
circumstances is much tougher to answer. Taking a functional view of
knowledge, I'd say it's not profitable, and possibly quite harmful. String
theory is possibly in this category; but it does have value as recreational
mathematics.
> IMO knowledge-perception is a prerequisite for existence.
I'm reading Russell's "Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits," and he
takes the view that while perception is not required for existence, it is
required for us to have a justified beliefs about existence.
The statement "There are events that will never be perceived by anyone" is
true, but its truth depends on how you define "events" and "perceived."
I will admit that an unperceivable universe is as useless from a scientific POV
as particles that never interact with anything, yet exist. One reason science
must be seen as a public, social enterprise is that the statement "The universe
will continue after I die" is by definition unverifiable to the individual.
Craig Franck
"andy-k" wrote
I view it as a scientific fact. The effects of things can be considered a form
of perception. The cosmic microwave background radiation dates back to
BB + 400,000 years. Also, the BB only produced the lightest of elements.
This implies nucleosynthesis in stars.
So projecting natural processes backward in time is a form of induction. It
would take a very scientifically-funky definition of "existence" to work
around this.
andy-k
> "andy-k" wrote
>> Craig Franck wrote:
>>>
>>> Prior to the development of perceivers, our universe had to undergo
>>> an enormous amount of evolution. It had to exist back then, with no
>>> perceivers, or we wouldn't be here.
>>
>> This is not a fact but a metaphysical postulate Craig.
>
> I view it as a scientific fact.
You're far from unusual in that respect Craig.
> The effects of things can be considered a form of perception.
> The cosmic microwave background radiation dates back to
> BB + 400,000 years. Also, the BB only produced the lightest of
> elements. This implies nucleosynthesis in stars.
>
> So projecting natural processes backward in time is a form of
> induction. It would take a very scientifically-funky definition of
> "existence" to work around this.
Yep, pretty much the standard story.
Democritus (Diels, fr. 125): the intellect and the senses are in dispute
concerning what is 'real':
Intellect: "Ostensibly there is color, ostensibly sweetness, ostensibly
bitterness, actually only atoms in the void."
Senses: "Poor intellect, do you hope to defeat us while from us you borrow
your evidence? Your victory is your defeat."
Keynes
wrote:
>"Keynes" wrote
>
>> "Craig Franck" wrote:
>
>> >Prior to the development of perceivers, our universe had to undergo an
>> >enormous amount of evolution. It had to exist back then, with no
>> >perceivers, or we wouldn't be here.
>> >
>>
>> So goes the materialist creed. But it is a faith.
>> Probably based on the supposed reality of physical time.
>> The curious thing about measurable physical time is that it
>> is totally conceptual and never a real matter of experience.
>
>Perhaps you could expand on that. I experience time, and constructions
>such as F = MA require the concept of time.
>
"the concept of time"
Logically, we can only directly experience a present 'now'.
Past and future are forever unreachable except in present imagination.
So how can duration possibly be experienced?
>My rational for the above was there was a state of the universe S0 which
>contained the first perception. There was S1 which followed, and S-1 which
>came before. S-1 and S0 are casually related; therefore, S-1 had to have
>properties that would lead one to believe things existed at that point in time.
>
We are causal-minded. It is our habit for dealing with changes in the world.
The method works and so we make concrete the liquid flow of 'time'.
But there is a scientific beginning of time in the big bang.
Causation must begin there and can't go any further back because
there is no further back to go to. So the fundamental birth of all
space-time and causation must be absolutely a causal. Causation
is a local feature of our space-time which sprang uncaused and
uncreated for no reason at no time in no place. Science can't
escape this conclusion, but it can ignore it easily.
We say the BB happened ~13 billion years ago. A year is nothing but
the 'time' of one complete earth-orbit of the sun. The earth is four or
five billion years old. Before there was an earth, what could a year be?.
For any of us, all the time since the BB has passed in no time at all.
Unconscious, we experience no time. Conscious, we can only
experience a 'now' that neither begins nor ends. Time is an idea.
>> Is it profitable to insist on the existence of unverifiable things?
>
>It depends. Imagining other solar systems than our own prior to the
>discovery of extra-solar planets was profitable, even if it might have been
>theoretically impossible to check for them. I believe in life on other planets
>even if the odds are we will never be able to confirm or deny this.
>
>The question WRT things which are impossible to perceive under any
>circumstances is much tougher to answer. Taking a functional view of
>knowledge, I'd say it's not profitable, and possibly quite harmful. String
>theory is possibly in this category; but it does have value as recreational
>mathematics.
>
>> IMO knowledge-perception is a prerequisite for existence.
>
>I'm reading Russell's "Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits," and he
>takes the view that while perception is not required for existence, it is
>required for us to have a justified beliefs about existence.
>
Simple secrets and armies behind the hill force us to accept the reality
of things unseen. We will always be surprised by the unexpected.
But I think that one's mind-store is one's whole world. In society
we find no mind with all knowledge. Still, how can there be a
cosmos at all if it is not perceived?
Our universe before man is unknown to us. We infer it's mechanical
existence at a regular rate of time according to current temporal observations.
This is taking the position that unconscious matter is the basis of being.
Is such a position really justified? For humans at least, consciousness IS
existence. Dead physical bodies don't exist for themselves, even if they
do exist for other 'conscious' beings. For unconscious beings how can
there be such a thing as existence?
Previous 'unscientific' generations supposed that Mind preceeded the
creation of matter, since existence apart from perception of existence
is absurd. Moderns take the position that matter preceeds Mind and
actually produces it by some mysterious unexplained method. The
modern idea is really an unprovable theological proposition, even
though it supposes itself not to be. Modern dogma is so strong that
it finds any other than the materialist position heretical and forbidden
to think about. Hard-headed materialist 'realism' is the apex of religious
bigotry. Worse, because it believes itself to be above unprovable dogma
while resting insecurely right on top of airy assumptions.
The physical world as we know it is rational (at the macro level at least).
Matter is rational. It regularly obeys the laws. Since the industrial
revolution we see this as mechanism, a giant mindless machine with no
plan or will of it's own, even though we have found no way to confound
matter or make it break it's own physical Will. The chain of cause and
effect is inexorable, an inescapable web begun at the beginning of time.
The mind of the cosmos is apparent in it's lawful, reasonable, physical
behavior. It has even produced us in all our glory, who pretend to
some sort of mental independence and even supremacy.