Materialism

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Q-Source,

Stimpson,

Do you mind answering my question to you (see post above)?

Thanks

Sorry, I missed it. Do you mean this one?

Could you give your opinion about this quote?:
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Quantum theory states that any physical system remains in a superposed state of all possibilities until it interacts with the mind of an observer. From the participatory anthropic principle
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Is it true?

Or is it just a vulgar misinterpretation of the Many Worlds interpretation?

I would say it is a misrepresentation of QM. It is simply not true. That is one possible interpretation of QM, but it is by no means a statement of Quantum Theory, nor is there any evidence that it is true, nor could there ever be, since it is unfalsifiable.

I didn't comment on this before, because UCE has been presenting the "consciousness causes the wave-collapse" idea as evidence for his beliefs as long as I have been here, and continues to do so no matter how many times it is pointed out to him that Quantum Theory does not actually say that at all.


UCE,

Yes, I already acknowledged that. Unfortunately, such a solipsistic philosophy is completely useless. If there is nothing more to reality than our experiences, then there is no way to construct a reliable method for understanding reality.
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How long are you going to go on pushing the lie that idealism is the same thing as solipsism? You must have been told fifty times why it isn't.

I have made no such statement about Idealism in general. I have merely pointed out that if you hold that all consciousnesses are one, then the belief that everything is a dream in the mind of that one consciousness, is logically equivalent to Solipsism.

Solipsism involves the denial that other humans are conscious in the way you are. Nobody here is proposing that, and you know perfectly well that nobody here is proposing it.

No, instead you are proposing that we are all, in fact, the same person, and that reality is our dream, and that our belief that we are different people is an illusion. The effect is the same, though. Instead of saying "those other people are figments of my imagination", you are saying "we are all figments of God's imagination". Either way, my above comment holds. If you hold that there is nothing more to reality than our experiences, then there is no way to construct a reliable method for understanding reality.

As for 'a reliable method of understanding reality' - science is the reliable method for understanding reality. You can still posit materialism as a working tool in order to explain the behaviour of what we perceive as an external world.

No, you can't. This is something I have been trying to get you to understand for a long time now.

If you assume that there are influences on the Physical World that cannot be described by science, then how do you decide which observations are describable by science, and which are not? You want to arbitrarily designate some aspect of the World as being beyond science, but how do you respond to somebody else, who wants to designate some other aspect of the World to be beyond science?

You cannot use science to determine which phenomena are subject to science, because to do so would be to assume a-priori that science can be applied to them. But if science is your only tool for getting reliable information about the World, then you have no other way of deciding either. ultimately it comes to exactly what you, and every other supernaturalist, does. You arbitrarily designate some aspect of the World to be "off limits" scientifically, based entirely on your unjustified beliefs.

Nothing has changed except that you have to acknowledge that materialism is just a useful working assumption and not absolute truth.

What is changed is that you completely undermine any validity science could possibly have. If you do not assume that the axioms of the scientific method are true, then you cannot draw any logical conclusions from scientific evidence!

In other words, nothing has changed apart from materialism and science must relinquish their claims to be able to fully explain all of reality.

They do not make such a claim.

Interestingly enough, in an article in this weeks New Scientist entitled "The Mind of God - Hawkings Epiphany", Mr Hawking has explained precisely this - That a TOE may be forever unacheivable and that science must accept that religion and philosophy may have to take precedence over science in some areas of thought.

To say that a TOE may be forever unachievable is nothing extraordinary. If the nature of reality is at least as complicated as arithmetic, then Godel's incompleteness theorem guarantees this. but this says absolutely nothing about the viability of materialism. Nor does it in any way imply that philosophy or religion could possibly fill in the missing parts.

Even more interestingly it was the existence of Infinity, rather than the problem of consciousness, that led him to make this statement.

You are reading your own confused beliefs into what he said. Infinity is not a thing that exists. It is a cardinality. If reality is sufficiently complex, then the number of logical statements whose truth value can be derived from any finite set of axioms and observations, is necessarily a countable infinity, whereas the number of statements that can be made is an uncountable infinity.

It seems that materialism is in a state of denial.
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That is because you are grossly misinterpreting what materialism is.
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Is he?

Actually I see a man who has seen materialism for precisely what it is : institutionalised denial of truths which lead to conclusions considered unacceptable by the materialists.

That is because you too, are grossly misinterpreting what it is.

2) Science can only describe reality in terms of our experiences by extracting reliable information from those experiences, and this can only be done by assuming that the experience is an interaction with reality, and not the reality itself. Thus the above axiom is a necessary one for science to function.
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*****It makes no difference to science whether the physical Universe self-exists as matter or exists as information in the realm of Mind. All that matters is that it behaves in an objective manner and is shared.*****

Saying that it exists as matter is an empty statement, since matter is just defined to be what exists. If it exists as information in the realm of Mind, then matter just means information in the realm of mind. The point at which your philosophy becomes inconsistent with materialism, and the scientific method, is when you assert that Mind is simply your consciousness, which you have done. If all minds are one, and the information exists only in that mind, then in what sense is it objective or shared?

This amounts to nothing more than the Solipsistic argument that reality is all a figment of your imagination, and that it just behaves as though it were an independently existing objective reality. The only difference is that rather than claiming that other people are thing you are imagining, your are claiming that we are all part of one mind, which is doing the imagining. The difference is only a semantic one.

Dr. Stupid

 

[Guest]

But, you told me that when we realised that reality is composed of synchronicities, then "solipsism becomes true". In fact, the Metamind resembles solipsism, but I could be wrong in my interpretation.

The metamind is a Solipsist. THE Solipsist. That is not the same as saying that all the subcomponents are also solipsistic, rather that solipsism becomes progressively more true for people who choose to take their minds closer to that of the Metamind. The Metamind 'sees' that everything is connected together - and how it is connected together. We mainly just see chaos.

... Mr Hawking did not make any reference or implied that religion and philosophy could substitute Science's role in some areas of thought.

No....but he's retracted an important claim which appeared at the end of ABHOT - namely that it is likely that there is a TOE and that science can find it. Hawking is much less certain that science can ever know 'the mind of God.'

He just said that black holes information has a limit and this eliminates the possibility that a theory of everything could use an infinite density of information.

The problem with Black Holes (and the big bang and various other problems) is that they introduce infinity somewhere it cannot really go. This problem with infinity also appears in M-Theory as a manifestation of Godels incompleteness theorem - which also ultimately tries to deal with infinity. If Infinity exists, we can never understand it completely.

 

[Guest]

I didn't comment on this before, because UCE has been presenting the "consciousness causes the wave-collapse" idea as evidence for his beliefs as long as I have been here, and continues to do so no matter how many times it is pointed out to him that Quantum Theory does not actually say that at all.

I would argue that this is down to interpretation, and that the vast majority of the founders of QM tended towards the interpretation I choose to use at this point.

I have made no such statement about Idealism in general. I have merely pointed out that if you hold that all consciousnesses are one, then the belief that everything is a dream in the mind of that one consciousness, is logically equivalent to Solipsism.

Not for normal humans it isn't.

No, instead you are proposing that we are all, in fact, the same person

Not 'person'. All our consciousness are part of the same Consciousness. We are different people. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Individuality is our right as humans.

Either way, my above comment holds. If you hold that there is nothing more to reality than our experiences, then there is no way to construct a reliable method for understanding reality.

There is no way to construct a reliable method for understanding the totality of reality. That part of reality we call "physical reality" can be understood, and can continue to be understood in terms of the material model. Only metaphysics cannot be scientifically probed. That is its nature.

If you assume that there are influences on the Physical World that cannot be described by science, then how do you decide which observations are describable by science, and which are not?

The ones describable by science are the ones which are describable by materialism.

You want to arbitrarily designate some aspect of the World as being beyond science,

The difference between the internal realm and the abstract mathematical world of physics is not arbitrary, is it?

If it were, then science wouldn't work.

You cannot use science to determine which phenomena are subject to science, because to do so would be to assume a-priori that science can be applied to them.

No, so you use philosophy.

But if science is your only tool for getting reliable information about the World, then you have no other way of deciding either.

Maybe we have to accept that there are parts of reality science cannot describe. If it is true, then we should accept it. What would be the purpose in denying it?

What is changed is that you completely undermine any validity science could possibly have.

In what way?

Science will remain our tool for investigating physics.

If all minds are one, and the information exists only in that mind, then in what sense is it objective or shared?

It is the medium by which parts of it which manifest as seperate from each other communicate with each other. It exists directly in the Metamind as a shared body of information which behaves according to mathematical laws. You really need a whole book to explain this stuff, and how you arrive at what you arive at.

 

[Guest]

I do not see this as in any way terminal for science. I see it as a clarification of the fundamental relationship between philosophy, science and religion - something which can only be a good thing IMO.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

UcE said:

It is the medium by which parts of it which manifest as seperate from each other communicate with each other. It exists directly in the Metamind as a shared body of information which behaves according to mathematical laws.

What is this "communicating with each other" that you refer to?

~~ Paul

 

[Guest]

Maybe I should go further. I think it would be a disaster of indescribable magnitude if science were to be in any way damaged by an ontologial re-assesment. Assuming materialism is the only way of coming to intellectual agreement about the behaviour or the physical world - and the physical world remains our perceived environment. I see new avenues opening up both for reinterpretation of existing data gathered from the physical world and new ways of understanding how our minds and bodies function with respect to each other. I also see potential for great social changes that I think are needed - this sort of re-assessment of the relationship between science and religion might have beneficial effects to both sides. The bulk of religious people who are not extremist and are welcoming to people of other beliefs will be supported whilst the extemists will find their positions further undermined. Meanwhile the world of philosophy and religion will be more accessible to people who up till now felt the only rational course was materialistic skepticism. All of these things can only help to bring together a divided world.

 

[Guest]

UcE said:
What is this "communicating with each other" that you refer to?

~~ Paul

The Metamind must act as a 'communications hub'. It stores information about objects in the physical world and your mind is connects to the information about these objects, via the metamind, when your consciousness interacts with them. The whole theory can be found here :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...77110/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_0_2/202-8446490-8308664

Given the radical nature of mental monism, the author recognises that any presentation of the theory raises questions about the purpose of philosophical argumentation. It is implausible to suppose that anybody would revise their fundamental notion of reality just on the basis of a piece of reasoning. Revising one's beliefs and concepts at such a deep level can be achieved only by apprehending a new perspective: the world must be seen anew. Whilst the philosophical arguments must be given, and must be rigorous, nevertheless it they are impotent to change people's fundamental view of reality. That insight, that new vision, can be achieved only by contemplation of one's personal encounter with reality. The author hopes that this book will help to steer the reader's contemplation in that direction.

Whilst mental monism solves the philosophical mind-body problem at a stroke, it nonetheless encounters substantial technical problems, because it must give an explanatory account of the structure and function of the natural world, including the mind itself. The author outlines an approach to modelling the mind purely in the mental domain, without any physical substrate to fall back on.

 

[BillHoyt]

Maybe I should go further. I think it would be a disaster of indescribable magnitude if science were to be in any way damaged by an ontologial re-assesment. Assuming materialism is the only way of coming to intellectual agreement about the behaviour or the physical world - and the physical world remains our perceived environment. I see new avenues opening up both for reinterpretation of existing data gathered from the physical world and new ways of understanding how our minds and bodies function with respect to each other. I also see potential for great social changes that I think are needed - this sort of re-assessment of the relationship between science and religion might have beneficial effects to both sides. The bulk of religious people who are not extremist and are welcoming to people of other beliefs will be supported whilst the extemists will find their positions further undermined. Meanwhile the world of philosophy and religion will be more accessible to people who up till now felt the only rational course was materialistic skepticism. All of these things can only help to bring together a divided world.

How charitable, UCE, that would be so kind as to include science into your framework of ways of knowing. Unfortunately, what is needed to mend the divide is exactly the opposite. What is needed is for you & yours to proffer proper proof of this "some non-thing out there" you keep carping about

What unimaginable benefits there would be from relaxing standards of proof. From accepting flights of fancy and fantasy as proper hypothesizing, and then to have the lack of intellectual rigor to simply proclaim facts rather than the hard work of testing, analyzing and retesting them.

O frabjous day, Calloo, callay! We are free! No study of reality needed! We have the Cliff Notes version!!!!

UCE, I dub your post The Sermon on the Muddleheaded

Cheers,

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Whilst mental monism solves the philosophical mind-body problem at a stroke, it nonetheless encounters substantial technical problems, because it must give an explanatory account of the structure and function of the natural world, including the mind itself.

Doesn't the second half of this sentence contradict the first half?

~~ Paul

 

[ChuckieR]

quote:
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Originally posted by Stimpson J. Cat

The only source of information we have is our experiences. This means that one can always speculate that there is something more to reality than what we experience, or what we can deduce from our experiences. Such additional things are simply unknowable.
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this problem only occurs if you adopt your particular philosophy. If you accept that our experience of red is the true nature of red then this problem disappears. In other words there is no something else to speculate about.

Alright, I'm bored with red. How about yellow. The block below is yellow, right? That is what you perceive, right? Nothing more to speculate about? Right?

Of course, we all know that your monitor is putting out equal amounts of red and green, which you then perceive as yellow. Get out a magnifier and verify this.

So it looks like there was something more to speculate about after all. Using a device to enhance our experience shows us that our initial experience was not what we thought it was.

There is NO YELLOW coming out of your monitor. The yellow is a fiction created in your brain. In fact, you could not distinguish between an object that is yellow (emitting a single wavelength between red and green) and one that is emitting equal amounts of red and green. But someone (or some thing) with different color perception hardware could distinguish them, and could then inform you that your perception of the situation is incorrect.

Perception/Experience != Reality.

How hard is this to understand?

 

[BillHoyt]

Alright, I'm bored with red. How about yellow. The block below is yellow, right? That is what you perceive, right? Nothing more to speculate about? Right?

Of course, we all know that your monitor is putting out equal amounts of red and green, which you then perceive as yellow. Get out a magnifier and verify this.

So it looks like there was something more to speculate about after all. Using a device to enhance our experience shows us that our initial experience was not what we thought it was.

There is NO YELLOW coming out of your monitor. The yellow is a fiction created in your brain. In fact, you could not distinguish between an object that is yellow (emitting a single wavelength between red and green) and one that is emitting equal amounts of red and green. But someone (or some thing) with different color perception hardware could distinguish them, and could then inform you that your perception of the situation is incorrect.

Perception/Experience != Reality.

How hard is this to understand?

How hard is it for you to understand you just further described a perceptual excercise to determine that the yellow is composed of red and green and that the monitor image is composed of dots? Now please explain to me how I do this without perception?

Cheers,

 

[ChuckieR]

How hard is it for you to understand you just further described a perceptual excercise to determine that the yellow is composed of red and green and that the monitor image is composed of dots? Now please explain to me how I do this without perception? Cheers,

Okay, gladly. There are any number of ways that you could determine that the "yellow" you see is composed of red and green, without actually "seeing" red and green:

• You could have me look at the monitor with a magnifier and I could describe what I see.
• You could use a spectrometer to get a numerical description of the brightnesses of each wavelength.
• You could look up the manufacturers specs for the monitor and realize that there was no yellow involved, and that yellow is produced by combining red and green.

My point is that your perception of reality does not define reality. In none of these cases do you actually need to directly perceive the red and green to come to an understanding that there is no yellow there - your red and green "qualia" (or whatever) never need to be invoked. The red and the green are there whether or not you perceive them.

Scientific observations use these "indirect" methods all the time. Without them, we would be left in davesmith73's shoes, assuming that reality is just what we experience, and that there is no more correct reality than our experiences.

 

[BillHoyt]

Okay, gladly. There are any number of ways that you could determine that the "yellow" you see is composed of red and green, without actually "seeing" red and green:

• You could have me look at the monitor with a magnifier and I could describe what I see.
• You could use a spectrometer to get a numerical description of the brightnesses of each wavelength.
• You could look up the manufacturers specs for the monitor and realize that there was no yellow involved, and that yellow is produced by combining red and green.

My point is that your perception of reality does not define reality. In none of these cases do you actually need to directly perceive the red and green to come to an understanding that there is no yellow there - your red and green "qualia" (or whatever) never need to be invoked. The red and the green are there whether or not you perceive them.

Scientific observations use these "indirect" methods all the time. Without them, we would be left in davesmith73's shoes, assuming that reality is just what we experience, and that there is no more correct reality than our experiences.

My bad, Chuckie, I didn't make my objection clear. What you are saying is correct. My quibble is with the one line, "Perception/Experience != Reality" In the specific context of refuting davidsmith73's claim, this is right. In the broader context of your refutation, the bald assertion fails because you returned to perception and experience to correct the original misperception. This is exactly what we do in science. It is just that that line makes it seem as if science eschews perception. Science organizes a non-naive approach to perception. Our senses are, after all, all we have to work with.

Cheers,

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

UCE,

The metamind is a Solipsist. THE Solipsist. That is not the same as saying that all the subcomponents are also solipsistic, rather that solipsism becomes progressively more true for people who choose to take their minds closer to that of the Metamind. The Metamind 'sees' that everything is connected together - and how it is connected together. We mainly just see chaos.

That doesn't change the fact that your philosophy is ultimately solipsistic. Science requires the rejection of solipsism. Simply hiding it under a layer of abstraction is not sufficient.

I didn't comment on this before, because UCE has been presenting the "consciousness causes the wave-collapse" idea as evidence for his beliefs as long as I have been here, and continues to do so no matter how many times it is pointed out to him that Quantum Theory does not actually say that at all.
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I would argue that this is down to interpretation, and that the vast majority of the founders of QM tended towards the interpretation I choose to use at this point.

Which is irrelevant, since interpretation of QM is not science, and not a part of Quantum Theory. You therefore cannot claim that Quantum Theory supports your beliefs. And either way, whoever wrote that page you linked to was simply dead wrong.

I have made no such statement about Idealism in general. I have merely pointed out that if you hold that all consciousnesses are one, then the belief that everything is a dream in the mind of that one consciousness, is logically equivalent to Solipsism.
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Not for normal humans it isn't.

Irrelevant. The problem with Solipsism, with respect to science, is that science requires that reality be something external to our perceptions, rather than the perceptions themselves. The specific differences between your philosophy and classical solipsism don't make any difference.

No, instead you are proposing that we are all, in fact, the same person
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Not 'person'. All our consciousness are part of the same Consciousness. We are different people. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Individuality is our right as humans.

This is just semantics. It is also extremely unparsimonious. I assume that reality is objective, and conclude that other people possess consciousness like me, because it is the simplest explanation for my observations. You, on the other hand, hold that your perceptions are a dream in some mind. On what basis do you then conclude that other people have conscious minds? You can't conclude it from your observations, because you have already assumed that your observations are an illusion. Why conclude that those other people have minds just like yours, which are all part of the same metamind? Why not just conclude that your own mind is the only one in the metamind, and that you just dreamed up the other ones to keep you company?

Of course, this is the problem with metaphysics. You can dream up an infinite number of scenarios, but you have no way to determine which, if any of them, is correct. Every detail of your philosophy is an untestable assumption. Doesn't it make more sense to just make the minimum number of assumptions necessary to produce a method for learning about the World, and go from there?

Either way, my above comment holds. If you hold that there is nothing more to reality than our experiences, then there is no way to construct a reliable method for understanding reality.
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There is no way to construct a reliable method for understanding the totality of reality. That part of reality we call "physical reality" can be understood, and can continue to be understood in terms of the material model. Only metaphysics cannot be scientifically probed. That is its nature.

See my previous explanation of why this does not work. How do you draw the line? If you draw the line by saying that anything that has an effect on physical reality is addressable by science, as I do, then you end up having no reason to believe that there is anything else anyway. If you hold that some phenomena which affect the physical World cannot be addressed by science, then you need some way to determine which can, and which cannot. How do you do this? What method do you use to decide? From what I can see, your method amounts to nothing more than making the a-priori assumption based on your metaphysical beliefs.

If you assume that there are influences on the Physical World that cannot be described by science, then how do you decide which observations are describable by science, and which are not?
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The ones describable by science are the ones which are describable by materialism.

You should have a chat with your fellow Idealist Ian. He seems to think that science and materialism have nothing to do with each other.

Anyway, the above is a non-statement, since saying that it is describable by materialism is equivalent to saying that it is describable by science. The question is, how do you decide whether it is or not? Are you saying that any phenomena which we are able to describe with science falls into the category of physical, and only those which cannot don't? If so, then this is just a God of the gaps type argument. What makes you think that anything at all lies in the second set?

Keep in mind that if the scientific method is the only reliable source of information you have, then you can never have reliable evidence that a particular phenomenon is not addressable by science. Not without falsifying science, anyway.

And of course, that is the entire point. Under the scenario you have suggested, the only way we would ever have any reason to believe that a particular phenomenon was not describable by science, would be to show that any scientific explanation for the observed phenomenon would be self-contradictory. In other words, you would have to demonstrate that it is supernatural.

Since no supernatural phenomena has ever been reliably shown to exist, this means that we have no reason to believe that this "non-physical realm" actually includes anything. In particular, since nobody has ever demonstrated anything supernatural about consciousness, there is no reason to think that it belongs in the non-physical realm.

You want to arbitrarily designate some aspect of the World as being beyond science,
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The difference between the internal realm and the abstract mathematical world of physics is not arbitrary, is it?

If it were, then science wouldn't work.

What are you talking about? Certainly there is a difference between the real World, and the abstract mathematical description of it. But I do not think that there is any distinction between our so-called "internal realm", and the objective reality that is described by science. On the contrary, I think that my "internal realm" is simply a part of objective reality.

You cannot use science to determine which phenomena are subject to science, because to do so would be to assume a-priori that science can be applied to them.
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No, so you use philosophy.

How? What is your method for making the decision? How do you verify that the decision you have made is correct?

But if science is your only tool for getting reliable information about the World, then you have no other way of deciding either.
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Maybe we have to accept that there are parts of reality science cannot describe. If it is true, then we should accept it. What would be the purpose in denying it?

Even if, as you believe, there are parts of reality that science cannot describe (the supernatural), that doesn't mean that you can describe them some other way. If science is the only reliable method for describing reality, then any parts of reality that science cannot describe, simply cannot be described.

Fortunately, nobody has ever demonstrated that any supernatural phenomena actually exist, so it is a moot point.

If all minds are one, and the information exists only in that mind, then in what sense is it objective or shared?
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It is the medium by which parts of it which manifest as separate from each other communicate with each other. It exists directly in the Metamind as a shared body of information which behaves according to mathematical laws. You really need a whole book to explain this stuff, and how you arrive at what you arive at.

OK, let's forget the whole solipsism thing, and just focus on this point. Like a materialist, you assume that reality obeys logical rules, and that we all experience that reality in some way.

The pertinent questions are:

1) Why make the additional assumptions about a metamind, or about our minds all being a part of it? Why not simply assume that this reality exists, and then rely on science to tell us about it?

2) Since you posit the existence of stuff that cannot be described by science, what method do you propose for describing it, and determining which stuff is describable by science and which isn't? Remember that in order to be useful, there must be some form of verification built in.

I do not see this as in any way terminal for science. I see it as a clarification of the fundamental relationship between philosophy, science and religion - something which can only be a good thing IMO.

Any philosophy which posits the existence of phenomena which affect the physical World, but which cannot be described scientifically, are fatal for science.

Maybe I should go further. I think it would be a disaster of indescribable magnitude if science were to be in any way damaged by an ontologial re-assesment. Assuming materialism is the only way of coming to intellectual agreement about the behaviour or the physical world - and the physical world remains our perceived environment. I see new avenues opening up both for reinterpretation of existing data gathered from the physical world and new ways of understanding how our minds and bodies function with respect to each other. I also see potential for great social changes that I think are needed - this sort of re-assessment of the relationship between science and religion might have beneficial effects to both sides. The bulk of religious people who are not extremist and are welcoming to people of other beliefs will be supported whilst the extemists will find their positions further undermined. Meanwhile the world of philosophy and religion will be more accessible to people who up till now felt the only rational course was materialistic skepticism. All of these things can only help to bring together a divided world.

I am confused. Are you saying that we should believe this stuff, even though there is no evidence to support it, because you think it will bring people together, and make them more comfortable with reality?

Aren't you aware that the majority of religious people would consider the beliefs you have presented to be every bit as heretical as atheism? Indeed, many would say that it is worse than atheism. And since what you are offering is just another religion, what makes you think that it is going to be any more successful than any other in bringing people together?

Dr. Stupid

 

[Interesting Ian]

Alright, I'm bored with red. How about yellow. The block below is yellow, right? That is what you perceive, right? Nothing more to speculate about? Right?

Of course, we all know that your monitor is putting out equal amounts of red and green, which you then perceive as yellow. Get out a magnifier and verify this.

And the very fact that we need to get our a magnifier in order to see this is telling. Does this somehow make our experience of yellowness illegitimate? If we follow your reasoning then everything we ever perceptually experience is a delusion. Why not just accept that what we directly experience is real; that for example the yellowness really exists, but it's just that by carrying out certain operations that, in an appropriate sense, reality changes.

So it looks like there was something more to speculate about after all. Using a device to enhance our experience shows us that our initial experience was not what we thought it was.

How so? We experience yellow. How can this experience not be what we think it is? What you are asserting is gibberish.

There is NO YELLOW coming out of your monitor. The yellow is a fiction created in your brain.

More accurately it is an interpretation by the brain or mind. Everything we perceptually perceive is filtered through the lens of low level theory. The idea of an atheoretical perception of the world is a naive one which needs to be discarded. But simply because all our perceptions are dictated by theory does not make what we perceive as unreal!

In an appropriate sense the monitor is outputting yellow. In a scientific sense it doesn't, sure. But then to scientifically describe reality is to abstract from reality.

In fact, you could not distinguish between an object that is yellow (emitting a single wavelength between red and green) and one that is emitting equal amounts of red and green. But someone (or some thing) with different color perception hardware could distinguish them, and could then inform you that your perception of the situation is incorrect.

Perception/Experience != Reality.

How hard is this to understand?

It's easy to understand. After all, all of us have grown up believing this. it takes some insight to move away from your position

(BTW the above is only my own views, I'm not at all suggesting that DavidSmith and UCE have similar beliefs. They may or may not do).

 

[BillHoyt]

The idea of an atheoretical perception of the world is a naive one which needs to be discarded. But simply because all our perceptions are dictated by theory does not make what we perceive as unreal!

What we are discussing is quite the opposite of this theory-ladenness tripe. Here we have a situation where we have perceived something that is quite against theory. We see yellow when, in fact, it is separate dots of red and green.

Care to have another go at it?

Cheers,

 

[Interesting Ian]

What we are discussing is quite the opposite of this theory-ladenness tripe. Here we have a situation where we have perceived something that is quite against theory. We see yellow when, in fact, it is separate dots of red and green.

Care to have another go at it?

Cheers,

Which only resolves itself as separate dots of red and green by carrying out certain operations. Any interpretation by the mind/brain is to implicitly impose a theory and everything we perceive is the result of interpretation.

 

[ChuckieR]

My bad, Chuckie, I didn't make my objection clear. What you are saying is correct. My quibble is with the one line, "Perception/Experience != Reality" In the specific context of refuting davidsmith73's claim, this is right. In the broader context of your refutation, the bald assertion fails because you returned to perception and experience to correct the original misperception. This is exactly what we do in science. It is just that that line makes it seem as if science eschews perception. Science organizes a non-naive approach to perception. Our senses are, after all, all we have to work with.Cheers,

Okay, I understand that... the only way we can experience anything about the world around us is through perception. But I was just trying to make the point, relative to ds73's argument, that physical properties exist separately from one person's perception of them. Our internal models of the world do not equal the world, they are built by our limited measurements of the world (our experiences).

I know, I jumped into the deep end of a philosophical discussion, and everything I say has deeper implications than I realize. They're discussing the definition of "reality" and the limits of perception in principle, and I am bringing up a simple practical point relating to a trivial example that will probably not deflect the philosophical discussion in the least. But on I blather

I just have a problem with ds73's qualia defining reality. If he claims that his perceptions shape his internal model of reality, that I have no problem with. And "red" as a concept is certainly a human one that exists only in our brains, so in that trivial sense, yes, our perception of red defines our internal model of redness... but that's a trivial, circular definition of what red is, and I still don't understand what ds73's "true nature" of red is.

I would say (and I suspect that ds73 would not say) that there are red objects out there and that (under the right conditions) our eyes and brains are able to give us an idea of how much red is in an object, and that people who can perceive color well have a collective definition/catagorization of what red is.

But other devices, beings, whatever, can also measure the amount of red in an object. The human eye/brain does not have a monopoly on RED. And there are many things in the world that cannot be percieved directly through anything like qualia at all. All we can do is analyze them maybe through pages of numbers, or graphs or charts. I can have an understanding of a concept without directly experiencing it. I understand that there are objects that emit infrared or x-rays, and that I can use instruments to "translate" these wavelengths into wavelengths that I can perceive, but just because a particular device translates a particular x-ray wavelength into red does not mean that x-rays are "red" in any sense at all. Yet, x-rays exist and if my eye was sensitive to x-rays then I would be able to "see" them directly and we would be discussing the "x-ray ness" of things instead of the "redness" of things.

x-rays exist independant of any direct internal representation of them in the human brain.

The summary: There are things in nature that we know to exist only indirectly, that we have no direct internal "qualia" to represent them, yet they exist. So the idea that every aspect of nature must give us a qualitative "feeling" inside in order to be "real" (whatever "real" means) is, I think, a dead end.

Thanks for the opportunity to blather on about things that I have no qualia to represent

 

[Guest]

Doesn't the second half of this sentence contradict the first half?

~~ Paul

Not the way I read it. What contradiction do you see?

 

[ChuckieR]

And the very fact that we need to get our a magnifier in order to see this is telling. Does this somehow make our experience of yellowness illegitimate?

Well, in a word, yes. There is no yellow there, yet you perceive yellow. I would say it is just a limitation of our system, I don't know if I would say illegitimate. There are a zillion examples of optical illusions. The 3-color monitor is just one that we take for granted. Here are some others: Optical Illusions Are the lines parallel: yes. Are there fuzzy dots between the corners of the squares: no. My perceptions mislead me.

If we follow your reasoning then everything we ever perceptually experience is a delusion.

I guess I'd say everything we experience is an imperfect internal representation of an imperfect measurement.

Why not just accept that what we directly experience is real; that for example the yellowness really exists, but it's just that by carrying out certain operations that, in an appropriate sense, reality changes.

Yikes, reality changes? I'm not sure I follow. What if I look through the magnifier with one eye and keep the other eye open. One eye sees yellow, the other sees red and green, and they see them simultaneously. Where is "reality"?

How so? We experience yellow. How can this experience not be what we think it is? What you are asserting is gibberish.

See the simple optical illusions above. Or maybe you are using wording here in a strange way. Certainly our internal "experience" is "what we think it is" (a circular statement?) but our experience misleads us as to what is really going on. A "better" measurement system (in some sense that I will leave undefined ) would see parallel lines and no fuzzy dots.

More accurately it is an interpretation by the brain or mind. Everything we perceptually perceive is filtered through the lens of low level theory. The idea of an atheoretical perception of the world is a naive one which needs to be discarded. But simply because all our perceptions are dictated by theory does not make what we perceive as unreal!

In an appropriate sense the monitor is outputting yellow. In a scientific sense it doesn't, sure. But then to scientifically describe reality is to abstract from reality.

The monitor is outputting a stimulus that your eye/brain perceives as yellow under certain conditions. But it is definately not putting out a single "yellow" wavelength in any sense.