Simple question: What is an object?

Robin said:
Nonsense, I can build a non-conscious device that can measure things.
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I'll just draw your attention to this statement, as it neatly indicates the whole contradiction in your way of seeing things.
It's possibly far too easy to point it out, but just in case you miss it: you could never know that any non-conscious device you build to measure things could actually measure things until your consciousness examines it, and sees the measurement results.

In effect then, no measurement takes place except within consciousness.

Now ponder.
Your 'measurement' strategy for deciding what is or is not reality is impotent while exterior to consciousness.
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plumjam said:
I'll just draw your attention to this statement, as it neatly indicates the whole contradiction in your way of seeing things.
It's possibly far too easy to point it out, but just in case you miss it: you could never know that any non-conscious device you build to measure things could actually measure things until your consciousness examines it, and sees the measurement results.
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Why do I necessarily need to examine it and see the measurement results?

I simply set it to measure something and then to take action automatically based upon that measurement. I do this all the time and I wouldn't possibly have time to check all the millions of measurements, that would be beyond the capabilities of my consciousness.

They will measure and take action when I am asleep. If I died tomorrow they would still continue to take measurements and take action. Sometimes other people's consciousness is affected by these in the forms of e-mails and SMS alerts and they take action, which proves the measurements have an effect outside my consciousness.
In effect then, no measurement takes place except within consciousness.
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And, as I point out, measurements do take place outside consciousness. In fact most measurements take place outside consciousness, but have effect on various independent consciousnesses.

The fact that we can agree on the results of these measurement, even in the absense of the original measurer, indicates that the thing being measured exists outside consciousness
Now ponder.
Your 'measurement' strategy for deciding what is or is not reality is impotent while exterior to consciousness.
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The only way your objection might make any sort of sense is if I was the Solipsist. In which case you don't exist anyway, so you would still lose.

If I am not the Solipsist then measurement demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt that objects persist outside consciousness.
 
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Sounds to me like someone is mixing epistemology with ontology again...

D#mn amateurs....

Robin, I like your definition I would add a bit of modality (though it might be superfluous):

Anything that can have a description covering property and/or behaviour that is verifiable by independent observation.
 
Epistemology and ontology have to be mixed.
To know we have to be.
It is useless to talk of the being of supposed aspects of reality unless we can know about said supposed aspects of reality.. or unless we have faith.
 
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Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
Indeed. Still, my problem is not that patterns have a clear ontological status, but that there are more patterns than those in which we focus our attention. For instance, our humanity (read need for survival) conditions which patterns are relevant for us and which are not.
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That's true in everyday life. But there is "pure" research where knowledge is pursued for its own sake.

So, for instance, I believe the whole categorization about what an object is (ontologically speaking) is contaminated with these anthropocentric assumptions (it is solid, occupies space, has a color, etc). It can be argued that objects are in constant flux with their surroundings, so there is not a clear boundary to draw a line between what we call "this object" and we call "other objects".
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Can and has been argued by Heraclitus, who said change is constant.
At the other pre-socratic extreme, Parmenides said change is impossible.
Plato reconciles them by saying change is constant, but there are durable patterns within change which don't change. He calls these patterns Forms or Ideas, and because they don't change says they are more real than the objects of sense, which do.
Then his star student Aristotle disagrees, and away we go... :)

A way to do this is to take out time (as it appears to us) from the equation, for example, leaving a camera with a time of 40 sec to capture a picture will show a very different shape of some objects (those which move in the scene). Why would our predetermined time window (about 20msec IIRC) be preferred over a 40 second one to define the shape of moving objects?
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It shouldn't be, when we can better our senses. That's why science is the preferred standard for objectivity. Instruments extend our senses (and minds: "instrumentality"). They don't "blink" (unless they're on the blink): when they have to, their sensory buffers reset faster than ours. In a sense of course, the limitations of the instrument are another sort of phenomenological bracket, which experimenters notate as significant error (measurement = X +or- x).

Agreed, but as the example above, we register only some particular, isolated variables. Its like the example about what is an elephant. Experiments are designed to show us a particular face, but that face reflects us.
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Well, we will always be prisoners of our phenomenological cages, of the limits of our senses; but so long as we're not after absolute knowledge, then getting as close as we do in science -- obtaining reliable working knowledge of the properties of objects -- makes a good working definition for "objectivity".
Rather than blind men, science is more like men with X-ray vision, etc., examining the elephant, then examining each others' examinations, then re-examining, and re-examining, and...
Because science doesn't deal in absolutes, it's neverending: the "blind" men are always building better instruments, and like gnats, they can never leave the poor elephant alone. :)

To put it in other words, I worked at a newspaper years ago, they used to say that journalism was about stating facts and not give interpretations (fools). A photograph was brought as an example of a tool to put just the fact, without "contaminating it" with opinions. Thing is, a photograph implies the particular POV of the photographer... another way to say it; the photographer is also in the picture, "contaminating it".
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Sure, a photograph is a choice by the photographer: depending on what she feels is relevant to the story. So the photograph is an 'objective' record of what was in the camera's eye at that moment and also where the photographer chose to point the camera, etc.: readers should be sensitive to bias, you're right.
 
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Phaedrus74 said:
.... Robin, I like your definition I would add a bit of modality (though it might be superfluous):

Anything that can have a description covering property and/or behaviour that is verifiable by independent observation.
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What do you suggest can not, independent of one's choice of, or disregard of, ontology?
 
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plumjam said:
Epistemology and ontology have to be mixed.
To know we have to be.
It is useless to talk of the being of supposed aspects of reality unless we can know about said supposed aspects of reality.. or unless we have faith.
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Not if you want to (try to) avoid circular definitions.
 
plumjam said:
kindly explain
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I'll try.

As you pointed out these two fields are related in the sense that what we can know is dependent on what there is. If you do not therefore treat either your theory of knowledge or your ontology as given you end up with the following:

What exists (or an object) is what can be known.

- What can we know?

We can know that which exists.

- What exists?

and so on and so forth.

In other words: you can question anything, just not everything at once.
Pick and choose....
 
Phaedrus74 said:
I'll try.

As you pointed out these two fields are related in the sense that what we can know is dependent on what there is. If you do not therefore treat either your theory of knowledge or your ontology as given you end up with the following:

What exists (or an object) is what can be known.

- What can we know?

We can know that which exists.

- What exists?

and so on and so forth.

In other words: you can question anything, just not everything at once.
Pick and choose....
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Yes, and if you look back you'll see that I mentioned faith as the way out of this.
 
plumjam said:
then you are stuck in your own circularity for evermore
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Were I less critical regarding the questions I pose, yes.
Fortunately I know my limitations, and I choose to accept a materialist ontology as given (or better: the only viable option at this point). This frees me to ponder questions regarding knowledge and language. Or more to the point regarding the OP: What we would (or should) "count" as an object.
 
Phaedrus74 said:
Were I less critical regarding the questions I pose, yes.
Fortunately I know my limitations, and I choose to accept a materialist ontology as given (or better: the only viable option at this point). This frees me to ponder questions regarding knowledge and language. Or more to the point regarding the OP: What we would (or should) "count" as an object.
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Good. I'm glad you realise your materialism is founded entirely on faith. Many others do not.
 
plumjam said:
Good. I'm glad you realise your materialism is founded entirely on faith. Many others do not.
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That I take materialism on faith does not mean it is founded on faith.

Materialism is grounded in experience, and founds our enquiries regarding the nature of the world up to a certain point. Beyond this point, all bets are off and meaningful discussions must cease lest our words lose their meaning.
 
Phaedrus74 said:
That I take materialism on faith does not mean it is founded on faith.
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A fine distinction, but false. You have come along with me in a discussion and we agreed that one has to have faith either in one's ontology or epistemology in order to escape circularity and solipsism, and in order to be able to attempt to make any meaningful statements at all about reality.
Therefore, all world views which are not solipsism, including materialism, are based entirely on faith.

Materialism is grounded in experience, and founds our enquiries regarding the nature of the world up to a certain point. Beyond this point, all bets are off and meaningful discussions must cease lest our words lose their meaning.
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Experience is grounded in experience. Materialism is just one of a host of interpretive schema that one can superimpose upon that experience. Some forms of experience do not fit well with materialism, so materialism (like here at JREF) is forced to deny such forms of experience.
Unfortunately for materialists experience is rather stubborn in this regard, and always will be.
 
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