Localized Interaction and Metaphysics
This is a continuation from the "What motivates pansychism" thread:
I said:
This is an interesting problem. I’ll call it The Problem of Perspective. It’s akin to the idea of a View from Nowhere. In an odd way, perhaps even Platonic notions of progressive understanding (noesis) was trying to solve it. That is to say, a worm, a termite, a pig, and a human all have a perspective. No perspective would seem privileged as to evaluating truth. Yet a worm can’t discern electromagnetism, nor scientific insights, mechanical theory etc., but humans can. But there is not supposed to be a Great Chain of Being. Yet humans at least act as though we have a privileged perspective to being close to what is “really going on”, more than other animals at least. Now take away humans, take away animals. We get a view from nowhere. Here is true metaphysics. What then exists in the view from nowhere? If you’re imagining a world as perceived and inferenced and synthesized by humans you would be mistaken. What is a non-perspective world? In what way can we talk of it intelligibly? Planets planeting? Particles particling? What does that even mean when there’s no perspective?
So I immediately see @apokrisis and others point to "information" being the source of perspective. That is to say, where ever information is being coded and decoded, that local interaction between information components is where a perspective is taking place. But is it? How is information akin to perspective? Perspective, a point of view, seems to be attached to an observer, not an information processor. How can information processing simpliciter be the same as a full-blown observer? I think there are too many jumps and "just so" things going on here to link the two so brashly.
So if not information, where is this "perspective" in the view from nowhere? If localized interactions, "what" makes the perspective happen from these interactions?
I said:
This is an interesting problem. I’ll call it The Problem of Perspective. It’s akin to the idea of a View from Nowhere. In an odd way, perhaps even Platonic notions of progressive understanding (noesis) was trying to solve it. That is to say, a worm, a termite, a pig, and a human all have a perspective. No perspective would seem privileged as to evaluating truth. Yet a worm can’t discern electromagnetism, nor scientific insights, mechanical theory etc., but humans can. But there is not supposed to be a Great Chain of Being. Yet humans at least act as though we have a privileged perspective to being close to what is “really going on”, more than other animals at least. Now take away humans, take away animals. We get a view from nowhere. Here is true metaphysics. What then exists in the view from nowhere? If you’re imagining a world as perceived and inferenced and synthesized by humans you would be mistaken. What is a non-perspective world? In what way can we talk of it intelligibly? Planets planeting? Particles particling? What does that even mean when there’s no perspective?
So I immediately see @apokrisis and others point to "information" being the source of perspective. That is to say, where ever information is being coded and decoded, that local interaction between information components is where a perspective is taking place. But is it? How is information akin to perspective? Perspective, a point of view, seems to be attached to an observer, not an information processor. How can information processing simpliciter be the same as a full-blown observer? I think there are too many jumps and "just so" things going on here to link the two so brashly.
So if not information, where is this "perspective" in the view from nowhere? If localized interactions, "what" makes the perspective happen from these interactions?
Comments (261)
Quoting schopenhauer1
For those who say that the direction of scientific knowing is an asymptotic progress toward
truth, what grounds perspective isn’t some ‘really real’ view from nowhere. Rather, dialectical relation is irreducible. There is no perspective-free reality to be uncovered prior to dialectical perspective. Instead, the structural form of the movement of the dialectic itself is the ground.
For those involved with building theories through 'cybernetic codes', there is an interesting model that separates two kinds of cognitive processes and sees them interacting in parallel. The model assumes that stress of negative experiences drives the interaction:
The need to pay attention is accompanied by a process that gives it a way to resolve the emergency. The system becomes dysfunctional without that relief:
From this perspective the 'perceiver' happens between the processes rather than appears as a result of any process by itself.
Or rather … no view anywhere. Case solved.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What I would say was that a perspective is a modelling relation with reality. A nervous system encodes habits of action and prediction. The gives an organism its point of view.
And key to an organism making such a model is that it models itself as in fact an organism in the world. It is a third person model as much as a first person one. The self must be discriminated from world, and thus it must be included in the reality being modelled.
To chew my food, I must model my tongue as part of myself, the food as part of the world. Pain sensors help define that objective line. After coming back from the dentist with a numb mouth, eating becomes a risky business for a while as consciousness of the boundary between self and world are neurologically disrupted.
None of this is mysterious - a drama for metaphysics. Just standard biology.
No, same thing. What is no view even mean? You will use a pseudo view to describe it.
Quoting apokrisis
What is a world without perspective? Let me guess, my OP predicts your answer:
Quoting schopenhauer1
So yeah
I notice you went straight to organism. I’m talking no point of view from a sentient being.
But what is a perspective free universe. One without sentience? Planets planeting? Particles particling? What is being without perspective? I get there is no neutral perspective but I’m asking what is a universe without a perspective at all, neutral, relative, or otherwise?
I dont think there is being without perspective. Every facet of the universe produces its own changing reality via its relations with its environment. So you have a universe continually developing , but not in some perspective free sense, because a perspective isn’t simply an observation for a point of view, it’s a contribution to the production of a universe. If every facet of being produces what only exists from its vantage, the it makes no sense to speak of the absence of perspective. If you take away perspective you also take away the very facts that make up a universe.
that is a meaningless question. You might imagine a universe devoid of observers, but you can't even imagine a universe devoid of perspective. Devoid of perspective, there is neither time nor space (as Joshs says). This is where Kant's analysis of the role of the 'primary intuitions' seems right.
There's one of my stock quotes that addresses this from a physics perspective.
[quote=Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271] The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time looses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'.[/quote]
The conceit of a lot of modern thinking is to believe that science really does exclude the subject. In fact that is impossible. What scientists endeavour to do, is to arrive at an understanding which is as general as possible, devoid of personal, subjective or cultural influences. That's what 'the view from nowhere' is trying to achieve, and it can do that. But it's not a metaphysic. To mistake it for a metaphysic is to lapse into scientism.
It's an inconvenient truth for our objectivist culture that 'the subject of experience' is an inextricable pole or aspect of reality. To which the objectivist will immediately respond: where is this 'subjective pole'? Show it to me! And that's the blind spot.
We, they, call that privileged perspective "objective reality," which it's not.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I'm with Apokrisis here:
Quoting apokrisis
It makes sense to say that, without an observer, there is no perspective and thus no existence. This is really at the heart of some eastern philosophies. For example, Taoism. Lao Tzu wrote:
[i]The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.[/i]
The act of seeing, naming, conceptualizing is what brings things into being - into a human perspective. Before that happens, they are unspeakable, unspoken. In a sense they don't exist. The Tao is the unbroken oneness that can't be described. That's what you get when there is no observer.
I agree with this.
Quoting Joshs
But not this. It seems like you are calling every interaction an observation which provides a perspective. That dilutes the meaning of "observation" and "perspective" till there's nothing left.
Quoting Joshs
I think this is true, although I would say "things" rather than "facts."
This is an example of a physicist confusing science with metaphysics. Human perspective is a metaphysical entity. It doesn't affect how matter and energy interact out here in the universe.
Matter and energy interacting out there in the universe, is a human perspective. It's how we describe things. You cannot escape the human perspective.
I agree.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I know what you mean, but I think I disagree. I think it is probably possible to escape the human perspective. Even if we can't do that, we can imagine what it would be like to escape the human perspective. We can examine it from a metaphysical ...perspective.
True metaphysics is an idea established by OUR deficit. Take away the deficit, then there is no metaphysics, nor physics. To think of an "absolute" metaphysics is just bad metaphysics.
And it can be reasonably argued that the measure of superiority between species is not about what one knows. One could have all the factual knowledge there could be and still it could be objected: so what? It is not knowledge that is the measure, but value. The depth and breadth of affectivity.
I wonder what all that elephant brain's 257 billion neurons actually do; certainly not philosophy. But perhaps some glorious, unfathomable sense of well being. A world of extraordinary experiential depth and breadth, I would hazard, is there.
But of course, all there is, is blind spot, for positing what is not blind would issue from what is blind.
In the Blind Spot sits experience: the sheer presence and immediacy of lived perception.
This statement is LOADED with problematic talk about something that is "blind". One has to wonder how blindness, us, can produce its opposite to set such a thing against itself. I don't think this is impossible, frankly, but it will not be done via any model science can provide.
Try it then. Try to remove the human temporal perspective, so that there's no "now". You'd have the entire temporal expanse of the universe at once. There'd be no separation of any object from any other object, because everything would exist everywhere all at once. If you wanted to imagine just a short portion of time, what would separate that portion from the rest other than your chosen perspective?
It's obviously either a meaningless question, or else at least a question that cannot be answered.
I think the idea of the blind spot is a metaphor for the failure to recognize a bias held by our own position - humans often assume a god-like, objective understanding of reality when it is actually a perspective with limitations. In this I think the notion is appropriate and I think Wayfarer states the problem well.
Quoting Wayfarer
To my mind this is one of your best succinct descriptions of the matter at hand.
What then could constitute a metaphysic? Surely no merely human perspective could qualify, since metaphysics, to be considered substantive in your book, must be absolute. no?
If a metaphysics, to be considered valid or substantive, must reflect a "reality beyond human perception" and all our metaphysics are merely human creations or at best "co-creations" (whatever that could be thought to mean), then there are no valid metaphysics, or at least no metaphysics which we can demonstrate or know to be valid.
Recall that according to the Greek tradition, that humans have a dual nature - sense and reason - the intellectual faculty being nous (ironically re-deployed in today's vernacular as 'common sense'). That is the basis of the various ancient formulations of dualism: the faculty of reason as the ability to discern the real. In Western philosophy metaphysics proper began with Parmenides, although properly studying Parmenides is, I fear, probably beyond my capability. But one of the books I've encountered about it is by an independent scholar, Arnold Hermann, called To Think Like God: Pythagoras and Parmenides: The Origins of Philosophy.The title does convey the original impetus behind those philosophers, which is precisely to penetrate a reality behind the appearance. In fact that has always informed science as well - not for nothing did Stephen Hawking say, atheist that he is, that his aim was to 'know the mind of God'. So, not claiming any expertise in any of that, but some understanding of what I know that I don't know.
That is the very claim which Kant refuted. Kant's metaphysical project is confined to reflection and analysis of what possible human experience and judgement must consist in. He specifically rejects the idea that reason can, inductively or deductively, come to discern the nature of the real (the noumenal). He rejects rational psychology, rational cosmology and rational theology; in other words the reliability of metaphysical speculations about the nature of the soul, the world and God. Did you read the SEP article I linked earlier?
Metaphysics is not my thing, so apologies. That said, my understanding is that our metaphysics amounts to a collaboration between ourselves and what it is we describe as reality. We create the measuring systems, the tools, the very language of description. And as we learn or grasp more, our metaphysics shifts and evolves. So that's what I mean by co-created. Do we ever grasp the real? Isn't even the notion of real a human construct? Or am I now sounding like a stoner? Physicalism as understood by most scientists is a metaphysical position, but many, like Bernardo Kastrup, would hold that this is questionable in the light of some interpretations of QM,if nothing else, right?
I would say our study of what we describe as reality (the empirical) is science, not metaphysics. Do we ever grasp the real? It depends on what you mean by "the real". Science does a good job of grasping empirical reality; in fact science would be impossible if we couldn't comprehend the field of our experience. Can we go beyond that? Traditional metaphysics says we can, and Kant was one of the first to say we can't (even though he thinks the tendency to try to do so is built into rational thought). Later thinkers (the logical positivists being the prime example) thought metaphysical claims are completely meaningless, or at least without sense (Wittgenstein).
I think physicalism is a metaphysical position (and is invalid as any other) if it holds that the nature of reality in itself is physical. Reality as we understand it is indeed physical, but that is an empirical or phenomenological claim, not a metaphysical one (unless you want to redefine metaphysics and ontology in terms of phenomenology).
I think many people want to reject physicalism holus bolus just because they think it threatens the spiritual side of human life. I don't agree with that concern.That's my small change on the matter, anyway.
Quoting Wayfarer
And it's much easier to make a sweeping claim that others don't understand the issues, or that they have dismissed the "whole subject" without sufficient investigation of it, than it is to actually explain and defend your position.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm not claiming any expertise, but I also don't accept your reading that Kant sweeps the whole of metaphysics off the table or that he's an out-and-out sceptic. But once you start getting into arguments about Kant....well, they're about as impenetrable as arguments about interpretations of quantum physics..... I think I've said all I want to say about it.
Let me have another shot, on the basis of what you've said. Going back again to Parmenides, then Plato, then Aristotle - there you have the beginning of the idea of the Ideas or Forms which was first articulated in the Parmenides. At issue in the way that line of thinking developed, was the fact that through the faculty of reason, you could know something with apodictic certainty - mathematical certainty, as we like to say. My interpretation is that this was a realisation of the nature of reason itself - the realisation that through reason one could come to know principles (logoi) with the kind of certitude that was never possible in respect of mere particulars - the insight that is, after all, at the origin of the Western tradition. That intuition was behind this notion that the sage apprehended the realm of unchanging truth, as distinct from the perishable objects of ordinary perception. Those 'sages of yore' were much nearer to what we would now call 'the great mystics', than to bench-scientists or academic philosophers. (This is the theme explored by the maverick academic, Peter Kingsley.)
That subsequently gives rise to Plato's epistemological scheme of the 'divided line' in the Republic. There you see the articulation of the idea of an heirarchy of knowledge, starting with mere opinion and belief, rising through dianoia, mathematical and geometric knowledge, to noesis (a word which has no modern equivalent.)
Galileo Galilei was deeply influenced by the Platonist revival of the Italian Renaissance - Marcello Ficino having produced the first complete Latin translation of Plato. Galileo's philosophy of science - 'the book of nature is written in mathematics' - was deeply influenced by Plato's esteem of dianoia. But at the same time, even though Galileo did indeed help usher in modern science with all of its immense powers, there is a fundamental philosophical issue in his work - subject of Philip Goff's recent book Galileo's Error, and also a penetraing critique by Husserl, in his Crisis of the European Sciences. That is, first, the conception of science solely as the 'domain of the quantifiable'; and second, the division of nature into the primary domain of supposedly mathematically-quantifiable entities, and the secondary domain, supposedly that of subjective perception. Joined to Descartes' vision of matter and mind, this gave rise to the dominating philosophical paradigm of the modern age. This is where the idea originates that the entirety of space-time (which is all that exists! a voice booms) can be modelled as a matrix of mathematically-describable relations. The 'view from nowhere'.
From Husserl's critique came the re-assertion of the primacy of first-person experience - that the human subject was not simply the by-product of the presumably 'primary bodies' describable by mathematical science, but was real in and of itself (which was at the origin of phenomenology. ) That's the perspective which is brought to bear by The Blind Spot of Science article (co-author Evan Thompson being one of the prominent theorists of phenomnology in the life sciences.)
But, all that said, I think something real was lost in all of this, which phenomenology itself has not recovered, even though it's vital. There is something about the Western metaphysical tradition that has gotten lost. That's what I'm researching.
Actually just picked up this book second-hand at a local store:
I don't reject physicalism because of the spiritual--I have no idea what spiritual means. I reject physicalism because it is incoherent. If we say everything is physical, we have explained nothing.
Physicalism is a metaphysics.
Right but I think you are dancing around an important point. You said here:
Quoting Joshs
I am not sure what that means. How is perspective "a contribution to the production of the universe"?
I've posted at length about considering Whitehead's process philosophy, as you may or may not remember, way back. A couple times actually.
I agree that people confuse "the view from nowhere" as a scientific approach to include as little bias or cultural influence in the science is different than "the View from Nowhere" which is a sort of metaphysical conundrum of thinking about a universe with no perspective. This latter one is what I am referring to.
And yes, general relativity and some interpretations of quantum mechanics must consider observers, so there is that. But my question also included ideas of localized interactions. Whitehead proposed atomic "occasions" of experiences. That still seems odd to me. I mean it's as good a conjecture as any, but doesn't really get beyond being conjecture.
Information-enthusiasts who reify information processes will somehow try to make the zombie information a point of perspective. For example, in this perspective, RNA decoding and encoding into DNA would be some sort of perspective. Or similarly, electrons interacting with nuclei or other electrons is a perspective. That seems odd to me. It is like a zombie, pseudo-scientific version of Whitehead. Perspective comes about through fiat. The verb "to do" becomes "perspective" here. Making something a process does not confer on it observational powers.
Anyways, interesting ideas.
That's the point. We can imagine, is different than what is going on. You are giving privilege again to humans. Our view of a "planet" would then be approximately "the planet". How odd and Platonic of you. Our Form of planet inheres in reality.
I am not discussing knowledge versus other experience here. Rather, I am asking, what is a universe without any perspective? We imagine a universe independent of humans, but that imagining takes on the character of what "we" perceive it as.
I have tried it. I think what you're describing is the essence of the experience meditation is looking for. Yes, I can imagine it. I can grasp it intellectually. No, I cannot experience it directly.
Do you think a universe can persist if there is no observer/perspective? I know we can't imagine that world, but I guess my bigger question is, "what" is being outside perspective?
If you say, there is no "being" outside perspective, that is indeed Idealism and Schopenhauer would get on board with that. But, let's say you weren't an Idealist. Is there any other way to answer this?
You are right, and I hadn't read it all the way. So now I've read it, and I do appreciate the direction it takes. But my views on this run rather radical, perhaps you've noticed. Take this: 'Our experience and what we call ‘reality’ are inextricable."
I put it quite differently: Our experience IS reality, and this is not an idealist claim. It is just to say that whether you want to talk about what is out there and in here or not, experience is not such that it is to be compared to or set apart from what is real. Then the matter takes its epistemic course: The cat considered out there has no "proximity" to me, since there is nothing about out thereness that is at all intimated. But the presence of the cat there, just as it is, this is where the "real" gets its meaning; this is the "originary" locus where talk about the real begins. It is not "in here" but simply "there". It is the intuitive presence of the cat as well as the eidetic presence of the thought that conceives it, these are, I would argue against others, direct and unassailablein their presence, whatever that means, which brings me to the problem: I say "whatever that means" because meanings distort presence, and the word 'presence' is itself embedded in a system of thought, which is freighted along with the simple utterance.
Hard to put this succinctly; there is a premise lurking in the shadows of all this: the point of philosophical work is not to arrive at propositional truth. It is to realize value; it is liberative (which is why I take Eastern thinking seriously. I suspect philosophy's issues were solved long ago, sitting under a fig tree) Value rules inquiry, not thought; and thought is pragmatic, a utility, to achieve value. We think to make things happen, but thought cannot "deliver" reality any more than a hammer can deliver a house. Language has use value. Talk about universals vs particulars, e.g., is simply more talk about meanings and how they converge, reflect, straddle, agree with, and so on, each other. And this is a big point: Concepts will never converge with the real, but they themselves are real. One simply has to abandon the scientific insistence on a fiction called materiality. Thinking is not disputable as a "presence"; what thinking is about is entirely different. Of course, I did just say that all language is like this, distorting or interpretative, so it has to be explained how a "direct" intuition unassailable in its affirmation, while the language's nature is inherently something assailable.
Anyway, this is where my thought begins on the matter of what is real. Bringing inquiry back to the foundation of all things, the actual presence of the world. One has to ask, then listen at the intuitive center, where, as Eugene Fink puts it, the "being-tendency (enworlding)" is revealed. One discovers, again, I argue, something alien and profound vis a vis our naturally lived lives.
Yeah, but I think you know where this goes: In order for the "without any perspective" to make any sense at all, the concept of perspective has to make sense. Of course, a perspective only makes sense vis a vis other perspectives. There is no single, privileged "perspective" except in the "mind of God" and this puts the idea clearly in the area of bad metaphysics. This is nonsense.
Your idea of "bad metaphysics" was just asserted without any jumping from your claim to your conclusion. A philosopher can't just write an article "Bad metaphysics. The end".
But anyways, you seem to be answering your own objections.. Yes, a universe has no privileged perspective on its own. But my question is what is a universe without a perspective? I mean literally, what does that look like? The only thing I can posit that people might say (especially information-enthusiasts) are localized interactions somehow inhering in the universe. But I don't really know if I buy that.
I also get we must use our human language and imagery to describe non-human perspective, but that is assumed in this argument. We obviously can't get outside our own framework. But that doesn't mean we can't have some discussion on it in a conceptual way, even if that really can't translate to our true understanding of it.
The idea of a blind spot implies that we re blind to something, something there that we cannot "see". If it is conceived as a metaphor, then it has to be such that both sides of the metaphor are known. I have brought this up earlier: a metaphor only makes sense, as in, Ingrid such a tiger in political conversation, if one knows about tigers and Ingrid. Both. Witt argued that one sided metaphors are nonsense. So the blind spot in this context, would be a one sided metaphor. Blind, but blind regarding what?
Here's what I wrote:
Quoting T Clark
If we can escape the human perspective, it would be without words. I think this is the essence of what meditation strives for. I certainly have never experienced it, but I think it may be possible.
I agree. I think metaphysics is the set of tools we use to bring the world into human perspective. I'm not sure if that's exactly what you mean.
Metaphysics is a tool. If it works, it's valid.
Bad metaphysics is metaphysics that has no grounding in analysis of experience. Talk about God as omniscient, omnipotent and so on--one asks, for evidence and it isn't forthcoming. Talk about God as, say, a grounding for ethical affairs that are inherently incomplete due to undeniable features of the given world, then metaphysics is not entirely a fiction.
If there is no privileged perspective, then the term 'perspective' stands in its meaning only against other perspectives, and loses meaning entirely in talk about "a universe without a perspective". Anything you say is already "perspectival"; to speak at all implies perspective; to say "without perspective" is itself a perspective.
I agree with this, except for the stoner and QM parts.
This just sounds like a complaint without content. If there are no sentient beings. What then? I'll try to use as little words that you don't like as possible here...
I agree with this except for "invalid."
It's is just an argument from nonsense. To talk about perspectivelessness is nonsense.
Sure, but then all ways of knowing the world except for direct, unspoken experience are metaphysics.
Nonsense in the Wittgenstein meaning of it? If let's say Earth is no more, what of the universe? That's an event that can (and will) happen. So how is that nonsense? There was a universe "before" humans and "after". So why the hostility? It's not nonsense, you are just unreasonably miffed by the subject. Wittgenstein's idea of "nonsense" isn't a license for shutting down all inquiry in the name of calling out "Nonsense!".
A Taoist might say that the universe doesn't exist until it is put into human perspective. "Existence" means "put into a human perspective."
I think this is true.
:up:
Well, not hostile, just in disagreement.
Witt writes:
[i]Thus the aim of the book is to draw a limit
to thought, or rather—not to thought, but to
the expression of thoughts: for in order to be
able to draw a limit to thought, we should
have to find both sides of the limit thinkable
(i.e. we should have to be able to think what
cannot be thought).
It will therefore only be in language that
the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the
other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.[/i]
One cannot think of a limit to thought for one cannot conceive of the opposite of thought. It takes thought to conceive. He knows that to have an idea at all in mind is to have logic in play already. One can't imagine a logic-free "world". Having a perspective is exactly the same thing in this matter here.
Imagining a universe before humans is, of course, a conception. When we talk about a Big Bang, it is a projection of what the world is processed in logic and experience. Take away this latter, the BIg Bang is just meaningless.
A perspective is not a passive observation from a certain vantage, it is the creation of something new from
a certain vantage . Any ‘observation’ alters not just what it relates to, but also that which is doing the observing.
Yes, a priori, this kind of conjecturing must be projections and imaginations. We can still try to "describe" it. Like if I say, "What do you think a dog's perspective is like" and you say, "It has a lot to do with smells, patterns of reward, belly rubs, and such" I can still meaningfully gain some insight into this from my limited human perspective without actually "being" a dog myself. Of course, I am never going to have the POV of a dog, but it can be discussed like anything else.
I'm just saying not to use Witty to weaponize any inquiry on metaphysical or epistemological conjectures. Sometimes it's more about how to view a subject matter, not necessarily getting at "it" directly. We all know that there is a contradiction in thinking about non-perspective, but the dialogue surrounding such ideas is not thus a non-starter, it's just keeping in mind that it can only be conjecture.
Right but what is a view without sentience? Besides using Wittgenstein to just say, "This is nonsense!" is there any other good responses here?
I've already had answers like Whitehead and process philosophy, which is adjacent to a kind of pansychism.
I've already anticipated answers like it's all "information processing" or some such.. But then countered that how can perspective come from information processing?
Whitehead's "occasions of experience" and zombie-like information processing are forms of the "localized interactions" that I am talking about in the OP (and that I am skeptical of).
When you say ‘human’ do you have in mind an a priori ala Kant? To be human is then to be possessed of a prior categories. This makes humanity a divine notion.
Whitehead goes some distance toward what I’m getting at in claiming that an observer alters what is observed in the act of observing it. As a result, perspective is something added onto a pre-perspectival reality, but constitutes it by producing it as something new.
He rejects Newton’s “doctrine of ‘simple location’ and ‘external relations’. “The rejected Newtonian doctrine of simple location dovetails with the conception of space and time in terms of external relations, that is, the conception of space and time as absolute ‘immovable’ containers external to and unaffected by the things located in space and time (see Newton’s Scholium cited in PR 70). By understanding spatiotemporal relations as external relations, Newton develops a “ ‘receptacle’ theory of space–time” (PR 70)—which, for clarity’s sake, should not be confused with Whitehead’s later notion of ‘the Receptacle’. Understood as such, space and time are ‘empty’ forms (PR 72) that merely ‘accommodate’ bodies, without affecting or being affected by what they accommodate. Mirroring the two inseparable aspects of the doctrine of internal relations, Newton’s externality of space and time entails, first, that bodies enjoy an independence from their spatiotemporal relations and are ‘simply located’, and, two, that space and time remain unmovable and unmodified by the extension of bodies.
Rejecting Newton’s doctrine, Whitehead takes precisely the opposite stance; Of the ‘Receptacle’— which in Adventures of Ideas is his concept referring to “the general notion of extension” (AI 258; see also AI 192)—he says: “It is part of the essential nature of each physical
actuality that it is itself an element qualifying the Receptacle, and that the qualifications of the
Receptacle enter into its own nature.” (AI 171) In other words, the fact that “the relata modify the nature of the relations” (AI 201) entails that extension as the “primary relationship” (PR 288) between actual occasions, is modified by these occasions.
Are you getting this view of logic from the Tractatus?
The Wittgenstein of Philosophical Investigations seemed to treat logic very differently
“… the logical edifice of the Tractatus came tumbling down and with it the whole notion of ‘logical form' that.played such a central role in Wittgenstein's
early thought.”” During his first six months back in Cambridge in 1929, as he wrestled with the difficulties about logical form that Ramsey had raised, he fairly quickly came to the conclusion that the very notion of logical form had to be abandoned.”(Ray Monk)
I think sentience as it is conventionally understood is a confused notion, as if to be sentient is to be possessed of some special substance or ineffable property in addition to how we understand physical stuff to interact. The problem is the way we wall off what we think of as the subject from the object. On one side is value, feeling and will, and on the other is dead content. No wonder we have a ‘hard problem’ and mystery of the gap between the in-itself and the for-itself. We created it with this artificial separation. Going the panpsychism route just reifies the split, and turning everything into information still assumes some sort of totalizing metaphysics. I like Nietzsche’s approach.
“Assuming that our world of desires and passions is the only thing “given” as real, that we cannot get down or up to any “reality” except the reality of our drives (since thinking is only a relation between these drives) – aren't we allowed to make the attempt and pose the question as to whether something like this “given” isn't enough to render the so-called mechanistic (and thus material) world comprehensible as well? I do not mean comprehensible as a deception, a “mere appearance,” a “representation” (in the sense of Berkeley and Schopenhauer); I mean it might allow us to understand the mechanistic world as belonging to the same plane of reality as our affects themselves –, as a primitive form of the world of affect, where everything is contained in a powerful unity before branching off and organizing itself in the organic process (and, of course, being softened and weakened –).
We would be able to understand the mechanistic world as a kind of life of the drives, where all the organic functions (self-regulation, assimilation, nutrition, excretion, and metabolism) are still synthetically bound together – as a pre-form of life? – In the end, we are not only allowed to make such an attempt: the conscience of method demands it. Multiple varieties of causation should not be postulated until the attempt to make do with a single one has been taken as far as it will go (– ad absurdum, if you will). This is a moral of method that cannot be escaped these days; – it follows “from the definition,” as a mathematician would say. The question is ultimately whether we recognize the will as, in effect, efficacious, whether we believe in the causality of the will. If we do (and this belief is really just our belief in causality itself –), then we must make the attempt to hypothetically posit the causality of the will as the only type of causality there is.
“Will” can naturally have effects only on “will” – and not on “matter” (not on “nerves” for instance –). Enough: we must venture the hypothesis that everywhere “effects” are recognized, will is effecting will – and that every mechanistic event in which a force is active is really a force and effect of the will. – Assuming, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire life of drives as the organization and outgrowth of one basic form of will (namely, of the will to power, which is my claim); assuming we could trace all organic functions back to this will to power and find that it even solved the problem of procreation and nutrition (which is a single problem); then we will have earned the right to clearly designate all efficacious force as: will to power. The world seen from inside, the world determined and described with respect to its “intelligible character” – would be just this “will to power” and nothing else. –“
Nonlocal (i.e. infinite).
Insofar as effability is perspectival, "a non-perspective world" is ineffable.
Noise (i.e. randomness).
I think "metaphysics" as such consists in creating and using conceptual tools / criteria in order to deflate – render transparent to reason – 'cultural-experiential perspectives' on whatever there is. This is done by either (A) positing one map to define (determine the totality of) the territory (i.e. "idealism") and to function as the foundation of all other maps (e.g. "platonism") or (B) negating every map which does not correspond with – cannot be used for navigating – the territory and thereby populating the set of all corresponding – navigable – maps of the territory which are inherent to the territory (e.g. "irrealism" ... "actualism").
(A) positive (i.e. traditional, classical) metaphysics speculates categorically on the necessary structure of the real. Empirical, transcendental and verificationist methodologies are instances of 'anti-metaphysical skepticism'.
(B) negative (à la apophatic) metaphysics speculates categorically on the necessary structure of the unreal. This negative approach is, I contend, even less perspectival, or subjective, than the positive (à la kataphatic) approach by virtue of negating the unreal in order to make explicit (but without defining) the real.
what is a direct unspoken experience?
Experience comes first, then the words. Words are how we process experience. It is possible, I think, to experience the world without processing. That doesn't mean I can do it, although I may have been close a few times.
Then what do you mean by experience?
Sights, sounds, tastes, smells, feelings, emotions, memories, attention...
I may have missed your point. Are you saying we cannot be angry without using words to say we are angry?
Young children experience emotions, but they have to learn what they are, what they mean, what they are called.
Good explanation. Thanks.
The key point here is the precise meaning of ‘to exist’. If I were to answer ‘no’, then you would say ‘aha! So you’re claiming the universe ceases to exist in the absence of observers!’ You then try to imagine the non-existence of the whole universe, of the universe literally disappearing.
But both existence and non-existence are conceptual constructions. The idea of non-existence is just as dependent on the constructive activities of the mind as the idea of existence. And what exists outside that constructive activity of the mind, we will never know, because that is what gives meaning to the term ‘it exists’. Nothing has any meaning outside that matrix of meaning-construction.
In the background of your thinking about this, you have an idea ultimately attributable to scientific realism: we know the Universe predates h. sapiens by many billions of years and that life on Earth will run its course. But even though that is empirically true, it is also an intellectual construction or projection which implicitly depends on the knowing subject . Here is a passage I often quote in relation to this point:
[quote=Bryan Magee, Schopenhauer's Philosophy, p106]'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ... that is impossible.'
Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was [that] the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.
The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.
This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood.
Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices.[/quote]
So, from the empirical perspective it is of course true that the Universe precedes our existence, but from the perspective of transcendental idealism, ‘before’ is also a part of the way in which the observing mind constructs the world.
My tentative, meta-philosophical claim is that this implies that in some sense, the appearance of conscious sentient beings literally brings the universe into existence. Not that ‘before’ we came along that it didn’t exist, but that the manner of its existence is unintelligible apart from the perspective brought to it by the observer. We can’t get ‘outside’ that perspective, even if we try and see the world as if there’s no observer. (Sorry for the length of this post.)
I don’t think they have to learn what they mean in a fundamental sense. What they mean is inherent in their very expression as emotions. An emotion is a kind of appraisal of one’s situation, a way of interpreting its significance, whether one has a word label for the emotion or not.
I agree, but this is a hard idea to keep hold of. If I stop paying attention, it slips away again.
This still seems to imply a factual status to the pre-human world. I prefer the idea that we could imagine a perspective within a pre-human universe, but even from
that perspective we find no neutral fact of the matter , but instead the same problem we faced when dealing with human interpretation of the world. That is , any facet of a world taken as what it is ‘in itself’ implies not only a relation with an environment to define what ‘it’ is, but a relation that produces it uniquely , and only in that moment, and only from ‘its’ perspective in that moment. A world creates and recreates itself , but in a way that is not accessible to a neutral
overview, because the nature of its fecundity is inherently perspectival. This is why matter is already value-laden
For sure. Habits of thought re-assert themselves constantly.
Quoting Joshs
:up: That's where phenomenology dovetails well with Buddhist philosophy, which says that nothing exists in itself, but only in relationship. And also with Rovelli's relational interpretation of qm.
In "How Emotions are Made," Lisa Barrett describes how children learn concepts, names, of emotions by observing their own internal states, other people's emotional expressions, and the use of words for emotions. Each emotional concept; anger, sadness, happiness; is made up of a whole bunch of different instances that they have to learn belong together. Anger can feel and be expressed very differently depending on the situation and the person involved. This is something that has to be learned.
There is no problem with saying there is being outside of any perspective, or that things exist independently of any perspective; but it's obvious, by definition, that anything we say about it, including the statement that there is being outside perspective, or things existing independently of any perspective is from a perspective.
I would agree if it just wasn't for that pesky absence of -perspective that is at the center of the issue here. The whole idea is to imagine the world/universe as if we were not there to conceive of it. Ever since, long ago, Rorty said he didn't know how anything out there got in here (pointing to his head) I have never been able to get around it. As counter intuitive as this sounds, it simply seems beyond refutation: either I am now "looking at" my brain's interior, or consciousness of the world is not brain bound.
But quite right, this kind of thinking often intrudes where unwelcome.
:up: That's it!
Quoting T Clark
Perhaps "invalid" is a problematic term, given it's use in logic to denote consistency as distinct from truth. My point is that if metaphysics is taken to be the attempt to arrive at a definitive answer as to the nature of absolute reality, then it is not, and cannot be, adequate to the task. This was the point of Kant's project.
Metaphysics is no more the definitive answer to absolute reality than epistemology is the definitive answer to absolute truth and knowledge.
And Kant was simply doing metaphysics under the guise of epistemology.
If metaphysics is taken to be the science of the Real (where "real" is understood to be what is independent of human experience) then Kant was not doing metaphysics. His aim was to establish what characteristics all possible human experience and judgement must have.
I don't define metaphysics as the science of the real. It is just a topic in philosophy about what we think the totality of the world is.
And Kant is rather petty in his understanding of the world. I've read a lot of Kant and I find him boring and pedantic.
Quoting Jackson
You may not, but traditionally metaphysics was understood according to that definition.
Quoting Jackson
What do you mean by "totality of the world"? Is thinking about that different than thinking about what the Real is?
Quoting Jackson
Why did you read a lot of Kant if you found him boring and pedantic?
Yes. The "Real" is abstract and is itself hard to define. Is it merely that which is not False? That is more epistemology.
No, it is traditionally considered to be that which is absolutely existent (as opposed to what appears to us to be existent).
I like to be informed about my judgments.
Aristotle defined metaphysics as "first philosophy." Where a philosopher discusses his basic principles of philosophy.
One definition, yes.
If you think he is boring and pedantic it wouldn't have taken you much reading to discover that you think that, would it?
Part of course work for my graduate degree.
Can you offer some other traditional definitions of metaphysics?
Stated it several times.
Where? Remember I'm asking for traditional definitions, not your definition.
I wrote Aristotle's definition. Even the SEP entry on metaphysics starts with Aristotle.
Where? Write it again or link to it; I couldn't find it.
"Janus;681633"]
That's okay. Read the thread and you will see it stated explicitly.
This is true. I dont agree with the predictive processing f model of emotions, because it hasn’t transcended its behaviorist roots sufficiently. Affect and intention are much more intricately intertwined than pp recognizes. We dont have some general body-maintenance feedback first and then have to decide how to explain its meaning by relating it to a current situation. Emotions come already world-directed. There is never just some generic arousal that then has to be attributed. Feelings emerge from within experiences that are relevant to us in some way. We are never without a mood.
Not anymore , or not since Nietzsche( and Husserl, Heidegger , Derrida ,etc)
:up:
Quoting Jackson
Or was it epistemology under the guise of (a new kind of) metaphysics or proto-phenomenology? Do you think it is possible to reflect on and know what characteristics any possible experience or judgement must have?
No such thing as the condition for any possible experience.
I can explain my objection. But, basically, experience is an event. We cannot determine all possible experiences.
What do you mean "determine all possible experiences"? Are you saying we cannot think of the necessary general characteristics of any experience? That seems just plain wrong; since time, for one, certainly seems to be necessary for any experience.
What is time? Sequence? We can't understand the world without framing it by sequences? Even Leibniz knew time was relative, before Einstein showed it empirically.
Duration. All experiences must persist for a time. I wasn't thinking of sequence; but that raises a different question: can we understand events without sequentiality?
Quoting Jackson
And...?
And I don't accept Kant's concept of space and time. So, his conditions of experience are contrary to science.
Don't know what this really means, honestly. I know that Whitehead talks about being and becoming and how an entity can change while be persistent, but that's about all I can say on this unless you really give more than neologisms, even Whiteheadian ones.
Nietzsche has to lay of the cocaine.
Well, of course you are going to win favors quoting literature about Schopenhauer (and his conception of Kant's Transcendental Idealism). From the man himself:
Kant is talking, not about any purported objective characteristics of space and time ( for him they are not objective, but subjective), but about how they are experienced by us. You may have read a lot of Kant, but it doesn't look like you've understood him.
A shame you need to make a personal attack. We're done.
Besides the fact that it puts the burden of proof from sentience to the universe itself, how else is this substantiated?
What is relationship? You mine as well say, "Information processes"... or "occasions of experience" or "actual entitites" or "little green goblins goblining".. It is the fallacy of homunculus on steroids.
It wasn't a personal attack. By your irrelevant comments you have demonstrated that you don't understand what Kant was doing. I am not criticizing you; I am criticizing your demonstrated misunderstanding of Kant's project. Don't you want to learn?
Right but obviously Idealists would chide you into "what" that is... Clearly a universe without perspective is a metaphysical mess that non-idealists might get defensive about and then conjure up old Wittgenstei and say, "STOP!!" "Thouh shalt not pass!!" :lol: :lol: Ignoring the issue doesn't make it go away.. That is simply a reflection of the philosopher and their propensities. Go make your model airplanes and watch paint dry.. I don't know.. Monger more minutia perhaps.. Construct some cool code, make some furniture? Do something you think as "practical" and just forget all this metaphysical "nonsense"..
Ad hominem attack. If you want to discuss philosophy, I will. If you cannot refrain from ad hominem attacks then I will not respond.
You seem to be contradicting yourself. How could the appearance of conscious sentient beings bring the universe into existence if it is not the case "that 'before' we came along it didn't exist". And why the inverted commas around "before"?
That is addressed in the longer quotation that Schopenhauer 1 provided from Schopenhauer 0 on the previous page, to wit:
No. Epistemology cannot posit "knowing" it's own "conditions of possibility" – begs the question, no?
No. Kant's 'transcendental scheme' is, in effect, a anthropocentric fiat: if humans experience X, then Y consists of the 'conditions of the possibility of' any human experience. A ("groundwork of the") metaphysics of human experience.
Why? Epistemology is the inquiry into what we know and how we know anything. It is arguable that we can know, on the basis of reflection, what the essential general elements of all kinds of experiences are. Knowledge comes from experience; where else? I don't see any question-begging here.
It's not an "anthropocentric fiat" unless it purports to extend its findings beyond the anthropos, in other words as long as it doesn't aim to make claims about what lies beyond human experience. The latter is what anthropomorphizing consists in, as I understand it.
Exactly. Like jumping over your own shadow.
As Kant says, we cannot acquire discursive metaphysical (in the traditional, not his Synthetic a priori, sense) knowledge, but that it is, nonetheless, intrinsic to rational thought to seek the unconditioned as the totality and ultimate explanation for the conditioned.
"I don't know" is not a fallacy, as I see it, but a suitably humble acknowledgement of the limits of knowledge; and it is by no means an injunction to cease thinking about such unknowables, because such thoughts can, and obviously have, enriched human life and creativity.
Quoting schopenhauer1
LOL, we can pass, but we have to leave our analytical discursive minds at the gate. The mind of the Muse may enter.
We can make educated guesses: Worms probably have touch/pressure/pain receptors just like us. It's usually easier to get an idea of how lower life-forms see the world (we can do what they can). As for übermensch, it's a little harder.
Quoting Janus
Non-empirical knowledge (e.g. mathematical theorems) does not "come from experience".
I understand anthropo-centric to denote knowledge restricted to "human experience" – limited to only what humans can perceive – which implies that "beyond" "human experience" there is not anything (e.g. neither quasars nor quarks) knowable by humans.
Is such knowledge possible without mathematical experience?
Right, I misread anthropocentric as anthropomorphic. In any case my point stands re anthropomorphizing, and we are apparently in agreement about knowledge outside human experience being impossible.
Yes he was, but no, he did not, at least in one sense of “absolute”, that being irreducible physical reality.....
“...Time and space are, therefore, two sources of knowledge, from which, a priori, various synthetical cognitions can be drawn. Of this we find a striking example in the cognitions of space and its relations, which form the foundation of pure mathematics. They are the two pure forms of all intuitions, and thereby make synthetical propositions a priori possible. But these sources of knowledge being merely conditions of our sensibility, do therefore, and as such, strictly determine their own range and purpose, in that they do not and cannot present objects as things in themselves, but are applicable to them solely in so far as they are considered as sensuous phenomena. The sphere of phenomena is the only sphere of their validity, and if we venture out of this, no further objective use can be made of them.
On the other hand, those who maintain the absolute reality of time and space, whether as essentially subsisting, or only inhering, as modifications, in things, must find themselves at utter variance with the principles of experience itself. For, if they decide for the first view, and make space and time into substances, this being the side taken by mathematical natural philosophers, they must admit two self-subsisting nonentities, infinite and eternal, which exist (yet without there being anything real) for the purpose of containing in themselves everything that is real. If they adopt the second view of inherence, which is preferred by some metaphysical natural philosophers, and regard space and time as relations (contiguity in space or succession in time), abstracted from experience, though represented confusedly in this state of separation, they find themselves in that case necessitated to deny the validity of mathematical doctrines a priori in reference to real things...”
....which still leaves room for “absolute” in the sense of irreducible transcendental ideality. But that isn’t Newton, so....we are left with an ambiguity with respect to the term itself, between your meaning of the word, and his.
And even if one leans on Kant’s granting “empirical reality” to both space and time, as indicating “absolute”, it behooves him to recognize the further qualification of that condition, as being merely “objective validity in reference to all objects which can ever be presented to our senses”, which reduces the conception of “absolute” to no more than pertaining to possible experience, and therefore hardly absolute in Newtonian terms, the reference frame for which being the Universe in general.
As if CPR wasn’t sufficient introduction, we can then be referred to “The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science”, particularly the chapter “Phenomenology”, in which Kant refutes the notion of Newtonian absolute time and space, re: Friedman, 1992. How well he refuted....well, that’s been suspect since 1786. Then comes Einstein, a self-proclaimed non-Kantian, who elaborates successfully a strictly Kantian argument.
Go figure......
No, I do not agree with Kant's a priori category. What I think, is that the mind operates in unison with sensation in specific preestablished ways. This means that there is something prior to mental experience, similar to Kant's a priori, as the conditions for such experience, but this, whatever it is which is prior to experience, cannot be conceptual in any way. So Kant calls them "intuitions". Well, I find "intuition" as an equally faulty word, because that word as we normally use it, has mental experience implied within. That's why when Aristotle investigated the nature of intuition in his "Nicomachean Ethics" (what he considered the highest form of knowledge, incidentally), he concluded that it is a combination of innate and acquired features. Therefore, I believe that to properly characterize what is prior to mental experience, as the condition for such experience, we need to go beyond "intuition".
Quoting Janus
This wasn't a refutation at all, just a simple assertion. But it's really a defeatist attitude. If we say that reality extends beyond our capacities of sensation (and what science shows us is that it does), yet we claim that reason has not the capacity to understand this reality, then we render science as impotent. Science uses hypotheses to understand what is beyond the limitations of sensation.
But this is also why we have to be wary of scientific conclusions, and duly subject them to skepticism. We tend to fall under the illusion that scientific theories are verified by sense experience, and therefore in some sense cannot be wrong, providing us with certainties. The problem though, as the ancients indicated, is that sense experience is what leads us wrong in the first place, and the goal of science is actually to access that true reality (noumenal) which is beyond sensation. If science's verification is provided by sensation, then we have the potential for a vicious circle within science, such that the deceptions of our senses are used to verify deceptive theories.
Quoting Wayfarer
I would say that what Plato demonstrated, and especially Aristotle, is that this form of certainty, which you call "apodictic" is really an illusion, a false certitude which is nothing more than sophism. As Aristotle demonstrated, mathematical axioms and geometrical constructs, which are proposed for various purposes, what Plato called "the good", are forms which are property of the human mind. When "the good" wanders, strays from truth and honesty into pragmaticism, then persuasion may become the principal goal involved with such proposals. Then we have mere sophistry. Einstein for example, was a master at this type of persuasion, in his presentation of the nature of time. He presents a conception of "time" which is pragmatic rather than truthful, and offers numerous different persuasive arguments as to why this conception of time ought to be employed.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is exactly the point, and it's very well said here Wayfarer; nice job. Wittgenstein likes this example too, the earth existed before me, he implies that it's something which cannot be doubted. Actually though, it's a very good example of precisely why we need to doubt such things, which we otherwise would tend to take for granted.
We see "the world" is a human construct, a conception, how we understand our environment, what's around us, enveloping us. So if "the world" refers to the way that I understand my environment, then it's impossible that the world existed before me. That's a basic fact. Now, to move to this belief, that the world actually existed before me, I have to accept the truth (correspondence) between this conception of my environment, which envelopes me, "the world", and the actual reality of my environment. Once I accept this as a truth, then all the temporal, spatial, and mathematical conceptions implied by this concept "the world", as logically prior to that concept (necessary for it), are implicitly accepted by me as well. These become true conceptions, as necessary for rendering truth to "the world existed before me". The problem is that we readily accept "the world existed before me", because it is extremely intuitive, without taking the time required to understand exactly what that proposition entails.
So you can see that the simple proposition "the world existed before me" involves a massive web of temporal, spatial, and mathematical conceptions all tied together, as necessary to ensure the truth of that proposition. If any of these conceptions might be inaccurate, then the entire proposition is cast into a shadow of doubt. The most obvious problem is the term "before". Our conception of time is so primitive and obscure, that we do not know with any degree of certainty what "before" actually means. And so, in setting a relationship between myself and my environment, which includes the concept "before", I have to approach with much skepticism.
Quoting Joshs
Really? Tumbling down? As I understand it, the picture theory of language was abandoned, but the insistence of logicality was not. For me, no one has ever convinced me that idealism of some kind is wrong. How does anything out there get in here? I just don't see it. Why am I not listening and observing activated "neuronal networks" ONLY?
But this line of thinking simply denies that there is anything "there" in some emphatic, irresistible way. I may not know what things are, but THAT they are, notwithstanding "are" being interpretatively indeterminate, is impossible to deny.
"IT"??? This is the problem.
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
All that's left to do is make systematic guesses, oui? Without the possibility of ever knowing whether we go it right or no.
Do you have a reference? I'd be interested in reading more. Beyond what Barrett says, in my own experience I have had to work to understand what particular emotions are. Babies have to learn everything about the world and how to put it into words. In particular, emotions have to be expressed in socially specific ways. What we call "anger" isn't just one thing, it's a whole bunch of related but significantly different things. That's something else I've experienced directly.
I don’t think it would be wrong to say that Wittgenstein’s language games are a kind of idealism, but what do you mean by ‘logicality’? The ‘S is P’ propositional structure? Belief statements?
Quoting T Clark
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5972154/
Quoting T Clark
Are emotions just expressed is socially significant ways or, as Wittgenstein shows , is their very sense created via these contextual engagements? Putting into words wouldnt merely be relating symbols to already formed meanings but allowing the worlds to form the sense of a meaning.
I mean that the insistence of ideas like, one cannot conceive of a thoughtless world, retain all of their authority.
I should note that for writers like Heidegger, Derrida and some of the phenomenologists, the notion of the human is presupposed but is instead a derived abstraction. From their vantage framing metaphysics in terms of what is within or outside of human experience is already anthropocentric because it begins from the notion of the human subject. nModern empirical science, including physics, is anthropocentric for this reason. The transcendental starting point for these authors is not yet a human subjectivity Even though it is a kind of subject, it does t lend itself to a dichotomy between what is experienced from a human point view and what is outside of it.
Quoting Constance
But where do they get their authority from , for the later Wittgenstein? I would suggest only through a particular language game in which that sentence is being used. Its authority would thus be contingent and pragmatic.
The above sentence , for instance, would be a tautology that doesn’t actually tell us anything new but can still have a specific and variable use in contexts in which it is uttered. We can’t ‘conceinve ’ what is ‘thoughtless’ just restates the already understood equivalence in meaning between conception and thought. So why do we utter the sentence? There can be widely various contexts in which we may want to make explicit what is implicit
That is the fallacy of scientism. Making systematic guesses is science's job. But philosophy's "guesses" are thematically different. Quoting 180 Proof
Not to ruffle feathers at all! But this here sounds like the fiction to me.
Yes. They presume a definition of subjectivity as if it is self evident. Is a subject merely a biological entity?
Not self-evident as a fact but identifiable as a relational performance. For them any empirical notion of subject as physico-chemical or biological is a derived abstraction. Science presumes
a definition of subjectivity in advocating for objectivity and the real, but does not make this explicit to itself. Subjectivity is not an entity, substance or content, but a pole of interaction.
:up:
Could you please elaborate on that claim.
It is a reflection of an intuition. Take causality, a very strong sense that something cannot be a spontaneous event. The strongest I can think of, this "apodicticity". I cannot say wath this is, or even imagine what saying so might even be. But this intuition itself is not a language game, nor is, I claim, injunction not to do something in the intuition of the experiencing o suffering. Twist my arm, and it is not language that I "see".
What to do with that which is not language yet cannot be accounted for by denying that it is language is, again, as I see it, getting to a genuine foundation. Causality? Who cares, really? But affectivity, ethics, this kind of thing is inherently what matters, even if I don't have a language to say what it is. even if I were, as Foucault put it, being ventriloquized by history, there is this foundation of actuality that has a palpable "presence", beyond what a language game can say. Witt said in Nature and Culture that "the good" was his idea of divinity.
Take pragmatism, the Dewey, Peirce, James, and then Rorty. Take Rorty: a thoroughgoing naturalist, like Dewey (like Quine), in many cases. But behind this there is a kind of phenomenological pragmatism. All pragmatists are, and I think there is no way out of this, idealists. Even Dewey comes to this, no? After all, meaning issues from experience; it is an experiential "event". How does meaning encounter the world? Though problem solving. How is problem solving "about" the world? Well, if the world is taken as a problem to solve, then it is history, the retained resources of problems solved, that one is "dealing with".
Quoting Constance
Is that all that language does is ‘say’ what ‘is’? Doesn’t language PRODUCE what is rather than merely express an already extant ‘it’? By language we don’t have to limit ourselves to words. Derrida said there is nothing outside of text , but he didn’t mean
symbolic language. He meant to include pre-linguistic perception , affect and valuation. This self that comes back to itself via a detour through the other is already a kind of pre-verbal language game. Could not the divine or the Good reproduce itself always differently through this enacting of subjectivity?
Thanks. I'll take a look.
Quoting Joshs
I'm not sure what this means, but I believe that things don't mean anything until they are put into words. That's what meaning means.
Can not actions, visuals, concepts have meaning even when not put into words?
Does art have meaning?
No. That's not how it normally works. Ideas form, language follows. It sets ideas free.
In my view, experiences are just experiences until they are conceptualized, put into words. Until then, they have no meaning. As I see it, art has no meaning, although many disagree with that. This has been discussed many times in the forum.
Art is a language like words. Language is meaningful, unless you write a poem for the sake of words.
I guess you would say that body language has no meaning until it has been put into words? I will have to mull over that a bit more.
This is the position I am closest to. I would go further and say actions and concepts are also languages that have meaning, like words.
Who are the authorities on language you’re following here? Certainly not Wittgenstein or the phenomenologists.
A lot of this thread has been about this issue, i.e. what does it mean to put something into words.
In college I came up with a way of understanding f the world that I have been elaborating ever since. But it took my 5 years before I was able to write a single word to articulate it. What I had in those first 5 years was certainly conceptualized, but it was not verbalized. I would describe this form of knowing as like an impressionistic sketch.
Word are merely the final stage in consolidating a set of ideas that begin as felt intuitions. I can tell you that these intuitions had a profound effect on me , guiding my thinking implicitly well before I was able to make them explicit with words.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is no more respected as it once was. There's been a ton of writing and empirical work on this hypothesis. Most people no longer think strong versions of it are true (i.e. it seems like people's thoughts are not deeply constrained by their native language). But weaker versions of it are still, I think, being debated.
Orwell wrote a great essay about the misuse of language: Politics and English Language
Concepts certainly have meaning. The concept of energy, art, politics, cooking, etc. Are concepts abstractions, or are there concepts for non-abstract happenings or features of reality. A tree is no concept. Is an elementary particle?
I can remember I was trying to recollect the name of Lakatos. I entered a page and the name popped up. I hadn't yet consciously read the page. But his name was at the bottom.
When I said that language produces what it symbolizes I didn’t mean that already learned word meanings dictate our understanding of new events aka Sapir Whorf. On the contrary, it is events that produce fresh senses of preciously learned words by interacting with what we already know. That is what Wittgenstein shows. Words only exist in the context of their actual use.
Yes. Language is a living organism. It's connected to other organisms and can act like a chameleon, a virus, a delphin, a lion, monkey, or even a humanoid. It can be used to express, impress, conceptualize, and beast of words can have a broad scala of moods and intentions, coloring words in the whole spectrum of the rainbow. Depending on the situation, language can be aggressive, red-green, and competitively harsh, while on other occasions the same words can be used pastel pink and turquoise, friendly, caring and loving. Words can dance or follow strict order, even math can be used like this.
I don't know whether you meant to say "is not presupposed, but is a derived abstraction". Traditional metaphysics certainly thought in terms of (purported) metaphysical truths being absolute, in contrast to the relativity of human opinion. Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza all thought, in their various ways that pure intuitive rational knowledge of the nature of reality was possible.
It is not so much a matter of "beginning with the subject" in my view, but of forming a distinction between appearance and reality. For Kant, we can know only appearances, but he also was the first to show that we can know what are the necessary conditions for any knowledge of appearances.
Modern physics is not anthropocentric, other than in the definitional sense that any human inquiry is anthropocentric in that it is an inquiry by the anthropos, by us. The notion of the human is a "derived abstraction" as are all notions altogether, including those of Heidegger, Derrida, etc.
What's curious here is why we even have the capacity to do physics at all, and also why the universe seems to be "built" in such a way that math can see into her secrets.
It doesn't make sense in terms of a survival purpose.
The fundamental premise of phenomenology is that there is nothing but appearance. No veil between what is ( the thing in itself) and what seems to be. The appearance IS the thing in itself.
Quoting Janus
Modern physics , to the extent that it accepts a form of realism, assumes a split between what appears to a subject and reality. There is the remnant here of Descartes’ res cogito, which is traceable back to medieval theology as the soul which reality appears before. Anthropos is the knowing , feeling subject, the ineffable internality making the hard problem hard. The empirical notion of the human , as a concatenation of physical bits, implies the conscious experience of the meaning of this concatenation, the awareness of the bits that belong to the real.
By abstraction I mean entities such as objects having spatial extension and temporal duration. They are ideal entities, intended as having no ‘subjectivity’ within themselves but instead only enduring properties. What is abstracted away , and attributes to the ‘subject’, is the pragmatic relevance which allows them to appear as what they are in the first place. Derrida and Heidegger don’t abstract away the relevance in a subject, but begin from the irreducible relation, which is neither subject nor object but the in-between.
Science is accepted because it works. We can make observations and measure and model the world as it appears to us. We can think in terms of causation and imagine ways in which the things of the observed world and their observed parts and functions might work. Then we can think of what we would expect to observe if our hypotheses were right, and if, on experimentation, we do observe what we predicted, then we accept our hypotheses, and they become established as theories. None of this relies on any belief that we can know the nature of things in any "absolute" sense.
Sure, you might say that for phenomenology a thing is the sum of all its possible appearances, and nothing beyond that. On the other hand, it is always possible that things are constituted in ways that do not, even cannot, appear to us. Of course we can also say that that possibility is of no relevance to us at all. These are all possible ways of thinking about it.
Quoting Joshs
I don't think this is true, or least not necessarily true. There are many physicists and they no doubt have different ideas about what is real. All that has to be accepted is what appears to our observations, and the testing of the explanations that can be imagined and modeled.
Quoting Joshs
These are concrete entities that can be measured, studied and modeled, not "abstract" entities. Of course they are appearances, but they are concrete appearances, not abstractions. It is our ideas, our models, of them that are abstractions. Now, that is one way of thinking about the situation, and there are others of course. But they are all just ways of thinking with their different starting assumptions. There are no presuppositonless ways of thinking.
But does math really "see into her secrets"? We seem to be able to model things mathematically and make extraordinarily accurate predictions. We accept such modeling if it works (if what is predicted is what is observed). Now imagine reducing those modeling processes back to their basic levels, of say predicting how hunted animals will behave, how traps will work, what are the most effective sizes and shapes of weapons and other implements or what effects burning will have on the landscape, and so on and we can see that it makes very good sense in terms of survival.
Kant would agree with you that we have knowledge of the empirical, and analytic and/ or synthetic a priori knowledge in the form of logic and mathematics. Does any of this, insofar as these are all human activities, say anything about anything beyond the human domain, though?
Well, correct. I think math helps us discover some of the abstract structural characteristics of the universe. But it doesn't apply well to things well beyond it's scope in physics (biological beings).
I think the inner nature of nature (pardon the redundancy) will remain a secret, beyond our understanding. But, that's idiosyncratic.
I agree; all we have are various ideas about what we are able to imagine as possibilities. We can say the whole question is irrelevant, incoherent or even meaningless, but that would just be another idea.
Why do you think we can know the innermost fundaments of nature. Why should nature hold secrets?
Pretty much. All we have in the end is speculation.
Why shouldn't it? Strictly speaking, nature holds no secret. We just don't have the necessary equipment (brain/mind) to pierce through all the layers it may have.
Yes indeed. I wrote "we can know" which had to be "we can't know". So, why you think we don't have the necessary equipment? I think we get a pretty good view on nature. Even the smallest can be visualized.
I've had the same kind of experiences you have - experiencing things without naming them or putting them into words. I don't call those "concepts" until they are put into words. People often need words before they even become aware of the experience. They certainly need them to communicate the experience to others or even to put it into a form that you can process yourself using reason. Whatever it is you end up with when you put something into words, it is not the same as the experience. You've created something new. You've taken a experience and jammed it into the boxes that fit.
I think babies are born with some instincts and a lot of built in capacities, but they have to learn about anything specific. I think intuition is learned, not innate. Language, learning the names for things, is an important part of the process.
Well we would be us judging ourselves, so it would make sense to be impressed with what we know. Which, I admit, is quite a bit. For an "evolved" ape, it's very impressive.
But there's no reason to believe that we have all the faculties needed to know everything. That would be almost religious, God-ish thinking, imo.
We are natural beings, with limitations, as all are creatures in nature. It has to be the case.
If we had no limits, we wouldn't have any scope. Thus we wouldn't be able to do any inquiries.
This really makes no sense. You say "I know that things are", but "are" you say, has a completely indeterminate meaning. How can you possibly know that things "are", when you cannot know what "are" means. Your statement is basic contradiction "I know that things "are', but I don\t know what 'are' means".
Quoting Janus
I think you're missing something here. When a hypothesis produces a prediction which works, this does not necessarily mean that the hypothesis ought to be accepted. Prediction is mostly produced from observation of temporal patterns, statistics, and mathematics, and a hypothesis generally goes far beyond the simple mathematics. So for example, imagine that I watch the sun rise and set day after day, and I produce a hypothesis, that a giant dragon takes the sun in its mouth around the back side of the earth, and spits it out every morning. I might predict the exact place and time that the sun will rise, and insist that my theory has been proven by my uncanny predictions. Clearly though, the successful predictions are nothing more than successful predictions, and my hypothesis hasn't been proven at all.
Therefore we must consider the logical relationship between the hypothesis and the prediction. It's very easy to be fooled into thinking that a certain prediction proves a specific hypothesis, when in reality we have to rule out all other possible competing hypotheses which could equally be said to be proven by the same prediction. This is a logical process which is crucial in designing experiments.
You misunderstand the nature of science; hypotheses are never proven, if by proven you mean rendered absolutely certain. Hypotheses, even established theories, are always provisional.
We (the community of inquirers) accept theories for as long as observations continue to manifest what is predicted of those theories.
If I take you correctly, since there is no interpretative standard that can stand as a center to deny one over ay other perspective, then each perspective is thereby no less real or proper or privileged than any other, and I find this kind of stunningly right. BUT: value, ethics, affectivity, aesthetics: this dimension of the world is, using the best term available, absolute. "Centers" are interpretative variables. My sprained ankle is, qua painful, not an interpretative event.
The divine reproduce itself differently? I don't think I follow. Things, affairs can always be different from what they are. Accidents, is the old term. But it is impossible, I hold, that pain can be recontextualized out of its, as best one could say, badness.
Isn't that exactly what I said, predictions do not prove hypotheses? So why do you think it constitutes a misunderstanding?
Quoting Janus
What you express here is a mistake. As in my example, it's a mistake to accept hypotheses solely on the basis of successful prediction, because it's not the hypothesis which enables the prediction, it's the mathematics which does. There's a common form of trickery in which the deceiver uses mathematics to make predictions, and claims that the predictions support a pet hypotheses. Anyone who does not apply the required analysis, and rigorous logic, which is usually very arduous, may be deceived.
Therefore it is a mistake for us to accept theories just because observations "manifest what is predicted of the theory". The fault here is in your notion of "predicted of the theory". It's not theories which make predictions, it's human beings.
Take my cat: The term 'cat' is arbitrary: you know, the noise we make and the knowledge we have of those furry living things never gives us something indubitable, not that is is wrong to think of it as a cat, but that this kind of knowledge has no determinate foundation. It is up in the air when questions about it are the most basic.
But what happens when we remove ourselves from this, if you will, ready to hand environment of knowing and we ask ontological and epistemic questions, not just in academic curiosity, but existentially, apart from the text, IN the world? Can we meaningfully say that because our language is indeterminate, then, say, my cat does not exist? So here: there is something intuitively absolute, "pure" even, about the givenness of the presence of the cat that is not language bound, and this is a kind of "knowledge" that exceeds the usual contextualized knowing.
Talking out of your hat. Dissing Kant, then saying nothing at all about this. You know, the pragmatists are all closet phenomenologists, if you give pragmatism is full due. Rorty was a big fan of Kuhn, the professed Kantian, as well as Heidegger and Derrida. Dewey, a naturalist, but what does this mean to a pragmatist? It means that Kant's empirical reality, minus the noumena, is all there is to talk about. Like Quine, he gets his empiricism from a hundred and fifty years of talkin, indirectly or otherwise, about Kant.
All analytic philosophers know they work in his shadow, that rises and falls, and takes many forms, but never disappears. Analytic philosophy always begs an essentially Kantian question: that of epistemology.
Just to say, I know you are not fond of postmodern thinkers, but your recognition of this redundancy is the kind of thing that puts language itself on the foreground of, well, suspicion. The nature of nature is an excellent redundancy, because it forces the hand of inquiry: what can this possibly be if not a reference to itself? Do our ideas EVER reach a world that is not "idea"? This kind of thing puts "aboutness" in serious peril.
I mean if people actually read Locke and Hume, instead of reading about them, they'd find a lot of material on these things, of the highest quality.
But, putting that aside, the important thing here is the destination, not so much the journey, and I agree, these are very big problems. I think that perhaps physics does show promise of being about the world and not limited to an idea only. The other special sciences are different in crucial respects.
But I don't think there's a way to get out of our "ideas", any more than it's possible to get out of bodies to look at whatever exists absent us.
Who knows. I don't see the promise, though. There is only one true "undiscovered country" and this lies with revealed philosophy, with revealed phenomenology, which is already in our midst. the whole enterprise of what we are and do has only one dimension that survives deconstruction: affectivity. That is, foundational questions like, what is it all about? are questions about value, affect, a reduction of suffering, procuring happiness, and the like. "Knowledge" is mostly pragmatically incidental to this foundation of what we are.
I think a better example would be the Ptolemaic cosmological system. It was very complicated and it turns out in the end it was wrong, but it worked well until Copernicus and Kepler came along. Their theory eventually superseded Ptolemy's. Ditto with Newton and Einstein. I guess Newton was wrong, but we still use his theories for non-relativistic applications, which is most of what we deal with.
:sweat:
Although we cannot say what is beyond our limits it is hubris to think that there is nothing beyond those limits. I think Zhuangzi got it exactly right with his sage stories of the relativism of species perspectivism.
I can't see how the analogy works. You can point to your cat and say "I know that's a cat, but I don't really know what a cat is". But you cannot point to an are, and say "I know that's an are, but I don't really know what an are is. That's the difference, you can point to a particular cat, as an example, but you cannot point to an example of "are" because it's purely universal.
Quoting T Clark
Yes, you're probably right, it's a better example because it's a real example. I just went to a ridiculous example to make the point more obvious.
Although I could be misinterpreting you, I think that your OP is primarily associated with the ontological aspect of this and not metaphysical: you are essentially asking what exists apart from observance (which I would argue is ontological not metaphysical, but I can see how it could bleed over into metaphysics the deeper one contemplates it). With that being said, I think you have formulated a question which is itself a contradiction: you are asking for a "perspective" (as I understand your definition) when their are "no perspectives" available. Therefore, to answer "nothing is there" or "something is there" are both incorrect because the question itself is contradictory. It is like if I asked "what does a square circle look like?": no matter what one posits in terms of the appearance of a square circle, they are inevitably wrong (doomed from the start). To be brief, I think that the question "what is a non-perspective universe" is nothing more than the combination of concepts in a manner that merely (and only) produces a description of a contradiction (albeit sometimes enticing to pursue as if it did postulate something more than that).
I would agree that, indeed, "understanding" is non-computational. The verification of something being true is computational, but the understanding that it should be accepted as true is non-computational. So, in other words, yes: information processing is not synonymous with "perspective" in the sense outlined previously.
Again, I think this, specifically speaking, is nothing more than a description of a contradiction. However, if one were to contemplate what their "perspective" (or "understanding") is, then it inevitably becomes a question of metaphysics (however, the contemplation of your OP question I would say is ontological because it is questioning what is left when "perspectives" are removed--regardless of any metaphysical inquiry into what "perspectives" actually are).
I think that you are thinking of it in the wrong order. "from these interactions" seems like you are trying to derive where "understanding" (or "perspective") arises from what has been produced from the understanding itself. I can never look at a brain, which is an interpretation derived from understanding, and figure out my understanding therefrom. The best I can do is inquire recursively (i.e. reason upon itself) to understand the mechanisms of my understanding via that understanding. That's the best that can be done.
I understand the appeal, but don't see the necessity.
When you say this
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
it shows the misunderstanding I'm talking about, Scientists don't imagine that observed predictions prove hypotheses, so that is not the reason they are accepted. They are accepted because they work as long as predictions are observed to be accurate.
Your following paragraphs are nonsense, so I won't bother responding; if scientists didn't (provisionally) accept hypotheses and continue to test them, then science would grind to a halt.
I think it's a better example because it represents a real situation - people used the Ptolemaic system for a long time and it allowed them to make pretty detailed, pretty correct predictions. It was finally replaced because a better system was developed that was simpler, more consistent with observations, and allowed better predictions. Your dragon causing the sun to go around the Earth didn't really allow any predictions at all beyond that the sun would come up, which everyone already knew by keeping track of the behavior of the sun.
I don't know, a lot of people take for granted a universe without perspective (before humans, without humans, after humans).. So your somewhat strident remark of contradictions doesn't jive with how the common view of the universe is conceived.. When asked to think of a universe without humans, we think of planets, black space, stars, etc.. When asked to think of physics we think of atoms whizzing...
Science seems to "work" in some way.. So to stridently pronounce there is a "conundrum" isn't quite the case for scientists who have no problem giving ontological pictures of reality through their measurements.. The fact that the predictions and measurements "work" in some way, seems to give us some privilege that perhaps other POVs don't have.. It seems to be tapping into "something out there". So I can see on the surface of it, science-oriented folks saying that they can describe a universe independent of perspective. It is the neo-Platonism (or Aristotleanism is it?) of not forms, but scientific principles that are foundational..
That the theory doesn't allow any predictions at all, is exactly the point I was trying to make. The mathematics applied to an observed pattern provides the prediction. The trickery I referred to, involves associating a theory with the mathematics so as to create the illusion that the predictions support the theory.
We can see the same trickery with the Ptolemaic system. We can model the sun and planets as making orbits around the earth, and employ geometry and mathematics within that theory, to make predictions. The predictions will be accurate to a large extent. But then there will be a small percentage of fringe cases, retrogrades, etc., anomalies where the normal prediction procedure will fail, so a special rule will need to be created to deal with each anomaly. This is where the trickery lies. Instead of recognizing, and accepting that when the model fails at the fringes, this means it is wrong, we produce "excuses" for the failings, exceptions to the rule.
We can see this in modern physics and cosmology with the general relativity theory. At the very small, local scale, quantum mechanics, the theory fails. Also, at the very large scale, it produces anomalies when dealing with cosmological spatial expansion. The anomalies are dealt with by positing things like dark matter and dark energy. (The dragon accounts for the failings in the predictions, because it has a mind of its own and doesn't follow the law every single time, exceptions to the rule). The desire to hang on to the theory, despite its failings produces the trickery.
In the case of the Ptolemaic system, it is my understanding that it was believed by many to be wrong, long before Copernicus demonstrated it to be wrong, even before Ptolemy produced the actual model. The idea that the real truth was that the planets orbited the sun was revealed thousands of years ago because of the nature of the observed retrogrades. The correct heliocentric model could not be formulated though because geometers worked with circles. Circular orbits produced predictive failings which could not be corrected for. However, the failings of retrograde motion could be corrected for, in the geocentric model, so it remain prevalent. It wasn't until Copernicus exposed all the exact failings of the circular orbit model, that elliptical orbits could be presented as the solution.
This is exactly what's going on around the interpretation of the muon g2 experimental results at CERN. Each time the experiment is pushed further, the adherents to the standard model try to recalculate the numbers to fit the event inti the standard. Which is fine, but at some moment it can't be upheld longer. At some point it becomes a silly enterprise. Like inventing new epicycles endlessly. Which can be done, for sure. But at what cost?
You call it trickery, I call it science. It's perfectly valid until it isn't. Discomfort about the trickery provides the pressure to keep looking or to change models.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm not sure if that's a good example or not. Someone proposes dark matter as a solution to an inconsistency, so people go looking for it. Eventually, they find it or, if they don't, they have to change models. Isn't that the way it's supposed to work?
Dark matter is not an imaginary dragon. There is no Vulcan-like stuff discovered, true. But there is still the possibility dark matter is "normal" stuff, and gravity doesn't have to be "MONDed". Dark energy is consistent with general relativity. So both are no trickery dragons of failure, and can actually turn out to be the dragons with the strong wings to carry the status quo.
The problem with dark matter is that it's dark and probably can't be directly detected. Maybe if sky observation techniques get sufficiently sophisticated or if DM particles are detected on Earth it can be solved once and for all. The planned European gravitational wave detector can shed more light on this modern-day enigma.
This is my current view.
There exists something (whatever it is, something exists). That something is more than just me - I am rejecting the possibility I (my mind) is the only thing that exists and everything else is created/imagined by me.
I (my mind), has an understanding of this something that exists, and this understanding is in the form of concepts. Other forms of language, which do have meaning, are dependant on me translating them into concepts.
So concepts are abstraction, but can also be abstractions of non-abstract happening. The states and connections in reality that make up what I consider a tree are not concepts - they are features of reality. But my understanding of a tree is a concept. I cannot understand what a tree is better than the best tree concept I can conceptualise.
Can non-sentient things (non-animals) have perspective? If not, what is the "platform" of interactions? What is even an "event" in this non-sentient/perspective world?
The non-sentient world is not yet viewed at from an angle, focused, or put in perspective. No boundary lines are projected yet. The objective atlas of the non-sentient world is a thick one. Every page is black or white. No legenda, no alfabetic content pages, no appendices, addenda, or rectifications.
If "perspective" is essentially identical with, or dependent on, (re: physics) locality, then every "thing" is inherently perspectival (i.e. always occupying some spatiotemporally unique point). So yes, machines, for instance, "have perspectives" (e.g. CCTV, neural net facial recognition systrm, radar array, JWST, etc).
I agree.
I would say that non-sentient beings do not have perspective. There are no events in an a world with no sentient beings.
I like Eugene Gendlin ‘s thinking on identity and interaction in non-living entities:
“We predict that physics must eventually give up pointwise localization in space and time and single, non-interacting particle states. There will always be two or more particles, and their definitions, as well as those of places and times, will be definable only backwards, from interaction... For us the same units do not need to last through a change. If they do, it is a narrower special case. In the old model events must occur within a static multiplicity of space points, time points, and particles. A particle alone is "this one," "the same one" that was earlier there and is now here...In the new model the occurrence forms its own new multiplicity. If a space time-particle grid is desired, it is determined from the occurrence. Nothing in the new model forces us to lose anything from the old, if we want it. But with the new model we do reject the assumption that occurring must be determined and necessitated by the units of previous occurrence.” (Gendlin 1983)
I also like Piaget’s approach:
“… phvsics is far from complete, having so far been unable to integrate biology and a fortiori the behavioural sciences within itsel. Hence, at present, we reasOn in dififerent and artificially simplified domains, physics being up to now only the science of non-living, non-conscious things. When physics becomes more 'general-to use C.-E. Guye's striking expression-and discovers what goes on in the matter of a living body or even in one using reason, the epistemological enrichment.of the object by the subject, which we assume here as a hypothesis, will appear perhaps as a simple relativistic law ot perspective or of co- ordination of referentials, showing that for the subject the object could not be other than it appears to him, but also that from theObject's point of view the subject could not be different.”
I also like Evan Thompson’s view:
"I follow the trajectory that arises in the later Husserl and continues in Merleau-Ponty, and that calls for a rethinking of the concept of “nature” in a post-physicalist way—one that doesn't conceive of fundamental nature or physical being in a way that builds in the objectivist idea that such being is intrinsically of essentially non-experiential. But, again, this point doesn't entail that nature is intrinsically or essentially experiential (this is the line that pan-psychists and Whiteheadians take). (Maybe it is, but I don't think we're now in position to know that.) All I want to say for now (or think I have grounds for saying now) is that we can see historically how the concept of nature as physical being got constructed in an objectivist way, while at the same time we can begin to conceive of the possibility of a different kind of construction that would be post-physicalist and post-dualist–that is, beyond the divide between the “mental” (understood as not conceptually involving the physical) and the “physical” (understood as not conceptually involving the mental)."
No big bang, no rapid inflationary period, no galaxy formation, no changes on pre-life earth? :cry:
The universe just universes. Reality just realitys. Not-even-stuff not-even-flowing not-even-around. A not-even-miasma of not-even-chaotic not-even-existent not-even-things. Then sentience comes along with it's conceptual knife and cuts all that not-even-stuff into things, and stuff, and events. Cuts the One into the multiplicity of things. And here we are.
This type of response was predicted in my OP.. I'm skeptical of local interactions of a non-sentient kind being any platform for perspective. How would it be? Interactions = perspective? What??
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting Janus
What he said.
Before it can change, it has to be a thing. That thing then can change into something else. Change is something that happens to things. Change is a thing.
Serious question - Did Kant think that things-in-themselves changed?
Any better response? The universe is just hanging out as humans conceive it, but without human conception?
That's like saying a machine looks at the world. Which they don't. It's you projecting a perspective on them. Which I'm doing right now too for the sake of argument.
I think Schopenhauer might have been the best interpreter of Kant.. he said:
Obviously there are no things-as-perceived absent perceivers; does it logically follow that there are no things at all? You haven't answered the question as to how the totally amorphous, changeless thing in itself gives rise to perceivers who perceive change, and "carve up" the world in fairly cohesive and consistent ways. Do you believe our structuring of the world could be totally arbitrary? If not, then what structures it?
I think Kant believed we cannot talk sensibly about things in themselves. Nevertheless, he said we must posit things in themselves because if there are appearances there must be "something" which appears. To be consistent he would have to say that things in themselves change, because for each phenomenon there is the noumenon which gives rise to it, and if phenomena change, then so must noumena. Kant it seems was not all that consistent in his treatment of things in themselves.
I think Schopenhauer's critique of and "solution" to Kant's noumena is pretty piss-poor because there is no answer as to how something completely changeless, a blind striving will. could give rise to a perceived world of change and seemingly replete with invariances and consistent lawlike behavior.
Quoting schopenhauer1
First, you haven't said what is wrong with the response, and second it is actually a question, not an assertive response, a serious question, a problem for your apparent position which you haven't answered.
I don't know what it is. I don't necessarily think its an amorphous whatever, but I don't think it's like watching the opening sequence to Star Trek...That would truly be naive realism at its most blatent.
You said:
Quoting 180 Proof
Very similar to this:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Does the universe exist if we're not looking?
Yes, The physicists Lindie and Wheeler, essentially restate the problem in physics terms:
It seems to feed right into my question of how information itself can suffice for there to be perspective going on.
Drops of experience seems a bit ridiculous though (ala Whitehead). So does a god-like observer (ala Descartes and Berkeley). I don't necessarily see these as solutions either, though I think the question is pertinent, I don't think it entails these kind of conclusions. Even Schopenhauer's Will is suspect, though it fits so well with my pessimism. I see his Will more akin to the human/animal condition not some universal one of "internal-ness" or double-aspectedness. Though inventive, that's where I see him taking it too far. Water, water, everything is water, kind of thing.
Schopenhauer does a good job stating clearly Kant's antimonies or contradictions regarding epistemology and the word. The first eye "opened" and the world began, but we observe the world as older than the first eye opening. What is this "antecedant"?
Then there is Speculative Realism that tries to deny Kant's "Copernican Revolution", putting epistemology as the limit of metaphysics. But it's really kind of the same kind of thing Whitehead was doing. It is speculating on how objects interact, or how processes interact, or how it is somehow mathematical contingency as a sort of reification?? I don't know those theories too well.
If anyone wants to decipher this and discuss, please let me know:
Making exceptions to the rule stipulated by the theory, whenever the theory fails in its predictive capacity, to account for these failings, instead of acknowledging that the theory is faulty, is not science.
Quoting T Clark
Dark matter is posited as such an exception to the rule. Where general relativity fails in its predictive capacity, dark matter is posited to account for that failing. There is nothing to look for except the reasons why general relativity fails in its predictive capacity, i.e. the faults of the theory.
No really. Ask yourself, what is a pragmatist's ontology? Why pragmatism, of course. Truth is "made" not discovered. Surely you don't think Rorty is a naturalist at the basic level?
:yikes: I have neither the time nor inclination to study this philosopher, but everthing I've read about him raises red flags. Of current French philosophes, I far prefer Michel Bitbol. He's expert in phenomenology, Kant, Schrodinger and Buddhist philosophy. I've only read a small number of his papers but they seem congenial to my outlook.
Compare with this passage from a contemporary Zen teacher:
[quote=Nishijima, S?t? Zen roshi - Three Philosophies, One Reality; http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/DogenStudies/three_philosophies.pdf] The biggest contradiction which Gautama Buddha must have faced in his thinking would have been between the subjective, idealistic thought of traditional Indian religion and the objective, materialist philosophies of the six great philosophers who were popular in India at that time.
I thought that Gautama Buddha’s solution to this contradiction was his discovery that we are in fact living in reality; not, as idealists tend to think, in the world of ideas, or as materialists tend to think, in a world of objective matter alone. Gautama Buddha established his own philosophy based on the fact that we live in the vivid world of momentary existence, in the real world itself. But to express this real world in words is impossible. So he used a method which brought together the two fundamental philosophical viewpoints into a synthesized whole. And the philosophical system he constructed in this way is the Buddhist philosophical system. But at the same time, he realized that philosophy is not reality; it is only discussion of the nature of reality. He needed some method with which people could see directly what the nature of reality is. This method is Zazen, a practice which was already traditional in India from ancient times. Gautama Buddha found that when we sit in this traditional posture in quietness, we can see directly what reality is. [/quote]
This 'seeing directly' is what is called in the Zen tradition 'satori', although there are constant admonitions from Zen teachers not to idealise what that might comprise.
Digression - isn't it the case that Rorty is controversially a part of the pragmatist tradition? I know he is described as a neo-pragmatist, but isn't he more of a post-modernist?
I'm not trying to be a smarty pants here, but does that answer my question. It doesn't seem like it does to me.
Quoting Janus
Things are concepts unless you're an idealist. I'm not. Concepts don't exist independent of there being someone to conceive of them.
Quoting Janus
The philosophy that means the most to me is Taoism. Taoism doesn't talk about things-in-themselves, it talks about the Tao. I think the concepts have things in common. The Tao is the original unitary undifferentiated oneness. That oneness becomes separated into the multiplicity of things when they are named. As to how namers evolved from the oneness - the Tao and the multiplicity of things are the same. It's just two different ways of looking at it. Metaphysics.
I assume you find this answer unsatisfying. There have been lots of discussions of Taoism and similar topics on the forum. I don't think it's especially related to the subject of this thread.
It's science until the attempt to verify the changes to the theory are investigated and not confirmed. If, at that point, people don't acknowledge that the theory is faulty, then it stops being science. Or at least it stops being good science.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. General Relativity has been an incredibly successful theory for 100 years. You get to tinker under the hood for a while before you buy a new theory.
That's exactly the problem, it isn't science at all, because instead of acknowledging that the predictive failures of the theory are due to a faulty theory, people will assume the real existence a phantom entity, dark matter, as the cause of the unpredictable behaviour. It's no different from saying a ghost did it, or attributing the failings of the model to a dragon.
Why did the planet not move exactly where the perfect circular orbit predicted it would move to? Instead of designating the model of perfect circular orbits as wrong, and producing the true elliptical orbit model, I simply say that the dragon who moves the planet has a will of his own, and doesn't necessarily have to follow a perfect circle. And we have the same situation with dark matter. Light doesn't necessarily have to move in the way predicted by general relativity theory, because there's some otherwise undetectable matter scattered around throughout the universe, which causes the light to behave in the unpredictable way.
Quoting T Clark
Actually general relativity has been demonstrated to be extremely limited. It is not applicable at the very small scale, quantum level, and it is not applicable at the very large scale where the existence of dark matter is called for. It has a very narrow range of applicability which is closely limited to the human sphere of spatial-temporal activity. Since we are human beings, living in that very narrow spatial-temporal zone of activity, the theory is very useful to us. But since the applicability of the theory is limited to this very narrow range, we can be sure that it does not provide a true representation.
Just curious, what particularly did you read that is concerning? I haven’t read much else.
Here is an interview I found on a short Google search: https://www.urbanomic.com/document/founded-on-nothing/
Derisive comments about Kant, and adoring ones about Peirce, et al, but then Peirce did have his "long run" views). But the traditional pragmatists are in their foundational views committed what could be called a pragmatist ontology. They could talk like naturalists, as did Rorty, James, Dewey and even Quine, but, well, to put the matter in a popular vein, tree falls in the forest, etc.? No sound, no tree, no falling, no forest. I call it pragmatic phenomenology, and the first great phenomenologist was Kant.
Look, no analytic philosopher worth her ink is going to think foundationally like a scientist. None do. Because they have all read Kant, at least, and know, not that the solutions to the issues will one day be achieved, but that they cannot be achieved because the matter goes to the structure of thought and experience itself: idealism cannot be refuted unless you move to language philosophy, which really is a radicalization of idealism, but certainly drops dichotomies and dualisms of the traditional sort.
Once you start asking real questions about basic epistemic problems, you find some form of Kantianism is staring you right in the face. Kant's problem was synthetic apriority. Dewey's experience" is similar, only it is not the presence of mind in space and time, it is pragmatism (in space and time?). Rorty's post modernism is obviously not Kantian, but what did Kant do?: he looked at judgment of the everyday kind and discovered it had form that could be analyzed. He was, arguable I suppose, the first language philosopher. Post modern thinking begins with this.
See Robert Hanna's KANT AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY for a well thought out argument.
Yes, that sounds right. But he followed Dewey, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Kuhn, and Derrida and on the other side of the fence there was Davidson and others ( I can't keep up with him, clearly. I'm just an amateur). Dewey shared with Heidegger the idea that when we enter into, call them knowledge environments, we have this pragmatic relationship with the things around us, what Heidegger called instrumentality, ready-to-hand, like the chair, the latch on the door, the floors and lights and so on. These are NOT to be conceived spatially in the usual sense, but temporally, and this is Rorty's pragmatism. I think of it in the terms of the structure of conditional propositional (the essence of the scientific method): IF I reach out and push up on the switch, THEN the light will turn on. This is foundational for our knowledge relationships with the world. I hold that language itself is a pragmatic phenomenon. What Heidegger calls "presence at hand" far more interesting.
There is a lot more to it, obviously, but this idea that we make the world through these internalized pragmatic structures of relating to it is essentially pragmatic. Beneath this (all the greats have layers!) there is, of course, indeterminacy. My view is not to dismiss this as an unmade future waiting to be realized by my "free" creative acts, but to pull down
Rorty gave me my favorite turn the tables question to "realists" (whatever that could possibly mean): how is it that anything out there can get in here (one's head)? This is the way of materialism, and if you're going to be a materialist, then you will find this single impossibility that undoes your thinking.
I don't agree.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am very, very far from being someone who can make a definitive statement in this area, but dark matter and dark energy seem like reasonable rationalizations worthy of being tested. If they can't be verified, then the theories will have to be changed. I sez that's science. You sez no.
General relativity actually can be applied to the quantum scale and directly leads, in combination with quantum fields, to Hawking radiation. The virtual particles around a black hole are real particles as seen from far away because of the equivalence principle. In the context of dark matter it can come to the rescue with primordial black holes being the dark constituent. Newtonian spacetime is a logical chimera in the context of general relativity, regardless of the successful quantitative application of Newtonian mechanics in the astronomical domain. Mass, cause, and effect don't make sense in an absolute spacetime. If the speed of light is infinite (as in Newtonian spacetime), everything happens at the same time, no cause and effect, and no mass would exist. Events would all be concentrated into one space and timeless event. "Kaboom!" The whole universum arisen, passed, and ended at once. Which obviously not the case. Little did Newton know... By which I don't wanna belittle his contribution, though it withheld science from (understanding) knowledge a couple of centuries.
Mellaisoux is an advocate for what Kant would describe as transcendental realism - the conviction that the objective domain has an inherent or intrinsic reality.
Right that is indeed what speculative realists are all about..trying to disregard Kants limits of speculating on the real, non cognitive or pan cognitive reality.
I'm surprised that you don't see the problem with this statement. The nearest blackholes are more than a thousand light years away. You cannot call this a quantum scale observation.
Why not? It's all happening in the imagination.
Observation all happens within the imagination?