I suppose one way to start would be to try an identify a situation or a scenario which most people would consider stupid. If we can't agree on that, then there's a problem.

What, then, is universally stupid (most of the time)?

Lots of good stuff to go over in that post. Obviously, such an OP can be taken as not being satisfied with how much we have and can know and is thus seeking more than what we have available to us. Such an approach can invite naïve spiritualism a la "new age" types.

I can't help that too much, save to say that it's not the intention. As it currently stands, absolutely we look for shortcuts and ease of access when we construct our model of the world. It has to be (at least in part) a matter of efficiency in natural selection: if we had to spend several hours to make out an image of the world, we'd be eaten alive.

Yes, our maps can and often do mislead us when we try to navigate the territory. But our maps are quite a treasure too, it seems to me, even if it leads many to the edge of the world.

I hope you find it to your liking.

Well, as far as I know, most mathematicians are Platonists in some sense.

As for "ordinary objects", it's hard to articulate such a view, given that what we perceive - including concepts - are likely unique to us, that is to say, a bird or a dog very likely has no such notions of ordinary objects. So our view of rivers and apples are unique to us, I'd venture to guess.

But the noumenal substratum would still apply to all creatures endowed with a certain level of perception. Something like that.

Yes. The curious aspect of this, within the modern-day rationalist tradition exemplified by Chomsky and McGinn, is that the stuff "out there", is quite peripheral to the magnitude of impact we feel "in here".

That is to say, our exposure to any object in the world, is so brief, quick and fleeting, that only very brief exposure leads to an image which we have no reason to believe exists "out there", as far as manifest reality goes.

McGinn's short book,Inborn Knowledge: The Mystery Within, is quite instructive, I think. It's quite strange really. And if you consider not only the images we get, but the concepts we attribute to things, it's pretty amazing how much we bring forth in constructing the given.

Actually, photon-detectors detect photons. They're specialised bits of equipment to do just that. The idea that photons (and atoms) are what is 'really there' was really being called into question already by the time of Arthur Eddington's book, Nature of the Physical World, between the Wars. — Wayfarer

Yes. Correct. It's a shorthand description. We detect photons through equipment.

Eddington's book is quite good, if a bit dated. But he has the merit of pointing out the main issue of how much is left unsaid, once everything's been analyzed in physics.

I think Whitehead has merit too, but he is often too obscure. But if you take the classical pragmatists, they were quite sober in how they assessed the situation.

Contemporarily, I think only Tallis really stands out as making a similar point to Eddington.

On the other hand, people like Rovelli and Sean Carroll, though the latter a bit scientistic, are quite sensible. So times may be changing.

I would assume Dennett or Rosenberg or Churchland(s), would have something to say. Not that I can tolerate that literature for too long...

It may be a common idea, there are quite a few in the idealist tradition who believe in this. But I at least wanted to narrow it down somewhat.

I personally don't know about the observer effect in QM. I know Wayfarer argues that it is important, highlighting some of the people who think observation is important. Most physicists do not. Doesn't mean the majority is right, but it makes one pause a bit.

I suppose Bryan Magee articulated this view quite well. I think it's likely true, in ways we can't comprehend.

Much of that is probably true. But it goes well beyond the topic of the OP.

Yes.

We may, for example say factual claims about fictional works. For instance, Winston Smith in Orwell's 1984 is a male and a party member, even though there is no Winston Smith in the actual world.

:ok:

Pretty much.

I think it's science fiction. I think the goals are noble, but that it amounts essentially to a religion, wildly exaggerating what we can do with our knowledge and capacity of science.

But would not mind being proved wrong.

Yes an advanced alien would say that. The fact is that we intuit the Sun going round the Earth, we can't help seeing this clearly every day. We know that this is a mistake when we compare our image to the way the structure of the world is set up mind-independently.

Yes, we find patterns, and we have an excellent pattern for 5% of the universe. Maybe it turns out that the postulated dark matter/dark energy is a miscalculation. Or it could be a particle we have difficulty detecting. It leaves the option open: some intelligent creature may have a more comprehensive pattern built up.



It would be nice to be able to ask. :)

But in that case I think there would have to remain things that can only be experienced indirectly by any being — AJJ

Yes. I suspect this is the case. Perhaps the grounds of reality are non-representable in nature, but nevertheless we are able to perceive its effects indirectly, in the form of photons or even colour-experience in everyday life.

I know, this is wild, but there's something to this idea.

It flatters the physicist if ordinary life is 'really' made of mathematical abstractions. But doesn't that lead to a mess? Mathematical abstractions are (we'd be tempted to say) 'mental.' And code, in the matrix example, is a human convention that we build in to hardware in the first place. — Zugzwang

I think this depends on how one thinks about metaphysics. If by metaphysics one takes it that the world is described by physics and that physics tells us everything about the world, that is a poor metaphysics. As you seem to suggest, the world we experience is far richer than the surprising things physicist find out when they work on models.

And yes, I think that's the "tough cookie", as it were. Some "scientistic" types would say the world is just physics and biology. But physics is discovered via math. And I literally don't know something less "realistic" (mind-independent) than mathematics.

That sounds right, and this could be framed as us being likely to keep finding more useful patterns in experience (or rather inventing, projecting, and learning to trust such patterns.) — Zugzwang

Patterns which by necessity have to leave stuff out. Usually "noise" in the data, though not always.



That's fine. Though I find the God terminology to be quite loaded.

I think something like "things-in-themselves" (or noumena) , could serve as a concept which indicates this kind of talk.

And on each view I expect there’d remain things we can only experience indirectly, like electrons. — AJJ

Yes. Which paradoxically is our most secure type of knowledge, outside of our own perceptions.

Actually, I think something like that is not completely crazy. Perhaps we have access to parts of the visual spectrum they do not have, as in, we can see purple, but they can't. They see some colour "bluelet", which we cannot. We could appreciate music which for them would be noise, and so on.

I agree, it is a problematic question to answer in what meaningful way do things exist if nobody could perceive them no matter a creature's cognitive makeup.

I suppose on an atheist view any things that we or any other being can’t be even indirectly conscious off may as well not exist, so they don’t matter. — AJJ

I don't believe in the Abrahamic God, so I would be an atheist in this respect. As to the question of if such an "supreme entity" exists, well then I'd have to be agnostic too.

If we can't even be indirectly conscious or aware or cognizant of something, would that settle the question of if such entities could be said to exist in nature?

I know it goes completely off Occam's razor, but it's a useful exercise for thought, at least for me.

Our instruments detect what we can't detect though our senses, although not yet dark matter. — PoeticUniverse

Yes, that's true. What I'm trying to point out, is that there are things in the world which our instruments cannot capture, simply because we don't have the capacity to detect these phenomena at all. We can only make machines that greatly amplify what we have access to in small amounts such as the electromagnetic spectrum.

With that in mind I think the question is this: why would anything that is in God’s consciousness be off limits to ours? — AJJ

I didn't intend to focus on the God aspect, so I modified the OP a little. I used the concept as an illustration of our limits.

As it stands now, the God we tend to postulate has "the good" we have, magnified infinitely. Something like that.

An idea that illustrates what I have in mind would be that an Intelligent Alien can, for example, perceive how quantum indeterminacy happens in an intuitive matter. Much the way we intuit how the Sun goes around the Earth.

Yes. I mean, biology alone and I mean a specific subfield of it, would take a lifetime. Similar to many disciplines by now. So if we do want to speculate reasonably well, we must attempt to find sources which we think are reliable.

And risk ridicule. Or one can take philosophy as a matter of specializing in X or Y's thought on issues. Notice that today, there are very few figures (if any) which are considered giants in the field. Maybe people like Quine, Strawson and Kripke could be considered important.

But I don't think they had the breadth of the classical pragmatists, who lived only a few decades before these.

It's a bit depressing.

I wasn't speaking about science when I gave my example about WWII, so I'm not sure I follow what you're saying in this part. It wasn't a scientific fact, but a historical one.

Faith is faith because it is based on belief alone, with little to no attention to facts. Science and religion in this sense are not compatible when describing the same situations. Sure, science is not sure proof, but nothing is. It's just that science is the best tool we have for ascertaining facts about the world.

Absent good evidence, we need good reasons to belief so and so. Philosophy can help us here. But if you want to speak about facts and how they relate to religion, I don't think one will get very far.

A fact is (often, not always) a proposition in which what is stated adheres to the situation the statement is aimed at elucidating.

Thus, that World War II ended in 1945 is a statement that corresponds to what actually happened in that period of time.

But it can soon become quite complex, as when new evidence renders the proposition obsolete. Maybe a new fact comes about in which we'd have to conclude that the WWII ended in 1946 because of some technicality concerning some document arises.

I see.

Ethically, I think I'd be inclined today (for it could change in the future) to a kind of gentle or sympathetic absurdism. That is, treat people reasonably well, given absurdity. Beyond that, I hesitate to attach myself to a school of ethics, I find the stipulations or teachings or conclusions to be too hard to attain. Perhaps it is an excuse for not being the best me that I can be. But I find comfort in absurdity, which is a good step.

That being said, I've found infinite wisdom in Chomsky and Schopenhauer. More so from the former, but the latter has been fantastic too.

I suppose that what concerns me are those questions that plague the philosophers specifically since its inception in "the West". What is the nature of the world? What is knowledge? Why existence? Why do things make sense sometime and yet often they don't? And so forth.

I find stoicism healthy. Better with a dash of humor, or several dashes. But when the focus in philosophy is one within ethics vs. metaphysics/epistemology, I fear that we may be speaking slightly different languages. Aside some specific questions or situations, ethics doesn't stimulate me to much discussion. Problems related to the nature of the world and mind do.

So, what to do? I hear crickets, and the echoes of eternity.

It seems to me that our temporality is what guides philosophical endeavors. In a limited time, we have to make sense out of this "booming buzzing confusion" before we return to dust. Given this background urgency we seek to ameliorate very big concerns with people who've thought about said issues considerably.

Nevertheless I think what you ask is impossible without stipulating the often unique situations that make us attracted to one person over another. Therefore what I say about person X or Y being the correct person to listen to is unique to me. As Z or A is unique to you.

There are many schools of thought, each of them accentuating one aspect of the world as opposed to another aspect. I suppose that in my case, I've found it liberating to find that there is no such esoteric knowledge which is beyond the reach of a critical kind of common sense.

I suppose that one general generalization (yep I phrase it like this) is that one should not write more clearly than one thinks about an issue. One should ask those whom you are attracted to.

Hard question, but good one.

That would be the idea. And maybe nature works this way.

Or maybe nature is too sophisticated for us as you say, which would make us agree on the main point if differing in our specific formulations.

Hmm. It's a subtle distinction you're making, I think. I mostly have in mind the first option, that of another creature having a more complex or maybe even comprehensive understanding of some aspects of reality such that we'd have no issues.

However, a part of it is quasi-Kantian, in the sense of dealing with X without knowing what X encompasses in its totality. Perhaps the things-in-themselves/phenomenon distinction would be formulated differently: instead of saying we know nothing about things-in-themselves, I'd say we know extremely little about it.

Another creature would perhaps know a bit more.

But I'm attracted to the idea that there is a grounding of the effects in nature that are non-representational in nature, which we can't access. A bit like trying to understand how the brain works by thinking about it.

So I entirely concede that I may be masquerading here, at least in part.

Descartes already complained about it back in his time, that no one would be able to finish reading all the books being published. If you strained yourself or were gifted, you could read most important work in science (including psychology, sociology, medicine), etc. This probably stopped being true by the mid 19th century.

Perhaps Russell was that last person able to master most topics and try to form a synthesis. I think Chomsky, may be the last one, though even he isn't as gifted as Russell was in terms of mathematics, not in terms of anything else.

In any case, yeah. The best one can do is to find a field or two you love or something like that. I like to read experts on specific fields, saving myself the work of several lifetimes by reading, say, 20-30 books as opposed to thousands. Whatever works for you.

And much knowledge is innate, in ways we cannot comprehend. This is a crucial aspect in knowledge, not emphasized nearly enough.

Well math is the application of numbers to some kind of structure. What this structure is, isn't clear.

But I don't understand the notion that there is only structure. It seems to me that a structure must be structure of something.

So if the universe is essentially mathematical and we don't really know what the structure math describes is, then I don't see Tegmark's hypothesis making much sense.

Yeah, yeah. The universe has no obligation to make sense to us. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to give it some sense, otherwise, why bother learning about it? It's a strange proposition on the whole, not very convincing.

Jung may know God like I know about the numinous. The phrase is fine and in ordinary conversation is not terribly complicated to speak like this. After all, we have to speak with each other in this world. But when you begin questioning what does knowing God consist of, complications arise very quickly.

It's a bit different when you say I know my favorite colour or my favorite song. That's ok. It involves in essence recognizing that such a phenomena or qualia are the ones you are most attracted to. What does this amount to? I'm not sure.

I agree, our grasp on reality is tenuous and constantly subject to revision of one kind or another. We are blessed that we are able to have theories at all. There's no obvious reason why any creature should have the capacity for explicit knowledge, much less theories about the world.

Clearing up the issue may help formulate the question. :wink:

I don't find a tension in these ideas. But I do have a "metaphysical itch", so that may be why. I could imagine a different intelligent species from us being able to cognize the world in a deeper manner, perhaps perceiving more than we could, in some respects. So I don't see a problem with this idea in principle

Descartes and his contemporaries knew what they were looking for, in that they sought a mechanical explanation for things. It just happens that the world doesn't work like this.

Depends on the person, no?

I mean, some people really are too far gone to reach common ground. But many are not. If one takes a path of sympathy to these views (maybe empathy would be too hard to reach), then there are ways to tone down the craziness.

Best is to talk to those people who are on the fence on many issues than those already set in stone in terms of belief.

In my experience anyway.

Yes. And it many ways, it's counterintuitive. The most familiar things to us, say an ordinary tree or a slug or a flower are immediate percepts. Yet our knowledge of them - what we can say about them in depth - is very, very little.

Yet when we go "down" to the uber-microscopic level, we have all these fancy theories, which are very hard and only a few people can comprehend them.

It would be interesting to be able to have knowledge of the actual thing or phenomena that produces these effects in us, that is, what grounds the effects that we perceive as laws of nature or even ordinary perception.

There was a time in which this was the aim of science, roughly Descartes' time up until Newton. The Universe was comprehended as a universal machine - like a giant clock - if you can build it, you can understand it. It appears to be our innate way of understanding our given common sense world.

But Newton, to his own astonishment and disappointment, proved the world does not work mechanically.

Thus science was forced to reduce it aims: from understanding the world to understanding theories of the world. That type of knowledge Descartes and others wanted, would be nice to be able to access. But is beyond our comprehension. Chomsky and E.A. Burtt speak about this in interesting ways.

It's hard to answer that question without getting into semantics of what it means to "know" or to "have knowledge". I'll bypass all these sometimes sophisticated and often cumbersome arguments to say that whatever knowledge is, is gradational.

That is, we know some things "more" or "less", depending on our information on the subject matter, our position in life, our experiences and all these other factors that are extremely difficult to enumerate, because there are so many.

Having said this, I think there is good historical evidence and indeed some simple questions one can ask to find out how much we know. I'll keep coming to physics, not because it is the most important subject - I don't think there is such a thing, - but because our knowledge of it is the best tested knowledge we have. All other knowledge we have in other areas of life pale in comparison to the quality of evidence we have in physics.

So ask a simple question: "what is gravity?", "what is a particle?", "what is magnetism?". The answers given are only the effects we can perceive of the phenomena. As to what these things are, we don't know.

Now go up in complexity to chemistry, biology all the way up to psychology. We multiply particles by billions. Minds enter the fray as do complex emotions. This complexity, if you stop and think about it, is truly mind-boggling. As the saying goes, if our knowledge is limited - as it is - our ignorance is infinite.

The anti-science stuff is used as a weapon since anybody can say that a study is biased or ideological or whatever. And it's not difficult to find a graph that shows whatever correlation you like.

I think it sometimes can be unhelpful to speak of science in so generalized a term in connection to political affairs. It's probably better to refer to the subset of scientists engaged in the relevant domain of concern.

The reality of the survival of science will depend upon whether we manage to be around in the next 100 years, or if we will all blow it up. But I don't think these cynics or critics will do much, it's not particularly new after all.

Not quite, though there are similarities. Sadism implies liking to actively harm people. Schadenfreude doesn't necessarily carry a connotation of enjoying other people's pain, more like enjoying whatever misfortunes happens to them. Pain could be involved, but not obligatorily.

There are certain feelings which aren't captured as neatly as one would in other languages. For example, in Spanish we sometimes say "Hasta siempre", which roughly means, until forever. It is usually said when a person dies or is about to, conveying the emotion that we will never see them again. I suppose "farewell" could be similar-ish given a certain context.

Likewise, in English the word "Schadenfreude" is borrowed from German, which is taking pleasure at someone else's misfortunes. Apparently, there is "epicaricacy" in English, which means something similar. But it sounds less nice.

Also, the term often used in English in philosophy "what it's like" to be so and so, is not sufficiently well translatable to other languages. You can get the main idea, but there is an important residue (or nuance) which can't really be conveyed.

I imagine that if China, Japan and so on, the cases sky rocket. Nevertheless, the main ideas can be expressed in any language.

And surely many emotions and perceptions can't be stated appropriately in words at all.

In the end, for our practical purposes, it should make no difference. If true, then we still need to apply laws to deter bad behavior all the while striving to make laws as humane as possible.

If false, then the same consideration applies.

It's fine if many determinists think that criminals or people who commit crimes (of small offence) should be thus treated less harshly. But this option should be the one we have in mind we thinking about reforming criminal justice the world over.

A person thinks. Not a brain.

I've never seen a brain think, or reflect or cognize. But people, on the other hand, do all these things.

So thinking takes place in a person's brain, not a brain itself.

Senses and intellect. It's a synthesis of the two.

Granted, we would not get far with intellect alone. But without intellect, the senses would be quite useless if understanding the world is what you're looking for.

If you can elaborate a bit more on your OP then there'd be more to say on this.

"At the very limit of his life, when familiar, differentiated daylight had become the edge of undifferentiated eternity, where words were only the spindrift off breaking silence, he had glimpsed the strange truth that, 'to one who sees the world aright' all lives that are not terrible are wonderful. In the beginning was astonishment. And so it was with a cry of astonishment, of wonder, perhaps even of joy, that he passed over into silence." -- Raymond Tallis

I don't think that's true. There seems to me as much consensus about things in politics as there is about anything -- it's just deliberately been targeted for confusion and propaganda. But when the buzz words are removed -- "socialism," "communism," "capitalism," "free markets," "liberal," etc. -- it's a much different picture.

A major caveat: this isn't always true. Some people are simply too far gone to even bother with. — Xtrix

But it's extremely difficult to begin a conversation without these buzzwords coming up very quickly. People want to save the mental effort of trying to figure out every single major political issue one may have. So if someone will ask "are you a libertarian/liberal/socialist?", many topics are stalled.

If you can avoid these labels to a latter point in the conversation, it's better I think. First explore the ideas as much as possible before a label comes up, then you can use them. But starting with definitions is problematic.

As soon as you say, I'm for "freedom/democracy/human rights/etc.", people assume "democracy" means choosing candidate A over candidate B (and sometimes a C), "freedom" means (in the US context, much of the time) not having the government interfere with my life.

But if you say "by freedom, I mean freedom to be able to do things instead of starving", people frequently don't understand what you're saying or retort to saying "that's not freedom".

So, it's not about not defining labels per se, but not beginning your axiomatic system with definitions. It becomes contentious too soon. In my opinion.

And yes, I agree, some people are not worth engaging.