Could I suggest that in saying that, you're positing 'mind' as 'something within the individual' - my mind, or your mind, the conscious cognition of an individual human. Of course, within that picture, the individual is indeed only a phantasm. — Wayfarer
The point I'm trying to make, is that there is an inextricably subjective pole or aspect of all experience. — Wayfarer
This applies even to the objects of scientific analysis. — Wayfarer
This realisation has been more or less forced on science by the conundrums associated with quantum mechanics. — Wayfarer
Even the scientific picture of the world, which I am not suggesting is fallacious, is still a construct or representation — Wayfarer
Could I suggest that in saying that, you're positing 'mind' as 'something within the individual' - my mind, or your mind, — Wayfarer
... world and mind arise together as objective and subjective poles, we have a shared world of meanings and common facts within which we all dwell. — Wayfarer
In whatever way we may be conscious of the world ... — Edmund Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences p108
This reminds me of De Anima where Aristotle says: "In a way, the soul is all things." — Valentinus
In the movie, The Matrix, taking the red pill even causes a permanent abstraction leak. — alcontali
I cannot accept the notion that world arises together with mind. There is solid evidence that the earth was here prior to any mind that we know of. And here is the claims about the subjectivity of science becomes problematic. Radiocarbon dating works because we know the half-life of the carbon isotope C14. The decay is independent of any subject. It is in this sense objective. — Fooloso4
the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the Idea of Good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellect; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.
This reminds me of De Anima where Aristotle says: "In a way, the soul is all things." — Valentinus
Knowledge presupposes some kind of union, because in order to become the thing which is known we must possess it, we must be identical with the object we know. But this possession of the object is not a physical possession of it. It is a possession of the form of the object, of that principle which makes the object to be what it is. This is what Aristotle means when he says that the soul in a way becomes all things. Entitatively (i.e. in themselves) the knower and object known remain what they are. But intentionally (cognitively) the knower becomes the object of knowledge as he possesses the Form of the object
the process of knowledge is immediately concerned with the separation of form from matter, since a thing is known precisely because its form is received in the knower. But, whatever is received is in the recipient according to the mode of being that the recipient possesses. If, then, the senses are material powers, they receive the forms of objects in a material manner; and if the intellect is an immaterial power, it receives the forms of objects in an immaterial manner. This means that in the case of sense knowledge, the form is still encompassed with the concrete characters which make it particular; and that, in the case of intellectual knowledge, the form is disengaged from all such characters.
So, a chair is a physical object, but the language expression "chair" is not. — alcontali
What we see, i.e. the input signals we receive, create some kind of model in our heads, i.e. an abstraction of the physical world. With all complex abstractions being leaky, this process inevitably, occasionally produces unexpected results, i.e. situations where the perception as a model is out of sync with what it is trying to model. — alcontali
Quine’s belief that we should defer all questions about what exists to natural science is really an expression of what he calls, and has come to be known as, naturalism. He describes naturalism as, “abandonment of the goal of a first philosophy. It sees natural science as an inquiry into reality, fallible and corrigible but not answerable to any supra-scientific tribunal, and not in need of any justification beyond observation and the hypothetico-deductive method”. .... Quine assumes that ordinary objects exist. Further, Quine starts with an understanding of natural science as our best account of the sense experience which gives us beliefs about ordinary objects. Traditionally, philosophers believed that it was the job of epistemology to justify our knowledge. In contrast, the central job of Quine’s naturalist is to describe how we construct our best theory, to trace the path from stimulus to science, rather than to justify knowledge of either ordinary objects or scientific theory.
I'm not questioning scientific method, what I'm doing is questioning the sense in which it conveys or results in or approaches an ultimate truth. Which is, I believe, the purport of the above-mentioned Allegory of the Cave — Wayfarer
We cannot 'know' anything about the 'ontological status' of the entities we conceptualize other than they are 'useful' in our epistemological quests to 'predict and control'. — fresco
I am saying that the act of constructing such scenarios is part of a cognitive process which is particular to the needs of humans In their quest to 'predict (or retrodict) and control' what constitutes their 'lives'. — fresco
Okay...define 'knowledge' without reference to 'prediction and control'. — fresco
did include retrodiction, which would cover your paleontology query. That is a process where proposed antecedents predict/explain current observations. — fresco
The 'desire to know' is clearly advantageous in potential control of one's life, even from the trivial povs of 'being respected' or 'self confidence'. — fresco
And I suggest 'objects or processes of aesthetic value' always have an element of organizational complexity associated with them which by definition involves 'control'. — fresco
And we know that with a kind of mathematical certainty, because the mind knows mathematical truths, and the forms of things, with a far higher degree of certainty than it does mere sense impression. — Wayfarer
Traditionally, philosophers believed that it was the job of epistemology to justify our knowledge. In contrast, the central job of Quine’s naturalist is to describe how we construct our best theory, to trace the path from stimulus to science, rather than to justify knowledge of either ordinary objects or scientific theory.
But naturalism is not at all critically self-aware in the sense that traditional philosophy actually was*. And it's also forgotten what it has excluded. This was one of the consequences of the attempt in the Enlightenment to discard metaphysics in favour of what was purportedly "really there", the so-called 'real world' as object of scientific enquiry. But in so doing, the West abandoned some essential and fundamental aspect of their intellectual heritage. — Wayfarer
A mathematical theorem will be "provable" from its axiomatic context, but never CT-true (about the real, physical world). Therefore, "provable" necessarily implies: not CT-true. — alcontali
What about applied maths — Wayfarer
what Eugene Wigner calls the 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences' — Wayfarer
On a really basic level, how come maths works in the real world, if it has nothing to do with it? — Wayfarer
"Applied math" is not math. — alcontali
Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as science, engineering, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical science and specialized knowledge.
If the object of mathematical language is the real world, it is not math. It is something else that merely uses mathematical formalisms to maintain consistency in its own statements, such as for example science. — alcontali
as I read it Aristotle is not claiming, as Wayfarer is, that world and mind arise together as objective and subjective poles. — Fooloso4
We never encounter physical reality outside of our observations of it. Elementary particles, time, genes and the brain are manifest to us only through our measurements, models and manipulations. Their presence is always based on scientific investigations, which occur only in the field of our experience.
This doesn’t mean that scientific knowledge is arbitrary, or a mere projection of our own minds. On the contrary, some models and methods of investigation work much better than others, and we can test this. But these tests never give us nature as it is in itself, outside our ways of seeing and acting on things. Experience is just as fundamental to scientific knowledge as the physical reality it reveals.
but as I read it Aristotle is not claiming, as Wayfarer is, that world and mind arise together as objective and subjective poles. — Fooloso4
What I'm arguing, however, is that there is an ineluctably subjective pole or aspect to all of our knowledge of the world, including scientific theories about the age of the world, and so on. — Wayfarer
Hence the soul is as the hand is; for the hand is a tool of tools, and the intellect is a form of forms and sense a form objects of perception. — Valentinus
Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical science and specialized knowledge.
Thanks, that's very instructive, but I think it's an artificial distinction. It glosses over most of what I find philosophically interesting about it. — Wayfarer
These images would not be possible without our instrumentation but are they merely artifacts of it or does the image capture what is really going on at the molecular level? — Fooloso4
What about applied maths, and what Eugene Wigner calls the 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences'? On a really basic level, how come maths works in the real world, if it has nothing to do with it? — Wayfarer
it may show that you are, despite and unbeknownst to, yourself, a realist after all. — Janus
The existence of different epistemic methods gives rise to the existence of different epistemic domains: mathematics, science, and history. — alcontali
The distinction between objective and subjective is treated here as the illusion. — Valentinus
I agree with this, but I also maintain that the world is as it is independent of our knowledge of it. We do not know the world as it is but as it is for us. It is here, the world as it is for us that we find the two poles. Most of what is going on in the universe we know nothing of. Some of those things we will come to discover but others we will never know anything of given the vastness of the universe. — Fooloso4
I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. To this idealism is opposed transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensibility). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding.
The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance – which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing – matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are called 'external', not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another - but that space itself is in us. — Critique of Pure Reason A369-370
We have images of molecules breaking chemical bonds. These images would not be possible without our instrumentation but are they merely artifacts of it or does the image capture what is really going on at the molecular level? — Fooloso4
I think the subtle point you're not seeing here, is that even 'this vast universe' you speak of, is still considered here from an implicitly human perspective. — Wayfarer
... science measures time in units relative to the rotation of the earth around the sun and distances of kilometers and so on. — Wayfarer
But the reality is vaster than even that, because it is not constrained by our human sensory and intellectual faculties. It's 'vast' in a way that even science can't imagine! — Wayfarer
I'm not sceptical in the sense of doubting scientifically-established facts as we rely on them every day. — Wayfarer
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