Yes, for maybe the fifth time now, properties are simply ways that things are, characteristics they have. — Terrapin Station
So how could there be anything that isn't some way or other? — Terrapin Station
Easily, every "way or other" is a judgement we make — Isaac
Ok, and "yellowness" might be a property of my experience while perceiving an object reflecting a certain wavelength? — bongo fury
So you believe that if no people existed, objects would be in what--some quantum, indeterminate state? — Terrapin Station
Possibly, yes. But at the moment I'm more inclined to think of reality as a heterogeneous sea of stuff — Isaac
Possibly, yes. — Isaac
Right, it's a property of that object reflect[ing] that wavelength of EMR, and it's also a property of your experience per se (which is what qualia are). — Terrapin Station
Why? — Terrapin Station
No, no. If there are no people then there is no perception. It's a bad question ('how would one perceive it if one were not around to perceive it?'. Very silly). — StreetlightX
No, no. If there are no people then there is no perception. — StreetlightX
Because that's the only way I can see objects being now, — Isaac
lol it's not a question about perception. — Terrapin Station
I didn't really answer the question as "what difference do people make" so much as "what model do you personally have of reality" (a model which, for me is obviously unaffected by people because I took him to be asking about what it is I think people's perception acts on). Does that make any sense at all? — Isaac
Why would that be the only way you can see objects being? How would you even see that? — Terrapin Station
True. But you want to say something about perception by asking it — StreetlightX
we are of reality, and don't stand outside of it looking it. "If no people existed, objects would be...?" is still a strange question. — StreetlightX
Yeah, so I guess my 'model' is inevitably flawed by being one without me in it — Isaac
I can't conceive of it divided up into objects in any sense at all when it's clear that such object division (and existence) can be so readily altered by our mental processes. — Isaac
Ok. Then it's just irrelevant. That's fine too. — StreetlightX
It tells us something about the world that it must be 'modelled' in this way (in any way) — StreetlightX
Anyway, sorry to be obscure. We're far away from perception now, and I don't want to derail. — StreetlightX
you're yet another person here in the "horrible reading comprehension" crowd. — Terrapin Station
So let's consider something like a comet orbiting the sun. We've got a chunk of rock--water, carbon dioxide, ammonia and methane ices, mixed with dust. Then we've got space where there's very sparse amounts of hydrogen and helium gas, etc. Then we've got the sun, a very dense aggregation of hydrogen and helium gases in a plasma state, etc.
How would our mental processes alter that? — Terrapin Station
None of these separate things are really separate. — Isaac
But you're saying that they're not really a lump of water, carbon dioxide, etc. ices and then a far less dense patch of hydrogen and helium gases, etc., right? — Terrapin Station
based on the arbitrary shape of its molecules. — Isaac
You don't think that there's really a shape of molecules, do you? — Terrapin Station
We have a completely uniform sea of whatever, with no properties, and then what? How would a creature appear amidst that, much less one with consciousness? — Terrapin Station
The fact that a "creature" has appeared is again, just a human artefact, — Isaac
All that has happened is that stuff has interacted with stuff ( — Isaac
Let me ask you this, if a 'creature' has appeared with consciousness, where do we stop, — Isaac
But at least we're here, right? How? — Terrapin Station
According to you it's a completely uniform sea of property-free stuff. How would it "interact," especially without having/exhibiting any properties? — Terrapin Station
Our bodies are us. That's our boundary, fuzzy though it may be on the edges on a microscopic level. — Terrapin Station
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