It is interesting you bring up the idea of limit. I'm not sure if you mean this as a metaphor, or as a literal model of what you are trying to convey. — Adam's Off Ox

I do mean it in the same sense it is used in calculus, something that a series asymptotically approaches, but I don’t mean it to be the exact sense of the limit of a numerical series. I guess you could call it a qualitative rather than necessarily quantitative version of a limit. Though in cases where it is possible to quantify the thing in question, I guess such a qualitative limit becomes the same thing as the ordinary quantitative limit, making the former concept perhaps a conservative extension of the latter.

From what you say, I gather that objectivity is binary. I also gather that an objective claim can either be correct or incorrect. While no idea can be more correct than correct, I gather you are saying some ideas can be more incorrect than others. — Adam's Off Ox

Yes. It is the old idea of being less wrong, as in
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Relativity_of_Wrong

This is an interesting description of what we do with science. I would have described the method differently. Could I ask you, do you have hands on experience with science? Have you done lab work in a university setting or been paid for scientific research? I ask because my experience has been different. — Adam's Off Ox

I have not, but I think I know where you are going with this, because the accounts I hear from people who have don’t generally involve thinking of things in terms like that, and that’s neither surprising nor a problem to me.

My description is a very high-level account of things so abstract they just form a background part of the norms of science that don’t usually need to be spoken about. The only time a working scientist would need to account for science in such a way is when justifying it against something radically different, like fundamentalist religion, or (back on topic) truth-relativist postmodernism.

Which would then be doing philosophy of science, or epistemology more generally, which is why such things are discussed more in those fields, and not among working scientists.

Lyotard was a theorist of postmodernity. He was incredibly critical of it, and the fact that he is often called a 'postmodernist' philosopher - as if he advocated or celebrated it - is not only wrong, it is practically the opposite of what he would have wanted. He bemoaned the end of the meta-narrative, which was coincident, for him, with the crisis of capitalism. He was a diagnostician of postmodernity, not a cheerleader for it. — StreetlightX

I hesitate to raise this point here, because I by and large agree with what you're saying, but....

I don't have a good grasp on Lyotard, but his The DIfferend, for whatever reason, is a book I keep coming back to and never finishing. The central concept, the 'differend', is something like: a thing that needs to be articulated, but is inarticulable in an existent 'idiom' (read: 'language game') The book is about how new language games emerge, or how existing language games are changed. I agree with the defense of Lyotard against pop-lyotard, but also real-lyotard was (1) firmly insistent on the incapacity of existing 'idioms' to express what needs to be expressed and (2) painstakingly focused on showing what that process looks like when you retain good, analytical hygiene (the book is shot through with kripke and wittgenstein and kant) while also alllowing for something new.

By which I mean: The pop-Lyotard is wrong; but the defense against the pop-lyotard is also off - he's not bemoaning - but is nevertheless closer to the truth, as correction, than the pop version.

Hard digression for sure, but I will never stop complaining that no one reads Lyotard's work besides the pomo report. He's the best mix of analytic and continental. I kind of want to start a reading group and finally finish this book. It's a gem.

I don't think arguing that no one else ought be plunked here is the best course of action, because no one considering having kids is listening. — csalisbury

Can you elaborate on this? It almost sounds like these people are beyond deliberative capabilities, not just merely ignorant.

Any pretense of 'this-is-actually-about-actually-reducing-suffering' vanishes quickly; if what we're talking about a pipe dream, then we're not meaningfully talking about reducing suffering anymore; we're very much in something else. — csalisbury

Then what are we talking about? You also know that it can be about marginal prevention of suffering. One less couple having kids, is one less possible sufferer. It doesn't have to be "If a significant amount of people don't stop, it is thus a useless, ineffective position". But I'll grant you this, it is more than the merely trying to reduce suffering. It points to meaning. Why start another life, brings in all sorts of ideas regarding purpose, "what's this all for?", absurdity, the bare-bones of existing itself. I always categorize the main motives of humans as simply survival-related. comfort-seeking, and entertainment-seeking. I also recognize its cultural context (i.e. our "modern" one post-Enlightenment, informed by the contingencies of history, and the situatedness of culture, causality, time, space, and circumstance). This "is" the bare-bones human condition. Why do we seek to reproduce this condition? I also mentioned that it is enculturating new people in a way of life. Why the compulsive "need" for enculturating more people into a way of life? It is oddly unjustified except in the "scare quotes" I have used in my previous post (i.e. not very good reasons to mess with the whole, ya know, existential status of a whole other person). We can self-reflect on every level, yet the minute we do so with procreation and its implications for negative consequences, absurdity, and the human condition, it is panned out-of-the-gate? There is something suspicious about that reflexive defense itself. It is almost as bad as people saying, "The political system is corrupt, ergo, I support this particular political corrupt person because there is no escaping the corruption". It is using the "everyone's corrupt" to support "this brand of corrupt".

I like what you've said about the irrecusable (apologies to Ray Brassier), ineluctable, sheer fact-of-the-matter of technology(modernism/capitalism/etc) - yes! You're plunked down somewhere, and the way back is barred, like a pile of pixelated concrete in a survival horror game; you have to go forward. — csalisbury

Yes, agreed. I am fascinated with minutia-mongering for example. The ways that fellow humans (including myself if forced) to focus on minute points of data, knowledge, etc. in order to create technological applications. All the steps involved in manufacturing technology, all the procedures around distributing it through distribution/logistics boggles the mind how details of details of details are focused on by various individuals.

Great example here.. and this is nothing:

An ALU is a combinational logic circuit, meaning that its outputs will change asynchronously in response to input changes. In normal operation, stable signals are applied to all of the ALU inputs and, when enough time (known as the "propagation delay") has passed for the signals to propagate through the ALU circuitry, the result of the ALU operation appears at the ALU outputs. The external circuitry connected to the ALU is responsible for ensuring the stability of ALU input signals throughout the operation, and for allowing sufficient time for the signals to propagate through the ALU before sampling the ALU result.

In general, external circuitry controls an ALU by applying signals to its inputs. Typically, the external circuitry employs sequential logic to control the ALU operation, which is paced by a clock signal of a sufficiently low frequency to ensure enough time for the ALU outputs to settle under worst-case conditions.

For example, a CPU begins an ALU addition operation by routing operands from their sources (which are usually registers) to the ALU's operand inputs, while the control unit simultaneously applies a value to the ALU's opcode input, configuring it to perform addition. At the same time, the CPU also routes the ALU result output to a destination register that will receive the sum. The ALU's input signals, which are held stable until the next clock, are allowed to propagate through the ALU and to the destination register while the CPU waits for the next clock. When the next clock arrives, the destination register stores the ALU result and, since the ALU operation has completed, the ALU inputs may be set up for the next ALU operation. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_logic_unit

There is no post-modernizing this minutia/necessary factoid of how computation works in computer processors. Yep, it's there. It's applicable (aka "real"), it is useful to many people who don't even know the minutia that brings them the technology. That is our reality, that is what we are replicating for survival, comfort, and entertainment's sake (i.e. that is our "cultural context" I keep talking about as the milieu for how our survival/comfort/entertainment plays out).

Long story short (and please don't just quote this last sentence.. I did write a lot above), Post-modernism wants to find ironic, absurd humor to give us an escape from the actuality, the real, the dull, the boring, the minutia, of the everydayness of the modern. In this regard, it is ineffective, escapist, and doesn't change the dull reality any ounce. At best it creates insensible sentimentality to try to console, but mainly it is simply the reiteration that there is no where to go, nothing to do.

I don't want to get into the antinatalist weeds. Read that as an incapacity to meet the force of the antinatalist argument if you will. Count me as one of the recalcitrant lost. I've said what I wanted to about antinatalism a bunch of times and have nothing left to say, so: take it or leave it. I'll chat about other stuff, but I've no interest in the antinatalist stuff, more or less power to me.

As for the rest: it seems like you don't like your job - that's a common thing. Strip metaphysics and go from there.

I'll chat about other stuff, but I've no interest in the antinatalist stuff, more or less power to me. — csalisbury

I'm getting that.

As for the rest: it seems like you don't like your job - that's a common thing. Strip metaphysics and go from there. — csalisbury

I guess you figured out the source of all the problems. You seemed to have not even attempted to discuss minutia-mongering as it relates to modernism (contra post-modernism). So looks like you're just not interested in what schop1 has to say in general. You've entertained the pop-culture stuff and DFW and published works.. But schop1 neologisms = not engaging in.. I'll try to throw more well-known philosophy content your way that is not from schop1, but peer-reviewed and/or published literature stuff only ;).

:cool: I'll take quality sass over sclerotic pessimism threads any day.

Yeah this is fair. An exaggerated imagine against an exaggerated image. I'll cop that. Still, I think Jameson was essentailly right in his intro to Lyotard's PC when he wrote that:

"Lyotard's affiliations here would seem to be with the Anti-Oedipus of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who also warned us, at the end of that work, that the schizophrenic ethic they proposed was not at all a revolutionary one, but a way of surviving under capitalism, producing fresh desires within the structural limits of the capitalist mode of production as such. Lyotard's celebration of a related ethic emerges most dramatically in the context of that repudiation of Habermas's consensus community already mentioned, in which the dissolution of the self into a host of networks and relations, of contradictory codes and interfering messages, is prophetically valorized.

...Lyotard's insistence on narrative analysis in a situation in which the narratives themselves henceforth seem impossible is his declaration of intent to remain political and contestatory; that is, to avoid one possible and even logical resolution to the dilemma, which would consist in becoming, like Daniel Bell, an ideologue of technocracy and an apologist for the system itself. How he does this is to transfer the older ideologies of aesthetic high modernism, the celebration of its revolutionary power, to science and scientific research proper. Now it is the latter's infinite capacity for innovation, change, break, renewal, which will infuse the otherwise repressive system with the disalienating excitement of the new and the "unknown" (the last word of Lyotard's text), as well as of adventure, the refusal of conformity, and the heterogeneities of desire."

Which is to say - as I read it - that the recourse to the paralogism (and the differned, after it) and so on is a strategic initiative, one specifically tailored to the postmodern condition, and not some trans-historical maneuver designed to work at all times in all places. So there's a kernel of truth in Lyotards' own 'postmodernism', but it is, once again, tributary to the condition that 'preceded' him and to which he is responding in his own time and place.

After decades training with the world’s foremost doulas, midwives and practitioners of Transcendental Meditation I’ve come up with a method (patent pending) of progeneration that actually decreases suffering and I’m almost ready to license it to expectant mothers for a modest fee. — csalisbury

:rofl:

Objective reality/morality is the limit of a series of increasingly improved subjective opinions on what is real/moral. — Pfhorrest

I did think this was your idea of objective reality; you've said as much before, although also said things that caused me to doubt it. It doesn't seem to mean the same as definitions I've seen or used. By lieu of it being an extrapolation of subjective opinions, it is not mind-independent, for instance.

When I've been saying 'objective reality', I've tried to distinguish between the putative reality supposed by scientists, i.e. that which models tend toward, and an empiricism-independent objective reality that is the simplest and best explanation for the former.

I do mean it in the same sense it is used in calculus, something that a series asymptotically approaches, but I don’t mean it to be the exact sense of the limit of a numerical series. I guess you could call it a qualitative rather than necessarily quantitative version of a limit. Though in cases where it is possible to quantify the thing in question, I guess such a qualitative limit becomes the same thing as the ordinary quantitative limit, making the former concept perhaps a conservative extension of the latter. — Pfhorrest

What differs between your concept and the mathematical concept is seriously important though. In mathematics, the quantitative nature of the concept of limit allows it to get defined formally. There is a clear method in mathematics for testing if a limit exists, or calculating said limit if a series converges.

I am asking if you would be willing to formalize your concept of limit, as it pertains to objective morality, so that given moral claims do lend themselves to analysis. Without this formal definition of concept and a subsequent proposition that extends the concept of limit, I'm afraid you haven't carved out grounds for your case for objective morality, yet.

What you are saying so far is that an understanding of objective morality can be formulated. That is an interesting claim, but it has no teeth until you actually demonstrate such a formulation. I'm alright with you describing a concept of limit that relies on a qualitative rather than quantitative approach. However, I would like to have more discussion on the qualities then. I get a sense that you have a strong intuition on which what you are saying is based. I'm interested in how you would nail down your intuition into sentences that would allow me to interact with the same intuition and make it my own. I would be interested in making sentences of a kind that are consistent with your approach, where we would both go along with some sentences and also mutually agree on which sentences get categorized as errors or wrong.

If your hypothesis about objective morality is correct, then at the very least, there must be some set of sentences which you and I can identify and label as "correct" through some method as well as some other set of sentences which get labeled "incorrect" by the same method. If the method you choose to employ hinges on the concept of limit, then we should both also be able to evaluate the degree of incorrectness in some statements and come to consensus on that degree.

Admittedly, I'm skeptical we will arrive at a formal method and even more skeptical that we will arrive at consensus on how we evaluate the incorrectness of sentences. I'm willing to go along with you as long as you are willing to contribute to the discussion. I will try to be charitable to your side, and not just argue for the sake of promoting my counter-narrative. However, my commitment to charity does not restrict me from employing all means of reasonable critique to analyze the foundations of your argument.

When I've been saying 'objective reality', I've tried to distinguish between the putative reality supposed by scientists, i.e. that which models tend toward, and an empiricism-independent objective reality that is the simplest and best explanation for the former. — Kenosha Kid

But I fear you are treating "scientists" as too broad a class. Sure, there are some scientists who still employ the variable of "putative reality" in their interpretations, but I believe for most scientists who are philosophically inclined, that interpretation is not the norm.

In my opinion, what "good science" does involves making observations of phenomena and then predicting additional phenomena. The concept of "putative reality" drops out from the process (as an empty variable) so that all the science is left with are phenomena and model.

In my opinion, what "good science" does involves making observations of phenomena and then predicting additional phenomena. The concept of "putative reality" drops out from the process (as an empty variable) so that all the science is left with are phenomena and model. — Adam's Off Ox

I disagree with that. The putative reality is put in by hand in the act of modelling. What is a model a model of if not a putative reality? That is not to say that they believe their models are accurate representations of objective reality, but that, over time, if objective reality does exist, those models should increasingly reflect that objective reality that seems to exist (the putative objective reality).

I disagree with that. The putative reality is put in by hand in the act of modelling. What is a model a model of if not a putative reality? That is not to say that they believe their models are accurate representations of objective reality, but that, over time, if objective reality does exist, those models should increasingly reflect that objective reality that seems to exist (the putative objective reality). — Kenosha Kid

But that's not how I model. That's also not what the mathematical methods I employ do. If anything, mathematical modeling works to reduce the expectation of putative objective reality. It may come to be recognized in terms of parsimony or Occam's razor.

A "good mathematical model" focuses only on the variables under consideration, and takes into account that an induction (not deductively logical) process is taking place in order to move from call to response. An account of an underlying putative objective reality does not get mathematically defined. Instead, a "good mathematical model", includes only data and formulas to translate call to response. Existence of any other kind is not philosophically covered — either in the science or the math.

A "good mathematical model" focuses only on the variables under consideration, and takes into account that an induction (not deductively logical) process is taking place in order to move from call to response. — Adam's Off Ox

That doesn't seem right to me either. The Standard Model, for instance, is not focused "only on the variables under consideration": it is a reference point for what is under consideration and exists (after consideration) whether we are considering something or not. "According to the Standard Model, the hypercharge is conserved under decay of blah blah blah." That is a reference to a model. The model itself is not defined by that reference. Not does the Standard Model go away when we stop considering the hypercharge under decay of blah.

What the Standard Model is is the best model of the elementary contents and interactions of a putative objective reality consistent with the totality of empirical facts.

That doesn't seem right to me either. The Standard Model, for instance, is not focused "only on the variables under consideration": it is a reference point for what is under consideration and exists (after consideration) whether we are considering something or not. "According to the Standard Model, the hypercharge is conserved under decay of blah blah blah." That is a reference to a model. The model itself is not defined by that reference. Not does the Standard Model go away when we stop considering the hypercharge under decay of blah.

What the Standard Model is is the best model of the elementary contents and interactions of a putative objective reality consistent with the totality of empirical facts. — Kenosha Kid

... where hypercharge and decay are both model representations of other phenomena or data points. When we look at hypercharge and decay, we find they are mathematically defined relationships between other phenomena. What is preserved in the discussion is the math, not putative reality.

What the Standard Model does, the "why it works", is convert observable data (phenomena) into predicted phenomena.

Do you consider yourself a physicist, by chance? Or perhaps a scientist in another field?

... where hypercharge and decay are both model representations of other phenomena or data points. When we look at hypercharge and decay, we find they are mathematically defined relationships between other phenomena. What is preserved in the discussion is the math, not putative reality. — Adam's Off Ox

That is not what is left in the Standard Model, though. I think what you've got here is an exclusive definition of "model" that only applies to whatever minimal thing you happen to be hypothesising about at the time, as use-once-and-destroy model. This does not match the definition of "model" in "Standard Model" though.

What the Standard Model does, the "why it works", is convert observable data (phenomena) into predicted phenomena. — Adam's Off Ox

Applying the SM to a particular question will give you predictions and, yes, you will only use the pertinent bits (e.g. ignore strong interaction in weak phenomena). But the SM itself is a model of an aspect of reality, derived from, but now independent of, particular problems in quantum field theory. It itself is not the minimal representation of the problem in hand and it exists whether you are performing a calculation or not. (Let's not go down the "Does the Moon exist when I don't observe it root :rofl: )

Do you consider yourself a physicist, by chance? Or perhaps a scientist in another field? — Adam's Off Ox

Yes, a physicist. Or rather a lapsed physicist. I was active in research until a couple of years ago but sold out mwahahahaaaa! I worked in many-body quantum mechanics.

Yes, a physicist. Or rather a lapsed physicist. I was active in research until a couple of years ago but sold out mwahahahaaaa! I worked in many-body quantum mechanics. — Kenosha Kid

Fair enough. I've never worked in a quantum-physics lab, so I fear I'd get in over my head if I got into the hairy details of everything that goes into developing the Standard Model, how observations get made, and how you would interpret the data. I would be at a disadvantage if we were to discuss details of that particular science.

Could I ask we move the example of science under discussion to something more tangible and less reliant on complex formulas, building sized machinery, detailed computer algorithms, various interpretive frameworks, uncertainty principle, relativity, and interactions between fields and forces. I fear we may get bogged down in discussions about how that science gets performed, instead of science as a general theme.

Could I propose we move the discussion to something more tangible, say billiard balls, which operates on the scale of medium-sized dry goods? The application of Philosophy of Science should remain the same without loss of generality. At any point, please let me know if the simplification dismisses something important to the discussion.

For this discussion, I even propose we make the greatest number of simplifications possible to only keep "Science" as a field as the topic under consideration. Let's assume no friction, sin x = x, no uncertainty comes into play in the measurement of mass and velocity, etc.

In the discussion of billiard balls, an interesting finding may be the conservation of momentum when two balls collide. To model this, all we need to know are the masses of the balls, their locations, and their velocities. The variables we model are m: mass, x_1_i and x_2_i: the initial positions of the balls, v_1_i and v_2_i: the initial velocities of the balls, t: time elapsed, and some formula preserving momentum.

From the phenomena that are measured for the variables, the model predicts the observed velocities of the billiard balls after a collision. The mathematics is agnostic to any putative existence of billiard balls as things, but only addresses the variables at hand.

We may come to test the model by making a large number of observations of pairs of billiard balls and recording their initial and ending velocities. But the accuracy of the model does not tell us about it's accuracy with respect to some putative reality. Instead, the only measure we have available for the accuracy of the model is a measure of error as it relates the sample to the model. I restate, the only features available to the science are phenomena (sample data) and model (formula relating the conservation of momentum). Even the assertion that momentum is a putative thing is questionable. Momentum, designated by the variable p, can be said to be another mathematical construct (an emanation of the model).

Maybe I'm missing something when you talk about a throw-away model. But I'll have to ask you to explain further if I am going to understand what you are saying about Science.

The mathematics is agnostic to any putative existence of billiard balls as things, but only addresses the variables at hand. — Adam's Off Ox

That is correct; the mathematics itself guarantees no generality. But modelling is something people do with mathematics, not something mathematics does. The observer in question formulates theoretical general laws of billiards which may be falsified, but are not.

50 years later, those laws are still predicting outcomes of billiards events. Why is it so reliable? Is it because the mathematics is so clever? It it because billiardologists have a culture that produces reliable frameworks? Both are important to discovering general laws of billiards, but cannot explain why the model itself never, ever fails.

That is where the assumption of an objective reality which is partly and approximately reflected in the general model simplifies matters. If billiards has an objectively real counterpart which itself obeys something like the general law of billiards, then the success of the general law is explained.

Without this, it is a mystery why merely noting down observations should ever lead to a predictive theory. The model in question cannot account for the success of the model. An objective reality can, by having something similar to the model in its aspect.

That is where the assumption of an objective reality which is partly and approximately reflected in the general model simplifies matters. If billiards has an objectively real counterpart which itself obeys something like the general law of billiards, then the success of the general law is explained.

Without this, it is a mystery why merely noting down observations should ever lead to a predictive theory. The model in question cannot account for the success of the model. An objective reality can, by having something similar to the model in its aspect. — Kenosha Kid

If all that we were saying reduced to the same outcomes (which is not what you are saying, I know) this discussion would be pointless. You and I would be simply arguing over semantics and syntax. But I believe you and I agree, this is not a to-may-to vs. to-mah-to issue.

The reason I am less eager to conform the language to one of objective reality focuses on the use of a single ontology to underlie all phenomena. From what I understand, (and admittedly I may be in waters over my head,) the way apples and oranges exist in some objective reality are different than the constituents of a Standard Model. On one level, apples and oranges are things I can see, touch, feel, and taste while quantum particles do not obtain of the same phenomena. On a different level, but no less relevant, the way we model things like billiard balls, apples, and oranges (deterministically) differs from the way we model gas in a chamber and work (dynamically), which also differs from the way we model quantum mechanics (WTF?). Using the same kind of ontology for all these models seems misplaced considering there are different philosophies in place (indicated by the different mathematics) in the modeling. We no longer have one objective reality defined by all of science, but rather many kinds of realities all taking place at once. And we've only discussed some domains of physics, the queen of science, without getting into different structures that exist in chemistry, biology, and medical science. And then even more when we get to social sciences.

By divorcing the ontology that informs our grammar into seeming things (phenomena) and existing things (objective reality as noumena) we find that modeling only requires phenomena. That our minds gravitate toward persistent objects (an instinct maybe – perhaps misguided) does not mean that the naive understanding of things-as-real best describes the world as it is, fundamentally and metaphysically. I advocate a departure from this common sense approach in order to gain better understanding of phenomena as not-guided by intuitions of substance or essence. I may be speaking above my pay grade, but I understand that at least some physicists agree with my interpretation.

That we use the mathematical models to perform an induction from observation set to general is already somewhat problematic for me, but I am able to go along with that approach insofar as it works (or has worked in the past) to predict future phenomena when constrained by the same data gathering techniques that were used to develop the model. I am reticent to make an additional leap that such predicted phenomena tell us more than that — some expectation about the world as a whole or reality beyond phenomena, which becomes a second level of induction.

Can you tell me, do you know of any fellow physicists who may advocate a similar philosophical or linguistic approach that I do? Or in your experience have all physicists come to consensus against me?

By lieu of it being an extrapolation of subjective opinions, it is not mind-independent, for instance. — Kenosha Kid

Being at the unattainable limit of that series, it is independent of anybody’s particular mind. It is composed entirely of mind-accessible stuff, but people thinking that it is this or that way isn’t what makes it what it is. People just have limited access to it in practice, though all of it is accessible in principle, so they can at best access and incomplete approximation of it. But the series of increasingly more complete approximations points us at whatever lies at the end of that limit.

When I've been saying 'objective reality', I've tried to distinguish between the putative reality supposed by scientists, i.e. that which models tend toward, and an empiricism-independent objective reality that is the simplest and best explanation for the former. — Kenosha Kid

Nothing needs to be empiricism-independent to be objective. You are conflating objectivism with what I call “transcendentalism”, that being anti-phenomenalism, empiricism being the description half of phenomenalism.

It’s the difference between being mind-independent and mind-inaccessible. We can never know anything about any reality that’s non-empirical; we’d just have to take someone’s word on it. The only reality that we can know and interrogate and try to come to grips with is the empirical one that we have direct but incomplete access to.

s/reality/morality and s/empirical/hedonic

On a different level, but no less relevant, the way we model things like billiard balls, apples, and oranges (deterministically) differs from the way we model gas in a chamber and work (dynamically), which also differs from the way we model quantum mechanics (WTF?). Using the same kind of ontology for all these models seems misplaced considering there are different philosophies in place (indicated by the different mathematics) in the modeling. We no longer have one objective reality defined by all of science, but rather many kinds of realities all taking place at once. — Adam's Off Ox

So just to refine the names of these different classes if models, we have: deterministic (billiards), statistical (gases), probabilistic (quantum). In the first, the element behaves deterministically and we can know it. In the second, each element behaves deterministically, but we can't know it and instead treat a statistical ensemble. And in the third, a single element has to be treated statistically.

These are three levels of approximation at modelling the putative objective reality. The first works well at the macroscopic scale, but breaks down when describing macroscopic ensembles of molecular-scale objects. For this, statistical mechanics works fine, so long as we don't wish to model the element itself or it is is sufficiently large. For smaller elements, you need a more thorough treatment.

The putative objective reality remains the same, and the trend of more exact treatment is precisely the trend discussed above, that toward a best model of this reality. That is, we don't think there's a part of reality specifically dealing with things like apples and billiard balls, another part specifically dealing with fluids, etc.

My statistical mechanics lecturer actually took the approach of deriving the entirety of statistical mechanics from quantum mechanics, where entropy is essentially the number of states explored by a system. Similarly, we derived all of the classical mechanics of billiard balls from quantum mechanics.

So we'd say QM is a better, rather than different, model of the objective reality we wish to explain.

Being at the unattainable limit of that series, it is independent of anybody’s particular mind. — Pfhorrest

Understood, but an extrapolation from actual mental and cultural content still isn't independent of mind and culture. It does not contain identical content, but it contains extrapolations of real mental and cultural moral trends.

To put it another way, had the trend of moral history been to become more individualistic, more selfish, more cruel (holy f**k, that's the current trend!), the extrapolation and thus the quality of moral objectivity, would be different.

The assumption of the objective reality underpinning scientific models, which themselves also have a trend, is that it is truly independent of that trend. It is precisely the supposed objectivity that stops us going down e.g. deterministic models of elementary particles: we couldn't do that because the phenomena and our idea of objective reality would diverge. Equivalents of the sorts of utilitarian local moral developments of places like Chad, which will yield a better morality in Chad through socialisation, don't really work in theoretical modelling. Funding might be conformist, what you choose to study might be conformist, but the actual models themselves have to match how the assumed objective reality seems. If it exists, it informs us. The moral objective reality you describe is informed by us only if I have understood it correctly.

So just to refine the names of these different classes if models, we have: deterministic (billiards), statistical (gases), probabilistic (quantum). In the first, the element behaves deterministically and we can know it. In the second, each element behaves deterministically, but we can't know it and instead treat a statistical ensemble. And in the third, a single element has to be treated statistically.

These are three levels of approximation at modelling the putative objective reality. The first works well at the macroscopic scale, but breaks down when describing macroscopic ensembles of molecular-scale objects. For this, statistical mechanics works fine, so long as we don't wish to model the element itself or it is is sufficiently large. For smaller elements, you need a more thorough treatment.

The putative objective reality remains the same, and the trend of more exact treatment is precisely the trend discussed above, that toward a best model of this reality. That is, we don't think there's a part of reality specifically dealing with things like apples and billiard balls, another part specifically dealing with fluids, etc.

My statistical mechanics lecturer actually took the approach of deriving the entirety of statistical mechanics from quantum mechanics, where entropy is essentially the number of states explored by a system. Similarly, we derived all of the classical mechanics of billiard balls from quantum mechanics.

So we'd say QM is a better, rather than different, model of the objective reality we wish to explain. — Kenosha Kid

Thank you for explaining. While I'm not trying to disagree, I believe I still don't fully understand. It may come off as a disagreement.

Are the objects at each level of inquiry the same kind of existing objects? Or rather, the words that make up an ontology of things of the same dimension (not just scale)?

I get that apples and oranges are things. They are objects we may say exist. (I'll remain silent as to their putative-ness.) I would say they are constituents of reality. Is work a real thing too? Does work exist? Exist as a putative object? How about fields? Charges? I'm wondering if the objectively real things in a quantum model are of the same order of things in the realm of apples and oranges?

It may seem like I am arguing frame or mereology or substance as opposed to putativity, but I wonder at what order are our concepts just ideas, and at what order do they become real, putative things?

Is a dollar a real thing? Not the dollar bill, but the value I own? How about Germany, is that a real thing? Is democracy or justice a real thing? Which are puttative and which are ideal?

Which are phenomena and which are the real and underlying things?

Phenomena seem knowable ot me. What phenomena are about seems more vague.

I still haven't been talked off the perch of "phenomena and model" which it seems I can know.

Understood, but an extrapolation from actual mental and cultural content still isn't independent of mind and culture. It does not contain identical content, but it contains extrapolations of real mental and cultural moral trends. — Kenosha Kid

I'm not saying to extrapolate from the trends of actual models we have to project what the final correct model will end up being at the infinitely far future. If we could do that, we would just jump straight to using that model right away.

I'm saying that if you have any means of ordering models as superior or inferior, even if you don't know what lies at the unattainable extreme in the "superior" direction, that very ordering entails that some models are less wrong than others, and increasingly approximate some not-wrong-at-all (i.e. correct) one at that unattainable extreme.

With the physical sciences, we have some way to gauge which models are superior to others (concordance with empirical experience), and that very idea of some being superior to others just is our idea of objectivism about reality. Saying there is an objective reality isn't saying that any of our models are, or even in principle ever can be, perfectly in accordance with it. Just that there is some way to gauge which are closer or further from it.

All we need for objectivism about morality is a similar notion of measuring moral models against each other and gauging which is superior or inferior to the other. (This is exactly why I call my philosophy "commensurablism").

To deny that is just complete moral nihilism, saying that no notion of morality is better than any other; that Hitler didn't actually do anything wrong, because nothing at all is "actually wrong", people just have different feelings about things.

As I recall you already deny that all moral systems are equally wrong, and think that some are less wrong than others. That's all moral objectivism is.

The rest is you conflating objectivism with what I call "transcendentalism" (anti-phenomenalism), and therefore with absolutism (or fideism, anti-criticism, excessive certainty), likely all because of reducing talk of norms to talk of facts (scientism, which entails justificationism [non-critical rationalism] about norms, which makes it a kind of what I call "cynicism", which entails nihilism via infinite regress). It looks to me like you are doing precisely the top part of this diagram with regards to moral, and likely misreading me as doing the bottom part (which which I disagree just a vehemently as the top):

Thank you for explaining. While I'm not trying to disagree, I believe I still don't fully understand. It may come off as a disagreement. — Adam's Off Ox

Nothing wrong with disagreement. Unless you disagree?

Are the objects at each level of inquiry the same kind of existing objects? Or rather, the words that make up an ontology of things of the same dimension (not just scale)? — Adam's Off Ox

If you mean what I think you mean, I'd say not. A model is not an exact description of an objectively real object. It is an approximate and incomplete description of phenomena from whose regularity we assume has a single underlying reality.

Brains also have models of apples. We can identify apples very quickly and anticipate their tastes. Things that look like apples but aren't can be mistaken for apples; things that don't look like apples aren't mistaken for them, unless the brain is at fault. Things that comprise my brain's model of an apple are: a generic apple shape, one of a set of generic apple colours or colour patterns (such that I can say: "This is apple white paint" or "The colour gradation is like an apple"), a generic apple size, a generic apple weight, a generic apple cross section with the membrane on the outside, the flesh most of the way through, then the core with its pips on the inside, several generic apple textures (waxy membrane, wet crunchy wall), and a narrow spectrum of apple flavours.

Newtonian mechanics has a much simpler approximation to the same apple. Mostly, it will be treated as a point particle with a generic apple weight. A more thorough model would be of a slightly irregularly-shaped body with an almost uniform density. Either way, it will be a generalised apple, as applicable to any apple as this one.

A biologist's model of the same apple will be more thorough than the brain's in some regards. They will see the different cells that make up the membrane, wall, core and pips. But they would have to defer to the chemist to account for the flavour, etc. Again, this will be a generalised apple. A chemist will also have a more thorough view of each of the kinds of cells that make up that apple, in particular a generalised model of the chemical constituents of those cells, but will be unconcerned with the macroscopic features of the apple.

The quantum chemist will focus on the chemical constituents of the cells and not necessarily even be concerned with the cells themselves. They are interested in how the structures of the molecules' atoms gives rise to electron behaviour that correspond to chemical laws.

At each stage, each person may be thinking about the same apple (the thing "under consideration"), but only I have a particular concern with this apple because this apple is not a regular, generic thing but a particular thing.

The sort of objective reality I have been talking about is not the objective reality of this particular apple. It is the objective reality of the universe having physical laws that mean: when I bite this apple I will taste apple flavour; when I throw this apple at a person it will hurt yay much; when I dissect this apple it will have these cells; when I perform chemical experiments on a parenchyma cell I will see these sorts of results; when I irradiate chemicals found in parenchyma cells I will see this emission spectrum.

Does that make sense? The objective reality of the apple itself is a slightly different concern. I can't build a theory out of a single data point, and I can't make a prediction from one apple alone (although a chemist could do a lot with a single apple). An apple is really a single phenomenon. I do feel justified in believing in the objective reality of the apple itself for similar reasons, but more phenomenological than scientific.

To deny that is just complete moral nihilism, saying that no notion of morality is better than any other; that Hitler didn't actually do anything wrong, because nothing at all is "actually wrong", people just have different feelings about things.

As I recall you already deny that all moral systems are equally wrong, and think that some are less wrong than others. That's all moral objectivism is. — Pfhorrest

When our ancestors lived in disparate social groups, I don't think, for even the most philosophical among them, a philosophy of morality would have been possible. We are hard-wired for selfish actions, hard-wired for altruism and hard-wired for empathy. Moral decisions would have been personal and practical: do I steal the food from the neighbour and risk being chased out of the group? do I give half of my food to my starving neighbour and go hungrier for a couple of days?

Morality only really became a concern when people came regularly into contact with people they were not related to and might not benefit from in the future. Not extending altruism and empathy beyond our kin was the mode of the powerful and the thuggish. I want this land, I will kill enough of its inhabitants until no one questions that it is mine. I want vast, cheap labour, I will steal people from their homes and violently force them to work. I want to copulate with this woman I don't know, I will rape. Alongside the uglier history of moral behaviour, we have also had people who took the opposite or an intermediate stance, which is the view that has been winning out for a while, a stance that the powerful still resist: we should extend altruism and empathy to everyone as if they were our kin. And then there are the majority who genuinely don't care.

There is a fundamental reason why the first and last of these are morally inferior positions, and it has nothing to do with any mind-independent moral objectivity and everything to do with the real biological basis of our morality: those views are fundamentally hypocritical and antisocial. The capacity for empathy, necessary for socialisation, in turn necessary for our survival and even our evolution, is as present in a slave-owner as in an emancipationist, and the slave-owner can't possibly be of the opinion that, if the roles were reversed, he would be okay with that. His actions, as indicated by his lack of altruism and empathy, are the same kind of antisocial as the stone age ancestor who steals the food from his neighbour. We have a survivalist basis of morality: the slave owner should be outcast.

To that extent, there is usually a basis to choose.

Beyond that, morality is an existential problem. We are thrown into a world of strangers with a biological capacity to be kind and empathetic toward people but we also have the ability to not bother. Doing no harm is easy enough, but is it better to do good than do no harm, is it better to do good for 10 and harm 1 than do no harm, etc., etc. Moral philosophy. There is no biological, survivalist, social basis for these sorts of moral questions. It is the same as meaning in existentialism. You have existence, and you have freedom, and there is no telling what you should do with it. Likewise you have wants and needs, but also altruism and empathy, and there's no rulebook for how to apply these in what combinations for how long and how often. Your morality is what you do with the choices you're given. You can keep your head down. You can appease your conscience and whet your oxytocin appetite with occasional arbitrary acts of kindness. You can become an activist for an oppressed people or dig wells in Africa until you drop. And whatever you do, this is you, making you as you go along, and as long as you're not antisocial (and most people with power still are) and fall into the group above, there's no should. This, for me, is a proper description of hedonism.

And, as with existentialism, morality is shaped by particular, local, temporary socialisation. Where they differ is that a good existentialist will tell you to ignore everyone else and be authentic, whereas a good person is designed to be socialised: that's part of the package. But we are not designed for a particular socialisation.

I think the illusion of objective morality comes down to the fact that, in history, most moral progress is made on the first kinds of moral questions regarding genuinely antisocial behaviour. Moral philosophy often deals with the second kind and struggles to find a basis for choosing, because they are not questions of anti-social/social behaviour, but what particular uses I should make of my social capacity. It is presumed, from the illusion of objective morality, that there must be answers and we just don't know them. People from one region at one time swing this way, people from another region another time swing that. Who is right? There must be an answer. But there isn't one. Your morality was not evolved to face these kinds of problems.

Thank you for the explanation, and in the end, I believe we don't disagree on that much. I may continue to avoid words like objective or reality, maybe for different motivations, but I don't completely agree with all the principles you mention.

I may end up getting more wordy in my descriptions in the future, where "apple" is a complex model made up of many submodels which each predict some particular phenomena.

I don't disagree that there is something that persists that drives the phenomena I experience. And that something drives my experience in a way that is independent of my will. It's not like we disagree with that sense of objective or putative. I do see from what you are describing that I have become less averse to a putative aspect of a model, although I believe I will still tend to focus my language on the consistency of observed phenomena.

I still have some objections to the concept of "objective reality", but that has more to do with rejecting an authoritarian approach to language than an actual interpretation of model.

Thank you for the discussion. I feel I learned something and was guided to a change in view, even if it doesn't do much to change my behavior.

There is a fundamental reason why the first and last of these are morally inferior positions, and it has nothing to do with any mind-independent moral objectivity and everything to do with the real biological basis of our morality: those views are fundamentally hypocritical and antisocial — Kenosha Kid

In other words, they are inconsistent and biased, not treating the same things in the same contexts the same way regardless of the individuals involved. Which is exactly the opposite of objectivity. The problem with those is precisely that they are non-objective; they only seem, subjectively, good to a few people, disregarding any concern for consistency or neutrality, i.e. objectivity.

Doing no harm is easy enough, but is it better to do good than do no harm, is it better to do good for 10 and harm 1 than do no harm, etc., etc. [...] You have existence, and you have freedom, and there is no telling what you should do with it. [...] Your morality is what you do with the choices you're given [...] And whatever you do, this is you, making you as you go along, and as long as you're not antisocial (and most people with power still are) and fall into the group above, there's no should. — Kenosha Kid

This is where modal (with a d, not an r) reasoning becomes important. On my account of morality, doing good (rather than just no harm) is only a supererogatory good: it is not obligatory. Supererogatory goods, I remind you, are the moral equivalent of contingent truths, just as obligation is the moral equivalent of necessity. Something contingent is non-necessary, it is possibly not; and something supererogatory is non-obligatory, it is permissibly not. But contingent things can still be true or false, and supererogatory things can still be good or bad.



So it sounds like we are in agreement. You are not obligated to do goods above and beyond simply not doing harm. There are many things that are permissible. Just like any truth that isn't logically necessary is merely possible: it might be true, but it might not. But we can still say, of the many possibilities, which are more likely than others; and some of them will in actuality be false, even though they were possible. And likewise, of the many permissible courses of action, we can say which are (morally) riskier than others, more probably going to end up bad; and some of them will in actuality be bad, even though they were permissible.

Greek epoche = postmodernism

It's a boogeyman as it lurks behind all sincere claims. — schopenhauer1

'Lurks behind' is nice, as it suggests the repression of an internal boogeyman.