Actually, facts themselves are ultimately subjectively conditioned inasmuch as they always represent one specific perspective. Scientific facts epitomize this. A scientific fact is always an abstraction from a holistic natural state to isolate some particular elements within a particular experimental perspective. It has been said, we murder in order to dissect. And we do it continuously. Only a perspective which was completely free of intention would be truly objective. But then it would not be a perspective.

This line of thinking reads (to me) a bit like the perceiver was somehow apart from it all.
Self and other aren't identical, yet both are parts of the same inter-mingling world.

how to perceive objective information, when subjectivity (its antithesis) lies in perception? — Marax

The Buddha recommended cultivating the non-perspective of No-Self. Although some are put-off by the paradoxical notion of Nirvana (extinguishment, non-existence), the practical task was to relinquish the Ego (self perspective) --- at least temporarily --- and to identify (become one) with the Cosmos : a universal perspective. I suspect that few humans have actually achieved Nirvana, but some meditators and drug-users have reported an Oceanic Feeling of Oneness with the whole world. Whether that results in practical wisdom is hard to prove. But it's one way to deal with the subjective-objective dilemma you are struggling with. :smile:

Oceanic Feeling : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_feeling

As perception is the recognition of something already learned, then, how to perceive objective information, when subjectivity (its antithesis) lies in perception? — Marax

As soon as you mention perception you've already divided the world into the objective and the subjective. SO don't pretend that this division is a conclusion rather than an assumption; and don't conclude that all you have is the subjective.

...and yet the ball falls down. The funny thing about facts, scientific or otherwise, is that they are true.

↪Pantagruel ...and yet the ball falls down. The funny thing about facts, scientific or otherwise, is that they are true. — Banno

More to the point, they are approximately true....

...approximately... — Pantagruel

What is it you think this word does, here?

What is it you think this word does, here? — Banno

Qualifies the sense of "true" to match my earlier comments, that it is a perspective, and a reduction, or an approximation, rather than an absolute.

Information perceived is not the same as knowledge obtained; the former only makes the latter possible. Recognition of someone’s knowledge represented by one’s perception of information put forth by him, only says that he knows something, but does not relate what he knows. One must still go through his own internal process to obtain congruent knowledge, all else being given.

Besides.....it is entirely possible for me to perceive unfamiliar information not forwarded by anyone, hence unrecognizable as already learned by anybody else, and certainly not by me. The most I can say under such condition, it is possible that information may have been already learned and I just haven’t had the occassion to recognize it as such.

Methinks ‘tis a slight case of “misplaced concreteness”, I do.

Only a perspective which was completely free of intention would be truly objective. But then it would not be a perspective. — Pantagruel

Sounds like a koan.

What is the view of no view viewed?

How is it that there is no thing in the "thing-in-itself"?

Only a perspective which was completely free of intention would be truly objective. But then it would not be a perspective.
— Pantagruel

Sounds like a koan.

What is the view of no view viewed?

How is it that there is no thing in the "thing-in-itself"? — Nils Loc

Nothingness coiled in the heart of being? A lot of eastern philosophy I have read involves concepts like "passive volition" or "no mind". It may be something that you can actually "do" more effectively than you can encapsulate it with reason. Performance knowledge vs conceptual?

As perception is the recognition of something already learned, then, how to perceive objective information, when subjectivity (its antithesis) lies in perception? — Marax

That is the point of Buddhist meditation. Not necessarily to achieve absolute Objectivity, but to "approximate" (Pantagruel) an Other's perception (judgment) of your own behavior. Unfortunately, as Nils Loc noted, "there is no thing in the ding-an-sich", and no subjective Self in Non-Self. :joke:

SO, sometimes the ball falls up?

Sure.

As perception is the recognition of something already learned, then, how to perceive objective information, when subjectivity (its antithesis) lies in perception? — Marax

Indeed, juxtaposing object and subject leads to incoherence.

So don't do it.

↪Pantagruel SO, sometimes the ball falls up?

Sure. — Banno

Why did I know that was coming?

It's context (frame) relative. If you are standing at the antipodes of the globe, and the ball is dropped, then what is it's direction, relative to you? Everything is true within a specific context.

Indeed, juxtaposing object and subject leads to incoherence.

So don't do it. — Banno

Except that objectivity and subjectivity are inextricably bound and form the basis of the world as we know it.

If you are standing at the antipodes of the globe, and the ball is dropped, then what is it's direction, relative to you? — Pantagruel

Zing!

Neat rhetoric. Well done.

Except that objectivity and subjectivity are inextricably bound and form the basis of the world as we know it. — Pantagruel

That's an interesting assumption. Nothing more.

As perception is the recognition of something already learned, then, how to perceive objective information, when subjectivity (its antithesis) lies in perception? — Marax

One point to consider is that perception is possible because it is the brain forming a model of the world with "you" in it.

The brain is not trying to see the world "as it is" in some actually objective sense. That would be silly and useless.

Instead, it is learning to construct a point of view in which "you" are being experienced as being an actor in a "world" that makes sense in terms of all that you could do (or not do).

So in one sense, it is all subjective - the idealist trope. There is only the model in your head. The model that is of "you" in your "world". But it is also all objective. There is actually the world. And now there is also this further objective fact of a creature with a brain and a set of intentions, running about doing material things in causally effective fashion. The self may be an idea - the construction of a viewpoint - but there are physicalist consequences that flow from the reality modelling.

This is the view of perception that is now standard in the enactive or embodied approach to cognition.

An act of perception has to make the two things of the world that is being seen and the self that is the anchoring locus of that seeing.

The fact that both are a dynamical construction - two aspects of the one co-construction - can be demonstrated by what happens to you in a sensory deprivation chamber. A lack of feedback from the world also results in a depersonalisation of the self. Our physical boundaries disappear when we no longer feel the world in resistance to our actions.

So perception is the act that leads to a stable seeming world and a stable seeming self as the two sides of the same process of constructing a "meaningful point of view". A model of the world with us as its centre.

And that is why in perception the useful "information" is not objective. It is really a semiotic system of sign. The sensory system is set up from the get-go to deliver only the differences that make a difference.

The brain has a model of the world in terms of what it has learnt to expect. And so it is then primed only to react to the physical events - the patterns of sensory energy - that could count as unpredicted and surprising.

So this is another reversal on the usual view that the brain is a computer that must crunch its input - that objective physical information.

In fact it processes the world the other way round. It has already decided how the world should be if nothing surprising or meaningfully different happens. And from that very self-centred perspective, anything actually novel or unexpected must leap out as the aspect of reality to quickly analyse and assimilate as best as possible to the running model of the self~world relationship.

So the self predicts the world. The world is perceived ahead of time at the level of a perceptual habit or expectation. And then the act of perception is completed by a discovery of what failed to be foreseen and now has to be assimilated to re-stabilise that sense of being in the world as a causally-effective agent.

Perception is more about filtering out the actual world - as that blooming, buzzing, indeterminate confusion - so as to construct a perfectly self-centred point of view where there is a world that makes complete sense in terms of our intentionality or agency.

Perception is as much a business of making an intelligible self, as making an intelligible world, in short.

That's an interesting assumption. Nothing more. — Banno

For you, it's an assumption. For me, it's definitive of the ongoing experience of reality. I guess we each have our own truths. Mine fits with my understanding, I'm sure yours fits with yours.

Perception is as much a business of making an intelligible self, as making an intelligible world, in short. — apokrisis

Nicely put.

Mine fits with my understanding, I'm sure yours fits with yours. — Pantagruel

Heh heh. The flat earther is the ultimate naive realist. Their point of view is the most subjective possible. It avoids all revisionist fact.

That's an interesting assumption. Nothing more. — Banno

As I have argued, it seems more like basic psychological science. Understanding cognition and "truth making" has been a major human endeavour of the last 100 years.

So I am curious. What is your actual model of the psychological processes that are in play when we utter propositions that speak of the world? Show by telling how you are not merely making the familiar errors of the naive realist.

Psychology feels it has it well worked out. What is it that you dispute and why?

As perception is the recognition of something already learned, then, how to perceive objective information, when subjectivity (its antithesis) lies in perception?

Thanks for posting your question Marax. I think the assumption in your first clause is incorrect. There are innate mechanisms for processing sense data, which are acting even absent learning. While you will not be able to classify or know what you are seeing if you haven't previously learned it, you will see it. And there is a layer of 'objective' data embedded within what is being perceived. Even if it's been modified from top-down

I wonder, at what point does the agreement, "there is a truth," degenerate into the disagreement "this is the truth?"

I wonder, at what point does the agreement, "there is a truth," degenerate into the disagreement "this is the truth?" — Pantagruel

The Peircean answer is when it becomes "my truth" rather than "our truth".

Language binds us as social animals to a collective identity, a communal point of view, a culturally-constructed model of "the self". So "truth" becomes that to which a community of inquirers practising practical reasoning would tend.

The community of inquiry is broadly defined as any group of individuals involved in a process of empirical or conceptual inquiry into problematic situations. This concept was novel in its emphasis on the social quality and contingency of knowledge formation in the sciences, contrary to the Cartesian model of science, which assumes a fixed, unchanging reality that is objectively knowable by rational observers. The community of inquiry emphasizes that knowledge is necessarily embedded within a social context and, thus, requires intersubjective agreement among those involved in the process of inquiry for legitimacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_inquiry

Pragmatism navigates the middle path between the extremes of relativism and positivism, or idealism and realism.

The Peircean answer is when it becomes "my truth" rather than "our truth".

Language binds us as social animals to a collective identity, a communal point of view, a culturally-constructed model of "the self". So "truth" becomes that to which a community of inquirers practising practical reasoning would tend.

The community of inquiry is broadly defined as any group of individuals involved in a process of empirical or conceptual inquiry into problematic situations. This concept was novel in its emphasis on the social quality and contingency of knowledge formation in the sciences, contrary to the Cartesian model of science, which assumes a fixed, unchanging reality that is objectively knowable by rational observers. The community of inquiry emphasizes that knowledge is necessarily embedded within a social context and, thus, requires intersubjective agreement among those involved in the process of inquiry for legitimacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_inquiry

Pragmatism navigates the middle path between the extremes of relativism and positivism, or idealism and realism. — apokrisis

Yes, this fits very closely with the social philosophers I have been reading, Mead and Parsons certainly.

There are innate mechanisms for processing sense data, which are acting even absent learning. — aporiap

In fact a huge amount of learning must take place for a new-born brain to be able to "process" the world in intelligible fashion.

This blog posts describes one of the classic experiments showing both that the brain does need to learn its robust perceptual habits, and that forming an embedded model of the self is a large part of what has to be learnt...

https://blogpsychology.wordpress.com/core-studies/cognitive-psychology/development-of-visually-guided-behaviour/

Sure there are also simple reflex pathways established by birth. But that isn't really what people mean by "perception". It's not going to produce qualitative states of experience - a running model of a self~world relationship.

And even these brainstem and midbrain level instinctual reactions involve a learning process. In the womb, a baby is still exposed to touch, taste, smell, sound and even a dim degree of light. There is adaptation going on.

But in human babies especially, we are born with the cortex - the higher brain - largely unconnected, just a mass of neurons that then grow a thicket of synaptic connections in speculative fashion. At birth, the cortex is still adding neurons at the rate of quarter a million a minute.

Then as the infant starts to interact with its world - when it gets the opportunity to be a self in opposition to a recalcitrant reality - things go the other way. A jungle of connections gets massively pruned to carve out the "sense data processing" habits of an organised brain. The pathways are created by cutting away the great excess of connectivity.

EEG recordings of infant brains show this in action. Even showing something as simple as a defraction grating - a grid of black on white lines - will cause many neurons to fire in the newborn visual cortex. Every cells reports it is seeing something, and so no cells are seeing anything in particular. The response is generaisedl no matter how fat or thin the grid of lines happens to be.

But rapidly, as connections are pared back, the brain response becomes sharply specific. Now only a few cells react to gratings of a certain spacing. The clamour has gone. The brain can discriminate gratings according to the relative thickness or thinness of the lines.

So a newborn has a basic start, for sure. But it has to then tune in to the world (and the body) in which it finds itself. It has to learn to makes sense of itself in an embodied fashion.

When you think about it, how could our genes dictate the exact positioning of every neuron let alone its every connection? Genes can only regulate bursts of growth, bursts of pruning. So learning is a part of neurodevelopment. What is innate is then the general propensity to be able to develop a model of the self in the world that underlies the process we call perception.

Yes, this fits very closely with the social philosophers I have been reading, Mead and Parsons certainly. — Pantagruel

Hah, that takes me back. Symbolic interactionism!

After the standard indoctrination into the psych department cults of behaviourism and cognitivism, at last stuff that started to make sense. I stumbled on to Vygotskian psychology at the same time - his suppressed works only finally getting English publication.

And then after another decade, Peirce also was dug up from the grave. It became possible to see how he had got to the guts of it first.

Vygotsky looks good. Interesting how these sociocultural models of action seem to create a mutually coherent structure. The Parsons I'm reading is actually his interpretation of Marshall, Pareto, and Durkheim, so kind of a synthesis.

I've been thinking that it isn't so much that theories are "true" as that they are cohesive and coherent, both internally and externally. So what we are really doing in learning more and different theories is building up a vocabulary of descriptions that allow us to progressively better conceptualize and communicate abstract concepts. Like your description of perception, making an intelligible self and making an intelligible world.