Our theories tells us about how the world might be in itself. — John
Any understanding of how the world could be in itself in accordance with our theories can only ever be given in terms of how the world appears to us, and so would be, utterly speculative. — John
So you mean ... exactly what I said then?
Ie: Holism is four cause modelling, reductionism is just the two. And simpler can be better when humans merely want to impose their own formal and final causality on a world of material/efficient possibility. However it is definitely worse when instead our aim is to explain "the whole of things" - as when stepping back to account for the cosmos, the atom and the mind. — apokrisis
That's what allows thought, and life. — tom
Except what if there is nothing besides nature as it appears to us? — Agustino
Only if you accept a noumenon/phenomenon distinction. — Agustino
Well I can conceive of flying pigs too - are flying pigs therefore important? :P — Agustino
The question makes little sense to my mind. Things can only disappear or appear for perceivers.do you believe that nature would disappear if humans were wiped out? — John
Yes, but for the world to exist it doesn't need to appear to someone. This doesn't mean the world is noumenal at all though.It is generally understood that there was a world long before there were humans, but of course we can only imagine that as though we were seeing it. — John
The world-in-itself is ultimately no different than the phenomenal world. We see the world as it is - there is no world other than the world as we perceive it. Before we existed, the world existed just as it exists now - the only difference is that now there exists someone to perceive it.So, if the Earth and its mountains, rivers, plants and animals etc. existed prior to humans, how would that not qualify as, despite our inability to imagine it as other than how we would see those things, the Earth and its creatures in themselves? — John
I can't see why [the noumenon/phenomenon distinction is] not a perfectly valid distinction.
...
But it is equally unimaginable that there was not what would appear to us as the Earth. So, if the Earth and its mountains, rivers, plants and animals etc. existed prior to humans, how would that not qualify as, despite our inability to imagine it as other than how we would see those things, the Earth and its creatures in themselves? — John
Right so when human beings will disappear, the Earth will disappear even though there are no perceivers left for which it can disappear right? :-} Appearing and disappearing are events of perception, they are not ontological. To say the Earth is just a phenomenal thing - just something which appears - is incoherent. The Earth is exactly THAT which appears or disappears depending on the perceiver opening or closing his eyes, etc. The Earth as that which can both appear and disappear is independent of the perceiver.It might be that the Earth just is the phenomenal thing and not the noumenal thing. — Michael
To say the Earth is just a phenomenal thing - just something which appears - is incoherent. The Earth is exactly THAT which appears or disappears depending on the perceiver opening or closing his eyes, etc. The Earth as that which can both appear and disappear is independent of the perceiver. — Agustino
Yes, pain is something that is always there when there's the specific firing of certain neurons. Whether one is conscious of this pain is different, and that depends on whether a state of consciousness is present in the mind of the person experiencing pain. If I'm hit with a ball in the head and I have a concussion, while I'm knocked out it isn't that I'm not in pain, but that I don't perceive the pain - my perception has ceased, but the world goes on, unperceived. That's why when I wake up, I wake up feeling the pain.It's not clear to me what you mean by saying that the Earth is that which appears or disappears depending on the perceiver opening or closing his eyes. I would say the same of pain – pain is that which appears or disappears depending on the firing of certain neurons. But given that it doesn't then follow from this that the pain is something that's always there, independent of perception, that only sometimes happens to be felt, it doesn't then follow from what you said that the Earth is something that's always there, independent of perception, that only sometimes happens to be seen. So there's something missing in your claim. — Michael
The mass of the Earth in and of itself isn't sufficient to cause a perception. Perception is the result of the Earth and of your cognitive faculties together - it's two aspects of reality meeting that results in perception. But both aspects are real prior to perception.It seems to me that you want to reduce the Earth to the mass of particles out there in space that is causally responsible for the experience of the Earth. But to me that's akin to reducing pain to the neurons in my brain that are causally responsible for the experience of pain. — Michael
Perception is the result of the Earth and of your cognitive faculties together - it's two aspects of reality meeting that results in perception. But both aspects are real prior to perception. — Agustino
Yes I am aware that Kant thinks so, but his assumption must be questioned."Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ... that is impossible." — Wayfarer
How do we know that time is only a form of the sensibility? Isn't the sensibility itself within time? In fact, it seems that time itself is presupposed even to get the sensibility itself working. There can be no sensation without time - so not only is time something that structures sensation, time is also something which makes sensation itself possible.The objector has not understood the fact that time is one of the forms of sensibility. The earth as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry...; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the room in which one is sitting. — Wayfarer
My argument is not that the world doesn't exist in the absence of any or all observers, but that whatever we can say we know about what exists, presupposes a perspective. Even if that is mathematicized, which effectively eliminates purely individual perspectives and gives a kind of 'weighted average' of all points of view, it's still an irreducibly human point of view, which is inextricably an aspect of whatever we say exists. — Wayfarer
The objector has not understood the fact that time is one of the forms of sensibility. — Wayfarer
But, what exists 'beyond perception'? And, what does 'duration' comprise? It might seem obvious, but in order for time to exist, there has to be sense of scale. Humans conceive of time in terms of the rotation of the earth around the sun, which gives them days and years - everything is measured by us in those terms. But what if you perceived it from the point of view of a being that lived for a million years? Or a being that lived for an infinitesmal instant? Those scales would be vastly different to the human scale - which is real? — Wayfarer
My argument is not that the world doesn't exist in the absence of any or all observers, but that whatever we can say we know about what exists, presupposes a perspective. Even if that is mathematicized, which effectively eliminates purely individual perspectives and gives a kind of 'weighted average' of all points of view, it's still an irreducibly human point of view, which is inextricably an aspect of whatever we say exists. — Wayfarer
This is a view of the "block universe" in which time just is another dimension akin to the three spatial dimensions. — Pierre-Normand
Such a view of the universe can't of course mesh with our view of the world as a source of possible objects of experience. Kant argues in the Analogies of Experience (in his CPR) that an empirical experience can't have an objective purport if it doesn't potentially rationally bear on other experiences. (Wilfrid Sellars also argued for this in his Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind currently being discussed in another thread). And this is only possible if we can distinguish the successive experiences of a single thing that has changed from the simultaneous experiences of two separately existing things. — Pierre-Normand
Measuring time only becomes possible after time already exists. It's not measurement that makes time possible, but time that makes measurement possible. So no - humans don't conceive of time because of measurements or rotations... So why do they then conceive of time? Because of motion - activity - becoming. The notion of time is nothing more and nothing less than an abstraction extracted from change. Change gives the concept of time - this was so now, and it isn't so later. Without change, there is no time.And, what does 'duration' comprise? It might seem obvious, but in order for time to exist, there has to be sense of scale. Humans conceive of time in terms of the rotation of the earth around the sun, which gives them days and years - everything is measured by us in those terms. — Wayfarer
All scales are equally real, since they map the same underlying reality. If X is equal to 3 x 30mm rulers in so and so circumstances, that is the same thing as saying X is equal to 9 x 10mm rulers in so and so circumstances - or even that X is equal to 1 x 30mm rulers if its traveling very quickly. A giant will have a ruler which is equal to 10 of mine maybe. Asking which scale is real, his or mine, is stupid though. They're both equally real.But what if you perceived it from the point of view of a being that lived for a million years? Or a being that lived for an infinitesmal instant? Those scales would be vastly different to the human scale - which is real? — Wayfarer
That is just a mental model, not reality itself. Mathematical models are just that - models. And of course you can't picture it from no viewpoint - that would entail being transcendent to reality, and you're not. You're immanent.In it, things have relationships, and scales. You can't picture it from no viewpoint, because from no viewpoint, nothing is large or small, near or far, long-lasting or ephemeral. — Wayfarer
Not only. I daily experience my mind being dependent on the world.The only reason you think the mind presupposes the world, is because you yourself know you were born into the world. — Wayfarer
Yes, there are only immanent explanations, not transcendent ones, thank you for finally coming to the realisation X-) Surely, conceptual knowledge presupposes that one is embedded within reality - and not transcendent to it.My argument is not that the world doesn't exist in the absence of any or all observers, but that whatever we can say we know about what exists, presupposes a perspective. Even if that is mathematicized, which effectively eliminates purely individual perspectives and gives a kind of 'weighted average' of all points of view, it's still an irreducibly human point of view, which is inextricably an aspect of whatever we say exists. — Wayfarer
Sean Carroll's block universe, as he conceives it, within which time just is an objective parameter, doesn't contain any planet because this conception lack any criterion according to which some set of "particles" does or does no make up a "planet" in any specific space-like slice of his "objective" (so called) universe. — Pierre-Normand
The idea that two distinct objects have "simultaneous experiences" is what, in the past, grounded our notion of objective existence. This gave us the notion that distinct things had something in common, the experience of time passing. This thing which they have in common was called existing. The precepts of special relativity do not necessitate that we dismiss this objectivity in favour of the block universe. — Metaphysician Undercover
What special relativity indicates is that there is vagueness with respect to "simultaneous experience". How we understand "simultaneous experience" greatly influences how we produce laws of physics. So there is variance within the laws of physics depending on one's interpretation of simultaneous experience.
Except of course, it is the very theory that reveals the block-universe to us - i.e. that the B-Theory of time is true - that explains the formation of planets and correctly predicts their orbits. — tom
This picture of complete determinacy of the future (given some fully determinate specification of energies and momenta in some space-like surface), of course, rubs against the indeterminacy inherent to QM — Pierre-Normand
Only through endorsing a time-independent formalism can you attempt to reconcile QM with the block-universe view, as you are wont to do. But this is to gloss over the measurement problem of QM and the fact that the measurement operators carry over the time-dependence of actual measurements (e.g. though specifying the time-evolving basis of the projection of the time-invariant state vector.) — Pierre-Normand
There is no measurement problem in realist no-collapse QM. — tom
It is important to recognize that the Earth is a potential object of experience of a distinctive formal kind. It is an enduring substance. As such, it doesn't exist qua object of experience independently of the specific substance concept that it is taken to falls under -- e.g. the concept of a rocky planet -- which specifies its conditions of persistence and individuation. Those conditions are tied up with the concept and aren't independent of our interests in individuating it thus. — Pierre-Normand
MWI's main conclusion is that the universe (or multiverse in this context) is composed of a quantum superposition of very many, possibly even non-denumerably infinitely many, increasingly divergent, non-communicating parallel universes or quantum worlds.
Measuring time only becomes possible after time already exists. — Agustino
Measurement is simply comparing one aspect of reality with another - a ruler with a desk (when measuring the desk). So the fact that measurement uses scales - and necessarily does so - proves immanentism and denies all transcendentalism as incoherent. — Agustino
That is just a mental model, not reality itself. — Agustino
thank you for finally coming to the realisation.... — Agustino
I notice that two of Sebastian Rödl's books are available in my University library, and thanks for alerting me to him. — Wayfarer
...the subject of the criticism by Sellars in his essay 'the myth of the given'. — Wayfarer
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