If you can't understand when an argument is refuted discussion is pointless. — Wayfarer
The argument is that a ceramic frog (or a train in the interview quoted) is objectively different — Bradskii
What is being called into question is the notion of the 'observer-independence' of the objective domain. — Wayfarer
I completely accept that what we see is not necessarily an accurate representation of objective reality. But that's internal to us. — Bradskii
What changes could there have been to that objective reality that we could propose? — Bradskii
Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxies—but all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation. This is the way the early universe was before the emergence of life—and the way the present universe is outside the view of any observer. — Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order
If it’s conscious agents all the way down, all first-person points of view, what happens to science? Science has always been a third-person description of the world.
Donald Hoffman: The idea that what we’re doing is measuring publicly accessible objects, the idea that objectivity results from the fact that you and I can measure the same object in the exact same situation and get the same results — it’s very clear from quantum mechanics that that idea has to go. Physics tells us that there are no public physical objects. So what’s going on? Here’s how I think about it. I can talk to you about my headache and believe that I am communicating effectively with you, because you’ve had your own headaches. The same thing is true as apples and the moon and the sun and the universe. Just like you have your own headache, you have your own moon. But I assume it’s relevantly similar to mine. That’s an assumption that could be false, but that’s the source of my communication, and that’s the best we can do in terms of public physical objects and objective science.
Treating quantum mechanics as a single-user theory resolves a lot of the paradoxes, like spooky action at a distance.
Yes, but in a way that a lot of people find troubling. The usual story of Bell’s theorem is that it tells us the world must be nonlocal. That there really is spooky action at a distance. So they solved one mystery by adding a pretty damn big mystery! What is this nonlocality? Give me a full theory of it. My fellow QBists and I instead think that what Bell’s theorem really indicates is that the outcomes of measurements are experiences, not revelations of something that’s already there. Of course others think that we gave up on science as a discipline, because we talk about subjective degrees of belief. But we think it solves all of the foundational conundrums.
Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds — Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order
There's a similar principle in biology concerning the protein hyperspace. That refers to the possible ways that amino acids can be combined, only a very small number of which will actually produce a protein. The numbers there also are astronomically minute. — Wayfarer
I know this may be difficult to accept, but that is also the point at issue. You're speaking from a position of naive realism (no pejorative intended, it's a textbook description) which assumes the reality of the objective world (or the sensory domain, call it what you will). But precisely that has been called into question in the history of philosophy, and certainly also by more recent cognitive science and the philosophy of physics. It doesn't mean that reality is all in your or in my mind, but that the mind - yours, mine, everyone's - provides a foundational element of what we designate as real, but which we're not aware of, because it is largely unconscious, it mainly comprises automatic (or autonomic) processes. One version of this argument is The Evolutionary Argument against Reality, by Donald Hoffman - particularly apt because it is (purportedly) based on evolutionary theory. It actually ties in with some of what Robert Lanza says (although they're very different theorists.) — Wayfarer
I was interested in this so I looked on the web. — T Clark
I've made the case many times that objective reality and materialism are metaphysics, not physics. They also are very useful. — T Clark
I'm not assuming that physical laws exist. They do. And everything is determined by them. Why those laws exist as they do is an interesting question. — Bradskii
:100:Saying physical laws exist somehow out in the universe somewhere without people is just old fashioned idealism. That doesn't mean it's wrong, it means it's metaphysics, not science. — T Clark
:100:Science is predominantly a method of acquiring knowledge but is not a worldview per se. In fact part of the implication of scientific scepticism is that it should not be taken as a worldview. — Wayfarer
The objective reality you propose is a creation of the mind. Of course the moon and the universe existed in some way before your existence, but the way in which it existed is entirely unintelligible, completely meaningless.
Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxies—but all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation. This is the way the early universe was before the emergence of life—and the way the present universe is outside the view of any observer.
— Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order — Wayfarer
Donald Hoffman: The idea that what we’re doing is measuring publicly accessible objects, the idea that objectivity results from the fact that you and I can measure the same object in the exact same situation and get the same results — it’s very clear from quantum mechanics that that idea has to go.
Treating quantum mechanics as a single-user theory resolves a lot of the paradoxes, like spooky action at a distance.
Yes, but in a way that a lot of people find troubling. The usual story of Bell’s theorem is that it tells us the world must be nonlocal. That there really is spooky action at a distance. So they solved one mystery by adding a pretty damn big mystery! What is this nonlocality? Give me a full theory of it. My fellow QBists and I instead think that what Bell’s theorem really indicates is that the outcomes of measurements are experiences, not revelations of something that’s already there. Of course others think that we gave up on science as a discipline, because we talk about subjective degrees of belief. But we think it solves all of the foundational conundrums.
This is categorically wrong. In thinking that red, for example, only exists if there is someone around who decides it's red. But we don't do that. What we decide is that objects that emit a wavelength around 700nm we shall describe to each other with a particular sound we can make with our vocal chords. And scratch a few runes on a suitable material to represent that sound. But whether anyone observes the colour of the object, it still emits wavelengths at that frequency. — Bradskii
I read about it in Simon Conway-Morris' book, Life's Solution. — Wayfarer
Scientific materialism arises precisely in the attempt to apply scientific method to the problems of philosophy. Science is predominantly a method of acquiring knowledge but is not a worldview per se. In fact part of the implication of scientific scepticism is that it should not be taken as a worldview. — Wayfarer
Richard Dawkins has time and time again, stated during interviews/lectures/debates etc that any emulation of Darwinian rules within human society, is vile. — universeness
But he wrote a book could the Selfish Gene and in it he specifically tried to put the worst interpretation on altruism because he was determined to make altruism ultimately self serving and for the good of the Gene and found self sacrifice problematic and puzzling. — Andrew4Handel
He clearly has wanted people to accept his model of evolution and the negative ideas found in his books regardless of what else he has said. — Andrew4Handel
No, the bible is fable based. Dawkins books are fact based.He is like the Bible. — Andrew4Handel
The problem is that a theory that has a notion of survival of the fittest, selection, fitness, competition, hierarchies, selfishness etc built in to explain biological success has innate negative connotations. — Andrew4Handel
It means they are saying that anything going against these trends is undermining biological viability or success and health which is exactly what Darwin himself said in a quote I cited. — Andrew4Handel
Saying physical laws exist somehow out in the universe somewhere without people is just old fashioned idealism. — T Clark
How is that idealism? You meant realism, yes? — Mikie
He clearly has wanted people to accept his model of evolution and the negative ideas found in his books regardless of what else he has said. — Andrew4Handel
How is that idealism? You meant realism, yes? — Mikie
I'd concur. For example, a body will remain at rest or continue in motion at a constant speed until it is acted upon by some force. — Bradskii
I call it idealism because it claims that there is some sort of abstract entity in the universe independent of actual phenomena. — T Clark
Dawkins himself, explaining in no uncertain terms, that your comment above is wrong. My guess is that you haven't read the book. — Bradskii
Philosophers and humanists are interested in what has been called, in 20th-century continental philosophy, the human condition, that is, a sense of uneasiness that human beings may feel about their own existence and the reality that confronts them (as in the case of modernity with all its changes in the proximate environment of humans and corresponding changes in their modes of existence).
Scientists are more interested in human nature. If they discover that human nature doesn’t exist and human beings are, like cells, merely parts of a bigger aggregate, to whose survival they contribute, and all they feel and think is just a matter of illusion (a sort of Matrix scenario), then, as far as science is concerned, that’s it, and science should go on investigating humans by considering this new fact about their nature.
"Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: 'Have they discovered evolution yet?'"
Based on this comment he appears to be asserting that evolution is the only way for life to come into existence. — Andrew4Handel
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