Roughly, I'm not convinced you've made any progress toward removing us from your conceptions. — Srap Tasmaner
There is no need for things, that's the point Descartes made. All that is required is that we have similar perceptions — Metaphysician Undercover
And, if someone tried to argue that the earth was actually spinning instead, this person was wrong, or incorrect, as not obeying the convention. — Metaphysician Undercover
I'm talking about the unobserved aspect of rocks — Janus
I didn't mean to say that I can imagine, as in visualize — Janus
I can imagine that objects have attributes that cannot be observed, and that are not dependent on being observed. — Janus
I can't imagine a particular rock without imagining it in terms of perceptible attributes, but I can imagine that a rock could exist without anyone perceiving it. — Janus
The most I would say is that whatever that existence is, it reliably gives rise to the spatiotemporal in-common perception of individuated objects. — Janus
:up:If the mental cannot be explained in terms of the physical then the physical cannot be explained in terms of the mental. — Fooloso4
In other words, a map (analysis ~ respresentation) is not informationally equivalent to its territory (experience) because a territory (experience) isBut the point of the hard problem of consciousness argument is precisely that no amount of objective analysis can capture the first-person experience. — Wayfarer
So your intention was to say that the existence of the rock is an attribute of it that is not dependent on being observed. — Srap Tasmaner
(Around here was where I mentioned Hume's suggestion that we seem only to think things as existing, which leaves open a question about whether existence is merely, as it were, an element of how we conceive things.) — Srap Tasmaner
so it's one of the properties we can still safely attribute to unobserved objects. — Srap Tasmaner
My point is still that you're trying to bracket the "observedness" of the object, while depending on it completely to say anything at all, which means you haven't really bracketed it at all. — Srap Tasmaner
The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers.
Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time looses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe.
So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271
But the answer I was looking for was: you can’t find it, because it’s not there. The perspective is always outside. — Wayfarer
So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271
Data is not built, it is the raw material. What is built is interpretation, what the data means - that is the difference between data and information. — Wayfarer
That makes conventions sound every bit as solid and consistent as any rock or table. — Srap Tasmaner
I still have no idea what point you are attempting to make. — Janus
My point was that the hard problem can only be accounted for by an obscurity, — Bob Ross
If someone says that eating rattlesnake is like eating chicken, I know what the experience of eating a rattlesnake will be like. — RogueAI
But that line of reasoning is untenable. There is no way to compare noumena and phenomena in order to determine that the one is not the other.
— creativesoul
But I know that my perception of the tree is not the tree, right? My perceptions are constituted by phenomena: sights, sounds, tactile sensations and so on, but the tree is not merely a sight, or a sound (say wind in the leaves) or a tactile sensation (say the feel of its bark) or the sum of those. Can I not be said to know that without knowing what the tree is as it is in its unperceived status? — Janus
Can I not be said to know that without knowing what the tree is as it is in its unperceived status? — Janus
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