Emergent consciousness is certainly a fact psychologically. We develope in stages thru life. The philosophical aspect is different for me. — Gregory
The self is certainly a substance in that the human body is a substance. — Gregory
I wasn't talking about geocentrists, I was commenting on the plain facts about the rising and setting of the sun and the stars. This is the stuff of astronomy textbooks, not to mention thousands of years of observations by people all around the world. I don't know what is not veridical about that. Yes, this is a description of appearances. — SophistiCat
Are implying that there is a world beyond appearances that can somehow be known? — SophistiCat
Is that what you are referring to by the honorific 'a correct description of (external) reality as it is'? — SophistiCat
Are you saying the self is a substance or not? — Gregory
he never quite let it be known how it does what it does, which, obviously, relates precisely to what it is, or at the very least, to what it is conceived as being. — Mww
….God must exist. — Gregory
To the animal mind, the world is subdivided into separate, discrete things. Without a separation into independent parts, nothing would be comprehensible, there could be no understanding, and thought would not be possible. Common sense has us believe that the world really does consist of separate objects exactly as we see it, for we suppose that nature comes to us ready-carved. But in fact, the animal visual system does such a thorough job of partitioning the visual array into familiar objects, that it is impossible for us to look at a scene and not perceive it as composed of separate things.
Every species of living creature has its own mental segmentation of the world, that is, its own way of cutting up the perceived world into varied and separate things. Humans, no less than other animals, carve up the world in a certain way into objects, features, categories, natural forces, all of which constitute their reality*. The way we divide our environment into objects and other things circumscribes and determines our way of life as well as the way we see reality. Such a segmentation of reality is formed gradually over evolutionary time and is part of every species’ genotype.
A scheme of segmentation is a way that the world is carved up into component parts. However, segmenting reality is more than merely cutting it up into pieces. The most significant part of segmenting the world is picking out those objects that are important and relevant to us**. Such objects are individuated, that is, made to exist in our world model. The same is true in other species: The objects that have been individuated are then recognized by members of the species, who learn how to act appropriately toward them.
To individuate a chunk of the world is to grant it recognition as an existing thing. It is not only material objects that are individuated, but also categories of objects, kinds of events, things people do, and so on. These become parts of our version of reality, and are inserted into our world model. There are countless different ways that reality can be divided up into parts, and the one selected for us is our scheme of individuation, or scheme of segmentation. — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why this Insight Transforms Physics (pp. 67-68).
"The Sun and the stars move from east to west" is a good descriptions of appareances. In this sense, it is 'true' and 'valid', yes.
The problem is the interpretation that we give to that statement. The ancient and medieval geocentrists clearly implied that such a statement described the 'external world as it is': the apparent motion of the celestial objects, to them, wasn't a mere appearance but the 'real motion' of the celestial objects.
They clearly didn't consider their model as a mere 'predictive model' but as an accurate description of the 'external world as it is'.
BTW, clearly we still use a 'geocentric model' in our daily lives, for practical purposes. As you say, it correctly describes the appearances. But we recognize, on reflection, that these appearances are mere appearances, so to speak.
So that's why I said that the statement "The Sun and the stars move from east to west" is provisionally/pragmatically true. But if it's interpreted in the way the ancient and medieval geocentrists did, it's false. Their mistake was an incorrect interpretation of appearances.
Do you agree with my analysis? If not, how do you explain the fact that those people were mistaken? — boundless
It is not veridical to claim the stars and Sun orbit the Earth. — AmadeusD
I can't see the * comment, but this is plainly a misuse of 'literally'. If taken 'literally' it is, after investigation, entirely false. If taken as a description of appearances (i.e not to be taken literally) then it goes through. — AmadeusD
The stars and the Sun do orbit the Earth in the earthbound frame — SophistiCat
just not quite the way — SophistiCat
Interesting :up: I just finished researching and reading, Henry P Stapp's work. Might be of interest, I just posted in the Perception thread about this...I saw your comment now, after the fact and was pleased with seeing your refreshing take's throughout this thread.Anatman. Does the brain generate consciousness? Yes. Does the brain generate consciousness? No. Both — Gregory
Me too, I love it all! I'm online reading along quite often :eyes:I enjoy the discussions on this forum very much and although I don't always know where they are leading, there seems to be a pattern — Gregory
No, I still don't know what you mean by 'external world as it is,' in general and specifically in this context. You say that the description is good, but it is not true to the 'external world as it is'. How can we know that? Apparently, not from appearances, since that is what is being described, and the description is good. — SophistiCat
But note that if one accepts that experience is the starting point of knowledge and if one accepts that experience is also the way we 'validate' our judgments, then corrispondence is difficult to maintain.
I can infer something about the 'external world' from my experiences but how can I 'prove' that my inferences are correct? How can I have a certain/true knoledge** of them?
Induction is not compelling. Even if all my experiences were to be consistent with some of my inferences about 'how the world out there should be', then I would still not have a certain, true knowledge. All I can have is a 'best guess'.
But I can still detect errors in judgments. I can still determine that some of my inferences are incorrect if they contradict some of my experience. In other words, while I cannot determine 'truth', I can determine (at least some) 'falsity'. Induction might not be a solid foundation for truth but it is still able to determine the falsity of some judgments.
But of course, this validation that we get from experience doesn't give us true knowledge and so it is not enough for truth (I reject 'coherence theory of truth', because a judgment that is coherent with all experiences is not enough to be called 'true'). So what? I think that, at least philosophically, we should 'suspend judgment' about the 'external world', i.e. the world outside experience. There is no denial here about the 'external world', or how it might be. — boundless
The book this is quoted from is considerably clearer than Hoffman, while also grounded in cognitive science. It makes the sense in which the brain constructs the cognitive arena we call 'the world' much clearer. — Wayfarer
. My point was that we can make a distinction between 'provisional' and 'ultimate' truths without any kind of 'explanation' on the reason why we tend to perceive the way we perceive. — boundless
Of course I agree with you, but then that is a distinction that we both discovered through Buddhist philosophy, whereas most folks on this forum (and I know this from experience!) will treat that with utmost suspicion. I think I’m going to try and write up something on this topic. — Wayfarer
What comes to mind for me is that the argument of the Third Meditation could, or may HAVE been, used by Kant in defense of noumena's existence. The thing-in-itself lives in twilight but it has to be there…. — Gregory
I am under the impression that Kant believed thing in itself or noumena was required for phenomena to appear. — Gregory
Anyway, while I believe that in Buddhist schools the formulation is more clear (after all, in their view it also had a salvific importance), the distinction is also present even in pre-socratic greek philosophers. Parmenides, for instance, developed a version of the 'two truths' doctrine similar to Advaita Vedanta. — boundless
I’ll just say this:
….Kant’s thought is the thing-in-itself was required for the things that appear;
….the thing of the thing-in-itself just is the thing that appears;
….phenomena are not that which appears, but represent things that appear.
….noumena are never even in the conversation, they do nothing, are nothing, and cannot ever be anything, to us. They were never meant to be the same, never meant to be understood as similar or identical, as the thing-in-itself, but were only ever to be treated in the same way, re: as some complete, whole yet entirely unknowable something, by the cognitive system from which they both arise.
…..Kant says things-in-themselves are real existent objects (Bxx), but never once says noumena are anything more than “…a thing which must be cogitated not as an object of sense, but solely through the pure understanding….” (B310). — Mww
No, CFD (counterfactual definiteness) simply implies that physical quantities have definite values at all times. de Broglie Bohm's interpertation is a perfect example of an interpetation which has CFD. MWI violates CFD because it assigns multiple values to hypothetical measurements, so it can be realistic and 'local' (although in a weird sense... after all, what is more nonlocal than a 'universal wavefunction' split at each measurement?). — boundless
So, in your view, if the particle configuration is definite at all times, how can you describe non-local correlations without a non-local dynamics/kinematics which involves some notion of simultaneity? — boundless
Boole’s problem is simple: we are given rational numbers which indicate the relative frequencies of certain events. If no logical relations obtain among the events, then the only constraints imposed on these numbers are that they each be non-negative and less than one. If however, the events are logically interconnected, there are further equalities or inequalities that obtain among the numbers. The problem thus is to determine the numerical relations among frequencies, in terms of equalities and inequalities, which are induced by a set of logical relations among the events. The equalities and inequalities are called “conditions of possible experience”. — Pitowsky
For certain families of events the theory stipulates that they are commeasurable. This means that, in every state, the relative frequencies of all these events can be measured on one single sample. For such families of events, the rules of classical probability — Boole’s conditions in particular — are valid. Other families of events are not commeasurable, so their frequencies must be measured in more than one sample. The events in such families nevertheless exhibit logical relations (given, usually, in terms of algebraic relations among observables). But for some states, the probabilities assigned to the events violate one or more of Boole’s conditions associated with those logical relations.
A violation of Boole’s conditions of possible experience cannot be encountered when all the frequencies concerned have been measured on a single sample. Such a violation simply entails a logical contradiction; ‘observing’ it would be like ‘observing’ a round square. We expect Boole’s conditions to hold even when the frequencies are measured on distinct large random samples. But they are systematically violated, and there is no easy way out (see below). We thus live ‘on the edge of a logical contradiction’. An interpretation of quantum mechanics, an attempt to answer the WHY question, is thus an effort to save logic. — Pitowsky
Relativistic fluid dynamics [1] is an important tool in the description of vastly different physical systems, such as the quark-gluon plasma formed in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions [2] and accretion disks surrounding supermassive black holes [3]. Early models of relativistic hydrodynamics were constructed in the mid twentieth century by Eckart [4] and Landau and Lifshitz [5], but these were later found to possess unphysical behavior signaled by causality violation [6] and the fact that in such theories the global equilibrium state is not stable with respect to small disturbances in all Lorentz frames [7]. These issues are not inherent to the formulation of viscous fluids in relativity.
Before outlining our approach, a general remark might be in order. Usually, a diffusion theory intends to provide a simplified phenomenological description for the complex stochastic motion of a particle in a background medium (e.g., on a substrate [5, 30, 33, 34, 35] or in a heat bath [20]). Thus, there exists a preferred frame, corresponding to the rest frame of the substrate (or, more generally, the center-of-mass frame of the interaction sources causing the stochastic motion). It is therefore not expedient to look for Lorentz or Poincare invariant spatial diffusion processes (cf. Sec. 5 of Montesinos and Rovelli [39]). Accordingly, we focus here on discussing simple diffusion models that comply with the basic requirements of special relativity in the rest frame of the substrate.
(a long time ago, I read of some versions of this interpretation which are Lorentz invariant. So, I guess that this kind of 'simultaneity' doesn't necessarily imply a rejection of special relativity. I don't remember however the details) — boundless
No doubt the quest for enlightenment or spiritual relaxation seems attractive to some but how likely is it you will arrive there? I often think that this quest is just a spiritual equivalent of consumer culture and status seeking. Thoughts? — Tom Storm
*Regarding non-locality, Einstein (probably influenced by the 'principium individuationis' of Schopenhauer) thought that undermines physical realism by itself (and this is the reason why he didn't like Bohm's interpretation, which is realistic). As he said to Born in a letter written in 1948:
I just want to explain what I mean when I say that we should try to hold on to physical reality. We are, to be sure, all of us aware of the situation regarding what will turn out to be the basic foundational concepts in physics: the point-mass or the particle is surely not among them; the field, in the Faraday - Maxwell sense, might be, but not with certainty. But that which we conceive as existing (’actual’) should somehow be localized in time and space. That is, the real in one part of space, A, should (in theory) somehow ‘exist’ independently of that which is thought of as real in another part of space, B. If a physical system stretches over the parts of space A and B, then what is present in B should somehow have an existence independent of what is present in A. What is actually present in B should thus not depend upon the type of measurement carried out in the part of space, A; it should also be independent of whether or not, after all, a measurement is made in A.
If one adheres to this program, then one can hardly view the quantum-theoretical description as a complete representation of the physically real. If one attempts, nevertheless, so to view it, then one must assume that the physically real in B undergoes a sudden change because of a measurement in A. My physical instincts bristle at that suggestion.
However, if one renounces the assumption that what is present in different parts of space has an independent, real existence, then I do not at all see what physics is supposed to describe. For what is thought to by a ‘system’ is, after all, just conventional, and I do not see how one is supposed to divide up the world objectively so that one can make statements about the parts. (Born 1969, 223–224; Howard’s translation)
(source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/einstein-philscience/#ReaSep) — boundless
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