That doesn't discount the reality of the things which we do experience. — Pantagruel

Sure, but they're not fundamental. And it's not clear whether our ordinary conceptions of objects is coherent when factoring in their physical constitution, but it works pragmatically for us.

Ok. But "everyday experience" is the world. So why not assume "that" is fundamental? — Pantagruel

Because science tells us of many things we don't experience that result in the world we do experience. Radio waves and atoms are good examples.

Why would we ever get sick if it weren't for invisible germs and problems with our cells (cancer, auto-immune, etc) causing the problem? Sickness is only an experience because we have material bodies. Death is only a reality for the same reason. So is getting high or drunk.

"What is extended in space, and hence the objective, material world in general, exists as such simply and solely in our representation, and that it is false and indeed absurd to attribute to it, as such, an existence outside all representation and independent of the knowing subject, and so to assume a matter positively and absolutely existing in itself." — Xtrix

But that assumes our representations are not based on something related existing outside and independent of the knowing subject. After-all, why do we have the representations we do have? It would be weird if time and space have no correlate outside of experience. How would the mind create them with no basis for a temporal and spatial existence?

Another interesting property of fields is that they coexist in the same location (or all locations), unlike ordinary objects. Materialism was wrong. Ordinary stuff isn't ontologically fundamental. Of course that was true once the subatomic particles were discovered and QM became a theory.

The world isn't material. It's something else. The material stuff of everyday experience emerges from that. And it's not even predominate. Dark energy, dark matter and neutrinos make up most of the universe.

For that matter, time and space likely aren't fundamental either.

That's plausible except there are some fields we can map or interact with. A magnet in the presence of iron filings will show the magnetic field lines. Light rays are the field lines of electromagnetism. And of course there is gravity.

I think the fields are what is real, and the particles are the potential interactions. Unless there is some further reality underlying fields.

That science is a human enterprise conducted from a human perspective is entirely consistent with naturalism. The "view from nowhere" is just how a dualist sees naturalism. — Andrew M

The view from nowhere exists because science has to abstract from human perceptual relativity to get at the way things are, and not just as they appear to us. Otherwise, we're left with ancient skepticism or some form of idealism.

I would note that Quine opposed mind/body dualism. As did the ordinary language philosophers, particularly Gilbert Ryle (in his book The Concept of Mind). — Andrew M

That's nice and all, but one still has to deal with intentionality, consciousness and epistemology.

Goatcha. I voted climate change, because global poverty is on the way down, but serious enough changes to the climate could easily reverse that trend.

You didn't include AI in the list. Some people believe it is the one big existential problem just over the horizon we need to figure out, because it's likely to be out of our hands once we achieve AGI, and it quickly bootstraps itself to super intelligence.

I'm not sure about the prospects for AGI, the singularity and super intelligence, but I can't discount it either. It should be included in the list, because it's potentially a big game changer. One that could replace humans as the driving force behind civilization.

For the skeptical, keep in mind that some of the poll options such as nukes, bio-weapons and climate change are the result of technological progress, so we'd be foolish to think they were the last threats we create. Nanotech is another potential future one, if it's weaponized. Gene editing could also possibly be used as a weapon.

I would say we’re beings among other beings. “Stuff” is misleading. — Xtrix

Okay, then what problem do you have with my modern update of the great chain of being, from the very small to the universe? Is there a problem with how science categorizes the different "beings", since you prefer that over "objects" or "stuff"?

I don't really see what the issue is with any of those terms, other than they're sufficiently vague enough to encompass everything, if one wishes to do so.

I’m getting bored. — Xtrix

What is that you want from an ontological discussion? I think science helps informs us on what exists and what that stuff is made up of, at least down to a certain point. But it leaves unanswered other questions, like whether objects can have parts or whether math or information are at the bottom of it all.

Science is successful in telling us all that stuff. But there's still plenty left unexplained like consciousness, causality, the right interpretation of quantum mechanics, and whether we should think of the world as being divided up into subjects and objects.

I would say we’re beings among other beings. “Stuff” is misleading. — Xtrix

It's not misleading since science is very successful in telling us what that stuff is. Granted, it's a bit murky once you get to fundamental physics, but we know the bigger stuff is made up out of that smaller stuff physicists call particles and fields.

What "stuff" would that be? Atoms? — Xtrix

Fields, subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells, tissue, organs, brain activity, people, societies, cultures, ecologies, environments, planets, solar systems, galaxies, superclusters, filaments, universe, maybe multiverse. <= great chain of being

Ultimately, a bunch of quantum-gravity stuff forming complex, decohered patterns with some consciousness sprinkled in for good measure.

The thing is quite a few members on here are ordinary language philosophy fans, and not great fans of metaphysics, so discussing the usage of words is important to them, since they're convinced philosophy goes wrong with a misuse of language, particularly when it comes to ontology.

I think we experience the world as if there is a subjective/objective divide, but the ontological situation is unclear, because we don't know the nature of consciousness. However, we're made of the same stuff as everything else, so I tend to think it's an epistemological divide.

I also thought being referred to living things, hence the great chain of being of theology from God on down to microbes, but not chairs or rocks. Unless we're talking pantheism.

The ancients may have used being to refer all things, but that's not how I understood the modern use of the word. A being was always something alive.

But as for the OP, the subject/object divide to is the difference between how we as animals experience the world versus how the world is.

Starting at about 3:38 in the video above, Phillip Ball, an editor at the Journal of Nature, is discussing popular notions of quantum mechanics. Here he talks about how people think that because measurement impacts the result:

So the human observer can't be extracted from the theory. It becomes unavoidably subjective. — Phillip Ball

He's just laying out a popular conception, not arguing for it. The point about the quote is the idea that science tries to extract the human from the observation. Right here we have a subjective/objective distinction, where it seems to be a problem that one result of QM might not allow that, at least on a popular understanding, or according to one interpretation.

But the key idea is that science tries to extract our human experience from what's being studied.

I'm wondering how many people in this forum still see the world in this way or something similar to it. It seems to be the philosophical basis for modern science, at least since Descartes. — Xtrix

We have our own experience of the world as individuals and human beings, and then we have scientific explanations of the world which are divorced from that, because how the world appears to us is not always how the world is.

This has been known since our ancestors starting making note of the difference between appearance and reality. We can use whatever terms make the most sense in modern language to describe that distinction, but yes, it's a reality of our human existence, and probably the impetus that got philosophy started.

Only a group of philosophers would sit around trying to decide whether their inaction in saving a man was responsible for his death, when everyone else would just dive in.

Philosophy exists only in action. — Brett

Also lawyers, because somebody needs to decide whether the philosophers are legally responsible for their inaction. And the one person who just doesn't like the drowning guy.

But the OP's friend brought another level to the argument. You're not having children might one day result in the drowning man going unsaved, because your child would have dived in.

However, the neighborhood man might also be a serial killer, so maybe it's good your child isn't born. But then again, he might kill someone even worse. Maybe there's a butterfly effect that determines the fate of the human race generations from now, all based on whether you have children.

But then again, the anti-natalist can just say it's better if the human race goes extinct, so ...

Ah, makes sense. I thought you were just pulling his leg.

On a semantic externalism view of meaning, a BIV cannot mean that it's envatted, because it can only refer to the sensations provided by the vat program. Putnam does have to arrange the argument a certain way so that the reference to brains in vats cannot be anything but the programmed sensation. So a person envatted last night could mean actual envatted brains, but a universe of just envatted brains hooked up together could not.

One wonders how Neo in the Matrix could understand what Morpheus was talking about when offered the blue and red pills. And the answer was he could not, he could only be shown. The choice was whether to go down the rabbit hole, or continue living a normal life. It was only after Neo got unplugged that he could understand his situation.

This kind of skeptical scenario is a problem for meaning not being in the head. If the environment provides meaning, but the environment is fake, then one cannot understand the environment being fake. Yet we seem to be able to understand simulation, dream, Matrix and evil demon arguments. So either we can know the environment is not fake, or semantic externalism is false.

Nu. They are just patterns. No need for any additional metaphysics.

That’s part of the point of this approach. — Banno

So, the world-stuff creates patterns that we sometimes find useful and turn into mathematics and physics.

he patterns are forms, they are not useful, they are expressions in the extension of matter and energy.
The forms are dynamic, and they have dependence of ....time. — armonie

Shades of Heraclitus?

A pattern that is useful. — Banno

Right, so is math about useful patterns, or about making up arbitrary games, like Chess and Go are made-up games with well defined rules that allow for interesting patterns?

Or maybe both.

The contention here is that this game has similarities to mathematics, in that the playful creation of rules is at the core of both. — Banno

So let's try this out. I as ruler of the nearby city demand you pay a tax. I have my soldiers take three oxen out of your six. You complain that this only leaves three oxen to plow the fields. My official reply is that six minus three is five, by decree. I have only removed one of your oxen.

For some reason, that system doesn't last and is replaced by the 6 - 3 = 3 one we have today.

Let's say the rules of arithmetic are arbitrarily made up, like Banno's math game. The golden ratio is one result of arithmetic. The surprising thing is that it can be find in spiral patterns in nature. Now why might that be? Perhaps the rules or arithmetic are not so arbitrary.

Let's go back to their origins. How did humans come up with arithmetic? Probably when it became useful to track transactions and taxation. And that's not arbitrary.

If you include things like time and position then two objects can never be identical — khaled

There is a the one-electron universe hypothesis where all the electrons and positrons are just one entity traveling back and forth through time, thus explaining how they all have identical mass and charge.

Setting that idea aside, even if physical objects can't be identical, some properties do have that quality. Leading us to ...

Universals (or Tropes).

As an adopted convention, it doesn't make sense to ask whether two things really are identical. — sime

Like the morning and evening star, water and H2O, temperature and molecular motion, Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain, the empty set and 0, or the charge of every electron in the universe.

Or that damned ship that had all its parts replaced during its voyage.

If we say that there is a strict demarcation between science and pseudoscience, then we are committed to saying that all worldviews prior to our current scientific worldview are false and meaningless. To say that would look like a prime example of cultural chauvinism and the modernist myth of progress. — Janus

But there is clear progress, at least in terms of science and technology.

Hence my asking about information theory. Recognising that a signal contains a message seems to me to imply some level of understanding of the message. — Banno

Probably so. I was more focused on whether we could understand the concepts if either the aliens sent us something difficult, or they thought a lot differently, without trying to provide a simpler cipher to help us along.

In Contact, the aliens had included a decoding schema starting with basic arithmetic and chemistry, but the goal was to provide plans for building a machine, which is a little different than sending a cultural text. What was also discussed was the alien's intentions in doing so, which could have been nefarious. It wasn't included in the message, so there was no way to know their intent until operating the machine.

Whatever dudes. — Wallows

Mentioning that he starved himself to death because of a food paranoia tends to grab the attention.

Sure, it might be message.

But let's say the signal is in a pattern of prime numbers like with the book and movie Contact, so we would know for sure it was artificial. But let's say the aliens, for unknown alien reasons, decided to send us the works of some arcane philosophy in the writing style of someone like Derrida without any additional guide to their language or culture. That might be untranslatable to us.

If we couldn't translate it, how could we know it was an alien signal? — Banno

I believe it's possible to know that a radio source is non-natural without being able to decode the message. Or at least that's what I've heard from SETI talks. The first goal is detection, and then after that would be decoding it. You can't decode before you detect an artificial signal.

Or it's like, Western science is inherently imperialistic and sexist, so we should reject it's truth claims in favor of culturally appropriate ones.

Was there a philosopher who looked at things this way? — frank

Richard Rorty might be an example. Certainly relativism has been around since ancient philosophy. I believe the Sophists made arguments that truth was relative.

That makes sense.

We have to be able to say, "No, that is a thought we ought not have about others." — TheWillowOfDarkness

No, we have to be able to say that is an action we should not take against others. Thoughts are private to the individual and nobody else's business. We all have uncharitable and rude thoughts about this or that person for whatever reason. But it's what we do or say that matters.

To posit intranslatability without access to transcendence produces an incoherent picture. How could human Jim know the instructions were impossible to translate? If he couldn't know that, he shouldn't be insisting that there is incommensurability. — frank

If we were to detect an alien signal, but were unable to decode it despite our best efforts, wouldn't that imply incommensurability? Or just really strong encryption?

Who has suggested (or who do you think might suggest and so need correction) that the physiology of these systems might be mediated by language use - the act of communicating with words. — Isaac

The physiology wouldn't change, but brain processes that integrate that sensory information into perceptions might, if they're mediated by language. That's what the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests. Looks like Davidson is arguing in contrast that we all actually perceive the same world, we just form different schemas of reference based on those perceptions, which can be translated between one another.

So while Eskimos might have 50 words for snow, and we have one, they could point out how their words point out variations in snow we gloss over in our language. The interesting question there is whether we noticed those differences before becoming aware that you could differentiate snow into fifty different kinds?

There has been discussion on whether the Ancient Greeks saw a blue colored sky or water based on Homer's odd choices of color language.

Using philosophy to prove philosophy is bunk proves philosophy isn't bunk. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Its philosophical bunk all the way down.

Just to be precise: What Banno said to me was: Philosophy amounts to nothing. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Right, I take it by that he means there's nothing meaningful to philosophy that can't be addressed by either science or ordinary language use, with the possible exception of ethics, and maybe aesthetics, but here I'm reaching.

And I don't know whether that's true or not. But I want it not to be. It offends my need to scratch the itch.

Great. Have at it, a guy who was best friends with Einstein taught at Princeton and completely demolished Hilbert's program is... crazy. Is this shitposting taken to a new level on TPF? — Wallows

Hey, I've watched A Beautiful Mind. Being crazy doesn't mean you can't also be an accomplished genius. And I was only referring to the part about starving yourself to death out of food paranoia. That sounds like an untreated mental illness.