I genuinely appreciate helpful criticisms and corrections.
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Must We Believe in an 'Objective Reality' to Do Science?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
I genuinely appreciate helpful criticisms and corrections.
Secret Chief
nirvana is samsara
All statements created by mind.
Statements yes, reality no.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
How do you observe real? What is it measured in? What is it as an actual thing? And so on?
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
So what does reality look like? Not that words about reality, but reality as observed?
You use a statement yourself, so that doesn't count according to you.
Moreover, those facts (subject to revision) are part
of a model of reality which best comports with history
& the present.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
So you speak for all humans as what we must believe in. Who gave you Objective Authority?
Secret Chief
nirvana is samsara
Isn't that the OP though? - the unanswerable question of can objective reality be said to exist, if it is dependent upon subjective perception, at least to get on with our day jobs.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
I am a hardcore strong skeptic. I have properly seen them all.
Can you find an Internet source to Wittgenstein?
Must we believe in an 'objective reality' to do science?
My answer would be that it is a useful assumption for almost all practical purposes even if it is ultimately a wrong assumption.
Kind of like thinking the earth is flat for practical purposes when doing a ground layout of my new property.
My answer would be that it is a useful assumption for almost all practical purposes even if it is ultimately a wrong assumption.
Kind of like thinking the earth is flat for practical purposes when doing a ground layout of my new property.
My 'Wittgenstein Days' were long before the internet. However, I recall his discussions of solipsism are scattered about The Blue Book, The Brown Books, and the Investigations.
If I still had my old course notebooks, I could be more specific than that, but I long ago traded the lot them to a stripper in exchange for a lap dance. She thought they might be useful in helping her choreograph an 'interpretative dance' of the Tractatus.
halbhh
The wonder and awe of "all things".
People can do science without even knowing they are doing science, since science is only trying to figure out how nature works. (and additionally one might think of all things as being part of nature also, making science out of any effort to understand most anything in that case)
e.g. -- If a person tries to figure out how often to water their grass and with how much water, by experimenting, it's science. They needn't have a particular viewpoint about objective reality. They could even do this type of everyday science without even conscious awareness.
It seems you'd need to believe in at least some degree of....quality or quantity of....independence of other things...to do science. Is that right?
If one thought that all things merely respond only to their thoughts/perceptions or that all things never acted by their own physics of some kind, then all physical actions would be meaningless (or perhaps instead redundant or after the fact or such).
But, that one thing works one way we can see doesn't mean that nothing about it is affected by other forces. That is, learning one science theory doesn't rule out others, nor even the subjective force of the perceiver for that matter, as in some quantum mechanics interpretations.
Why do I have to speak for an authority for something to be true?
(i.e. Truth is independent of authority)
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
So your "we believe" is true for all humans?
There is a single world in which we inhabit and it is objective, irrespective of our subjective perception of that world, or of our thoughts and desires about it. The effect of the existence of this objective reality is felt, regardless of whether I or anyone believes in it. There are no doubt many things I do not know and will be true regardless.
You can believe whatever you want and I cannot force you to believe anything either way. In fact, the process of causation means my ability to convince you of anything is only one factor among many. you exist objectively to my will and my desire for you to believe what I say.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
You are doing a privileged positive metaphysics , which you can't show to be true. It is a belief, that we share a real objective reality.
You can't take for granted that I exist as me. So now show as true that I exists as me as independent of your experience of me.
So now do what you claim you can do.
You know your stuff and I like a challenge.
There is no privileged position in objective reality. It is the same reality, shared by all, no matter how different our subjective perception and experience of it may be.
There are two qualities necessary to distinguish here. The first is the objective nature of the self and the second is the subjective experience of the self.
I can demonstrate that you exist as you as a physical and biological entity. I have senses to perceive you. I can see you. I can smell you. I can touch you. I can hear you. I can perceive the change in atmospheric pressure or temperature from your presence (if you want to assume I'm blind or deaf).
As for the subjective experience of consciousness, I am aware that as a biological entity you will have a nervous system and a brain and that- because you are alive and not dead- your nervous system will be active to the extent you possess consciousness and will therefore subjectively experience it.
You can get in to the hard problem of consciousness, of the relation between subjective experience and nervous activity, but show me an example of consciousness without a nervous system or life- however narrowly or broadly you define it to be- to demonstrate that consciousness without a brain or a body is possible on evidence. Otherwise you are assuming the possibility or prior existence of consciousness independent of a physical process without evidence for doing so.
I'll go one better. You do not exist simply as I perceive you to be or as you perceive yourself to be. the advance of medical knowledge shows that, you have lungs to breathe, blood in your veins, a heart that beats, muscles that allow you to move, a brain to think, a nervous system to sense, a stomach, liver and intestines to digest and excrete, a skeleton of bones to frame your body as a being under physical laws in physical environment with physical constriants and tolerances to heat, pressure, etc.
Under the layers of flesh inhabit is the living architecture necessary for sustaining you as a human being, regardless of your ability to perceive them to be there.
I may perceive you are walking and talking flesh and look no further, but the finite nature of my experience does not exclude the reality of a complex biological organism making it possible for you and I to have this interaction.
Feel free to debunk this if you wish. I'd genuinely like to know if and where I have got this wrong if that is the case. Learning from your mistakes of the only way you can grow in the end.
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