(October 4, 2016 at 9:10 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: When I put the probes of a voltmeter across a certain part of an electrical circuit, the readout displays a number which represents an electrical quantity. We know it does so accurately because we've designed it to provide an accurate representation of the electrical quantity. When it's voltage, we say that we have measured the voltage across the probes. With current, current. We only have correlates for the things we measure. The large hadron collider is a massive correlate provider. If there were a single cluster of neurons that have been found to be solely responsible for the experience of red. Say we've mapped out experience and what happens in the brain when you experience red. Is it a valid objection to the practice of measurement to say that I haven't measured the presence or absence of the experience red in this hypothetical brain? This seems consistent with practice in other areas. When I measure 5 volts in a circuit, I say that the circuit is presenting 5 volts. I don't say that the voltmeter is measuring a correlate of a circuit presenting 5 volts. Measurement assumes ontology. To take the knife in the thigh example, our experience is only a correlate of the event. Some people don't experience the pain as being undesirable. Others don't experience the pain at all. All you have is a representation that something is occurring. But if correlates aren't admitted into evidence as witness to the existence of a thing, then your experience isn't witness to its own existence. After all, your experience is just a correlate of reality. That you have 'an idea' that you have an idea is no more valid than that the voltmeter is measuring 5 volts. I think every one of us has experienced the phenomena of being half awake and thinking something, and that thought turned out to be nonsensical once we are fully awake. How do you know that your notion of an idea isn't just another half awake illusion? Are we going to doubt reality on the basis of the point that we know nothing in and of itself, all we know are representations of reality, correlates? All we have are correlates; once you dispense with them, you've dispensed with the notion that anything is real. Including experience. Skepticism cuts both ways.
It certainly does. There are no safe assumptions which are guaranteed not to distort the reality we assume is out there. But I assume there is something real and objective which my (like every other) organism has evolved the capacity to screen for aspects salient for my survival. The manner of the screening may well influence the representation I have of what is out there. But why question that? What assumptions is a person making who would attempt to distance himself from those representations and consider them dispassionately? What sure footing do they suppose is available for such a project? Me thinks madness lies in that direction.
