Proving What We Already "Know"

[The Grand Nudger]

The repeated projection of chicken-farmer psychological analogies aside, the metacommentary about what you think my motivations are is making it a bit hard to follow the thread, and therefore to respond to your comments.  Let's take it as given that I'm trembling in my booties, pissing my pants, and generally fearful of any idea or definition you might come up with about anything at all-- and then get back to the job of discussing the nature of reality and approaches to discerning it.

It was your suggestion that people jealously guard this or that, was it not?  I'm exploring that.  It's very clear that you have something in mind that you fear is excluded by whatever you think science is or does - is it so strange to want to know whatever that is?  

My response to solid-and-empty tables is to establish a context, and to accept a truth-in-context.  In the context of modern physics, it's true that a table is mostly empty.  In the context of placing my breakfast on it it's true that it's solid.  The problem is that in establishing a context, a local truth cannot be generalized to Truth™, unless you have some mechanism or method of bridging two (or all) contexts.  I do not currently know of a way to bridge a modern scientific understanding of the world with my actual daily experience of it.

Is that the thing, then?  Your experience?

Re: your definition of terms.  My problem with too broad a definition of physicality or of science isn't that it offends me or scares me-- it's that terms no longer really mean anything.  Imagine a Venn diagram, with two non-intersecting circles named (let's say) "Shakespeare's poems" and "penguins."  Now imagine that someone walks into the room, draws a big circle around them both and says, "See?  Same thing."  Sure, if you want it to be, but it doesn't tell me anything useful. Specifically, it doesn't make it clear how to bridge contexts.

Some people just can't be pleased.  On the one hand, they fear the exclusion of some x..and then on the other, they get pissy when you include it. So, in addition to a fear of exclusion, you're anxious about your experience being included as well. Tough spot. Why?

Me, personally, I find it very useful and very instructive to understand why I perceive this or that thing the way I do, why I perceive at all. I find my zen in the garden. Ground "feels spongy"? Plant okra in it. The soil is sour? Less green, more brown. The soil is sweet? Time for strawberries. Leaves are yellow? Iron deficiency. You could use instrumentation to get more accurate data on all of this - but each is..in and of itself, an example of my experience interacting with something that can be detected by instrumentation, and that has an effect on other living things. To me, they're not competing truth claims in different contexts. More like translations of a single sentence into different languages. I was born speaking spongy, sweet, sour, yellow. I had to learn about soil hydrology, biological activity, and chlorosis. A statement corrected for factual accuracy at any level of detail is going to be longer than it's common use expression. I think your example of running from a predator is great. Imagine some person saying, "look out! there's a [insert full description of a predator here]"!. Our statement "the table is solid" obviously refers to something real enough to crack our head on...but, if we correct that statement in a similar way....

IMO that's part of why people think observation and experimentation can point at truth. We've used it to find clever ways out of the trap of biological utility and devise measuring tools that aren't subject to human limitations. With it, we can understand that our relationship to a wall is more like two nets than two bricks against each other. Alot of the same things can pass through both of us, but we can't pass through each other. You now, if that weren't the case, I'd be out of a job.