Has anyone seen my neutral pointer?

[Losty]

I don't know why you quoted my squirrel

Um...probably because she's fabulous?!  [emoji1]

True that probably is it!

[Kernel Sohcahtoa]

Anyway – and maybe I should have just asked this up front – is there already such a concept in the world of philosophy?  Does anyone have a similar concept?

Yes, sir.  The concepts and ideas articulated in your op remind of Gregory Bateson.  I think you might appreciate and enjoy Form, Substance and Difference; however, it is not easy reading (my classmates and I racked our brains trying to understand these ideas).  In a nutshell, Bateson is all about trying to make sense of sense-making.  Do we truly experience this world as it is or are our experiences simply the product of our internal sense-making processes?  Is it possible to experience our world in a completely neutral way (beyond any particular sense-making process)?  Is there an objective way of making sense of reality? These are the types of questions that Bateson tackles. 

Excerpt from Form, Substance and Difference (The article appeared in The General Semantics Bulletin, no. 37, 1970):

"...I suggest to you, now, that the word "idea," in its most elementary sense, is synonymous with "difference." Kant, in the Critique of Judgment—if I understand him correctly—asserts that the most elementary aesthetic act is the selection of a fact. He argues that in a piece of chalk there are an infinite number of potential facts. The Ding an sich, the piece of chalk, can never enter into communication or mental process because of this infinitude. The sensory receptors cannot accept it; they filter it out. What they do is to select certain facts out of the piece of chalk, which then become, in modern terminology, information.
 
I suggest that Kant's statement can be modified to say that there is an infinite number of differences around and within the piece of chalk. There are differences between the chalk and the rest of the universe, between the chalk and the sun or the moon. And within the piece of chalk, there is for every molecule an infinite number of differences between its location and the locations in which it might have been. Of this infinitude, we select a very limited number, which become information. In fact, what we mean by information—the elementary unit of information—is a difference which makes a difference, and it is able to make a difference because the neural pathways along which it travels and is continually transformed are themselves provided with energy. The pathways are ready to be triggered. We may even say that the question is already implicit in them." (Bateson.  The General Semantics Bulletin, no 37., 1970, pp: 459-460)

P.S  The link I provided was part of my class resources, so the university may restrict access.  If this does happen, then try this link: Bateson Article (full length).  The format of the first link will be easier to read.  I hope this information has been useful, Bunburryist.  Thanks for this thread

[fdesilva]

Would I be right in thinking your concept of a neutral pointer is similar to the concept of an axiom (self evident truth)?

We have neutral pointers everywhere in everyday life – “that bird” for an unidentified bird.  “That box shaped thing” for a filing cabinet.  But we don’t have a neutral pointer for “the material world.” 
Then there’s the problem of our “bodies.”  It is implicit in most peoples’ thinking that “my body” is made of matter.  But what if we want to see if we really are that kind of being.  We need a neutral pointer for what we learn to believe is a material body. 
If a person is not willing to . .  then they simply will not understand.   If you’re trying to determine if an a bird is  finch or some other kind of bird, you can’t even discuss it wit
 
Let’s take a geometric axiom – that a circle is that set of points that are equidistant from a given point.  That’s an axiom, and we have a definition.  Where does the idea of a neutral pointer idea come in?  Suppose we have a piece of paper with some apparently circle-like shapes.  Now, we don’t know that they are circles because haven’t determined if they are consistent with our definition.  So we don’t want to call them circles, because we don’t know they are circles.  But if we want to talk about them; talk about how we might determine if they are circles or not, we need to call them SOMETHING.  We need a neutral pointer – we could use “those shapes,” for example.   Now we can ask, “Are those shapes circles.”  If we determine one way or another whether they really are circles, then we can throw our neutral pointer away and call them either circles or non-circles.
Neutral pointers in everyday life – like “that animal,” or “that box-looking thing”  -  are common and not particularly interesting.  But ask yourself – what neutral pointer would we use for what we learn to call “the material world”?  “The world”?  “The physical world”?  “The universe”?   “The physical universe”?  “The material universe”?  “The cosmos”?  They all imply a big something that you, as a living thing, exist “in,” and to most people are implicitly synonymous.   But if we want to really “stand back,” so to speak, and take away ALL of our assumptions about what this experience we learn to call “the world” is, and what we as beings are, we need a way to refer to it, just as we needed a way to refer to those circle-looking shapes.  In order to talk about it we need to call it SOMETHING.  My neutral pointer for what we learn to call “the material world” is “this experience.” 
Perhaps the most useful aspect of referring to this experience we learn to call “the material world” as “this experience” is that ALL aspects of “the material world” come into doubt – whether the “things”  I experience seeing are “made of atoms,” whether my experiences happen in a brain existing in “this head,” (neutral pointer) whether there is something called light propagating through “this space” (neutral pointer) or not,  and whether my nature, as a being, is that of a thing in a “world” at all.
Keep in mind that neutral pointer doesn’t imply anything one way or another.  Using the neutral pointer “this brain” doesn’t imply either that my experiences happen in a material, and it doesn’t imply they don’t.  It is merely a way to refer to whatever exists/goes on/happens (whatever) at this place in my experience.
 
Another way to appreciate the necessity of a neutral pointer comes when we analyze and understand what I call the “sense story” – how we learn to believe we see, feel, etc.  If it is true as it is taught in science class (I’m not saying it is, and I’m not going to get into it here) then this experience IS NOT a material world, but is, somehow, an experience happening in a brain in a material world.  So if (according to the sense story) this experience is not a material world but something happening in a material brain – what will I call it?  Some philosophers like the phrase “sense date,” but it’s usage implies “something happening in a material brain,” and far from being a neutral pointer is rather something specific to materialist theories of experience.  I have found the best neutral pointer for what we learn to call “the material world” is “this experience.”

So then would I be right in thinking of a neutral pointer in terms of it usage as follows.

If I say I am going to use the word water in this following sentence in the sense of a neutral pointer.

The water in this glass is talking to me. Is it talking to you too?

Then you are expected to forget about the fact that your believe water cannot talk and observe the water to see if it is talking to you.

Would that be a proper usage?

[Whateverist]

But none of those things is neutral.  Apparently we are only to grunt indifferently in the general direction of the boxes and leave it at that.

I was simply responding to Benny's contention that the photon doesn't behave "like matter should."  As far as grunting at the box, I don't think that's an answer.  I believe that every term of reference we think up will be found to be embedded in a theory about the how and the what.  No matter how "neutral" we go, we'll never be able to escape the theory dependency of reference.  If we ask if it's a cat in the box, we're operating under the theory that cats occupy boxes.  If we ask if there's an animal inside, we're operating under the theory that the box is a container for stuff.  If we ask if the box is a container for stuff, we're operating under the theory that the box can be other than a container of stuff.  No matter how primal we go, we'll always be making assumptions and have a preformed concept of the how and the what of boxes.

And I'm agree with you.  Amazing what the mind can imagine.  Our OP is imagining stepping outside the contracts of his own mind .. using what?  While his mind of course.

[Bunburryist]

Anyway – and maybe I should have just asked this up front – is there already such a concept in the world of philosophy?  Does anyone have a similar concept?

Yes, sir.  The concepts and ideas articulated in your op remind of Gregory Bateson.  I think you might appreciate and enjoy Form, Substance and Difference; however, it is not easy reading (my classmates and I racked our brains trying to understand these ideas).  In a nutshell, Bateson is all about trying to make sense of sense-making.  Do we truly experience this world as it is or are our experiences simply the product of our internal sense-making processes?  Is it possible to experience our world in a completely neutral way (beyond any particular sense-making process)?  Is there an objective way of making sense of reality? These are the types of questions that Bateson tackles. 


P.S  The link I provided was part of my class resources, so the university may restrict access.  If this does happen, then try this link: Bateson Article (full length).  The format of the first link will be easier to read.  I hope this information has been useful, Bunburryist.  Thanks for this thread

I read the long version.  Reading talks/articles like that is like touring Paris in a day.  “Hey, can’t we stop there for a while?”  Every other sentence could be a thread!  And you could read it over and over and keep pulling stuff out. 
Of course, the implicit (material) worldview of the talk is as diametrically opposite to mine as possible.  The pleroma (the world of infinite differences) and the creatura (“mind”  which result from a culling of those differences) dichotomy is interesting, though.  In a way, that dichotomy exists in my thinking, only in exactly the opposite way.  Where as in his view it is ultimately the material world of infinite differences that is the reality, which leads to the neuronal processes culling all but those differences which it needs to “make sense” of that reality, in my view, we take a holistic experience and we pull meaningful differences from that experience.   (How physical measurement fits into my way of thinking is another thing for another thread.)  What’s missing from that view however, is what is missing from all physical description – and what is my starting point in thinking about what I am - my holistic experiences of color/space, thought, etc..  – none of which can be described or defined in physical terms.  That’s why behaviorism and it’s various descendants – functionalism, computationalism, etc. - are the “go-to” theories for materialists.

I looked at his Wikipedia page and one thing that popped out was that he spent time on New Guinea.  I just finished reading Gerald Diamond's (the Guns, Germs, and Steel guy) book World Until Yesterday, where he compares various aspects of hunter gatherer cultures - most in New Guinea - with modern societies.  A great read!  Some professional anthropologists weren't thrilled with it, but as Diamond says in his preface (I'm paraphrasing) - to do a comprehensive exploration of these ideas would require volumes.  It is, for the non-professional anthropologist, an interesting outline of a fascinating subject.

[Bunburryist]

As for my neutral pointer concept . . .


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otm4RusESNU