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Proving What We Already "Know"
#31
RE: Proving What We Already "Know"
(June 18, 2022 at 8:32 am)bennyboy Wrote: An aside to the Deists / theists / spiritualists in the room (I haven't yet figured out who you are), let me say that to me, "God created Man in His image" means "God created a living thing capable of knowing what things are like."

Thomas Aquinas also said that "in his image" referred to the mind.

He said that the image in question was neither male nor female, because it referred to mind which, in his view, was the same in both sexes.
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#32
RE: Proving What We Already "Know"
(June 18, 2022 at 8:41 am)bennyboy Wrote:
(June 18, 2022 at 8:37 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: I've always wondered, what is it, specifically, about this notion that ruffles your feathers. 

At the risk of seeming illiterate-- WHICH notion, exactly, do you believe ruffles my feathers?

That our experience can misrepresent itself/be a misrepresentation.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#33
RE: Proving What We Already "Know"
(June 18, 2022 at 8:44 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote:
(June 18, 2022 at 8:41 am)bennyboy Wrote: At the risk of seeming illiterate-- WHICH notion, exactly, do you believe ruffles my feathers?

That our experience can misrepresent itself/be a misrepresentation.

Oh, I see.  There's a surprising amount to unpack about that sentence.  Let me say that not only does what you're saying not ruffle my feathers, it's kind of the reason for my agnostic stance.

Based on what I've learned about science, there is probably no case where experiences DO properly represent objects.  The video in the OP talks quite a lot about that, and it's in the title.

For example, I "know" (i.e. as an academic understanding gleaned through the sensation of reading books, listening to teachers, watching videos and so on) that the table in front of me is 99.9999% empty space (I'm making up an arbitrary degree of precision here), and that the 0.0001% is squirrely nondeterministic bullshit that cannot be represenbted by sensation.  I also know, through sensation, that the table top is a continuous unbroken surface, and that the table occupies its volume fully and convincingly.

Given that, how would you define any experience as being representational, and how would you establish that an experience failed properly to represent?  If I'm so poorly perceiving whatever-is-out-there-in-objective-reality that I think 99.9999% emptiness is 100% solidity, then what, exactly, DO my experiences represent?
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#34
RE: Proving What We Already "Know"
That one appears to represent differences of scale and the limit of the human eye - for starters. The hope - at least with any method of finding truth alike things...I think..is that while many might represent things not as they are, but as they are useful - that some of that utility might be press ganged into looking for truth alike things.

We don't have this brain so that we can do formal logic or science - but there are some indications it can be used for that.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#35
RE: Proving What We Already "Know"
(June 18, 2022 at 8:43 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: That one appears to represent differences of scale and the limit of the human eye - for starters.  The hope - at least with any method of finding truth alike things...I think..is that while many might represent things not as they are, but as they are useful - that some of that utility might be press ganged into looking for truth alike things.  

We don't have this brain so that we can do formal logic or science - but there are some indications it can be used for that.

Okay, so let's say there's an objective-world-out-there.  It is not the world as we see it, and probably cannot be, but there is some kind of relationship between the world as we see it and something real-- for example, lions are real enough that there's utility in avoiding them, and whatever physics underlies them is consistent enough that this utility persists across time.

Would you be comfortable defining objectivity ONLY in terms of persistence of utility?  It sounds goofy, but I'd say that science is the science of identifying and working with those parameters which have the property of persistence across time, space, and perspective-- i.e. those things that we expect to be true for all tomorrows and for all observers.
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#36
RE: Proving What We Already "Know"
Not to be too tangental but it seems to me that the whole conversation hinges on what someone considers to be "real". If one starts with the assumption that matter/energy and its operation exhaust the category then there is not much room left, none actually, to talk about the reality of intangible things such as triangles, holes, and past events.
<insert profound quote here>
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#37
RE: Proving What We Already "Know"
(June 18, 2022 at 10:49 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Not to be too tangental but it seems to me that the whole conversation hinges on what someone considers to be "real". If one starts with the assumption that matter/energy and its operation exhaust the category then there is not much room left, none actually, to talk about the reality of intangible things such as triangles, holes, and past events.



[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
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#38
RE: Proving What We Already "Know"
(June 18, 2022 at 10:49 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Not to be too tangental but it seems to me that the whole conversation hinges on what someone considers to be "real". If one starts with the assumption that matter/energy and its operation exhaust the category then there is not much room left, none actually, to talk about the reality of intangible things such as triangles, holes, and past events.

It also seems careless to me if we just assume that "objective" equals "real," and "subjective" equals "illusion." 

It's not so simple.
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#39
RE: Proving What We Already "Know"
(June 18, 2022 at 10:10 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Okay, so let's say there's an objective-world-out-there.  It is not the world as we see it, and probably cannot be, but there is some kind of relationship between the world as we see it and something real-- for example, lions are real enough that there's utility in avoiding them, and whatever physics underlies them is consistent enough that this utility persists across time.
The objective and the subjective are both real....factual statements can be made from either set.  Our preferences in ice cream are subjective, but no less present than a lion, for example.   

Quote:Would you be comfortable defining objectivity ONLY in terms of persistence of utility?
That would seem to cut out objective facts that don't have much, if any, utility.  Say...... knowing my middle name.  There's a whole mound of this type of stuff that we still love to pour over - trivia.  Our gathering brain at work, I suppose. I don't know that it would fit the subjective, either. A useful tool can still do or discover a useless fact. I sometimes discover where there are hidden knots in wood with my hammer and brain - and this irritates me - but it's not necessarily useful information..nor does my irritation at that fact, as a fact, make the work go quicker.

Quote:It sounds goofy, but I'd say that science is the science of identifying and working with those parameters which have the property of persistence across time, space, and perspective-- i.e. those things that we expect to be true for all tomorrows and for all observers.
What's wrong with "the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment"?  I think it's pretty clear that a thing true today may not be true tomorrow, that a thing true of one location in space may not be true of another, and that the apprehensions of all observers are not uniform.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply
#40
RE: Proving What We Already "Know"
(June 19, 2022 at 8:37 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: What's wrong with "the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment"?  I think it's pretty clear that a thing true today may not be true tomorrow, that a thing true of one location in space may not be true of another, and that the apprehensions of all observers are not uniform.

That's fine, but then you have to define all those terms.
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