Proving What We Already "Know"

[bennyboy]

You can use world if you like, all I did was copy paste a definition.  Just like you could sub out "anything that interacts" for natural and physical so that we could at least entertain the possibility of many worlds.  That said, the things you offered as murky examples aren't really murky.  A table, as the solid object we perceive..or as mostly empty space, is physical and natural in both cases, just as our perceptions that don't accurately portray the world (or ourselves) are.  

See, the physical and natural world I have in mind encompasses all the things you might care to include...empty tables and full heads...so there's really no reason to bicker about it as though it excludes something - which..I'm pretty sure, is whats ruffling your feathers.  Maybe you should just cut to the moneyshot?  There's something of value to you, either science or just words..somehow..exclude it, or you fear as much.  What?  If you could have an unguarded conversation about it, there's an extremely good chance that your fear in that regard is misplaced.  Introspection, for example, is neither ruled out, nor unapproachable. There's a whole branch of science about it, after all.

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.

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.

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.

[HappySkeptic]

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.

Things "are" as they "act".

A table is solid to most things.  It is partly see-through to X-rays, and almost completely transparent to neutrinos.  That "empty space" is filled with electron clouds that experience repulsive and attractive forces.  That isn't empty.

What we perceive with one sense or with one type of test isn't all of reality.  It is exciting that physics can drill down into the nature of things at different sizes and levels of interactions.  Every one of them are "real" in the context they are explored.

[Belacqua]

Things "are" as they "act".

A table is solid to most things.  It is partly see-through to X-rays, and almost completely transparent to neutrinos.  That "empty space" is filled with electron clouds that experience repulsive and attractive forces.  That isn't empty.

I think you're in near complete agreement with BennyBoy here. 

We may object to his use of the word "empty" in relation to solid matter. If it's more correct to say that there are electron clouds instead of empty space, that doesn't really change the argument. (But is it true to say that the clouds "experience" forces? Do electron clouds have experiences? This is perhaps a metaphor...?)

Some things encounter the electron cloud as pass-throughable, and others don't.

What we perceive with one sense or with one type of test isn't all of reality.  It is exciting that physics can drill down into the nature of things at different sizes and levels of interactions.  Every one of them are "real" in the context they are explored.

I think we all agree that it's exciting when physicists are able to describe what's going on at different "levels" and under different conditions. "Drill down" is an interesting metaphor.

But to say that each level that the drill bit gets down to is itself "real" is the same as what BennyBoy is saying, isn't it? Truth-in-context.

[bennyboy]

Things "are" as they "act".

A table is solid to most things.  It is partly see-through to X-rays, and almost completely transparent to neutrinos.  That "empty space" is filled with electron clouds that experience repulsive and attractive forces.  That isn't empty.

What we perceive with one sense or with one type of test isn't all of reality.  It is exciting that physics can drill down into the nature of things at different sizes and levels of interactions.  Every one of them are "real" in the context they are explored.

That's fair enough, and you could say the same thing about the solar system or the universe-- nothing is truly empty, because gravity exerts an influence at all points in space.  But in the context of my normal daily view of things, the solar system is basically empty space with a few objects in it, and a lot of forces.


I could describe a tiger's claws as a collection of shaped fields which disrupt the membranes of skin and vein, also a collection of high numbers of fields (or particles or wave functions or whatever).  But that's not the context I'm considering when the tiger is running toward me.  In fact, if I was foolish enough to take the time to ponder the "real" nature of tigers' claws at different sizes and levels of interactions, I suspect I'd experience a radically different truth in a very short time span.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Things "are" as they "act".

A table is solid to most things.  It is partly see-through to X-rays, and almost completely transparent to neutrinos.  That "empty space" is filled with electron clouds that experience repulsive and attractive forces.  That isn't empty.

What we perceive with one sense or with one type of test isn't all of reality.  It is exciting that physics can drill down into the nature of things at different sizes and levels of interactions.  Every one of them are "real" in the context they are explored.

That's fair enough, and you could say the same thing about the solar system or the universe-- nothing is truly empty, because gravity exerts an influence at all points in space.  But in the context of my normal daily view of things, the solar system is basically empty space with a few objects in it, and a lot of forces.


I could describe a tiger's claws as a collection of shaped fields which disrupt the membranes of skin and vein, also a collection of high numbers of fields (or particles or wave functions or whatever).  But that's not the context I'm considering when the tiger is running toward me.  In fact, if I was foolish enough to take the time to ponder the "real" nature of tigers' claws at different sizes and levels of interactions, I suspect I'd experience a radically different truth in a very short time span.

Careful, my atheist friends...in Thomist philosophy, the distinction between act amd potency leads to the metaphyical necessity of something that is fully "in act", which in Thomism is God. Not that you're near there yet. But once you start to realize that "act" is both existence and the creative force of making manifest...then a whole beuatiful realm starts to unfold in the conteplative mind of a believer.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Indeed. One of the reasons I admire Scholastic philosophy is their inordinate concern for the percise distinctions and definitions. Lately I been thinking a lot about the term "objective". I am reasonably certain a physicalist, such as @polymath, would consider himself objective. However, without an ontology that addresses the problem of universals there can be no true objects, just heaps. What I am saying is that SINCE physicialism cannot escape meteorological nihilism, AND since in meteorological nihilsm heaps never truly become objects (there are not objects); THEREFORE, physicalism cannot be objective.

Here's something to puzzle us further:

https://alioshabielenberg.com/objectivit...-and-marx/

I Kant take it anymore! You are like the 3rd person this week to invoke Kant. And frankly I really hate reading or trying to interpret Kant...even if he was probabley second only to Aristotle as the GOAT philospher. Serendipity compels me to face my fear.

[Neo-Scholastic]

BTW re: Hoffman, I used to be impressed with his videos until I realized that his examples of illusions tilted heavily towards critters copulating ineffectively...and I thought, well shit, half the teenboys in the World will stick their pecker into anything they think'll feel good and I am confident they are under no illusions about the reality of their situation.

[Belacqua]

I Kant take it anymore! You are like the 3rd person this week to invoke Kant. And frankly I really hate reading or trying to interpret Kant...even if he was probabley second only to Aristotle as the GOAT philospher. Serendipity compels me to face my fear.

When I teach this stuff in Japanese, I write "Immanuel Kant" on the board, and then erase most of the letters to get "I Kant." And then I suggest that his full name should be "I Kant undahsutando."

I wonder if he wins the prize for the philosopher most referred to and least read. 

My suspicion is that he, in discussions like the one on this thread, stands as a kind of symbol for this whole problem of our disconnect between the world-in-itself and the world-as-it-appears. That issue would certainly be a major topic even without Kant, but it may be that he set the vocabulary (e.g. noumenon, phenomenon) or was the flagship philosopher in German Idealism, which did the most to tease out the ramifications of the epistemological divide. 

But people were aware much earlier on that our perceptions are not pure. Thomas Aquinas wrote that the world appears to us as it does because of the kind of animals we are, with particular kinds of bodies. He was aware that the same world appears very differently to bats. 

I think the article I linked to shows that our discussions of the topic here stay at a pretty elementary level. Personally I know that I haven't grasped even a fraction of what German Idealism has tried to explain. 

As I understand it, in histories of metaphysics, it's Galileo, Descartes, and Newton who are credited most with declaring that what's out there is fundamentally unavailable to us, and what we perceive is an interpretation of the mind. Kant added to this by proposing that what we perceive of the objects is largely a projection from what already exists in the mind. That is, the object appears to us as it does in large part because we make it appear that way.

[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.

[bennyboy]

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?

What have you included that you think I'm "pissy" about, and in what useful way have you included it?