Le 27-juil.-05, à 15:55, chris peck a écrit :
>>> Samuel Johnson did refute Berkeley.
>
> The main thrust of Berkley's argument is to show that sensory
> perception is indirect, and therefore the existance of a material
> cause for those perceptions is an unjustified inference in
> contravention of Occam's razor. The argument that the look, texture,
> smell, taste and sound of an object are apprehended indirectly is
> successful in my opinion, and I dont feel any need to defend it unless
> someone really thinks a defence is required. Aterall, on any view
> there is a translation of 'signals' of many different forms (light
> waves, sound waves) , into various 'signals' of the same form (neurons
> firing) which become synaesthetically unified into a whole, such that
> we associate the smell, taste, colour and texture of say an orange, as
> being qualities of the same object. That kicking a rock hurts, for
> example, does not establish that the 'material world' is apprehended
> directly, or that the concept of a material world is anything more
> than an inference.
>
> I dont think this is really what Johnson meant, but the only challenge
> his 'refutation' genuinely offers is with regards to extension. How is
> the size of an object, or its ability to exist and move (by being
> kicked) in a 3 dimensional realm, derived from perception alone? Our
> grasp of a 3 dimensional world is dependent on our stereoscopic
> perception. Its only when there are two seperate perceptions of the
> world of the same type (eg. left and right eye) that we apprehend a
> properly 3 dimensionally world, each of these perceptions is however
> intrinsically 2 dimensional. It is the mental combination of these
> slightly different images from which we derive an extended world. This
> is probably more controversial, but Berkley's move here is to insist
> that it we have enough information now to create the appearance of a 3
> dimensional world out of elements that are not intrinsically extended.
> By Occam then, we should not infer something for which there is no
> requirement - however firmly that inference has been imbedded in us.
> We should stick to using what we can know directly.
I agree ontologically. But I disagree epistemologically. It is like
with Mendeleev classification of the elements (atoms). It was wise to
infer the existence of "unknown atoms" from the holes provided by the
classification. So a view-point should always to be completed as much
as possible. This makes it possible to get in a quicker way some
possible contradiction (internal or with facts). Remember that Occam
was proposing the razor for the number of hypotheses. In this list most
people tend to agree that we should have as few postulates as possible.
This makes the set of possibilities bigger and we take it as face value
(most are inspired or encouraged by Everett quantum mechanics (the
"many world").
> Perception.
Oops! Mhhh... Tricky word which has a foot in "knowing" (first person)
and a foot in some infered third person describable "reality".
>
> In otherwords, dualists and materialists contravene Occam, not
> idealists. i dont see how Johnson refuted that.
Very well said. But idealist are not necessarily solispsist, and once
you can acknowledge the existence of one "other", or even just this set
{1, 2, 3, 4, ...} (in the company of addition and multiplication),
then there is a vast realm full of ... surprises (counter-intuitive
truth which we can "know" but only indirectly. (A little like you need
two eyes to imagine 3D, you need two brains to make a genuine proof or
a genuine bet).
Bruno
>
> regards.
>
>> From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin.domain.name.hidden>
>> Reply-To: <lcorbin.domain.name.hidden>
>> To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
>> Subject: What We Can Know About the World
>> Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 02:19:49 -0700
>>
>> Stathis writes
>>
>> > > When 99% of the human race use the word "reality", they mean
>> > > the world outside their skins.
>> > >
>> > > If you sacrifice our common understanding of "reality", then
>> > > you'll find yourself in a hole out of which you'll never climb.
>> >
>> > Yes, but what *is* this 3D world we can all stub our toe on?
>>
>> Korzybski would warn: beware the "is" of identity :-)
>>
>> > If we go back to the start of last century, Rutherford's
>> > quaintly pre-QM atom, amazingly, turned out to be mostly
>> > empty space. Did this mean that, suddenly, it doesn't hurt
>> > when you walk into a brick wall, because it isn't nearly as
>> > solid as you initially thought it was? Of course not; our
>> > experience of the world is one thing, and the "reality"
>> > behind the experience is a completely different thing.
>>
>> That's *exactly* right. We *could* have been designed by
>> evolution not to hurt when we walked into a wall. For certain
>> reasons, we were not designed that way.
>>
>> > If it is discovered tomorrow beyond any doubt that the
>> > entire universe is just a game running in the down time
>> > on God's pocket calculator, how is this fundamentally
>> > different to discovering that, contrary to appearances,
>> > atoms are mostly empty space, or subatomic particles have
>> > no definite position, or any other weird theory of modern
>> > physics?
>>
>> Good analogy! The world surprises us all the time, especially
>> the more we learn about it. It would be bizarre if it did not,
>> (we'd probably have to abandon most of our theories).
>>
>> > And how could, say, the fact that brick walls feel solid enough
>> > possibly count as evidence against such an anti-realist theory?
>>
>> Occam's razor. We go with the simplest theory. Imagine
>> that you and I believe we are standing next to a wall.
>> Our conjecture is that it has certain properties. We
>> may need it to protect us. If we're wrong, nature will
>> make short work of us. That we have survived this long
>> is a strong indication that the wall really is there.
>> In fact, on some level of practicality, it is foolish
>> to debate the existence of the wall. Samuel Johnson
>> did refute Berkeley.
>>
>> Lee
>>
>
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Received on Wed Jul 27 2005 - 12:09:58 PDT