RE: What We Can Know About the World

From: Lee Corbin <lcorbin.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 12:01:43 -0700

Aditya writes

> At the risk of barging in once again,

Oh, please forget about all that! No one should apologize for it. Ever.

I (Lee) had written

> > When in the laboratory we examine the concepts mice
> > have of the world, we can easily see their limitations.
> > What would we think of mice who attempted to found all
> > of reality on "mouse observer moments"?

and Jesse wrote

> Since there is nothing specifically human about my idea of
> "observer-moments" this analogy doesn't really work.

I meant only to say that it's obvious how limited the ideas
of biological machines can be, *especially* when they consult
their subjective ideas.

Aditya continues

> I agree more with this version of "observer-moments". An assumption
> that an "observer" is a human or even a "biological" entity is being
> narrow-minded IMO.

Quite right.

> I think a common error that we make is to assume some vague concept of
> "consciousness" and then limit our notion of observation as a process
> that only "conscious" entities can undertake/undergo.

That sounds so sensible.

> We only believe we are conscious, we have no "proof" or "physical
> evidence", because ALL our thought-systems ASSUME consciousness, it is
> just a human axiom. Or taken another way, conscious is a human-made
> word representing just the way we (and our "close relatives" for the
> relatively liberal) work. Nothing special about it.

I *think* that that has to be right.

> Why not allow "observation" to be any event in which any set of
> entities (even the most "fundamental" entities) interact among each
> other in any way? After all, human observation can be explained as the
> "physical" interactions of our senses/brain with "other" entities.
> (i.e. just events)
>
> Notice that this "definition" (or description, for the
> "definition"-averse) cuts through a WHOLE lot of assumptions,
> ultimately revealing (at least to me) the IDENTITY (sameness) of the
> terms "Event" and "Observer-Moment".

I suspect that we will be driven to accept this just as you
have written it.

> Further, no version of "Observation" adopted by any Idealists violates
> this definition. Also, the converse is not hard to accept if we are
> just a bit more open minded (doing away with the "speciality" of human
> thought).

Well, taken literally your statement cannot be correct. There
will be versions of the concept "Observation" that will be
adopted by some idealists that indeed violate your definition.

> In the system that emerges, yes, Observer-Moments alone ARE a
> candidate for giving us a ToE, but for this, they cannot be
> differentiated from our simple notion of "Event". (The realist
> favours the term Event, the Idealist favours Observer-Moment)

By "event" do you mean an event that leaves a record? Just
wondering. Meanwhile, yes: if we have observer moments,
and mice have observer moments, then so will ants and even
thermometers. (A thermometer observes the temperature and
its mercury expands or contracts accordingly.)

Thanks for a nice try at clearing up what Jesse, at least,
and I were discussing.

Lee

> I have been tilted towards what this list seems to call "realism"
> since the start, but I maintain that digging deep enough, the realism
> and idealism being discussed here aren't that different if we just use
> a "Realish-Idealish, Idealish-Realish" dictionary, and I believe all
> terms in either "language" have equivalent translations in the other.
>
> I think Mazer has put this across quite nicely, so I pause here.
Received on Sat Jul 30 2005 - 15:00:36 PDT