Re: Reality vs. Perception of Reality

From: <chales1.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 11:18:24 +1000

[-----Original Message-Tom Caylor wrote:]
May I offer the following quote as a potential catalyst for Bruno and Colin:

If thought is laryngeal motion, how should any one think more truly than the wind blows? All movements of bodies are equally necessary, but they cannot be discriminated as true and false. It seems as nonsensical to call a movement true as a flavour purple or a sound avaricious. But what is obvious when thought is said to be a certain bodily movement seems equally to follow from its being the effect of one. Thought called knowledge and thought called error are both necessary results of states of brain. These states are necessary results of other bodily states. All the bodily states are equally real, and so are the different thoughts; but by what right can I hold that my thought is knowledge of what is real in bodies? For to hold so is but another thought, an effect of real bodily movements like the rest. . . These arguments, however, of mine, if the principles of scientific [naturalism]... are to stand unchallenged, are themselves no more than happenings in a mind, results of!
  bodily movements; that you or I think them sound, or think them unsound, is but another such happening; that we think them no more than another such happening is itself but yet another such. And it may be said of any ground on which we may attempt to stand as true, Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum ["It flows and will flow swirling on forever" (Horace, Epistles, I, 2, 43)]. (H. W. B. Joseph, Some Problems in Ethics (Oxford University Press, 1931), pp. 14-15)

Regards,
Tom Caylor

[Brent Meeker wrote:]
So what? Of course without any context, simply looking at physical processes doesn't allow one distiguish "true opinion" for "false opinion".
True and false are the linguistic analogues of effective and ineffective action. Wiiliam S. Cooper as written a nice little book on this called "The Evolution of Reason - Logic as a Branch of Biology".

Brent Meeker

[Bruno wrote]
I am not sure I follow that (very well written) statements. It is a little bit wrong like the argument of those who use determinism against free will. By looking at yourself at some low level it *looks* there is no sense, but this just shows that from your personal point of view you are not "living" at that level. You take the risk at dismissing all theories by pointing that they are all produce by .... and then you are using a theory for describing some level.

The fact that Schroedinger was obeying to its one wave equation cannot be used to invalidate it!

Bruno


[Col replies---------------------------]
Tom, in your very eloquent fashion you have touched upon the essence of my approach to the issue of a theory of everything. Somewhat spooky in coincidence: as Brent Meeker tells us of Cooper's "Evolution of Reason - Logic as a Branch of Biology" I happen to have that very book in front of me. In that book is yet another very handsome structured linguistic metaphor for the structure of thought and reasoning. Once again I think to myself(very paradoxical, this act!) if I build one will it truly reason like us? The usual answer is 'maybe'. You simply can never resolve the question with linguistic frameworks (artifacts of brain material).

Note in the case of Brent and Bruno (and I do this too... putting it aside has been agonising) is an assumption. That assumption is that within the products of thought some direct correspondence with the natural world has been achieved. The reality of the situation is that what has been achieved is a cogent way of arguing for the position, not that the position has touched upon the true nature of things. Cooper has not done this. Nor has Crick, Koch, Edelman or anyone else...

The acid test is to make empirical predictions in relation to brain material or some other testable physical situation. If a metaphor ( a model) can’t do that then you're never going to resolve it. Indeed that you can ever really resolve it is as open to criticism. The prediction/observation of the behaviour of the natural world, in particular novel technology, is the only way any progress can be made. Even then the relationship model to the natural world can never be assumed more than verisimilitude in respect of the predicted outcome.

This sounds ever so dry and empirical, but it has teeth! If the only evidence you can find in support of 'truth' X is brain material reporting the belief - you are wasting your time. You will be going around in linguistic circles rearranging mental beliefs of other beliefs of other beliefs of.....

I would commend everyone to take a moment to simply look at things the way Tom has. A collection of matter, a human, made of the natural world, within the natural world, has made an utterance 'about' that natural world. Consider the bare reality of that situation. Forget everything else you have ever read about it. There may be an infinity of abstract domains. We may be in one of those. That we can necessarily represent our domain in terms of other domains is an assumption. QM, multiverse, computation....any other domain ... they may have great predictive utility and assistance in making decisions in a specific context.... however... in the end they can be only metaphor for the natural world that the natural world can access from within to describe itself.

For that is us and what we do. We may have a perfect mathematical 'law' and yet we can always configure doubt, so it must remain a metaphor. We can never know for sure.

To let go of the idea that we literally touch the truth with our musings is not easy. It can feel so compelling. It can be so very useful. Humility is part of it. Science since the 1600s is paved with such embarrassing hubris. That we are stuck in this endless loop, repelling access to deeper truth is the outcome. That deeper truth in relation to the natural world will come from being able to make predictions of brain matter made from a position of humility in the face of the reality of our position within the natural world so well described by Tom.

When indeed does thought as presented dynamically by laryngeal motion necessarily more a 'truth' than the blowing wind? More importantly: why should a mind inclusive of phenomenal consciousness necessarily have better access to a truth? (this is proven with an evolutionary argument - we wouldn't otherwise
be here to argue the point!)

You can only get to that through deep analysis of brain matter that results in testable predictions. Instead of ascribing access to 'reality' (which is all we can do) the approach is to understand what mechanism gives rise to this 'apparent' reality. Whatever natural world gives rise to that, no matter how weird, that is 'reality'.

Our scientific evidentiary process is based on the fallacy of the assumed existence of an 'objective view'. To push the so-called 'objective view' of corroborative science aside and allocate primacy to the subjective is not going to be an easy adjustment. To do that and retain the validity of all science to date (because it works) is ultimately what is required.

Reality vs perception of reality? I vote we work really hard on the latter and drop all ascription in relation to the former. A significant dose of humility indeed.

Cheers

Colin hales
Received on Sun Jul 31 2005 - 21:20:56 PDT