Jesse and Norman gave excellent reasons for us not to abandon the
objective stance.
About Norm's post, I agree with
> I realize that different observers must see different versions of events,
> but so what? In our 3+1 dimensional universe, couldn't "objective reality"
> be defined as the state of events at a "time slice," as though the universe
> had frozen at the instant chosen?
Yes, while you can call any "slice" of the multiverse or 3+1 physics an aspect
of objective reality, to be more literally correct, it has to be added that
again this depends on the frame of reference (velocity through space): it's
as though the slices can be taken through the whole at any angle one desires.
Our poor brains are just survival machines, and each of them has many,
many incorrect apprehensions of reality. It is literally impossible not
to have a misapprehension of something because the nerve firings in the
brain only crudely encode the facts of the Earth environment they're in.
But even so, even given that for example eyes see only a tiny part of
the EM spectrum, and that retinal images are only 2D, the machines
are simply wonderful: they enable a mammal to navigate through and
know a great deal about its environment. And humans are best of all!
With the help of abstract scientific theories (and the imagery and
memes produced thereby), humans have proven that they really know
what's going on, to an utterly amazing degree.
So it's sad to see some philosophers wanting us to junk that for our
own subjective impressions of the world.
Lee
Received on Sun Aug 07 2005 - 18:10:30 PDT
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