Yes indeed, one may take this as their idea of "objective reality",
but then by its very definition, this objective reality is
"unknowable". In fact, its not only "until we wait for the photons to
reach us" that we can't know this reality, even when they reach us, it
is only our brain telling us that the "simplest" explaination is a
supernova in the distant past. our estimate of the event can only be
built from the event of our observing it.
Yes, in theory you could say that take ALL possible "observation
events" and then with ALL this information you can rebuild "reality"
with hundred percent confidence, but then we are talking of pure
theory, because we simply are not omniscient/omnipresent in space-time
to ever make that possible. and here's a kick in the head: while I am
sounding like a non-realist, this non-realism comes from one very
realist assumption: "pure theory" is just the mechanics of the brain.
In essence, our belief that "objective reality" exists is a
simplifying assumption that our minds find pleasant. in fact, even the
argument that testable predictability is a measure of "objectivity"
fails somewhat, because our tests of our predictions yield results
again only from our viewpoints, not the omniscient, omnipresent
"objective" viewpoint.
remember, Occum's razer and such "laws" that promote simplicity in
reason are great tools for doing science from our perspective, but
they cannot and should not be taken to be "objective" laws themselves.
it would be like saying "I can drive this nail into the wall with my
hammer, therefore ALL nails that are EVER driven into the wall can
only be driven with my hammer".
there HAS to be scepticism in ANY possible theory of everything,
realists are sceptic about the abilities of our minds, idealists are
sceptic about things outside our minds.
The more I hear these two schools argue, the more I want to try to
find the "common ground" theory that permits both views as "accurate".
On 8/8/05, Norman Samish <ncsamish.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> Even though the theory of relativity says that information cannot be
> transmitted faster than the speed of light, why does that make it
> nonsensical to talk about "objective reality"? 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? Granted, we can't know what this distant objective reality
> is until we wait for the photons to reach us, but that doesn't make it
> nonsense. The supernova that occurs at a million-light year distant galaxy
> is objective reality, even though our subjective reality is that the
> supernova has not occurred. We have to wait a million years to make the
> discovery.
> Norman Samish
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
Aditya Varun Chadha
adichad AT gmail.com
http://www.adichad.com
Received on Mon Aug 08 2005 - 19:26:13 PDT