RE: The Reality of Observer Moments

From: Lee Corbin <lcorbin.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 22:27:03 -0700

Colin writes

> Lee Corbin [wrote]
>
> > The final word: OMs can be viewed as objective processes, and
> > efforts to find the simplest explanation considering Everything
> > seem quite appropriate.
>
> It sounds like a final word but I'd urge caution. It may be _your_
> final word but not the natural world's final world.

Well, I *did* say "can be viewed", and in the rest of the sentence
merely stated that I did *not* have an argument with OMs per se. :-)

> The system of observer moments could be just as 'mathematical'/
> computational and be an illusion - but a real illusion that is
> fit for purpose.

I have to admit that I don't know what you mean.

> Evolutionary considerations do not suggest that observation system[s]
> be any better than that consistent with survival (not those necessities
> compatible with the survival of a mathematician's view of the observation
> system N million years later) :-)

Yes, that's right! (I mean, of course, I agree.)

> A cohort of elemental subjective experiences configured to present
> an emergent _apparent_ observation as an objective view equally fits
> the circumstances you describe and is a simpler solution. Simpler
> because a brain does not have to make a-priori assertions about
> everything that is 'not' brain. It can slap computational paint
> on reality and come up with an 'adequate' picture without knowing
> anything about how 'not brain' works. Isn't that what it has to do?
> How can a brain that knows nothing about the universe be created
> from the universe from nothing without making such shortcuts?

You say "simpler because a brain does not have to make a-priori
assertions that is 'not' brain". At the risk of perhaps misunderstanding
you, I would say that the brain was built by evolution first to make not
assertions but as a machine, to simply respond. For some of us humans,
we indeed go further and make assertions and what not, but it's all
based on our primary functioning.

Are you saying that our brains know nothing? (I'm trying especially hard
on this last sentence.) Or are you asking how it can be created (but I
think you know the answer to that)?

Earlier you say that the brain "slaps computational paint on reality"
and I am not sure at *all* that I know what you are talking about.

> It can slap computational paint on reality and come up with an
> 'adequate' picture without knowing anything about how 'not brain' works.

But our brains do store at least a kind of knowledge exactly about
how "not brain" (the outside world) works. That's what they were
designed to do. So if you know that red means stop (and that operationally
you want to stop the vehicle when the light turns red to avoid accidents
and penalties) then you know something about the world. I guess I would
say that the brain knows that.

> How can a brain that knows nothing about the universe be created
> from the universe from nothing without making such shortcuts?
> This is an _apparent_ objective view of a 'just-as-real' reality.

Sorry, I'm baffled.

> It also can be hypothesized to deliver what we have. If a theory
> insists that the objective view has any greater status than this
> then part of the theory should explain why it is necessarily that
> way and how its prescribed circumstances would deliver a solution
> preferred by the natural world and indeed a very specific detailing
> of the difference between the two.

The objective view should have better status (and it does except when
people start talking too abstractly to other abstract thinkers or when
they get behind a keyboard). Here are the reasons why the objective
view should have higher status:

1. When conflicts have arisen in the past---not temporary, accidental,
   or quickly resolvable conflicts---the objective view triumphs. For
   example, the objective view of the solar system in which the Earth
   circles the sun has more validity than the system of appearances
   from here on Earth, which was incorporated into more primitive
   and more error prone understandings.

   Yes, I know that many here will retort that it's only from such a
   system of appearances that the correct view was generated. While
   I don't talk that way, you'll agree that it was the final product
   has the higher status and ought to be regarded as true.

2. Just as a naive realist---a child, say, who believes that their
   experiences of an object are all there is to an object---isn't
   aware of all the processes (in principle quite error prone processes)
   that convey information from distant objects to visual system to the
   rest of his brain, so some "naive subjectivists", if you will, don't
   seem to appreciate that their entire experiences are simply nerve
   firings. They don't keep that image continually in mind, and fail
   when you talk to them to speak about what is objectively occurring,
   just as Kepler's, Copernicus's, and Galileo's critics refused to
   keep in mind the picture of the solar system from outside.

3. The objective view can be communicated to others, and on it successful
   sciences can be and have been built.

> Hence my advice of caution in attributing the source of the 'observer
> moment' to anything more than a subjectively delivered virtual objective
> view.

And we realists hasten to retort that better knowledge is built from
an understanding of the physical world, and that anything that is only
subjective should be looked at with the gravest suspicion.

Lee
Received on Mon Aug 15 2005 - 01:30:45 PDT