Hi Colin,
Sorry for being late,
Le 10-août-05, à 02:51, chales1.domain.name.hidden a écrit :
> Hi,
>
> (via) Reality vs. Perception of Reality
> In answer to Bruno’s recent comments on the old post:
> * Thanks for helping me sort out my ‘Nagels’! I had them mixed up in
> EndNote.
You are welcome. I did that confusion too.
> * Young? 49 years young. Getting young and seemingly knowing less and
> less every day. :-) This I seem to have to conclude is progress of a
> sort.
Ah! You are also born the year (1955) Einstein died ? Before all, it is
the year Lob answered to the problem of Mister Henkin!
... and, sure, it is a progress to discover we know less. Glad to hear
that, because comp literaly forces us to realize we are much more
ignorant than most physicalist approaches could imagine!
> ---------------------------
>
> I’ve caught up with the ‘subjective reality’ thread and am finding the
> usual linguistic blurs, wondering how to resolve them. Part of the
> process is to ensure we are all talking about the same things. It
> seems there is room for some work in this regard. In going through the
> posts it seems to me there is an overlap in the word ‘subjective’ in a
> very specific way.
>
>
>
> a) Firstly there is ‘subjective’ in the sense of experiential content
> (the ‘now’ of our experiential fields vision, haptic, emotion etc)).
> This is implemented in brain material in some way. What the brain
> feels.
I agree the experiential content is related to some "brain activity".
But I don't think my brain is thinking at all. I think (well, I hope).
To say the brain think is to make a confusion of level. I think,
through my brain, body, universes ...
>
> b) Secondly there is knowledge derived from that experience. This is
> devoid of experiential qualities and is reported as a belief. “Mr X
> had a headache on that day” is the example used here. What the brain
> does. This is a belief whose truth may or may not be supported by
> empirical evidence. This is formed by a separate brain mechanism.
>
> There seems to be a tendency for these two to get mixed up. You can
> see evidence in the thread: the interpretive mismatch actually caused
> discussion to occur. Both of these constructs a) and b) can be
> characterised as ‘virtual’. In case (a) the brain makes the outside
> natural world have an appearance ‘as if it were like that’. In case b)
> the belief is a ‘truth’ about the natural world and the holder of the
> belief acts (behaves) ‘as if’ it were true.
>
> Both are subjective in that they are properties of a subject (a brain)
> and the result of that subject’s view of the natural world (=not the
> brain) as an object. This leads is into the next potential confusion
> c) subject in contrast to d) object. This too has been in the possibly
> confused mixture and was well recognised by Lee.
>
> This may be a confusion of word subject/object vs
> subjective/objective. Don’t know.
>
> Then there is the final confusion (? Not sure) e) that ‘measurement’
> in the quantum mechanical sense of a so-called ‘observer moment’ and
> its relationship to a), b) c) and d). For I do not think they are the
> same thing. The quantum mechanical ‘observer moments’ happen
> continually at all places, scales and times where the natural
> processes taking place demand that resolution of position/velocity
> some other pair be resolved to a certain state. This is the massive
> collection of falling trees in the unobserved forest. They still fall
> in the sense that Schrödinger’s cat ‘fall’. This form of ‘observation’
> may actually occur in a brain and be relevant to a), b), c) , d) but
> it does not necessarily _define_ a), b), c) d). I believe this to be
> an accidental cultural mis-interpretation that seems to continue
> unchallenged. Or am I seeing something that is not there?
>
> There seems to sometimes be a tacit assumption that QM observation and
> observation by a cognitive agent inclusive of a phenomenal
> consciousness are literally the same thing or necessarily related or
> that QM is necessarily causal in phenomenal consciousness. A corollary
> of this is that if you do a QM depiction of the universe unfolding
> that somehow phenomenality has been depicted. This is not necessarily
> the case. To me they seem to be two completely separate aspects of the
> natural world that may or may not be connected and the confusion that
> they are seems to be in place here.
>
> So here we are all thinking we are talking about the same thing
> whereas there seem to be at least 5 separable aspects to the
> discussion (a,b,c,d,e above). They appear very distinct to me, anyway,
> and in order to have any meaningful discussion it would seem that
> these 5 things be very clearly defined. Or have I just done that?
I am not sure. I do agree with your distinction, but I am not sure all
distinctions does not depend on different set of assumptions, and if
those sets are compatible with each other.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Mon Aug 15 2005 - 09:32:11 PDT