Le 15-août-05, à 06:02, Lee Corbin a écrit :
> Stephen writes
>
>> I would like for you to consider that we should not take OMs as
>> "objective processes" but the result of "objective processes".
>
> Of course, I will bow to whatever word usage is favored by most of
> the people, or by those who have the longest experience with the
> term.
Well, but here we are divided. Those who thinks OM precede, logically,
the physical world and those who thinks the physical world precedes
the OM. It is a main point of discussion.
> I merely want to assert that I don't and never have found
> any real value in what is not objective.
I would like to insist that most of us do the same assertion. It is
just that we acknowledge the existence of subjectivity. Like you
actually. Then, a reasoning shows that in some theory (like comp)
subjectivity has a an objective role with objective, albeit indirect,
verifiable consequences. (Where you think subjectivity is purely
epiphenomenal. That cannot be! (unless you assume you are a subtantial
infinite non turing emulable soul).
>
> For example, if I am poked with a needle and cry out, one may wish
> to proclaim to me "see, you do have a subjective reality". "Oh, that
> really hurt," I'll admit "but if you want to really know what happened
> then the needle caused some nerves in my finger to fire, which caused
> other nerves to fire and so on. I am a process fashioned by evolution
> to object to actions like poking me."
I have no problem with that. Actually by admitting "that hurts" you
admit the subjectivity. By dismissing discourse on it, you agree on its
ineffable aspect. And by admitting it is related to evolution, you
admit implicitly the mind-body problem: why nature would have associate
ineffable perception when only triggering neurons could make me behave
in the right way.
And so you are perhaps closer to the mind-body "solution" which emerges
by itself from computer science, which is that any machine which
introspect itself discover soon enough an objectively ineffable
gigantic a-spatial atemporal, but mathematically and "physically"
explorable reality. Godel did not only discover incompleteness. He
discovered that machine can discover their incompleteness. That is
what I exploit. The sufficiently rich (lobian) does discover the
geometry of that incompleteness and why that geometry should operate in
their most probable neighborhoods (in their most probable consistent
extensions/ computational histories).
>
>> I shudder every time I read of notions that imply some kind of
>> knowledge of "reality in itself"!
>
> Yeah, well now you know how it feels! :-) Feels, that is, every
> time that someone speaks of inner truths not accessible to anyone
> else, not accessible in *principle* to anyone else.
But this is the case of the *hurting* needle. If you can give me a
purely third person communication that the needle hurts you, just give
me it.
> I don't consider
> those things to rank very highly on the scale of truth.
Take someone. Put the needle in the finger of that someone. Tell him
now that you don't rank very highly his personal feeling on the scale
of truth!
Try to give him a third person proof of that! Tell him "Come on,
that's only some firing neurons!".
You frighten me a little bit!
>
> It boils down, as you hint, to what we mean by "knowledge". Casting
> aside the incredibly mistaken quest for "certainty", we ought to
> speak of that which can be objectively known in principle.
Here again I follow you completely.
> It doesn't
> ever do any good to speak of anything else.
Absolutely. But to exclude the possibility of objective theory *on*
subjectivity from that would be a category error.
> Sure, ask someone if he
> or she has a headache---but if you want to think about it strictly,
> then it is a state (or a succession of states constituting a process)
> in that person's brain.
Suppose you explain me what is a succession of states and how that
could give some person a feeling of headache. And suppose you are so
good that you convince me. Now, 'to be convinced' is a first person
subjective experience. Is that convincing not also just a succession of
states? If you use that reduction for dismissing the headache, why
shouldn't we use to dismiss the convincing? But then how could we still
give sense to any argument?
> I repeat my challenge: find *one* thing that
> is subjectively "known" or investigable or knowable by introspection
> that was not "known" by the ancients.
The first person comp indeterminacy. Theaetetus was close, but he
missed it.
:-)
(but are not all theorem in math new such things?)
> Oh, here I agree with you. I consider the speculations of the
> Everything
> Platonic monists to be, er, speculations only.
No no. It is only reasoning from assumption. Unless there is an error
in my proof, of course, but in the case there is no error, the result
changes the "speculation-target".
A physical universe? We don't need that hypothesis any more ...
(assuming comp).
Materialism (the doctrine that matter exists): superstition!
> Those conjectures have not
> even *begun* to pass the test of time, i.e., have not endured much
> criticism
> as yet, and certainly cannot be said to have survived much criticism.
It is like some job proposal. We ask a very young engineer having 90
years experiences!
> Your
> real knowledge, (for example, that some people have been to Hawaii or
> that
> you have two hands or that four gas giants revolve around the sun), has
> survived the tests of time.
But that most humans suffer on the planet, and sometime somewhere more,
this does not survive the tests of time?
And does not the mathematical proved theorems not survive the tests of
time?
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Mon Aug 15 2005 - 10:41:31 PDT