Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
>>Bruno writes
>
> <snip>
>
>>>I see what you mean and I agree with you, but now, you were again
>>>talking about third person description of the first person point of
>>>view (I will write 1-pov, 3-pov, ...).
>>
>>Yes. I find that the 1st person accounts to be pretty subjective,
>>actually. They also lead to inconsistencies and unnecessary
>>differences of opinion. In history, the 1st person experience
>>(e.g. the stars revolve around the Earth) are always upstaged
>>sooner or later by actual, objective data.
>
>
> Bruno! This is a very good joke!
> "I find that the 1st person accounts to be pretty subjective"
> LOLOLOLOLOL!!! :-)
> How could a 1st person account be anything else!?
>
> Actually I'd like to challenge your statement and suggest that there is no
> such thing as 'an objective view'!
>
> All we _actually_ have for our scientific evidence is first person
> experience! What we do (behave) is to carry out a procedure called
> _objectivity_ to select/agree on what we are studying within the
> individual subjective experience of those doing the 'agreeing'/being
> objective. When they have all agreed, there is _no_ _one_ _person_
> actually having (experiencing) that so called 'view'.
>
> The objective view is a VIRTUAL construct. The universe is acting 'as if'
> there was someone having the view, but there is no-one actually having the
> view. Ernest Nagel called the so called objective view "the view from
> nowhere".
>
> Here's a scientific experiment for the list:
>
> 1) Close your eyes.
> 2) Now prove you can do science to the same extent you could before. That
> is if you are now even able to read the rest of the instructions for the
> experiment!
>
> .i.e it ain't gonna happen, is it?
>
> Such an odd position for a scientist!
>
> a) Totally dependent on subjective experience as a causal ancestor to the
> act of 'being scientific', .i.e. it is all there is.
>
> b) having a false belief in the existence of an 'objective view', and then,
>
> c) finds that when you use the scientific observation system (subjective
> experience) to try and observe and be scientific about the scientific
> observing system (subjective experience), you can't observe it!
>
> Your words "actual, objective data" are actually an oxymoron! There is
> objective data, but it's derived entirely from a subjective experience
> which is discarded by the act of objectivity. What does the word 'actual'
> mean in this context? We have something going on in the universe that has
> been mapped through a human's subjective experience and then mapped again
> by the 'method' we call objectivity.
>
> By the time this incredibly long causal chain/mapping through a situated
> cognitive agent called the scientist has finished with the original
> observed 'thing', how does this claim any cudos as 'actual', except in
> that it is all we have?
>
> Subjective experience has PRIMACY in science, and we don't even know it!
>
> cheers
> colin
Right, except I think thoughtful scientists do know it. They recognize that what we call
"objective" would be more accurately called "intersubjective agreement". We create models and when
they work for everybody we (tentatively) agree on them. A lot of physics now is derived from
symmetry principles and the most basic principle is invariance of the model under changing
subjective viewpoints.
Brent Meeker
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Received on Fri Jun 23 2006 - 14:30:49 PDT