Philosophy, Science & Reality

[tar]

dimreepr,

 

Sure there is. I am confirming that solipsism isn't real.

 

My joke in college philosophy course was that I wanted to start a solipsism club.

 

Regards, TAR

besides, who are you looking to for confirmation?

if its only you, and you know there are other people to go to, you already have proof enough that you are not a figment of your own imagination to consider yourself wrong to think you are alone

if its only you, and you know there are not other people to go to, you already know there is no hope of confirmation

[dimreepr]

dimreepr,

 

Sure there is. I am confirming that solipsism isn't real.

 

My joke in college philosophy course was that I wanted to start a solipsism club.

 

Regards, TAR

 

That's great, can you do the same for god and save us all a lot of BS from those pesky believers?

[tar]

God I believe IS real, in the sense that he/she/it is the anthropomorphic unseen other that we converse with, when we wish to engage the absolute.

Guy hears a commotion in the chicken coup.

"hey, anybody in there"

"nobody here but us chickens"

[Strange]

klaynos,

 

Well yes its frustrating, but you are setting artificial limits as well. For instance you believe it is true that people sometimes hallucinate something that effects multiple senses. If you were to give me an example of this, I would believe it too.

 

Oh come on. Really?

 

You don't believe that people such as those with schizophrenia who see people that aren't there and talk to them, are not having a consistent visual and auditory hallucination? They can probably smell and touch the person as well.

 

FFS.

 

And I can assure you that certain chemical substances that cause hallucinations can cause you to both see and hear things that do not exist.

 

But even if that didn't actually happen in the world (we think) we live in, that is irrelevant. From the point of view of a logical(*) argument it is possible that hallucinations can create a completely false reality that cannot be detected or tested in any way.

 

(*) And I mean logical in the strict philosophical/mathematical sense, not "oh, that doesn't seem right to me" sort of logic (aka common sense).

[dimreepr]

God I believe IS real, in the sense that he/she/it is the anthropomorphic unseen other that we converse with, when we wish to engage the absolute.

 

Absolute what?

 

You play fast and loose with that word, kinda the antonym of it's meaning.

Edited July 1, 2017 by dimreepr

[tar]

Strange,

 

 

I was pointing out that we are sitting here discussing halucinations with other real people that because we are having the discussion, are obvioulsy considered other real people by each of the members.

 

Any discussion of the non-reality of all the members but one is absolutely proven false by the existence of the discussion.

 

Regards, TAR

[dimreepr]

Strange,

 

 

I was pointing out that we are sitting here discussing halucinations with other real people that because we are having the discussion, are obvioulsy considered other real people by each of the members.

 

Any discussion of the non-reality of all the members but one is absolutely proven false by the existence of the discussion.

 

Regards, TAR

 

FFS, did you even read strange's post?

[tar]

and if it is not absolutely false enough for you based on the confirmation of all the member's participation, then there is no thing that the members can absolutely confirm which is not notably helpful to scientific enquiry

 

The logical conclusion your argument comes to, is that science does not attempt to confirm reality, where I am rather sure that the confirmation of reality is the point of science.

 

If we are, in Klaynos' opinion, not good absolute judges of the place, so what, point me to someone who is a better judge than another human.

dimreepr,

 

Strange thinks I was saying people can't have hallucinations. I never thought that.

 

 

Regards, TAR

[dimreepr]

and if it is not absolutely false enough for you based on the confirmation of all the member's participation, then there is no thing that the members can absolutely confirm which is not notably helpful to scientific enquiry

 

The logical conclusion your argument comes to, is that science does not attempt to confirm reality, where I am rather sure that the confirmation of reality is the point of science.

 

If we are, in Klaynos' opinion, not good absolute judges of the place, so what, point me to someone who is a better judge than another human.

dimreepr,

 

Strange thinks I was saying people can't have hallucinations. I never thought that.

 

 

Regards, TAR

 

You really should stop deciding what others think, it's not helpful nor is it an excuse to change the goal.

[tar]

I can have a dream where I taste and smell and see a thing, yet I can still call it a dream because I know I was asleep when I had those experiences and they do not have to align with the waking world.

 

My thesis is that EVERYTHING we experience is an analog model of reality. Some of it firsthand, some of it from memory, some of it from the experiences of others we trust. That we have more than one sense allows us to match our model to reality in more than one way, thus "making sense" of the place.

 

 

In regards, to science, and many of the arguments I get into with scientists, it is more important to me that what I sense matches my model, and I immediately update my model to include changes to reality of which my senses inform me. It is always the match between my model and reality that makes my point of focus consciousness of reality, real.

 

I don't need to do a transform into Hilbert space, to imagine a photon traveling from a nearby star taking 4 years to get here, and what implications as to the reality of that star, that has.

dimreepr,

 

I was responding to what I thought Strange thought I was saying. There is plenty of "you shouldn't think you know what the other is thinking" to go around.

 

Regards, TAR

dimreepr,

 

I do however admit I often think I know what another is thinking, and I am wrong. However, there are plenty of times in my life when I thought I knew what the other was thinking and I was correct.

 

I still tend to put myself in the other person's shoes, and figure I can converse with that unseen other, hypothetically, but based on human tendencies I know they must have, because they are human. So sometimes I overthink, but I do not appreciate being accused of "not reading" someone's post. I read the post, I read between the lines, I take into consideration other arguments that the poster has presented to attempt to understand what he or she is thinking. I do not pull my considerations out of thin air.

 

 

And of course I confuse and conflate ideas presented by different posters and take the figurative literally, and forget and misremember and such, but I do read. What the subject is, is often misconstrued.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited July 1, 2017 by tar

[beecee]

 

The logical conclusion your argument comes to, is that science does not attempt to confirm reality, where I am rather sure that the confirmation of reality is the point of science.

 

And you would be wrong. Science simply constructs models that match what we observe and the result of our experiments as close as possible...Or if you like, as close to reality as possible.

These models and theories grow in certainty over time, and as they continue to successfully predict, and continue to match new observations.

This so called deeper reality you are talking about may not exist, and may be unobtainable anyway: If science does happen to hit upon it, then all well and good.

Speaking and searching for that is philosophy, plain and simple.

[Strange]

Strange,

 

 

I was pointing out that we are sitting here discussing halucinations with other real people that because we are having the discussion, are obvioulsy considered other real people by each of the members.

 

Any discussion of the non-reality of all the members but one is absolutely proven false by the existence of the discussion.

 

Regards, TAR

 

 

Nope. Because it could all be happening entirely in your head. There may be no other people (and no other reality) other than what is in your head.

The logical conclusion your argument comes to, is that science does not attempt to confirm reality

 

 

Absolutely. Science can say nothing about reality. All it can do is describe what we observe. (And, note that that works equally well even if there is no external reality and it is all created by your mind.)

 

 

 

where I am rather sure that the confirmation of reality is the point of science.

 

Not only can science not say anything about reality, but nothing (other than blind faith) can say anything about reality.

My thesis is that EVERYTHING we experience is an analog model of reality.

 

 

It might be. Or the external reality might be completely different. Or it may not exist. How would you know.

 

You can only know what your sense tell you. You have no independent way of checking they are "true".

 

 

 

In regards, to science, and many of the arguments I get into with scientists, it is more important to me that what I sense matches my model, and I immediately update my model to include changes to reality of which my senses inform me.

 

That is a very dangerous (and unscientific) approach. One thing we have learned from science is that our senses (and memories) are very, very unreliable.

 

If you think your senses are more important than objective reality, does that mean that you think the two squares in this image are actually different colours even though, objectively, they are the same?

Strange thinks I was saying people can't have hallucinations. I never thought that.

 

 

You appeared to express disbelief that people could experience hallucinations that affect more than one sense (in a consistent way). Which is obviously wrong.

[tar]

Strange,

 

I was trying to show that using more than one sense was how we operate and each sense helps complete the model of the world that we build internally. I understand that hallucinations could involve multiple senses, I was saying that if someone gave me a real example of this occurring I would believe it, because a report of this happening would be an example of taking someone else's word on what is real. I would not need to actually interview the guy that had such experience, I would trust that he told somebody what he experienced, knowing in retrospect it was a hallucination, or the person he was with at the time determined what he was experiencing was not real. But in either case somebody would have to make the determination that there is a difference between experiencing reality, and having a very real feeling hallucination.

 

5 years ago at work one day I had a situation for about 3 minutes where I saw edges and colors around everything. I experienced it as if it was actual. No difference between what I saw that I knew was the way the world looked and what I saw that I knew my brain was manufacturing. It looked real, yet I knew it wasn't because I knew from prior experience what these things looked like, and the fringes "made no sense". I looked it up later and my experience was much like the reports of "visual migraines". So visual migraines are real, but they are not as true to reality as the way a thing looks to me, when I am not having a visual migraine.

 

Kant believed that you could not know the thing as it is. But you could say something about the thing. That is all we can do as individuals, and that is all science can do as well...but since that is the best we can do, and we all have the same limitation, AND we are able to, through language tell each other things about the world, then the things we tell each other about the world, as long as we are not lying to each other, are true. They are at least true things you can say about the world. Even if we don't have access to the thing as it is, and we only get the "image" of the thing, there is still something casting the shadow on the wall and we can talk about what might make such a shadow. The thing casting the shadow is still real. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave

 

Regards, TAR

[swansont]

 

The logical conclusion your argument comes to, is that science does not attempt to confirm reality, where I am rather sure that the confirmation of reality is the point of science.

 

Interesting that you can be rather sure of this despite having scientists say otherwise, supported by examples.

[tar]

Yes interesting.

Do you, as a scientist believe that other scientists are real?

By confirm I am not talking confirmation bias, where you look at things in a way that confirms your preconceptions. I am talking about looking at things and confirming that they look the same as they did last time you looked. Confirming that your model matches reality, or importantly that your model and reality do not match, informing you of a change in reality. That is, a very important component of human consciousness is pattern recognition. Being able to see a whole deer hiding in the woods, even though only a piece here and a piece there is visible through the brush. We fill in the blanks with deer parts we only know are "supposed" to be there because we have seen whole deer.

[Randolpin]

Another idea that I think an argument against sollipsism is the fact that we ourselves are conscious and have freedom on what we will do (freewill). In this view, we ourselves are independent from an ultimate mind or consciousness because again we are free to choose which action we should do. Therefore, me, you and any other persons independently exist not depending from an ultimate mind or consciousness because again, we have free will.

Edited July 2, 2017 by Randolpin

[tar]

SwansonT,

 

As a person who was taught logic and who has mused about life and meaning quite considerably, I have always thought what is important in ones own worldview, ones own philosophy is that it be internally consistent. A consistent worldview does not mean it is the best or the only worldview, it just means it is consistent. I see a direct analogy to the science that we talk about on this board, from various angles, in that​ ​a scientific model does not have to be the best fit, or the only fit, it just has to work theoretically under the constraints and assumptions agreed upon and be useful in predicting how reality is going to behave next time we encounter it, applying the same combination of variables in the way we did last time, when it behaved in a recorded manner.

 

So in both cases one looks for agreement. One looks to please something, to match something, to find something fits. My insight into this situation, that I have not, up to now, properly shared, is that we as humans want to please objective reality by agreeing with it, and we want to please ourselves by having a model that securely fits the world. We want the model to fit the world and the world to fit the model.

 

If this is the case, then philosophy and science are married. It is not a situation of philosophers are like this and scientists are like that. It is a situation where both philosophers and scientists are human.

 

Regards, TAR

We want to please ourselves, we want to please those we consider part of our feeling of self, and we want to fit the world, and we want the world to fit with us.

[swansont]

Yes interesting.

Do you, as a scientist believe that other scientists are real?

What relevance does that have to the discussion?

[swansont]

SwansonT,

 

As a person who was taught logic and who has mused about life and meaning quite considerably, I have always thought what is important in ones own worldview, ones own philosophy is that it be internally consistent. A consistent worldview does not mean it is the best or the only worldview, it just means it is consistent. I see a direct analogy to the science that we talk about on this board, from various angles, in that​ ​a scientific model does not have to be the best fit, or the only fit, it just has to work theoretically under the constraints and assumptions agreed upon and be useful in predicting how reality is going to behave next time we encounter it, applying the same combination of variables in the way we did last time, when it behaved in a recorded manner.

 

So in both cases one looks for agreement. One looks to please something, to match something, to find something fits. My insight into this situation, that I have not, up to now, properly shared, is that we as humans want to please objective reality by agreeing with it, and we want to please ourselves by having a model that securely fits the world. We want the model to fit the world and the world to fit the model.

 

If this is the case, then philosophy and science are married. It is not a situation of philosophers are like this and scientists are like that. It is a situation where both philosophers and scientists are human.

 

Regards, TAR

We want to please ourselves, we want to please those we consider part of our feeling of self, and we want to fit the world, and we want the world to fit with us.

 

 

Do you have some examples of science not being the best fit, and still conforming to the protocols of science? Making ideas fit to our notions, to please us, is regularly rejected by science.

[tar]

What relevance does that have to the discussion?

 

Just the solipsism argument. It seems to me that the reality of others is unquestionable. I don't see how someone can say there is no proof of others when there is nothing but proof. So I was wondering if you had any reason to doubt that others exist.

 

As for examples of something not being the best fit I would say things like epicycles, that explain the behavior but are too convoluted to be really the way things work. Personally I think dark energy and dark matter, are not a very good fit. Science had a pretty good series of explanations without what appears to be 95 percent of the place accounted for. I do not see where dark energy has been "fit" into our understanding of our immediate surroundings.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited July 2, 2017 by tar

[beecee]

 

Science had a pretty good series of explanations without what appears to be 95 percent of the place accounted for. I do not see where dark energy has been "fit" into our understanding of our immediate surroundings.

 

Regards, TAR

Probably to explain the observed acceleration in the expansion rate?

I thought that was common knowledge,

Let me sum it up for you in an extract from a reply I received from a Professor Isi from the aLIGO laboratory.........

"This is because natural language is too ambiguous to express formal statements: GR (as every other physical theory) is a mathematical framework and we need mathematics to discuss it properly. This is evident when you consider how both quantum mechanics and special relativity are full of paradoxes that seem to point to contradictions that go away when expressed mathematically. Paradoxes point to the inadequacies of our intuitions, not to those of the theory".

[swansont]

Just the solipsism argument. It seems to me that the reality of others is unquestionable. I don't see how someone can say there is no proof of others when there is nothing but proof. So I was wondering if you had any reason to doubt that others exist.

I was not a participant in that discussion.

 

As for examples of something not being the best fit I would say things like epicycles, that explain the behavior but are too convoluted to be really the way things work. Personally I think dark energy and dark matter, are not a very good fit. Science had a pretty good series of explanations without what appears to be 95 percent of the place accounted for. I do not see where dark energy has been "fit" into our understanding of our immediate surroundings.

 

Regards, TAR

Epicycles were abandoned after a mechanism was identified.

 

You said not the best fit. What is the better fit for dark energy and dark matter? They are placeholders. There can't be alternatives as they do not represent anything resembling a theory.

[tar]

Epicycles were probably to explain the observed retrograde motion of nieghboring planets.

 

The math worked...if you understood it.

I was not a participant in that discussion.


Epicycles were abandoned after a mechanism was identified.

You said not the best fit. What is the better fit for dark energy and dark matter? They are placeholders. There can't be alternatives as they do not represent anything resembling a theory.

 

Sorry, I was just going by the recent arguments in the thread.

 

So its not a theory, yet Wiki talks about it like it is accepted fact, and they don't mention the placeholder bit.

 

 

​"Assuming that the standard model of cosmology is correct, the best current measurements indicate that dark energy contributes 68.3% of the total energy in the present-day observable universe. The mass–energy of dark matter and ordinary (baryonic) matter contribute 26.8% and 4.9%, respectively, and other components such as neutrinos and photons contribute a very small amount.^[3][4][5][6] The density of dark energy (~ 7 × 10⁻³⁰ g/cm³) is very low, much less than the density of ordinary matter or dark matter within galaxies. However, it comes to dominate the mass–energy of the universe because it is uniform across space.^[7][8][9]"

 

 

Regards, TAR

^​

What if, for instance the universe is dynamic and undulating like a huge soap bubble in the wind. Then what we saw at 1 million ly is representative of the going away or coming closer of an area of space measured by its redshift/blueshift but representative of the motion that part of space was undergoing 1 million yrs ago, and we actually have NO measurements to look at concerning what that portion of space is doing now.

 

Not a thought out theory, just a placeholder to explain the redshifts we measure at different depths of space.

 

If the model we are going by had inflation followed by expansion that would indicate a mechanism slowing down growth of space, and the expansion of space would more sensibly slow to a stop and perhaps then retract.

 

Can you explain to me how redshift measurements of different depths of space lead one to hypothesize that the place is currently doing any one thing?

 

Regards, TAR

Edited July 2, 2017 by tar

[beecee]

 

So its not a theory, yet Wiki talks about it like it is accepted fact, and they don't mention the placeholder bit.

 

 

​"Assuming that the standard model of cosmology is correct, the best current measurements indicate that dark energy contributes 68.3% of the total energy in the present-day observable universe. The mass–energy of dark matter and ordinary (baryonic) matter contribute 26.8% and 4.9%, respectively, and other components such as neutrinos and photons contribute a very small amount.^[3][4][5][6] The density of dark energy (~ 7 × 10⁻³⁰ g/cm³) is very low, much less than the density of ordinary matter or dark matter within galaxies. However, it comes to dominate the mass–energy of the universe because it is uniform across space.^[7][8][9]"

 

 

Regards, TAR

^​

I don't believe WIKI does talk about it like an accepted fact.

Both DM and DE are "probable explanations" to explain some anomalies in the standard model.

If the standard model is correct, then certainly we need DE [whatever that may be] to explain accelerated expansion, and we need DM to explain anomalies in observed rotational curves of galaxies.

Although as yet the exact nature of DE and DM is still a mystery, it does not invalidate the overall large scale picture of the present day standard model, which still aligns with plenty of observational and experimental evidence.

Are they wrong? That as yet remains to be seen.

[tar]

"Assuming that the standard model of cosmology is correct, the best current measurements indicate that dark energy contributes 68.3% of the total energy in the present-day observable universe. The mass–energy of dark matter and ordinary (baryonic) matter contribute 26.8% and 4.9%, respectively, and other components such as neutrinos and photons contribute a very small amount.^[3][4][5][6]The density of dark energy (~ 7 × 10⁻³⁰ g/cm³) is very low, much less than the density of ordinary matter or dark matter within galaxies. However, it comes to dominate the mass–energy of the universe because it is uniform across space.^[7][8][9]"

 

So I am guessing most people here take the standard model as being correct, and the rest are implications of exactly what the measurements must then indicate.