Philosophy, Science & Reality

[tar]

Strange,

 

I do not think it is true that there is only one instance of a given star.

 

 

That is, take our Sun. It looks younger to a viewer a million lys from here and even younger to a viewer 2 million lys from here. In fact a viewer 40 billion lys from here might look in this direction and see the Milky Way when another star that provided the material for our Sun to get together went supernova...that is, to someone 63.5 lys from here, with a powerful enough telescope, I am just being born. To a current observer 100 lys from here my mom does not exist, yet. To an observer here and now, my mom does not exist either, but she was real while she lived.

 

So how many instances of a star do you figure there are? I say, only one, but that is not the instance we will see in our telescopes, so that is at least two instances, and counting.

 

Regards, TAR

[Strange]

 

 

But how can a hallucination can have a rational mind just like you? Have physical characteristics just like you?

 

Ask someone with schizophrenia.

 

But it doesn't matter "how" it can happen. There is no independent evidence, beyond your own senses and mind, for the existence of anything (including other people).

 

 

 

Things that really exist has logical existence containment (LEC) -my own words. LEC means the individual exist in a logical way as you observed. Hallucinations does not follow LEC. For example a person takes a drug that causes hallucinations, suddenly a snake just pop into existence from nothing and bite his leg. The existence of the snake is invalid or not real because it does not follow the logical way because it is like magic, it just pop into existence.

 

This is a straw man (or straw snake) argument. You invent a type of hallucination that doesn't correspond to reality and then claim it proves that hallucinations do not behave like reality.

 

What about a hallucination of a snake that slithers out of the grass and then runs away when you approach it. It behaves just like a real snake.

 

Also, we are not talking about drug-created hallucinations. They were just introduced to refute the claim that people cannot have hallucinations that affect all sense consistently. They obviously can, whether due to drugs or psychosis.

 

But if you see a snake, you can only compare it to your idea of what a "real" snake should do based on your memories, which were created by your mind. So there is no reason that any snake you see (which is, therefore, a creation of your mind) would not behave exactly like your memory of other snakes created by your mind.

[tar]

what is this insistence that everything could be an hallucination?

 

it can't be

 

There is no way such a situation would work out. And it certainly makes no sense.

[Strange]

what is this insistence that everything could be an hallucination?

 

 

To try and explain why science does not deal with "reality". It deals with things our senses tell us. That is all there is to it. You cannot know anything beyond what your senses tell your (or, more, accurately what your mind tells you that your senses say). Everything you know, all the information you have, is in your mind and created by your mind.

 

 

it can't be

 

Why not? How would you tell if there were something out there beyond what your mind tells you?

Strange,

 

I do not think it is true that there is only one instance of a given star.

 

 

That is, take our Sun. It looks younger to a viewer a million lys from here and even younger to a viewer 2 million lys from here. In fact a viewer 40 billion lys from here might look in this direction and see the Milky Way when another star that provided the material for our Sun to get together went supernova...that is, to someone 63.5 lys from here, with a powerful enough telescope, I am just being born. To a current observer 100 lys from here my mom does not exist, yet. To an observer here and now, my mom does not exist either, but she was real while she lived.

 

So how many instances of a star do you figure there are? I say, only one, but that is not the instance we will see in our telescopes, so that is at least two instances, and counting.

 

Regards, TAR

 

Well, if you are defining "instance" to mean a visual stimulus perceived by a being, then there are an unbounded number. That is not what I understand "instance" to mean.

[tar]

Strange,

 

Maybe this will help.

 

Your memory of a "real" snake, is not a creation of your mind, it is a recall of the sensory perceptions you had of that real snake. An analog representation of an actual real snake, slithering through actual grass, growing on an actual sunlit field, illuminated by an actual Sun around which our actual planet cycles.

 

You HAD TO have had your own eyes to see the thing and store this memory in the actual real synapses and cells and chemicals and connections in your actual brain, located in an actual building in front of an actual computer in an actual location on the planet everybody we know of calls their own.

 

It is the simple explanation of our common experience that according to the ole razor, is probably the correct explanation.

 

All this "could be" nonsense, is non-sense. It makes no sense and has zero to do with our common condition.

 

Regards, TAR

 

 

To try and explain why science does not deal with "reality". It deals with things our senses tell us. That is all there is to it. You cannot know anything beyond what your senses tell your (or, more, accurately what your mind tells you that your senses say). Everything you know, all the information you have, is in your mind and created by your mind.

 

 

Why not? How would you tell if there were something out there beyond what your mind tells you?

 

Well, if you are defining "instance" to mean a visual stimulus perceived by a being, then there are an unbounded number. That is not what I understand "instance" to mean.

 

I agree in principle that there can be only one instance of each event that is currently happening in the universe. But that is in accord with the universal now idea only, which is a mental exercise where we put ourselves in God's shoes and imagine the place as if the speed of light is not a constraint. In actuality the universe really looks as it does, with old stuff close and young stuff far away. But each item is not therefore all ages, because that would require being able to put ourselves in every possible shoe that currently exists, which is way out of our computational abilities, even with super computers, and WAY out of our reach in terms of the information such a picture would require.

Edited July 3, 2017 by tar

[dimreepr]

what is this insistence that everything could be an hallucination?

 

In Strange's example, did it look like the squares were the same shade?

 

 

it can't be

There is no way such a situation would work out. And it certainly makes no sense.

 

 

But they were, your belief has no bearing on reality, whether it makes sense or not.

 

Personally I choose to labour under the belief that we do exist and, mostly, my senses are reasonably accurate in defining the world around me, until I'm shown otherwise; but that's irrelevant to this discussion.

Edited July 3, 2017 by dimreepr

[swansont]

Swansont,

 

If you read the passage, knowing what you know, you can read the hypothetical nature of statements, you can assess the conditional portions as conditional. But as a laymen I can only read it as this is what scientists that believe the standard model is correct think the place is made of.

I'm probably not the only one who gets annoyed at this gambit. You make a claim as if you are quite certain of it, and when pressed, you say "I'm a layman, don't expect me to know details." Jumping into a discussion about science requires some understanding of science. If you don't have the knowledge, then you need to make an effort to gain some. In this case, it's pretty basic: understanding what an hypothesis is, and having a very basic idea of how dark energy and dark matter fit into cosmology.

 

If you don't have that, then read up on it, and ask questions. You've been a member long enough to know the patience and helpfulness of the members here when they are asked sincere questions.

 

Right, we established that science and/or an individual human, can not know the thing in itself. But we can still say a heck of a lot about our models of the place.

 

Philosophy can talk about "how the universe looks" from a God's eye perspective. Science, bound by the requirement to retrieve empirical data, can not say much about what a star 4 lys from here, is doing now. All science can do is tell us what it was doing 4 years ago, and perhaps predict what it will look like in our sky IN four years and imply that is what it is probably doing now, but there you have two instances of the star. One that exists in our telescopes, and one that exists in our minds. Which one is more real?

Well, one relies on a mythical being, so I'd say science is "more real" than that, but this again misses the point, which was whether the goal of science is to confirm reality.

 

that is, which reality does science form its models from, and which reality does a scientist seek to match her model to?

Science is limited to observations.

 

for instance the CMB (or the matter we are currently sensing) was relatively very close to us (the matter that formed the MilkyWay) at the time of last scattering, but that same matter is currently part of some system 46 billion lys from here,

I suspect that this is not a true statement, and as such, any conclusion drawn from it as a premise is invalid.

[beecee]

BeeCee,

 

I read the words and I understood them to say if our model is correct, then putting the measurements we took into the equations, the indication is that the universe is 5 percent normal matter and energy and 95 percent dark matter and energy. There was no suggestion that dark matter and energy were placeholders for a fudge factor needed to have the numbers come out clean.

 

 

Science is a discipline in eternal progress. Theories are formulated to explain observation and experimental results. Theories do grow in certainty over time, and as they continue to successfully predict and explain observational data. While that continues, scientists then proceed under the assumption that it is correct: I see that aligning with common sense and logic.

 

 

 

 

"This topic talks about the relationship of philosophy, science and reality.

I will expound it thru questions:

1. Is philosophy more advance than science in understanding reality because it can form ideas even when there is no experiments performed or observations (While science on the other hand can't step forward because it relies on data)?

2. Is philosophy always correct? Are there instance that science prove philosophy?If philosophy always correct, we can rely solely to philosophy than science.

3. Is philosophy as accurate as science?

4. When can we say that a question become philosophical? Can we say that philosophy is an advance science? If yes then we can conclude that the only task of science is to prove philosophy ( is it correct?).

 

I hope you understand my points. If you need clarifications, just ask me. Thank you..."

 

To these questions the status of reality is important to get straight between us, to begin with. If you can't assume reality is real, then all discussions concerning the nature of it, are put on hold until you can determine or stipulate that reality is real. That there is something "out there" beyond our fingertips to model. So we have to logically stipulate the place exists and we have to stipulate that we notice the place, and we have to stipulate that each of us indeed has fingertips for everything else to be beyond. If these things are not "assumed" to be true, then there is no discussion.

Philosophy imo lays down the ground rules for science. Science is the hands on approach.

Some great science and philosophy quotes here.......

 

https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sciquote.htm

 

What I will say is that if it weren't for science, we would still be swinging in the trees.

Edited July 3, 2017 by beecee

[Randolpin]

Ask someone with schizophrenia.

 

But it doesn't matter "how" it can happen. There is no independent evidence, beyond your own senses and mind, for the existence of anything (including other people).

 

 

 

This is a straw man (or straw snake) argument. You invent a type of hallucination that doesn't correspond to reality and then claim it proves that hallucinations do not behave like reality.

 

What about a hallucination of a snake that slithers out of the grass and then runs away when you approach it. It behaves just like a real snake.

 

Also, we are not talking about drug-created hallucinations. They were just introduced to refute the claim that people cannot have hallucinations that affect all sense consistently. They obviously can, whether due to drugs or psychosis.

 

But if you see a snake, you can only compare it to your idea of what a "real" snake should do based on your memories, which were created by your mind. So there is no reason that any snake you see (which is, therefore, a creation of your mind) would not behave exactly like your memory of other snakes created by your mind.

How can you consider our reality or the reality that surrounds you as a hallucination?

 

Consider this new argument. This argument is called constancy argument. In this argument, you cannot consider the reality around you as hallucination because it appears always as what it should be with LEC. You see your bedroom the same way it is before and after you sleep. No matter what you do it still appear the same. Meaning your surroundings is independent from you. You are just a member of your surrounding, not a master mind of your surrounding. This is the constancy argument.

Edited July 4, 2017 by Randolpin

[tar]

 

In Strange's example, did it look like the squares were the same shade?

 

 

 

 

But they were, your belief has no bearing on reality, whether it makes sense or not.

 

Personally I choose to labour under the belief that we do exist and, mostly, my senses are reasonably accurate in defining the world around me, until I'm shown otherwise; but that's irrelevant to this discussion.

 

In the shaded chess board example the two same shade of grey squares "look" like different shades to EVERYBODY. This is not an indication that human thought and perception is faulty, or that our picture of the world is therefore somehow incorrect and fraught with error. It is actually quite the opposite, and shows not only do we all see the same reality, but we all see it in a consistent fashion. That is, we make the correction in our brains, each of our brains for the fact that the one square is illuminated in bright sunlight and the other is in deep shadow. We know what a chess board looks like, we know that a white square in the shade will not reflect as much light as a white square in the sun. So an illusion is drawn to convince us that the white square is in a shadow and EVERYBODY is fooled by the same construction. But it is a drawing. There is not real sunlight hitting a real board, and if it where, the black squares in the sunlight might indeed reflect exactly the same amount of light as the white squares in the shade. An argument FOR reality being consistent and understandable in a common fashion. That even though illusions can be created, that they can be created so consistently, across the board, proves we all match the same reality to our internal model in the same fashion.

 

Regards, TAR

Just thought in addition that the illusion also proves some things about pattern matching and transforms, that are a consistent feature of all humans, and suggests to me that although our models are all independently occurring in our isolated brains, that there is a consistency in both how we match, and the thing that is being matched to. Consider the black square, drawn with a corner in the sunlight and the rest in the shade of the cylinder. There of course is no sunlight, but the artist is constructing the picture to convince us that there really is sunlight and shade, and this square provides the correction factor, that all squares in the shadow of the cylinder will be darkened by this amount.

Edited July 4, 2017 by tar

[dimreepr]

 

In the shaded chess board example the two same shade of grey squares "look" like different shades to EVERYBODY. This is not an indication that human thought and perception is faulty, or that our picture of the world is therefore somehow incorrect and fraught with error. It is actually quite the opposite, and shows not only do we all see the same reality, but we all see it in a consistent fashion. That is, we make the correction in our brains, each of our brains for the fact that the one square is illuminated in bright sunlight and the other is in deep shadow. We know what a chess board looks like, we know that a white square in the shade will not reflect as much light as a white square in the sun. So an illusion is drawn to convince us that the white square is in a shadow and EVERYBODY is fooled by the same construction. But it is a drawing. There is not real sunlight hitting a real board, and if it where, the black squares in the sunlight might indeed reflect exactly the same amount of light as the white squares in the shade. An argument FOR reality being consistent and understandable in a common fashion. That even though illusions can be created, that they can be created so consistently, across the board, proves we all match the same reality to our internal model in the same fashion.

 

Regards, TAR

 

Ever woken from a dream convinced it was real?

 

I used to wake up and get on with my day, only to wake again, often multiple times.

[robinpike]

what is this insistence that everything could be an hallucination?

 

it can't be

 

There is no way such a situation would work out. And it certainly makes no sense.

 

Take this example. All the inputs that feed into a computer inside a driver-less car are recorded and these are then input into another computer sitting in a lab somewhere, running the same driver-less car software. Can that computer tell that it is not in a driver-less car, controlling it down the road?

 

Suppose all the inputs that a person receives during their life were to be recorded and then played back to a computer running a 'person simulator'. Would that 'person simulator' think that they are alive and real? How would the 'person simulator' know that they are a simulator and not a living creature?

[tar]

dimreepr,

 

 

Why yes I have done that.

 

I can also close my eyes and drive the route to work that I drove for 26 years, even though I quit my job two or three years ago. I can "see" the reservoir, see the swans on it, see the turn coming up where I used to turn to get to one building, where I went straight to get to the other building.

 

Dreams and imagination are close to reality, because both or all are happening in our brains. That is, our senses internalize the outside, and build a model of the place that we can navigate without actually expending much energy. Its a very detailed and complete model and it matches every aspect of reality that we can sense.

 

No wonder we can get confused between the waking world and the dream world, it is all happening in our brains. But there is this thing we are modeling. And that this thing is so consistently modeled by all of us is a testament to the fact that the thing is real.

 

That there is indeed a waking world.

 

Regards, TAR

 

Take this example. All the inputs that feed into a computer inside a driver-less car are recorded and these are then input into another computer sitting in a lab somewhere, running the same driver-less car software. Can that computer tell that it is not in a driver-less car, controlling it down the road?

 

Suppose all the inputs that a person receives during their life were to be recorded and then played back to a computer running a 'person simulator'. Would that 'person simulator' think that they are alive and real? How would the 'person simulator' know that they are a simulator and not a living creature?

 

We cross posted. I gave the driving to work example before I read your driverless car analogy. But none-the-less, I can tell the difference between actually driving to work, and imagining I am driving to work. We have a predictive motor simulator in our brains that rehearses combinations of motor signal timings and sets the whole coordinated sequence up, before actually sending the signals. We in essence go through the motions, before we actually move. The driverless car has untold subprograms to run in various situations, just having the program is not the same as moving the car through reality. The driverless car would know what was real and what was simulation. If such an ability to tell the difference was not built into the car, then it would be quite dangerous indeed, liable to do zero turns at 60 miles an hour in the middle of a festival, just to burn rubber.

 

Regards, TAR

robinpike,

 

as to how would the person simulator know if it was actually a person or a simulation, I would have to go with consideration of whether or not the thing was conscious of itself and conscious of its position in reality...if it knew what it was, and where it was, had a intuition of time and space and could place itself in context, then I would say it would know it was a person simulator

[dimreepr]

 

Take this example. All the inputs that feed into a computer inside a driver-less car are recorded and these are then input into another computer sitting in a lab somewhere, running the same driver-less car software. Can that computer tell that it is not in a driver-less car, controlling it down the road?

 

Suppose all the inputs that a person receives during their life were to be recorded and then played back to a computer running a 'person simulator'. Would that 'person simulator' think that they are alive and real? How would the 'person simulator' know that they are a simulator and not a living creature?

 

We aren't computers.

[robinpike]

 

We aren't computers.

 

But in the example given, how would the computer know that it is not a living thing?

[tar]

yeah I think the wires and chips might be a tip off to the computer, that it was not a person

[DrP]

.... but, but, the computer wouldn't know it had wires and chips if it was a person simulator... oh, never mind.

[tar]

DrP,

 

No, go ahead. This is central to the argument (the question) of what is real.

 

Regards, TAR

If a person simulator were to be created, it would have to have all the senses of a human, all the capabilities of a human, all the internal timings of a human, all the needs, wants and motivating factors of a human, or it would not act like a human, or be like a human or "think" it was a human. A camera does not think it is at a wedding.

And I don't think the camera will be leaving a gift.

Edited July 4, 2017 by tar

[DrP]

I thought that the whole point was - how on earth could you even know if you were a simulation or not? How would you test it? How can you be sure or trust the results of any test as it could have been fed to you through your programming. I thought it was generally accepted that you cannot prove such a thing at all.

 

At first I thought you could have been joking in post 216. How would a computer know if it had wires or not?... lol,. I still do not know if it was a humour attempt or not.

Edited July 4, 2017 by DrP

[tar]

DrP,

 

I do not accept that there is no way to tell if you are a simulation or not.

You will have to go through that logic for me again, because I don't see the problem.

 

So not an attempt at humor, just a statement of fact. If you were a conscious computer, you would be conscious of your computerness because your computerness would be the reality of the situation.

 

Regards, TAR

[dimreepr]

 

But in the example given, how would the computer know that it is not a living thing?

 

yeah I think the wires and chips might be a tip off to the computer, that it was not a person

 

Lets stick to the topic.

tar

 

Your credulity is not required, the simple "fact" of the matter is, our senses are fallible and so can't be relied upon as any sort of proof against solipsism.

If we take your example of the self drive car, the Tesla that crashed, did so because it's senses were fooled.

[DrP]

To say "it is a statement of fact" - is just ridiculous.. your definition of 'fact' is very different from mine then. You tell me - "HOW can you possible even test for that"? If you were a bot programed to think you were human then you would have no way of finding out. All of your senses could be programed to lie to you about actually reality. Obviously I do not think that this is the case, but there is no way you could possibly objectively check for this or not without using your own senses, which are what are under question in the first place.

 

If you were a computer programmed to think you were human then you would think you were human - you wouldn't know about the wires. All of your senses could just be routines in the program and you'd have no way of testing what is real or not if the program was good enough.

[tar]

DrP,

 

Well I don't believe our senses are lying to us. What they report is true stuff happening in the real world. If something tastes bitter it is because it has the chemicals in it that activate those taste buds. That I might hate bitter things and you might like them or that I might have fewer of the buds and you might be more sensitive to that chemical than I am, or that I can have a bitter taste in my mouth just by breathing in a few molecules of that chemical, or that I can remember what a bitter taste is like, without even biting into a bitter thing, or that a onion and an apple taste the same with your nose closed, does not mean the chemical is not real and that we really sensed it.

 

In fact, the fact that we need to smell the onion for it to be identified as an onion and not an apple proves that we notice the world based on a combination of our senses, AND that the onion and apple have real characteristics, that effect the senses of all functioning humans in the exact same manner. The apple is real, the onion is real, the tasters and smellers are real. The senses are not fooled they complement each other. And they do so in a consistent manner across all instances of functioning humans.

 

Regards, TAR

[DrP]

I don't believe they are lying to us either.... that's not the point. We have no way of proving this and wouldn't know if they were.

[tar]

Why not, in your person simulator with all the data streams of inputs just imagine instead of the supposed imprecise inputs a human receives, a super human detector that sensed all wavelengths of light and sound and could tell exact energy and pressure and the existence of contacting chemicals...you could take the human right out of the sensing business and just say what ever is happening is happening. It could be a rock, and the rock is real and receives all the stuff around it. Every vibration, every photon, every object or chemical that comes to it. Put a person and a rock and a person simulator in the same room and they will experience the exact same reality, give or take a few feet. Except the rock receives the stuff and takes it like a rock, and does not "think" it is anything other than a rock. A human takes it and considers itself human. A person simulator would take it like a person simulator.

does a rock "remember" getting hit by a photon by heating up?

 

did you ever notice that everything above the shoreline on a glassy lake is repeated upside down below the shoreline...that means the same impressions that are hitting your eyes must also be hitting the lake...every point on the lake is surrounded by the exact same reality that surrounds your eyes

proof that reality exists