Well...IceNine and I, while both politically libertarian, do not seem to agree on basic principles of philosophy. It's not widely appreciated that philosophy culminates in politics, but if you think about it, politics is merely ethics applied to human relationships of all numbers. It's even less widely appreciated that ethics derives directly from epistemology (philosophy of thinking).

But before you can debate any of that crap, you ought to first check and see if you even live in the same universe...sooo...

Ice, do you also hold that metaphysics is subjective? Or does reality exist independent of your consciousness?

Short answers to start

Reality is, but our conception of it is completely subjective.

I reject metaphysics.

IceNine said:

Alright, so you hold that the universe really is out there, has it's own immutable properties, but that our knowledge of it is subjective, correct?

What do you mean when you say you reject metaphysics? As a branch of philosophy? In general...?

teller said:

You are right about my concept of reality. I believe that things ARE, but our perceptions of them are inherently flawed. In order to know "reality," we would necessarily need to know every single possibility and piece of data on everything and every outcome from reaction within and without, as the nature of something in "reality" is the sum of all of its properties. When we describe an object what we are really doing is giving our interpretation of the object, as we do not know all possible details, therefore our description is incomplete and is not "reality" but rather our conception of the object.

"Reality" is, but we cannot possibly know the true REALITY of anything, as it would require infinite knowledge.

Our conception of "reality" is pragmatic and it holds our worldview together. It would not do to say that we don't know "reality," therefore nothing is real as some philosophers have tried to do. All things have a "reality" but we can only know what we can know about them.

The very act of measuring things changes them and they are immediately not what they were when you measured them, therefore descriptions of objects are not descriptions of the true object, but they are descriptions of the object as it was, not as it is.

This concept is best illustrated by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle which basically states:

"The more precisely the position of an object is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa."

All things are in a constant state of flux, therefore knowing the reality of an object in any way other than knowing that it exists is impossible, as it is constantly changing.

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[This message was edited Fri Nov 8 19:13:18 PST 2002 by IceNine]

IceNine said:

Alright...I'm going keep this thread focused on metaphysics and deal with the interpretation of perceptions later...the heisenberg example is tempting, but must wait.

"Incomplete" is the verdict Ice has given to our knowledge of reality. In some sense this is true. Our perceptual faculty does not give us infinite knowledge. But it does give us information about...reality?

Put another way, when you put your hand on the stove and it hurts, is that knowledge subjective? Is the stove really hot or might it not be? (the layman at this point applies common sense, but when dealing with intellectuals you must not hold your breath)

teller said:

Hot is also subjective... is 200 degrees hot to a heat-loving microbe? All things are relative to the observer.

The pain associated with putting your hand on a hot stove is a reaction of the sensory neurons in your hand and is quite subjective... here is a fun experiment to do...

Put your hand in a bucket of sub-freezing saline for about 5 minutes... turn your COLD tap water on and shove your hand under it... your hand will feel like it is on fire. The feeling of hot versus cold is thus subjective.

But... back to the stove example. I would agree that the stove is hot to humans, but there are organisms that thrive in that sort of temperature, so it wouldn't be hot to them. As far as humans go, a red hot stove is hot though... but we are not getting at the nature of reality with this argument. We are dealing with gradations in sensory phenomena rather than physical reality.

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[This message was edited Fri Nov 8 19:26:38 PST 2002 by IceNine]

IceNine said:

Your arguments are well taken Ice...

Let me tighten my question a bit--the hot stove is harmful to human skin, whereas it is not harmful to some other creature. But when we experience pain, it is because of an objective fact, that human tissue and nerves are being destroyed. Is this information about reality? Or still totally subjective?

teller said:

That information is certainly a fact of human physiology, so I would say that it is real.

Are we discussing the possibility of knowing external reality or the reality of the outcome of actions?

We know for a fact that paper will burn if you put it in flame, so that is reality... we can know MANY things of this nature, but we don't know the reality of the forces at work, therefore our knowledge is limited to a description of the rudimentary outcomes of interactions between energy and matter, but we still do not know the reality of all that went on to produce the reaction.

IceNine said:

We are discussing the possibility of knowing external reality. For example, I see a rose and it is red. I may not have the full knowledge of the wavelenghts of light and all such detailed physical interactions, and yet every object I look at that reflects light at that wavelength gives me the same "red" experience as the rose because my perceptual faculty functions in a certain manner due to it's nature. It is information from reality, about reality, no matter how "incomplete." Do you disagree?

teller said:

All descriptions of color, softness, etc. are simply pragmatic descriptions of the state the we experience when seeing an object. It is much easier and more sensible to describe the color of an object by a simple name such as "red" or "blue," but there are a great number of variances to all colors, therefore the description "red" or "blue," although very useful from a standpoint of utility and pragmatism, is not an accurate description.

Saying something is "red" is very subjective in that it could be seen as "red-orange" or "pink" to others who see it differently based on differences in their optic nerves or viewing circumstances. A pure "red" object can appear orange underneath a yellow light source and our experience of that object will be that of experiencing and orange object unless we know the trick that is being played, therefore all color perception is subjective when dealing with purely optical interpretation by human physilogical means.

In a laboratory, we determine that wavelength of light and know much more precisely.

IceNine said:

I like your yellow light example. A red object appears orange. This is because of the type of light shined on the object...it's not the same as white light. Our retinae do not receive the same wavelengths as before. So we perceive it differently. Does this not reflect some accuracy of our perceptions?

As an aside...you occasionally hear the crap about "how do we know that the color blue to you is the color blue to me?" Well...who knows...we can't get inside other's brain. But if you see all blue as red and all red as blue, it really doesn't matter because we both call it "blue" and refer to all the same objects as blue practically without exception. So regardless of your subjective experience, there is objective information in there!

teller said:

Our perceptions are accurate to a degree, but our perceptions are exactly that... ours. We cannot assume that the perceptions of others are exactly like ours. There are a great number of colorblind individuals who see shades of grey but that does not mean that all objects are grey. What we have is a subjective interpretation of sensory data.

Our senses are very useful, but they are not objective. This does not mean that I disregard the importance of our perceptions, indeed I believe that we must trust our perceptions, but I certainly believe that our perceptions are subjective.

teller said:

The information is not necessarily objective though, as there are gradations of blue, therefore our experience of blue covers a wide range of shades of blue... when does blue become azure or deep purple?



There are many shades of blue on the color wheel and they can all generalize to blue. This does not mean that we can't call them blue and people won't know what we are talking about, but we are really dealing with description rather than external reality.

IceNine said:

A color-blind person is handicapped and can't register as much detail as I can. But with a color-blind person, I can still agree with him/her on whether an object is light/dark, and this corresponds to whether a lot of light or not very much light is hitting my retina, again, a physicial phenomenon that is real.

Some of this information is not subjective...?

teller said:

I would argue that all of the information is subjective if described by a human who is perceiving the phenomenon through human sensory apparatus. Variations in lightness, darkess and hue are absolute but our perception of these variances is not and is therefore subjective.

For now, I will concede that matters of precision are perhaps not in agreement for all men...the point I've been trying to win this evening is that some of the information our perceptions give us is indeed ABOUT REALITY and not totally imagined.

teller said:

I would say that the majority of our perceptions are about reality, but they are still subjective and incomplete impressions of an unknowable underlying reality.

This is the very subject that guided me to study physics.

IceNine said:

Listen to you!!! "Unknowable..." "study..." Do you not see the contradiction?!

teller said:

That is the point of the whole thing... I started studying physics and migrated to quantum physics, etc.

This is where I learned that we could not know everything about anything... I did not have that concept before studying physics. My studies in physics are the only reason that I know of things such as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and things of that nature. I didn't think of things on the sub-atomic level when only studying philosophy.

Now that I have studyed philosophy very extensively and physics pretty extensively, I have more well-rounded concept of things and I can state that I believe that the reality of things is essentially unknowable.

With this in mind, there is no contradiction, as I thought that there was an answer to be found in physics and I was wrong, therefore the contradiction was before the fact and is null.

Hmmm...well, no contradiction, but I guess it's all a wash!

teller said:

On the other hand, your knowledge that all knowledge is subjective...IS SUBJECTIVE! Sigh...

teller said:

Everything is subjective in that it is described through the eyes of a biased observer... things such as "1 + 1 = 2" are not subjective due to our precise definitions of numbers and the rules of mathematics.

So, I agree that my ideas are clearly subjective.

Good night Ice...you're the best.

teller said:

Goodnight, my friend!

We will do this again soon!

Thanks for the topics Teller! Keep them coming!

AzureStar said:

Hey, I did my part too!

Does anyone have anything to add?

IceNine said:

Good morning Ice...

Well, since it's so quiet in here I think I'd like to inquire about Heisenberg a bit.

I'm watching Carver Mead kick everybody's ass in multiple industries with his inventions (analog touch-pads, hearing aids, and the fabulous Foveon camera that blows conventional digital away). This guy really knows his quantum physics and has the inventions to prove that his ideas work in reality. Obviously not just some marginal quack.

And now he's rejecting much of quantum physics, including Heisenberg...

From the

American Spectator:

Now I'll be the first to admit that I'm in a little over my head in the physics department, but the uncertainty principle really does sound like an artifact of the crude measurement systems of that age. How would you respond to this?

On a related note, do you believe that electrons are truly random in their movement? Or could it be that such measurements are...subjective?

teller said:

Okay... this is a good question.

The Uncertainty Principle is not axiomatic, therefore it hides in the shadows of uncertainty itself!

The whole idea of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is very tricky and has been disputed by people like Einstein, and colleagues and is still very much theoretical. This gets very complicated very quickly, so I am going to take the layman's approach in describing it in order to avoid the obvious difficulties of quantum matrix algebra.

The Uncertainty Principle has more to say than that we are just altering the system by measurement. The Uncertainty Principle states that if we know the speed that an electron is moving, we cannot know where it is... it could be anywhere in the universe until it is measured, at which point we change is direction and velocity.

The idea that we effect the system by measurement has destroyed the idea of the experimenter being neutral and has made the experimenter part of the experiment, due to the interaction and alteration of the matter being explored. I believe that our methods of measurement are less than perfect and are intrusive when we attempt to measure a system, so I believe that Heisenberg was correct in his assumption due to the crudity of our measurement apparatus. In practical application, the effects of intrusive measurement would not be great and would not affect the system in a meaningful way, so laser will work, etc., but on a quantum level our intrusion changes the system in an appreciable way. This makes study subjective in that the experimenter is now a part of the system and can no longer be outside the realms of the subject.

As far as electrons go, Einstein certainly believed that electrons had definite orbits, but I see no reason that this is necessary and I believe that Bohr's model of the atom, while very useful in visualizing valence and so forth, is not an accurate representation of the atom. I would tend to believe more in the "electron cloud" theory.

The problem with all quantum mechanics, wave theory, etc. is that they are theoretical physics at this point. The models work very well, but so do Newtonian models in practical application.

Although Newton was wrong and Einstein was right, NASA still uses Newtonian physics to fly spacecraft, etc. Does this mean that we should discard the advances of Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg and others? No. But it does tell us that theoretical physics still resides in the realm of pure research at the moment and has some way to go.

Later we can discuss Schrodinger's Cat... that would be fun too!