A question for scientists: Primary and Secondary qualities

[Interesting Ian]

I agree completely with what Stimpy has just said about this being a completely different type of inference than logical inference -- this intrinsic inference is based on the differential success of employment of various rule sets, containing no knowledge of the reasons why one set might work more often than another; no structure that says: "because this is so, that must be so, etc."; simply: "if you see this, infer that; if it works, keep it". There is an enormous difference. [/B]

Well I'm not getting anywhere with Stimpy on this so perhaps you can help me. How does one logically infer the colour or the length of an object?? I'm genuinely interested in knowing because I imagined that there could only be actual measurement of an object or quality, or actually seeing it and doing the "non-logical" inference.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Yes of course. Length, colour, the smell of a fart etc, all as experienced are all constitutive of the external world. Something like love is a state of mind. So completely different.

BTW, length, colours, smells etc as measured (and therefore objective) is what science deals with. But the real "stuff" of the world is our actual experiences, our qualia.

In this sense science doesn't deal with reality as such since reality is subjective. Science deals with what we might call the merely objective.

All clear?
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Not at all. I don't understand the distinction. If everything is conjured up by my mind,

Huh? Whatever gave you that idea? There is an external world, it's just that its reality does not amount to more than peoples' perceptual experiences, or qualia of it.

then it is conjuring up length, color, and love.

No, as I said length and colour (as experienced) are constitutive of the external world where as love is a state of mind. Completely different things.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Actually, a bit less clear, but worth exploring. There's something here...let's take the colour of that square, to start. We can easily simplify it--take a piece of orange paper as a center, and two other pieces of paper as surrounds--that is, we'll take a yellow piece and a red piece, cut a hole in each, and place them in turn over the orange piece. In the case of the yellow surround, the orange will look more red; in the case of the red surround, the orange will look more yellow. But I cannot agree that its change in appearance is inferred, as you claim above. It is directly experienced (yes, we can go into opponent process channels and perceptual fields, relying on the mechanics of the bipolar and ganglion cells in the retina to explain the effect, but if I am not mistaken, all that is irrelevant to your argument). We can recall the process by which we constructed the illusion, remembering that, in fact, it is the same piece of orange paper beneath two different surrounds, to infer that the color is actually the same, and that the apparant difference is illusory. The fact that our agreed-upon "objective" inference about the illusion does not make the "subjective" experience of the changing nature of the orange paper any less real--it truly does appear to be two different colors. But the appearance is not inferred--it is experienced.

Anyway, that's my reaction when I read your above statement. Am I mistaken?

The so called "illusionary" colours are indeed directly experienced and inferred. Everything we see is a kind of inference, a kind of construct. We directly see a 3 dimensional world although at any given instant this information is not contained within the raw data of our 5 senses. I won't go on about this here as I have addressed this issue many times on the past. I would just ask you to consider one thing. Lets say that you were observing a red car from dawn to dusk. Note that its colour remains more or less constant. This is despite the fact that the character of the light reflecting off the car changes as the sun goes round the earth (or as the earth goes round the sun if you like). So how come the apparent colour of the car doesn't continually change as the day progresses? It is because our minds are constantly reinterpreting on a continous basis to take this into account! BTW that checker square illusion employs the same principle by casting one of the squares in a shadow. Our minds reinterpret so that objects placed in shadows look the same colour as other times. Everything is infered

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Ian,

Good grief, man! That is a completely different type of inference.
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Huh? Buit clearly we do infer length in this manner. I mean we either come to know a length by observing it and hence inferring it from our experiences, or by actually measuring its length. What is this third mysterious way??

Why do you distinguish "measurement" from "inference from experiences"? That is exactly what measurement is.

Anyway, I already explained that the difference is that in one case the "inference" is being done at a completely non-cognitive level, by brain tissue specifically specialized for that process. There is no reasoning, or logical deduction, or thought of any kind, involved. In the second case the inference is a logical inference, whereby you look at the experience in the context of the assumptions you have made about the relationship between reality and your experiences, and come to a conclusion.

That is completely different than logical inference, which is a sequnce of logical deductions about the world, made from your experiences, based on assumptions you have made about the relationship between your experiences and the world.
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You can logically deduct the length of an object from your experiences?

Of course. I do it all the time, and it works very well.

I think not! It all depends on context. What we actually see is dictated by an implicit low level theory about the world.

Like I said, we make the logical deduction based on our assumptions about the relationship between reality and our experiences. I am not refuting that.

There is no logical deduction about it! We infer it yes, but it would I think be incorrect to call it a logical deduction. Plenty of optical illusions illustrating that the apprent length of objects depend on context (ie low level theory).

The very fact that we can, through careful observation and testing, distinguish between optical illusions and reality, just demonstrates my point. Of course we need context. That doesn't have any bearing on the fact that the type of inference done by your visual cortex is completely different from the type of inference you use to determine that your pen is 15cm long.

In the first case, your visual cortex is interpreting your sensory input according to a set of heuristics which it has learned, and which cause you to experience the two rectangles as being different colors.
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Well, I suspect it's what our minds have learned.

That is a completely different type of learning than, for example, learning how to make measurements with a ruler, or how to solve quadratic equations. It involves completely different brain processes, and there is absolutely no cognitive element to it. You are in no way aware of the processing that transforms your sensory input into the experiences you are aware of.

The wavelength of light reflected by an object is a measurable property, just like length. But as the optical illusion you mentioned clearly illustrates, the experience of color you see is not a property of the object you are looking at.
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If anyone with good vision is in agreement about an object being a particular colour than I disagree. There is nothing more to the properties of objects than a concensus of subjectivity.

Since your hypothesis is not falsifiable, I can hardly prove you are wrong. But the fact remains that the assumption you have just made is nothing less than a rejection of the validity of the scientific method.

This of course isn't relevant to the crucial point as perhaps you'll now understand on reading the above. I would just like to say though that although I agree with you that the wavelength of light reflected by the apple is not a brain process (duh!), I have to disagree that it is a quality of the apple. It is not the wavelength of light that is a quality of the apple, but rather the colour we actaully experience (which incidentally is again not a brain process).
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That makes absolutely zero sense. Suffice it to say that this view is completely inconsistent with the scientific view of objective reality, and how perception works.
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There is no scientific view of objective reality. The notion of an objective reality is outside the purview of science. My idea here certainly isn't opposed to science if that's what you mean. Inconsistent with materialism yes. So what?

I have explained to you many, many times why objectivity is a necessary assumption of science.

You asked me for my view on the issue. I gave it to you. You clearly disagree. Do you have any actual criticism for my view? Or are you just going to insist that my view is false because yours is true?
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You've given nothing to me. I asked how you can distinguish between length and colour (experiential or measured!) so that one literally is a brain process and the other isn't. You've talked a lot but said nothing to address this point.

Fine. I am done. I have explained my position to you. I have answered all of your questions. It is quite clear that your are incapable of even attempting to understand any position which contradicts your own. To assert that you do not agree with, or understand my position, would be understandable. To assert that I have not addressed your questions at all, is either a flat-out lie, or an indication that it is completely pointless to even try to have a reasonable conversation with you on the matter.

Like I said before, it was overly optimistic of me to think that you were actually interested in understanding anybody else's position on this matter. You have made up your mind. Nothing anybody could say or show you is going to change your mind. your only purpose in posting this thread at all was to once again preach your own religious beliefs. Preach on brother. I don't subscribe to your religion.


Dr. Stupid

 

[jj]

Ah, but scientists love to obfuscate. And as I said, I like to give people the experience, not the description. Perhaps my writing style will be clearer below. Or I could be giving you false hope, who knows.


No, scientists try to be precise, not obfuscate. This very often leads to long sentences, careful phrasing, and often to redefinition of words in the scientific use.

What goes on in the brain is not available to anyone else; only to the person who experiences what goes on. So these are personal experiences, which seem (to me) to have to be subjective.

Indeed, they can't be directly measured. The experience, via a set of experiments, can be compared to others' responses, however, it happens all the time. Obviously this requires care and good experimental practice.

But I would use the term "subjective" in the formal sense as well.

You can use principles of science. But if you mean we need scientific studies with double-blind controls and statistical analyses, etc., then no, you usually can't.

Ok, I missed the context, what is it that can't be determined via DBT here?

When I asked you to tell me what it is in particular, that you think I don't know about science, you told me to go read a book on the subject -- you didn't specify which one, and I've already read plenty of them. It sounded like the old "Go read the bible" answer the credophiles resort to at times.

And a classic credophile response to information is denial, followed by the "read a book" advice back to them, etc. I haven't a position yet on what you're saying (having perused only part of the thread, and finding some of the antecedants and context unclear), but in fact many of us have read many books.

Now, "read a book" is nothing like "read the bible", if we're talking about a scientific textbook. One is falsifiable, the other isn't. One is based on scientific understanding, that can be refuted, advanced, changed, etc, the other is not.

So using that comparison was blatantly unfair.

Anyway, if you have a specific book in mind that you think represents your position on science best, let me know. Alternatively, you could just tell me what you think science actually is; and how "real" scientists do it.

Do a search on "Karl Popper".

 

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by Stimpson J. Cat

Well, I suspect it's what our minds have learned.
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That is a completely different type of learning than, for example, learning how to make measurements with a ruler, or how to solve quadratic equations. It involves completely different brain processes, and there is absolutely no cognitive element to it. You are in no way aware of the processing that transforms your sensory input into the experiences you are aware of.

I don't even see how there is room for much disagreement on this. We could maybe rephrase the statement to: "it's what our minds have stumbled upon".

With logical inference, you not only have to come up with an answer, you have to show your work. It is flexible; the details of how the conlusion was reached are available for revision. With intrinsic inference, all that is required is a conclusion; the conclusion may be completely bogus as long as acting on it has a statistically greater chance of producing a good result than the next best conclusion.

Originally posted by Interesting Ian

How does one logically infer the colour or the length of an object?? I'm genuinely interested in knowing because I imagined that there could only be actual measurement of an object or quality, or actually seeing it and doing the "non-logical" inference.

I don't see what else there could be, and I strongly agree with what you said here:

Everything we see is a kind of inference, a kind of construct.

Regardless of the source of any piece of information, it all ends up in the same place -- the human mind. If all we wanted to do with the cognitive equipment we have is cavort about the savanna in search of ripe fruit and maidens while avoiding being eaten by lions, then the rough approximations arrived at by our raw senses -- as interpreted by the hardwired routines our brains rely so heavily upon -- would be adequate. But when we attempt to force this equipment to solve problems that exceed the original design specifications, we need to find ways to reach better approximations. Pooling our observations and our conclusions is one way to do this, creating devices that measure phenomena beyond the capabilities of our senses is another. But the end result is still an approximation; a simulation.

I believe that there is an objective reality which this simulation attempts to model (whether or not we attempt to enhance the process), but I cannot even begin to conceptualize what it would mean to observe this reality 'directly'.

I don't see how 'primary and secondary qualities' could be a useful distinction unless it were used to point out the unreliability of 'first-hand experience'.

 

[Mercutio]

On the back cover of my paperback copy of Dennett's Consciousness Explained is an optical illusion consisting of a simple grid of horizontal and vertical black lines -- except that within the bounds of a donut-shaped area, the lines are red. The spaces inside the cells are not filled with any color, but where the lines are red, they appear to be filled with a light pink. This illusion is very strong; close inspection is required to determine that the pink is in fact entirely illusory.

I would say that the pink is 'inferred', the inference being intrinsic to the way the processing mechanism works -- its principle design consideration being to arrive at the best approximation possible within something like 200 milliseconds (and probably having something to do with continuity, as you mentioned).

That particular illusion is a version of a Hermann Grid. I'm glad you chose it, because like color perception, it is not a "learned" illusion, but a mechanical one. The illusory dots are created by the action of receptor fields, a tremendously useful tweak of the cell structure of the retina itself which makes edges more easily apparant. (arguably, it is very adaptive to know where objects begin and end, so our visual system is biased toward picking up that sort of information). In this case, there is absolutely no "interpretation" or "processing" of any sort, apart from the exitatory and inhibitory synaptic connections at the level of bipolar and ganglion cells of the retina. No brain processing is used for this whatsoever (some would quibble and say that the retina is actually an extention of the brain itself--I will just let them quibble). I don't think I'd call this inference of any sort, since it requires no learning, only the hardware of the eye.

Now, Interesting Ian's examples about three-dimensional perception are a slightly different matter, but I'll address those below. In that case (he said, addressing it anyway), learning is necessary, and so an argument can be made for a form of inference. What form of inference?

I agree completely with what Stimpy has just said about this being a completely different type of inference than logical inference -- this intrinsic inference is based on the differential success of employment of various rule sets, containing no knowledge of the reasons why one set might work more often than another; no structure that says: "because this is so, that must be so, etc."; simply: "if you see this, infer that; if it works, keep it". There is an enormous difference.

I tentatively agree...somewhat. We do learn correspondences between what we sense, say, visually, and what we sense tactically (thus, you can learn to throw a ball to a target, and correct your proprioceptive perception of your muscles to adjust the ball's flight to the visually perceived target. I do think it is a stretch to call this an inference once the connection is learned. It becomes automatic. If you put on a pair of glasses that throws your vision 20 degrees to the left (I have done this), your world looks the same--colors are not affected, distances look the same, depth perception is just fine...but if you try to throw a ball at a target, you will be off by 20 degrees. (it is actually a lot of fun). Now, you could infer that if you throw 20 degrees to the right, you'd be on target. And that works, more or less. But what works better is to just throw a few times, and the automatic (learned at a young age, automatic now) feedback your body gets will correct your throw within just a few throws. Eventually, you will be completely accustomed to the new connection between vision and movement, such that you no longer feel the 20 degree difference in the slightest. (When you take off the glasses, your "normal" eyesight will now cause you to throw the ball 20 degrees the opposite direction!) THe point is, the connections are not thought out, they are not conscious, they are simply done. To call this "inference", even with your new definition of the word, just seems wrong. (actually, your rule you use above, "if it works, keep it" is a rule that is inferred from our experience, but in the experience itself that rule is not felt. It is a descriptive rule, not a prescriptive one)

 

[Interesting Ian]

Mercutio
Now, we could throw our hands in the air, claim equivalence of both types of experience, and say that subjective experience is every bit as likely to be "real" as is the collectively agreed-upon "objective" measurements. If I am not mistaken, that is what some are suggesting here. We could also take advantage of the agreement with other observers and place our confidence in the inferred "objective" reality. Can we guarantee the superiority of either choice? Logically, I really don't think so (which is why I understand II's arguments). Practically, however, yes we can. Choosing to believe that reality is objective, logical, consistent (or whatever the three conditions you folk were bandying about) has led to the success of science as a methodology. Practically speaking, if the subjective is the true reality, it has so far behaved as if the objective reality is real, and so there is no practical reason to switch to the subjective assumption.
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Slimshady
I'm going to nominate this for some Aug awards

And no one has yet given one good practical reason, though many have been asked.

What do you think Ian? Pretend I'm a total pragmatist, give me a reason to adopt your belief system. What is something useful that would come from the world accepting it?

I'm serious.

Adam

Well you know my opinion of the matter, which I've stated many times. Objective reality, that is to say the reality that can be measured, abstracts from our experiences. Why should one suppose there is a wholly mysterious reality, which lies forevermore over and beyond everything that we ever see, hear, touch, taste and smell?? Why suppose there is anything more to a peach than its visual appearance, and the feel of it, and its taste etc?

Once we start saying that the peach doesn't really have a colour as experienced but simply reflects a certain wavelength of light; is not really solid but is really the electrons near the surface electrically repulsing the electrons in the tips of our fingers; doesn't really have a taste because that is just a process in ones brain when biting into a peach, then we are engaged in a profound scepticism in all things. Apparently everything that we ever perceptually experience is a delusion. Apparently the "real" world, a world forevermore beyond our direct acquaintance BTW, is the nightmarish world the scientists and materialists have dreamt up. A world devoid of colour, smells, tastes, in fact a world devoid of all that which we directly experience!

But it's even worse than that. The materialists would have it that we are soulless robots living out our purposeless lives in a purposeless Universe with the added promise that soon we will cease to exist forevermore. They would have it that everything we ever perceive is a comprehensive delusion. That everything that we ever see is a lie. That our loves, hopes, fears, aspirations, everything that we have ever thought, felt and experienced is nothing over and above meaningless atoms in motion or meaningless chemical processes.

They deny everything and anything that appears to be truly real, and which truly matters, and substitute their lies, and then they have the effrontery to deride anyone who calls into question their wholly unwarranted crazy interpretation of reality.

But do you know what the worse thing of all is? It's that they have no reason or evidence for their grotesque metaphysic! We have no reason to suppose that qualia are somehow unreal, indeed we have no reason at all to even suppose a material world exists!

At the end of the day everything we believe we know about the world has to be cashed out in terms of our perceptual experiences. This so called measurable reality is itself something which is only known through experience. But if everything about the external world is only known through experience, then why go over and above what experience reveals? Why do we suppose that science is anything more than discerning the patterns in our perceptual experiences? What warrants us to suppose that this measurable reality, itself only known through experience, has primacy over our experiences, and indeed is the origin of our experiences??

Absolutely crazy!

To repeat what I have said many times:

Doubt thou the stars art fire;
Doubt thou the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.

 

[Mercutio]

The so called "illusionary" colours are indeed directly experienced and inferred. Everything we see is a kind of inference, a kind of construct. We directly see a 3 dimensional world although at any given instant this information is not contained within the raw data of our 5 senses. I won't go on about this here as I have addressed this issue many times on the past. I would just ask you to consider one thing. Lets say that you were observing a red car from dawn to dusk. Note that its colour remains more or less constant. This is despite the fact that the character of the light reflecting off the car changes as the sun goes round the earth (or as the earth goes round the sun if you like). So how come the apparent colour of the car doesn't continually change as the day progresses? It is because our minds are constantly reinterpreting on a continous basis to take this into account! BTW that checker square illusion employs the same principle by casting one of the squares in a shadow. Our minds reinterpret so that objects placed in shadows look the same colour as other times. Everything is infered

I'm gonna have to agree with just about everything you say here, because you have chosen examples of perceptual "illusions" (or in this case, "constancies" despite a changing objective stimulus). In this case, the car (which remains the same car, I assume ) is in reality constant, and you perceive it as constant, despite the changing mix of wavelengths (more reds as the sun sets, for instance) that hit our retinas. Similarly, a door may in reality be a rectangle, and you perceive it as a rectangle, even as the door opens, presenting to your retina a trapezoidal image.

It is true that the three-dimensionality of the real world is presented to us on a (practically) two-dimensional retina, a dimension-free taste and smell, more-or-less two-dimensional skin (at any given point--we have to interpret connections between our touch sensors), and don't get me started on sound perception... If the examples you give are what you mean by inference, I would agree with you (although I would prefer the word "interpretation" rather than inference--interpretation implies a decoding of information about a real world, inference implies doing something with that information. I see that you used the phrase "reinterpreting" above, and that helps).

What I am not getting here, Ian, is how this is antimaterialist. Your examples above are precisely what psychophysicists and vision researchers study, from their materialistic framework. We are coming close to a mutual understanding here--so tell me, what am I missing?

 

[davidsmith73]

Now, we could throw our hands in the air, claim equivalence of both types of experience, and say that subjective experience is every bit as likely to be "real" as is the collectively agreed-upon "objective" measurements. If I am not mistaken, that is what some are suggesting here. We could also take advantage of the agreement with other observers and place our confidence in the inferred "objective" reality. Can we guarantee the superiority of either choice? Logically, I really don't think so (which is why I understand II's arguments). Practically, however, yes we can. Choosing to believe that reality is objective, logical, consistent (or whatever the three conditions you folk were bandying about) has led to the success of science as a methodology. Practically speaking, if the subjective is the true reality, it has so far behaved as if the objective reality is real, and so there is no practical reason to switch to the subjective assumption.

Practicality has never been the issue of debate here. I am aslo bemused by what people mean when they say the scientific method has been "successful". Do you mean in the sense that is has continually provided theoretical models that have been gradually modified ? Or do you mean in the sense that it has provided us with the ability to manipulate our environment ?

 

[davidsmith73]

davidsmith,

I justify it based on a scientific analysis of my experiences.

Your inference is hidden in your above statement. Your scientific analysis has already made the inference you are trying to justify. It's circular reasoning

What exactly is it that you think we are trying to "validify". I have been attempting to explain my position, not to provide evidence or arguments to support it. I can hardly hope to convince you, or anybody else, that my position is reasonable, if you don't even understand what my position is.

I understand your position to enough extent to point out the inconsistencies in it. We are trying to validify the inference of objectivity that is made on the basis of certain experiences but not others. In other words, we are trying to validify why length is said to objectively exist as a property of an object but colour or smell is not.

No experience "constitutes" the length of an object. The length of an object is inferred from our experiences.

Ok, a little semantic misunderstanding there. Thats ok, I shall rephrase.

If you say that all experiences are brain processes then the experiences that you use to infer the length of an object are also brain processes, just like the observations that constitute a hallucination are brain processes.

Better ?

Me: You infer some experiences to denote objective properties of objects while others brain processes you do not.

Stimpy: No, I extract information about objective properties of objects from my experiences. There is no "experience of length", or "experience of mass", etc...

Am I not saying the same thing there ? Ok then to be clear, you infer that you are extracting information about objective properties of objects from your experiences. These experiences are brain processes just like the brain processes that are the experience of colour.

I ascribe an objective reality to all experiences. All experiences objectively exist. The question is whether a specific experience is telling me something about an object or not.

Thats the aspect of your position that I've been trying to get you to address all along !

Once again, you are all mixed up. Color is one of many brain processes that extract information about objects from. Objective qualities are not brain processes. They are not experiences.

I know what your position means. Don't waste your time repeating your assumptions. I'm trying to address some inconsistencies. You infer objective qualities like length from your experiences, which you say are brain processes. You say colour is a brain process, but you do not infer an objective quality from that experience.

You still haven't explained why.

Me: If you assume that all experiences are brain processes, you have to admit that the experiences you use to infer your objective "length" are themselves brain processes.

Stimpy: Of course. But the experience I use to infer length is not the quality of length. It is not a quality of the object at all.

I know what your position is !!! What about the point I am actually bringing up ? Can you address it please ?

If the experiences you use to infer your objective "length" are themselves brain processes and colour is also a brain process then why do you infer length but not colour for objective properties ?

Me: So, the question is, how can you justify ascribing certain brain processes to denote an objective reality (the ones that make up length) while others ones you do not (the ones that make up colour).

Stimpy: I don't. There are no brain processes which constitute the length of an object. That is an incredibly silly misrepresentation of my position.

And that is an incredible misrepresentation of my question. You know what I mean. Just start addressing the question will you please ?

How do you justify inferring objective properties of objects from some experiences and not others ? Your justification for not inferring colour to be an objective property of an object is to simply state that it is a brain process. However, you also say that the experiences you use to infer length as an objective property of an object are also brain processes. Why do you infer from some brain processes and not others ?

 

[Suggestologist]

That's not experience. It's inference based on experimentation.

Then what's experience? The experience of doing something?

You do not experience radio waves, X-rays, etc. Thousands of years of personal experience with communicable diseases did not lead to understanding of microorganisms.

Someone had to have had the experience of finding such things out, didn't they?

Mercutio apparently noticed that you didn't answer any of my questions about why you place personal experience above scientific measurement. Would you say that his comments fairly characterize your position, or would you rather have a go at actually answering them yourself?

Scientific measurement is itself an experience. Someone has to experience it in some form or it would never get into the idea-pool, would it?

I place personal experience above scientific trust relationships (people trusting that what scientists tell them is correct), because one is an experience of the physical reality and the other is an experience of social reality. Physical reality should trump social.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ian said:

Huh? Whatever gave you that idea? There is an external world, it's just that its reality does not amount to more than peoples' perceptual experiences, or qualia of it.

Sorry Ian, but I cannot keep track of your greased-pig metaphysic. I thought all was consciousness, with the "external" world constructed by our minds, especially given that you said:

There is nothing more to the properties of objects than a concensus of subjectivity.

But now you sound like a dualist. I give up.

No, as I said length and colour (as experienced) are constitutive of the external world where as love is a state of mind. Completely different things.

So you say. I repeat: How do you know love isn't constitutive of the external world (whatever the hell that means), too?

~~ Paul

 

[Suggestologist]

Ian,
Suggestologist,
Evidence? All the scientists I know try to explain their research as clearly as possible, making their explanations more no complicated than is absolutely necessary to be accurate. Can you give some examples of scientists who "love to obfuscate"?

Sorry, I shouldn't have implied negative intent by scientists. However, the need -- the psychological need -- to have certainty leads to using words as if they were reified objects in some cases, and as if they were profound principles in others -- where such use is not warranted.

Once again, you are just making unjustified attacks on scientists.

Like I said, I didn't mean to imply negative intent.

Information processing. Computation. Retrieval and storage of memory. All sorts of things going on subconsciously, which you are not aware of, and can therefore not reasonably be said to have "experienced".

I completely agree. But, are you saying that objectivity comes from the subconscious? Since consciousness produces subjectivity, then subconsciousness produces objectivity? You probably don't mean that.

Not true. They are not experiencable by anybody else. That does not mean that they are undetectable, or non-objective, or in any other way fundamentally different from any other physical process.

Sure, perhaps one day computers will be able to read people's thought processes and detect which emotions, thoughts, and memories are progressively triggered during such experiences.

Someone still has to verify this through personal experience, and it probably has to be the person being mind-probed.

Sure, they are subjective. That does not mean that they do not objectively exist, or that they are not physical processes, or that they cannot be studied and understood scientifically.

And once again, this has no relevence to the topic being discussed, which is whether or not your sensory experiences are qualities of the objects you are percieving.

Nice relevancy challenge. Whether or not sensory experience EQUALS qualities of the objects -- has no clear meaning as a question. It's not well-formed. The correct answer is: What do you mean?

It is because in one case the source of the signal is sensory input, which contains information about the objects being sensed, and in the other the source is your own brain, which does not contain any information about any objects outside of your brain, that didn't originally get their through sensory input.

Since that's an elaboration of what I said, we agree.

Pragmatism. If we don't make that assumption, then we have nop source of information about objective reality.

You have to admit, that's circular. Of course, circular reasoning isn't always a logical fallacy. But one has to show that it isn't.

It's sort of like saying: If there's no god, then existence is meaningless; therefore we must postulate a god or things would be horrible, blah blah blah.

I said using the principles of science. Double blind studies are a very effective way of controlling for subjective bias, but not the only way. in any event, the double blind protocal is not even relevent to the above scenario.

I agree. There are people who claim to understand science, however, they bandy about techniques that don't apply to a particular experiment. I won't mention any names yet. In order to understand which techniques do apply, you must understand the particular subject of investigation, not just the "scientific method".

I principle, yes. In practice, no. What does any of this have to do with the topic being discussed?

The logical fallacy being used here is "false analogy".

Do you even know any real scientists? Have you ever discussed these issues with one? have you ever read any articles from real scientific journals? Ever read the guidelines for publication in those journals?

Do you actually have any idea what you are talking about at all? Or are you just repeating the post-modernistic nonsense that you heard from somebody else, or read about in some philosophy book or papers?

Dr. Stupid

The guidelines for publication? What good are those when the referees don't critically analyze the papers? This is all within the social reality of the publication process of scientific papers.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Suggesto said:

I place personal experience above scientific trust relationships (people trusting that what scientists tell them is correct), because one is an experience of the physical reality and the other is an experience of social reality. Physical reality should trump social.

Do you really trust your personal experiences that much? I don't trust mine. Wait until you have a hallucination or bipolar experience, or someone you know intimately does. Out the window goes this trust in personal experience.

~~ Paul

 

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by Suggestologist

Someone had to have had the experience of finding such things out, didn't they?

Scientific measurement is itself an experience.

You have now expanded the definition of 'experience' to include scientific methodology.

I place personal experience above scientific trust relationships (people trusting that what scientists tell them is correct), because one is an experience of the physical reality and the other is an experience of social reality.

Do you have difficulty trusting people in general, or do you consider scientists to be particularly untrustworthy?

Physical reality should trump social.

That approach just isn't going to work. Never mind modern science, most human activity is in some way based on cooperative efforts by teams of specialists.

You live in an age where at your fingertips is a body of knowlege with an incalculable price in human effort. Free for the taking, this trove contains treasures which many great men would have paid their lives for a mere glimpse of -- some in fact did exactly that, yet died with their dreams unfulfilled; the path of science is paved with shattered hopes and broken dreams. In saying that this body of knowledge is of no value because you haven't experienced each detail personally strikes me as not only foolhardy, but disrespectful in the extreme -- not only to the great men whose words we so often repeat, but to those who failed as well.

Do you have not a single hero? Is there not one you respect? Not one whose work you admire?

 

[Mercutio]

[BI place personal experience above scientific trust relationships (people trusting that what scientists tell them is correct), because one is an experience of the physical reality and the other is an experience of social reality. Physical reality should trump social. [/B]

Y'know...I've been studiously avoiding the specialized language of the radical behaviorist, but Skinner had a point that might help here. Rather than a distinction between subjective and objective, with all the baggage that carries with it (just peruse this thread and many others if you doubt), perhaps a better distinction is private versus public experience. The quote above implies that one's own experience (usually termed subjective) is "of the physical reality", and that our scientific observations (usually termed objective) are "of social reality". In Skinner's pragmatic view, threads like this one show that the subjective-objective distinction is a useless one (in some post above I mention that "Practically speaking, if the subjective is the true reality, it has so far behaved as if the objective reality is real, and so there is no practical reason to switch to the subjective assumption.") Oddly enough, this does not mean we must accept objective reality as real either--rather, the distinction is, in a practical sense, meaningless.

What is meaningful, though, is a distinction between private and public events. Your personal experience that only you, even in theory, can observe (thinking, seeing, feeling) is private (duh, I guess), and your personal experience that can be shared by others is public. When it is said above that "physical reality should trump social", the dichotomy is artificial. Science focuses on public events because it can. We should not ignore private events either. But creating artificial distinctions between types of our experience (note: I don't think the experience/inference distinction explored here is artificial [note that it is made with both private and public events], but I am willing to be corrected) is what I have called before on these forums "verbal gymnastics."

I note with sadness that my last sentence, decrying verbal gymnastics, is perhaps the most grammatically convoluted thing I have as yet posted. I will trust you to muddle through or to ask for clarification...*sigh*...

 

[Suggestologist]

You have now expanded the definition of 'experience' to include scientific methodology.

I've pointed out that scientific methodology must be mediated by some human person's experience. Do I really need to show that this is not an "expansion" of the term "experience"?

Do you have difficulty trusting people in general, or do you consider scientists to be particularly untrustworthy?

Ad hominem. All people have motives, all people have knowledge, I cannot know either how their motives relate to me, nor how correct their knowledge is; not always.

That approach just isn't going to work. Never mind modern science, most human activity is in some way based on cooperative efforts by teams of specialists.

And there is ample room to practice your skepticism while engaged in such cooperations.

You live in an age where at your fingertips is a body of knowlege with an incalculable price in human effort. Free for the taking, this trove contains treasures which many great men would have paid their lives for a mere glimpse of -- some in fact did exactly that, yet died with their dreams unfulfilled; the path of science is paved with shattered hopes and broken dreams. In saying that this body of knowledge is of no value because you haven't experienced each detail personally strikes me as not only foolhardy, but disrespectful in the extreme -- not only to the great men whose words we so often repeat, but to those who failed as well.

Do you have not a single hero? Is there not one you respect? Not one whose work you admire?

Since this all ad hominem, I'll just pretend you didn't write this part.

Eh, I guess I should respond in part. The value that I enjoy necessarily involves those things that I can personally experience, or personally verify, or "personally experiment on".

 

[Suggestologist]

Suggesto said:
Do you really trust your personal experiences that much? I don't trust mine. Wait until you have a hallucination or bipolar experience, or someone you know intimately does. Out the window goes this trust in personal experience.

~~ Paul

What is it that allows you to know that your hallucination is not real? Indeed, I know that you hallucinate all the time, but you would probably argue that I was using a different definition of the term -- if I were to develop this point further.

It amazes me that psychologists have tried to reason through to people suffering from things such as schizophrenia. Telling someone that their experience is not real -- has proven to be extremely ineffective. You may as well have a friend you think is real who keeps telling you that he's just your imaginary friend -- you know?

If out the window goes the trust in personal experience, how does a person know that they are not hallucinating the social reality that is being communicated to them? Since the communication of the social reality must pass through the personal experience of the person.

 

[Suggestologist]

Y'know...I've been studiously avoiding the specialized language of the radical behaviorist, but Skinner had a point that might help here. Rather than a distinction between subjective and objective, with all the baggage that carries with it (just peruse this thread and many others if you doubt), perhaps a better distinction is private versus public experience.

I must point out that a collective cannot have an experience; only the individual members of the collective can have individual experiences. The things they trust each other to experience (and assign meaning) in ways similar to how they themselves experience (and assign meaning to) that same thing -- is a collection of social truths -- the social reality.

The quote above implies that one's own experience (usually termed subjective) is "of the physical reality", and that our scientific observations (usually termed objective) are "of social reality". In Skinner's pragmatic view, threads like this one show that the subjective-objective distinction is a useless one (in some post above I mention that "Practically speaking, if the subjective is the true reality, it has so far behaved as if the objective reality is real, and so there is no practical reason to switch to the subjective assumption.") Oddly enough, this does not mean we must accept objective reality as real either--rather, the distinction is, in a practical sense, meaningless.

The social linguistic reality has created opposing terms such as bad and good, truth and falsity, subjective and objective. If you are tempted to argue against one term by employing it's opposite, then you are seeing through the lens that society has posed upon reality. You are not seeing the shades of gray between, and the invisible spectra beyond.

Looking at things differently can make the old distinctions disappear.

What is meaninful, though, is a distinction between private and public events. Your personal experience that only you, even in theory, can observe (thinking, seeing, feeling) is private (duh, I guess), and your personal experience that can be shared by others is public. When it is said above that "physical reality should trump social", the dichotomy is artificial. Science focuses on public events because it can. We should not ignore private events either. But creating artificial distinctions between types of our experience (note: I don't think the experience/inference distinction explored here is artificial [note that it is made with both private and public events], but I am willing to be corrected) is what I have called before on these forums "verbal gymnastics."

I did not mean to suggest that there are different "types" of experience. There is only one "type" of experience, and it is a private one. No matter how you attempt to communicate it to someone else, the communication will ALWAYS be incomplete. When someone communicates their experience or a social truth to you, you experience it just like any experience -- privately. But you cannot, ever, hope to fill in all the gaps that would make second-hand experience (the reconstruction in your mind) as complete as primary-experience (experiencing the event for yourself). Necessarily then, personal experience is more complete than a communicated experience can ever be. And communicated experiences are also prone to deliberate and accidental error -- noise in the information, if you like. Copies usually have more noise than originals. So one cannot be as certain about communicated second-hand experience, as of personal first-hand experience to represent the physical reality -- that which has a meaning that cannot be negotiated among humans.

I note with sadness that my last sentence, decrying verbal gymnastics, is perhaps the most grammatically convoluted thing I have as yet posted. I will trust you to muddle through or to ask for clarification...*sigh*...

Writing in muddles, gives you the personal experiences that can help you figure out other people's muddles. But, I think I've had more practice than you.