Ian,
Depends if you want to talk about measurements, or talk about what we experience. If the former we get a ruler out for the willies, and measurere the wavelength of light reflecting off the walls. If the latter we simply observe the length of our respective willies and observe the color of the walls and come to a conclusion that way without measuring them.
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I am confused as to why you think the latter is talking about what you experience?
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Because we're talking about colorE and lengthE rather than colorM and lengthM.
I disagree. What is it that you are coming to a conclusion about? If you are just coming to a conclusion about what you are experiencing, then in what way is that a conclusion about some property of the walls, or of your willy? In what way is it a conclusion at all?
What you are claiming is colorE and lengthE here is nothing but your
intuitive inference of lengthM and colorM. You are still inferring something about the walls, or about your willy. You are inferring this from your experiences.
When you observe that the wall is red, you are inferring a property of the wall from your experience of colorE. It doesn't make any difference whether this inference is done intuitively, or logically through the scientific method. Either way, you are inferring something about the wall from your experience. Either way, the color of the wall is colorM. ColorE is simply your experience of color. Without making some sort of inference, it is just the sensation of color. An inference is necessary to say "the wall is red".
In both cases you are inferring something about objective reality from your sensory experiences. The only difference is the method of inference, and the accuracy of the results.
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There is no objective reality. There are only our experiences and therefore there is only subjectivity. Even colorM and lengthM are analyzable in terms of our subjective experiences. That which is deemed real is a consensus of subjectivity.
Even under idealism what I said above is true. You must still assume that there is more to reality than just
your experiences. You must still infer any facts about this external reality from your experiences. The fact that you, for some reason I cannot understand, choose to assume that this external reality is composed of other experiences, does not change this.
When you say "that wall is red", implied in that statement is that there is something more to the wall than just your experience of it. You are inferring a property of that wall from your experience of redness. You can insist that the wall itself is ontologically composed of "experience" all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that there is more to the wall than just
your experiences, and that you must infer any other qualities of the wall from
your experiences.
The moment you associate your sensory experiences with some part of the external world, you are inferring something about the external world from your experiences.
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Our perceptual experiences are the external world.
The validity of that assumption is irrelevant to this argument.
Your perceptual experiences are just a part of the world, not the entire world. You must assume that the part of the world that is your experiences somehow interacts with the part that is not, and that through this interaction, you can infer qualities of the part that is not from the part that is.
That is exactly what I do too. The only difference is that I have only assumed that there is more to reality than
my experiences. You have not only assumed that there is more to reality than
your experiences, but have also assumed that the rest of reality is completely composed of other experiences.
I see no reason to make this unnecessary, and quite extraordinary, assumption.
LengthE is not a primary quality. It is not a quality at all. LengthM is a quality. LengthE is the set of experiences from which we infer lengthM.
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Obviously I don't agree with this. You've got it the wrong way round. LengthE is the reality. LengthM is not reality, it is merely the objective measurement which enables predictions in the contents of our perceptual experiences.
This view is internally incoherent. By this reasoning, you must conclude that other consciousnesses do not exist. After all, the experiences from which you infer the existence of other people is what is real, not the other person.
Consider the mind of some person named Bob, whom you are speaking to. The only source of information you have about that person, indeed the only reason you have to believe he exists at all, is your own experiences.
So, you've got BobE, and from BobE you infer the existence and characteristics of BobM. Remember, BobE is nothing more than
your experiences. Before you can say that there is another consciousness, you must infer that from your experiences. You must come to the conclusion, logically, intuitively, or even through blind faith, that there is actually another consciousness which you are conversing with, and which your experiences are providing you with information about.
If you claim that LengthE is the reality, and that lengthM is just a construct of your mind, a model for making predictions about your future experiences, then you must also claim that BobM is just a construct as well, and that BobE, meaning your experiences of Bob, are the reality.
In other words, you have solipsism. The moment you posit the existence of other consciousnesses than your own, indeed, the moment you posit the existence of anything more than
your own experiences, you must either assume that you can infer fact about this external reality from your experiences, or you must acknowledge that external reality is wholly unknowable.
In the former case, lengthM is the reality. LengthE is simply the experience from which you infer lengthM. LengthE is, of course, still a part of reality, but it is your sensory experience, not the actual length of the object you are perceiving. In the latter case, you can infer nothing about reality from your experiences. You are, for all intents and purposes, in exactly the same boat as the solipsist.
So this means therefore that lengthE is not a primary quality!
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Of course not. By definition, it is a set of experiences.
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Well, traditionally lengthE is supposed to be a representation of so called objective reality eg lengthM. In an appropriate sense it was considered lengthE is "similar" to lengthM but that colorE is not similar colorM. It is this dichotomy between length and color which I emphatically reject but which you seem to embrace.
I think that the problem here is that we are still talking about different things when we say lengthE and lengthM.
It appears that by lengthE you mean the rather imprecise estimate of length that you arrive at intuitively, and by lengthM you mean the length that is carefully measured.
In this case, they are both the same quality, and neither are experiences. The only difference is the manner in which the inference is made. The experiences from which this inference is made a brain process, not a quality of the object.
This is why I mentioned both intuitive and logical inference earlier. Logical inference refers to an inference drawn from the experiences acquired by the process of measurement. Intuitive inference refers to the inferences your brain automatically makes when you experience anything. Both are inferences about the same qualities of the object being perceived. The sensory experience itself is not a quality of the perceived object.
Like I said, I don't think the whole primary/secondary quality idea makes any sense at all.
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I agree with this, but this is exactly the position you cannot hold since you're saying that lengthM can be "inferred" (or as I would put it "similar") from lengthE. But both you and the ones who draw a distinction between primary and secondary say the relationship between coloeM and colorE is not of this nature.
Once again, I never claimed that. Just the opposite. I have repeatedly stated that colorM can be inferred from colorE.
Yeah, so what's the problem?
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The problem is basically that which I expressed before in that post that Mercurito nominated for the language award. To quote some of it
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??
This is a strawman. We don't assume that there is a "wholly mysterious reality, which lies forevermore over and beyond everything that we ever see, hear, touch, taste and smell". We assume that there is an external reality whose properties can be inferred from what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell.
You are attacking a strawman position, where we assume that reality is objective, but that there is no way to ever know anything about it. Clearly that is not my position!
Why suppose there is anything more to a peach than its visual appearance, and the feel of it, and its taste etc?
Because that is solipsism.
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.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Apparently everything that we ever perceptually experience is a delusion.
Not a delusion. An interaction with the external world, from which we can extract information about the external world.
Apparently the "real" world, a world forevermore beyond our direct acquaintance BTW, is the nightmarish world the scientists and materialists have dreamt up.
Compared to your Idealistic fantasy where reality is a construct of human consciousness, and where you get to live forever, and where none of the horrible things that happen to people's physical bodies really matter, yeah, I guess it is pretty nightmarish.
But we didn't dream it up. This is what our observations logically lead us to infer about reality.
A world devoid of colour, smells, tastes, in fact a world devoid of all that which we directly experience!
Nonsense. Our experiences are a part of that world. There are physical processes in that world.
They just aren't necessarily the fundamental building blocks of the world. It is incredibly egocentric, not to mention embarrassingly over-optimistic, to assume that reality exist for the benefit of mankind. To go the next step, as you have, of believing that reality consists of nothing but human consciousness, is just delusional wishful thinking.
Where is the inconsistency in holding that I can extract information about the external world from my experiences?
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The only information that you can extraction is information regarding the future course of our sensory experiences.
That is only if I make no assumptions about the relationship between my experiences and reality. And if that is the case, then I cannot even extract information about the future course of my sensory experiences, since the hypothesis that they are comprehensible is not consistent with the hypothesis that there is nothing more to reality than just them.
What is this "stuff" beyond our perceptual experiences which you claim we get information about??
I don't know. All I know about it is what I infer from my experiences. Any information about it which is not present in my experiences, is not available to me, and pointless for me to worry about.
Besides, you have claimed you reject the realm of the nounema.
nou·me·non n. pl. nou·me·na
In the philosophy of Kant, an object as it is in itself independent of the mind, as opposed to a phenomenon. Also called thing-in-itself.
I reject the assumption that reality has properties which cannot be inferred from our experiences. That is neither an assumption that neumena do not exist, nor an assumption that they do. It is nothing more than the realization that I cannot meaningfully talk about things which I have no access to information about.
All this requires is that my sensory experiences actually contain information about the external world, and that I have some reliable method for extracting that information and using it to build a description of the external world. Where is the inconsistency in that?
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A description of the world is cashed out wholly in terms of perceptual experiences (qualia) or potential qualia.
The description is made wholly
in terms of experiences and potential experiences. That does not mean that what the description is describing consists wholly of experiences. In fact, it can not be so.
You do not experience other people's experiences. The only way you have to know anything about other people's experiences is by inferring it from your own experiences.
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Well, you're forgetting about anomalous cognition here.
I have no experience of anomalous cognition. I have never experienced anybody else's experiences. I have only inferred that other people have experiences from my own experiences.
I do not believe that you accept the existence of other consciousnesses based on "anomalous cognition". I think that you accept there existence solely for the reason that your intuition tells you that they exist. And since your intuition is nothing more than a process by which your brain infers things from your experiences...
You must assume that there is more to reality than just your experiences,
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Yes I certainly do, but not more to "physical" reality than what sentient cretures perceptually experience.
Your additional assumptions are of no interest to me. Not unless you can provide evidence to substantiate them.
I don't need to assume that there is more to reality than what sentient creatures experience. I just don't assume that there is not, either. I assume that there is more to reality than my experiences, along with the other assumptions necessary for science, and then I use science to determine what the nature of this reality is. If science indicates that reality consists solely of the experiences of sentient creatures, then I will accept that. So far, it indicates that there is far more to reality than just the experiences of sentient creatures. I see no point in inventing unfalsifiable ad-hoc hypotheses to try to reconcile the evidence with some preconceived idealistic notions.
I see no reason to assume that the external reality that we both agree exists is composed entirely of other people's experiences.
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Not composed of other peoples experiences, rather defined by other peoples experiences. To talk about external reality in abstraction from perceptual experiences of it is like talking about a grin without a cat.
Either way, you are saying that everything that exists that is not one of your experiences, is somebody else's experiences. I see no reason to make such an assumption.
We cannot prove that there is anything more to the physical world apart from perceptual experiences. So what? There are all sorts of completely useless unfalsifiable positions which we cannot prove false. That doesn't mean we have any reason to think they are true.
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But what I'm saying is that what we experience is truly what reality is. There really are colorsE and smellsE in the world. What we experience colorE, smellsE, lengthE, weightE is real, a part of reality, constitutive of reality.
Yes, I know that is what you are saying. You can say it all you want. That doesn't make it true. And just repeating it over and over again is not going to convince me that it is true.
You on the other hand are saying that what we experience is not part of the world.
That is not what I have said. Our experiences are part of the world. They are brain processes. Brain processes are part of the world. I am just saying that our perceptual experiences are not qualities of the objects being perceived, although they contain information about them.
Only that which is measured is real. And this position of yours is not only unfalsifiable but it is also incoherent since you advocate the reality of an unspecified something forever beyond the realm of experience.
It is both falsifiable, and knowable through experiences, as I have repeatedly explained to you before.
Dr. Stupid
