Skepticism and The Normal

[Mojo]

The person reading the statement is a subjective component. The person making the statement is another subjective component.

They are not components of the statement.

 

[Mojo]

Quote:
Funnily enough Bubb, I know what you mean despite the fact that you've still not explained your system, and you never will.

Bubblefish: That's a contradiction right there.

How could she know what I mean if I wasnt explaining it?

It should be obvious from the context that she's saying she knows what you mean by your statements that she quoted from the post she was replying to. Are you saying that this is your entire system? If that's all there is it's not much of a system, is it?

It may be the case that she is mistaken in saying she knows what you meant by those statements, but this still wouldn't be a contradiction, it would just be that she was mistaken. There is no contradiction in the statement you quoted.

 

[WWHP]

Ichneumonwasp,

Interesting name by the way, what does that mean?

Anyway, to recap

Ojective Reality is external reality
Subjective Reality is internal reality.

That is one sense of objective/subjective.

This is the only sense of o/s that I use.

But that is not the sense in which one can speak of "Angelina Jolie as objectively beautiful".

It is the only sense we can speak of Angelina Jolie as objectively beautiful, that is what I suggest. Yes, we have a conflict of idea here.

For her to be objectively beautiful in the sense of "objective is external reality", then beauty would necessarily be an integral part of the universe. It would not depend on anyone's particular viewpoint.

Agreed. That is what I am indeed suggesting and quite capable of rational explanation that suggests this is indeed a logical one.

Unfortunately, objective has many different meanings.

Yes, agreed, that's what I have been arguing about with many people on this issue. The common understanding of objective. It's not a very clear idea, and I have found that most people have very contradictory ideas regarding Objective reality when you break them down.

Then it is vitally important that we not shift the definition to other connotations of objective and subjective. If objective means "that which we can observe in external reality", then where does valuation come into play?

From a point of view of that external reality.

Beauty is a value judgment.

Sure, but it's also a mathematical evaluation, calculation, that our eyes and nervous systems are hardwired to react to and develop appreciation for. This appreciation of beauty could also be argued as a necessary component of society and social structures.

Are you saying that external reality already contains those values within it, and people disagreeing about various beauties demonstrate that one person is right and another is wrong?

Well, to a certain extant, yes, but not right or wrong, rather objective or subjective.

I think the confusion here is perhaps that because some people find different things beautiful, then this disqualifies the repeating characteristics in all forms where beauty is found for certain to be beautiful. It is both objective and subjective.

Look, if someone is having a bad day, they are in a real funk, self obsessed and stressed, and they could walk by the most beautiful object in the world and fail to notice anything special. Does that mean the object isn’t beautiful? If the man was 'clearer', would he not see what he missed?

Not finding beauty is not proof of absence! Objective reality has many distinctions that we miss all the time, due to our own subjective nature, or ideas about objective reality.

haven’t you ever had an 'opinion' about a quality of something, perhaps music or a film, that once you didn’t see anything wonderful about, but perhaps you discover something about it years later that you didn’t get? If so, was it really never there at all then? Of course not, it was always there, and found by others.

If beauty isn’t objective, then it cant be discovered. If beauty can't be discovered, then the term 'hip' would never have any cultural significance.

Again we need to be very careful about how we use the words objective and subjective here. There is clearly an process theoretically observable to others involved in the process of our valuations.

I am strictly staying inside of external/internal reality. I actually don’t even like using the word 'reality', it sounds too deep or complex, rather, I prefer the word 'environment'. external/internal environments are o/s.

We have a wiring diagram that is shared by most of us (there are always exceptions, unfortunately), so we tend to see the same things as beautiful.

Yet the wiring is consistent in significant number for identifying symmetry as beautiful. And 'symmetry', harmony, balance, elegance, synergy, union, all of these words, which are inferred from each one, also have very critical and specific meanings that are also relatable mathematically, which 'looks' beautiful only to mathematicians in their language. To most of us, it just looks like a bunch of symbols, numbers, and letters. We can't see the symmetry in the mathematical expressions, are they then not beautiful? No, of course they are b beautiful to those that can perceive them. And they perceive elegance in structure, and naturally call it beautiful.

That idea contains two senses of the word "objective", both slightly incorrectly. The fact that we see things pretty much the same is nice, and this allows us to talk about beauty together and make sense of it; but how many people must see things the same way for beauty, or value, or whatever to be "objective"?

any significant number

Edit: This may lead to further argument, but please dont think i am saying concensus reality is objective reality, it just functions as if it were objective reality.

Is it objective (meaning inter-subjective agreement) if 99% of us agree? Or 72%? Does it require 100%? Objective is a very strong word. I think it implies 100% concordance.

It implies 100% in potential, yes, but it's impossible in concordance, that would mean all of us would see the same reality each other sees, relative to education, training, culture, etc

I cant see the beauty in the mathematics of String Theory. I do hear how they talk about it though, even those that don’t think String Theory will amount to much. Everyone agrees on the elegance in the math. But I don’t see it, but I don’t know mathematics either. It is assumed that if I had the proper training, I would see what they see too.

The other issue is the process by which we arrive at this seeming consensus, which is theoretically observable -- we can look at some of the process in neuron firings, but we only describe what happens from the outside. We don't actually observe the valuation. We observe the process that creates the valuation. We don't feel the valuation itself -- which is what constitutes beauty.

We don’t see the logical structure of ideas forming when we wire someone's brain while they are performing calculus either, yet we will see neurons firing as well, but calculus is still objective.

Everything has an experience attached to it, you cant just separate the objective from the subjective in experience. The experience of the internal environment is completely and almost perfectly sealed off to an outside point of view.

I'm not so sure that beauty can be discovered in things.

Of course it is discovered in things, just as much as we discover any other things, like logic, geometry, creative skills.

haven’t you ever had a special creative friend who always turns you on to a good movie or piece of music that you didn't get before?

I'm an artist, and also have many many artist friends. Actually most people I know are artists of some kind. My favorite artists are the cartoonists. They always have the most amazing taste in so many different areas of art, and have constantly turned me on to more beauty in form that I may have missed otherwise. If someone finds something beautiful truthfully, and I can see they are really moved, and if I cant see what they see, I want to know what I am missing!

Beauty seems, to me, to arise from an interaction between the observer and the object observed.

Me too, but our difference is, I think, that you don’t think beauty really exists, and I am saying that beauty is not just the connection between the two, which is another harmony, but it is also represented in both of them.

I don't think the object itself has any intrinsic beauty. If there were no observer would the word "beauty" mean anything?

But there are observers, and the answer to your question as what would really exist if there were not is not comprehensible in any meaningful or rational sense, according to my point of view. We simply are limited to modeling reality with observers in it. It is impossible for us to model a reality with no observers, for even the model itself would be a contradiction.

Making sense of anything in the universe, and this includes the possibility of making valuations, depends critically on the internal structures of the observer. A computer without instructions to "see" beauty could never make sense of the concept. There would be no such concept.

A computer doesn’t have concepts about computers either, or anything. Computers do not have experience.

We happen to share a common way of evaluating what is beautiful, so we tend to agree on most things. We share a common program, as Malachi put it.

program would be more cultural influence, and I don’t think our hardwiring could reasonably be modeled as a 'program'. We are programmed to make distinctions in our environments. We gravitate towards distinctions we find appealing and easy to assimilate. We naturally find symmetry appealing in all forms, either conceptually, metaphysically, experientially, sonically, radiantly, emotionally, erotically, philosophically, mathematically, and visually. It's not just limited to pretty faces and a nice tush!

But not everyone has exactly the same program. Valuations differ from culture to culture and between individuals because of these differences in "programming". So, the valuations depend on subjective evaluations.

I agree that subjective programming, and I think programming is actually a good word here to model the subjective component, is utilized by our hardwiring, or vice versa.

If I spent a few years with some tribe in bora bora learning their traditions and see things from there point of view, I would be able to find beautiful what they agreed was mutually beautiful amongst them.

Take Samoans. HUMONGOUS PEOPLE! I went to Hawaii once and hung out with a number of them. Now, if I am a Samoan, my sense of symmetry in female form is going to be different than say, um, anyone else's! But it's still a symmetry relative to their culture and genetics.

For example, here in America, many African American Males, or at least the ones that I know, simply may love a 'big booty'. A big booty is still holding symmetries, even though Paris Hilton would not find those set of symmetries hot, she finds a different set of symmetries hot, the symmetries of thinness.

Our ability to perceive outer symmetry is dependent on the internal construction of our nervous system that extracts information in its own peculiar way. Symmetry is beautiful to us because symmetry confers very useful information -- as far as faces go, genetic "perfection". As many have previously said, part of our hereditary heritage is this orientation toward symmetry because symmetry means something. Those who chose symmetrical mates tended to leave behind more offspring. Now that does not mean that we will forgo a slightly asymmetrical mate since having sex is more important than waiting for that perfectly symmetrical Sheila, or Angelina. But all things considered.......

genetics can only account for the physical mating beauties. What about all other beautiful things? How is it that great music is so elegant and harmonious?

I'm afraid that I don't quite understand what you mean by metaphysical symmetry. Are you suggesting that our thinking is somehow tied to the structure of the universe (I mean beyond the fact that we are part and parcel of the universe) such that there is some metaphysical property of symmetry that transcends everything?

No, I'm not suggesting that. I'm not denying it either, I don’t know, that's a mystery to me if there is. I am saying that our internal environments are indeed modified by two •quarks• in the universe, thinking and feeling. I used the word 'quark' artistically there, not analytically.

I am saying that thinking and feeling are metaphysical, are ontological, yet objectively they exist in the universe because they are indeed components of ourselves that operate reality, we know they exist because we experience them, and there empirical quality is uniquely subjective, but mutual, and thus, thinking and feeling do objectively exist as metaphysical structures.

Our perception/experience internally is distinguishable by thinking and feeling, or some layer that relates to thinking and feeling. That's a coupling, a set of harmonies, mutually experienced and perceived. when one is experiencing beauty, joy, inspiration, or any set of pleasant experience or focus, or a nightmare, when one is experiencing anxiety, confusion, depression, etc etc.

In their balance or harmony, we find beauty. In their disruption or conflict, we find misery. That may sound poetic, but it's meant simply as an objective observation that can in potential be agreed upon and experienced/experienced.

All fine in its expression, but the bottom line is this.....there is clearly a cultural aspect to beauty valuations.

agreed

It doesn't matter that there is an underlying algorithm that almost all humans use in beauty valuations as far as deciding that beauty is "objective".

I don’t agree. I think it's very relevant to consider, especially in philosophy, art, and science.

There is clearly a component that is culturally biased. I doubt you could find everyone within a single culture who would agree that Angelina is beautiful, in part because one of the subjective aspects of this is that different people have different cut-off points for "beautiful". In other words, there is again a subjective component to this.

agreed, there is a subjective component. a subjective component can culturally or personally, in principle, not perceive or frame something that does indeed exist.

Remember those cheesy drawings that when you stared at them after a few minutes, some trick would happen in your brain where the object would take on depth of field? I forget what they were called. Some people couldn’t see it, no matter how long they looked. So tell me, was it really not there in objective reality, or did they simply not have the framework, for what ever reason, to view the floating Tiger?

How was the depth of field perceived to exist when it really didn’t on the flat picture, unless there was some mutually viewable pattern going on that produced a depth of field illusion in the brain of most people?

I now submit those cheesy depth of field illusions as proof of the objective/subjective coupling of environment, and a good example of 'beautiful'

Total agreement inter-subjectively or true independent of any observer (the earth revolves around the sun).

so when I say objective reality, just translate that into your 'absolute reality' and we should have understanding.

But don’t assume that total agreement is the only thing there is to confirm about absolute reality, we don’t have total agreement on evolution, right? But evolution is still a function of objective reality regardless. It's just agreeable in potential when all parties are rational agents.

To find beauty in art and science, one must be a rational and/or intuitive agent. To find something means that it exists. We cannot find anything that is not there.

Beauty Exists. It is internal and external.


Beautiful discussion, eh?

Bubblefish

 

[sinnikal]

I think the Toyah link has fused a few circuits. He seems to be caught up in some mysterious Bubblefish incarnation of the 'Dollis Hill loop'
Dollis Hill.
Mork to Orson.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

BF has now established that there are no purely objective statements. The all have a subjective component and are therefore mystery. Thus his 1/True category is empty. So why isn't it OS02? All ideas are either false or mystery.

That right bubb?

 

[Mojo]

Ichneumonwasp,

Interesting name by the way, what does that mean?

Google is your friend.

 

[flimflam_machine]

If there is no point of view, Angelina would not exist, as SHE is a point of view as well.

Careful Bubb, to quote you:

The eye of the beholder is an irrational argument that suggests feelings create reality.

So how about ravens and rock then? Would they still exist if there was noboby there to see them?

Everything has an experience attached to it, you cant just separate the objective from the subjective in experience.

Firstly how does "everything" have an experience attached to it? I can prove that there are many things that even enter your sensory system of which you have no conscious experience.

For example:

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/%7Ecfc/Simons1999.pdf

We cannot find anything that is not there.

Take a look, we can very much perceive something that is not actually there:

http://www.acs.appstate.edu/~kms/classes/psy3203/Kaniza.htm

To sum up: of course you can separate the objective from the experience attached to it, it's called metaphysical objectivism.

How could she know what I mean if I wasnt explaining it?

Magical thinking there Bubbster! You've assumed my gender without any evidence, any more of your own rules that you'd like to break? So far you've conflated people with ideas/beliefs (Z) resorted to ad homs (Z) and been dishonest when called on things that you've said (the entire first OS012 thread). The list is growing! Oh, and you've still not explained how OS012 works nor provided any evidence that it does work. Thought I'd just keep reminding people since we're getting bogged down in minutiae again! Got to keep the big picture in mind.


A quick thought experiment, I'm genuinely interested to see what your response is to this: A programmer creates a very simple program that outputs statements of the form "X is/are Y" for X you have nouns, for Y you have nouns and adjectives. The programmer leaves his computer running and it just churns out random combinations. So examples woud be, "Butterflies are beautiful", "Marble is hard", "Roses are red".

10 minutes later the entire human population is tragically wiped out after it uses OS012, to parse the "meaning" of an approaching asteroid and decides that it is "mystery" and goes to the pub instead of doing anything about it. All hardware, infrastructure, animal species, the body of AJ and the computer survive.

The computer not only survives but keeps churning out statements: what is the status of the following statements that it makes? I'm interested to know what you think their truth value i.e., accuracy, is and where they stand with respect to objective vs. subjective:

"AJ is beautiful"
"Ravens are flightless"
"London buses are red"

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Just found this interesting abstract of a study on facial symmetry and attractiveness:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0962-8452(19950722)261%3A1360%3C111%3AAAHFAS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T

 

[flimflam_machine]

The truth of the statement could NOT BE A TRUTH if there was no subjective component, no point of view. If there is no point of view, Angelina would not exist, as SHE is a point of view as well. Your argument here is absurd. Your saying that if we remove all points of view in universe, then Angelina Jolie is woman is still true, yet if we remove all points of view, we can neither view anything, nor claim that points of view exist.

Let's choose a statement that doesn't refer to someone who can also be "a point of view" by which I assume you mean that she is a conscious agent as well as an object for the statement.

"Ravens can fly"

Following your logic from above, if all "points of view" are removed from the universe it would "not be a truth" (which I take to mean that it would no longer be true) that "ravens can fly". Even by your own definition of "true" which appears to be something like "real" this is obviously nonsense.

 

[WWHP]

BF has now established that there are no purely objective statements. The all have a subjective component and are therefore mystery. Thus his 1/True category is empty. So why isn't it OS02? All ideas are either false or mystery.

That right bubb?

No

 

[WWHP]

Just found this interesting abstract of a study on facial symmetry and attractiveness:

Biologists who see symmetries or beauty as nothing more than traits are not using the same definitions of beauty as the artist. Assymetry is one piece of a symmetry/asymmetry coupling, which is itself another symmetry.

The bodies symmetries fall around the body's center line, and are not soley bilateral. The bodies' center line is metaphysical. The more aligned the frame and the feautures around the center line, the more beauty is noticed.

centerline dynamics
http://www.rolfing-munich.de/Littelboy.jpg

Note, this woman below would still be considered beautiful, even though the image of her is angled more in profile, thus negating the bilateral image of a static stationary shot.

http://fionajohnson.tripod.com/05dac550.jpg

The paper you submit presupposes that "Contrary to what was predicted, faces that were made more symmetrical were perceived as being less attractive."

what methods were used to make faces more symmetrical? Photoshop? Plastic surgery?

Hardly natural. And if the scientists can't find the hidden yet metaphysically existant center line in the faces or bodies, and note like an artist the relationships of radial and planar symmetries around them, then no matter what they do to bilateral symmetries in faces is still missing the boat.

 

[WWHP]

Careful Bubb, to quote you:

So how about ravens and rock then? Would they still exist if there was noboby there to see them?

What they are independent of observers is mystery.

Firstly how does "everything" have an experience attached to it? I can prove that there are many things that even enter your sensory system of which you have no conscious experience.

Fine, let me clarify. Everything we can percieve, measure, observe has an experience attached to it.

Take a look, we can very much perceive something that is not actually there:

We are percieving something metaphysically. Ever hear of Esher? We are percieving an internal metaphysical structure.

To sum up: of course you can separate the objective from the experience attached to it, it's called metaphysical objectivism.

You can distinguish it, you cannot seperate it, there is a difference.

Magical thinking there Bubbster! You've assumed my gender without any evidence, any more of your own rules that you'd like to break?

hehe, fine, I shall concide that I magically turned you into a hot chick in my mind who was giving me a back massage and a hot tub frilly.

So far you've conflated people with ideas/beliefs (Z) resorted to ad homs (Z) and been dishonest when called on things that you've said (the entire first OS012 thread).

To make such a statement assumes you are correct in interpretting my meaning. Since you dont get OS 012 yet, this is clearly impossible.

Making observations/judgements about people is not ad hom. It is ad hom when you use that as the source of your argument against there idea.

The list is growing! Oh, and you've still not explained how OS012 works nor provided any evidence that it does work. Thought I'd just keep reminding people since we're getting bogged down in minutiae again! Got to keep the big picture in mind.

Bubblefish is no longer addressing rationally magical statements

A quick thought experiment, I'm genuinely interested to see what your response is to this: A programmer creates a very simple program that outputs statements of the form "X is/are Y" for X you have nouns, for Y you have nouns and adjectives. The programmer leaves his computer running and it just churns out random combinations. So examples woud be, "Butterflies are beautiful", "Marble is hard", "Roses are red".

ok

10 minutes later the entire human population is tragically wiped out after it uses OS012, to parse the "meaning" of an approaching asteroid and decides that it is "mystery" and goes to the pub instead of doing anything about it. All hardware, infrastructure, animal species, the body of AJ and the computer survive.

okay, so what else happens in this alternate universe that is complety unfathomable?

The computer not only survives but keeps churning out statements: what is the status of the following statements that it makes? I'm interested to know what you think their truth value i.e., accuracy, is and where they stand with respect to objective vs. subjective:

"AJ is beautiful"
"Ravens are flightless"
"London buses are red"

How can anyone confirm the computer is spitting out statements? If I assume the computer is spitting out statements, then I have destroyed your model relevancy, for now there is an observer. And as an observer, which cant possibly exist in your scenario, I can only say that AJ is beautiful is true, ravens are flightless is false, and london buses are red is also true, because those things are true in the objective reality that we all live in.

Flim, if you are going to magically create alternate universes which will show a contradiction, at least consider them a bit more before you do.

Let's have our thought experiments at least try to model reality a bit. Consider, if your reaching that far into your creative consciousness to find a contradiction, your thinking creatively, not rationally.

 

[WWHP]

The observer is external to the thing observed, and therefore not a component of it.

You can only note the observer is external to the thing observed if you are observing them.

We cannot model reality in no certain terms if we magically pretend there are no observers.

OS 012 is for interpreting MEANING of statements in content, not form. Your still stuck in applying 0, 1, and 2 to FORM of statements. In the form of all objective statements, there is nothing relating the subjective point of view, the observer is a metalogical neccesity, it is assumed.

Statements are not found like rocks and trees. It is impossible for them to be independent of observers.

BF

 

[WWHP]

I think the Toyah link has fused a few circuits. He seems to be caught up in some mysterious Bubblefish incarnation of the 'Dollis Hill loop'
Dollis Hill.
Mork to Orson.

Bubblefish is no longer rationally addressing magical statements

Regards,
The Managment

 

[WWHP]

It should be obvious from the context that she's saying she knows what you mean by your statements that she quoted from the post she was replying to. Are you saying that this is your entire system? If that's all there is it's not much of a system, is it?

It may be the case that she is mistaken in saying she knows what you meant by those statements, but this still wouldn't be a contradiction, it would just be that she was mistaken. There is no contradiction in the statement you quoted.

Mistakes are contradictions to reality.

 

[WWHP]

Let's choose a statement that doesn't refer to someone who can also be "a point of view" by which I assume you mean that she is a conscious agent as well as an object for the statement.

"Ravens can fly"

ravens are points of view.

Following your logic from above, if all "points of view" are removed from the universe it would "not be a truth" (which I take to mean that it would no longer be true) that "ravens can fly". Even by your own definition of "true" which appears to be something like "real" this is obviously nonsense.

Ravens are points of view.

If there are no observers in universe, then there is only one conclusion we can make about that universe, MYSTERY.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

No

Would you like to elaborate?

 

[flimflam_machine]

The bodies symmetries fall around the body's center line, and are not soley bilateral.

The body is not symmetrical around a line. Symmetries around a line in 3D space are radial. The body is roughly symmetrical about the mid-sagittal plane.

The bodies' center line is metaphysical.

So the body's centreline is metaphysical eh? Which one of these definitions of metaphysical is it?

1 relating to metaphysics. 2 transcending physical matter.

The paper you submit presupposes that "Contrary to what was predicted, faces that were made more symmetrical were perceived as being less attractive."

It doesn't "presuppose" it; it "shows" it. Crucial difference.

what methods were used to make faces more symmetrical? Photoshop? Plastic surgery? Hardly natural.

Read the methods section. Photoshop, which is exactly the same method that has been used in all those papers which apparently show that symmetry is more attractive. If you're going to reject this paper for its methods, you're compelled to reject papers that support your argument that use the same methods. At least, you are if you're honest.

And if the scientists can't find the hidden yet metaphysically existant center line in the faces or bodies, and note like an artist the relationships of radial and planar symmetries around them, then no matter what they do to bilateral symmetries in faces is still missing the boat.

I think the more important point is that if artists cannot supply a concrete definition of this "metaphysically existant" centreline such that it can be identified in all bodies, then symmetry about that centreline cannot be quantified and therefore cannot be shown to be an objective component of beauty. I think that providing a concrete, useful definition of a metaphysical line could be tricky.

Note at this stage that you cannot simply say that metaphysical symmetry is "that which is pleasing to the eye" because that is basically the same as "beauty" and would constitute a circular argument.

 

[flimflam_machine]

How can anyone confirm the computer is spitting out statements? If I assume the computer is spitting out statements, then I have destroyed your model relevancy, for now there is an observer. And as an observer, which cant possibly exist in your scenario, I can only say that AJ is beautiful is true, ravens are flightless is false, and london buses are red is also true, because those things are true in the objective reality that we all live in.

You can't confirm it, nor do you have to assume an observer if you simply stick to the proposed thought experiment. Imagining a universe with no observers does not make you an observer within that universe. You asked for a way for statements to exist in isolation without a meaningful "stater" and no observers. I have provided one, and you have dodged the question.

By all your prevarication and avoidance of the real question you have basically revealed that you are a Berkeleyan idealist i.e., you believe that the universe does not exist outside of our ideas. By suggesting that you are an observer in our imaginary future puts you in the position that Berkeley suggests for god within our universe i.e., that of a universal observer.

You are suggesting that there is no "truth" outside of our heads, since you closely equate "truth" with reality, and coupled with your obvious Berkeleyan idealism the logical conclusion is that you do not believe in external reality. Weren't you having a go at Z for this several pages back?

 

[flimflam_machine]

Ravens are points of view.

And would they agree that "Angelina Jolie is beautiful" or would they prefer a hot female raven?

If there are no observers in universe, then there is only one conclusion we can make about that universe, MYSTERY.

And who would be making that conclusion if there's nobody in that universe?