Subjectivity and Science

[Lord Muck oGentry]

But, said I, how did one of those resulting consciousnesses become the centre of experience I call my consciousness?

Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious, but you seem to imply that there could be two different answers to the questions:

1. Which person am I?

2. Which person is it whose experiences I experience ( whose eyes I see with, ears I hear with, fingers I touch with, and so on)?


Unless there are criteria by which the answers can be made independent of each other, the question makes no sense.

Dualism is no help to you: if you are puzzled to say how you came to have your body rather than someone else's, you have the same difficulty with the question how you came to have your mind ( spirit, soul, personality or whatever) rather than the next chap's.

 

[Mobyseven]

But then how is the consistency of the elm tree in my yard maintained between the times that thoughts exist about it?

~~ Paul

Who says that it is? If there is no 'you', and the sense of identity currently posting is no more than the chance coming together of a pattern of thoughts and emotions, then your memories of what the elm tree was like in the past are not actually 'your' memories. It could just as well as been a person who was confused as to what species of tree they have in their backyard - every time 'they' remember checking, it switches between 'oak' and 'elm'!

Understand that I'm not actually advocating this position - after all, what would it even mean to say that this is not the real world that I (or 'I') am living in now? It certainly seems to be the real world, and I have yet to see anything that would make me doubt such a thing. There is limited value, in my opinion, to applying reductionism to such an extreme - the ultimate conclusion of such reductionism is necessary doubt of one's own existence, and such a scenario doesn't really teach anyone anything about the world (it does, however, keep metaphysicists in tenure ). Maybe it is all an illusion, but to treat it as such is counter-productive. At least, I imagine it is.

 

[John Freestone]

I'm surprised so few of you seem to have a clue what the question was. Maybe I'm wiser than I thought (compared with this particular population - oooh yes I can do both science and arrogance me).

I wondered how many words I would read before I was insulted, having read a few other threads round here. Six is the answer, when The Grave said "what a dumb stand point". 'Standpoint' is one word, BTW. Matter and mind are 'both real', you say. OK. You're confident. Not only that, but meaning is real, as when I write the word 'up'. Well, 'up' might have a useful meaning in a warehouse, but the universe, for example, doesn't seem to have an up. Hence simple meanings are ok for warehouse workers, not cosmologists or philosophers.

Oh we love this, don't we? This is what we really come to discuss things for: gradual increase in temperature and deeper entrenchment in our separate views towards flame war, whereupon we're all dumped in the relevant archive, having proved that we're clever and everyone else is stupid. At least we've had a good time taking part in an utterly useless battle of the selfish memes.

I think this phenomenon is actually more interesting than my original question. Maybe "Complexity" has an opinion on it

Another one.
John, this got tedious a long time a go.
Go off and read better books.

Simplicity, I could suggest that you go off and take part in discussions that don't bore you so much that you have to say how bored you are and insult the author (with whom you have not exchanged a word before) by suggesting he read different books (when you don't know which books he's read). I think all you did there was waste everyone's time demonstrating your irrational anger.

Why? Why are there so many angry, insulting people round here, or have I just read too few threads to get an objective view?

And why are so many of you so incredibly quick to make up your minds about stuff, and answer questions no-one asked. I didn't say we have immortal souls. Several of you go from "Hmmm. this is weird...tree falls in forest...?" to "Don't start preaching your God rubbish at me it's all garbage" before you actually understand anything you've read.

PixiMisa (The Illuminator) replies that there is no mystery to my subjective consciousness, since I have a body and a brain (and, incidentally, can't resist insulting me by saying that I didn't listen to the materialist argument of my sister or my high school biology lessons). I can guarantee you'll find that I did listen, and you didn't understand the question.

At least Ichneumonwasp clarifies the issue:

What problem of subjectivity?

Science has so far failed to make sense of 'subjectivity' because it isn't properly speaking a scientific problem. It is a thought problem, so belongs to philosophy of mind.

I'm not sure why there is a problem, though. ...snip...

Yes, philosophy. This is the philosophy board. This is the syndrome: because it isn't a scientific problem, you can't see the problem anymore, and go back to describing the evolutionary benefits of emotion, things already inside the box.

PixyMisa demonstrates the same lack of imagination

The question, to a materialist, is trivial. No-one gives it serious attention because it doesn't deserve serious attention.

Yes to the first part. PixyMisa is more sure of the material world out there than his or her apprehension of it, which I find odd. Apparently The Grave seriously doubts his or her existence, so it gets worse. If the CIA were flashing lights in our eyes it couldn't be a better cover-up. The Pixy goes on:

Mediation Considered Harmful.

So we'll just have to slug it out then. Ok, easy typo, sorry. The fact that meditation might be considered harmful (and you don't say by whom) strikes me as poor reason to ignore it with Three Word Headlines. Meditation is cited in a wide range of traditions as a tool for helping us understand the nature of consciousness. Since many of us here at least have agreed that our experience is subjective, and therefore not within the purview of science, which always deals with objective measurements, I practise it in the hope of shedding some light on what I consider 'problems' or 'mysteries' or 'questions' about my subjective consciousness and existence. Discussion is pretty ineffectual.

Oh but it is sooo enjoyable arguing with strangers. I leave you with another of pixi's gems (speaking as a scientist, presumably): "The observer is irrelevant." Oh God, my sides! High skool rocks. I hope there is a heaven; Einstein will wet himself.

Plumjam, thanks for the encouragement. It made a difference, you posting that. I don't much like myself round here. Just feels like it's meant to be a battle ground and you either fight or flee. I guess that's maybe part of the syndrome.

 

[PixyMisa]

PixiMisa (The Illuminator)

Just to clarify that, "Illuminator" is just the default label attached to users with, I guess, between 3000 and 4000 posts. It's not a title I chose for myself.

replies that there is no mystery to my subjective consciousness, since I have a body and a brain (and, incidentally, can't resist insulting me by saying that I didn't listen to the materialist argument of my sister or my high school biology lessons). I can guarantee you'll find that I did listen, and you didn't understand the question.

No, I understood the question just fine. It's just that, as I said, under materialism it's a trivial question.

Why do I experience my consciousness and not others'? Under materialism, and from a truly immense body of evidence gathered over thousands of years, consciousness is brain function. You have a brain, so you experience the consciousness generated by that brain. Or rather, your experiences are the consciousness generated by that brain.

The materialist position is, of course, an assumption, and to an honest scientist it's a tentative but essential one. As I said, science is in some sense a meta-experiment into the fundamental nature of reality: Assume materialism (or at least naturalism) and then see how far you can get explaining things.

And we haven't found any limits yet.

At least Ichneumonwasp clarifies the issue:Yes, philosophy. This is the philosophy board. This is the syndrome: because it isn't a scientific problem, you can't see the problem anymore, and go back to describing the evolutionary benefits of emotion, things already inside the box.

Philosophy uninformed by fact is mere opinion. If you want to talk about what is rather than what might be, you must observe the world and take it into account - which is precisely what science does.

PixyMisa demonstrates the same lack of imagination

Not true; rather, it's a question I've considered for more than 25 years, and I didn't lay out every single step along the way, just the conclusion.

PixyMisa is more sure of the material world out there than his or her apprehension of it, which I find odd.

It's a natural conclusion.

Other people clearly possess conscious minds equivalent to my own. I've seen people born, with their minds largely blank. I've seen people die. Everyone has seen this. It always happens, and it's always the same. You're born, you live, you learn, and you die. And no-one and nothing ever comes back.

And that those conscious minds are generated by brains is indisputable. (Not deductively proven; merely indisputable.) No brain, no mind. Poke the brain with electrodes, drown it in alcohol, jolt it with caffeine, deprive it of sleep, gnaw at it with disease, slice it and dice it in unfortunate accidents or life-saving surgery, tease it with any of a thousand alkaloids and opioids, and consciousness changes. Change the brain and consciousness changes.

If consciousness is fundamental, why is its every aspect utterly dependent upon matter?

So we'll just have to slug it out then. Ok, easy typo, sorry.

Yeah, I saw that, but only after the editing period was over.

The fact that meditation might be considered harmful (and you don't say by whom)

Me, in this case.

strikes me as poor reason to ignore it with Three Word Headlines.

It's a computer science joke.

Meditation is cited in a wide range of traditions as a tool for helping us understand the nature of consciousness.

Yes. And it doesn't work.

Since many of us here at least have agreed that our experience is subjective, and therefore not within the purview of science, which always deals with objective measurements, I practise it in the hope of shedding some light on what I consider 'problems' or 'mysteries' or 'questions' about my subjective consciousness and existence. Discussion is pretty ineffectual.

I disagree with every part of this. The subjective, as we are shown over and over again, is merely a subset of the objective. All you are is the interaction of molecules. We know that. So, necessarily, given that your subjective experience is generated by objectively observable events, the subjective is fully explicable in terms of the objective.

That doesn't mean we know the entire answer, not just yet. It does mean that there is no necessity to bring anything else to the table.

Oh but it is sooo enjoyable arguing with strangers. I leave you with another of pixi's gems (speaking as a scientist, presumably): "The observer is irrelevant." Oh God, my sides! High skool rocks. I hope there is a heaven; Einstein will wet himself.

The observer is irrelevant. Relativity works exactly the same whether you are there to make the measurement or not, and whether you believe in it or not. When a discussion of Relativity refers to the observer, what matters is the observer's location and motion and nothing else.

 

[Mobyseven]

Ugh. Another 'philosopher'. "Philosophy is so deep! I'm so deep you can't even understand me! Look at how deep I am! LOOK AT MY DEEPNESS, DAMMIT!"

 

[JoeEllison]

Ugh. Another 'philosopher'. "Philosophy is so deep! I'm so deep you can't even understand me! Look at how deep I am! LOOK AT MY DEEPNESS, DAMMIT!"

I think the only people who buy into this sort of "philosophy" are high on drugs. It sounds like the sort of thing that seems really deep and meaningful at 3 AM when you're drunk or stoned, but doesn't mean much at all the next morning.

 

[joobz]

I think the only people who buy into this sort of "philosophy" are high on drugs. It sounds like the sort of thing that seems really deep and meaningful at 3 AM when you're drunk or stoned, but doesn't mean much at all the next morning.

It's rather outdated school of thought. Kind of meaningless to question the utility of science and materialism with people over the INTERNET while ON A COMPUTER.

 

[JoeEllison]

It's rather outdated school of thought. Kind of meaningless to question the utility of science and materialism with people over the INTERNET while ON A COMPUTER.

Well, yeah, but using actual logic isn't as "deep" as the sort of "philosophy" that most people seem to engage in.

To me, the whole "what if..." philosophical question followed by some attack on science and materialism? My response is that it just doesn't really go anywhere. If you don't have to provide evidence, if you don't even believe in evidence, that's pretty much the end of anything you can say, isn't it? Your little "what if..." question becomes stupid and useless by your own twisted logic, because if everything is completely subjective, nothing can ever be proven or disproved, and anything is possible and equally likely... then frankly, any claim you make past that point makes you a moron and a hypocrite.

Rejecting the idea of evidence doesn't mean that you can claim whatever religion or belief you want. It means you can't claim anything. So, if John Freestone really rejects the idea of evidence, he should really consider shutting up. Otherwise, he's making a claim that he doesn't believe he's allowed to make at all.

 

[joobz]

Rejecting the idea of evidence doesn't mean that you can claim whatever religion or belief you want. It means you can't claim anything.

Quoted for truth. Nicely said.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

I think the only people who buy into this sort of "philosophy" are high on drugs. It sounds like the sort of thing that seems really deep and meaningful at 3 AM when you're drunk or stoned, but doesn't mean much at all the next morning.

I was sober when I read the OP and am drunk at (almost, but what is time, other than a construct to shackle us) 11pm and JF's meanderings made as little sense to me then as they do now. I don't want to dismiss all philosphy or abstract thought was worthless since I find value in many gedankenubungens, but trying to juxtapose the abstract with the material is a waste of time.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it does it make a noise? Of course it does you navel gazing blowhards! It's the same with a beam of sunlight touching a blade of grass being green even if no one is there to see it. When the F did koans, ignorant of physics as they are, become considered scientific?

 

[Tumblehome]

I'm probably stepping into the lion's den with this one.

Yep.

I understand that science has so far failed to make sense of the subjective experience of it.

Wrong. Science has made its own sense of it. You just choose not to accept it.

Science recognizes that my consciousness is a function of my brain, and that because my experiences are limited and different than everyone else's, it is subjective and, therefore, biased. If we're to understand the Universe, we can't rely on my or anyone else's biased view. Acknowledging the bias in our consciousness is precisely why we have the objective discipline of science to filter out that bias.

But, said I, how did one of those resulting consciousnesses become the centre of experience I call my consciousness? How did I get in here, talking to you out there? It is that question that keeps bringing me back to consider different views of the world from the materialist one.

Well, you see, your mother and father loved each other in a very special way, and...then you were born. You became a functioning human being which necessarily includes a brain capable of consciousness. It's not like your consciousness was already there, waiting for you, as you seem to want. It was the result of a purely biological process that didn't exist until you were born.

I suspect that many scientific materialists don't consider the mystery of their own consciousness much from that absolute perspective.

I'm sure they consider their own consciousness, but not the "mystery" of it, because there's nothing to suggest it's mysterious. What is it about consciousness that means it has to be mystical?

The more I consider it, meditate and read spiritual philosophies, the more sense a world view makes that includes Consciousness as fundamental, perhaps Cosmic, a priori, given.

Spiritual philosophies that see consciousness as inevitable take only the warm and fuzzy aspect of consciousness and put it on a pedestal. They don't acknowledge that human consciousness also creates war, child rape, ingenious methods of torture, etc., etc. In other words, they're biased. They're a perfect example of why we can't depend on subjectivity to explain the Universe.

Scientists are happy to imagine a universe in which matter or energy-matter or space-time are fundamental...

Of course. This Universe wouldn't exist if that weren't so.

...and indeed lap up the weirdness of all of that exploding out of a singularity behind which is no past (since time was created) or place (since space was). Yet I have heard no convincing explanation of consciousness that does not describe it in third-person, out-there, functional-material language, utterly missing the philosophical problem of its subjective quality - it is not an it, but an I.

Yes, science laps up weirdness--whenever it's supported by evidence. When weirdness, or normalcy, or anything, isn't supported, it's not accepted.

Your consciousness is an "I" only to you, not to anyone else.

Further doubt about science comes from the reasoning that all of the 'empirical evidence' that is so revered by scientists must eventually be made sense of in the individual consciousness, the nature of which is mostly ignored, perhaps because it is such a mystery. If the observer is not known, any theories about the observed stand on much shakier ground than scientists usually like to admit.

Yes, evidence is interpreted by the individual consciousness, and for that reason, it's accepted only if it passes a bias filter.

Again, the nature of the individual conscience is not ignored; science's intrpretation of it is right there in front of your eyes. The fact that you don't accept it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And again again, there's no mystery to it except for those who feel the need to attach a biased, unsupported metaphysical significance to it.

It seems to me, also, that 'scepticism' on this forum is often used to mean 'scientific materialist' (although no doubt some will have other ideas about what it means to them), and I wonder if actually scientific materialism is merely a philosophy - one might even say an atheistic religion, since it has tenets and assumptions, axioms - and rather than 'sceptic' (or skeptic) what is meant is 'believer'.

Is it a philosophy to believe that the next time I drop a ball, it will fall to the ground? Or is it a conclusion reached by a system of logical deduction that applies to everyone on Earth, regardless of their philosophical outlook?

This seems to allow 'sceptics' to assume that their position is natural...

It certainly isn't supernatural.

...and dissenters are either stupid, mad, or at least must show evidence for their belief.

Do you expect their beliefs to be accepted just on their say-so?

...all manner of 'religious' people (dare I call them mentalists?) are expected to prove that mind is real.

No, they're expected to prove their versions of the mind are real, as opposed to the official, logical version.

This brings me full circle. Stop for a moment and experience your consciousness. Now which is more absolutely undeniable, you (subject), or all that stuff out there you believe in?

Not sure what you mean, but I'll take a stab. As far as I know, I exist. My beliefs will have to change if the evidence warrants it. As a minor example, I didn't like the idea of Pluto being exlcuded as a planet, but when I looked at the reasons for it, I had to agree it was the right thing to do.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Hi John, that's an excellent post. Nominated.
I'm looking forward to seeing the 'quality' of responses you'll get.

A lot will be attacking. Don't mind them, there are some fools here.
I hope you'll stick around, it'll make for more interesting debate.

Ah. So we have another jejune "mystery of consciousness" poster and thread do we?

Thus I refute Berkeley

 

[John Freestone]

Thanks. I think there's a lot of strength in most of these arguments within their materialist religious dogma. They have an internal logic. Like Newtonian Physics has within certain limits. What I'm trying to suggest is that philosophy is an attempt (ok, perhaps stupid and fruitless, but attractive to some) to try to approach truth. Science is one method of doing that, but the problems with the 'bias filter' conception of science are:
1) All of it depends on accepting doubtful knowledge. I realise that most of you are aware of this and I'm not disputing that over time science can establish reasonable faith in certain propositions. What I am saying, from a philosophical point of view, is that this is faith, since all scientific discoveries are 'best guesses'. The filter is based on a human invention, confidence (the mathematical variety, I mean, the basis of statistics). If something is 'statistically significant' it is so with reference to some purely arbitrarily chosen confidence quotient. So what this means is that the scientist says, "That'll do, I'll take that as best-guess-reality". Now that's fine, except that it is then transmuted by semi-conscious people into "established fact", and we get the kind of badgering here towards anyone who QUESTIONS its philosophical basis: the facts are in; your conscious experience is evolutionarily useful froth on a material sea of patterned accident.

2) Objective observations might not be filtered through a bias filter so much as distorted by the objectifying, pattern-making habit of our minds (which is why there is so much made of the possible potential of altered states of awareness to open the 'doors of perception' to more truthful apperception of reality, rather than merely being hallucinatory error). Of course, to a dedicated, pious materialist, the problem is solved by default; to a philosopher it is not. Even this I put as "might not be..." because I am agnostic, exploring reason and experience in search of undeniable truth. Those of you who say that materialism is undeniable have failed to realise that you have no way of knowing whether you are dreaming that belief.

The philosopher, perhaps wrongly, perhaps stupidly, recognises that the 'established fact' you lot are so sure of is not fact, but faith, and asks again "What do I actually know?" Andyandy has enough freedom of thought to say that thought is more reliable than the objects being thought about. Those who meditate report that even thoughts can be observed as objects, separate from the witness, the "I" thinking them. Of course, traditionally some of them come to a similar conclusion (or rather, they assert, they aquire direct knowledge) as some of you have been saying here - that the self is utterly illusory (it is one of the tenets of Buddhism). However, it is a very different kind of understanding than what many of you seem to be saying, that facts are just observed, filtered through the magic bias filter of scientific experimentation, appreciated by the clear view of your eyes.

I am not denying the functional usefulness of science and technology, or external reality. I am reminding us that what we observe has already had a cognitive pattern imposed on it by our minds: we call it a chair and sit on it, even though in a natural sense there is no such thing as a chair; 'chair' is an ideal, and you can do the thought experiment of constructing less and less chair-like chairs and find a continuum from 'not-chair' to 'chair' and the dividing line between the two is down to your personal taste in how comfortable you like to be when you sit down. In a similar way, whatever science 'measures' might have already been projected, as it were, constructed, rather than observed in the raw. Am I mistaken in stating that this is one of the uncomfortable discoveries of science itself, that observer and observed cannot be separated (at least in certain realms or dimensions)? Does it not lead many cosmologists and particle physicists to comment on the kind of 'mystery' I am alluding to?

I'm afraid my ability to argue this point is poor because I haven't enough knowledge of these areas, but did I dream Chaos and QM, particles popping in and out of existence, wave-particle confusions... Is it Heisenberg who would have a good laugh about the observer being irrelevant.

Someone summed it up by saying that science has not found any limit. Newton might have said the same about his clockwork universe.

My question was probably rather naive and stupid. Forget it if you like. I just find it stimulating to my curiosity to note that there have been approximately 13 billion human brains through history, but only one of them is supposed to be the 'cause' of 'me'. Annother way of looking at it is to imagine all that mechanistic evolution taking place and questioning whether my hallucinatory perception of a self was at all necessary. Being one of those several billions for a fleeting lifetime is like crawling inside the cosmos somehow, unnecessarily putting it on as a skin. It feels significant and strange to exist or have the dream of existing as a person. I mean, we might repeat the process with AI robots, but if we suddenly found ourselves embodied in one, we'd be dim not to wonder why. And if we did, someone would say "It's obvious, dimwit: you have a frame and a CPU, don't you?"

 

[Irony]

Thanks. I think there's a lot of strength in most of these arguments within their materialist religious dogma.

If your so interested in this subject, then perhaps you could refrain from hurling insults between spats of patting yourself on the back and actually listen to what others here have said about it.

 

[Darat]

Surely i can be more sure of my thoughts than i can be of anything that exists outside myself? For anything that i think exists outside myself requires that the stimulus is correctly received and interpreted, whereas at least with my thoughts, that external step is not required.....

...snip...

That's only true after you've made the assumption that you are sure of your thoughts. There is just no way that you can tell if you are the solipsist or just a creation of the solipsist in solipsist metaphysics.

 

[CFLarsen]

But they are! How? It is not your conscious thought that keeps the tree consistent from one observation to the next. There must be something else.

Don't worry about your bleedin' trees, man!

When you're not thinking about them, I will. Promise!

 

[JoeEllison]

I'm afraid my ability to argue this point is poor because I haven't enough knowledge of these areas.

The real problem, I think, is that you don't actually have a valid or useful point. You'd like to have one, I'm sure. Since you don't, you're going to keep hitting frustrating roadblocks. The embrace of subjectivity that you seem to espouse is not a path to greater knowledge, but a rejection of the possibility of any knowledge. It is a complete dead end.

Did you actually read and internalize any of the criticisms of your position?

 

[NeilC]

That's only true after you've made the assumption that you are sure of your thoughts. There is just no way that you can tell if you are the solipsist or just a creation of the solipsist in solipsist metaphysics.

What do you mean by "sure of your thoughts"? Sure they exist or sure that because they exist you must also exist?

 

[Darat]

I'm assuming that andyandy is using it as in "I'm sure these thoughts are mine".

 

[fls]

Thanks. I think there's a lot of strength in most of these arguments within their materialist religious dogma. They have an internal logic. Like Newtonian Physics has within certain limits. What I'm trying to suggest is that philosophy is an attempt (ok, perhaps stupid and fruitless, but attractive to some) to try to approach truth. Science is one method of doing that, but the problems with the 'bias filter' conception of science are:
1) All of it depends on accepting doubtful knowledge. I realise that most of you are aware of this and I'm not disputing that over time science can establish reasonable faith in certain propositions. What I am saying, from a philosophical point of view, is that this is faith, since all scientific discoveries are 'best guesses'. The filter is based on a human invention, confidence (the mathematical variety, I mean, the basis of statistics). If something is 'statistically significant' it is so with reference to some purely arbitrarily chosen confidence quotient. So what this means is that the scientist says, "That'll do, I'll take that as best-guess-reality". Now that's fine, except that it is then transmuted by semi-conscious people into "established fact", and we get the kind of badgering here towards anyone who QUESTIONS its philosophical basis: the facts are in; your conscious experience is evolutionarily useful froth on a material sea of patterned accident.

'Statistically significant' had its birth in the 1920's - long after the laws governing physical processes had been elucidated. I don't think you can hold it to blame.

Try thinking of 'established fact' as 'that list of things which must be wrong in order for my idea to be wrong', instead.

2) Objective observations might not be filtered through a bias filter so much as distorted by the objectifying, pattern-making habit of our minds (which is why there is so much made of the possible potential of altered states of awareness to open the 'doors of perception' to more truthful apperception of reality, rather than merely being hallucinatory error). Of course, to a dedicated, pious materialist, the problem is solved by default; to a philosopher it is not. Even this I put as "might not be..." because I am agnostic, exploring reason and experience in search of undeniable truth. Those of you who say that materialism is undeniable have failed to realise that you have no way of knowing whether you are dreaming that belief.

The philosopher, perhaps wrongly, perhaps stupidly, recognises that the 'established fact' you lot are so sure of is not fact, but faith, and asks again "What do I actually know?" Andyandy has enough freedom of thought to say that thought is more reliable than the objects being thought about. Those who meditate report that even thoughts can be observed as objects, separate from the witness, the "I" thinking them. Of course, traditionally some of them come to a similar conclusion (or rather, they assert, they aquire direct knowledge) as some of you have been saying here - that the self is utterly illusory (it is one of the tenets of Buddhism). However, it is a very different kind of understanding than what many of you seem to be saying, that facts are just observed, filtered through the magic bias filter of scientific experimentation, appreciated by the clear view of your eyes.

Instead of patting yourself on the back for having these thoughts, recognize that Science has had these thoughts as well. While Philosophy is stuck on the navel-gazing part of the process, Science has moved on to the 'taking all that into consideration....' part of the process.

I am not denying the functional usefulness of science and technology, or external reality. I am reminding us that what we observe has already had a cognitive pattern imposed on it by our minds: we call it a chair and sit on it, even though in a natural sense there is no such thing as a chair; 'chair' is an ideal, and you can do the thought experiment of constructing less and less chair-like chairs and find a continuum from 'not-chair' to 'chair' and the dividing line between the two is down to your personal taste in how comfortable you like to be when you sit down. In a similar way, whatever science 'measures' might have already been projected, as it were, constructed, rather than observed in the raw. Am I mistaken in stating that this is one of the uncomfortable discoveries of science itself, that observer and observed cannot be separated (at least in certain realms or dimensions)? Does it not lead many cosmologists and particle physicists to comment on the kind of 'mystery' I am alluding to?

I'm afraid my ability to argue this point is poor because I haven't enough knowledge of these areas, but did I dream Chaos and QM, particles popping in and out of existence, wave-particle confusions... Is it Heisenberg who would have a good laugh about the observer being irrelevant.

It's not that the observer is irrelevant, it's that certain characteristics of the observer are irrelevant - that the observer is a life-form and is conscious are two of them.

Someone summed it up by saying that science has not found any limit. Newton might have said the same about his clockwork universe.

My question was probably rather naive and stupid. Forget it if you like. I just find it stimulating to my curiosity to note that there have been approximately 13 billion human brains through history, but only one of them is supposed to be the 'cause' of 'me'. Annother way of looking at it is to imagine all that mechanistic evolution taking place and questioning whether my hallucinatory perception of a self was at all necessary. Being one of those several billions for a fleeting lifetime is like crawling inside the cosmos somehow, unnecessarily putting it on as a skin. It feels significant and strange to exist or have the dream of existing as a person. I mean, we might repeat the process with AI robots, but if we suddenly found ourselves embodied in one, we'd be dim not to wonder why. And if we did, someone would say "It's obvious, dimwit: you have a frame and a CPU, don't you?"

There have been 13 billion license plates through history, but only one of them is VQR 312. You'd be dim not to wonder why.

Linda