on 5/3/01 11:00 PM, Dan Minette at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Marvin Long, Jr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> Um, isn't there a certain metaphysical arrogance is defining the universe
>> as "the organization of impressions of reality made by *human* minds?" I
>> have no problem with a statement such as, "the human viewpoint will vanish
>> when humans do" (perhaps barring the presence of extraterrestrial
>> anthropologists)...but that ain't the same thing.
>>
>
> Well, the argument is that the universe we live in is just the human
> viewpoint. There is a reality apart from the human viewpoint, but we don't
> have a direct understanding of it.
>
But our view of reality doesn't change reality. And our understanding of
this allows us to broaden our view of reality using instruments and logic.
We have no direct experience of how bats use the reflections of chirps
beyond the range of our hearing to catch insects in the dark, or how bees
see colours outside our visible spectrum to find flowers exchanging nectar
for pollination... But we can work it out and understand it.
And of course experiments in psychology show that our own 'direct'
experience is really another mental model which can be subverted by all
kinds of perceptual illusions.
So the fact that we get on so successfully in the world seems to me to be
more evidence for the solidity of an objective reality that can be
approached from different directions than for a reality that is only
constructed by our viewpoint.
>
>> So here's another question--probably still yet to be definitively
>> answered--which is: can the limitations of the human viewpoint be
>> explained in purely phenomenal terms, i.e. by science?
>
> Well, I don't think so. The strongest argument for this position, off the
> top of my head, is the enormous trouble inherent in any self-referential
> statement. Think of Godel's proofs.
>
A mind isn't a clean formal system with a Godel sentence to send it into a
recursive tailspin, it is a mess of dirty competing heuristics. It is
obvious that a given person at a given time may not be able to understand
something; but a different person (with different heuristics) might, and be
able to transfer that understanding to another.[1]
[1] Using one of those obscure inter-mind data transfer protocols like
language...
--
William T Goodall
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk
"Belief is the wound that knowledge heals."
