Richard: I see little wrong in discussing the *World Out There.* All that is external to our sensory system, that impinges on that system is that *world.* ================ G: Also known as "transcendency", for transcending the ultimate input of cognition - the sense impressions. You have said that you read and agreed with my "STRUCTURES OF MIND"
http://findgeorges.com/CORE/A_FOUNDATIONS/c_structures_of_mind.html so one would expect you to know that I consider the mind domain "sensorium" as a mapper, mapping the unknowable territory of transcendency to the mind domain "imagery" (see below). Now, all views of the human reality may be divided with respect to the map/territory border of sensorium into: 1.Transcendent, considering the transcendent territory as "reality" which founds "existence" and cognition. Most of "...isms" and all shades of "realism" fall in this category. Now, whatever the pretensions of even most famous "...isms", an unknown territory cannot be derived from its map, it may only be guessed. Thus, transcendental "reality" can only be guessed by arbitrary apriori speculations, usually claiming absolute and necessary validity. 2.Immanent, which deal exclusively with the sensorial map and - without denying it - consider the transcendent territory as unknown, unknowable and staying beyond the human universe of discourse. They humbly consider human reality as entirely immanent and mental and the transcendental "reality" as an illusion. ================ Richard: Are you claiming that your hero, Einstein, was not involved in trying to grasp, understand and explain that *world?* ================ G: I don't have to claim anything. Einstein himself stated it clearly, implicitly in all his work and explicitly in his "PHYSICS AND REALITY", which I present in the chapter "NATURAL MODEL": http://findgeorges.com/CORE/B_NATURAL_VIEW/a_natural_model_v_ab.html Let's note that since Newton's "hypotheses non fingo" science does not "grasp, understand and explain" any "worlds", but, in accordance with Einstein, constructs abstract models justified exclusively by their capacity to coordinate subjective events (percepts, images, recollections). In a famous statement Dirac told Copenhagen Interpreters pretending to grasp and explain some shamanic "world" - "Shut up and compute". ================ Richard: Is it entirely out of bounds in your estimation to even mention or discuss that *world?* ================ G: Let me answer with help of the Newton's allegory comparing scientist to a child playing with shells on the ocean shore. -Shells represent concepts and theories. -Ocean represents the unknown marvelous wherefrom the shells had emerged and new ones will turn up. It is absurd to restrict, in keeping with pseudo-science, the universe to a few shells and to deny the Ocean. But it is equally absurd to infer - in keeping with "realisms" and religions - the details of the marvelous, to shut it in a shell and to dissect it as if it were an oyster. The marvelous invites admiring meditation, poetry and art, but - not being an oyster - escapes scientific dissections. ================ Richard: I seriously doubt that you, even in your seemingly stringent avoidance of reification, can, in fact avoid it. What is a *model?* What is *abstraction? * What is *meaning?* ================ G: If, as you pretended, you really read my "Structures of Mind" you would know that I defined: 1.Sensorium, as above, 2.Imagery, Mind's domain supporting perception called "Imagery" to keep it compatible with the essential faculty of Imagination. Elements of imagery will be called Images, of which percepts are a subclass. "Image" is a strict synonym of "Event" as defined in "TIME, AWARENESS AND EVENTS". Due to common usages, it's easier to talk about events in the most general context of ontology and about images in the much more specific one, that of mind and its structures. Images are continuous, bounded by virtue of the Covering Principle, spacially by covering rods and timely by clock ticks. 3.Symbolism. By virtue of the CD dichotomy we seek a discrete counterpart of the intrinsic continuity of images. We find it in Symbols. Images may be mapped to symbols which act psychologically as mnemonic pointers and physically as fixed point attractors. We shall call "Symbolism" the mind's faculty handling abstract symbols and consider it as the discrete complement of continuous images. Images are seldom reduced to single percepts. Usually they represent compound patterns or "situations" in the sense Sartre gave this term, which are mapped to Symbolism as complex abstract structures e.g. linguistic, logical and mathematical expressions. "Model" is a symbolic or abstract structure consisting of axiomatic deductive "theory" comprising factual (eventtual) theorems verifying/falsifying the theory inductively. "Abstraction", as above. As for "meaning", it pertains to "reflection". "Reflection" will denote the faculty of reciprocal transfers between Imagery and Symbolism: 1."Symbolizing" or mapping images into symbolic or abstract structures. 2."Understanding", or regressing symbolic structures to images, which embody their "meaning". ================ About TWTWI: I have thoroughly read "The Way The World Is" which you had kindly sent to me. I wanted to comment it as a well written creed of some sort of realism, but in the meantime I read your favorable comments of my "Structures of Mind" and gathered that something new must have happened. Your transcendental TWTWI and my immanency seemed totally irreconcilable, so I took it that you somehow adjusted your opinion towards bridging the gap between metaphysical "realism" and physical immanency. Such a bridge could represent the most important breakthrough in the contemporary philosophy, so I postponed commenting the TWTWI, expecting that our discussions on the list would clarify the issue of the potential bridge. Taking for granted that you read thoroughly and favorably my stuff, each time you twisted my terms I thought that you were pulling my leg and reacted accordingly, or , as you said - satirically. Only now I realized that you simply disregarded my stuff and ignore my terms. That's why I try most seriously to explain some of them in the present post. As for the TWTWI, I keep on seeing it as a creed of some transcendental "realism", which I can neither understand, nor comment in details. I would suggest just one thing, to scrap in the next version the Appendix 5 on the QM. It has nothing to do with particle physics and presents a badly digested version of the Copenhagen balderdash. It's not worthy of you, who are a sound elementary physicist, but seem to lack the active experience and knowledge of fundamentals such as GR and QFT. Particle physics is not a contradiction, but a continuation of extended relativity, not yet completely fulfilled in a unified theory, but well advanced in that direction. That's why I believe that the Rotating Disk would be a good entry point to grasping the current fundamental physics, but I still await your reaction to my simplified presentation. And perhaps could we together try and build this bridge between physics and metaphysics? Regards Georges. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Epistemology" group. 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