Hi Colin,
Sorry for being late,
Le 10-août-05, à 02:51, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit :
Hi,
(via) Reality vs. Perception of Reality
In answer to Bruno’s recent comments on the old post:
* Thanks for helping me sort out my ‘Nagels’! I had them mixed up in
EndNote.
You are welcome. I did that confusion too.
* Young? 49 years young. Getting young and seemingly knowing less and
less every day. :-) This I seem to have to conclude is progress of a
sort.
Ah! You are also born the year (1955) Einstein died ? Before all, it is
the year Lob answered to the problem of Mister Henkin!
... and, sure, it is a progress to discover we know less. Glad to hear
that, because comp literaly forces us to realize we are much more
ignorant than most physicalist approaches could imagine!
---------------------------
I’ve caught up with the ‘subjective reality’ thread and am finding the
usual linguistic blurs, wondering how to resolve them. Part of the
process is to ensure we are all talking about the same things. It
seems there is room for some work in this regard. In going through the
posts it seems to me there is an overlap in the word ‘subjective’ in a
very specific way.
a) Firstly there is ‘subjective’ in the sense of experiential content
(the ‘now’ of our experiential fields vision, haptic, emotion etc)).
This is implemented in brain material in some way. What the brain
feels.
I agree the experiential content is related to some "brain activity".
But I don't think my brain is thinking at all. I think (well, I hope).
To say the brain think is to make a confusion of level. I think,
through my brain, body, universes ...
b) Secondly there is knowledge derived from that experience. This is
devoid of experiential qualities and is reported as a belief. “Mr X
had a headache on that day” is the example used here. What the brain
does. This is a belief whose truth may or may not be supported by
empirical evidence. This is formed by a separate brain mechanism.
There seems to be a tendency for these two to get mixed up. You can
see evidence in the thread: the interpretive mismatch actually caused
discussion to occur. Both of these constructs a) and b) can be
characterised as ‘virtual’. In case (a) the brain makes the outside
natural world have an appearance ‘as if it were like that’. In case b)
the belief is a ‘truth’ about the natural world and the holder of the
belief acts (behaves) ‘as if’ it were true.
Both are subjective in that they are properties of a subject (a brain)
and the result of that subject’s view of the natural world (=not the
brain) as an object. This leads is into the next potential confusion
c) subject in contrast to d) object. This too has been in the possibly
confused mixture and was well recognised by Lee.
This may be a confusion of word subject/object vs
subjective/objective. Don’t know.
Then there is the final confusion (? Not sure) e) that ‘measurement’
in the quantum mechanical sense of a so-called ‘observer moment’ and
its relationship to a), b) c) and d). For I do not think they are the
same thing. The quantum mechanical ‘observer moments’ happen
continually at all places, scales and times where the natural
processes taking place demand that resolution of position/velocity
some other pair be resolved to a certain state. This is the massive
collection of falling trees in the unobserved forest. They still fall
in the sense that Schrödinger’s cat ‘fall’. This form of ‘observation’
may actually occur in a brain and be relevant to a), b), c) , d) but
it does not necessarily _define_ a), b), c) d). I believe this to be
an accidental cultural mis-interpretation that seems to continue
unchallenged. Or am I seeing something that is not there?
There seems to sometimes be a tacit assumption that QM observation and
observation by a cognitive agent inclusive of a phenomenal
consciousness are literally the same thing or necessarily related or
that QM is necessarily causal in phenomenal consciousness. A corollary
of this is that if you do a QM depiction of the universe unfolding
that somehow phenomenality has been depicted. This is not necessarily
the case. To me they seem to be two completely separate aspects of the
natural world that may or may not be connected and the confusion that
they are seems to be in place here.
So here we are all thinking we are talking about the same thing
whereas there seem to be at least 5 separable aspects to the
discussion (a,b,c,d,e above). They appear very distinct to me, anyway,
and in order to have any meaningful discussion it would seem that
these 5 things be very clearly defined. Or have I just done that?
I am not sure. I do agree with your distinction, but I am not sure all
distinctions does not depend on different set of assumptions, and if
those sets are compatible with each other.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
