On 2/18/2014 4:58 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 04:19:33PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
On 2/17/2014 10:15 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 09:18:32PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
I don't think there's any difference between objectivity and
inter-subujective agreement. I tend to use them interchangably.
Pity. Because its confusing. If this is an argument over whether
intersubjective realities exist, then we're both arguing on the same side.
Good, because that's the only operational meaning I can attach to "objective".
However, Edgar was arguing that a truly objective, observer
independent reality must exist. That is different.
Not sure what your point is here. It's our, because we're having this
conversation.
Not necessarily. Maybe you're just imagining it.
Someone once coined the phrase "real as I am real". In any Platonic
idealist theory (such as COMP), you are as real as me. If I'm
imagining you, I am also imagining myself.
It has to do with whether what they do is mind-independent or not.
You're taking "mind dependent" to mean "observed somewhere, sometime
by some mind".
No - a little stronger than that. I mean that what is observed is
necessarily consistent with being observed by some mind.
So not actually observed, just "consistent with" and "some" mind. But how is "consistent"
with to be evaluated. Does it mean merely logically possible? or nomologically
possible? If the latter, then it means using theories in which some things happen unobserved.
So do you agree that the results of scientific
observations (those for which there is inter-subjective agreement)
are independent of which particular minds do the observing.
Only if the inter-subjective agreement extends to all possible
minds. In ToN, I argue that the laws of quantum mechanics have this
nature. But only because those laws can be derived from considerations
of what it means to observe something. That means that those are laws
of physics, not geography. But that means those laws depend on the act
of observation (or are grounded in the act of observation).
Is that possible worlds that are observed or worlds that might
possibly be observed?
possible worlds that are observed
But this is incoherent. When we formulate a theory about the big
bang or how fossils were formed or how our Mars Rover is functioning
the theory is that those things really happen whether anyone
observes them or not.
It doesn't seem essential to the theory. All that matters is the
predicted observations.
Now you may say that eventually someone will
observe them, but that is already theory laden. The big bang is
observed via satellite telescopes which send down digital images
which are displayed on LED screens which send photons to your retina
which sends signals along your optic nerve...and THEN observation
takes place? But observation of what? nerve impluses? There is no
observation without theory, which includes some kind of ontology to
define the observation. You don't have to assume your theory
includes what is really real, but it has to include a theory of
observation if you are to go beyond from pure solipistic dreams.
Sure. I'm not sure what your point is though. You're just admitting
the theory doesn't need to make ontological claims in order to be effective.
But "effective" means predicting events not yet observed and even unobservable events -
unless you make "observe" so broad as to include any inference from any evidence.
is due to some reason other than the fact that
observers necessarily exist in those worlds. For there to be a mind
independent reality, there needs to be such a facts.
So a world must have physics that *permits* observers in order that
it be our world. But worlds don't have to have *geography* that
permits observers, e.g. this universe between inflation and the
recombination. So they can be mind independent.
Just so long as some geography permits the observers, such as on a
rocky planet on a middling start some 13 billion years after those events.
But the theory derived to explain that observation also entails that
no one need have observed it.
Really? How so?
The plasma was too chaotic to allow records or memory - hence the smoothness of
the CMB.
I could believe that mathematical facts (about say the integers) could
fit that category, and thus be the basis of a fundamental
ontology. But even in COMP, we cannot distinguish between an ontology
of Peano arithmetic, or of Curry combinators, say. Once your ontology has
the property of Turing completeness, you could choose any such
ontology and be none the wiser. Doesn't this make the whole notion of
an ontological reality rather meaningless?
Then you would have structural realism.
Yeah - fair enough. That position is largely a defeat of the idea that
we can know an ontological basis of phenomena.
But that's just the radical skepticism that we can't *know*
anything. All theories are provisional.
It's more than that. It's actually a theory making the claim that the
actual ontology (if such a thing has meaning) has no observable consequences.
But does it have observable predictions. Of course an ontology is part of a theory so it
doesn't have consequences, it predicts them.
But a geographical fact that is unobservable is mind independent and
our best theories entail that many such facts exists.
Which ones? How can unobserved facts exist?
By not being observed. It's a fact that you are observing these letters on a screen. Is
it a fact that your computer is running? is it a fact that they are produced by electrons
emitting photons? To say that only observed facts are really real invites solipism and
positivism and requires some theory free definition of observation.
Brent
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