Philosophy Now Forum

Terrapin Station wrote:Well, you have to buy some beliefs, otherwise you can't function in the world (as a human who is going to function as anything other than an effective "vegetable").

OuterLimits wrote:In science, truth is "provisional" - you never know when a better model will come along.

Terrapin Station wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:The indentification of patterns and processes is wholly mental. The universe does not know what you are thinking about, It does not care what you are thinking about

I agree with you completely up to that point.

and the 'process' is about what interests the human mind, about what happens in the universe.

At that point, no. You completely lose me. Extramental processes aren't about anything. They have no intentionality. It's simply the fact that things in the world are not static. Their relations change relative to each other, and many things (all things that are not ontic simples) are the things they are by virtue of those changing relations in combination with (dynamic) structures (qua structures) and the particular simples that comprise them.

A natural process is a narrative about the universe.

I have no idea what that would be saying.

Whatever the "block universe/eternalism/B-theory of time" was last year, is today, or whatever is is tomorrow is a narrative to save the appearances of the universe.

It seems to me like you're continually conflating our thinking about things and what the thinking is about. Those are two different things. It's not like I'm going to start to agree to conflate them and not see them as two different things if you just keep repeating the conflation in different ways. You'd need an argument for why what I take to be a conflation should be made, and shouldn't be considered a conflation.

I agree that there are concepts, theories, etc. about a block universe, etc., but I don't agree that what the concepts, theories, etc. are about in this case is only our concepts, theories, etc. They're about what the world is like outside of our concepts, theories, etc.

But the universe as a whole, shall not have changed in a hundred years, but our experience of it shall.

So without calling it that, maybe, you do buy the block universe view. I don't. And in my view, the universe as a whole isn't the same from instant to instant.

Belinda wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Belinda wrote:Prothero wrote:




Our ability so far to encounter and manipulate an independent external reality is cumulative despite paradigm shifts and moral disability. If one accepts this then one necessarily accepts also that we approach more closely the independent, frozen, and timeless reality. Probably as we are creatures of time we can never attain the latter.

This is not an argument for absolute progress because we have no absolute criteria but only ad hoc and culturally relative criteria. However it is an argument that supports reason and the modern as against the postmodern all -consuming nihilistic relativism.

We like to pretend that our model of the universe is getting better, closer to the reality of the situation, but we shall never know if we shall remain playing with pebbles in the shore, whilst the vast ocean of knowledge remains unknown to us.
It might be that we can only understand dry things, and the seawater is invisible to the limits of our perceptions.

This from Hobbes'Choice shows the possibility of multiple realities that compose "the vast ocean ". Indeed reality as development borne along on time we have access to only two of those realities. The two realities which we perceive are the mental and the physical. Please note that I'm not implying that those two realities are separated by more than our inability to perceive two aspects of "the great ocean" at exactly the same time.

Terrapin Station wrote:

OuterLimits wrote:In science, truth is "provisional" - you never know when a better model will come along.

Sure. When you have better reasons to buy/believe something else instead, and/or reasons to not buy/believe something you previously bought or believed, you move on.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:For me things make more sense to remind ourselves that we are only estimating reality, and we do not have magical access to it.
But I think we are done here. I can't put it more simply; you either get it or don't.

OuterLimits wrote: Right. You go with your gut, in other words. Only your gut can proclaim what "better" consists of, in these issues beyond logic's ability to resolve.

Terrapin Station wrote:

OuterLimits wrote: Right. You go with your gut, in other words. Only your gut can proclaim what "better" consists of, in these issues beyond logic's ability to resolve.

"Better" is always a subjective assessment, but the sorts of reasons I'm referring include empirical evidence, which isn't subjective.

OuterLimits wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:

OuterLimits wrote: Right. You go with your gut, in other words. Only your gut can proclaim what "better" consists of, in these issues beyond logic's ability to resolve.

"Better" is always a subjective assessment, but the sorts of reasons I'm referring include empirical evidence, which isn't subjective.

The claim of "empirical evidence" is just hand-waving in the world of Descartes / BIV / nature-of-experience questions.

The "experience" is just as "empirical" whether one is in 100% VR or plain old sensory life.

If you don't get that, then we're done.

Terrapin Station wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:For me things make more sense to remind ourselves that we are only estimating reality, and we do not have magical access to it.
But I think we are done here. I can't put it more simply; you either get it or don't.

I can't imagine what I would consider a good reason to believe that we are only estimating reality. Because anything that I'd consider a good reason to believe that would require empirical evidence where we have direct perceptual access to externals at some point. But if we have that, then "We're only estimating reality" is wrong.

Terrapin Station wrote: I'm referring include empirical evidence, which isn't subjective. .

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:For me things make more sense to remind ourselves that we are only estimating reality, and we do not have magical access to it.
But I think we are done here. I can't put it more simply; you either get it or don't.

I can't imagine what I would consider a good reason to believe that we are only estimating reality. Because anything that I'd consider a good reason to believe that would require empirical evidence where we have direct perceptual access to externals at some point. But if we have that, then "We're only estimating reality" is wrong.

Well duh. Do you not think it is puzzling then, why we have taken thousands of years of science to get where we are? Surely had we direct access to reality, we'd have had it all from the beginning.

Like I said, we are really done on this one.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote: I'm referring include empirical evidence, which isn't subjective. .

Well duh.

Terrapin Station wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote: I can't imagine what I would consider a good reason to believe that we are only estimating reality. Because anything that I'd consider a good reason to believe that would require empirical evidence where we have direct perceptual access to externals at some point. But if we have that, then "We're only estimating reality" is wrong.

Well duh. Do you not think it is puzzling then, why we have taken thousands of years of science to get where we are? Surely had we direct access to reality, we'd have had it all from the beginning.

Like I said, we are really done on this one.

Figuring out how, say, volcanoes work is a much different matter than being able to directly perceive a volcano rather than only being aware of a mediated mental impression that might not at all resemble whatever is creating a "volcano" picture.

Terrapin Station wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote: I'm referring include empirical evidence, which isn't subjective. .

Well duh.

I like "well duh" responses to my posts, because that means one agrees.