Philosophy Now Forum

Posted: **Tue Nov 08, 2016 11:54 am**

Londoner wrote:
SpheresOfBalance wrote:
Isn't just to describe a 'thing in the universe' already to not agree with the universe?
Not necessarily, unless of course you have the only edition of the universe's user manual.

The universe is a whole; once we divide it up in a particular way we are already imposing something in our own minds on the universe and thus misrepresenting it.
Not at all, you're just presuming that the universe cares how we view it. Show me where it says that in the user manual, and I might agree with you.
Where did you get the notion I think the universe 'cares'?
Above in purple you speak of it caring, knowing it's mind, it's rule, you have anthropomorphized it, projected your human assumptions onto it as if there is a necessary mindful way in which it's meant to be perceived. You have overlaid your beliefs on it then said they are wrong. I know this because you don't have it's user manual, because one doesn't exist, or at least it's highly improbable from mankind's current perspective.

I absolutely agree that there is no set way of viewing the universe, but you say: Mans descriptions of things in the universe can be just as truthful, factual, real and actual, if they agree with the universe. If you say the descriptions can be true, then you are saying they can also be false. If you say that, then you are the one who claims to be in possession of the user manual, or at least that the manual exists!
Not at all, humankind is ever so slowly uncovering her mysteries, look at all that is her that we've been able to harness. If that's not understanding the truth of her parts, thus ever so slowly her totality, as well as debunking all our previous falsehoods, that we once believed were the truth, I don't know what is.

That we endeavor to see all it's perspectives, ensures we can see it as completely as possible, no? That way we can be sure at least one of them can be found in the user guide.

There's no necessary rule for how the universe should be viewed!
Yes, I would agree. It was a question of how we can reconcile that view with your remark that 'All things in the universe are real, factual, the actuality, the truth of the matter', I think that to say something is a 'fact' etc. is to imply we do have a rule for how things should be viewed.
We do, and we have philosophy to thank, as it's father, it's called science, the scientific method, empiricism. And even though it's slow and cumbersome, often trial and error, with each generation we nail more of it down. Look at how us humans have played with E=MC2 and command Electromagnetic Radiation. Is that not viewing the universe such that she has supplied answers? If we continue and survive ourselves shall we not eventually, given eternity, view her complete? In viewing her complete shall we not understand the proper way to view her, I mean they say hindsight is 20/20, do they not. Do you believe it's not always 20/20, if not, why not? Do you believe that it's important to always view the universe 'properly,' or that it's enough to finally learn how to view her properly?

But if that isn't what you intended, I accept that.

Posted: **Tue Nov 08, 2016 12:37 pm**

Hobbes' Choice wrote:
Terrapin Station wrote:
Hobbes' Choice wrote:Please let us have YOUR personal definitions of noumena, and Phenomena.
The way I'm using the terms, and I couldn't care less if this coheres or doesn't cohere with how anyone else is using the terms, is simply that phenomena refers to how things appear to be, especially to consciousness, and noumena refers to how things really are, especially objectively. (With "objectivity" being defined as I defined it earlier.)
Cop out.
You are using the terms in meaningless ways, You might as well use the terms banana, and arse bandit.
IF we need to talk about subjectivity and objectivity then we have two perfectly good words for that.

A phenomenon (Greek: , phainomenon, from the verb phainein, to show, shine, appear, to be manifest or manifest itself, plural phenomena) is any thing which manifests itself. Phenomena are often, but not always, understood as "things that appear" or "experiences" for a sentient being, or in principle may be so.

The noumenon (/ˈnɒuːmᵻnɒn/) is a posited object or event that exists without sense-perception. The term noumenon is generally used in contrast with or in relation to phenomenon, which refers to anything that can be apprehended by or is an object of the senses. Modern philosophy has generally been skeptical of the possibility of knowledge independent of the senses, and Immanuel Kant gave this point of view its canonical expression: that the noumenal world may exist, but it is completely unknowable through human sensation. In Kantian philosophy, the unknowable noumenon is often linked to the unknowable "thing-in-itself" (in Kant's German, Ding an sich), although how to characterize the nature of the relationship is a question yet open to some controversy.

The noumenon's original meaning of "that which is thought" is not compatible with the "thing-in-itself", the latter meaning things as they exist apart from their existence as images in the mind of an observer.

In some areas Kant was seriously reaching. And at least I can see that all he grabbed was thin air.

[Edited by iMod]

Posted: **Tue Nov 08, 2016 12:42 pm**

A_Seagull wrote:
Londoner wrote:
A_Seagull wrote: I have no problem with the "sense-data bit".

What is your problem with it?
As one example; where do they originate?

Suppose you 'see' your tree, however actually this is an illusion. Is your sense of the tree still an example of sense data' or not? Some would say yes, others no. The ones who say 'no' say that sense data are an awareness of physical phenomena. But then, if we only have the sense data, how could we ever know that what we are aware of is a physical phenomenon?

Another problem arises from how we interpret sense data. To describe it as 'a tree' (or anything else) is to move away from that sense data and bring in other ideas. So, if we cannot differentiate the sense data from the rest, what does 'sense data' describe? It turns it into a word like 'noumena', that attaches a name to a something, but a something that we can never encounter.

Lots more if you Google 'sense data'.
I think there may be a difference in the meaning of the ways we are using the word 'sense-data', I am not using it as an object of any form. I am simply using the word to mean the data that is incident on the senses.

And regarding your question about physical phenomena: we 'know' that what we are aware of is a 'physical phenomenon' because that constitutes the 'best pattern' that fits the data.

I dare say that some of the concepts of 'the pattern paradigm' do not fit in comfortably with some of the concepts of traditional philosophy which is why I have termed it a 'paradigm' - a collection of ideas and concepts that are self-consistent and fit the facts. Traditional philosophy itself constitutes a paradigm.

And as for your question of :Where do sense data originate? Well I put that one right alongside the question: Why does something exist instead of nothing? Both interesting questions, but neither relate particularly to epistemology.

That's how the religious justify their belief in their god. Science puts that kind of, so called logic, to shame.

Posted: **Tue Nov 08, 2016 12:46 pm**

A_Seagull wrote:
I think there may be a difference in the meaning of the ways we are using the word 'sense-data', I am not using it as an object of any form. I am simply using the word to mean the data that is incident on the senses.

And regarding your question about physical phenomena: we 'know' that what we are aware of is a 'physical phenomenon' because that constitutes the 'best pattern' that fits the data.

Although the pattern we have chosen is not itself 'sense data'. We apply the pattern to things that are never presented as sense data (like the workings of the invisible spectrum, or fundamental physics) and some things that are presented as sense data (dreams, illusions) we exclude. So we might argue that it is the pattern which defines what we accept as data, rather than the pattern being fitted to the data. In other words, we are left with the circularity of something counting as 'physical phenomena' - if we think it is!

I dare say that some of the concepts of 'the pattern paradigm' do not fit in comfortably with some of the concepts of traditional philosophy which is why I have termed it a 'paradigm' - a collection of ideas and concepts that are self-consistent and fit the facts. Traditional philosophy itself constitutes a paradigm.

There is no problem finding 'a collection of ideas and concepts that are self-consistent and fit the facts'. That we are part of God's dream, or bodies in the Matrix etc. can all satisfy those requirements. Or, it can be tautological, complicated arguments amounting to simply inventing a word for the answer to the question; (What is the source of phenomena? Answer 'The noumenal'. Problem solved!)

I think the problem arises when we ask what question our idea is supposed to answer. Does it provide a description of 'truth'? Is it a psychological depiction? Is it about language? If an idea purports to be useful, success is not about whether it is consistent etc. but whether can we think of something which would show our idea is wrong, or that it fails to do the job it was meant for.

And as for your question of :Where do sense data originate? Well I put that one right alongside the question: Why does something exist instead of nothing? Both interesting questions, but neither relate particularly to epistemology.

Asking where sense data originate isn't asking the equivalent of 'why does something exist?'. 'Sense data' is a description; when we ask 'where does it originate?' we are asking 'what do you mean by that description?' It evoked the answer from you that it is 'data that is incident on the senses'.

That answer of course assumes an external physical world, which seems inconsistent with the idea that we can only work out that it is the external physical world by applying a 'best pattern' to it. We have already assumed the data is data, i.e. that it was incident on the senses, before we applied the pattern test that was supposed to identify it as data.

My view is that we can never break out of this circularity. We want to identify a point in which our sensations are still raw, untouched by interpretation or thought i.e. pure data that has not been processed. But we can never find that point, we can never distinguish the perception from the perceiver, in your terms; we cannot distinguish the data from the pattern.

Posted: **Tue Nov 08, 2016 12:58 pm**

A_Seagull wrote:What I am saying is that the data from the senses is processed using pattern identification methods to create 'objects', which may subsequently be labelled as a 'tree'.

What is providing the data to the senses in the first place in your view?

Posted: **Tue Nov 08, 2016 1:10 pm**

creativesoul wrote:
Terrapin Station wrote:
Hobbes' Choice wrote:Please let us have YOUR personal definitions of noumena, and Phenomena.
The way I'm using the terms, and I couldn't care less if this coheres or doesn't cohere with how anyone else is using the terms, is simply that phenomena refers to how things appear to be, especially to consciousness, and noumena refers to how things really are, especially objectively. (With "objectivity" being defined as I defined it earlier.)
So...

Things never appear how they are?

No, that's not what I'm saying. Rather in my view, there's no reason to ever assume that things do not appear just how they are in lieu of good evidence to the contrary, and that evidence would include phenomena where there's no reason to assume that things do not appear just how they are.

In other words, the vast majority of the time, there's no reason to ever assume that things do not appear just how they are.

But some of the time, later evidence will suggest that some earlier appearance was an illusion, or that something was going wrong with perception, or that someone's perception is flawed in some way.

That evidence can include things like this example: last evening, I was riding my bike towards the Hudson River on the New Jersey side, in Jersey City (I live in New York City, but my work studio (recording, rehearsal and I use it for visual art, too) is in Jersey City, so I'm often there). Looking down the street I was riding down, I could see a Celebrity cruise ship passing by, headed out to the ocean. The ship looked huge from the perspectival reference point I was at, as it was framed by relatively large buildings on either side of the street I was on. It appeared to be traveling down the Hudson so that it was immediately off the New Jersey side of the river.

I was at the riverfront walkway within a minute or so after first seeing the ship, and when I reached there, the ship appeared much smaller and it was clear that it was on the New York City side of the Hudson instead. So its apparent size/closeness was an optical illusion of sorts because of the way I saw it framed passing between the two buildings, where I'm used to seeing "nothing" from that vantage point.

SO, I had no reason to initially assume that my phenomena (unusually large ship/it's right on the NJ side of the river) didn't match the noumena (where the ship really was, it's smaller apparent size from a closer reference point), until I reached the riverfront walkway, at which point the new evidence showed my previous phenomena to be an illusion, but at which point there was no reason (and there still is none) to assume that my adjusted phenomena wasn't identical to the noumena at hand.

That situation, where I later had evidence of there being an optical illusion from a particular reference point, is unusual. The vast majority of the time, we have no such evidence.

Also, re points that Hobbes was making, I agree that a number of aspects of how I'm describing the above example are "theory-laden"--that is, they hinge on applying concepts and so on, including that for example, I knew it was a Celebrity cruise ship, whereas many people might not (since their logo on their ships is just a large white X)--but perception qua perception is not theory-laden, and we could describe it just as well in terms of shapes and colors and so on. That description is still going to be theory-laden in a sense, because of the necessities of describing something in words, but the perception we'd be describing would not be theory-laden--it can be done with no concept-application at all.

Posted: **Tue Nov 08, 2016 1:17 pm**

SpheresOfBalance wrote:
Me: Where did you get the notion I think the universe 'cares'?
Above in purple you speak of it caring, knowing it's mind, it's rule, you have anthropomorphized it, projected your human assumptions onto it as if there is a necessary mindful way in which it's meant to be perceived. You have overlaid your beliefs on it then said they are wrong. I know this because you don't have it's user manual, because one doesn't exist, or at least it's highly improbable from mankind's current perspective.

If I say to someone 'you have misrepresented the US electoral process' I am not suggesting that they have hurt its feelings.

'The universe' is the name of a category that contains 'all things'. If we pick out a particular thing, then we are no longer describing 'the universe'. The universe won't be offended, but philosophers might be! I suggest this is just a misunderstanding that is not worth pursuing.

Yes, I would agree. It was a question of how we can reconcile that view with your remark that 'All things in the universe are real, factual, the actuality, the truth of the matter', I think that to say something is a 'fact' etc. is to imply we do have a rule for how things should be viewed.

We do, and we have philosophy to thank, as it's father, it's called science, the scientific method, empiricism. And even though it's slow and cumbersome, often trial and error, with each generation we nail more of it down. Look at how us humans have played with E=MC2 and command Electromagnetic Radiation. Is that not viewing the universe such that she has supplied answers? If we continue and survive ourselves shall we not eventually, given eternity, view her complete? In viewing her complete shall we not understand the proper way to view her, I mean they say hindsight is 20/20, do they not. Do you believe it's not always 20/20, if not, why not? Do you believe that it's important to always view the universe 'properly,' or that it's enough to finally learn how to view her properly?

I think that science works because it deliberately limits itself to certain questions and works on certain assumptions. For example, it simply does not address what is personal, what is subjective, even though such experiences are as 'real' as everything else in the universe. I mean, plainly you are right, in the sense that science can do the amazing trick of predicting future events, and thus experiences. But isn't it irking that we can't nail science itself down? That it cannot be justified, except in the sense that it is useful?

Posted: **Wed Nov 09, 2016 5:58 am**

Terrapin Station wrote:
creativesoul wrote:
Terrapin Station wrote:
The way I'm using the terms, and I couldn't care less if this coheres or doesn't cohere with how anyone else is using the terms, is simply that phenomena refers to how things appear to be, especially to consciousness, and noumena refers to how things really are, especially objectively. (With "objectivity" being defined as I defined it earlier.)
So...

Things never appear how they are?
No, that's not what I'm saying. Rather in my view, there's no reason to ever assume that things do not appear just how they are in lieu of good evidence to the contrary, and that evidence would include phenomena where there's no reason to assume that things do not appear just how they are.

But...

That's not Kant's view, and he coined the terms.

Posted: **Wed Nov 09, 2016 10:49 am**

Terrapin Station wrote:
The ship looked huge from the perspectival reference point I was at, as it was framed by relatively large buildings on either side of the street I was on...

... I had no reason to initially assume that my phenomena (unusually large ship/it's right on the NJ side of the river) didn't match the noumena (where the ship really was,... but at which point there was no reason (and there still is none) to assume that my adjusted phenomena wasn't identical to the noumena at hand.

... That description is still going to be theory-laden in a sense, because of the necessities of describing something in words, but the perception we'd be describing would not be theory-laden--it can be done with no concept-application at all.

The theory comes in well before the language. Your description is of the ship having dimensions, being at a point in space and so on. However, the reflected light from the object does not convey any of that. In order for you to make some sort of sense of the reflected light it is necessary for your mind to already have such concepts, usually named 'extension', but they come from you, not the phenomena. Similarly, your story of a changed perspective on the object requires you to already have a notion of time, but that is not conveyed in the raw sense impressions either.

So the normal (Kantian) understanding of 'noumena' is a description of what things might be independently of all the mental tools we need to interpret phenomena. That is why the noumenal is (literally) inconceivable. That there is something there, but we can never get our heads around it.

I just throw this in, in case casual readers of this thread might be curious about why we are disputing the use of that word 'noumena'.

Posted: **Wed Nov 09, 2016 2:53 pm**

creativesoul wrote:But...

That's not Kant's view, and he coined the terms.

What's the relevance of that in your view?

Posted: **Wed Nov 09, 2016 2:56 pm**

I want to make sure we don't ignore anything I say and that we resolve things as best we can before moving on, so one thing at a time.

Londoner wrote:The theory comes in well before the language.

I wasn't saying anything about language per se and its temporal place with respect to theory, etc. I'm not sure why you're mentioning this as if I were saying something about it.

Posted: **Wed Nov 09, 2016 4:22 pm**

Terrapin Station wrote:
Londoner wrote:The theory comes in well before the language.
I wasn't saying anything about language per se and its temporal place with respect to theory, etc. I'm not sure why you're mentioning this as if I were saying something about it.

Because you wrote:

That description is still going to be theory-laden in a sense, because of the necessities of describing something in words...

I'm pointing out that, according to Kant, the necessity of describing something in words is not the reason why a description would be theory laden.

It seemed a good idea since we are using words (like 'noumena') that are usually associated with Kant. If we don't mean them in the sense Kant meant them, but in some other sense, it would be as well to make that clear.

Posted: **Wed Nov 09, 2016 9:44 pm**

Londoner wrote:
Terrapin Station wrote:
Londoner wrote:The theory comes in well before the language.
I wasn't saying anything about language per se and its temporal place with respect to theory, etc. I'm not sure why you're mentioning this as if I were saying something about it.
Because you wrote:

That description is still going to be theory-laden in a sense, because of the necessities of describing something in words...

Ah--What I'm saying there is that when you do describe something in words, there's a theory-ladenness to that aspect. That's necessary for describing something in words.

I'm pointing out that, according to Kant, the necessity of describing something in words is not the reason why a description would be theory laden.

Not that I could care less what Kant says (I'm not at all a fan of his work), but I'm not saying anything like that either. I was just saying that when we do describe something in words, that's sufficient to be indicative of being theory-laden in that respect.

It seemed a good idea since we are using words (like 'noumena') that are usually associated with Kant. If we don't mean them in the sense Kant meant them, but in some other sense, it would be as well to make that clear.

I refuse to kowtow to Kant and Kantians in that way.

Posted: **Wed Nov 09, 2016 9:46 pm**

Alright, back to the next part of your comment.

Londoner wrote:In order for you to make some sort of sense of the reflected light it is necessary for your mind to already have such concepts,

I'd agree with that, because of what it means to make sense of something. But I don't agree that that implies that perception can't occur in a non-theory-laden way.

Posted: **Thu Nov 10, 2016 10:16 am**

Terrapin Station wrote:Not that I could care less what Kant says (I'm not at all a fan of his work), but I'm not saying anything like that either. I was just saying that when we do describe something in words, that's sufficient to be indicative of being theory-laden in that respect.

Me: It seemed a good idea since we are using words (like 'noumena') that are usually associated with Kant. If we don't mean them in the sense Kant meant them, but in some other sense, it would be as well to make that clear.

I refuse to kowtow to Kant and Kantians in that way.

I'm sure Mr Kant wouldn't require you to abase yourself. You can make up your own meaning for 'noumena' if you want. It is just that clarity about whatever that meaning is would tend to facilitate productive discussion.

Me: In order for you to make some sort of sense of the reflected light it is necessary for your mind to already have such concepts,

I'd agree with that, because of what it means to make sense of something. But I don't agree that that implies that perception can't occur in a non-theory-laden way.

So you are distinguishing between basic ideas that it is necessary that we have in order to interpret sensations, and something else described as 'theory'?

Can you say how you draw that distinction and why?

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