Fundamental things, emergent things

[WaveJumper]

It is like saying everything is nothing, vise versa. I know a lot of mystic that love it.

You don't know what everything is, neither do you know what nothing is(what do you mean by nothing?) Can you give an example of something undefined? Yes the question when worded about 'something' and that something being 'undefined' is totally meaningless. I hope you can clear up what you meant by 'nothing'.

When you get to the 'bottom' of physical reality, something and nothing aren't defined as crispy as macroscopic reality is. The hard question is - why is the 'something' so well defined at all times at our level of existence? What makes this possible?

BTW, you probably know this, but anyway - naive realism is extremely hard to maintain, if not totally impossible.

 

[madness]

"Epistemology would be how things seem (subjective) and ontology would concern how things really are (objective). So the natural course of your argument would lead you to either idealism (mind is real, and all that is real), or else dualism (both mind and matter are the real).

If you don't like these choices, you then have to retreat back to the epistemological view in which there is how we make things seem (ideas and impressions, models and measurements) and then probably (but unknowably in the ontically certain sense) the things in themselves, objectively "out there"."

Of course, I am arguing that mental experiences are the most direct and fundamental things and the only things I know to be real. This leads to idealism, dualism, or maybe some kind of monism. This is my point - I could be lead to accept that my sense experiences have no physical basis, but I could not be lead to accept that my sense experiences don't exist.

 

[apeiron]

Of course, I am arguing that mental experiences are the most direct and fundamental things and the only things I know to be real. This leads to idealism, dualism, or maybe some kind of monism. This is my point - I could be lead to accept that my sense experiences have no physical basis, but I could not be lead to accept that my sense experiences don't exist.

No quarrel with the essential cogito argument. I'm sure everyone does find that compelling. But it is how people build out towards some certainty from a position of almost absolute doubt that is the live issue.

People jump too quick towards certain things. Such as claiming there are mathematical truths that also cannot be doubted, that must be objectively true of any possible world.

This could be true, but starting from cartesian doubt, the case would have to be closely argued. And we have seen how rarely anyone does that.

And another way people jump too quick is even to think that they can treat their own experience as veridical data - the qualia approach. I see red and how can I doubt that fact?

But in fact, study cognitive neuroscience and psychophysics closely, and the idea of impressions as separate from ideas - thoughts about sensations being separate from the sensations themselves - is very questionable.

Indeed, I would argue strongly that sense experiences do not "exist" in any brute fact fashion. It is way more complicated than that.

So just like QM demands an update on traditional Enlightment views of epistemology, so does modern neuroscience. We cannot do 21st century philosophy with an 18th century level of scientific insight.

 

[madness]

"And another way people jump too quick is even to think that they can treat their own experience as veridical data - the qualia approach. I see red and how can I doubt that fact?

But in fact, study cognitive neuroscience and psychophysics closely, and the idea of impressions as separate from ideas - thoughts about sensations being separate from the sensations themselves - is very questionable."

So now if I experience red I can't be sure that I really am experiencing red? Maybe Descartes should have said "I think therefore I am, but maybe I just think that I think and actually I'm not".

 

[madness]

I don't think this thread can come to any reasonable conclusion unless there is a clear definition of what it means for something to "exist". It could be that the whole argument is just a matter of semantics.

 

[JoeDawg]

But in fact, study cognitive neuroscience and psychophysics closely, and the idea of impressions as separate from ideas - thoughts about sensations being separate from the sensations themselves - is very questionable.

Indeed, I would argue strongly that sense experiences do not "exist" in any brute fact fashion. It is way more complicated than that.

Because they are constructed?

If I'm reading this correctly, I don't see much difference between this and saying chairs don't exist because they are infact just particles and forces.

 

[WaveJumper]

Because they are constructed?

If I'm reading this correctly, I don't see much difference between this and saying chairs don't exist because they are infact just particles and forces.

...manifested as physical matter by (exchange of)virtual particles that come and go at Planck times. You are right though, the reality of perception is a construct.

 

[apeiron]

If I'm reading this correctly, I don't see much difference between this and saying chairs don't exist because they are infact just particles and forces.

Well, wouldn't that be more that we "know better" from physical level modelling that chairs are mostly empty space? In the same way, we would know that red is really 650-ish range nanometre EM frequency. So that is the kind of scientific understanding that perhaps does not alter the experiencing - the chair still looks like a solid object, and red does not look any more wavelengthy.

So talking about developed brains, the redness constructing response is really already baked in, so to speak. But the details of the how it gets constructed can still be revealed by careful psychophysical experiment.

Redness is so often put forward as the philosophical challenge because it is about the hardest example of "qualia" to explain away. Yet it can indeed be largely picked apart as a complex construction of brains.

For example, the classic Land colour constancy effect demonstrates how we can still see "red" even when the actual wavelength being detected is green.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_constancy

 

[JoeDawg]

The thing is, generally in philosophy, with regards to epistemology, scientific explanations are not much use, because they are constructed... further down the road.

Red, whatever wavelengths, whatever brain functions, however you choose to divide red, the colour represented, is what is immediate to consciousness, and therefore fundamental. The fact that science shows us that it is constructed in different ways at different times, doesn't change the experience of red.

So if we are talking about what is fundamental to consciousness, and that is what we are doing when we talk about epistemology, then red does exist. It is not the source of red that really counts, but the result.

As another example, just because matter is made up of, and can be converted to, energy, doesn't mean that matter doesn't exist. It just means science provides a good explanation of how matter is constructed.

 

[apeiron]

So if we are talking about what is fundamental to consciousness, and that is what we are doing when we talk about epistemology, then red does exist. It is not the source of red that really counts, but the result.

Agreed that there is something there are the end of the day. There is "a result" which seems pretty irreducible.

But still, what remains to be explained only becomes clear once as much as possible has been explained away.

So, for example, the ability to introspect generally is language scaffolded, and the ability to introspect in a way that leads you to be able to focus on just "pure redness" would be one of those scaffolded actions. The idea of "colour" is an intellectual metric that allows measurements.

This is not claiming the more extreme Whorfian position, but it does show there is a intellectual scaffolding of the supposedly canonical experience of "seeing red".

And then 1) I said we would all find it compelling that the fact we are aware of something seems to be the irreduciable fact - the cogito from which we start. We already know that there is a something rather than a nothing (and also a something rather than an everything too).

Furthermore 2) science would support the contention that even perception, even seeing red, is about ideas shaping impressions (and impressions generalising over time to become ideas).

The key thing I was arguing is that the scientific evidence would show that we do not simply contemplate sense data, sensations are always constructed contextually. And human belief that we do in fact just sit witnessing displays is a socially constructed idea, not the psychophysical reality.

 

[madness]

"In the same way, we would know that red is really 650-ish range nanometre EM frequency."

Red is not 650 nm light. Red is the subjective experience most people have when receiving this light. Some people also experience green, or grey when they receive 650 nm light.

 

[pftest]

How about this:

All things are fundamental, except our misconceptions/optical illusions/etc. about those things. For example, everything about a chair is fundamental, except our misconceptions that it is solid, motionless, etc. Fundamentally, as far as we physically know so far, chairs are mostly empty space and lots of moving ingredients.

The emergent properties of the chair (solid, motionless) are the result of optical illusions. The emergent properties only happen in our minds.

 

[ValenceE]

Hello to all,

The way I see it, fundamental VS emergent can be expressed as a hierarchy within a closed loop. So here it goes…


From an objective perspective, energy and motion are fundamentals. From the interaction of these fundamentals emerge all radiations and matter, giving existence to our Universe.

From a human perspective, being part of this Universe, the act of procreation is fundamental to our emerging bodies and existence.

From our functioning, energized brain emerges our mind, which exits as an energetic immaterial field, generating all our mental processes, giving them form in order to interact with each other, either consciously or not.

There is a constant interaction between our bodies’s sensorial inputs and our minds, giving rise to our consciousness. The emergent results of mental processes, such as thoughts, feelings and emotions, have the possibility of a direct impact on our body, includind puting it in motion.

The loop closes with a very special kind of energetic body/mind activity that fuses two complementary human beings with the Universe in the act of procreation.



Regards.

VE