On the existence of Objective reality

[heusdens]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
I do not see your justification for this idea. You use it repeatedly, but how can you be so sure that you have figured out this key component of consciousness? But I won't bother trying to discredit this claim, since it doesn't apply to anything I have asserted. Again, for something to be mental in nature does not imply that it is self-conscious. To use the example I have already used to illustrate this point: picture a tree in your mind. This tree is mental in nature, although we can probably safely assert that it possesses no element of consciousness in its own right.

It seems to be quite obvious that to be consciouss, this must mean that you have an outside reality outside of yourself, of which you can be consciouss.

Right. Hence, we cannot make a definitive statement as to the nature of external reality, since by definition is eludes all of our attempts to grasp it. Hence, we cannot say definitively that external reality is not mental in nature.

Wrong.

You have the point of view of solipsism, and then state that whatever you are aware of, you can not know if that is really there, or just only in your mind.

This would collide with the fact that there are other minds.

Since they have the same kind of experience of the outer world, it would be necessary to conclude that these other minds are like my mind, and that - since I don't have any prior knowledge about their mindly state - they are entities that exist outside of me and independend of me.

ANd the next logical conclusion is then that I have to assume that outside reality exists independend of me.

 

[Royce]

Originally posted by heusdens


It seems to be quite obvious that to be consciouss, this must mean that you have an outside reality outside of yourself, of which you can be consciouss.[/B/

No, heusdens, it is not quite obvious nor is it true nor proven. It is simply a meaningless unsupported statement. There is no reason why a conscious being cannot be conscious of self and that all of reality exists within himself. That which appears to be external is only persceived through our senses to be external yet all perception is internal, mental or subjective.
Reality exists only in our minds. It is only subjective. We can know it no other way.
To say that anything exist outside of myself is only an unproven assumption. It is only supported by the assumption that other conscious beings exist outside of myself and report the same or nearly the same phenomena being perceived by them.

You have the point of view of solipsism, and then state that whatever you are aware of, you can not know if that is really there, or just only in your mind.

This would collide with the fact that there are other minds.

Since they have the same kind of experience of the outer world, it would be necessary to conclude that these other minds are like my mind, and that - since I don't have any prior knowledge about their mindly state - they are entities that exist outside of me and independend of me.

Yes it is a valid conclusion; but, again it is only based on the assumption the other minds exist outside of my own. I can assume this but cannot prove it.

And the next logical conclusion is then that I have to assume that outside reality exists independend of me.

Yes, but, as you point out, it is a conclusion based on an assumption.
The point being is that while the material world may, and I would add probably, if not surely, exists external and independant of or mind, it cannot be proven in any way that is open to us other than through our perceptions of what our senses feed us. Thus all of reality is subjective, mental whether real of not. Reality is a concept of our minds.

 

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by CJames
Yes, basically. It's important to understand, however, the difference between the brain and the mind. There is more than two views, as well. The Objective paradigm, or materialist/physicalist view, is that only the brain exists. The subjective view is that only mind exists. But don't forget about duality. I don't really consider myself a dualist either, however I believe the mind and brain coexist. The mind is not a material object, but rather an emmergent behaviour. It is a whole greater than the sum of its parts. As FZ was talking about earlier, chaos/complexity theory is showing that systems of particles show behavior not found in the particles themselves. I am essentially a materialist, but a materialist would argue only the particles exist. I dissagree, as the behavior of the particles exists as well. This behavior is, in the case of the brain and all its requirements, what we call the mind.

The important idea is that Objective reality has a primary existence and that the subjective mind is secondary-- how you arrive at that conclusion isn't as important.

And as an aside... pardon my French, but whoever disputes the existence of the mind is just ignorant. It's fine to say it's a phenomenon produced by the brain, or brain = mind, or to make any other sort of claims about the nature of mind, but to say it does not exist at all is just a monumental exercise in ignorance and denial. If mind/subjectivity/consciousness did not exist, how would we even know we're alive?

(edit for my French.. heh. )

If mental things aren't generated then they cannot be created by choice. Deterministic subjectivity? I don't think so.

Try thinking of it like matter or energy-- it can take different configurations but cannot be created or destroyed.

Wrong, as long as we avoid solipsism. A factor that can be agreed upon is objective, and that's that. Is suppose it's not Objective (big O), whatever that means, but it's definitely objective. The color, texture, etc of the tree is subjective. But wavelength, mass, etc are completely and entirely objective.

Look, we can agree upon whatever we want to, and we don't have to be solipsists. The fundamental fact remains that everything we know is known as subjective. We may come to a consensus that this object here has a mass of 10 kg, and this is an objective fact insofar as it is a public, intersubjective phenomenon, i.e. insofar as our respective subjectivities carry the same content of seeing the same scale reading 10 kg. But ultimately, the nature of this knowledge of this object is subjective. If it were not, then it would by definition be impossible for me to know it in the first place.

Again: all objective information must pass through the subjective filter of the perceiver. We can note commonalities across different subjectivities/minds, but the nature of all these things as contents of the mind are subjective. Public/intersubjective/objective phenomena, before we attach further assumptions to them, only indicate a common content of mind across multiple people.

As for "Objective"... again, the best I can do is direct you to the diagram I have posted. Situation 2 corresponds to Objective reality. In this situation, the subjective trees of A's and B's consciousnesses are supposed to be generated by physical properties of the Objective tree, and furthermore are supposed to represent and correspond to at least some actual properties of that tree (such as shape, motion, etc.) There is a fundamental ontological dichotomy, however, between the Objective tree and the subjective trees.

First off, you're a little off considering that events such as a human hovering in the air are distinguishable from reality, but that's not really the point now is it? No, the matrix reality is not a so called Objective reality. Why? Because it's not big enough to hold your brain within it. The brain still exists externally to the system.

What about the agents? The oracle? Can we presume that they are conscious? If we can, then we have an entirely self-contained reality, with respect to these computer generated beings.

But this is besides the point... the important observation is that there is a clear cut example here where the assumptions of Objective reality fail. Neo sees a spoon, but there really is no Objective spoon that corresponds to his conception of it. If Neo believes he is in Objective reality and measures the spoon to be 6 inches, then he believes there is an object independent of his mind that is 6 inches long. Of course, Neo is wrong. Analogously, our own conception and assumptions of Objective reality could be wrong.

The reason this is different from your proposition is that this 6-inch spoon is not mental in nature, it is created by a system that obeys strict rules (though not entirely strict according to the plot).

The analogy is not perfect, but I used it to illustrate this simple point:

The spoon that Neo sees is mental in nature. There is no corresponding Objective spoon.

Again, there is no definition here of what is mental.

I realize I am using the term a bit vaguely, but I did illustrate what I was trying to get at in my last post. Here's another stab at it: picture a full blown Cartesian world, dualities and all. The outside world is not mental in nature. The mind and its contents are mental in nature. Note that not all contents of the mind are contained in conscious awareness. Things that are mental in nature are not by necessity contained in what we discretely think of as a mind, but rather are capable of creating a construct which we may call a mind, and are also capable of availing themselves to the consciousness of such a mind.

That is probably your fundamental misunderstanding. It is impossible for you to concentrate hard enough to simultaneously run the equations for gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces across all the subotomic particles in the universe, keeping in mind all the equations of quantum mechanics, relativity, and theories as yet unfinished. You could show your friends a tree, but it wouldn't be the same as the objective tree (little o).

Your objection here is irrelevant. I wanted to show a situation where that which is known to be mental in nature could be a public, objective phenomenon. It doesn't matter if the objective phenomenon is a tree, or a toy block, or a red dot. What matters is that the object/world in question is axiomatically mental in nature since it occurs in a mind, and yet to the outside observers it is an objective phenomenon-- thus, if these observers are absolute believers in Objective reality, they will falsely conclude that their publically perceived object is not mental in nature.

If it makes you more amenable to the argument, we can posit a super-advanced intelligence in the far far distant future that can picture such a tree with enough consistency and fidelity to fool any observers who have gained access to its mind.

Re-read my post above, I think you may have missed some points. Although at the same time I must admit you have forced me to think a great deal about this.

There is much to be thought about. Question your assumptions...

 

[CJames]

Rather than respond to this point by point, which seems to distract me from what I'm trying to say, I'll just make this post.

My first argument was that this was essentially an argument not over fundamental truth but of vocabulary and point of view. I hold to this.

Let me try to state your basic arguement. Let me know if I'm right.
1. The Objective model assumes the world is physical and that the mind is secondary to physical processes. This is an unfounded assumption as mind may in fact be primary and physical processes in fact mental.

Now allow me to show you why I don't believe there is a difference between these two paradigms.

Here is what I said about mind:

The mind is not a material object, but rather an emmergent behaviour. It is a whole greater than the sum of its parts. As FZ was talking about earlier, chaos/complexity theory is showing that systems of particles show behavior not found in the particles themselves. I am essentially a materialist, but a materialist would argue only the particles exist. I dissagree, as the behavior of the particles exists as well. This behavior is, in the case of the brain and all its requirements, what we call the mind.

Note that nowhere here have I stated or meant to imply that the behavior of the particles is secondary to the particles themselves. Again, a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Now realize that the place where the behavior goes from atonomous to "random" can't really be defined. In fact, you can see that the atonomous behaviour doesn't really have a position etc. How can a behavior have a position? In this way, the mind is an entity individual from but linked to the physical particles.

From here it truly depends on where you start. If you start with the particles themselves and procede to explain their individual actions, and slowly work your way up to how all the particles work together to create what appears to be atonomous behaviour, than you have shown how the mind is physical in nature.

If you instead start with the mind, the atonomous behaviour, you will show level by level how atonomous behaviour controls a large group of what appear to be particles. You will show that nothing can be described without concepts and that therefore even particles are concepts and therefore mental in nature.

Rather than take one of these views, I'm willing to accept that both are equivalent and that it's best to use one or the other depending upon circumstances.

 

[Royce]

CJames, Here I have to agree with you. I think that this is the best approach to take so long as we remember that it is merely an approach and not fact or proven either way.

The bottom line is that all that we have is our mind. All our mind has is perceptions and concepts. All of our perceptioned are based on what our 'physical' senses give us, which we know are limited and falable. Thus I say I/we KNOW nothing. All that we think we know is based on assumptions not fact or truth or knowedge. Reality is only in our mind, not because reality does not exist in whatever form that it may be; but, because our mind is all that we have to perceive and know reality.

 

[CJames]

Originally posted by Royce
CJames, Here I have to agree with you. I think that this is the best approach to take so long as we remember that it is merely an approach and not fact or proven either way.

I agree too, thanks.

The bottom line is that all that we have is our mind. All our mind has is perceptions and concepts. All of our perceptioned are based on what our 'physical' senses give us, which we know are limited and falable. Thus I say I/we KNOW nothing. All that we think we know is based on assumptions not fact or truth or knowedge. Reality is only in our mind, not because reality does not exist in whatever form that it may be; but, because our mind is all that we have to perceive and know reality.

I agree to a point. But I would say this, we know at least to an extremely high degree of certainty that both the mind and the material exist. What we don't know and can never know is which is seconday. Since we never really can know, it's pointless to argue one or the other.

"That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way." -Doris Lessing

 

[Royce]

It may be pointless but obviously wee all have opnions and go to great length to express them. That seems to me to be what this forum is all about.