What is Metaphysics?

So what are you comparing to the dice and the monopoly board? I'm guessing the dice value is like an object of perception, and the state of the board is like the state of our minds? (Correct me if I'm wrong.) So the significance of the object of perception depends on the state of our minds. Okay, I think I'd agree with that, significance is probably relative.

But you say "significance (reality)" as if these are synonyms. You seem to think that the reality of the dice depends on the state of the monopoly board. But regardless of the state of the monopoly board, the dice are still cubes, they still have dots printed on them, and if you roll a six then there will be six dots facing upwards. Similarly, some things are true of external things regardless of the state of human language/mind/perception.

I'm not denying that certain aspects of reality are determined largely by the way we percieve things, rather than (or as well as) the nature of those things. But what reason is there to suppose that reality is entirely composed of relations between a perceiver and an object? Why can't there be unperceived things?

I take the Wittgenstein quote to imply the possibility of a distinction (or lack of harmony) between thought and reality. Grammar may connect us to the world, but surely the world is there before we connect with it...

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But you say "significance (reality)" as if these are synonyms. You seem to think that the reality of the dice depends on the state of the monopoly board. But regardless of the state of the monopoly board, the dice are still cubes, they still have dots printed on them, and if you roll a six then there will be six dots facing upwards. Similarly, some things are true of external things regardless of the state of human language/mind/perception.

To consider the "shape of the dice" is go outside the functional context of the game.....think about it.....it doesn't matter what "object" generates "6 numbers". The "shape" of the generator is relevent only to our expectations of fairness. Nobody actually perceives "shape (or general physicality) of the dice" within the game unless we suspect "foul play" but thats another "game".

But then you might argue "surely the dice exists when I'm not thinking about the game".....to which the answer is no!....the "physicality" of the dice evoked by its "name" is about your expectancies of visual and tactile experience at some later time. If the dice had been carved out of ice or some other short lived material relative to your lifespan you would need to alter those expectancies. Thus "existence" is ultimately relative.

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fresco wrote:

But then you might argue "surely the dice exists when I'm not thinking about the game".....to which the answer is no!....the "physicality" of the dice evoked by its "name" is about your expectancies of visual and tactile experience at some later time.

I understand what you're saying, but I don't understand what reason there is to favour that theory over realism. Just because "anti-realism rules OK"?

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If the dice had been carved out of ice or some other short lived material relative to your lifespan you would need to alter those expectancies. Thus "existence" is ultimately relative.

It doesn't follow from the fact that ice melts at room temperature that existence is relative. I say our expectations are relative to reality. Reality is not relative to our expectations. I'm still unaware of any reason to accept your view of reality over mine.

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Agrote,

The "persistance of objects" is a pragmatic modus vivendi.

The metaphysical issue arises with the recognition that "object properties" are not possessed by the object "in itself" but are predictions of our expected interactions with the world which are in turn dependent on the particular physiology and dynamics of our life span. You only need to consider the effect on "object properties" if all humans were born colour blind, or if they possessed an electric field detector (like some aquatic species) in order to fully understand how "observer" and "observed" co-define each other.

Why is this favoured over "realism"?...because by extrapolation if we removed all "observers" with their species specific sensory transducers there would be NO "object properties" hence NO "objects".....those "objects" you might still be "seeing in your head" are because you are still there in contravention of the hypothetical observerless universe "in your head" ! (This point drove Berkeley to evoke "God" as an "ultimate observer" in an attempt to save "realism").

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There's really no need to use the term 'modus vivendi'. I'm sorry to get personal again (this is not an ad hominem, I'll respond to your actual arguments in a moment), but it's pretentious. I assume that you knew I'd be unfamiliar with the term. I've tried looking it up and I'm still unsure what you're trying to say. I'll take it again in English, please.

Our disagreement about properties is probably semantic more than anything. Independently of whether we interact with them, objects have causal powers. They have the potential to produce what you call 'properties' should somebody be around to observe them. Even if everybody were colourblind, bananas would still have the potential to produce yellow experiences in people who are not colourblind.

By my use of the word, that means that bananas have the 'property' of yellowness, but you clearly see properties as things which are (roughly-speaking) invented rather than discovered. Which is fine. But the causal powers of mind-independent particulars are discovered, not invented. At least, that is my view.

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Google immediately gave

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modus vi·ven·di (vĭ-vĕn'dē, -dī')
n., pl. modi vivendi.
A manner of living; a way of life.

LATER EDIT
[quote]bananas would still have the potential to produce yellow experiences in people who are not colourblind. [/quote]

No...there would simply be no concept of "colour" or "colourblindness" as we know it. (We don't think of ourselves as "infraredblind" relative to cats) Whether anybody would have investigated "bananas" in terms of giving "a set of reflected radiation wavelength values" is another question entirely because using technological transducers is a different form of functional interaction.

I am not prepared to go further on "reality as interaction". I did not say "properties are invented" . If you listen to programme 3 below it may trigger a change in your perspective.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/ineinsteinsshadow.shtml

(The relevant stuff is about eleven minutes from the start)

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fresco wrote:

Why is this favoured over "realism"?...because by extrapolation if we removed all "observers" with their species specific sensory transducers there would be NO "object properties" hence NO "objects".....those "objects" you might still be "seeing in your head" are because you are still there in contravention of the hypothetical observerless universe "in your head" ! (This point drove Berkeley to evoke "God" as an "ultimate observer" in an attempt to save "realism").

Really, this is about the funniest thing I have ever read in these forums. I mean, I had a notion that you might be leaning in this direction (that's why I asked you to explain the concurrence of independent observers), but I couldn't, in my wildest dreams, imagine that you were actually taking a position akin to Berkeley's -- without the god part. Think of it -- you were criticizing me for being a naive realist, when all of this time you've been a naive idealist! It's just too, too funny.

And the really amusing point is that Berkeley didn't add god to his epistemology because it saved realism, but because it was the only thing that saved his system from being completely absurd. Without it, Berkeley couldn't explain how independent observers managed to see the same thing. Without the omnipresent, all-seeing observer fixing objects in their places, it would require a near-miracle for any two people to observe the same object, or even for one person to see the same object twice. Yet you not only embrace that system, you throw out the only part of it that made it workable. For you, the unobserved tree that falls in the forest not only doesn't make a sound, it doesn't even fall. Indeed, it doesn't even exist. And we don't have to ask if the light stays on when one closes the refrigerator door, because the light ceases to exist once the door is closed -- along with everything else in there. It is only by some inexplicably miraculous event that the contents of the refrigerator appear to be the same when the door is opened on some subsequent occasion. God may be absent from your system, but that doesn't prevent miracles from occurring on a regular basis.

It's no wonder that you were forced to present your views in such an opaque manner. Stripped down to its essentials, you're simply putting forth a position that has been discredited for over two centuries. If I were in your place, I'd be trying to hide behind meaningless gibberish and gobbledigook too.

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Only a simpleton would interpret my views as idealism. "The world" does not evaporate "unobserved", merely its "perceived structure". Listen to the broadcast if you don't understand what I am saying.

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fresco wrote:

"The world" does not evaporate "unobserved", merely its "perceived structure".

To say that something's "perceived structure" disappears when it is unobserved is merely to say that things that are unperceived aren't perceived. That may qualify as a major revelation for you, but I am decidedly underwhelmed.

Bottom line: if you believe that there is an objective reality, then you're a realist. If you believe it's all in your head, then you're an idealist. Whether you're a naive realist or a naive idealist I'll leave for another discussion. Suffice it to say that I have my own opinions about the level of your naiveté.

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To say that something's "perceived structure" disappears when it is unobserved is merely to say that things that are unperceived aren't perceived.

No I was careful to avoid "thing" and "disappear". Instead I used "the world" as constituting a dynamic union between observer and observed,
and "evaporate" to imply loss of "structure" without loss of "substance".
That "substance" need not be "material" or "mental", as in the nature of "quantum states" prior to "observation". (You clearly have not listened or not understood my audio reference).

.

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fresco wrote:

Quote:
To say that something's "perceived structure" disappears when it is unobserved is merely to say that things that are unperceived aren't perceived.

No I was careful to avoid "thing" and "disappear". Instead I used "the world" as constituting a dynamic union between observer and observed,
and "evaporate" to imply loss of "structure" without loss of "substance".

"Metaphysical" "whim-wham."

fresco wrote:

That "substance" need not be "material" or "mental", as in the nature of "quantum states" prior to "observation". (You clearly have not listened or not understood my audio reference).

Given that you reject the foundations of quantum physics, I can't imagine how a program on quantum physics would support your position at all.

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True !...that "I" is certainly "lacking in imagination".

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Agrote says that while "Grammar may connect us to the world...surely the world is there before we connect with it...

And Joe argues that "realism" is the opposite of what Fresco (and I have been proposing).

There IS a mysterious reality, but when I say that it is our construction I am referring to "our version" of reality. The world's shape is not something we discover passively; it is something we construct actively, by means of language, mathematics, etc..That is not "idealism" in the naive sense of the term. Reality is "real," but it is inherently shapeless in the sense that it does not come to us with a ready-made shape (the notion that it does is what is meant by naive realism) OUR necessarily interpretive shaping of that reality is RELATIVE to neurological and cultural constraints (constraints that both restrict and enable our interpretations).

No doubt, Agrote, the "objective" world we were born into precedes our "subjective" experience of it, but that experience is not one of immaculate perception: every scientific researcher knows that such an objectivity is no more than an ideal. Moreover, the grammatical structure of my mental fieldis such that Nietzsche called grammar the metaphysics of the masses.

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JLN,

This may be of interest to you regarding some correspondence between the positions of Wittgenstein and Nietsche. (You might also enjoy my BBC reference above).

http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/burbules/syllabi/Materials/Nietzsche_&_Wittgenstein.html

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Yes, very interesting. My wife and I will read it together tomorrow. I love the phrase at the beginning regarding the redundancy of the act and actor: "[There is no being] behind the doing, acting, becoming -- the doing is everything."

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fresco wrote:

True !...that "I" is certainly "lacking in imagination".

A feeble yet predictable response.

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JLNobody wrote:

Agrote says that while "Grammar may connect us to the world...surely the world is there before we connect with it...

And Joe argues that "realism" is the opposite of what Fresco (and I have been proposing).

Actually, I don't know what the opposite of your position is, because I still don't understand your position. If you think that there is an objective reality, then you're realists. If you think that all objects are perceived in the observer's head, then you're idealists. And if you think that there is a reality, but it isn't objective, then you're just confused. The opposite of that isn't "realism," it's "lucidity."

JLNobody wrote:

There IS a mysterious reality, but when I say that it is our construction I am referring to "our version" of reality. The world's shape is not something we discover passively; it is something we construct actively, by means of language, mathematics, etc..That is not "idealism" in the naive sense of the term. Reality is "real," but it is inherently shapeless in the sense that it does not come to us with a ready-made shape (the notion that it does is what is meant by naive realism) OUR necessarily interpretive shaping of that reality is RELATIVE to neurological and cultural constraints (constraints that both restrict and enable our interpretations).

No doubt, Agrote, the "objective" world we were born into precedes our "subjective" experience of it, but that experience is not one of immaculate perception: every scientific researcher knows that such an objectivity is no more than an ideal. Moreover, the grammatical structure of my mental fieldis such that Nietzsche called grammar the metaphysics of the masses.

As epistemology, this, of course, is pure rubbish. As psychology or sociology, on the other hand, it would seem to have some value.

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As epistemology, this, of course, is pure rubbish

Why ? This is the theme of constructivist epistemologies.
"Classical epistemology" rests largely on "the independent
reality of objects" the lack of tenability of which was precisely the point conceded by classicists with the experimental refutation of the EPR paradox.

Maybe "rubbish" = "That which Joe doesn't understand".

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fresco wrote:

Quote:
As epistemology, this, of course, is pure rubbish

Why ? This is the theme of constructivist epistemologies.
"Classical epistemology" rests largely on "the independent
reality of objects" the lack of tenability of which was precisely the point conceded by classicists with the experimental refutation of the EPR paradox.

It's rubbish because it isn't epistemology. Epistemology investigates how we know what we know. It isn't an investigation of why we know what we know. That's psychology. What you and JLN are describing is, if anything, psychology.

As for the EPR Paradox: as with any paradox, that's only a problem if you accept the law of non-contradiction. You don't, so I don't see why you would put any weight on that.

fresco wrote:

Maybe "rubbish" = "That which Joe doesn't understand".

You're still mistaking "understand" for "accept."

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Epistemology investigates how we know what we know. It isn't an investigation of why we know what we know. That's psychology.

No ....thats semantic squirming ! Smile

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You're still mistaking "understand" for "accept."

Okay...explain why you don't "accept" what the Einstein group conceded, that the experimental evidence directly supports the QM notion that the act of observation determines the nature of the observed.

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