What is the Empirical World?

@paulhanke,

I'm not so sure about b), but a) is on the button.

Mind you, it would depend on how we are defining religion. Not all religionists are reductionists. But mysticism, which many would regard as 'true religion,' or the source of the dogmatic religions, is reductionist with a vengeance.

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@Whoever,

Whoever;116485 wrote:

You're putting words in my mouth. Scepticism puts paid to realism as a scientific theory. Whether the theory is true or not is another matter.

But Realism is not a scientific theory. it is a philosophical theory. But what does "put paid" means. I thought it means that what is "put paid" to is false. If you just mean that it shows that Realism is not a scientific theory, that is news from nowhere. No one claimed it was a scientific theory in the first place.

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@Whoever,

Whoever;116494 wrote:

Mind you, it would depend on how we are defining religion. Not all religionists are reductionists. But mysticism, which many would regard as 'true religion,' or the source of the dogmatic religions, is reductionist with a vengeance.

Now you see, I would have said "mysticism" which for the most part rejects logical rational attempts to describe god or assign divine attributes and relies more on inspiration and personal subjective experience of the divine, and often talks about the notion of monism or the oneness of all reality in the divine was the least dogmatic and the least reductionist of religous notions.
Can you expound on your view?
Sorry for the diversion away from the empirical world.

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@prothero,

prothero;116518 wrote:

Now you see, I would have said "mysticism" which for the most part rejects logical rational attempts to describe god or assign divine attributes and relies more on inspiration and personal subjective experience of the divine, and often talks about the notion of monism or the oneness of all reality in the divine was the least dogmatic and the least reductionist of religous notions.
Can you expound on your view?
Sorry for the diversion away from the empirical world.

Thanks for the opportunity to explain. It's very difficult to rule out misinterpretations of these messages in a bottle, and I think we don't stop often enough to check what people mean before going into battle. I'm as guilty as anyone, maybe more so.

I didn't mean to suggest that mysticism is dogmatic. For mysticism we're expected to discover what is true, not merely believe what someone else tells us is true, although we might have faith in what they tell us. But its doctrine becomes dumbed down, quite literally, in the monotheistic religions into a theory that makes no sense in metaphysics or physics. As a consequence, these religions have to claim that the truth is somehow anti-logical, illogical, unreasonable or paradoxical, beyond the wit of man anyway, and that we must stop thinking properly and have faith in received wisdom instead, as if there is such a thing.

It is true that mysticism, where they use the term 'God' - and not something less pregnant with misunderstandings such as the 'Real' or 'Nibbanah,' - as they must in Sufism or Christian mysticism, for until recently you might be crucified for doing otherwise, is a negative theology. But this is not a claim to ignorance, and certainly not the claim that there would be no point in using reason and logic to test our ideas about God. Quite the opposite claim is made. We are advised to place our trust in our reason, not least because it allows us to work out the limits of our discursive intellect.

It is said that only in experience could the nature of God and the truth about his existence or non-existence become clear, but it is perfectly possible to discuss mysticism as just another metaphysical position, just as open to analysis as any other. This came as a very big surprise to me when I discovered it, and I think it is unfortunate that it isn't more widely known.

To get back to the main discussion, for a neutral metaphysical position what we normally call the 'empirical' world, the world of internet forums, human beings and other psychophysical phenomena, would not really exist. Or, it would exist, but not, Scotty, in the way we usually think it does.

It's possible to discuss this idea within metaphysics and physics without mentioning the words God or Religion. Either it stands up to analysis or it doesn't.

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@Whoever,

Whoever;116643 wrote:

... a neutral metaphysical position ...

... is there such an animal? ... that is, I can understand there being a position that tries to be neutral with respect to any metaphysics (phenomenology comes to mind), but what is a neutral metaphysics? ...

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@paulhanke,

It is one for which all positive metaphysical positions would be false. Think of compatibilism applied to all philosophical problems. No distinctions would be fundamental. The universe would be a unity. It's a part of what the phrase 'Middle Way' means in Buddhism.

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@Whoever,

Whoever;116666 wrote:

It is one for which all positive metaphyscial positions are false. Think of compatibilism applied to all philosophical problems. No distinctions would be funmdamental. The universe would be a unity. It part of what the phrase 'Middle Way' means in Buddhism.

... I'm not quite sure about the first statement, especially with respect to the last statement ... that is, I think the Eightfold Path is more of a reconciliation of extremes (e.g., hedonism vs. asceticism) and does not start by declaring all ways of living "false" ... I think something similar could be said of compatibilism ... so perhaps it could be said that a neutral metaphysics would be one where all irreconcilable metaphysical positions are false? ...

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@paulhanke,

Sorry about the sloppy typing.

Yes, a reconciliation of extremes. But I don't know what you mean by 'declaring all ways of living to be false.' That all positive metaphysical positions are false is what Kant declares when he tells us that all selective conclusions about the world as a whole are undecidable. We cannot settle on a selective conclusion about the world as a whole because they are all demonstrably absurd. This is the problem of metaphysics and it is the nub of the problem of consiousness.

A selective conclusion would be one for which the universe would be this as oppose to that in any case. So yes, a neutral position would one for which all irreconcilable metaphysical positions would be false, although it may be better to think of it as one for which all contradictory and complementary metaphysical positions would be inadequate. This would be why none of them makes sense.

Of course, I might be wrong about any of this. It's what seems to be true to me.

1 Reply

@Whoever,

Whoever;116666 wrote:

It is one for which all positive metaphysical positions would be false. Think of compatibilism applied to all philosophical problems. No distinctions would be fundamental. The universe would be a unity. It's a part of what the phrase 'Middle Way' means in Buddhism.

Very close to the mark in my view.

---------- Post added 01-04-2010 at 11:16 AM ----------

and actually this stands to reason, because Buddhism generally avoids speculation on the 'beginning of the cosmos' and other such ideas.

kennethamy;114935 wrote:

I am still trying to figure out what "direct contact with the real" means. Is it like bumping your head on a low doorway? I do that a lot.

This is a good point. Our ideas about reality have become so abstract, so rarefied, that our situation-within-reality is often completely forgotten. (I *think* this is what Heidegger's Dasien signifies). Going right back in the Western tradition, there is a notion of 'the REAL reality' which is somehow obscured or covered over by 'the ORDINARY reality'. It is elemental in such foundational works as The Parmenides. And now, the way our 'prosthetic senses' reveal quantum structures or cosmology feeds into this sense, the feeling that our ordinary world is just a super-imposition on the 'real world' revealed by Science.

But is it? From a human viewpoint, when it is all said and done, our relationships with others and the way we conduct ourselves is at least as important as the '11-dimensional string theory of reality'. Which is not to disparage research, or the advancement of knowledge, or anything of that kind, but to ground it within the realm of actual existence (a.k.a. 'reality').

And that is very much in keeping with the philosophical approach of Buddhism.

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@Whoever,

Whoever;116691 wrote:

So yes, a neutral position would one for which all irreconcilable metaphysical positions would be false, although it may be better to think of it as one for which all contradictory and complementary metaphysical positions would be inadequate. This would be why none of them makes sense.

... yes, this is something that has been nagging me since I started this thread - specifically, how does this "Empirical World" (as I've initially given a working definition to it) fit in with metaphysics ... is metaphysics, to the degree that it influences observation and technology development, part of the "Empirical World" or is it something external that gives shape to the "Empirical World"? ...

---------- Post added 01-03-2010 at 08:09 PM ----------

jeeprs;116715 wrote:

From a human viewpoint, when it is all said and done, our relationships with others and the way we conduct ourselves is at least as important as the '11-dimensional string theory of reality'.

... do you think they are of similar importance to the degree that our relationships with others and the way we conduct ourselves are at least as real as (to risk the accusation of anthropomorphizing) each of the eleven dimensions' relationships with the others and the way they conduct themselves? ...

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@paulhanke,

Isn't the idea that the sub-atomic realm, or the cosmological realm, are more fundamentally real than the realm of 'ordinary perception', itself, the very basis of reductionism? In the former, you are moving towards the fundamental constituents of matter, and in the latter, towards the ultimate origin of the universe, both understood in naturalistic terms, as being something discoverable by science.

So in this way, we seem to understand more than ever before about what the nature of things. But at the same time, and in another sense, we have also lost touch with reality, in my view. Heraclitus said 'the Many live each in their private world, while those who are awake have but one world in common'. (Quoted in John Fowles, The Aristos). What I mean is that our notion of reality itself is now extremely fragmented. This is true in a number of ways; for example in regards to knowledge, there is now such a lot of it, that specialists can only really know there particular speciality. Nobody can know much of anything about the Big Picture any more. On a personal level, we very much live 'each in our own private world'. Globally, the world is divided as never before, even while being united as 'the global village' by communications technology and the like.

So I think there is a conflict here.

1 Reply

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;116776 wrote:

Isn't the idea that the sub-atomic realm, or the cosmological realm, are more fundamentally real than the realm of 'ordinary perception', itself, the very basis of reductionism? In the former, you are moving towards the fundamental constituents of matter, and in the latter, towards the ultimate origin of the universe, both understood in naturalistic terms, as being something discoverable by science.

So in this way, we seem to understand more than ever before about what the nature of things. But at the same time, and in another sense, we have also lost touch with reality, in my view. Heraclitus said 'the Many live each in their private world, while those who are awake have but one world in common'. (Quoted in John Fowles, The Aristos). What I mean is that our notion of reality itself is now extremely fragmented. This is true in a number of ways; for example in regards to knowledge, there is now such a lot of it, that specialists can only really know there particular speciality. Nobody can know much of anything about the Big Picture any more. On a personal level, we very much live 'each in our own private world'. Globally, the world is divided as never before, even while being united as 'the global village' by communications technology and the like.

So I think there is a conflict here.

If I look at a bit of tissue paper under a microscope, I will see the individual threads interwoven, but with a great deal of space between them. What seems to me to be continuous paper really is not. This is no different, in principle, than wearing glasses to improve my vision. In both cases, I am seeing better what there actually is.

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@paulhanke,

But then you're not seeing the paper anymore, only the thread. Are the two the same to you?

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@bluemist phil,

bluemist;116779 wrote:

But then you're not seeing the paper anymore, only the thread. Are the two the same to you?

The paper consists of the thread. Would you say that when I am wearing glasses I am not seeing the painting anymore, only the details of the painting?

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@paulhanke,

Yes, if you get close enough. You are still confusing the grain of sand with the dune. All magnifications are arbitrary. It just happens that biologically we have to have the one that helps us survive. But a microscope or a telescope see just as well, but not at all what we see with the unaided eye. So why would one be more real than the other?

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@bluemist phil,

bluemist;116788 wrote:

Yes, if you get close enough. You are still confusing the grain of sand with the dune. All magnifications are arbitrary. It just happens that biologically we have to have the one that helps us survive. But a microscope or a telescope see just as well, but not at all what we see with the unaided eye. So why would one be more real than the other?

I don't know what you can mean by saying that magnifications are arbitrary. But your question about degrees of reality " So why would one be more real than the other? is a very good one. Actually, I did not say that what we see with the unaided eye is "less real" than what we see under magnification. And, this is a difficult question Even whether there are degrees of reality is questionable. One possible answer is that if X explains Y, but Y does not explain X, then X is more real than Y. The separate threads in the tissue paper explains why the tissue paper feels and looks the way it does. The general idea is that what is more explanatory is more real. A different answer is that what is mind-dependent is not real, but what is mind-independent is real. So, the tissue paper, as it appears to us, is not real, but the tissue paper as it appears under the microscope is real. That is how it "really" looks.

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@paulhanke,

kennethamy wrote:

The general idea is that what is more explanatory is more real. A different answer is that what is mind-dependent is not real, but what is mind-independent is real. So, the tissue paper, as it appears to us, is not real, but the tissue paper as it appears under the microscope is real. That is how it "really" looks.

Why couldn't the threads and the tissue be the 'same amount of real'? Viewing the threads, or viewing the whole that is the tissue, are simply two different views of the same reality. I don't understand why we would convolute it further. More, or less, real?

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@Zetherin,

Zetherin;116827 wrote:

Why couldn't the threads and the tissue be the 'same amount of real'? Viewing the threads, or viewing the whole that is the tissue, are simply two different views of the same reality. I don't understand why we would convolute it further. More, or less, real?

Agreed.

It gets even more obscure when the distinctions are more nebulous like: society, or the individuals? the forest, or the trees?

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@kennethamy,

kennethamy;116804 wrote:

what is mind-independent is real.

I reckon the notion of ''mind-independent" is the foundation of a belief system. It can't be anything else really.

---------- Post added 01-04-2010 at 08:53 PM ----------

which is why we often get stalled at this point in a discussion, as it really rests on a statement of faith. In this case, 'faith in reality' vs. the counter-claim that reality and perception are not actually seperable. It is hard to get past the is/isn't dialog - the idea of mind-independent reality is taken to be the irrefutable foundation, and to question it by any means, a bad argument. Is. Isn't. And so on.

---------- Post added 01-04-2010 at 09:09 PM ----------

"Physicists used to think that electrons are truly fundamental, but today many of them would place strings in that deeper role, regarding electrons as just one manifestation of string activity". Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? p 253

But according to some physicists, the existence of strings can never be proven, regardless of whether they are real or not (e.g. The Trouble with Physics, Lee Smolin).

So after all this time, we are still arguing about what is 'really there'.

In which case, belief in a "mind-independent reality" really is an article of faith.

1 Reply

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;116827 wrote:

Why couldn't the threads and the tissue be the 'same amount of real'? Viewing the threads, or viewing the whole that is the tissue, are simply two different views of the same reality. I don't understand why we would convolute it further. More, or less, real?

Maybe for the same reason that I don a pair of glasses so I can see what a person's face really looks like instead of the hazy mess I see without my glasses.

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What is the Empirical World?

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