What is the Empirical World?

It is an abstruse idea, I agree, and apparently contradicts common sense. I don't suppose it will help if I say that when we observe that the earth existed for X billion years prior to the emergence of H Sapiens, that measurement itself is in a unit of time defined by us and relative to the terrestrial year.

The remark about 'not knowing what anything is' refers to the fact that the actual nature of matter is still unknown. The harder you look at it, the more elusive it seems to be.

The remark about 'not knowing what anything is' refers to the fact that the actual nature of matter is still unknown. The harder you look at it, the more elusive it seems to be.

Like much else in 'the new physics', this throws considerable doubt on the concept of the 'mind-independent reality'.

... if we think of empty spacetime as some immaterial substance, consisting of a very large number of minute, structureless pieces, and if we then let these microscopic building blocks interact with one another according to simple rules dictated by gravity and quantum theory, they will spontaneously arrange themselves into a whole that in many ways looks like the observed universe. It is similar to the way that molecules assemble themselves into crystalline or amorphous solids. ... Similar mechanisms of self-assembly and self-organization occur across physics, biology and other fields of science. A beautiful example is the behavior of large flocks of birds, such as European starlings. Individual birds interact only with a small number of nearby birds; no leader tells them what to do. Yet the flock still forms and moves as a whole. The flock possesses collective, or emergent, properties that are not obvious in each bird's behavior. ... Evidently, a small object experiences spacetime in a profoundly different way than a large object does. To that object, the universe has something akin to a fractal structure. (http://signallake.com/innovation/SelfOrganizingQuantumJul08.pdf)

I wonder what sort of answer would satisfy you. No scientific discovery contributes to our knowing of the "actual nature" of matter? Can you describe just what it is you're seeking?

An acknowledgement of humility. Not from you, or anyone here. It is not a personal accusation or anything. Western Man is so cocky about all the stuff he has figured out. He thinks that everything is reducible and explainable in his terms.

When he sees mystery, he says, the job is to roll up your sleeves and clean it up. Get rid of it. Explain it away.

An acknowledgement of humility. Not from you, or anyone here. It is not a personal accusation or anything. Western Man is so cocky about all the stuff he has figured out. He thinks that everything is reducible and explainable in his terms.

It isn't. No, I don't mean we should give up and wander off, despondent, either. But there is always, implicit in every situation, the unknowable.



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We should recognize that there are two kinds of unknowability: 1. There is something to know, and for some reason, it cannot be known. 2. There is nothing to know, but we think there is something to know. The trick is to distinguish between the two, and not mistake the second for the first.

... and vice versa? ... first, Locke divided up the world into primary and secondary qualities ... he observed that the secondary qualities (such as sound, color, smell, etc.) while being caused in some way by real objects are in fact products of our senses - that is, secondary qualities are not properties of objects but rather the sensory representations of a subject ... to Locke, the primary qualities (spatial extent, temporal extent, etc.) are indeed properties of real objects ... Kant took this a step further: since space and time are how we arrange and make sense of secondary qualities, and since secondary qualities are the sensory representations of a subject, space and time must also be (to some degree) the mental representations of a subject ... following this line of thinking, both primary and secondary qualities are ideal (i.e., belong to subjects, not objects) ... thus in the phenomenal world, Mind-Independent Reality is unknowable - is this a type 1 unknowability, or a type 2?

Moving on to the empirical world, we have prosthetic senses that can probe much more deeply than human senses - so perhaps we have a chance at penetrating all the way to Mind-Independent Reality ... but then again, despite the more deeply we probe we still seem to be running into conceptual problems ... as jeeprs quotes, "I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead." ... if we imagine that as we probe more deeply we are getting closer to Mind-Independent Reality, such statements are counter-intuitive; on the other hand, if we imagine that as we probe more deeply that the qualities we uncover continue to be ideal, then such statements are completely intuitive simply because ideal qualities cannot exist without a subject ... could the mere act of observation by a subject no matter what the prosthetic sense necessarily imply that the perceived quality is ideal? ... and what type of unknowability would that be?

A natural science is one whose propositions on limited domains of nature can have only corresponding limited validity;...science is not a philosophy developing a worldview of nature as a whole or about the essence of things.

The hypothetical picture of a causal relationship with which we invest natural phenomena must prove its usefulness in practise. The criteria...are that (1) it must be admissable, i.e. corresponds with our laws of thought; (2) it must be correct i.e. agree with experience, and (3) it must be relevant, i.e. contain the maximum of essential and minimal of superfluous or empty relations of the object.

We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And Lo! It is our own."

What do you do when you see mystery? Do you make a bed of it and go to sleep?

I don't know how true (3) remains; hope it does.

I then think the next question is: how do we distinguish between what we know to be secondary qualities and what are in fact primary qualities? I think Im starting to understand why you titled the thread the way you did.

... and vice versa? ... first, Locke divided up the world into primary and secondary qualities ... he observed that the secondary qualities (such as sound, color, smell, etc.) while being caused in some way by real objects are in fact products of our senses - that is, secondary qualities are not properties of objects but rather the sensory representations of a subject ... to Locke, the primary qualities (spatial extent, temporal extent, etc.) are indeed properties of real objects ... Kant took this a step further: since space and time are how we arrange and make sense of secondary qualities, and since secondary qualities are the sensory representations of a subject, space and time must also be (to some degree) the mental representations of a subject ... following this line of thinking, both primary and secondary qualities are ideal (i.e., belong to subjects, not objects) ... thus in the phenomenal world, Mind-Independent Reality is unknowable - is this a type 1 unknowability, or a type 2?

Moving on to the empirical world, we have prosthetic senses that can probe much more deeply than human senses - so perhaps we have a chance at penetrating all the way to Mind-Independent Reality ... but then again, despite the more deeply we probe we still seem to be running into conceptual problems ... as jeeprs quotes, "I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead." ... if we imagine that as we probe more deeply we are getting closer to Mind-Independent Reality, such statements are counter-intuitive; on the other hand, if we imagine that as we probe more deeply that the qualities we uncover continue to be ideal, then such statements are completely intuitive simply because ideal qualities cannot exist without a subject ... could the mere act of observation by a subject no matter what the prosthetic sense necessarily imply that the perceived quality is ideal? ... and what type of unknowability would that be?

Why should I in either case?

Don't you think there are aspects of "reality" that we do not perceive empirically with either our insturments or our senses?
Don't you think that there is some perceptual interiority to "being a bat" say that is not avaialble to us?
That things "exist" which are not part of the "empirical world"?

Yes. I am told that dogs hear pitches that human beings cannot hear. Why?

Aren't those things that exist which are not perceived part of what people mean when they speak about "mind independent reality"?

Perceived how? Directly? Indirectly? Posited to explain what is perceived? For instance, God is not perceived, but God is often posited to explain what is perceived.

Really the notion is one of "metaphysical humility" an acknowledgement that some aspects of the "real external world" are not available to our instruments or our senses. Good starting points are the interior subjective states of other minds but clearly there are also aspects of the physical world that lie beyond our abilities as well.

Some of course assume that science will eventually provide a purely physical or material explanation for "all experience" and that anything not perceived does not "exist" but such positions I think clearly lack humility.

It is not clear to me that the subjective states of other minds are not available to me, although not, of course, in the way they are available to the owners of the other minds. As to your more general point, the history of science is strewn with those who believed we could never know about some aspects about the world. For instance, the constitution of the stars. And then, the spectroscope was invented. There may be such unknowables, but it is unknowable what they are.

I don't think anyone is calling for an end to; or artificial limits on; the scientific endeavor. I don't think anyone is denying the contributions of science in an increased understanding of our world. I don't think anyone is arguing that science should not be taken into account in attempting to construct an adequate, coherent, consistent or correspondent worldview.

What is being suggested is the possiblity that what science actually gives us (and all it may ever give us) is a partial, tenative and incomplete view of "total or universal reality". It is also being suggested that some confuse their mechanistic materialistic deterministic metaphysical assumptions or philosophical speculations with what "science" as a method of investigating nature acutally seeks or claims to tell us.