Berkeley's Response to Descartes

@Procrustes,

According to Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty (et al), reality is "brought forth" by the interaction of observer and observed. There is ample empirical evidence to support such a view. The concept of an "unperceived reality" (Kant's Noumena) is an oxymoron because in order to conceptualize it at all we need to perceive it "in our mind's eye".

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@Setanta,

BTW. The irony of your objection based on "lack of equivalence" is that such a personal view either underscores subjective interpretation, or appeals to social consensus, both of which are encompassed by a non-duality thesis.

If I were a Christian Scientist I would of course reject modern medical advice, but not because I rejected its efficacy relative to medieval practice, but because human efficacy was antithetical to my belief and trust in "God's Will". Thus my "reality" as a certain type of believer, would differ from the "reality" of a non-believer, and therein lies essence of arguments about reality, that involves social context.

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@fresco,

You don't get to have your own, individual reality. If you were infected by a potentially lethal micro-organism, your goofy religious beliefs would not serve to protect you from the effects of the infection. You might console yourself with any amount of nonsense about god's will, just as you now attempt to appeal to your silly philosophical theses. That will not alter by one iota the potential lethality of the disease condition. The lack of equivalence is based on empirical methodology in contemporary medical research as opposed to the speculative nonsense of Renaissance quacks--and i note you appeal to empirical evidence when it suits you, but ignore in cases in which it is inconvenient to your hilarious thesis.

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@fresco,

You can make all the idiotic contentions you wish about my alleged committee. That will not alter that Cyracus pulled that one out of his ass. If you don't agree, all you have to do is demonstrate that all congnitive processes in the brain take place at the sub-atomic level.

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@Setanta,

You are equating "prediction and control" with as an ultimate arbiter of "reality". Fritjof Capra is one writer who categorizes that as Western intellectual chauvinism.

I suggest you read Cyracuz's post again. He made no claim about all cognition or consciousness. Hameroff and Penrose are the scientists who advocate the possibility of quantum processing based on the failure of traditional cybernetic paradigms.

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@fresco,

As though i give a rat's ass. All you are doing is your typical word games. The prediction and control to which you refer are replicable, and are routinely replicated in non-Western venues just as they are in Western venues. Once again, you only appeal to empirical evidence when it suits your thesis, and ignore it when it doesn't.

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@Setanta,

You are not going to get it because you are refusing to examine the accusation of intellectual chauvinism. For example, if elimination of a disease in a non-Western country precipitates social strife due increased competition for food supplies, what is the real status of prediction and control....an ephemeral vanity ?

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@Setanta,

I wouldn't say want to believe. It is something that is being explored and investigated, and I find it very interesting.

With what we know about human perception today, the idea that "physical reality" exists independent of human observation is problematical.
Whatever exists does exist regardless of being observed or not, but "physical" is a description that is relevant to humans. It is how things appear to us. To say that it is an objective fact, regardless of how plausible it seems, would be an assumption.

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@Cyracuz,

Quote:

To say that it is an objective fact, regardless of how plausible it seems, would be an assumption.

Certainly it would be far more plausible than, say, the assumption that all cognitive processes in the brain take place at the sub-atomic level.

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@fresco,

No, not an emphemeral vanity--rather, an appeal to the apple-like nature of oranges.

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By the way, that was one of your most irrelevant passages, which is no mean feat.

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@fresco,

O.K., now how about a touch football game? I'll bet we can kick your butts in that.

BTW, I do not say that reality consists totally only of what we agree it consists: I have not shrunk the world to the size of my head. But I do hold that the phenomenally experienced character of the contents of reality are defined to be as they are in good part by social agreement: we socially construct what we come to see as our reality. Another way of putting it: we live not only in situations but our definitions of situations. For this reason philosophy and art are fundamental social cultural expressions, but they do not usurp the functions of Science--the former idealistically provide aesthetic and philosophical meaning, the latter pursues realistic prediction and control. Both-and, not either-or.

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@Setanta,

Why?
Every process that happens does so at a sub-atomic level, even the process of putting food into your mouth. But that process is much more easily understood with the concepts food and mouth than trying to explain it with quantum physics.
When it comes to the brain, however, there isn't really a good explanation on the macro-cosmic level of what the process of thinking involves, which is why scientists are looking into descriptions involving quantum-physics, on a sub-atomic level.

Just because we understand something a certain way doesn't mean it cannot be explained in another way. Everything involves waves and particles, even though describing something in those terms isn't always the most practical.
In a way, classical physics can be thought of as the physics of our perception.

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@Cyracuz,

Wavicles.

Seriously, I find it difficult to imagine what it would be like to explain macrophenomena at a subatomic level. Ultimately everything is, at least in principle, reducible "all the way down" and at all lower levels* we find the material for emergent processes. Yet I can't see how we might explain phenomena at any but their own--or at a near equivalent--level.
* We can, of course, explain our experienced events at microscopic levels (e.g.,disease and bacteria), but at a subatomic level? Wow.

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@Cyracuz,

Upon what basis do you allege that "every process that happens does so at the sub-atomic level?" You're just stringing words together because they sound good to you. Do you think chewing a granola bar creates or destroys muons? What evidence can you present that this is so?

I'm really not interested in your view of "classical physics," because you are using it, as you did that silliness about the sub-atomic level, to attempt to put a scientific gloss on what is no more than idle speculation. I have no good reason to accept your unsubstantiated contentions.

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@JLNobody,

hehehe . . .

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

In a way, classical physics can be thought of as the physics of our perception.

Would you agree with this interpretation of classical physics by UCLA professor Sandra Harding?

Quote:

A consistent analysis would lead to the conclusion that understanding nature as a woman indifferent to or even welcoming rape was equally fundamental to the interpretations of these new conceptions of nature and inquiry. Presumably these metaphors, too, had fruitful pragmatic, methodological, and metaphysical consequences for science. In that case, why is it not as illuminating and honest to refer to Newton's laws as "Newton's rape manual" as it is to call them "Newton's mechanics"?

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@Setanta,

Quote:

Upon what basis do you allege that "every process that happens does so at the sub-atomic level?"

That was a misleading attempt to communicate a point, sorry.
What I mean to say is that everything has waves and particles, and if there is something going on on the macro cosmic level, there is corresponding activity on the sub-atomic level.

It is much more practical to refer to the facial expression used when one is happy as a smile, rather than call it "activity in all the relevant muscle groups". Just because the activity in these muscle groups isn't relevant in communicating the experience of happiness doesn't mean they don't happen.

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@wandeljw,

Quote:

Would you agree with this interpretation of classical physics by UCLA professor Sandra Harding?

I am not sure I understand the context.
A consistent analysis of classical physics? Is that what the first sentence of the quote refers to?

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

What I mean to say is that everything has waves and particles, and if there is something going on on the macro cosmic level, there is corresponding activity on the sub-atomic level.

This is precisely the kind of ipse dixit contention i'm objecting to. Any sub-atomic particles, and energetic wave activity at the sub-atomic level which is normally a steady-state function is not necessarily going to be affected by activities which we perceive to take place in the realm of solid reality. Once again, what affect to you allege chewing your granola bar has on sub-atomic particles?

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Berkeley's Response to Descartes

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