Is empiricism the epitome of dualism ?

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This issue seems to have arisen elsewhere and my answer would be negative largely on the basis of Maturana's work.

1.Non-dualism (observer-observed inextricability) need not be confined to single observers but to consensual observer groups sharing a common observational paradigm. Indeed, Maturana has argued that all we call "observation" involves "languaging" or "verbal reporting behavior" albeit even by a single individual to himself.
2. All observation in general, and measurement in particular starts with the act of focusing on a target "thing". The first level of measurement is nominal(naming). Whence does this focus come from if not through common physiological, psychological or social needs? Data does not arise in vacuum. What is empirically the case must of necessity be "of interest" to an observing individual.
3. There are no theoretical limits to the size of "the organism" which defines the nature of "data". It can range from single cell to whole species and sub-divisions thereof.
4. Maturana argues that concept of "data" as external input (sense data) is fine relative to what we call "traditional science" because what is assumed there is "the standard observer" (with no perceptual biases). M points out that we forget the consensual domain which has constructed the agreed paradigm for observation. But the dichotomy internal/external is insufficient to account for study of the non-standard observer per se. All analysis at this level can only proceed from a concept of "perturbation of structure" and "adaptation of structure for survival". This is what Maturana calls "cognition" (the general life process).
5. The picture suggested here is of an organic structure undergoing dynamic state changes which define for it what constitutes its changing"environment".It is like a a locomotive running on changing networks of tracks. But tracks have no existence without the locomotives which utilize them.

In short "empiricism" is one concept describing an aspect of the cognition of languaging individuals in consensual domains. No observers, no facts, no agreed measurements, no empiricism. Those who doubt counter intuitive ideas such as this are invited to consider the nature of "empirical data" in world where say we we all color blind or deaf.

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@fresco,

Quote:

In short "empiricism" is an aspect describing one aspect of the cognition of languaging individuals in consensual domains. No observers, no facts, no agreed measurements, no empiricism. Those who doubt counter intuitive ideas such as this are invited to consider the nature of "empirical data" in world where say we we all color blind or deaf.

But we all aren't color blind or Death

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@argome321,

I think some of us might be death (sic)...or maybe dead from the neck up at least !

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@fresco,

death LOL
my carelessness Embarrassed

1 Reply

@argome321,

No probs.
But what's your point ?

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@fresco,

Quote:

my answer would be negative largely on the basis of Maturana's work

I don't know this Maturana guy, but it's clear that not everyone agrees with him:

According to Ron Swenson, for example, Maturana's model:

Quote:

is "miraculously decoupled from the physical world by its progenitors [...] (and thus) grounded on a solipsistic foundation that flies in the face of both common sense and scientific knowledge".

Wiki, summarizing what it refers to as "multiple criticisms" says, as a general matter:

Quote:

Critics have argued that the term fails to define or explain living systems and that, because of the extreme language of self-referentiality it uses without any external reference, it is really an attempt to give substantiation to Maturana's radical constructivist or solipsistic epistemology,[17] or what Danilo Zolo[18][19] has called instead a "desolate theology".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis

Given that it's Fresco who's affirming this guy's work, it certainly doesn't surprise me to see the criticism that it's "solipsistic foundation flies in the face of both common sense and scientific knowledge."

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@fresco,

But what's your point ?

my point is that experiments that ask for unrealistic condition don't lend much credibility nor insight. Most people are not color blind and nor deaf. This condition would only skew what ever data that you think you would receive.

Empiricism is about observation and measurements. You do not want the fact that color blindness and being deaf would be come part of the test results and skewing the findings.

Then there is always cybernetics.

What is languaging individuals?

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@fresco,

Quote:

In short "empiricism" is one concept describing an aspect of the cognition of languaging individuals in consensual domains. No observers, no facts, no agreed measurements, no empiricism.

Am I reading this the way it's intended. Are you, or Maturana, claiming that there are "No observers, no facts, no agreed measurements, no empiricism.?"

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@layman,

Try actually reading Maturana. Wink

He is of course only one dissenter from naive realism. The "embodied cognition" movement in psychology at Berkeley is another group interested in the process we call "observation". Indeed "the observation of observation" (aka "second order cybernetics") is a major systems theoretic approach in psychology and artificial intelligence.

Note too that the well known "Copenhagen Interpretation" in quantum physics is another candidate for dissent from straight "dualism".

Quote:

Am I reading this the way it's intended. Are you, or Maturana, claiming that there are "No observers, no facts, no agreed measurements, no empiricism.?"

I don't know. You don't seem to be able to read Morin "as intended". Indeed the phenomenon of your perceptual set is grist to the mill for researchers in observation.

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@argome321,

Sorry Argome but this is a philosophy thread which assumes familiarity with some basic ideas like "the questioning of common sense". Terms like languaging can readily be researched on Google. Try it and come back if you have a problem.

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@argome321,

Quote:

This condition would only skew what ever data...

No. My point is that it would re-define and delimit what we call "data".

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@fresco,

Quote:

This issue seems to have arisen elsewhere

Yeah, I was there when you were purporting to "educate" Olivier5 in your usual arrogant, pseudo-intellectual name-dropping manner, Fresco.

Empiricism has a centuries-old definition and meaning that Olivier used, when noting that empiricism was dualistic in that it presupposed (1) a subjective observer and (2) external objects being observed.

Now you start this thread to "win" your argument with him. So how do you undertake to do that?

You cite a solipsistic philosopher who (you say) claims there are "no observers" (and who, you say, claims there is no observation) to REDEFINE empiricism. You conclude by saying "[there is] no empiricism."

When your argument is that the subject matter doesn't even exist, then obviously it is not dualistic, monistic, or anything else. How clever of you.

Once again, YOU WIN!!!!!!

Not.

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@layman,

Don't you think its about time to drop your adolescent posturing as "a vulture looking for crumbs to get that bastard fresco" ?
You like minority views ! Get down from your perch and do a bit of suggested reading. One never knows. You may actually learn something !

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@fresco,

Quote:

Sorry Argome but this is a philosophy thread which assumes familiarity with some basic ideas like "the questioning of common sense". Terms like languaging can readily be researched on Google. Try it and come back if you have a problem.

I know exactly what languaging means. it truth, it's a very loose form of the present participle of language.

My question was rhetorical.

Knowledge is not depend upon democratic consensus. Believing Earth is flat by millions doesn't make it so. Believing that if I jump off the Empire State Building and if I got others to believe I would survive doesn't make it true. Reality is independent of human thought and no amount of sophistic verbiage is going to ever change that.

Quote:

"When one puts objectivity in parenthesis, all views, all verses in the multiverse are equally valid. Understanding this, you lose the passion for changing the other. One of the results is that you look apathetic to people. Now, those who do not live with objectivity in parentheses have a passion for changing the other. So they have this passion and you do not. For example, at the university where I work, people may say, ‘Humberto is not really interested in anything,’ because I don’t have the passion in the same sense that the person that has objectivity without parentheses. And I think that this is the main difficulty. To other people you may seem too tolerant. However, if the others also put objectivity in parentheses , you discover that disagreements can only be solved by entering a domain of co-inspiration, in which things are done together because the participants want to do them. With objectivity in parentheses, it is easy to do things together because one is not denying the other in the process of doing them."

Humberto Maturana - Interview 1985.

You may argue but this is still an subjective view

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@argome321,

Quote:

Knowledge is not depend upon democratic consensus. Believing Earth is flat by millions doesn't make it so. Believing that if I jump off the Empire State Building and if I got others to believe I would survive doesn't make it true. Reality is independent of human thought and no amount of sophistic verbiage is going to ever change that.

Exactly, Arg.

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@argome321,

I appreciate your efforts to research Maturana.

Note that the term "languaging" is a term to denote contextual behavior rather than "thought expression". I can apply to animals as well as humans when engaged to mutual activities involving "structural coupling" of individuals (as in a dog barking at a human to resume a game of "throw the stick").

Check out Goffman: "The Social Construction of Reality" for just one debunking of "observer independent reality". The fact that we can all agree it would be fatal to jump off a high building is "the reality" for humans with a common physiology. It is obviously not "a reality" for birds. In short "reality" may simply be a word we use for "confident consensual expectations". As one poster has put it recently, "reality" could be a concept with no referent outside of human agreement about mutual interests.

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@fresco,

Quote:

...a debunking of "observer independent reality".

These are two COMPLETELY separate questions:

1. Are there "things" (such as dogs) which actually exist, apart from the human mind?

2. Can the human mind know, see, or comprehend those "things" directly, without mediation?

Solipsists want to say that if the answer to 2 is "no," then the answer to 1 must also be 'no." But, of course, that's just the egocentric nature of the solipsist. He is the measure of all things. If he can't directly know something, then it can't be true--it doesn't even exist.

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@fresco,

Quote:

It is obviously not "a reality" for birds.

Who the hell knows, or cares, what "reality" is to a bird? It is a reality to US that birds can fly. You want to pretend otherwise, it seems.

Arg wasn't talking about a bird. He was talking about how the "laws of physics" would affect a human being, not a bird.

Birds presumably "know" they can fly. Guess what? We also "know" they can fly. It's not a matter of "two different realities."

1 Reply

@layman,

"Solipsism" is a non-starter for language users since language is socially acquired. Thinghood is part of the grammar of that acquisition. Acquired language constructs "things" as the focal elements of mutual interest. "Things" have no ontological status in their own right. Scenarios of "observer independent worlds" such as a "pre-life earth" employ the psychological sleight of hand of ignoring that such scenarios must be currently present in the minds eye. Hence "observerless worlds" is an oxymoron.

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@layman,

Quote:

Who the hell knows, or cares, what "reality" is to a bird?

Anybody with the intelligence to understand that if "reality" is species specific then it is observer dependent. The "laws of physics" is an incomplete work in progress involving human constructions which successfully generalize and predict human expectations.

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Is empiricism the epitome of dualism ?

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