On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 04:19:33PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: > On 2/17/2014 10:15 PM, Russell Standish wrote: > >On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 09:18:32PM -0800, meekerdb wrote:
> > I don't think there's any difference between objectivity and > inter-subujective agreement. I tend to use them interchangably. > Pity. Because its confusing. If this is an argument over whether intersubjective realities exist, then we're both arguing on the same side. However, Edgar was arguing that a truly objective, observer independent reality must exist. That is different. > >Not sure what your point is here. It's our, because we're having this > >conversation. > > Not necessarily. Maybe you're just imagining it. Someone once coined the phrase "real as I am real". In any Platonic idealist theory (such as COMP), you are as real as me. If I'm imagining you, I am also imagining myself. > > It has to do with whether what they do is mind-independent or not. > You're taking "mind dependent" to mean "observed somewhere, sometime > by some mind". No - a little stronger than that. I mean that what is observed is necessarily consistent with being observed by some mind. > So do you agree that the results of scientific > observations (those for which there is inter-subjective agreement) > are independent of which particular minds do the observing. > Only if the inter-subjective agreement extends to all possible minds. In ToN, I argue that the laws of quantum mechanics have this nature. But only because those laws can be derived from considerations of what it means to observe something. That means that those are laws of physics, not geography. But that means those laws depend on the act of observation (or are grounded in the act of observation). > >>Is that possible worlds that are observed or worlds that might > >>possibly be observed? > >possible worlds that are observed > > But this is incoherent. When we formulate a theory about the big > bang or how fossils were formed or how our Mars Rover is functioning > the theory is that those things really happen whether anyone > observes them or not. It doesn't seem essential to the theory. All that matters is the predicted observations. > Now you may say that eventually someone will > observe them, but that is already theory laden. The big bang is > observed via satellite telescopes which send down digital images > which are displayed on LED screens which send photons to your retina > which sends signals along your optic nerve...and THEN observation > takes place? But observation of what? nerve impluses? There is no > observation without theory, which includes some kind of ontology to > define the observation. You don't have to assume your theory > includes what is really real, but it has to include a theory of > observation if you are to go beyond from pure solipistic dreams. > Sure. I'm not sure what your point is though. You're just admitting the theory doesn't need to make ontological claims in order to be effective. > > > >>>is due to some reason other than the fact that > >>>observers necessarily exist in those worlds. For there to be a mind > >>>independent reality, there needs to be such a facts. > >>So a world must have physics that *permits* observers in order that > >>it be our world. But worlds don't have to have *geography* that > >>permits observers, e.g. this universe between inflation and the > >>recombination. So they can be mind independent. > >> > >Just so long as some geography permits the observers, such as on a > >rocky planet on a middling start some 13 billion years after those events. > > But the theory derived to explain that observation also entails that > no one need have observed it. > Really? How so? > >>>I could believe that mathematical facts (about say the integers) could > >>>fit that category, and thus be the basis of a fundamental > >>>ontology. But even in COMP, we cannot distinguish between an ontology > >>>of Peano arithmetic, or of Curry combinators, say. Once your ontology has > >>>the property of Turing completeness, you could choose any such > >>>ontology and be none the wiser. Doesn't this make the whole notion of > >>>an ontological reality rather meaningless? > >>Then you would have structural realism. > >Yeah - fair enough. That position is largely a defeat of the idea that > >we can know an ontological basis of phenomena. > > But that's just the radical skepticism that we can't *know* > anything. All theories are provisional. It's more than that. It's actually a theory making the claim that the actual ontology (if such a thing has meaning) has no observable consequences. > > > But a geographical fact that is unobservable is mind independent and > our best theories entail that many such facts exists. > Which ones? How can unobserved facts exist? -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
