---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: David Nyman <da...@davidnyman.com> Date: 26 May 2017 at 19:36 Subject: Re: A thought on MWI and its alternative(s) To: meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net>, Bruno Marchal < bruno.fernand.marc...@gmail.com>
On 26 May 2017 18:49, "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: On 5/26/2017 4:40 AM, David Nyman wrote: > Forgive me for hijacking your topic for my own ends ;) But as is > currently being discussed in other threads, truth has another sense which > is most often obscured for methodological reasons and then most typically > subsiding thereafter into complete invisibility. Brent's remarks above will > serve as a quite typical example. This truth is what we might call > perceptual, or the primary indubitability of perceptibility itself, to > which Descartes notoriously referred. So truth by concordance, to which you > refer above, is in the first instance "accessible" only in terms of its > *primary truth for a subject* with whose perceptual spectrum it is > coterminous. You might wish to quibble about the necessity of appropriating > a concept of truth to these ends. But what is the indispensable > characteristic of truth if it isn't indubitability? Yes, of course, > subsidiary truth-notions then depend on concordances or "correspondences > with the facts" as Tarski points out. But what are these "facts" if not in > the first instance (and it is indeed this first instance we seek to bring > back into the light) perceptual ones? And how could we conceive of applying > the criterion of correspondence if the provenance of the putative "facts" > to be correlated was already itself in doubt? I think you will see what I > mean. For me, what has been particularly helpful in Bruno's introduction of > the modal logics in the elementary analysis of subjectivity has been the > rigorous rehabilitation of the indispensable (but nonetheless gone missing) > notion of a specifically first-personal or perceptual truth. Paradoxical as > it may seem (although consistent with our experience) it is a truth that > cannot be proven, but only guessed at or wagered on, from any but its > uniquely first-personal point of view. Nonetheless it is this conception of > truth that perhaps may ultimately permit us to escape the stark > not-even-wrongness of alternative formulations of the mind-body problem. > I agree that "facts" ground in first-person perceptions. But not that they are indubitable. Brent, can we finally either agree or disagree on the distinction I have repeatedly made every effort to make explicit? I am perfectly clear that any inference whatsoever made *on the basis of* perceptual facts may be mistaken, possibly in every respect. Descartes, of course, was equally explicit about this, as I recently reminded you, as is Bruno, which is why he says that Bp&p is a "bet" on a reality. Therefore *that is not my point*. What is my point is the fact that no inference whatsoever of this kind can even get started failing the presence of a perceptual fact, a point also not lost on Descartes. That's all he really meant to convey in the cogito, despite subsequent attempts to obliterate this pithy encapsulation in a snowstorm of grammatical obfuscation. Hence this primary fact is by its very definition indubitable, on pain of incoherence. We are familiar with optical illusions and other misperceptions. As you say, we are all indeed familiar with that, which is why I was at pains yet again to make clear the distinction. Look, I'm flattered of course that you read me at all but your comments would be of more help to me if you would at least take on board what I have said on repeated occasions. So the facts that science attempts to explain are already filtered through intersubjective agreement, i.e. a third person view. Well, inter-subjective agreement is properly a 1p-plural view. A 3p view is a hypothetical idealisation of this. IOW it adopts a hypothetical view from nowhere, which is its Achilles' heel when we forget that it thereby implicitly appropriates a 1p interpretative perspective. The 1p-plural view is what we accept as evidence of the relative probability of veridicality of our perceptions. Consequently, the observables of physics are inescapably 1p-plural phenomena. That's why Bruno's computationalism needs to explain the appearance of the physical world - in order that there be "facts" and not just dreams. Yes that's exactly what it needs to explain. No one would claim it currently fully achieves this, though it's notable that a quantum-like logic - a consequence of the infinity of continuations - is a prediction of the theory, as opposed to an a posteriori observation. But is there something in particular that would lead you to believe that it cannot? David Brent -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
