RE: A calculus of personal identity
Bruno writes snip I see what you mean and I agree with you, but now, you were again talking about third person description of the first person point of view (I will write 1-pov, 3-pov, ...). Yes. I find that the 1st person accounts to be pretty subjective, actually. They also lead to inconsistencies and unnecessary differences of opinion. In history, the 1st person experience (e.g. the stars revolve around the Earth) are always upstaged sooner or later by actual, objective data. Bruno! This is a very good joke! I find that the 1st person accounts to be pretty subjective LOLOLOLOLOL!!! :-) How could a 1st person account be anything else!? Actually I'd like to challenge your statement and suggest that there is no such thing as 'an objective view'! All we _actually_ have for our scientific evidence is first person experience! What we do (behave) is to carry out a procedure called _objectivity_ to select/agree on what we are studying within the individual subjective experience of those doing the 'agreeing'/being objective. When they have all agreed, there is _no_ _one_ _person_ actually having (experiencing) that so called 'view'. The objective view is a VIRTUAL construct. The universe is acting 'as if' there was someone having the view, but there is no-one actually having the view. Ernest Nagel called the so called objective view the view from nowhere. Here's a scientific experiment for the list: 1) Close your eyes. 2) Now prove you can do science to the same extent you could before. That is if you are now even able to read the rest of the instructions for the experiment! .i.e it ain't gonna happen, is it? Such an odd position for a scientist! a) Totally dependent on subjective experience as a causal ancestor to the act of 'being scientific', .i.e. it is all there is. b) having a false belief in the existence of an 'objective view', and then, c) finds that when you use the scientific observation system (subjective experience) to try and observe and be scientific about the scientific observing system (subjective experience), you can't observe it! Your words actual, objective data are actually an oxymoron! There is objective data, but it's derived entirely from a subjective experience which is discarded by the act of objectivity. What does the word 'actual' mean in this context? We have something going on in the universe that has been mapped through a human's subjective experience and then mapped again by the 'method' we call objectivity. By the time this incredibly long causal chain/mapping through a situated cognitive agent called the scientist has finished with the original observed 'thing', how does this claim any cudos as 'actual', except in that it is all we have? Subjective experience has PRIMACY in science, and we don't even know it! cheers colin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Only Existence is necessary?
Ah, waht is mathematics? I suspect humans could spend their life-times pondering this profound question and never fully understand. I'm a mathematical realist in the sense that I think mathematical entities are real objective properties of reality and not just human inventions, but I've come to seriously doubt the Platonist idea that mathematics is static and timeless. Rather I now favor the idea that mathematical truth can evolve with time. See Greg Chaitin for some ideas about this. As some of you may, know, I've suggested some radical ideas about time on this list: namely the idea that there may be more than one time dimension, in the sense that there may be more than one valid way to define cause and effect relations. My big big idea is that mathematics could be a sort of 'higher order causality' ,or, if you like a 'higher dimensional time'. This is possible if some mathematical truths are not static, but can evolve with time. Suppose that causality itself had a two-level structure, with 'mathematical time' on the top level, and what we think of as physical time on the bottom level. This two level time structure is compatible with David Bohm's interpretation of QM where reality indeed has a two-level structure - both the wave function and the particle are equally real but correspond to different levels of reality. The two-level time structure could also explain the difference between the 1st person and 3rd person perspectives and resolve the puzzle of flowing time versus platonic timelessness. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Re: Teleportation thought experiment and UD+ASSA
Hal Finney writes: The problem is that there seems to be no basis for judging the validity of this kind of analysis. Do we die every instant? Do we survive sleep but not being frozen? Do we live on in our copies? Does our identity extend to all conscious entities? There are so many questions like this, but they seem unanswerable. And behind all of them lurks our evolutionary conditioning forcing us to act as though we have certain beliefs, and tricking us into coming up with logical rationalizations for false but survival-promoting beliefs. There is a way around some of these questions. When I ask whether my copy produced as a result of teleportation, or whatever, will really be me, what I want to know is whether that copy will subjectively stand in the same relationship to me as I stand now in relationship to my self of a moment ago. It doesn't really matter to me what process I go through (provided that the process does not have other unpleasant side-effects, of course) as long as this is the end result. In fact, I am quite happy with the notion that I live only transiently, because it does away with all the paradoxes of personal identity. Normal life then consists in the relationship between these transient selves: that they have certain thoughts in a certain temporal sequence, memories of previous selves, a sense of identity persisting through time, and so on. While it is true that in the world with which we are all familiar this sequence of selves is implemented in a single organism living its life from birth to death, there is no logical reason why this has to be so; and if you consider that there may not be a single atom in your body today that was there a year ago, physical continuity over time is just an illusion anyway. Even if it were possible to imagine another way of living my life which did not entail dying every moment, for example if certain significant components in my brain did not turn over, I would not expend any effort to bring this state of affairs about, because if it made no subjective or objective difference, what would be the point? Moreover, there would be no reason for evolution to favour this kind of neurophysiology unless it conferred some other advantage, such as greater metabolic efficiency. Right, so there are two questions here. One is whether there could be reasons to prefer a circumstance which seemingly makes no objective or subjective difference. I'll say more about this later, but for now I'll just note that it is often impossible to know whether some change would make a subjective difference. Yes, it does present difficulties, not least because we haven't managed to duplicate a person yet and there is no experimental data! But it wouldn't be fair to insist, if we did do the experiment, that we can't really know the subject's first person experience, because the same criticism could be made of any situation with a human subject. For example, we could say that we can't be sure someone who has had transient loss of consciousness is the same person afterwards, despite their insistence that they feel the same, because it is impossible to know what they are actually feeling, and even if we relied on their verbal account, we could not be sure that they have an accurate memory of what they were like before the incident. The other question is whether we could or should even try to overcome our evolutionary programming. If evolution doesn't care if we die once we have reproduced, should we? If evolution tells us to sacrifice ourselves to save two children, eight cousins, or 16 great-great uncles, should we? In the long run, we might be forced to obey the instincts built into us by genes. But it still is interesting to consider the deeper philosophical issues, and how we might hypothetically behave if we were free of evolutionary constraints. I was actually trying to make a different point. If the subject undergoing teleportation does not have his identity preserved, as opposed to what would have happened if he had continued living life normally, then this means that - despite his behaviour being the same and despite his insistence that he feels the same - some subtle change or error was introduced as a result of the teleportation. Since the matter in a person's body is turning over all the time, there is a constant risk of introducing copying errors as the various cellular components (including neuronal components) are replaced. Those errors that would have a negative impact on the organism's survival chances are weeded out by evolution, while those that make no difference at all remain. The putative errors introduced by teleportation are of a type which, at the very least, do not change the subjects external behaviour, even though they result in the non-preservation of personal identity (whatever that might mean). Now, even though it might be argued that teleportation-induced
Re: Only Existence is necessary?
Marc: your considerations are enlightening. I am no mathematician so I try to evaluate your (and others') remarks in a broader sense - and get diverse thoughts. Your question is more and more relevant and less and less explained by those who live in math. Tom wrote: math is invariant, but is it still? The world is NOT invariant, it is a ceaseless process of change and we take snapshots. Math puts explanatory logic on such snapshots, so far (?) invariance-wise, staying within. (Goedel stepped further and I suspect: Bruno as well). So I had to conclude: mathematicians are conservative, not advancing with the trend of a dynamic view of 'everything' - unless my above hint to newer math holds. I could not explain (1st person) (to myself) WHAT such math could be. Or: what the 'new' sense of NUMBER may be, everything is no answer. Then I do not need a new statement. Then I have an old noumenon: with a new word. I would leave that to the dictionary-writers. About your time-dimension(S): in THIS UNIVERSE a time-concept arose by the inside view according to the restricted qualia forming our world. Not differently from space and the combination of these: movement, referring in abstraction: to change. So we have the 'right' to formulate multiple concepts for them. Mathematics, the invention of the human mind (after Bohm) is a stage in our epistemic enlightenment and is the product of restriction since we (humans) use a materially (figment!) limited tool: the human brain, for thinking. It is not restrictive to the ...(?) existence? nature? everything? even: reality? beyond us. I leave it open that 'other' universes, composed by other qualia, may have 'other' concepts than ours. Time etc. Logic etc. Math on 'variant' units, unrestricted variables and dimensions (whatever these are) I use 'timelessness' as a variation: thought is atemporal, aspatial. We CAN think in those restrictions, but also transcending them. So several time-dimensions are not so 'radical' for me. I may not be able to 'concretize' them, but not excludable. Your use of causality is also universe-bound. In a total interconnectedness I figure a continuous change of everything with influence of everything on everything (is it culminating in Hal R's nothingness?) so all changes are deterministic even if we cannot follow all angles. Change comes from change, influence changes influence. We pick causes in our limited model-view, looking for influences and origins 'within' our (boundary-enclosed) topical? model we can think in. Then we find a most likely cause, just disregarding the 'rest of the world' with its combined entailment, outside our observational limitations. I do not base my speculations on ideas of (maybe ingenious) earlier thinkers too much (how much? good question) because the epistemic cognitive inventory at their time was meager, humanity is continuously increasing the 'stuff' we can think in, with, about, for, by etc. and do not restrict myself by 'accepted' limiting rules - maxims? like e.g.. the 'expanding universe' and its consequences all the way to e.g. the Everett to Tegmar type multiverse or even the Flat Earth as center of the universe (according to Einstein it may (or may not) well be it, since movements are relative, no matter how complicated it may be), adding to that the limited model view of our physicists (including Q-science). The figment of our traditionally built edifice of a physical world and its 'rules' is very impressive and practically exploitable, including 'math' (in which I, too, do differentiate between the 'ideal' (pure?) 'Math' and the applied 'math' (using (Robert Rosen's capitalization) applying the former's results to the latter, with limited model-quantities derived from the (scientific?) physical view. Thank you for triggering the formulation of these thoughts of mine by your post. I am not ready with my speculations to discuss them with people well versed in worldviews based on foundation of different knowledge-base 'sciences'. John Mikes - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 5:56 AM Subject: Re: Only Existence is necessary? Ah, waht is mathematics? I suspect humans could spend their life-times pondering this profound question and never fully understand. I'm a mathematical realist in the sense that I think mathematical entities are real objective properties of reality and not just human inventions, but I've come to seriously doubt the Platonist idea that mathematics is static and timeless. Rather I now favor the idea that mathematical truth can evolve with time. See Greg Chaitin for some ideas about this. As some of you may, know, I've suggested some radical ideas about time on this list: namely the idea that there may be more than one time dimension, in the sense that there may be more than one valid way to define cause and effect relations. My big big idea is that
Re: Only Existence is necessary?
Marc and John, Interesting ideas. Don't have time to comment appropriately. But I want to say one thing about my previous thought. Note that I said that mathematics is *about* invariance; I didn't say that mathematics *is* necessarily invariant. There's a big difference. Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: A calculus of personal identity
Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: Bruno writes snip I see what you mean and I agree with you, but now, you were again talking about third person description of the first person point of view (I will write 1-pov, 3-pov, ...). Yes. I find that the 1st person accounts to be pretty subjective, actually. They also lead to inconsistencies and unnecessary differences of opinion. In history, the 1st person experience (e.g. the stars revolve around the Earth) are always upstaged sooner or later by actual, objective data. Bruno! This is a very good joke! I find that the 1st person accounts to be pretty subjective LOLOLOLOLOL!!! :-) How could a 1st person account be anything else!? Actually I'd like to challenge your statement and suggest that there is no such thing as 'an objective view'! All we _actually_ have for our scientific evidence is first person experience! What we do (behave) is to carry out a procedure called _objectivity_ to select/agree on what we are studying within the individual subjective experience of those doing the 'agreeing'/being objective. When they have all agreed, there is _no_ _one_ _person_ actually having (experiencing) that so called 'view'. The objective view is a VIRTUAL construct. The universe is acting 'as if' there was someone having the view, but there is no-one actually having the view. Ernest Nagel called the so called objective view the view from nowhere. Here's a scientific experiment for the list: 1) Close your eyes. 2) Now prove you can do science to the same extent you could before. That is if you are now even able to read the rest of the instructions for the experiment! .i.e it ain't gonna happen, is it? Such an odd position for a scientist! a) Totally dependent on subjective experience as a causal ancestor to the act of 'being scientific', .i.e. it is all there is. b) having a false belief in the existence of an 'objective view', and then, c) finds that when you use the scientific observation system (subjective experience) to try and observe and be scientific about the scientific observing system (subjective experience), you can't observe it! Your words actual, objective data are actually an oxymoron! There is objective data, but it's derived entirely from a subjective experience which is discarded by the act of objectivity. What does the word 'actual' mean in this context? We have something going on in the universe that has been mapped through a human's subjective experience and then mapped again by the 'method' we call objectivity. By the time this incredibly long causal chain/mapping through a situated cognitive agent called the scientist has finished with the original observed 'thing', how does this claim any cudos as 'actual', except in that it is all we have? Subjective experience has PRIMACY in science, and we don't even know it! cheers colin Right, except I think thoughtful scientists do know it. They recognize that what we call objective would be more accurately called intersubjective agreement. We create models and when they work for everybody we (tentatively) agree on them. A lot of physics now is derived from symmetry principles and the most basic principle is invariance of the model under changing subjective viewpoints. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Only Existence is necessary?
Tom, my English may be feeble and artificial (as the 5th), but I see not too much difference IN ESSENCE whether math is dealing with (about!) invariance, or the idea of math is itself (about?) invariance. Invariance is the state itself I like to disregard. John - Original Message - From: Tom Caylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 12:25 PM Subject: Re: Only Existence is necessary? Marc and John, Interesting ideas. Don't have time to comment appropriately. But I want to say one thing about my previous thought. Note that I said that mathematics is *about* invariance; I didn't say that mathematics *is* necessarily invariant. There's a big difference. Tom -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.2/372 - Release Date: 06/21/06 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: A calculus of personal identity
Brent, Colin and Bruno: I had my decade-long struggle on 3-4 discussion lists (~psych and ~Physx) about objective reality being really subjective virtuality - and I finally won. Assuming (!) an existing 'reality' (=not being solipsist) also assumes that impacts arrive at one's mind (what is it?) which interprets them to a suitable understanding within the limitations we have. That is widely called the objective reality. (Brent went a step further in his agreed upon clause). It was exciting how differently the students of different disciplines gave in. Subjective is ambiguous: pertaining to the subject (person) thinking, or pertinent to a subject to speak about. This later is frequently called object. So we have a semantical mess (why not in this, too?) and we fall in the trap. We have no ways (tools, understanding) to get to the real thing whatever that may be, sending those impacts to us. Agreed intersubjectively, or not. (We - sort of - agreed on this list lately to speak about percept of reality). * To Colin's experiment a question: are blind people not capable of thinking straight? scientific is an odd word and could be 'subject' to debate: IMO all sciences (conventional that is) are based on some model-view, at least are topically limited and observed within such limitations. The new ways of 'free thinking' what we try to exercise on this one and some other lists lately, try to think broader, if not quite without boundary-limitations (it would wash away whatever one could state into a wholeness of ambiguity). Paradoxes, (unexpected) i.e. emerging novelties, axioms, givens etc. are products of model-limitations. The visual is not the only restriction we suffer from, simply the most studied one. I thank Colin for the wise par about the 'objective'. * Finally to Brent's concluding words: We all can agree on features based on models because we all suffer from the same incompleteness. And please, take into account that the model you talked about is not fixed, it is a snapshot at a time and changes continually into different occurring characteristics. So our conclusions are temporary-based. It is hard to do science with such premises, but who said that life is easy? Best regards John Mikes - Original Message - From: Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 2:29 PM Subject: Re: A calculus of personal identity Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: Bruno writes snip I see what you mean and I agree with you, but now, you were again talking about third person description of the first person point of view (I will write 1-pov, 3-pov, ...). Yes. I find that the 1st person accounts to be pretty subjective, actually. They also lead to inconsistencies and unnecessary differences of opinion. In history, the 1st person experience (e.g. the stars revolve around the Earth) are always upstaged sooner or later by actual, objective data. Bruno! This is a very good joke! I find that the 1st person accounts to be pretty subjective LOLOLOLOLOL!!! :-) How could a 1st person account be anything else!? Actually I'd like to challenge your statement and suggest that there is no such thing as 'an objective view'! All we _actually_ have for our scientific evidence is first person experience! What we do (behave) is to carry out a procedure called _objectivity_ to select/agree on what we are studying within the individual subjective experience of those doing the 'agreeing'/being objective. When they have all agreed, there is _no_ _one_ _person_ actually having (experiencing) that so called 'view'. The objective view is a VIRTUAL construct. The universe is acting 'as if' there was someone having the view, but there is no-one actually having the view. Ernest Nagel called the so called objective view the view from nowhere. Here's a scientific experiment for the list: 1) Close your eyes. 2) Now prove you can do science to the same extent you could before. That is if you are now even able to read the rest of the instructions for the experiment! .i.e it ain't gonna happen, is it? Such an odd position for a scientist! a) Totally dependent on subjective experience as a causal ancestor to the act of 'being scientific', .i.e. it is all there is. b) having a false belief in the existence of an 'objective view', and then, c) finds that when you use the scientific observation system (subjective experience) to try and observe and be scientific about the scientific observing system (subjective experience), you can't observe it! Your words actual, objective data are actually an oxymoron! There is objective data, but it's derived entirely from a subjective experience which is discarded by the act of objectivity. What does the word 'actual' mean in this context? We have something going on in the universe that has been mapped through a human's subjective experience and then
Re: Only Existence is necessary?
Hi Lee, I have no qualms with your point here, but it seems that we have skipped past the question that I am trying to pose: Where does distinguishability and individuation follow from the mere existence of Platonic Forms, if process is merely a relation between Forms (as Bruno et al claim)?! In my previous post I tried to point out that *existence* is not a first-order (or n-th order) predicate and thus does nothing to distinguish one Form, Number, Algorithm, or what-have-you from another. The property of individuation requires some manner of distinguishability of one thing, process, etc. from another. Mere existence is insufficient. We are tacitly assuming an observer or something that amounts to the same thing any time we assume some 3rd person PoView and such is required for any coherent notion of distinguishability to obtain and thus something to whom existence means/affects. We can go on and on about relations between states, numbers, UDs, or whatever, but unless we have a consistent way to deal with the source of individuation and thus distinguishability, we are going nowhere... Onward! Stephen - Original Message - From: Lee Corbin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 11:14 PM Subject: RE: Only Existence is necessary? Stephen writes What properties do you have in mind that pure platonic algorithms seem to lack? Anything, that is, besides *time* itself? How about an explanation as to how an illusion of time obtains (assuming the theory of Platonic forms if correct)? I can't speak for advocates of a timeless Platonia, because I am not one. I have not yet been reconciled to timelessness. But here is what I think they would say (at least a simplified version of what they'd perhaps say): Future states contain some information about past states in an unambiguous way that past states do not contain about future states. For example, a future version of a photographic plate contains information about the incidence of a particle upon it. In the same way, photons moving outward from a source collectively contain information about their source, but not about their destination. By gradually going to more advance versions of photographic plates and carbon chemistry, it is seen that evolution allows for amoebas and other creatures who contain information about their past chemical environments. Now taking an amoeba for example, all the possible states of it exist in Platonia. 10^10^45 or so of them, if we are to believe Bekenstein. But if you observe the 10^10^45 carefully, you will find a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny set of them somewhere that seem to tell a story. The story thus told is the life-history of the amoeba, including every possible thing that can happen to it. (Now I myself have some objections to this account---though I reckon it can all be fixed up by a UD, that it by focusing instead on programs that themselves produce sequences of states ---but I have the same sort of objection that I've always had to Hilary Putnam's claims about all computations (within certain huge bounds) taking place in a single rock.) Lee --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: A calculus of personal identity
Hi, [ALL] Lee, I seem to have miss-attributed the source of my guffaw that lead to my little outburst to Bruno. Apologies to all as appropriate... :-) [John Mikes] Brent, Colin and Bruno: I had my decade-long struggle on 3-4 discussion lists (~psych and ~Physx) about objective reality being really subjective virtuality - and I finally won. Assuming (!) an existing 'reality' (=not being solipsist) also assumes Isn't this old sophist chestnut getting a bit tired? I am so happy to _applaud_ your assumption. More than that I would add to the discussion a demand from anyone who thought that arguing that issue justify how it can possibly lead to anything useful other than the endless swapping of lexical tokens chasing metaphor rainbows (double whammy metaphor theresorry!) followed by silence and no progress... for this is the empirically available, supportable outcome of all such discussion, time and time again. Time to just dump the whole thread as fun, intriguing, instructive, useful training for 1st year philosophy and campfire rah-rah but not a contribution useful to any scientific endeavor. that impacts arrive at one's mind (what is it?) which interprets them to a suitable understanding within the limitations we have. That is widely called the objective reality. (Brent went a step further in his agreed upon clause). It was exciting how differently the students of different disciplines gave in. Subjective is ambiguous: pertaining to the subject (person) thinking, or pertinent to a subject to speak about. This later is frequently called object. So we have a semantical mess (why not in this, too?) and we fall in the trap. We have no ways (tools, understanding) to get to the real thing whatever that may be, sending those impacts to us. Agreed intersubjectively, or not. (We - sort of - agreed on this list lately to speak about percept of reality). The practical effect of a belief in an objective view is the surgical excision of the scientist from the process. Some clarity can be added here by reversing ( a surgical resection?) that process and treating the scientist (as scientists do all the time for absolutely everything but themselves!) as a situated agent inside the scientists natural environment - the universe. I ask the list to simply draw this situation. Draw a scientifically studied 'thing'. Then add next to it the scientist doing the studying. Then box them both inside a universe. When you do this you have applied the science of situated agency to the scientist. The clarity that emerges is startling. Take a look at the picture.. you will see that the John's the real thing is Kant's Ding an Sich and that whatever it is, the scientist and the object of scientific study are BOTH made of it. More than that, the universe containing them is _also_ made of it. Then take another look at percept of reality... inside the cranium of the scientist in your diagram is mind, which delivers a view of the studied object in the first person to the scientist. Using this idea we cansee immediately that we can indeed get at the 'noumenon' - the 'ding an sich' - because we have conclusive proof that whatever it is, it delivered subjective experience into the head of the scientist AND presents the information accurately enough for the scientist to make really useful predictions (via behaving objectively) via the descriptions provided by the contents of the experience of the scientist... The existence of the subjective experience in and of itself is surely definitive proof that we can scientifically investigate structural schemes of 'ding an sich' that simulataneously provide the subjective experiences that behave as per the empirical descriptions we then derive from its contents. This is a massive simultaneous equation set and results in two intimately related set so of natural laws...one about ding an sich and the other, what we already call 'laws of physics'. Subjective experience can act as an evidence base for BOTH, because the two sets of descriptions are not in the same domain of knowledge. So I would definitely _disagree_ with Kant's assertion that the noumenon is unassailable. There is one subtlety here... logically you can only get at a science of the noumenon by forcing the science thus enabled to make predictions of brain material. It is only in brain material where empirical science is utterly voiceless (we have 2500 years of voicelessness here! QED) in predicting structures and conceptual bases for the delivery of mind consistent with empirically derived laws based on the usage of that mind. To Colin's experiment a question: are blind people not capable of thinking straight? scientific is an odd word and could be 'subject' to debate: IMO all sciences (conventional that is) are based on some model-view, at least are topically limited and observed within such limitations. The new ways of 'free thinking' what we try to exercise on this one and some other lists
