Indeed.
Jab,
Well, of course. To view the universe objectively, you must see all of it (and everything about it, and for all time) at once. How else will your viewing itself cause no change whatsoever within it? If you yourself, as part of the universe, were to view it, would not the composition of it then have changed (as you yourself have admitted: new synaptical connections and so forth)? And doesn’t the universe constantly change with every moment of your continued existence? And if the universe is always changing, then what is there within it to take an objective view? How can a thing be both a subject and an object?
Ambushed,
Yoohoo! I’m down here. Could you take your nose out of the clouds for a moment? And would you kindly stop talking to me in the third person? And what’s with the “quotes”? I didn’t “correct” anything. I corrected my syntax, as I explained quite clearly. The original syntax, the result of an unpreviewed edit, implied the opposite of what I had intended. And you have the nerver to toss out accusations of intellectual dishonesty?
Sure it does.
On the grounds that the object, upon its own subjective realization, has changed. You’re the Materialist, so why am I explaining the effects of synaptic discharges and how they change brain chemistry and structure to you? Your mere observation that you’re sitting in a chair is so contextually incomplete as to be useless. It is the same as defining material as either anything that is explicable or anything that is verifiable. Well, shit. Why not just define material as “everything that has been, was, and will be conceived”? Once again, material is the Materialist’s “I AM”.
Xeno,
I have no idea what that means, but it reads to me like this: “I, Material, exist where two or more are gathered in my name.”
Well, clearly my opinion on the matter is objective, isn’t it? After all, I’m one of the parties inside the conflict. Oops. 
ambushed, I think that is an overly harsh way to read into Wittgenstein. I believe his point in TLP was to outline a method of discourse on empiricism, phenomenology, and what the limits and purpose of philosophy is. “Going up” or “beyond” or whatever he said was, I think, meant to demonstrate that not all problems have the same solution. Philosophy can become a semantic quagmire, and I think he felt that the problem of that was trying to use English (or, in his case, German) as the means of explanation when natural languages are not well-typed. At any rate…
I am also extremely wary about your ability to dismiss consciousness so readily in a discussion about metaphysics. Is it your assertation that consciousness does not actually exist and so it can be dismissed?
xen, that little blurb you gave before about the “three tiers” or whatever? Just wanted to mention I had just read that this weekend in a discussion about the three types of phenomenon we perceive.
I am still wondering about a materialist’s claim that perception does not shape reality. Is this an a priori piece of knowledge or an axiomatic assertation? Secondly, I continue to wonder about what distinction, if any, exists between perceived reality and reality. If we claim such a distinction exists, how do we know? (I think I’ve already asked this personally at least once, but I still cannot get my mind around it). To patch up the radical subjectivism that materialism seems to offer us we would need to make a series of assertations which would line up our perception of events with our theories about the perception of events… synthetic?
Consider that we cannot perceive anything without perceiving it… that is, we all seem to agree that humans have no method of divination, we must always perceive phenomenon. At no point would we ever know we perceived reality. Even using correspondence of perception wouldn’t really help us; it would simply leave us with the option of everyone who agrees being crazy or everyone who agrees being sane (nevermind solipsism). But any inquiry into the foundation of either of those claims are subject to the same intensely skeptical lines of (meta)inquiry.
Gah, am I rehashing an argument I already put forth? This sounds strangely familiar… (note: do not post on 0 sleep)
Because there’s no good evidence that those things ever happened.
No one is trying to observe the entire universe simultaneously. (No one who is sane, anyway…) We’re just saying we can observe a given small piece of it objectively and reporting what we observed at the moment we made the observation. For example, the Census Bureau’s decennial census tells only what the population was on the day it was taken. It cannot tell us what the population was before that day or what it will be afterwards.
I certainly hope so. A stagnant universe would be a dead one.
On Poly’s “Erroneus” thread, you said:
I wonder the same thing about you. Yes, I admitted that when an observation is made, an alteration is made to reality in the form of minor changes in the physical structure of the brain. I also pointed out that these changes are infinitesimal and inconsequential to the world at large.
The point you stubbornly refuse to accept is that you cannot avoid altering reality by observing it, a fact as unavoidable as the fact that you cannot be in more than one place at the same time, as unavoidable as the fact that your body cannot survive indefinitely without food, oxygen and water. (And I don’t want to hear anyone say, “Nothing is impossible.” It ain’t true.)
There are some things you are just going to have to accept whether you like them or not. Wanting things you cannot have is a sign of immaturity. Taken to the extreme, it can lead to madness. Be careful.
Oh, crap.
While I don’t want to touch your closing, jab, I do find this to be interesting. Though I admittedly dozed off in my readings of this thread between page two and four, I am very interested in the above quote.
I am positively unsure about the distinction between “reality as it was perceived” and “reality as it is without perception” and how the two are distinguished. I assume you are not bold enough to state that observations about reality can be false or mistaken, and so I wonder where this supreme confidence comes into play? I mean, the above rejects Descarte’s world of doubt in so many ways that I would think there is some underlying motivation for this that is either observational or axiomatic. Could you enlighten me?
I am not at all sure how to answer this. I can only answer your question by asking this one: If reality depends upon an observer, then how did reality exist before there were any observers?
Why can’t they be false or mistaken? Hell, mistakes are made all the damned time! People used to think the Earth was flat, you know. After they realized it was round, they decided that it stood still in space while the Sun and all the other heavenly bodies orbited it. Many also believed that the known planets were all that there were, because why should God create planets that could not be seen by Man? “What a waste of God’s time!” they reasoned. People also used to believe that mental disorders were demonic possession.
So tell me again why observations about reality cannot be false or misleading?
I’ve never read Descartes. (I’m not even sure how to pronounce the name!)
It’s just something I’ve figured out slowly and gradually over the years. While it’s certainly possible (even likely) to mis-interpret data, that’s no reason to doubt everything your senses tell you. Doubting everything leads to madness.
First, whoops! I had meant to say that you weren’t bold enough to say our perceptions couldn’t be mistaken. Man, I swear I make typos at the worst times. LOL
OK, now that that faux pax is corrected…
Well, the idea isn’t that reality is affected by our perceptions (necessarily) but that the only reality we know is gained from our perceptions. Surely our perceptions shape our perceptions! Not to say we aren’t perceiving reality, necessarily, only that there is no particular reason why our perceptions are true or false, and thus our entire conception of reality (if we are empiricists).
Well, his idea wasn’t that one should doubt everything, but that one could doubt everything. His whole reason for favoring rationalism over empiricism, actually.
What amuses me to no end is that the very same thought seemed to drive Hume to empiricism; and strongly, too. I believe his attack was leveled on perceiving thoughts themselves (even if it isn’t, I consider it a fun argument anyway)! Consider you ask me, “erl, how are you today?” I respond, “Well, thanks.” Now, was my assessment of my being any less open to perceptual error than any other perception? In fact, was hearing myself tell you the phrase “Well, thanks” any more accurate than another man’s perception of God? Also consider Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” rephrased (as one was apt to do, though I cannot remember his or her name) “I think that I think therefore I think that I am.” The latter is much more in tune with evidence gathering than rational assertion. Or so it seems to me, anyway…
sigh At any rate, I flip back and forth myself on rationalism versus empiricism, so I cannot strongly argue either side. I just find the whole damn ball of wax thoroughly amusing.
One more thing:
Well, to be sure, but alas there is no method to determine which data you have misinterpeted and which you haven’t, because every act of confimation (perception) is no more secure than the doubt one would care to dispell.
I think I have talked my way right into a corner now. Sheesh! 
In fact, it cannot tell you the population at all; it can give you only an estimate. Nor can it canvas the whole population in a single day. Nor does the population freeze for a whole day.
If you observe a small piece of the universe and extrapolate that particular to a generality, then you are inducing. Induction is infamous for introducing potential error and misleading interpretation. Peano’s fifth axiom is one thing — mathematics is an abstraction of reality; but inducing ontological principles (which includes the ontological basis of general science) is rife with danger.
I could give you myriad examples, but you already know them. And in fact, you almost surely argue against induction nearly every day, at least when it suits your purpose. You quite likely would argue that the reason the sun will come up tomorrow is not because people have observed the sun rising every day of recorded history, and therefore it will surely rise tomorrow; rather, you would argue that the sun will come up tomorrow due to an illusion caused by the earth’s rotation about its axis.
You know in general, instinctively, that sampling proves nothing and is not objective. You know all about liars and statistics. And yet, your purpose here is served by maintaining what you know to be false. That is because there is no practical way to deduce a materialist reality, given its tautological nature. You must take the eternity of material as axiomatic just as we take the eternity of God as axiomatic.
And one that you could not perceive because you, as a part of it, would be stagnant as well. Therefore, you cannot perceive the universe as an objective whole whether it is stagnant or not. Only an extrauniversal entity could so percieve it.
And why is the threshold of tolerance for change that you have established not subjective and arbitrary? It can be reasonably argued that the Holocaust was a direct result of an “inconsequential” synaptic discharge in Hitler’s brain.
It is hardly a fact that I stubbornly refuse to accept the very thing I have been arguing for in some detail. The whole point that I have been trying to get across to you is the one you say I won’t accept. Your observation of the universe changes it, and therefore once you’ve observed it, it is no longer the same, and so your observation is obsolete. Indeed, it is subjective since what you observe is filtered through your own senses and interpreted by your own biases.
The only way to make an objective observation of the universe is to observe it — all of it, both time and space — from outside and all at once. Only an extrauniversal and eternal entity can observe the universe objectively.
Nothing is impossible. You may cover your ears all you like, but the fact remains that all probability estimates are inductions and can even be illusions. A phenomenon that is statistically impossible in one reference-frame can be so likely in another that the probability of its occurence is nearly one-hundred percent. For example, your inductions would tell you that an electron on a 2p orbital cannot cross the node of the nucleus of its atom. And yet it does because at the scale of an atom, the electron is not a particle but a wave.
Good advice. Good for me. Good for you, too.
By the way, Descartes is pronounced “day-CART”.
This resource has been invaluable to me, not only in my quest for proper pronunciation information, but also in distinguishing between different inebriative agents. And, of course, inflection.
OK. I read through a lot of stuff posted since I was here last. But, could someone remind me what difference it makes whether we change things by observing them?
Is someone trying to say that because no one can observe the universe objectively that reality is subjective?
Our perception of reality is, of course, subjective. I don’t see what prevents me from communicating in as clear a manner as possible with the people around me and, over time, concluding that we all perceive a very similar reality and that a lot of what we see the same way is objectively real. There’s the whole thing where you test your ideas and see what works. If you bang your head into a wall enough, eventually you realize, “Hey, that hurts!”
What exactly are we disagreeing on here?
I don’t believe that anyone will ever know everything about the universe. However, the more I know the more power I have to control nearby pieces of the universe. If some piece of information I have is incorrect, I run the risk of failing in my endeavors. Just because science has not yet found a general theory of the universe doesn’t mean we can’t use what we do know. And, nothing I know convinces me of the existence of anything non-material.
We know that gravity works. We also know that we don’t know exactly what gravity does inside of a singularity. So, we don’t know everything there is to know about gravity. Still, we know enough to make use of it. We know enough about much of our surroundings to make use of them.
Ever hear the saying (I’ll bowdlerize it), “Pray in one hand and poop in the other and see which one gets full first.”?
All we need is one confirmed divine miracle and the whole of materialism goes out the window. Or one confirmed ghost. Or one confirmed fairy queen. One confirmed non-material object. But there aren’t any. Why should I believe there ever will be? I can see where someone might think, “Boy, every time humanity thinks they’ve got some law of nature nailed down, we find out there’s more to it. I’m going to leave open the possibility that God exists.” This would be Soft Atheism. I, OTOH, think that, at some point, you just gotta believe that logical and consistent parts of subjective reality must be objectively real as well.
I dunno, I’ve actually become somewhat more convinced of the existence of things outside the realm of science as I’ve gotten further and further through my studies in physics. I don’t want to hijack this thread with my musings, but are enough people here interested in discussing the philosophical implications of quantum theory to make it worth starting a new thread, or would I just be doing so only to watch it sink like a stone?
How can science convince you of something beyond science? Are you sure it’s not metaphysics that leads you there? Sort of a “God in the gaps” perspective that arises due to our imperfect understanding of quantum phenomena?
As you doubtless know better than I (as a physics student), there are QM interpretations other than the Copenhagen which have fewer conceptual problems. You might want to consider the time-reversal interpretation, for example, if you haven’t yet. Just a thought.
For what it’s worth, perhaps you should consider starting a new thread on your topic, which is interesting in its own right.
erislover, my friend, I submit that your preoccupation with perception may have led you afield on this question. Perceptions are neither true nor false. They are merely sense data.
I would say that the correspondence of our conceptions to reality, not our perceptions, is what matters (but I wish to avoid re-entering the epistemological debate much more deeply than that).
The issue is whether or not non-material causes or events are present in reality (or in our interactions with the ground of our perceptions, if you prefer). There is no credible evidence of such. Until such evidence can be convincingly presented, I can see no persuasive reasons to deny or abandon materialism.
I can see no fault in VileOrb’s most recent reply, with which I am in essentially full agreement.
Descartes, in my view, was far too intellectually timid in his battle with the demon. He jumped at Rationalism and God with embarrassingly unseemly haste! Evolution would have made for a far superior ground on which to fasten his anchor, had he but known of it. Natural selection is a critically important theory for scientists and philosophers of the mind today, and Descartes is hopelessly obsolete.
Perhaps you may wish to consider epistemology in the light of the findings of evolutionary psychology…
Regarding induction…
Well. Setting aside O’Hear’s masterful debunking of Popper, I have one question of Popperians: just exactly how is the principle of falsification itself subject to falsification without an axiomatic (and therefore arbitrary) acceptance of Friesian interpretations of First Principles of Demonstration? Where is the test to show that falsification might not hold in every instance?
Falsification is induction wearing a different dress. After all, A = False <=> Not A = True.