Most annoying/frustrating atheist arguments?

roosh

Morbert wrote: »

In addition to my previous post. Here are some examples of the common use of the word objective we are adopting.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/objectiv/#H1

Interesting article alright. The differing definitions put forward for both objectivity and subjectivity, are not wildly different from what we have been discussing.

While the OED, and apparently a wide range of dictionaries, propose that subjectivity is anything that is dependent on the mind for existence, the definition depends on what one understands by "mind"; whether what one understands as mind is essentially what the mind is; is there a potentially different understanding of what mind is; what is the true nature of mind?


With regard to the discussion about subjectivity being dependent on the subject, and objectivity being dependent on the object, the issue becomes what is the nature of the object; what is the nature of the subject; what is the true nature of the self.


Spiritual practice deals almost soleley with these questions, i.e. what is the true nature of the self and the mind.

roosh

Morbert wrote: »

And just for ****s and giggles (although this will stray us far off topic): I put it to you that, (accepting your definition of objective and subjective) it is impossible to determine any objective properties of the universe.

Just to be clear again, it isn't my definition, it is the Oxfor English Dictionary [among apparently most other dictionaries] definition.

Of course it depends on what you mean by determining objective properties of the universe. It would not be possible to explain any properties of the universe objectively, because all explanations are, by their use of words, symbols, numbers. etc., subjective.

We could however know the universe objectively.

The term universe is somewhat misleading however, as what we perceive as the universe is entirely subjective regardless of the definition, as scientific findings will attest to. The universe exists at the sub-atomic level, yet we just have a perception of it, which is subjective.

What we see as the universe, is not necessarily the true nature of reality. However, we exist at the sub-atomic level and are experiencing that right now, and we exist in reality, which we are experiencing right now.

Of course the issue becomes about the true nature of ourselves or who we actually are. Science tells us that our bodies are just a subjective perception and are little more than an illusion. Spiritual practice tells us that we are not the contents of our ["ordinary] minds" and that such things as our identification with our names, nationality, profession, religious beliefs, moral beliefs etc. etc. is just another illusion, or perhaps delusion.

The question then is who or what are we, in reality and not in our perception of reality?

Stabshauptmann

Sam Vimes wrote: »

What you have there is called hyperactive agency detection. Human beings are wired to see purpose in everything, whether there is actually purpose or not.

You've a gap in your logic there, you have already assumed you know the conclusion. "Whether there is purpose or not".

"so perfect that there must be some guiding hand pushing it along and making sure things work out", you must never have seen this picture:

That old chestnut, how could god allow x, y or z to happen.
Again, thats down to what you think I think God is. I do not believe the world is or supposed to be an idyllic paradise.
Nor can anyone know the enterity of another persons experience of existence.

You say "its not that Im asking you to disprove God", then you end with "you cant disprove my theory", essentially challenging me to disprove it.

And only by cutting out everything in between those two quotes are you able to twist what I said to suit your purpose.

And besides all that, even if I was to totally accept that there was an intelligence guiding the universe, that's a far cry from accepting that a Jewish guy raised from the dead 2000 years ago.

Once again building a strawman, and once again back to the problem here being your presumptions about what your opponent believes.

Sam Vimes

Stabshauptmann wrote: »

You've a gap in your logic there, you have already assumed you know the conclusion. "Whether there is purpose or not".

I haven't assumed anything you see, the only person making an assumption is the person who says that he believes there is a guiding hand. You are the one making a claim so you are the one who has to justify it. What you're talking about here is basically the theory of intelligent design, a theory that has been laughed out of science laboratories and out of courts again and again. The judge in the latest trial used the term "breathtaking inanity" to describe the case put forward by the people who wanted intelligent design taught in schools.

If you want to say that there must be a guiding hand you can do that but only insofar as free speech allows you to say whatever you want. The fact remains that there is nothing to suggest that there is a guiding hand because all of the complexity and apparent "perfection" around you can be explained scientifically and there is an awful lot to suggest no guiding hand whatsoever, such as the picture of the deformed babies in my previous post. If you want to claim that "something so perfect didnt just happen together. That there was some guiding hand pushing it along and making sure things worked out", you must account for everything, not just the good things. You must account for the fact that the world is far from perfect and that things very often don't work out. Only looking at the things that confirm your theory and ignoring all the things that go against it is called confirmation bias

Stabshauptmann wrote: »

Once again building a strawman, and once again back to the problem here being your presumptions about what your opponent believes.

What I know is that arguments such as this are used time and time again by religious believers to justify belief in god. I was pointing out that these arguments do not justify belief in a particular religion in any way. I could completely accept your argument and then declare that the guiding hand was actually the noodly appendage of the flying spaghetti monster. The point is that, even if I accept your argument, so what? What difference does it make to my life if I accept that there is some kind of guiding hand since there is no way to determine whether the hand is noodly or not?

Turtwig

Ohh..

We have another theist in our midst. Let's eat get Him!
Stabby how bout you tell us what you kinda of God you believe in?
That way it'd be easier to avoid the strawman.

roosh

Malty_T wrote: »

I'm going to throw a sorta curve ball here at Mangaroosh.

Suppose:

Person A experiences a blip occuring only at slot A, whereas Person B experiences the blip occuring only at slot B. Both of them know exactly what they experienced but who is actually experiencing the objective reality, that you claim our personal experiences allow us to. So my question is, do you think it is possible for humans to experience an objective reality? If so, how?

There is an assumption here that the experience of a blip is the nature of objective reality. That would be highly questionable. Also, the nature and existence of slots A and B would need to be explored because they sound as though they themselves, may be entirely subjective.


As for humans being able to experience objective reality, we are experiencing it right now, the issue is that our perception is such that we do not recognise it. Perception of course is what is subjective, although I would suggest that correct perception is possible.

One way may be to consider perspective in terms of 360 degrees of perception, where the 12 O'Clock position is what is referred to as "pure" or "correct" perception.

Together with that, if we consider perception as a series of criss-crossed misperceptions, or a web of delusions if you will. It is only through the systematic elimination of these delusions that one can arrive at an objective experience of reality, that isn't "obscured" by the mind. The act of experiencing without rationalising, accepting what one sees, hears and feels without believing it to be reality, ultimately allowing yourself and reality to be as they are, without grasping at concepts.

"Enlightenment" would [probably] be the term that captures it best, something everyone is capable of experiencing, and that some allegedly have, and on which there exists a great body of information.

roosh

Sam Vimes wrote: »

It's an argument over semantics because you use the words "supernatural", "know", "tacit knowledge", "subjective" and "objective" in a way that I have never seen them used.

That is why it may be useful to refer to a dictionary. The dictionary, under the principles that you have adopted would be considered the objective opinion.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

An experience cannot be objective because the only thing that can have an experience is a living being, ie a subject. A subject can only have a subjective experience even if the thing being experienced is objective. An experience exists only in the mind

Again, this is not necessarily what the word subjective actually means, however, if it does, then what is the nature of the subject, or living being?

roosh

Sam Vimes wrote: »

It's not so much that I'm incapable of reading it, it's that I've had a few discussions with yourself before and I just don't see it going anywhere. Your view of the world is massively different to mine to the point that you ascribe very different meanings to words and it's very difficult to talk to someone when you're pretty sure that anything you say is going to be misinterpreted because of this. If you wrote shorter replies I might be willing to respond but I don't particularly want to spend about half an hour a time saying "that's not what that word means" and "no that's not what I meant", especially since it will all be lost in the noise of a 1000 word reply

Pretty much your whole point is predicated on your understanding of the words subjective and objective. By your understanding of those words certain things can be argued but I do not share your understanding of those words and neither does anyone on the forum so the whole thing becomes a massive debate on the meanings of words.

The argument I have been putting forward has not been predicated on my understanding of the words subjective and objective, rather that the words subjective and objective best convey what it is that I am saying.

Again, it isn't my own personal understanding of the words either, it is how they are defined in the dictionary. The semantical argument has arisen because the meaning of the words, as outlined in the dictionary, is being dismissed in favour of a personal understanding.

Under the alternative description of the words [as opposed to the dictionary], then it is the personal understanding that is subjective and it is the dictionary definition that is objective.

roosh

This may or may not be considered a long post, but one of the reasons that it is long is because it seeks to explore in more detail the assumption outlined below.

While the peer review process is indeed much better than accepting one guys opinion, how the peer review process operates [in general] needs to be explored.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

You keep asking this question as if it proves something. The predictions are verified by scientists doing experiments. Yes they "personally experience" the experiments. All that shows is that verifying something for yourself is better than taking someone's word for it in some cases.

Precisely, I completely agree with you.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

However it does not mean that personal experience is inherently better than externally verifiable evidence. A million people can think they have experienced something and they can still be wrong. A process of peer review involving years of repeatable experiments and thousands of scientists trying to disprove something is and will always remain a far superior way of determining "truth" than one guy's opinion about how great he is at interpreting his senses

The problem appears to be a general overview of the concept of peer review without examining the fundamental principles upon which it is based.

Just to be clear, the argument thus far has not been about anyone's opinion on the existence of God, it has been about personal experience being the only available means with regard to the acquistion of knowledge.

The fact that personal experience is the only way in which knowledge can be acquired, does not mean that God exists, that would be a non-sequitor, it simply means that personal experience is the only way in which knowledge can be acquired.

The peer review process is [in generic terms] about verifying the truth of one persons claim, to assess whether or not it is true. In order for this assessment to be made, those verifying the claim must know what the truth is, otherwise they cannot be in a position to make a statement of truth with regard to the claim.

The peer review process then involves a large number of individuals acquiring knowledge for themselves, through personal experience, so that they can then be in a position to make a truth claim themselves - that either supports or denies the original claim.

If the majority of people, who have acquired knowledge of the truth for themselves, agree that the original claim is correct, then the original claim is deemed to be correct, and this is disseminated to a wider audience.

The thing is, that this wider audience then chooses to believe or not, the information about the truth that they have been presented with. They cannot know that it is true unless, they verify it for themselves.


Again, it is only those that verify the claim for themselves that can know the truth. If many people verify a claim for themselves, they may all agree with a particular claim, but those that do not verify the claim for themselves can only choose to believe or not, on the basis of faith.

roosh

Sam Vimes wrote: »

When people say science can't disprove god this is essentially the argument being presented:

Apologies for jumping in, but I think that is a decent point for discussion.

With regard to the above, if scientific principles are applied to that claim about the baseball and the subsequent production of the baseball, then the claim would remain untrue.

The baseball itself is just a subjective perception, of the assembled sub-atomic particles, and is therefore not how the "baseball" actually exists, rather how it is perceived to exist.

The discussion on the existence of anything is expressly a discussion about reality - as reality is the state of things at they actually exist.

As such the baseball does not actually exist in reality, rather it is perceived to exist, and the evidence is misleading.

liamw

mangaroosh wrote: »

As such the baseball does not actually exist in reality, rather it is perceived to exist, and the evidence is misleading.

How do you live your everyday life? If you actually lived by the rules your setting about in this thread you would lock yourself into a basement forever.

Although who's to say the basement is actually locked, the lock is only perceived to exist as sub atomic particles.

ayumi

think of it in a different way,
so your a person living on this earth and your living working etc and then you realise that there is no meaning in life your just living, so you ask yourself,why Im I here?Am I here for something?why does the body work in that way?why is everything detailed in life?

also god gave a human a brain unlike animals soo that they can discover new thinks but the brain was made to funtion on certain aspects but the only question that no one will be able o answer is where did everything start from?
if you born into a family of any religion you will understand what the bible,torah,quran says about everything and where everything started.every q has an answer if you read any of these important books to a person

Turtwig

ayumi wrote: »

also god gave a human a brain unlike animals

Let's take a parrot shall we.

Obituary of Alex the parrot wrote:

Alex had the intelligence of a five-year-old child and had not reached his full potential. He had a vocabulary of 150 words. He knew the names of 50 objects and could, in addition, describe their colours, shapes and the materials they were made from. He could answer questions about objects' properties, even when he had not seen that particular combination of properties before. He could ask for things—and would reject a proffered item and ask again if it was not what he wanted. He understood, and could discuss, the concepts of “bigger”, “smaller”, “same” and “different”. And he could count up to six, including the number zero (and was grappling with the concept of “seven” when he died).

That's only a "birdbrain" by the way.

It pains me that I'm on dial up because I'd love to show you how similar our intelligence is to pigs. Googling is not easy though, some other time perhaps.

Reading this would also be advisable.

if you born into a family of any religion you will understand what the bible,torah,quran says about everything and where everything started.every q has an answer if you read any of these important books to a person

Many of us were born into religious families. We had the answers that you do, but we realised that they were wrong. We're still looking for the answers. We may never find them but we're still closer to the truth than you'll ever be.

roosh

Morbert wrote: »

We both accept "of the mind". You, however, are ignoring "personal characteristics" and "particular states". According to the dictionary definition, a statement is subjective if it depends on a particular state of mind/personal characteristics. Scientific theories do not depend on a particular states of mind, or a personal characteristic.

I amn't ignoring the "personal characteristics" or "particular states", I am just highlighting that they do not refer to the personal characteristics of the mind of a particular individual, or the state of mind of a particular individual. Rather what they refer to is the personal characteristics of the mind itself.

However, I won't argue that point any further because it will become a semantic argument.


The issue again however, is that experience is not necessarily dependent on the "personal characteristics of the mind". It is the rationalisation and explanation of the experience that is.

Scientific theories are dependent on the personal characteristics of the mind. They may be agreed upon, but they dependent on the personal characterisitcs of the minds, of a large number of individuals.

A pertinent issue is how the macrocosmic view is made up, and it is made up of the assembly at the microcosmic leve.

Morbert wrote: »

And the fact that this knowledge cannot be communicated means we cannot determine whether or not the knowledge depends on a particular state of mind or a personal characteristic, which is the point we have been making. Nobody has been arguing that experiences aren't indicative of objectivity. We are saying personal experiences aren't enough to determine whether or not they are indicative of objectivity.

Personal experiences is the only way, because anyone who seeks to verify a claim, must do so personally, using their personal experience. If someone seeks to run an experiment to verify a claim, they do so personally, and they add their claim about the truth to the original claim, which may either support it or deny it.

The verification of a claim is ultimately just a sum of the claims, of a large number of people, based on their personal experience. Only these people can know whether or not a claim is true, through their experience. If many people agree then it is deemed to be true.


Lets just say that I make a claim about reality. No one else here can know if I am telling the truth if they don't personally verify my claim.

Sam Vines may carry out the experiment and deem my claim to be true. He may then report that to the rest of the people on here.

Again, no one other than Sam can know if it is true or not.

Maybe MatlyT carries out the same experiment and finds that the claim is true, and subsequently reports it on here.


Now we have a position where the truth claim has been backed up by two independent experiments, that is independent of me. The thing is that the two verification experiments were just as reliant on personal experience as was my own first one, and indeed the only people who can know the truth about the claim are those who carried it out personally.


Based on your faith in Malty T and Sam Vines, you may choose to believe that the original truth claim was true - they may have a good reputation as top scientists, and you trust their judgement.

The thing is, you still cannot know if the claim is true or not, as MaltyT and Sam Vines could be lying to you, for whatever reason, or indeed, they may be afflicted with the same fallibility of senses that I am.


The only way you can verify the claim is by personally carrying out the experiment yourself, and verifting the truth of the claim through your own observations and findings.


This is a somewhat flawed example, as observations and measurements are not necessarily part of reality, but it hopefully illustrates the point.

Morbert wrote: »

Then we cannot say our experiences are necessarily true. Scientists accept this, so they settle for impartiality.

I cannot explain how the digestive process works but I can tell you that I know how to digest, and I am doing it right now, after my dinner.

Morbert wrote: »

Repeatable experimentation, carried out by multiple people. The repeatability of experiments help to filter out facets of observations which stem from a personal characteristic or a particular state of mind.

Indeed, and as outlined above, it is only those people who carry out the experiment personally, and gain first hand personal experience, who can know if a hypothesis is true or not.

The repeatability may lead to a better explanation, but that is not the same as knowledge, rather it is information about an experience and information about knowledge.

A person may have the best scientific explanation of how to drive a car, but that doesn't mean they know how to actually drive a car.

Also, it is only through the personal experience of a larger number of people that a more concise explanation is formulated, but this is still dependent on each individuals personal experience. Some may be better able to rationalise it than others, but that only means they can come up with better words to describe it.

Morbert wrote: »

I have been arguing that I am indeed using a dictionary definition, and have referenced a dictionary. The definition also conforms to the OED definition:"based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.". I have now given multiple sources where the word is used in a manner similar to the way it is used here.

Not all experience is based on personal feelings, tastes or opinions, but all of the aforementioned trio are dependent on the mind for existence.

Words are ultimately just [shared] opinions on how to describe something, as are numbers, symbols etc. It is the rationalisation/explanation of an experience that gets coloured by the aforementioned, which are all dependent on the mind for existence, and therefore subjective.

My knowledge of how to drive a car is not "based on personal feelings, tastes or opinions". My rationalisation that I am a good driver or a bad driver is. Therefore my knowledge of how to drive a car (gained through personal experience) is objective, but my rationalisation of my ability is subjective.

Morbert wrote: »

Remember that I am not arguing that your definition is wrong, but rather that there are multiple definitions, and the one we are using is a common one. The Philosophy essay, for example, talks about the multiple meanings of objective and subjective.

There aren't that many definitions, in fact the definitions that have been provided so far have seemed to conform to the OED definition, especially those more reliable sources.

However, there does appear to be multiple misinterpretations of the definitions, and it does appear to be a common misinterpretation. However, a common misinterpretation is still a misinterpretation.


The philosophy essay, while interesting is highly, highly debatable, not least because there is a discussion on the meaning and understanding of words, and not once is the dictionary referenced. Now, I'm not saying to stick rigidly to the definition without any discussion, but when discussing the meaning of a word, then one source that must be referenced, in order for the discussion to be granted any shred of credibility, is the dictionary. That is what dictionaries are for.

Turtwig

mangaroosh wrote: »

Sam Vines...
...
Maybe MatlyT carries out the same experiment...

Based on your faith in Malty T and Sam Vines,

MatlyT.
Sam Vines.
Malty T.
????????

You're personal experience is obviously reliable alright.

Dades

ayumi wrote: »

think of it in a different way,
so your a person living on this earth and your living working etc and then you realise that there is no meaning in life your just living, so you ask yourself,why Im I here?Am I here for something?why does the body work in that way?why is everything detailed in life?

And then you realise that those questions don't necessarily have to have answers and get on with enjoying your life.

Zombrex

Jakkass wrote: »

Science deals with natural claims, not supernatural claims.

No, science deals with claims that can be tested. It doesn't matter if they are natural or supernatural, supernatural is just a point of reference after all, an conceit to our ignorance. most things in science appear supernatural at first until we find an explanation (say radiation for example)

The issue with God is not that it is a supernatural claim it is that it is a totally untestable unmodelable claim.

None of you guys (religious types who like to talk about going "beyond" science) have explained yet how you go about learning about something properly when you can test what you think you know.

That is the issue with God, all "knowledge" about God is far to fuzzy to be of any use. Basically you have no idea if your knowledge is correct or not, nor any way to gauge this.

ayumi

cant we stop arguing about this,
. if you believe that god doesnt exist even though there are many things proving there is a god
.if you believe there is a god then you have enough info about proving about the existness of god

whatever you believe just live your life on what you believe and try not to get into such aruguments with people.

Zombrex

mangaroosh wrote: »

The issue being discussed is "externally viable evidence", and someone claiming to have seen something does not count as "externally viable evidence", so the comparison doesn't work.

The comparssion was to highlight the difference contexts that a word such as "seen" can be used in. If you take only one and then say people have seen Star Wars you will run into a paradox because Star Wars never actually happened, just like you run into an issue when you take "real" in one and only one context and then try and use that context when people are using it in another.

When people say "America is a real country" they do not mean "real" in the sense that it exists as a physical entity, they are using "real" in a different context to that, in the same way that when someones says "I saw Star Wars" they do not mean they actually saw Darth Vader running around trying to kill Luke Skywalker.

When people say "America is a real country" the context of the word "real" is that it exists as a designated country. Designated countries exists purely as abstract concepts in the minds of those who agree them. But using the word "real" in that context is perfectly fine because it means yes America is a country that has been designated as such by a group of people on Earth which is a physical place.

mangaroosh wrote: »

Again, there is a difference between knowldege and information. You may be able to explain in great detail, everything about childbirth, but a woman who has experienced childbirth will have knowledge about it that you have no access to.

True but she will also lack plenty of knowledge about it that I will have. Which, again, is why people 5000 years ago had such wacky inaccurate ideas of their bodies, because they had not clue what was actually happening when things happened, such as child birth.

You highlight the point yourself, difference between knowledge and information. The mother will have plenty of information about the experience of childbirth, the sensations and feelings she is experiencing. But that goes quite short of knowledge about child birth.

It is like the difference between electrocuting yourself and having a degree in electromagnetism.

mangaroosh wrote: »

What is there to explain without experience?

Nothing, but that isn't really the point. The whole point of the explanations is to explain the things around us, to explain our experiences.

I've nothing against experience, but you seem to put far to much weight in the knowledge you can gain from experience alone. You gain very little if any knowledge from the experience itself. It is only when you attempt to analysise and explain the experience and others like it do you gain knowledge.

mangaroosh wrote: »

verification is the act of confirming if something is true.

No it isn't, verification is the act of confirming if the model we have in our head (or on paper) about how something is and behaves matches future observations (or experiences).

You experience sharp pain in your head. You see a rock as fallen from a wall on your head. You instantly form an explanation, mostly through instinct, that a brick falling on your head is damaging to your head and thus causes the sensation of pain. You have straight away gone from experience to explanation, you have just explained your experience. This model (brick falling on head causes pain) will be tested further in the future as you have more experiences with things fall on your head to compare to the model and its predictions

Another example is you are going into hospital to have a scan. They give you an injection of liquid to show up on the machine. This liquid (speaking from experience) gives you the experience of having peed in your pants. You instantly form a model of what has happened, this liquid they injected you with causes you to pee. You reach down and find that it isn't wet. You haven't peed your pants, despite the experience of doing so.

Puzzled you re-evaluate your model in your head. This liquid doesn't do that. The nurse then explains to you that the liquid makes the groan head up, giving the experience of peeing your pants. Ah, your model (based on 3rd party information) is better now, though of course the nurse could just be lying to you. But still your model is better than when it was that the liquid made you pee your pants.

This is a good example of how personal assessment of experience can be faulty, as we humans are not particularly good at testing our models, our explanations, as well as they should be tested.

It is all very well to say that you must experience something to have knowledge of it, but often we don't have the correct knowledge of what we experience either.

It comes down to a matter of trust, and you appear to trust your own asessment of what is happening far to much. I would trust the nurse's explanation of what is happening better than I would trust my own.

Yes the nurse could be lying to me, but my own brain could be lying to me as well (ie be mistaken), as it was when I first thought "Oh no I'm peeing myself"

I agree with you that people should be sceptical of what they are told by others. But they should be equally if not more sceptical of what they are told by themselves.

mangaroosh wrote: »

How does he develop this model?

Instinctively. The human brain is constantly modelling the world around us based on our experiences, we are constantly trying to explain our experiences.

It often making a pretty bad job of this (hence religion) but that is a different issue (the accuracy of the model rather than the model itself)

mangaroosh wrote: »

How does he confirm that his model is correct i.e. how does he compare his model to what is true?

He doesn't "compare his model to what is true" since we never know truth. He compares his model to future experiences and adjusts as necessary is the model is predicting something that does not match the experience

A rock falls on your head and you have a sharp pain. You explain this with the model that things falling on your head hurt you.

Then a balloon falls on your head. You don't have a sharp pain, as your earlier model might have predicted. You instinctively update your model that only heavy hard things falling on your head cause pain.

You are probably doing this at 4 years old by instinct. But you are still doing it.

mangaroosh wrote: »

Accuract is defined by what is true and what is not. The accuracy of something is determined by its proximity to the truth. If the truth cannot be known, then accuracy is meaningless.

No it isn't because as you say accuracy is determined by it's proxminity to the truth. Something can be a bit true and a bit false. Truth can only be known if you know something is 100 percent accurate, which you cannot ever know (how could you know that?)

It may be 99 percent accurate, which means it is not true but pretty close to it. It may be 8 percent accurate which means it is a little but true but mostly false.

mangaroosh wrote: »

What is the reason that humans never know if something they believe is true or not?

Because we have no way of determining if our model of something is 100 percent accurate, that there is nothing left to know about something.

Again it is like chess. If you only ever see your King move one square can you say that your model that a King piece can only ever move one square is "true"? You can't. Tomorrow you may wake up and witness a Castle move (King moves two to move behind the Castle). Your "true" model is now not actually true, it is only sort of true and sort of false.

We can never know if something is true or not because we can never know that we have accounted for all possibilities because we can't know all possibilities.

mangaroosh wrote: »

OK, but the above deals more with the predictions of how gravity will operate, as opposed to its existence.

When you say "its" existence what do you mean?

"Gravity" is a term given to a model of an observed phenomena. "Gravity" is itself a model that makes predictions. And a pretty bad model at that, we don't really know what gravity actually is, what is actually happening. We can model some basic attributes of it and thus make predictions about it but scientists have been trying for years to figure out what is actually happening with the phenomena we call "gravity"

mangaroosh wrote: »

One of the main issues with modelling, and often the reason for their [eventual] inaccuracy, is that they are based on assumptions that are not usually questioned

I couldn't agree with you more, to my mind such non-critical questioning of the models we construct goes a long way to explaining religion, spiritualism and the paranormal.

People construct very basic models of their experience based on personal bias and then stop without attempting to test them properly and are just happy to accept these explanations because they are comforting or exciting.

mangaroosh wrote: »

One can determing when one's mind is playing a trick on them by "questioning" their assumptions about what their mind has "told" them.

Yes but then you get into a never ending loop. You question what your mind just told you and you determine that it was a mental illusion.

Ok, now how do you determine what you just determined wasn't one as well?

You are assuming you will eventually get to an answer that you can be sure is not an illusion. But that is an unfounded assumption since you only have your mind to tell you this so how can you test if it is or is not an illusion?

It is like saying I know I lied to myself about the last 10 times but I know I'm not lying to myself now. How could you know that?

Zombrex

ayumi wrote: »

cant we stop arguing about this,
. if you believe that god doesnt exist even though there are many things proving there is a god
.if you believe there is a god then you have enough info about proving about the existness of god

whatever you believe just live your life on what you believe and try not to get into such aruguments with people.

Don't throw you toys out of the pram just because you don't like the responses to your posts (on the A & A form as well I might add).

People apparently better skilled in the art of critical thinking than you have been taking time out to reply to your posts. You should consider this an education, and a bit of education never hurt anyone.

Instead of getting snotty about it you should be paying attention to what they are saying, you might even learn something.

liamw

ayumi wrote: »

cant we stop arguing about this,
. if you believe that god doesnt exist even though there are many things proving there is a god
.if you believe there is a god then you have enough info about proving about the existness of god

whatever you believe just live your life on what you believe and try not to get into such aruguments with people.

Can you give us an example of all these things that prove God's existence because we all seem to have missed them?

Turtwig

Wicknight wrote: »

Yes the nurse could be lying to me, but my own brain could be lying to me as well (ie be mistaken), as it was when I first thought "Oh no I'm peeing myself"

I agree with you that people should be sceptical of what they are told by others. But they should be equally if not more sceptical of what they are told by themselves.

I just though I'd add this curious phenomenon to strengthen wicknight's point.


It's a really bizarre thing whereby amputees may feel pain and think bodyparts that no longer exist actually do.

I placed a coffee cup in front of John and asked him to grab it [with his phantom limb]. Just as he said he was reaching out, I yanked the cup away.
"Ow!" he yelled. "Don't do that!"
"What's the matter?"
"Don't do that", he repeated. "I had just got my fingers around the cup handle when you pulled it. That really hurts!"
Hold on a minute. I wrench a real cup from phantom fingers and the person yells, ouch! The fingers were illusory, but the pain was real - indeed, so intense that I dared not repeat the experiment.

Who do you trust here the doctor or your personal experience?

roosh

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Exactly. Both meanings of the word are valid. But as I keep saying, even if we use mangaroosh's narrow definition of the word this statement is wrong:

Again, it isn't my narrow definition, it is the definition that is found in the Oxford English Dictionary and 12 of the 14 other definitions cited by your good self.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Personal experience most certainly does take place solely in the mind. Even if you are experiencing something that is objective, your experience of it is still entirely dependent on your mind. The "experience" is nothing more than a series of electrical signals stored chemically in your brain. Kill your brain and the experience no longer exists.

If experience was objective, things like this would not happen but they happen all the time.

Again, the brain and the mind are not the same thing.

roosh

liamw wrote: »

How do you live your everyday life? If you actually lived by the rules your setting about in this thread you would lock yourself into a basement forever.

that may be how you would live your life based on what I have said here, it's not how I choose to live though

roosh

Malty_T wrote: »

MatlyT.
Sam Vines.
Malty T.
????????

is there an explanation needed?

iUseVi

mangaroosh wrote: »

Again, the brain and the mind are not the same thing.

Dualism....really?

Sam Vimes

mangaroosh wrote: »

The problem appears to be a general overview of the concept of peer review without examining the fundamental principles upon which it is based.

Just to be clear, the argument thus far has not been about anyone's opinion on the existence of God, it has been about personal experience being the only available means with regard to the acquistion of knowledge.

The fact that personal experience is the only way in which knowledge can be acquired, does not mean that God exists, that would be a non-sequitor, it simply means that personal experience is the only way in which knowledge can be acquired.

The peer review process is [in generic terms] about verifying the truth of one persons claim, to assess whether or not it is true. In order for this assessment to be made, those verifying the claim must know what the truth is, otherwise they cannot be in a position to make a statement of truth with regard to the claim.

The peer review process then involves a large number of individuals acquiring knowledge for themselves, through personal experience, so that they can then be in a position to make a truth claim themselves - that either supports or denies the original claim.

If the majority of people, who have acquired knowledge of the truth for themselves, agree that the original claim is correct, then the original claim is deemed to be correct, and this is disseminated to a wider audience.

The thing is, that this wider audience then chooses to believe or not, the information about the truth that they have been presented with. They cannot know that it is true unless, they verify it for themselves.

Again, it is only those that verify the claim for themselves that can know the truth. If many people verify a claim for themselves, they may all agree with a particular claim, but those that do not verify the claim for themselves can only choose to believe or not, on the basis of faith.

You use the words "know" and "truth" in a way that does not exist in science. There is no such thing as a "truth" claim in science, there is only "this is the best answer we can currently come to but it could be wrong and might be updated in the future". Even if a million scientists all experience something they still acknowledge the possibility that they might be wrong but you feel qualified to say you "know" something because you think you experienced it even if you have no way of externally verifying it. Unless you have access to some kind of deeper knowledge that no one else on the planet does then all I'm seeing is someone who has a very high opinion of themselves.

mangaroosh wrote: »

Again, it isn't my narrow definition, it is the definition that is found in the Oxford English Dictionary and 12 of the 14 other definitions cited by your good self.

But not 14 of the 14. Our definition of the word is a perfectly valid understanding of it and it is the understanding that everyone I have ever come across has except you.

mangaroosh wrote: »

Again, the brain and the mind are not the same thing.

In the same way as a computer's software is not the same as its hard drive, ram and cpu. It uses the hardware but it does not exist independently of the hardware and cannot "perceive" anything other than the signals from its input devices even though it's made of atoms.

You have all these grand metaphysical ideas of the nature of experience but I have seen nothing to suggest that any of them accurately reflect reality. You talk about experiencing things at the sub-atomic level but where did you even get that idea? Do you have any evidence of it or do you just choose to believe it because it allows you to say you can "know" things?

Morbert

mangaroosh wrote: »

I amn't ignoring the "personal characteristics" or "particular states", I am just highlighting that they do not refer to the personal characteristics of the mind of a particular individual, or the state of mind of a particular individual. Rather what they refer to is the personal characteristics of the mind itself.

However, I won't argue that point any further because it will become a semantic argument.

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=personal&sub=Search+WordNet&o2=&o0=1&o7=&o5=&o1=1&o6=&o4=&o3=&h=00

Princeton Wordnet wrote:

•S: (adj) personal (concerning or affecting a particular person or his or her private life and personality)

By using the words personal and particular, they are referring to those characteristics that vary between people, such as intoxication, or a preference for chocolate "as opposed to what is determined only by the universal condition of human experience and knowledge." .

The issue again however, is that experience is not necessarily dependent on the "personal characteristics of the mind". It is the rationalisation and explanation of the experience that is.

An experience is not necessarily dependent on a personal characteristic or particular state of mind, true. The rationalisation and explanation of the experience is also no necessarily dependent on a personal characteristic or particular state of mind. The explanation of the experience does, however, depend on the mind for existence, and that is an important distinction.

Scientific theories are dependent on the personal characteristics of the mind. They may be agreed upon, but they dependent on the personal characterisitcs of the minds, of a large number of individuals.

A pertinent issue is how the macrocosmic view is made up, and it is made up of the assembly at the microcosmic leve.

Scientific theories are not dependent on personal characteristics of the mind. Only the properties that are collectively shared by any rational being.

Personal experiences is the only way, because anyone who seeks to verify a claim, must do so personally, using their personal experience. If someone seeks to run an experiment to verify a claim, they do so personally, and they add their claim about the truth to the original claim, which may either support it or deny it.

Again, I agree that personal experience is essential. But if I want to build an impersonal description, then I must also compare my experience to those of others, to see what facets of observation do not depend on the individual.

The verification of a claim is ultimately just a sum of the claims, of a large number of people, based on their personal experience. Only these people can know whether or not a claim is true, through their experience. If many people agree then it is deemed to be true.

Scientists go one further. Even those who experience experimental results cannot know whether or not a claim is true. They can only affirm their confidence that a particular theory has predictive power.

Lets just say that I make a claim about reality. No one else here can know if I am telling the truth if they don't personally verify my claim.

Sam Vines may carry out the experiment and deem my claim to be true. He may then report that to the rest of the people on here.

Again, no one other than Sam can know if it is true or not.

Maybe MatlyT carries out the same experiment and finds that the claim is true, and subsequently reports it on here.


Now we have a position where the truth claim has been backed up by two independent experiments, that is independent of me. The thing is that the two verification experiments were just as reliant on personal experience as was my own first one, and indeed the only people who can know the truth about the claim are those who carried it out personally.

Repeatability serves two purposes. It allows other people to verify a claim. It also helps to rule out observational effects that might be due to particular states of minds or personal characteristics. Malty_T might have been intoxicated when he made the measurement, or Sam Vimes may have been reading the rule backwards etc. Repeatability removes these errors. (In reality, scientists make multiple measurements themselves anyway)

Based on your faith in Malty T and Sam Vines, you may choose to believe that the original truth claim was true - they may have a good reputation as top scientists, and you trust their judgement.

The thing is, you still cannot know if the claim is true or not, as MaltyT and Sam Vines could be lying to you, for whatever reason, or indeed, they may be afflicted with the same fallibility of senses that I am.

Yup, completely agree.

Also, it is only through the personal experience of a larger number of people that a more concise explanation is formulated, but this is still dependent on each individuals personal experience. Some may be better able to rationalise it than others, but that only means they can come up with better words to describe it.

A scientific theory is impersonal. The trajectory of a ball prescribed by Newton's laws will be the same for everyone.

My knowledge of how to drive a car is not "based on personal feelings, tastes or opinions". My rationalisation that I am a good driver or a bad driver is. Therefore my knowledge of how to drive a car (gained through personal experience) is objective, but my rationalisation of my ability is subjective.

And that is precisely why this kind of rationalisation would never be considered scientific. "good" and "bad" are subjective, but if you constructed a description of your personal experience (say the speed of the car) that could be communicated to others (say a guard with a speed gun), then they could see if your experience conforms to their own. The description would no longer depend on you personally.

There aren't that many definitions, in fact the definitions that have been provided so far have seemed to conform to the OED definition, especially those more reliable sources.

However, there does appear to be multiple misinterpretations of the definitions, and it does appear to be a common misinterpretation. However, a common misinterpretation is still a misinterpretation.

The philosophy essay, while interesting is highly, highly debatable, not least because there is a discussion on the meaning and understanding of words, and not once is the dictionary referenced. Now, I'm not saying to stick rigidly to the definition without any discussion, but when discussing the meaning of a word, then one source that must be referenced, in order for the discussion to be granted any shred of credibility, is the dictionary. That is what dictionaries are for.

But it isn't a misinterpretation. Look at definition 1. of the OED, or the one I supplied from the Webster dictionary.

roosh

Wicknight wrote: »

The comparssion was to highlight the difference contexts that a word such as "seen" can be used in. If you take only one and then say people have seen Star Wars you will run into a paradox because Star Wars never actually happened, just like you run into an issue when you take "real" in one and only one context and then try and use that context when people are using it in another.

When people say "America is a real country" they do not mean "real" in the sense that it exists as a physical entity, they are using "real" in a different context to that, in the same way that when someones says "I saw Star Wars" they do not mean they actually saw Darth Vader running around trying to kill Luke Skywalker.

When people say "America is a real country" the context of the word "real" is that it exists as a designated country. Designated countries exists purely as abstract concepts in the minds of those who agree them. But using the word "real" in that context is perfectly fine because it means yes America is a country that has been designated as such by a group of people on Earth which is a physical place.

Ok, the issue has become somewhat muddied here. The point you make is indeed correct, although not necessarily central to the issue at hand. The issue is not what people mean when they say, "America is a real country".

I won't dispute what you say above, although I don't fully accept it, as the word country adds validity to the statement, even though what individual people mean when they make that statement is beyond our scope here.

Again, to return to the issue that was raised, it is more to do with the statement that "America exists in reality", as opposed to being a real country. I could provide evidence to support the claim that, "America exists in reality".

Now, we have both agreed that America does not, in fact, exist in reality (despite being a real country), however, there are others who may not share our opinion (or knowledge, depending on the accuracy of the statement). To them I can provide evidence to support the claim that America exists in reality.

You may not accept the evidence, as you are in possession of knowledge that falsifies the claim, however, there may (and I propose there definitely will) be people who accept that America exists in reality, who will accept the evidence as verification [in part] of the claim.

This highlights the fallibility of "externally verifiable evidence" with regard to truth claims, when being assessed by those not already in possession of the truth.

In a similar manner, ample evidence was provided to support the claim that the earth was at the centre of the universe, yet this turned out to be incorrect. Granted this was falsified by further evidence, however, there was also evidence provided to suggest that the earth was flat, which again shows that the fallibility of "externally verifiable evidence".

Wicknight wrote: »

True but she will also lack plenty of knowledge about it that I will have. Which, again, is why people 5000 years ago had such wacky inaccurate ideas of their bodies, because they had not clue what was actually happening when things happened, such as child birth.

How will you verify that the knowledge that you have is correct?

Wicknight wrote: »

You highlight the point yourself, difference between knowledge and information. The mother will have plenty of information about the experience of childbirth, the sensations and feelings she is experiencing. But that goes quite short of knowledge about child birth.

The mother will actually have relatively little information about child birth but will instead have the knowledge of child birth. Knowledge about childbirth, i.e. knowledge of information about childbirth is not knowledge of childbirth.

Firstly, any knowledge known about childbirth has to be verified through personal experience. That is not to say that one has to experience childbirth, as the knowledge acquired through the experience is different to knowledge of the information about childbirth. However, knowledge of the information cannot just be made up out of thin air, it must be observed, measured, witnessed, etc. in order to be verified. These are all forms of personal experience, although the nature of what is experienced is, perhaps, not captured by those expressions.

Just to clarify furhter, a person can have all the information about how to drive a car, however that does not mean that they actually know how to drive, or have knowledge of driving. In order to gain this knowledge, and indeed verify that the information they have is correct, personal experience is required.

On the other hand a person may have absolutely no information about driving, but may know how to drive through personal experience.

Wicknight wrote: »

It is like the difference between electrocuting yourself and having a degree in electromagnetism.

There are different types of knowledge here. On the one hand, the person with the degree in electromagnetism may not know what it is to be electrocuted. On the other hand, the person who was electrocuted may not have a rational explanation for the experience.

Of course, any information with regard to electromagnetism was either initially gained through personal experience, or it was verified through personal experience. That is information that is deemed to be correct, of course - otherwise it is merely believed to be true.

Wicknight wrote: »

Nothing, but that isn't really the point. The whole point of the explanations is to explain the things around us, to explain our experiences.

Indeed, it is to explain our experiences, if we don't experience anything, there is nothing to explain. If there is an explanation without an experience it cannot be known if the explanation is true or not, the explanation will ultimately be meaningless.

This is why personal experience is not only essential, but it is an unavoidable facet of human existence, that is neither bypassed by religion nor science, nor any other human endeavour.

Wicknight wrote: »

I've nothing against experience, but you seem to put far to much weight in the knowledge you can gain from experience alone. You gain very little if any knowledge from the experience itself. It is only when you attempt to analysise and explain the experience and others like it do you gain knowledge.

Experience is the only way in which knowledge can be gained, that is why it is so important (and unavoidable).

Without experiene one only has belief, not knowledge. Again, a person can know all the information there is to know about how to drive a car, but until they personally experience driving, they cannot know that the information they possess is true or not.

Knowledge of information about something that is accepted as true, without personal verification (through the unavoidable means of personal experience) is merely belief.

If someone beleives information, because the track record of the methodology used has been proven to be very reliable, or because those who report it have solid reputation, then that belief is based on faith in the methodology or the people.

Similiarly, if someone accepts as true that the methodology is indeed very reliable, without testing it for themselves, then they merely believe in the methodology.

Wicknight wrote: »

No it isn't, verification is the act of confirming if the model we have in our head (or on paper) about how something is and behaves matches future observations (or experiences).

Ok, that is not necessarily what is meant by the word, but we can work with it.

The something that I referred to could be a model, while the "observations" would be deemed the relative truth.

If of course the observations are not deemed the relative truth, then we cannot verify our model, because in order to see if our model is correct, we need to compare its predictions to the relative truth.

Wicknight wrote: »

You experience sharp pain in your head. You see a rock as fallen from a wall on your head. You instantly form an explanation, mostly through instinct, that a brick falling on your head is damaging to your head and thus causes the sensation of pain. You have straight away gone from experience to explanation, you have just explained your experience. This model (brick falling on head causes pain) will be tested further in the future as you have more experiences with things fall on your head to compare to the model and its predictions

Another example is you are going into hospital to have a scan. They give you an injection of liquid to show up on the machine. This liquid (speaking from experience) gives you the experience of having peed in your pants. You instantly form a model of what has happened, this liquid they injected you with causes you to pee. You reach down and find that it isn't wet. You haven't peed your pants, despite the experience of doing so.

Puzzled you re-evaluate your model in your head. This liquid doesn't do that. The nurse then explains to you that the liquid makes the groan head up, giving the experience of peeing your pants. Ah, your model (based on 3rd party information) is better now, though of course the nurse could just be lying to you. But still your model is better than when it was that the liquid made you pee your pants.

This is a good example of how personal assessment of experience can be faulty, as we humans are not particularly good at testing our models, our explanations, as well as they should be tested.

It is all very well to say that you must experience something to have knowledge of it, but often we don't have the correct knowledge of what we experience either.

The issue as outlined above, is not necessarily to do with the knowledge acquired through experience, rather to do with the predictive power, of the subjective model we formulate, based on the knowledge gained from that personal experience.

With the rock example above, when the rock falls on our head and we rationalise the sensations as pain, we have knowledge that the rock that that just fell on our head caused the sensation we call pain.

We may formulate a model, based on the knowledge acquired from that experience, however, that model and any predictions made are are not knowledge. They are attempts to predict future events, based on that knowledge, and so it is our predictive powers that are inaccurate, as opposed to the knowledge of the experience.

The nature of knowledge is such that it cannot be known prior to being acquired, so the accuracy of a prediction has no bearing on the knowledge that we possess. The question mark is over our predictive powers, or our ability to use the knowledge we have. Again, however, our ability to apply knowledge to a wider context, than that within which it was acquired, has no bearing on the knowledge itself.


With regard to the liquid that makes you "experience" having peed yourself, it is not so much that you experience peeing yourself, as you think that you have peed yourself. Of course, you can check for various indications of having peed yourself and arrive at the conclusion on your own. You may find it hard to accept the conclusion because the subjective rationalisation of the feeling may contradict what you are actually experiencing.

Models are formulated based on knowledge. Early models may be based on relatively little knowledge, however, without any initial knowledge the model is meaningless.

Of course a model can be formulate from nothing, but unless there is experience to confirm its accuracy, it remains meaningless.

Wicknight wrote: »

It comes down to a matter of trust, and you appear to trust your own asessment of what is happening far to much. I would trust the nurse's explanation of what is happening better than I would trust my own.

Yes the nurse could be lying to me, but my own brain could be lying to me as well (ie be mistaken), as it was when I first thought "Oh no I'm peeing myself"

The reason that you would trust the nurses explanation is because it matched your experience. If on the other hand the nurse had said that it makes you think you just won X-factor, you would not really accept her explanation - I presume.

Also, there is an inherent assumption about the nurses explanation that needs to be questioned. Where is it that you think the nurse got the explanation from? She may not have experienced it herself, but the company may have manufactured the liquid may have told those in the medical profession. The question then becomes, where did the company get the explanation from? More than likely it was from medical tests on patients who were asked to repoth their personal experience.

In this case the manufacturers would beleive the testimonies of the patients (or perhaps the majority of the patients) who reported their personal experience. Those in the medical profession would then have believed the manufacturers, and would inform the patients. The patients would then accept this informaton as true or false, depending on their personal experience.

Wicknight wrote: »

I agree with you that people should be sceptical of what they are told by others. But they should be equally if not more sceptical of what they are told by themselves.

I agree to a certain extent. In fact, spiritual practice and personal investigation into the nature of the mind will highlight that the mind can be a "trixy little hobbit", and may help with identifying the subjective nature of the mind. However, the "true nature of the mind", is somewhat different, and experience of this may foster an understanding of the objective nature of experience.

Wicknight wrote: »

Instinctively. The human brain is constantly modelling the world around us based on our experiences, we are constantly trying to explain our experiences.

I would argue that it is the ["ordinary"] mind that is constantly modelling. The brain on the other hand stores the knowledge that the ["ordinary"] mind bases its models on.

Wicknight wrote: »

It often making a pretty bad job of this (hence religion) but that is a different issue (the accuracy of the model rather than the model itself)

I agree again to a certian extent, particularly in the case of religion. The models of reality (and God) that have been developed are, in many cases, very inaccurate.

However, it is understandable, to a degree, when one considers the difficulty (or impossibility) of transferring knowledge through the medium of language. Or indeed the propensity of people to misinterpret the information they receive, for reasons that are often not necessarily their own fault.

Wicknight wrote: »

He doesn't "compare his model to what is true" since we never know truth. He compares his model to future experiences and adjusts as necessary is the model is predicting something that does not match the experience

Again, the role of personal experience is essential for assessing the accuracy of a model.

The assumption that "we never know truth", has been widely touted, however, the nature of the discussion so far has been to challenge that. Why can "we never know truth"?

To continue however, the personal experiences must be taken at least as relative truth, in order to verify the accuracy of the model, because they are either [relatively] true or they aren't. If they are not taken as [relatively] true, then comparing the model to something that is [relatively] false, will not facilitate verification of the model.

The model will remain meaningless if all experience is deemed not to be true.

Wicknight wrote: »

A rock falls on your head and you have a sharp pain. You explain this with the model that things falling on your head hurt you.

Then a balloon falls on your head. You don't have a sharp pain, as your earlier model might have predicted. You instinctively update your model that only heavy hard things falling on your head cause pain.

You are probably doing this at 4 years old by instinct. But you are still doing it.

Again, the issue does not lie with the inaccuracy, or unreliability, of the knowledge, it rests with the persons ability to make predictions using that knowledge. When that knowledge is applied to potential future experiences, outside the context it was acquired in, then the prediction, not the knowledge is likely to be incorrect.

As said before, the knowledge that a person will acquire from a rock falling on their head will be somehting like "that specific rock, falling from that particular place, under these conditions, and hitting me on the head, will induce this feeling that I refer to as pain".

They may then use this knowledge to formulate a predictive model, but if they apply it to a balloon, then the problem lies with their predictive and interpretive abilities, and not the knowledge they have acquired.

A more accurate model may perhaps be: "a similar sized rock, falling from a similar position, under similar conditions, and hitting me on the head, will induce a feeling similar to that pain"

Further: "a bigger rock, falling from a similar position, under similar conditions, and hitting me on the head, will induce more pain, than what I have experienced"

Of course, in order to verify the prediction of this model, the person will have to have the experience of a bigger rock hitting them on the head.

Wicknight wrote: »

No it isn't because as you say accuracy is determined by it's proxminity to the truth. Something can be a bit true and a bit false. Truth can only be known if you know something is 100 percent accurate, which you cannot ever know (how could you know that?) It may be 99 percent accurate, which means it is not true but pretty close to it. It may be 8 percent accurate which means it is a little but true but mostly false.

How can something be said to be "a bit true" if the truth is not known?
How can a percentage of truth be applied to something, if the truth is not known?

Wicknight wrote: »

Because we have no way of determining if our model of something is 100 percent accurate, that there is nothing left to know about something.

Again, the issue is not that the knowledge is unreliable, rather the model that is constructed based on that knowledge is not known to be complete.

If you know how to drive a particular car, and you try to formulate a model of how to drive all vehicles, based on that knowledge, then the issue lies with your model.

If on the other hand you accept that you know how to drive that particular car, without trying to apply it to all vehicles, then your model is perfectly accurate.

Wicknight wrote: »

Again it is like chess. If you only ever see your King move one square can you say that your model that a King piece can only ever move one square is "true"? You can't. Tomorrow you may wake up and witness a Castle move (King moves two to move behind the Castle). Your "true" model is now not actually true, it is only sort of true and sort of false.

We can never know if something is true or not because we can never know that we have accounted for all possibilities because we can't know all possibilities.

Again, the issue lies with modelling and not with knowledge gained from personal experience.

If you try to apply the knowledge outside the context it was acquired in, then the prediction is open to failure. This is not a failing on the part of the knowledge, rather the application of it.

If one watches a game of chess between two of the elite players, under competition conditions, and one sees a player move the bishop in a certain manner, and this move is accepted as being legitimate, then that person knows that the bishop can make that move, under those conditions.

They don't have to assume that, that particular move is all the bishop can do, but they can know that the bishop can, at least, make that move.

Wicknight wrote: »

When you say "its" existence what do you mean?

The existence of the "force" that is referred to as Gravity.

Wicknight wrote: »

"Gravity" is a term given to a model of an observed phenomena. "Gravity" is itself a model that makes predictions. And a pretty bad model at that, we don't really know what gravity actually is, what is actually happening. We can model some basic attributes of it and thus make predictions about it but scientists have been trying for years to figure out what is actually happening with the phenomena we call "gravity"

Fair enough, but whatever it is that is referred to as Gravity, we experience it. Gravity may be a poor description of it, but we still experience it, and we know it, we use it everyday. Our inability to explain what it is that we are experiencing has no bearing on the objectivity of the experience.

Ultimately the "force" doesn't actually need to be explained, whatever it is, exists without being explained, and we will continue to experience it without the explanation. We will do this objectively, because it is not dependent on our mind for existence.

Wicknight wrote: »

I couldn't agree with you more, to my mind such non-critical questioning of the models we construct goes a long way to explaining religion, spiritualism and the paranormal.

Such non-critical questioning, may also go some way to explaining atheism.

Wicknight wrote: »

People construct very basic models of their experience based on personal bias and then stop without attempting to test them properly and are just happy to accept these explanations because they are comforting or exciting.

Again, the constructed model is different from the knowledge on which it is based

Wicknight wrote: »

Yes but then you get into a never ending loop. You question what your mind just told you and you determine that it was a mental illusion.

Ok, now how do you determine what you just determined wasn't one as well?

You are assuming you will eventually get to an answer that you can be sure is not an illusion. But that is an unfounded assumption since you only have your mind to tell you this so how can you test if it is or is not an illusion?

The thing is, once an illusion is dispelled, it doesn't mean that another illusion takes its place. Once an illusion is dispelled, what is left is truth. Of course, if one may invent another illusion, however, that too can be dispelled.

The act of determining that something isn't trure, automatically leads to some truth. Discovering that America does not exist in reality, is a discovery of truth (I posit), that is not necessarily replaced with a different determination that requires verification.

Wicknight wrote: »

It is like saying I know I lied to myself about the last 10 times but I know I'm not lying to myself now. How could you know that?

if you know that the last ten things were lies, then you know they weren't true, so those lies no longer make up part of what you believe is true, so you are therefore closer to the truth.

Zombrex

mangaroosh wrote: »

Experience is the only way in which knowledge can be gained, that is why it is so important (and unavoidable).

Without experiene one only has belief, not knowledge. Again, a person can know all the information there is to know about how to drive a car, but until they personally experience driving, they cannot know that the information they possess is true or not.

Knowledge of information about something that is accepted as true, without personal verification (through the unavoidable means of personal experience) is merely belief.

I think this is your central point, and in the effort to keep our correspondence manageable I'm going to cut the reply down this (apologies if I've miss out anything else of importance but on a different topic, point it out and I'll reply to that as well)

There is a certain flaw in your argument there, that being that through personal experience we can know "truth", we can know that something is true or not.

The problem with that of course, as I tried to explain in the previous post, is that we never know something is true or not.

We can only deal in degrees of accuracy. And certainly experiencing something yourself and seeing that a model of how you think something will behave (say based on being taught it in school) does behave will increase how accurate you believe a model is.

But that is not the same thing as saying you now know something is true. You don't. You now know that your model is a bit more accurate than it was.

And equally you can experience something and based on a mistake in your perceptions you can believe something is accurate when it isn't or inaccurate when it is not.

Personal experience is not the be all and end all you seem to make it out to be. Again I would trust what the nurse is saying to me above what I was experiencing because I was getting confusing mixed messages from my experience itself.

Equally I don't feel any strong need to verify what I've been taught about electromagnetism is actually true. You can take the position that it is merely a belief not knowledge unless I do but I think that is being overly dismissive of the work scientists have done and far too trusting in one's own ability to verify something.

Say I did actually do an experience and my results were different to what I've been taught. Do I take the position then that what I've been taught is wrong? That to me would be a quite silly thing to do. I would be trusting my own personal experience with the experiment over hundreds of years of collective experiments.

It is far more likely in my opinion that my understanding of my personal experiences doing the experiment are wrong than everyone else's is.

rohatch

mangaroosh wrote: »

Again, it isn't my narrow definition, it is the definition that is found in the Oxford English Dictionary and 12 of the 14 other definitions cited by your good self.

Mangaroosh any chance you could start a seperate thread on your chosen subject and just give us the highlights here. You are hi jacking the thread over the meaning of words.

ayumi wrote: »

cant we stop arguing about this,
. if you believe that god doesnt exist even though there are many things proving there is a god
.if you believe there is a god then you have enough info about proving about the existness of god

whatever you believe just live your life on what you believe and try not to get into such aruguments with people.

Hilarious.

roosh

Malty_T wrote: »

I just though I'd add this curious phenomenon to strengthen wicknight's point.


It's a really bizarre thing whereby amputees may feel pain and think bodyparts that no longer exist actually do.


Who do you trust here the doctor or your personal experience?

I'll respond to this individually, although it was replied to in the response to Wicknight.


It is the minds rationalisation, that they are feeling pain in a part of the body that they no longer have, that is incorrect, and what they think they are experiencing is not what they actually are experiencing.

Whereas, the person can invesitgate for themselves and realise that they are not feeling pain in the part of the body that has been amputated, and realise that that that feeling is just a misinterpretation of what they are feeling.

The thing is though, they do not need to explain what it is they are feeling, they can just experience it without rationalising it to themselves or anyone else. They can allow the pain to just be.

roosh

iUseVi wrote: »

Dualism....really?

apologies, not entirely sure what is meant by that?

roosh

This is going to be a relatively long post, so brace yourself. The reason it is long is becasue there are a number of points to be made, with regard to certain assumptions contained below.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

You use the words "know" and "truth" in a way that does not exist in science. There is no such thing as a "truth" claim in science, there is only "this is the best answer we can currently come to but it could be wrong and might be updated in the future". Even if a million scientists all experience something they still acknowledge the possibility that they might be wrong but you feel qualified to say you "know" something because you think you experienced it even if you have no way of externally verifying it. Unless you have access to some kind of deeper knowledge that no one else on the planet does then all I'm seeing is someone who has a very high opinion of themselves.

So far it has only been asserted that we cannot know anything for definite. This is an assumption that so far has only been backed up by the assertion that this could be a dream. Of course we don't have to assume that this is a dream, or it isn't, we can discuss both cases. In the case where this is a dream, then the dreamer of this dream is what is referred to by the word God, in the context of the language that prevails within this dream.

If this isn't a dream, then it is possible to acquire knowledge of the truth, and the argument is that personal experience is the only manner in which knowledge can be acquired.

The issue appears to be with the nature of modelling as opposed to knowledge, where it can never be known if a model is full and complete. The reason being it attempts to make predictions about future events that are not yet known. The prediction of an event however is not knowledge, it is an attempt to predict what may later become knowledge. If a prediction is incorrect it isn't that the knowledge is incorrect, rather the application of that knowledge was incorrect.

Further, the issue appears to be with the nature of what is known. For example, it may have been "known" that all things were made up of atoms, but thent that was proven to be just a perception of reality, where an atom is actually made up of protons, neutrons and electrons, which themselves, it is posited, are made up of quarks, which are posited to be made up of vibrating strings. Of course one can not know if each of those things is the indivisible entity that completes the search for the smallest particle. However, what one can know as a result, is that what one sees through their vision, is not necessarily reality, and that it is a subjective view of reality.

One can extend this if one wishes, although one does not need to, to all physical things, including the human body and the brain, so realise that what we perceive as the brain is essentially just a subjective perception of reality. If one therefore has a model of the mind that is dependent on the brain, then the perception of the mind is likely to be incomplete, or inaccurate.


Further examination of the mind may reveal that who we think we are, is not necessarily who, or what we are. The ego refers to the conditioned mind that is the sum of all our learned behaviour, our identification with such concepts as our name, our nationality, our profession, our religious beliefs, concepts of good and bad, and a whole variety of other thoughts that we take to be ourselves. Examination of this "ego" helps us to determine who we are not, and then we can know who or what we are not. If one realises what one is not, then what is left is what one is.

What one is, cannot be summed up in words, because words are created in the mind and themselves do not exist in reality, thereofer one cannot define what one is in words, rather one must experience what one is, without clinging to explanations or rationalisations.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

But not 14 of the 14. Our definition of the word is a perfectly valid understanding of it and it is the understanding that everyone I have ever come across has except you.

Of the 14 one was not actually a dictionary - the access.autistics.org website.

The other one that was, and I stress this, only arguably different to the OED definition - as a very stong case could be made that it was - was a wikipeida source, and there was a second description from a wikipedia source that was very much inline with the OED.

So it wasn't so much that it wasn't 14 out of 14, it was rather that all the actual dictionaries (as opposed to websites) were in agreement. One non-dictionary, rather open source site was highly questionably not aligned in one of its descriptions, whiole another one of itse descriptions was 99% aligned, with a strong case that the other 1% was also aligned.

And just to re-iterate, the point you made was that I was using a very narrow definition. Apologies for having to state this so clearly, but it was you who was using the narrow definition.


Even by the definition you were using, the definition that you had, and that the others had would have been classed as subjective, while the dictionary would have been classed as objective, thereby making the dictionary the more reliable source even using your own definition.

You are clutching at straws, because you are trying to make the argument that you and other people, who have yet to provide credentials to verify their status as lexicogrophers, are in fact correct in your definition of the words, and that it is all dictionaries that are incorrect.


It is similar to a Christian arguing that all scientific findings are incorrect and that whatever the bible says is correct. So if you wish to continue arguing that point, by all means continue.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

In the same way as a computer's software is not the same as its hard drive, ram and cpu. It uses the hardware but it does not exist independently of the hardware and cannot "perceive" anything other than the signals from its input devices even though it's made of atoms.

There is a fundamental difference between the human mind, the human brain and a computer, not least becuase computers are manufactured by humans and are limited to what humans can make as opposed to what they know.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

You have all these grand metaphysical ideas of the nature of experience but I have seen nothing to suggest that any of them accurately reflect reality. You talk about experiencing things at the sub-atomic level but where did you even get that idea? Do you have any evidence of it or do you just choose to believe it because it allows you to say you can "know" things?

Although I mention experiencing things at the sub-atomic level, this is using a subjective description for means of illustrating a point.

We experience things at a sub-atomic, level, we experience things at a sub-quark level, at a sub-string level (if they prove to be accurate), we are experiencing reality as we speak. Scientific enquiry seeks [in many cases] to rationalise our experiences. The fact that we cannot explain what it is that we are experiencing does not mean that we don't know what we are experiencing, it means that we cannot explain it subjectively using our limited minds.

Again, the issue of being able to rationalise knowledge, fully and completely, is as of yet impossible without personal experience. One must either experience something to explain it, and then get other people to experience it and add their rationalisation to the explanation to develop a better description, or one must formulate some form of explanation and then verify it through personal experience.


Either way, experience is the only manner in which knowledge can be acquired.



Just to return to the assumption stated above - we can maybe limit the discussion to this topic - why can we never know anything?

roosh

I replied to the whole post below, but found that the discussion may perhaps be narrowed down, with one particular question, namely:

Can something be both objective and subjective at the same time?

Morbert wrote: »

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=personal&sub=Search+WordNet&o2=&o0=1&o7=&o5=&o1=1&o6=&o4=&o3=&h=00

Originally Posted by Princeton Wordnet
•S: (adj) personal (concerning or affecting a particular person or his or her private life and personality)

By using the words personal and particular, they are referring to those characteristics that vary between people, such as intoxication, or a preference for chocolate

If we work with that description, so as to avoid a semantic discussion, then we need to determine what varies between people, and therefore qualifies as subjective.
Also, what needs to be determined is, what constitutes variance between people?

Intoxication and preference for chocolate are indeed two examples, but there may indeed be many more. As has been borne out through the discussion on here, there is a variance between people's understanding of particular words, indeed there is a variance between how various dictionaries describe a word, which means there is a difference between how the people who write those dictionaries perceive a word.

This would then make words subjective.

Morbert wrote: »

"as opposed to what is determined only by the universal condition of human experience and knowledge.".

An experience is not necessarily dependent on a personal characteristic or particular state of mind, true.

We may be in agreement here so, that personal experience is therefore objective.
Does the question remain, over the objectivity of the knowledge acquired through personal experience?

Morbert wrote: »

The rationalisation and explanation of the experience is also no necessarily dependent on a personal characteristic or particular state of mind. The explanation of the experience does, however, depend on the mind for existence, and that is an important distinction.

Scientific theories are not dependent on personal characteristics of the mind. Only the properties that are collectively shared by any rational being.

I've put these together because I believe they deal with the same issue.

If we examine it further though. A scientific theory is based on words, symbols and numbers, that are designed to explain a particular phenomenon.

As we have seen, the understanding of words apparently varies between people, and even dictionaries. One example is how the word theory differs in its use in english and in a scientific context. Does this then make the word "theory" subjective, and indeed any word that is not understood the exact same by all people?

If people understand symbols differently, does that then make them subjective also?


Perhaps it may be better to ask the question if something can be both objective and subjective at the same time?

Morbert wrote: »

Again, I agree that personal experience is essential. But if I want to build an impersonal description, then I must also compare my experience to those of others, to see what facets of observation do not depend on the individual.

That is fair enough, to an extent, although the nature of an impersonal description coudl be argued. Personal opinions can be shared and consensus reached, to the extent that everyone can share the same personal opinion or description.

As such, the concept of the collective is simply the collection of individuals, and where opinions or descriptions are common among all, it simply means that each persons personal opinion or description is the same. There isn't a separate body that is the collective that has an opinion or description independent of the individual members.

For this reason opinions and descriptions are "dependent on the personal characteristics of the mind", the characteristics may be the same for every individual, but they are still "dependent on the personal characterisitcs of the mind".

Again, however, the question needs to be asked, can something be subjective and objective at the same time?

Morbert wrote: »

Scientists go one further. Even those who experience experimental results cannot know whether or not a claim is true. They can only affirm their confidence that a particular theory has predictive power.

That depends on what is claimed. If something is discovered for one phenomenon and it is claimed to be true for all phenomena, then this is an attempt to apply the knowledge gained from one thing, to all things.

The issue there lies not with what is known about the one thing, rather the attempt to apply it to all things.

Further, it depends on what is claimed. If it was claimed that all things are made up of atoms, then this may have been proven to be erroneus, however, if it was claimed that all things are made up of what will be referred to as atoms, which themselves could be made up of something else, then this statement would have been true.

The reason being, that what is referred to as an atom, is the perception of sub-atomic particles. It doesn't claim that atoms exist, rather that what is observed [subjectively] will be referred to as an atom.


A prediction is essentially a claim about truth. It is a prediction of what will later be either confirmed as true or denied as false, based on observation.

It must be remembered that a prediction based on knowledge is separate from the knowledge itself, it is an attempt to apply that knowledge in a context outside that which it was acquired. If the prediction is incorrect, it doesn't mean that the knowledge is incorrect, rather the attempted application of it is.

Morbert wrote: »

Repeatability serves two purposes. It allows other people to verify a claim.

Indeed, and an experiment must be carried out perosnally to be verified i.e. a person who does not carry out an experiment cannot verify a claim.

Morbert wrote: »

It also helps to rule out observational effects that might be due to particular states of minds or personal characteristics.

Indeed, but how this works is that those who repeat an experiment add their own subjective description to the already existing descriptions and try to develop a more consistent one.

The thing is, a person may describe an experience. That may then be repeatedly tested to assess its validity. It may turn out, that after 1000 tests a more accurate description of the experience is written up.

The person who originally described the experience may agree with the modified description, and say that yes, it more accurately describes the experience. However, in order for the original person to know that the subsequent description is accurate, they must compare it to their experience to verify it.

The fact that the original person described it inadequately does not necessarily mean their knowledge of the experience is flawed. It is more likely that their knowledge of the descriptive framework e.g. language is flawed, and therefore their attempt to describe it is affected.

To use the example of driving again. Lets say that we both can drive. Now, I explain how to drive to someone, but do not do a very good job of it, despite the fact that I am a fully licensed driver and display a high level of competency on the road.

Then you come along, and you explain how to drive much more clearly to another person, much better than I did. Lets say that you then display the same level of competency as I do.

This does not mean that your knowledge of how to drive is superior than mine, or that my knowledge is flawed. What it means is that you are better able to describe it than I am, for whatever reason.

Morbert wrote: »

Malty_T might have been intoxicated when he made the measurement, or Sam Vimes may have been reading the rule backwards etc. Repeatability removes these errors. (In reality, scientists make multiple measurements themselves anyway)

Indeed, the two who verified the claim may have been subject to some condition that obscured their judgement, the issue is, that repeatability does not necessarily get rid of this, it is just assumed that it does.

The reason being that if these two may have been subject to some condition that obscured their judgement, then every single person who verifies it could be suffering from the same condition, and this will not be eliminated by repeatability, rather entrenched because of it.

If you question Malty T and Sam Vines, then the same question should apply to all individuals, and therefore raise doubt about the overall verification process. We can call this the dilemma of individuality, where if one individual is doubted, then all individuals are doubted for the same reason.

Otherwise one can choose to believe that becaues all those people are in agreement, that none of them suffer from this condition, but this is merey a belief that because there is agreement among a larger number of people, that the claim is true. This belief may be based on faith, because it has proven to be successful before, or it may be blind faith (which is just belief).

In order to see if you are in agreement, you would need to carry out the test for yourself and acquire the knowledge that either confirms or denies the claim.

Of course, the case may be, that there is a certain assumption that is inherent in the human psyche, that goes unquestioned, that is inherent in all people. This will be borne out in the results of the verification process.

Indeed, spiritual practice can actually reveal that there are a number of assumptions that go unquestioned, and spiritual practice is [supposed to be] about actively questioning those assumptions. But just as all scientists may not enounter that "eureka" moment, neither might all spiritual practitioners, however, as is true for both, some will, and indeed, all can.

Morbert wrote: »

A scientific theory is impersonal. The trajectory of a ball prescribed by Newton's laws will be the same for everyone.

The thing is, Newton's theory was personal when he developed it. If someone tests it and deems it to be accurate, they then change their personal opinion to incorporate Newton's theory. They will then be of the opinion that Newton's theory is correct.

As more people agree, they change their personal opinion to match Newton's theory. It is not so much that it is impersonal, rather that they agree with it, probably on the grounds that it is accurate.

Morbert wrote: »

And that is precisely why this kind of rationalisation would never be considered scientific. "good" and "bad" are subjective, but if you constructed a description of your personal experience (say the speed of the car) that could be communicated to others (say a guard with a speed gun), then they could see if your experience conforms to their own. The description would no longer depend on you personally.

The thing is that such thing as a Kilometre, and an hour, which may be used to describe the speed of the car, were originally highly subjective. They were mere opinions as to what should be used as units of measurement. The fact that they became standardised, simply means that people reached an agreement or consensus on the opinion. They therefore remain subjective, despite consensus, as consensus is not a condition for objectivity.

Morbert wrote: »

But it isn't a misinterpretation. Look at definition 1. of the OED, or the one I supplied from the Webster dictionary.

to avoid a longer discussion on that issue, the question must be asked, can something be both subjective and objective at the same time?

roosh

rohatch wrote: »

Mangaroosh any chance you could start a seperate thread on your chosen subject and just give us the highlights here. You are hi jacking the thread over the meaning of words.

I suggested that this particular discussion be moved to a different thread, but I will continue to reply to posts regardless.

Sam Vimes

mangaroosh wrote: »

So far it has only been asserted that we cannot know anything for definite. This is an assumption that so far has only been backed up by the assertion that this could be a dream. Of course we don't have to assume that this is a dream, or it isn't, we can discuss both cases. In the case where this is a dream, then the dreamer of this dream is what is referred to by the word God, in the context of the language that prevails within this dream.

If this isn't a dream, then it is possible to acquire knowledge of the truth, and the argument is that personal experience is the only manner in which knowledge can be acquired.

You keep saying this over and over again but I didn't accept it the first time you said it and I'm not going to accept it the 15th time either. Whether this is a dream or not, our senses are fallible, our brains are fallible, our minds are fallible, our entire perception of the world is fallible, whether at the sub atomic level or otherwise. How do you propose to overcome this fallibility to "know" something? You keep saying that we can know something but I have yet to see an explanation for how we discern when we know something from when we think we know but are mistaken

mangaroosh wrote: »

And just to re-iterate, the point you made was that I was using a very narrow definition. Apologies for having to state this so clearly, but it was you who was using the narrow definition.

Eh no mate I completely accept your definition but me and everyone else on the forum is trying to explain to you that the word has several definitions.

mangaroosh wrote: »

You are clutching at straws, because you are trying to make the argument that you and other people, who have yet to provide credentials to verify their status as lexicogrophers, are in fact correct in your definition of the words, and that it is all dictionaries that are incorrect.

The dictionaries are not incorrect, it is your understanding of them that's incorrect. You use the word only for things that exist solely in the mind such as the concept of a kilometre but it can also be used to describe opinions, perspectives and understandings of things that objectively exist because, even though the object itself exists, the opinion, perspective or understanding exists solely in the mind. If I meet someone when they're in a bad mood I might think they're a horrible person but if you meet then when they're happy you might like them. We have different subjective opinions of the same person and there is no requirement for him to exist solely in our minds. If I look at a rock my perception of it is not the rock itself, it's a series of electrical and chemical signals being sent to my brain and processed by my unconscious and conscious minds. I have a subjective view of an objective object.

mangaroosh wrote: »

There is a fundamental difference between the human mind, the human brain and a computer, not least becuase computers are manufactured by humans and are limited to what humans can make as opposed to what they know.

No you just like to think there's a difference because it allows you to imagine that we have access to some kind of deeper knowledge even though there is nothing to suggest that we actually do.

mangaroosh wrote: »

We experience things at a sub-atomic, level, we experience things at a sub-quark level, at a sub-string level (if they prove to be accurate), we are experiencing reality as we speak.

Who says? These things are going on around us but it doesn't mean we can perceive them in any way or that they provide us with any kind of knowledge.

mangaroosh wrote: »

Again, the issue of being able to rationalise knowledge, fully and completely, is as of yet impossible without personal experience.

No one is arguing with you that we can't rationalise knowledge fully and completely without personal experience, we have all agreed with you on that point all along every time you have repeated it. We are saying that you can't do that even with personal experience.

mangaroosh wrote: »

Just to return to the assumption stated above - we can maybe limit the discussion to this topic - why can we never know anything?

Because we perceive the world with flawed senses, flawed brains and flawed minds and no matter how sure we are there is always the possibility that we are wrong. The only way to be sure is if we are infallible, which we are not

awombler

mangaroosh wrote: »

For this reason opinions and descriptions are "dependent on the personal characteristics of the mind", the characteristics may be the same for every individual, but they are still "dependent on the personal characterisitcs of the mind".

Again, however, the question needs to be asked, can something be subjective and objective at the same time?

I may be picking your argument up wrong (I've read most, but not all, of the thread), yet it strikes me that that gap is as much about observation vs theory as it is about subjective vs objective perception.

mangaroosh wrote: »

The thing is, a person may describe an experience. That may then be repeatedly tested to assess its validity. It may turn out, that after 1000 tests a more accurate description of the experience is written up.

Indeed, but presumably that individual experience could be explained in any amount of ways. For example, a particular observation may be explicable by reference to Newton. But that doesn't mean Newton's theory is 'true', simply that it seems to be an effective model for explaining many observations.

It strikes me the issue is less about whether a particular observation is accurate - you'd expect that fraudulent or inaccurate observations would be discovered over time. The issue (IMHO) is more that theories are never 'true', they are merely effective or ineffective. Newton is probably a good example of that. We know now that his theory about motion is incomplete - yet it is still of great value for many purposes.

Isn't that really why the religious vs atheist argument can never really be resolved? We can argue from an atheist perspective that the universe can be explained by a theory that does not involve a god, and that cannot be refuted. Theists can similarly argue that a god-based theory of creation is consistent with the facts as they see them.

While the atheist perspective might have the benefit of not inventing anything that isn't strictly necessary, theists would presumably justify the inclusion of a god on grounds of the benefits they see as coming from religion.

As I see it, the atheist perspective is preferrable, but not actually so much more rational and logical as we'd like to think.

On the main point, the atheist argument I find worst is the insistence that evolution is absolutely irrefutable. Evolution is a powerful model that makes sense of many facts. Yet that's all it is - a very useful way of ordering and making sense of those facts. I can understand the temptation to respond to religion's claims of certainty with a claim that pretends similar certainty. But that's just not how things are.

Morbert

mangaroosh wrote: »

Can something be both objective and subjective at the same time?

If we work with that description, so as to avoid a semantic discussion, then we need to determine what varies between people, and therefore qualifies as subjective.

Also, what needs to be determined is, what constitutes variance between people?

If we want to work with the definition you have referenced ("2" from OED) then we can, if it serves your purposes better. But anyway: This may be cheating but perhaps it would be easier to identify those things which don't vary between people. A kilometer doesn't vary between people, nor does a second (assuming people have access to accurate measuring apparatus, and aren't moving close to the speed of light with respect to one another).

Intoxication and preference for chocolate are indeed two examples, but there may indeed be many more. As has been borne out through the discussion on here, there is a variance between people's understanding of particular words, indeed there is a variance between how various dictionaries describe a word, which means there is a difference between how the people who write those dictionaries perceive a word.

This would then make words subjective.

Words can be subjective, but I don't believe it is difficult to establish rigorous formal definitions for some words or ideas. The concept of "tasty" may differ from person to person. But the definition of "topologically mixing" is sufficiently rigorous enough to be understandable and agreeable to everyone.

We may be in agreement here so, that personal experience is therefore objective.
Does the question remain, over the objectivity of the knowledge acquired through personal experience?

Well it's important to remember that "not necessarily" works both ways. We may be actually experiencing a mind-independent reality. We might also not be.

I've put these together because I believe they deal with the same issue.

If we examine it further though. A scientific theory is based on words, symbols and numbers, that are designed to explain a particular phenomenon.

As we have seen, the understanding of words apparently varies between people, and even dictionaries. One example is how the word theory differs in its use in english and in a scientific context. Does this then make the word "theory" subjective, and indeed any word that is not understood the exact same by all people?

If people understand symbols differently, does that then make them subjective also?

There are three issues that must be raised here.

Firstly, I must again stress that a scientific theory is different to the symbols or concepts used to represent it. Take the equations "F=ma" and "F=dp/dt" as examples. The former says force is equal to mass times acceleration. The latter says force is equal to the rate of change of momentum with respect to time. They are both different representations of the same theory (classical mechanics). There are other representations or "formalisms" such as the Lagrangian formalism, or the Hamiltonian formalism. Different formalisms can provide different insights, but they are all the same theory.

Secondly, it's important to highlight the difference between disagreements of definitions, and disagrements over qualities. If I define a kilometer as the length of a specific platinum bar at 36 degrees celcius, and you define a kilometer as the length of a different platinum bar, then the problem is simply one of convention. Whether or not we choose to adopt your convention or my convention should not matter. If I, however, claim chocolate icecream tastes nice, and you claim it tastes horrible, then we are both describing fundamentally different experiences of tasting chocolate. So the manner in which definitions vary between people is a trivial subjectivity (under my tendered definition) that can be overcome with a little communication.

Thirdly, if we decide that scientific theories are subjective because they are representations then surely that means experiences are subjective also because they too are representations. You experience the colour red because photons of a certain energy level trigger an electrical signal in your brain, generating the experience "red". Red is simply a representation of a certain aspect of reality generated by the brain. In fact, experience would be even more subjective than formal descriptions, as difference in brain chemistry might mean the same photons would trigger a slightly different electrical signal in another brain, causing them to see a slightly different shade of red. We would have two different representations of the same reality, even though the formal description of photons and quantum electrodynamics would be the same for both.

Perhaps it may be better to ask the question if something can be both objective and subjective at the same time?

I don't believe it can be, under either definition. Something cannot have its existence both depend and not depend on the mind. Similarly, an experience cannot both depend and not depend on personal states of mind.

That is fair enough, to an extent, although the nature of an impersonal description coudl be argued. Personal opinions can be shared and consensus reached, to the extent that everyone can share the same personal opinion or description.

As such, the concept of the collective is simply the collection of individuals, and where opinions or descriptions are common among all, it simply means that each persons personal opinion or description is the same. There isn't a separate body that is the collective that has an opinion or description independent of the individual members.

This is an important point. The ultimate goal of a scientist is to tender some theory which accurately predicts what people will observe. Whether or not a theory is true is a dilemma for the philosopher, but not the scientist. The example I have commonly used is quantum mechanics. Whatever representation or units you use, it predicts phenomena with an accuracy analogous to the prediction of the length of the USA to within a hair's width. Whether or not the actual mechanics of the theory are "real" is a matter that is inconsequential to scientists. Now obviously people will be happy to believe more "intuitive" theories like Darwinism are indicative of things that actually exist, but you get the idea.

For this reason opinions and descriptions are "dependent on the personal characteristics of the mind", the characteristics may be the same for every individual, but they are still "dependent on the personal characterisitcs of the mind".

But then those characteristics are impersonal.

That depends on what is claimed. If something is discovered for one phenomenon and it is claimed to be true for all phenomena, then this is an attempt to apply the knowledge gained from one thing, to all things.

The issue there lies not with what is known about the one thing, rather the attempt to apply it to all things.

This is "the problem of inference" and it is why you will never see "experiment A agrees with theory X therefore X is necessarily true" in a scientific paper.

Further, it depends on what is claimed. If it was claimed that all things are made up of atoms, then this may have been proven to be erroneus, however, if it was claimed that all things are made up of what will be referred to as atoms, which themselves could be made up of something else, then this statement would have been true.

The reason being, that what is referred to as an atom, is the perception of sub-atomic particles. It doesn't claim that atoms exist, rather that what is observed [subjectively] will be referred to as an atom.

Oddly enough, many people used the atom as a predicitve model, but didn't believe atoms actually existed or could be observed.

A prediction is essentially a claim about truth. It is a prediction of what will later be either confirmed as true or denied as false, based on observation.

It must be remembered that a prediction based on knowledge is separate from the knowledge itself, it is an attempt to apply that knowledge in a context outside that which it was acquired. If the prediction is incorrect, it doesn't mean that the knowledge is incorrect, rather the attempted application of it is.

Well a prediction stems from an induction, not simply an experience. I'm not sure how relevant this is to the discussion though.

Indeed, the two who verified the claim may have been subject to some condition that obscured their judgement, the issue is, that repeatability does not necessarily get rid of this, it is just assumed that it does.

The reason being that if these two may have been subject to some condition that obscured their judgement, then every single person who verifies it could be suffering from the same condition, and this will not be eliminated by repeatability, rather entrenched because of it.

If you question Malty T and Sam Vines, then the same question should apply to all individuals, and therefore raise doubt about the overall verification process. We can call this the dilemma of individuality, where if one individual is doubted, then all individuals are doubted for the same reason.

Otherwise one can choose to believe that becaues all those people are in agreement, that none of them suffer from this condition, but this is merey a belief that because there is agreement among a larger number of people, that the claim is true. This belief may be based on faith, because it has proven to be successful before, or it may be blind faith (which is just belief).

Again, this is why scientists would never claim a theory is necessarily true. Instead, scientists would claim that repeatability and reputability allow us to produce a predictive framework that works for everyone: an impartial framework that does not depend on any particular bias or opinion to be applicable.

The thing is, Newton's theory was personal when he developed it. If someone tests it and deems it to be accurate, they then change their personal opinion to incorporate Newton's theory. They will then be of the opinion that Newton's theory is correct.

As more people agree, they change their personal opinion to match Newton's theory. It is not so much that it is impersonal, rather that they agree with it, probably on the grounds that it is accurate.

Newton's theory was not personal to begin with. Newton's laws never applied only to newton. At the very most, you could say Newton was the first to understand his theory. But the theory was still as applicable to everyone and everything.

The thing is that such thing as a Kilometre, and an hour, which may be used to describe the speed of the car, were originally highly subjective. They were mere opinions as to what should be used as units of measurement. The fact that they became standardised, simply means that people reached an agreement or consensus on the opinion. They therefore remain subjective, despite consensus, as consensus is not a condition for objectivity.

People are free to use whatever definition they like, as it doesn't matter to the theory. If a car travels 50km/h under one set of definitions, and 48 km/h under another, then both answers are technically correct. A problem would only emerge when the difference in definitions is concealed. If people are unaware of the difference between "opinions" of what a kilometer or an hour shoukld be then confusion will arise. This is different to genuinely subjective qualities like ice-cream preference.

awombler

Morbert wrote: »

Oddly enough, many people used the atom as a predicitve model, but didn't believe atoms actually existed or could be observed.

For what its worth, this is the point that's on my mind. This is really all any theory can be. We can never tell what the actual situation is, only that the situation behaves 'as if' things were composed of atoms or 'as if' species evolved through natural selection.

Teutorix

awombler wrote: »

For what its worth, this is the point that's on my mind. This is really all any theory can be. We can never tell what the actual situation is, only that the situation behaves 'as if' things were composed of atoms or 'as if' species evolved through natural selection.

Atoms can be seen using an STM so things definitely are made of atoms, and natural selection is just the process by which the better at finding a mate have more offspring. They are both truths. Atomic theory its self isnt a truth as we are not 100% sure what their composition is like the same as Evolution theory isnt a universal truth.

Sorry for being pedantic I do understand where you are coming from though

roosh

Sam Vimes wrote: »

You keep saying this over and over again but I didn't accept it the first time you said it and I'm not going to accept it the 15th time either. Whether this is a dream or not, our senses are fallible, our brains are fallible, our minds are fallible, our entire perception of the world is fallible, whether at the sub atomic level or otherwise. How do you propose to overcome this fallibility to "know" something? You keep saying that we can know something but I have yet to see an explanation for how we discern when we know something from when we think we know but are mistaken

Exploring the true nature of the mind is one such way that a person can realise what exactly it is, within us, that is fallible, and thereby a useful practice in determining what is true and what is not.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Eh no mate I completely accept your definition but me and everyone else on the forum is trying to explain to you that the word has several definitions.

The thing is though, that it doesn't have several definitions. The same thing is stated in a number of different ways. It may perhaps be misinterpreted to have several different definitions, but exploration of the definitions will show that they are actually the same thing.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

The dictionaries are not incorrect, it is your understanding of them that's incorrect. You use the word only for things that exist solely in the mind such as the concept of a kilometre but it can also be used to describe opinions, perspectives and understandings of things that objectively exist because, even though the object itself exists, the opinion, perspective or understanding exists solely in the mind. If I meet someone when they're in a bad mood I might think they're a horrible person but if you meet then when they're happy you might like them. We have different subjective opinions of the same person and there is no requirement for him to exist solely in our minds.

Indeed, and one's opinion of someone is completely subjective, and their rationalisation of their experience of a person is subjective, however, their experience is not subjective.

If you meet someone, and "straight away" you may form an opinion of a person, that perhaps you don't like them. However, through practice you could familiarise yourself with your mind and realise when you are forming these opinions, and realise that the opinion is completely subjective.

Not all the experience of meeting someone however, is merely the opinion you form.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

If I look at a rock my perception of it is not the rock itself, it's a series of electrical and chemical signals being sent to my brain and processed by my unconscious and conscious minds. I have a subjective view of an objective object.

The brain however is just a subjective perception of sub-atomic particles, and your vision of a rock is completely subjective. One can be aware of this when one has such an experience, but one can also realise that we are not the content of our minds, and who we think we are, is not necessarily who, or what we are.

Again, spiritual practice and personal experience, exploring the true nature of mind, can be helpful in revealing this.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

No you just like to think there's a difference because it allows you to imagine that we have access to some kind of deeper knowledge even though there is nothing to suggest that we actually do.

Science tells us that our bodies are just a subjective interpretation of sub-atomic particles, so our mind is almost certainly not our brain, or at least, what we perceive as our brain.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Who says? These things are going on around us but it doesn't mean we can perceive them in any way or that they provide us with any kind of knowledge.

Again, exploring the true nature of mind can help us access this knowledge. If we realise that we are not the content of [what we think is] our mind, then we can explore further who we truly are.

Spiritual practice is largely concerned with this.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

No one is arguing with you that we can't rationalise knowledge fully and completely without personal experience, we have all agreed with you on that point all along every time you have repeated it. We are saying that you can't do that even with personal experience.

I agree with you completely on that, we cannot achieve such an explanation at present, but again, the explanation is not the knowledge, they are different "things".

The explanation of how to perform an experiment, is not the same as carrying out the experiment. This is the difference between explanation and knowledge.

The knowledge is acquired at the moment of experience, while the explanation comes after.

One may have someone elses explanation, and may follow that, however, knowledge is again acquired at the moment of experience. This is when the second hand explanation is verified or not (the relative part that is). Then, one forms ones own explanation, sometimes, almost exactly at the point of experience.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Because we perceive the world with flawed senses, flawed brains and flawed minds and no matter how sure we are there is always the possibility that we are wrong. The only way to be sure is if we are infallible, which we are not

Science tells us that what we perceive as our bodies - brain, sensory detection, etc. - is, as such, an illusion. It is a subjective perception that many of us believe is real, but that does not exist in reality.

Exploration of the true nature of mind, can help to explore that part of us that is not necessarily our bodies or what we perceive as our mind.

roosh

awombler wrote: »

I may be picking your argument up wrong (I've read most, but not all, of the thread), yet it strikes me that that gap is as much about observation vs theory as it is about subjective vs objective perception.Indeed, but presumably that individual experience could be explained in any amount of ways. For example, a particular observation may be explicable by reference to Newton. But that doesn't mean Newton's theory is 'true', simply that it seems to be an effective model for explaining many observations.

Ultimately, the discussion is on the acquisition of knowledge, which often incorporates a discussion on the nature of knowledge.

I contend that the only way in which knowledge can be acquired is through personal experience, and that that knowledge is objective, while any rationalisation of it is subjective - including sight, sound, touch, etc.

This leads to a debate on what is meant by subjective and objective.

To try and use an analogy. If you know how to drive a car, then that knowledge is objective. You may then try explain that to someone else, but your explanation will never be a substitute for the knowledge acquired through the personal experience of driving a car.

Your explanation, becuause it uses words, symbols, numbers, etc. is dependent on the mind for existence, and therefore, by definition is subjective.

The knowledge you have of driving a car is not dependent on the mind for existence and is therefore objective.

This then leads to a discussion on the nature of mind. What we think is our mind, is not necessarily what our mind is, and by extension, who we think we are, is not necessarily who we are. Eckhart Tolle explains this pretty well in "the power of now"

awombler wrote: »

It strikes me the issue is less about whether a particular observation is accurate - you'd expect that fraudulent or inaccurate observations would be discovered over time. The issue (IMHO) is more that theories are never 'true', they are merely effective or ineffective. Newton is probably a good example of that. We know now that his theory about motion is incomplete - yet it is still of great value for many purposes.

I agree to an extent, however it is a slightly different point. Again, the discussion is ultimately about the acquisition of knowledge, and the objectivity of that knowledge, together with the subjectivity or otherwise of an explanation of an experience.

awombler wrote: »

Isn't that really why the religious vs atheist argument can never really be resolved? We can argue from an atheist perspective that the universe can be explained by a theory that does not involve a god, and that cannot be refuted. Theists can similarly argue that a god-based theory of creation is consistent with the facts as they see them.

While the atheist perspective might have the benefit of not inventing anything that isn't strictly necessary, theists would presumably justify the inclusion of a god on grounds of the benefits they see as coming from religion.

An important point to be made, is that God and religion are separate from each other. The inaccuracy of a religious claim about God, does not, or at least should not, [rationally] affect one's belief in God.

Also, to suggest that a theist would include something that is not strictly necessary, to the universe, would depend largely on what you think it is that the "theist" believes.

awombler wrote: »

As I see it, the atheist perspective is preferrable, but not actually so much more rational and logical as we'd like to think.

In a sense I think you are correct, that atheism would be preferrable to religion on some counts, as it may perhaps be a necessary transition to understanding what God is, as opposed to being told what God is.

Religion itself, can often be a barrier to understanding and experiencing God, because it may often be the case, that there are people preaching about something they don't truly understand or have never experienced.

awombler wrote: »

On the main point, the atheist argument I find worst is the insistence that evolution is absolutely irrefutable. Evolution is a powerful model that makes sense of many facts. Yet that's all it is - a very useful way of ordering and making sense of those facts. I can understand the temptation to respond to religion's claims of certainty with a claim that pretends similar certainty. But that's just not how things are.

Personally I accept evolution, but often try to ask a few questions to better understand it. I saw a few online lectures from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute that explained it pretty well.

One question I often find resistance to though is any question on the fossil records, not as a "God of the gaps" argument, or to question evolution, but simply to try and see what exactly is claimed to be known, vs what is actually known.

any suggestions of something that would be accessible to the lay person on that?

roosh

Morbert wrote: »

If we want to work with the definition you have referenced ("2" from OED) then we can, if it serves your purposes better. But anyway:

I would prefer to discuss the definition that you were proposing to be honest, to see if it corresponds to the OED "2" definition.


Just to get back to the debate of subjectivity being "dependent on personal characteristics of the mind".

I think you are correct in what you have been contending with regard to the meaning of the description. I was thinking about it a bit more, and it does make more sense than I thought. It could also be read taking "characterisitcs of the mind" together, with the adjective "personal" being used to describe that.

That would then ultimately make it subjective, on the basis of it being particular to one individual and not the rest.

However, if we explore the nature of thinking furhter.

Thoughts are ultimately subjective, because they are dependent on the characteristics of the mind of a particular individual. When I think, it is dependent on the characteristics of my mind, when you think it is dependent on the characteristics of your mind, when anyone thinks it is dependent on the characteristics of their own mind.


If we explore the nature of words then, we can see that all words, symbols, numbers, etc. exist as thoughts, that are thought by individuals. Individuals may agree with what each word means, but the act of thinking a word makes the word subjective.

That would make all descriptions, theories, etc. subjective because they are dependent on the personal characteristics of the mind, as you quite rightly propose.


The meaning of a word is of course different to the word itself, as words are only ever labels, or signposts if you will, that point to something else. For example, the word cup is ultimately useless without that to which it points, namely, the object that is referred to as a cup, which itself has to be experienced to be known and to give meaning to the word.

The experience is objective, because it doesn't depend on the personal characteristics of the mind.

The nature of experience may perhaps be, what needs to be clarified, as we do experience the universe subjectively, but we also experience it objectively. OF course the nature of who we are would need to be explored further.

Morbert

mangaroosh wrote: »

I would prefer to discuss the definition that you were proposing to be honest, to see if it corresponds to the OED "2" definition.


Just to get back to the debate of subjectivity being "dependent on personal characteristics of the mind".

I think you are correct in what you have been contending with regard to the meaning of the description. I was thinking about it a bit more, and it does make more sense than I thought. It could also be read taking "characterisitcs of the mind" together, with the adjective "personal" being used to describe that.

That would then ultimately make it subjective, on the basis of it being particular to one individual and not the rest.

However, if we explore the nature of thinking furhter.

Thoughts are ultimately subjective, because they are dependent on the characteristics of the mind of a particular individual. When I think, it is dependent on the characteristics of my mind, when you think it is dependent on the characteristics of your mind, when anyone thinks it is dependent on the characteristics of their own mind.


If we explore the nature of words then, we can see that all words, symbols, numbers, etc. exist as thoughts, that are thought by individuals. Individuals may agree with what each word means, but the act of thinking a word makes the word subjective.

That would make all descriptions, theories, etc. subjective because they are dependent on the personal characteristics of the mind, as you quite rightly propose.


The meaning of a word is of course different to the word itself, as words are only ever labels, or signposts if you will, that point to something else. For example, the word cup is ultimately useless without that to which it points, namely, the object that is referred to as a cup, which itself has to be experienced to be known and to give meaning to the word.

The experience is objective, because it doesn't depend on the personal characteristics of the mind.

The nature of experience may perhaps be, what needs to be clarified, as we do experience the universe subjectively, but we also experience it objectively. OF course the nature of who we are would need to be explored further.

Let's call my definition "1." and yours "2." (referencing the OED definitions). If something is subjective by definition 1 then it is also subjective by definition 2. However, I would say that the converse is not always true. Something could depend on the mind for existence, but still not depend on personal characteristics, opinions, or biases of people. The key is formal and rigorous definition. The properties of the real number system, for example, do not change from person to person because the properties are all carefully defined. Someone could come along and declare that the real numbers should be defined differently. We would then have subjective opinions of what the convention should be, but not differing opinions on what the convention currently is. We might also have someone who defines the real numbers their own way regardless of convention. But in that case we simply have two different number systems, which isn't a problem provided we qualify which definition we're using. We might also have a case where someone mistakenly believes the real number system has some property it doesn't. But that sort of disagreement can be easily rectified by revising the necessary axioms and theorems.

This is why I believe the subjectivity of "tastiness" or "niceness" (definitions 1 and 2) is fundamentally different to the subjectivity of "3 is less than 4" (definition 2 but not 1).

Sam Vimes

mangaroosh wrote: »

Exploring the true nature of the mind is one such way that a person can realise what exactly it is, within us, that is fallible, and thereby a useful practice in determining what is true and what is not.

That didn't answer my question at all. Again, how do you propose to overcome the fallibility of our bodies and our minds? "Exploring the true nature of the mind" is not an answer. I think this is what's getting my goat about this conversation tbh. Extraordinary vagueness

mangaroosh wrote: »

Indeed, and one's opinion of someone is completely subjective, and their rationalisation of their experience of a person is subjective, however, their experience is not subjective.

What part of it exactly is objective? As far as I'm concerned the rationalisation is a part of the experience. Most of it is done at a subconscious level and the parts that aren't still vary from person to person. Two people experiencing the same thing but standing in different spots will have different subjective experiences simply because different light and sounds waves hit their senses. I think experience is another word where we have very different understandings

mangaroosh wrote: »

The brain however is just a subjective perception of sub-atomic particles, and your vision of a rock is completely subjective.

So my vision of a rock is subjective but my experience of it is objective?

mangaroosh wrote: »

One can be aware of this when one has such an experience, but one can also realise that we are not the content of our minds, and who we think we are, is not necessarily who, or what we are.

In your opinion. An opinion that appears to have no basis in reality and seems to be just what you like to think

mangaroosh wrote: »

Science tells us that our bodies are just a subjective interpretation of sub-atomic particles, so our mind is almost certainly not our brain, or at least, what we perceive as our brain.

I didn't say your mind is your brain, I said it's like the software running on the hardware of the brain. There's nothing mystical about it, it's just a biological computer. There are levels of our mind that we aren't consciously aware of and which can be brought out through meditation and drugs etc but this idea that it gives you access to some kind of deeper knowledge is just wishful thinking tbh

mangaroosh wrote: »

The explanation of how to perform an experiment, is not the same as carrying out the experiment.

Never said it was.

mangaroosh wrote: »

This is the difference between explanation and knowledge.

Except you can carry out an experiment, think you "know it" and still be wrong, a fact which you seem to be overlooking

roosh

Morbert wrote: »

Let's call my definition "1." and yours "2." (referencing the OED definitions). If something is subjective by definition 1 then it is also subjective by definition 2. However, I would say that the converse is not always true.

We have agreed that something cannot be both subjective and objective at the same time, so the definitions need to be reconciled.

"dependent on the mind for existence" is a fairly rigid definition, and there doesn't appear to be much room for interpretation there, although, we can consider any possible interpretations.

"dependent on the personal characteristics of the mind", seems to be fairly straight forward too, but when examined it very much conforms to the definition of "dependent on the mind for existence", even with the qualifying adjective "personal" included.

Morbert wrote: »

Something could depend on the mind for existence, but still not depend on personal characteristics, opinions, or biases of people. The key is formal and rigorous definition.

agreed with regard to the emboldened. As for something being dependent on the mind for existence, but not on personal characteristics, opinions or biases of people, this would make that "thing" both subjective and objective at the same time - which has been agreed, does not really make sense.

Morbert wrote: »

The properties of the real number system, for example, do not change from person to person because the properties are all carefully defined.

The issue however is, that the real number system doesn't exist in reality, i.e. it doesn't have any intrinsic existence of its own. In order for the real number system to exist, it is dependent on the human mind for existence, which makes it subjective under "definition 2".

Now, it may of course be agreed upon by all, as to what the properties of the real number system are, and it may appear to be free form personal bias, opinions etc., which makes it potentially objective by "definition 1".

The issue however is one of individuality, where each individual has their own [ordinary] mind - I refer to ordinary because the nature of mind is a separate discussion.

Now, as individuals have their own [ordinary] mind ("mind" from here on), every thought that they have is "dependent on the personal characteristics of the mind", or the mind of the individual that is. This would make the thoughts of any individual subjective, by "definition 1".

As mentioned, any thoughts I have are dependent on the personal characteristics of my mind, just as any thoughts you have are dependent on the personal characteristics of your mind - because we use our own personal minds to think.


If we look again at the real number system, we can see that it doesn't have any intrinsic existence of its own, it exists solely in the human mind, or more to the point, in the mind of the individuals who are familiar with it. There may of course be consensus with regard to its properties, that confirms that each individual thinks the same thing when they think of the real number system.

As mentioned however, consensus doesn't bestow the title of objectivity on something, it means that individuals are in agreement about something.

The fact is that words, numbers, and therefore the real number system exist solely as thoughts. Individuals can only think using their own mind, meaning that an individuals thoughts are "dependent on the personal characteristics of the mind" - their mind - means that all words, numbers, symbols, etc. are therefore subjective, despite the fact that there may be consensus reached on what they mean.

Morbert wrote: »

Someone could come along and declare that the real numbers should be defined differently. We would then have subjective opinions of what the convention should be, but not differing opinions on what the convention currently is. We might also have someone who defines the real numbers their own way regardless of convention. But in that case we simply have two different number systems, which isn't a problem provided we qualify which definition we're using. We might also have a case where someone mistakenly believes the real number system has some property it doesn't. But that sort of disagreement can be easily rectified by revising the necessary axioms and theorems.

Again, what is being referred to above appears to be consensus as opposed to subjectivity/objectivity, although the term subjectivity could also apply, but not on the basis of disagreement from convention.

Morbert wrote: »

This is why I believe the subjectivity of "tastiness" or "niceness" (definitions 1 and 2) is fundamentally different to the subjectivity of "3 is less than 4" (definition 2 but not 1).

They do appear to be fundamentally different alright, but perhaps under a different heading. With regard to subjectivity, they would both be subjective, because they are dependent on the mind for existence.

roosh

Sam Vimes wrote: »

That didn't answer my question at all. Again, how do you propose to overcome the fallibility of our bodies and our minds? "Exploring the true nature of the mind" is not an answer. I think this is what's getting my goat about this conversation tbh. Extraordinary vagueness

Unfortunately, any attempt at clarification has been met with criticism over length.

The issue may perhaps be the following:

The statement "we cannot truly know anything" has an inherent assumption in it. There is an assumption with regard to who or what "we" are.

This is where exploration of "the true nature of mind" can lead to differing assumptions about who "we" are.

apologies, I'm caught for time here, so will have to respond to the below later.

Sam Vimes

mangaroosh wrote: »

The statement "we cannot truly know anything" has an inherent assumption in it. There is an assumption with regard to who or what "we" are.

The statement that we cannot truly know anything in the way you mean is an observation based on facts, ie we are fallible beings and no matter how sure we are of something we can still be wrong


Your statement that we can know things in that way is what carries an assumption. As far as I can see it carries a whole heap of assumptions about the human mind and some kind of metaphysical level of being linked to the supernatural and the sub-atomic, none of which have any basis in reality as far as I can see


Could you please outline as briefly as possible how one can "know" something, bearing in mind that there are billions of people all over the world who claim to "know" contradictory things. They can't all be right so how can we tell the difference between knowing something and mistakenly thinking we know it?

roosh

Sam Vimes wrote: »

The statement that we cannot truly know anything in the way you mean is an observation based on facts, ie we are fallible beings and no matter how sure we are of something we can still be wrong.


Your statement that we can know things in that way is what carries an assumption. As far as I can see it carries a whole heap of assumptions about the human mind and some kind of metaphysical level of being linked to the supernatural and the sub-atomic, none of which have any basis in reality as far as I can see


Could you please outline as briefly as possible how one can "know" something, bearing in mind that there are billions of people all over the world who claim to "know" contradictory things. They can't all be right so how can we tell the difference between knowing something and mistakenly thinking we know it?

In order to facilitate brevity, it will be necessary to establish the nature of who is being referred to by the following:
"we"
"one"
"you"
"I"
"fallible being", etc.


This isn't being facetious, but in order to establish whether or not "we" are capable of knowledge, it must first be established who/what is being referred to as "we" and the rest of the above.


Now, a number of things that have been established:

We are not our bodies. Scientific evidence highlights that what we perceive as our bodies is merely a subjective perception of reality. This means that our brain too, the processing centre of our senses is merely a subjective perception, and is equally not who we are. So while our senses may indeed be fallible, the processing centre for them, is not necessarily who we are.

Also, we are not the content of our [ordinary] mind, or perhaps more pointedly, what we think our mind is, is not necessarily the true nature of our mind. Bearing in "mind" that, according to scientific evidence, our brain is not necessarily real, but rather a subjective perception.

We know that we exist, but we do not necessarily know what the nature of our existence is. We can determine what the nature of existence is not however, as established, it is not our bodies or what we perceive to be our minds.


With this information, the question again is. Who/what is the "we", that is not capable of knowledge?