I still don't get it.......epistemology

[merjet]

The assertion that the senses are infallible and the persistence of the illusion are contradictory. The only "explanation" (which the Objectivists reject) is that the visual sense is NOT infallible. Vision is very fallible, which is why camouflage ( for example) works as well as it does.

Again, where are you getting the notion that "the Objectivist position" asserts that the senses are infallible? Or is it simply your hearsay?

[BaalChatzaf]

The assertion that the senses are infallible and the persistence of the illusion are contradictory. The only "explanation" (which the Objectivists reject) is that the visual sense is NOT infallible. Vision is very fallible, which is why camouflage ( for example) works as well as it does.

Again, where are you getting the notion that "the Objectivist position" asserts that the senses are infallible? Or is it simply your hearsay?

Hearesay, I suppose from all of the Objectivist fora in which I have participated over the last fifteen years, all the way back the HPO. That is what these "students of Objectivism" kept telling me. The senses are infallible. Only our identification of what the senses reveal can be faulty.

Added in Edit:

Ah ha! I think I have made an error. It is the validity of the senses that Rand and her buddies claim. Even so we know that under certain circumstances our senses are not always valid. Again, consider camouflage. If our senses were valid, camouflage would not work to hide things from us. Likewise sleight of hand and magic acts. The magicians (so-called) know the kind of false clues that send our perceptions and identifications galley-west. Our senses are sometimes (most of the time) right and sometimes wrong. Also we cannot detach our sensing, perceptions cleanly from our inferences and identifications. The process that leads from sensing something to perceiving something to identifying something is often near instantaneous and unbroken into perceivable stages. We do it as fast as our neurons can fire, in many case.

Please see:

http://en.wikipedia....emology:_reason

which gives references to Rand's written work.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited January 17, 2010 by BaalChatzaf

[BaalChatzaf]

The assertion that the senses are infallible and the persistence of the illusion are contradictory.

Bob,

I don't know of a single Objectivist who denies the existence of optical illusions or the fact that sense organs get sick or old and don't work as well as before.

There are some premises that need to be checked if understanding (instead of bashing) is the goal. One of them is what is meant by infallible within the context presented.

Michael

What context? "Infallible" is an absolute term, like "perfect". It stands by itself. It is its own context.

Why do you characterize fair criticism as "bashing". And what happened to the Objectivist slogan, judge and be judged? Ayn Rand made many errors and some of her followers refuse to see them and regard the revelation of such errors as "bashing". I would be inclined to ignore most of Rand's errors if she had not made such a big deal and fostered a movement in which her every utterance is regarded as gospel. It is too much like the Hadiths concerning Mohamed (PBUH). Atlas Shrugged, ITOE and OPAR are the Q'ran and the Ayn Rand Newsletters are the Hadiths.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited January 17, 2010 by BaalChatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

What context?

Bob,

All knowledge and all evaluations in Objectivist epistemology are contextual.

There is no way to eliminate context.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Saying that the mind isn't perfect and omniscient isn't "denigrating the mind"...

Please note correctly what I wrote. I'll help...

It is precise to mention and describe our limitations. I have no problem with that.

The harping on the oversimplification, insinuating that we can never really know anything, is denigrating. And that's what you guys do constantly.

The human mind can know stuff. And it does know stuff.

That's about as simple as I can put it.

Do you agree with that? Or do you always need to put a denigrating qualification to it (like it can't know reality)?

As if I'd give a damn whether it sounds "cool".

It certainly does not come off like that. Maybe it's a style issue, but the impression is clearly a "fearless detached concern with the truth even as we have to acknowledge what a worm mankind is and will always be. Imagine the fools who think the mind can actually know reality."

That's the "academic BS cool" tone that is conveyed with phrases like "the human mind can't know reality as it is" or "the mind is nothing but an instrument of distortion" and the whole litany.

I have no idea what this serves, but I see it constantly.

Because we're pestered by Objectivists who make unwarranted claims of perfection, so we feel we have to set the record straight.

Why is this always presented out of context and a false meaning ascribed to it? That's not setting any record straight. That's setting it cockeyed.

If you presented the meaning correctly and included the context, you probably wouldn't feel pestered. Disagree if you like, but at least get it right.

Try different words if you don't like Objectivist jargon. (I'm one, for instance, who does not like a great deal of Objectivist jargon. Many Objectivists often don't understand me because I seek different words for the same concepts and that falls outsider their comfort zone. But I don't do this for their sake. I do it to hit the concepts from different angles to make sure they are sound.)

If you look at what is meant in context instead of taking the words out of context, you will not find a correspondence with the meanings you attribute to them, especially that stuff about things needing to be perfect to be great.

(The morally perfect issue is another thing, one with actual problems in both meaning and words.)

There is one cavaet to all this. There actually are boneheaded Objectivists who often try to present the meanings in the manner you say. I can assure you that they irritate me just as much as they irritate you.

Also, I think you know me enough to realize that I am not of the religious Rand-worship Objectivism school.

I insist on precision of meaning because I like precision. Kat says I'm an Aspie in hiding...

Michael

[jeffrey smith]

Dragonfly,

I realize you don't deny the existence of light waves. I just get irritated with the package concept of denigrating the mind by playing word games. I guess it sounds cool to say, "We can't even know reality "as it is..." (sighing with deep reflection)

That is totally imprecise since it is a gross oversimplification, as my nitpicking shows. But the message of belittling the mind is quite clear.

Why do you guys do that? I never have understood that.

It is precise to mention and describe our limitations. I have no problem with that. It is not precise to exaggerate the limitations with oversimplification, then make out like that is being courageous or something...

... and those who don't agree

are blind fools who cannot see.

I don't get it.

Why insist on the error when the correct thing is easy to understand and communicate?

Because the error sounds cool?

Michael

Let me take a stab at this.

The fact is that we never experience reality directly, except that portion of reality which is our own mind.

Consider an elephant you see at the zoo or the circus. What actually enters your awareness is not the elephant: it is the information relayed by your eyes (that's the first filter) that it receives in the form of light waves reflected (that's the second filter) by the elephant. That's what you actually perceive--something filtered twice over. You don't, for example, perceive whatever portions of the electromagnetic spectrum which the elephant reflects but which are not part of the "visible light spectrum"--the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum our eyes are adapted to perceive. (Unless of course you have fitted yourself with infrared sensors or something similar in the way of technology and even that does not cover the whole of the electromagnetic spectrum.)

Even if you remove some of the filtering--for instance, by going over and touching the elephant with your hands, so you focus your perceptions on the information gained through the sense of touch--there's still filtering involved, since your skin won't report all the tactile information possible.

The Objectivist answer to this seems to be on the lines of "nevertheless, the information reported to us by our senses can be relied on to give us an accurate knowledge of reality, subject to verifying the information reported to us by our senses by further information gained through the senses". With that I have no problems.

But that is not actually equivalent to "knowing" reality. You can only know, only directly experience, the information relayed by your senses about an object; you can not "know" the object itself. To know the exterior object directly would mean that you are "the Knower, the Known, and the Knowledge"--which, not coincidentally, is the formula (gotten almost directly from Aristotle) which Maimonides uses to describe God in the first book of the Mishneh Torah.

Jeffrey S.

Edited January 18, 2010 by jeffrey smith

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jeff,

We process the reality (the direct reality at that) that enters into our sense organs. That's the material we process.

The package-deal concept ("we do not perceive reality as it is" blah blah blah) tries to insinuate that it is not reality that we are processing, but some kind of mental construction instead.

The existence of our process mechanisms does not negate the existence of the direct reality that enters into the process. Yet the package deal concept insinuates that it does.

That is what I am arguing against.

Our process mechanisms can feed on themselves and process stuff that does not come from outside direct reality. The package deal concept uses this to insinuate that we do not process direct reality at all.

That is what I am arguing against.

And our process mechanisms can break down. The package deal concept uses this to insinuate that our process mechanisms do not work correctly at all. Ever.

That is what I am arguing against.

Michael

[jeffrey smith]

Jeff,

We process the reality (the direct reality at that) that enters into our sense organs. That's the material we process.

The package-deal concept ("we do not perceive reality as it is" blah blah blah) tries to insinuate that it is not reality that we are processing, but some kind of mental construction instead.

The existence of our process mechanisms does not negate the existence of the direct reality that enters into the process. Yet the package deal concept insinuates that it does.

Not sure what you mean by "direct reality". But it's impossible to deny that we do not directly experience (which is different from perceiving) reality--we experience, and therefore directly know, only those perceptions that reach our minds via the senses. This does not negate the existence of a reality that is outside us: it merely states what should be an obvious point--that we perceive it through the senses, and therefore our knowledge and experience of it is indirect: secondhand and filtered. But something is experienced.

That is what I am arguing against.

Our process mechanisms can feed on themselves and process stuff that does not come from outside direct reality. The package deal concept uses this to insinuate that we do not process direct reality at all.

That is what I am arguing against.

I'm not sure again what you mean by "direct reality". If it means what I think you mean by it--then, we never process direct reality, we only process our perceptions, what can be called indirect reality. The only part of reality that can be directly known and experienced is that which can be experienced without the intervention of the senses--and the only thing I know of that fits that bill is our own mind.

And our process mechanisms can break down. The package deal concept uses this to insinuate that our process mechanisms do not work correctly at all. Ever.

I don't recall ever running into that sort of argument--that because our senses sometimes fail, they always fail. If it's actually held, then it's self defeating. I certainly don't hold that position: I think the senses are valid channels of information.

That is what I am arguing against.

Let me sum up my view: the only thing we can experience directly and therefore know directly, is our own mind. Everything else is filtered to us through our senses and therefore can be at best known and experienced only indirectly.

Jeffrey S.

[anthony]

To know reality directly? This is the concept I think we have all been absorbed with, all our lives. The two parts, broadly, that have interested me are, Can I? and, Why should I not want to? (i.e., to reality-evade).

The process of sensory perception, comes dowm to this: can I trust what I see/feel/hear/smell? Especially when I know that I am perceiving 'things' in a second hand way (e.g. light to object, light off object, light on to retina, image to brain).

In a weird way, it's almost as if we know too much about how it works, and a man living in a pre-science era had an advantage, in never having to doubt his perceptions!

I think that-in a nutshell- there is some sort re-inforcement and corroboration, ongoing in the consciousness, that is constantly checking itself against incoming percepts; the more that a consciousness establishes its correctness, the more it learns that this no random conclusion, but true reality. So we learn to trust this - 99% of the time.

Anyway, this rationale has been good enough to satisfy myself that we 'can' know.

The 'why not just evade reality?' is most often psychology-based, imo, - at least, it was with me - and has to do with fear. I've observed that (strangely) the confident person who has seldom ever questioned his grasp of reality could be the one to doubt it, later on, to his own detriment.

Just try coming at this from the opposite point, of evading reality for years, and see how much you value and trust your increasing grasp of it...!

"You don't know what you've got til it's gone."

Tony

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jeff,

Let me put it another way.

Our sense organs are part of our mind, not separate from it.

The package deal presents them as "filters" that go to our mind--"filters" that somehow filter out reality.

I don't agree with that.

Just as the contents in our stomach after a meal no longer look like the plate of food we finished eating, that does not mean we are not experiencing food "as it is." That makes no sense. How about calling our teeth a "filter" between food and the digestive system, that once food goes through the filter it is no longer food. That makes no sense again. Food continues to be food while it is being processed, even once it is ground up and being broken down chemically.

Ditto for light waves, sound waves, heat waves, etc., in their respective processing.

Reality continues to be reality during processing. It just changes form.

Michael

[merjet]

It [the sense organ] didn't evolve to capture and process reality "as it is", because that is impossible.

If it is impossible, then how do you proclaim to know reality "as it is"?

I don't proclaim to know reality "as it is".

That's contradictory. You first said our sense organs didn't evolve to capture and process reality "as it is", which implies you do proclaim to know reality "as it is".

The existence of an independent reality is a good hypothesis to explain our experiences, but we know that it an abstraction and as such not knowable "in itself".

I didn't know you were such a Kantian.

[Dragonfly]

That's contradictory. You first said our sense organs didn't evolve to capture and process reality "as it is", which implies you do proclaim to know reality "as it is".

That is a non-sequitur. You don't have to know the exact nature of something to be able to tell that some things cannot be done with it, if you know some general property of it. Simple example: I know there are given some negative numbers, but I don't know their values. Nevertheless I know that I can never get a positive number (and a fortiori some specified positive number) by adding those numbers as that follows from the property of being a negative number, regardless of their specific values. In the same way sense organs can't evolve to capture and process reality "as it is", as the latter is an abstraction that is physically unreachable. So unless you believe in the possibility of mystical insight, no amount of evolution can lead to organs that can capture reality "as it is".

I didn't know you were such a Kantian.

Is that something bad, or so?

[merjet]

In the same way sense organs can't evolve to capture and process reality "as it is", as the latter is an abstraction that is physically unreachable.

'Reality as it is that sense organs can't capture and process' is your abstraction. It isn't mine.

So unless you believe in the possibility of mystical insight, no amount of evolution can lead to organs that can capture reality "as it is".

It sounds like you, by some mystical insight, believe you can distinguish between "reality as it is" and reality that your sense organs capture.

Edited January 18, 2010 by Merlin Jetton

[anonrobt]

So unless you believe in the possibility of mystical insight, no amount of evolution can lead to organs that can capture reality "as it is".

...........

And what of the animals - ye saying they do not perceive reality as they go about their affairs? the reality-orienting the animals have is the same one used by humans, who are but higher animals able to analyze their senses...

[tjohnson]

So unless you believe in the possibility of mystical insight, no amount of evolution can lead to organs that can capture reality "as it is".

...........

And what of the animals - ye saying they do not perceive reality as they go about their affairs? the reality-orienting the animals have is the same one used by humans, who are but higher animals able to analyze their senses...

The difference between humans and animals is that animals (and some humans ) do not know they are abstracting. The reason humans know they are abstracting is because of our science, ie. the whole light-waves, retina, cones, rods, neurons, etc. theory. Animals have no knowledge of this and so their abstractions are their total reality. Not so with humans.

[Dragonfly]

In the same way sense organs can't evolve to capture and process reality "as it is", as the latter is an abstraction that is physically unreachable.

'Reality as it is that sense organs can't capture and process' is your abstraction. It isn't mine.

Quantum mechanics gives a good illustration of the unknowable character of reality, it shows that there is a fundamental uncertainty in nature than cannot be removed. What "really" happens when the electron in the double-slit experiment seems to go through two slits at the same time? We can think of several scenarios for some picture in our mind, but there is no way to tell which one is "correct". Different interpretations of QM that lead to exactly the same mathematical formalism cannot be confirmed or refuted by experiment, so it becomes meaningless to say what "really" happens, we can only say that if we do this, then that will happen with a certain probability. It may be seductive to think reality as some kind of Newtonian universe with sharply localized particles, but that concept has been shown to be incorrect.

It sounds like you, by some mystical insight, believe you can distinguish between "reality as it is" and reality that your sense organs capture.

There is no mystical insight for that necessary, it follows from the definition.

[merjet]

Quantum mechanics gives a good illustration of the unknowable character of reality, it shows that there is a fundamental uncertainty in nature than cannot be removed. What "really" happens when the electron in the double-slit experiment seems to go through two slits at the same time? We can think of several scenarios for some picture in our mind, but there is no way to tell which one is "correct".

I don't deny there are things unknown, nor that our sense organs are limited (e.g. vision to a part of the electromagnetic spectrum), but how does the above show that our senses organs tell us about "reality as it isn't"? I have not witnessed a double-slit experiment, but doesn't a witness rely on his/her sense organs to determine where the electron goes? Or are you saying his/her sense organs give a false report?

Edited January 18, 2010 by Merlin Jetton

[BaalChatzaf]

Quantum mechanics gives a good illustration of the unknowable character of reality, it shows that there is a fundamental uncertainty in nature than cannot be removed. What "really" happens when the electron in the double-slit experiment seems to go through two slits at the same time? We can think of several scenarios for some picture in our mind, but there is no way to tell which one is "correct".

I don't deny there are things unknown, nor that our sense organs are limited (e.g. vision to a part of the electromagnetic spectrum), but how does the above show that our senses organs tell us about "reality as it isn't"? I have not witnessed a double-slit experiment, but doesn't a witness rely on his/her sense organs to determine where the electron goes? Or are you saying his/her sense organs give a false report?

Those stripes we say behind the slit-barrier are an aggregate. When the electrons are shot through one at a time where they land is random. We only know where they land after the fact and we have no idea through which slit they came (in fact, electrons and photons go through both slits - a very counter intuitive notion). If we set up a device that actually watches the slits to see what goes through, the resulting patter on the backstop is quite different. The interference pattern does not show at all. This goes completely against our intuitive expection. If we had fired b-b shot instead of electrons through a double hole target we would get most of the shot landing midway between the holes. The density curve would be approximated by a gaussian normal curve. That is what common sense tells us to expect and it is not what happens when electrons or photons (very small particles) go through a double slit without being tracked. Richard Feynman claimed that our common sense cannot make any sense out of this state of affairs.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Christopher]

Some things literally cannot be conceptually understood. For example, a concept of the universe is impossible since there exists no duality against everything. Nothing perhaps?... but existence itself is considered an axiom of awareness.

Some people define the universe as everything that exists, but God knows whether this is accurate. If we defined life as all the physical properties of an organism, we would fail to capture the system and thus fail to understand it appropriately. So if the universe is a system, it could never be grasped. There is no outside vision.

[tjohnson]

In the same way sense organs can't evolve to capture and process reality "as it is", as the latter is an abstraction that is physically unreachable.

'Reality as it is that sense organs can't capture and process' is your abstraction. It isn't mine.

So unless you believe in the possibility of mystical insight, no amount of evolution can lead to organs that can capture reality "as it is".

It sounds like you, by some mystical insight, believe you can distinguish between "reality as it is" and reality that your sense organs capture.

I think the problem is the term 'reality' is so very vague. The term implies something that is completely independent of observers but how is that possible? Even for you to speak about "reality" means there is an observer (you). It is meaningless to speak about 'reality' independent of observers, it is what I have heard called here a stolen concept.

[jeffrey smith]

Jeff,

Let me put it another way.

Our sense organs are part of our mind, not separate from it.

The package deal presents them as "filters" that go to our mind--"filters" that somehow filter out reality.

I don't agree with that.

Just as the contents in our stomach after a meal no longer look like the plate of food we finished eating, that does not mean we are not experiencing food "as it is." That makes no sense. How about calling our teeth a "filter" between food and the digestive system, that once food goes through the filter it is no longer food. That makes no sense again. Food continues to be food while it is being processed, even once it is ground up and being broken down chemically.

Ditto for light waves, sound waves, heat waves, etc., in their respective processing.

Reality continues to be reality during processing. It just changes form.

Michael

I think you are confusing perceiving and knowing. The two are not the same.

But consider the difference in how you know your own thoughts and how you know objects outside yourself. The former you know directly, the latter only indirectly (that is, through sensory perception).

(And technical note: light waves, etc. are transformed by the sensory organs into neural impulses that are communicated to the brain: as far as the body is concerned, they go no farther than the sense organ that perceives them and what the brain actually receives is a pattern of nerve impulses that it translates into the perception.)

Jeffrey S.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jeff,

I'm not confusing perceiving and knowing. I'm taking about a package deal concept that severs them. They are not standalone attributes of a human. They are both part of the same awareness faculty.

You also wrote: "... light waves, etc. are transformed by the sensory organs into neural impulses..."

Correct. That is what reality does. It transforms.

It does not go away or become filtered out, as implied (and sometimes stated) in the package concept.

In this respect, what is reality "as it is"? The form before the transformation? What makes the form after the transformation "reality as it is not"--as those who argue this argue this?

I do not accept the argument (which is the logical root of all this) that once reality changes form, it is no longer reality.

Michael

[Christopher]

Jeffrey,

According to your explanation, you cannot know your thoughts directly either. Thoughts themselves are just neural impulses converted into symbolic patterns at the physical level. Another point, what is the first word that pops into your head? Whatever it is, where did it come from? Thoughts themselves, though accessed through intention, arise from mechanisms that exist outside consciousness.

I think what you're trying to brush up against is the dichotomy between exterior and interior reality. Exterior exists outside of us and is available to many consciousnesses; interior exists inside of us and is available only to the person having the experience. I wouldn't know whether it makes sense though to say that interior reality is more immediate or "more direct."

The only immediate thing to humans is the moment of awareness, and that moment is filled from one of any number of sources; but awareness is empty without some outside "indirect" filler - whether thoughts, sounds, sights, feelings, etc.