: My claim is stronger: that no possible human observation
: could shine light on the question. Not under a theory
: of relativity, not under QM, not under The Next Great
: Thing.
I certainly wouldn't argue with this.
: The next step--the interesting one--is that there still
: might be reasons to hold that such a world exists.
: Personally, I find this a fascinating discovery, a
: discovery about human belief systems.
: I shortened this paragraph, but don't follow you on this
: point. I'd point out that science will be necessarily
: self-centered, and based on measurement. Unless we
: have a revolution.
Oh, certainly...what I'm referring to here is the idea that QM shows human consciousness directly influencing the world, via experiments such as that described by Forrest. A sort of "there is an external world, but it's not mind-independent" idea. That, I think is unfounded.
: I'm going to let this idea rattle around in my head for a
: little while as I continue my daily grind of
: appraising real estate. My spider sense is tingling.
Probably means Electro's lurking in the next home's romper room. I'd be on my guard if I were you.
: But the first question to you is: are observations
: physical or mental? And are you holding a sort of
: mental/physical duality or something else?
I don't really know. I suppose I think that the mental world is an expression of certain interactions in the physical world. Each mental state is an observation of the physical system the interactions within which evoke that state. Or something. Or something.
: 'Unthinkable' is my term, and I haven't yet found anybody
: else that likes it. I don't say it's terribly
: accurate, but it sums up in my mind Kant's point in a
: single word. Are you familiar with the antinomies?
Never read any Kant outside of the World Book article, but if you'd care to provide a summary, I'll gladly try to follow along.
: Do you have a source for this from Russell? What's
: curious about this is that there's a strong prima
: facie case that bringing in talk of unobservables
: (e.g., a mind-independent world) complicates rather
: than simplifies a problem, ANY problem. It seems to me
: like to really get the answer you have to move beyond
: a functional excuse (I need mind-independence to get
: the right answer), because those will never work, and
: find something more compelling. For just one example,
: co-opting Descartes, if you could show that you needed
: a mind-independent world just to be doubting whether
: one existed, then that might be a reason to suppose
: such a world existed. If you needed it just to get off
: the ground, so to speak.
Russell I haven't read in a few years (my grandfather's a philosophy professor, so I was somewhat better-versed in this stuff when I lived with him), but I believe he arrived at that conclusion after attempting to work out his perception-based scientific theory. If you've read all that and don't see it anywhere, then I'm just pulling it out of my ass.
As for the question of simplicity--well, I'd treat it as analogous to, say, starting with a polynomial and then converting it into a factored form. The second form contains more terms, but it still makes many calculations much much easier. Simplicity is dependent both on the number of entities and on the ease of calculations involving them.
Care to expound upon that strong prima facie case?
: That's what you're going to hang your hat on at the end
: of the day? A false principle and an old wive's tale?
: Actually, Plus, see above: I would resist the idea
: that claiming the existence of an external world makes
: things simpler.
Well, I'm in the company of the entire human race in trusting to the inductive principle, so I don't feel much embarrassment there. :-) And I'd follow simplicity on the grounds of convenience rather than truth, as I said.
Hey, if I wanted certainty, I'd be a mathematician.
: OK, there's 'empirical', which means, roughly,
: 'testable'. It sounds like your use of 'scientific'
: means what I'd call 'empirical'. You can force a
: psychic friend to make empirical statements that are
: not scientific because they're guesses. If they turn
: out to be true (I AM pregnant with my ex-financee's
: baby!), that doesn't mean a scientific theory is
: validated.
Should the theory be "Guesses X, Y and Z will be correct," then it's been validated better than most scientific theories will ever be.
You consider scientific theories to be a subset of testable statements...for me it's the reverse. I classify math as a science, whereas I suppose you would not?
--SiliconDream
