Posted by alexandra_k on February 10, 2005, at 22:12:17
In reply to Re: quick thought... » alexandra_k, posted by Gabbi-x-2 on February 10, 2005, at 20:54:28
> > Science isn’t authoritative on everything. But it is authoritative on a limited domain.
> That's exactly what I was saying here...Yeah, I thought you'd like that :-)
> I won't ever believe, that science is authoritative though...Okay. What I had in mind by authoratitive is that we have better reason to believe what the scientists say (when and *only when* they make claims about their limited domain) than we have reason to believe the non-scientist. If we ask 'do NZ sparrows migrate' and there is a conflict between cousin Joe the artist and the scientific journals IMO it would be more rational to go with the journals...
Kuhn "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" talked about the progress of science from a scientific historian point of view. He maintained that different scientists view the world through different theorietical lenses. The lenses are unavoidable (there isn't a 'view from nowhere') and the lenses infect the way they describe the world.
For example, Joseph Black wrote that he 'observed' heat-fluid (phlogiston?) flow from one object to another... Nowdays scientists 'observe' the motions / vibrations of molecules. Observation is always theory laden.
Quine showed us that. The observational / theorietical distinction is untenable.
Kuhn thought that different world views (alchemy vs modern atomic theory) were incommensurable and incomparable... Lets see if I can remember...'two scientists working within two different frameworks neither oberve the same phenomena nor observe the same results'.
Science doesn't work in a cumulative fashion. Rather, whole frameworks are thrown out and abandoned. If you go to study chemistry you are unlikely to study alchemy. You are unlikely to study what Aristotle and the alchemists had to say. That is because they work within a completely different framework...
That is probably more confusing than anything else, but I thought you might like it..
The results we see, the *things* we observe are dependent of the *theory* or lens through which we view the world. Every now and then the lens changes - e.g., newtonian mechanics vs eienstinean mechanics.
> > That's what I was saying here...
Goodie, you liked it again :-)
> Some things cannot be defined (by science) that does not mean they are not real.Thats right. Science is the study of *inter-subjective* reality.
> Hence my statement that reality is subjective.But not all of it. I'll try to give an example.
I am now sitting in front of a computer.
That is true or false, it either is the case in reality or it is not. That is mind independent in the sense that my mind might believe the answer is yes and yours might believe the answer is no and one of us would have to be wrong. Whether it is true or false isn't anything to do with the state of our minds - it is to do with the way things are in the world.I do haggle a bit. Because we aren't in agreement over terminology or distinctions. You sort of need to start with a mind / matter distinction. Then what is real is facts about mind and facts about matter. Science can do facts about matter and they are supposed to be mind-independent. Though it then turns out that because of our limits given our place in the world the best we can manage is a study of inter-subjectivity and reality is unobservable / beyond our grasp in principle.
You then have a linguistic decision to make: either reality is beyond our grasp in principle, or reality turned out to be a little different than we had supposed (in the sense that reality is inter-subjective). I dub these reality1 and reality2. That is a distinction Kant made...
Depending on what decision you make you will get a different answer to the questions:
- Can we have knowledge of reality?
- Is reality mind-independent?
- If a tree falls in the woods...?Thats why philosophers always say 'well, it all depends on what you mean by xxxxx'.
> Reality is comprised of thought, consciousness produces thought, consciousness is relative therefore reality is subjective.Sorry, but I don't think that works. Reality1 is the cause of our experiences. Our experiences are subjective. I can't have your experinece. But we can have two different experiences of *the same thing*. It is the thing that is supposed to have a mind independent existence. It would be there regardless of our having observed it.
> > If a tree falls in the woods and there is nobody there to hear it – then does it make a sound?
> I've always thought that the latter was meant not to find an answer but to free your mind from rigid thinking.Different thinkers have different answers depending on their theory of reality... Locke believed in mind-independent reality (reality1) but the price to pay is that we can never have knowledge of the external world. Well, okay, to be exact we can never know that we have knowledge of the external world.
Berkely thought 'to be is to be perceived'. All that exists / is real are ideas in minds. Then he has a problem of if we all close our eyes then the universe (or tree) would disappear in reality.
He loses objective reality. Then, as a manouver he invokes god. Everything need not disappear just because we close our eyes - because all of reality (even us ourselves) are really ideas in the mind of god! The tree is observed by god, and so all is well. Everything is an idea. But to say 'everything is an idea' is to lose the subjective / objective; mental / physical distinction...
Ultimately it would be a good one to lose, I agree.
But I think ideas are on the one hand and reality1 is on the other...
And inter-subjectivity (reality2) has to be the bridge between them...
We actually ask students that question - but it is more 'compare and contrast the answers that would be given by Locke and Berkeley'...
Do you think the ability to see it both ways would help free one from rigid thinking?
poster:alexandra_k
thread:455724
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20050205/msgs/456103.html