h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"2. Ictoan: I wonder why you want so much to attach to the definition of our assumed reality a quality - objectivity - whose presence or absence you are unable to discern or confirm?"
Because, as I keep saying, it's bl**dy useful!

And as yet I haven't found a use for saying 'um, well, not sure really, might do, might not' other than for winding up someone who wants a definite answer

<[objectivity is] bl**dy useful!>

You've said it a number of times, I agree, but you haven't yet demonstrated it to be useful. It would be convenient if objectivity was accessible to us, I admit, but that's just wish-list fodder. In RL (where objectivity is inaccessible to us mere mortals), I have yet to become aware of any useful application of or for objectivity....

Go on! Educate me!

Pattern-chaser

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But I don't need to. You've already shown it be useful yourself!

BTW, I'm saying the 'assumption of objectivity' is useful.

Pattern-chaser

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See your arguments

Ooops, missed this reply:

"That's not my intention. My assumption is that there is a reality, and it's the one we perceive (more or less). I deliberately stop short of assuming anything more than necessary. For example, I am *not* assuming a 'pink reality', an 'objective reality', or any other qualified reality. I accept what (I think) is there, but deliberately make no (unjustified, IMO) attempt to tie it down further."
I see. Yet within that statement is an acknowledgement that what you perceive is not what necessarily is. You are implicitly acknowledging a greater reality which we each perceive individually and, presumably, somewhat differently. That reality therefore being universal.

"
Which is?"
Surely you know my answer to this by now?

"In uncertain universe fits the empirical evidence we have, without adding any unjustified speculation. [Where did 'non-causal' appear from? The universe I perceive is causal, if not *certainly* so.]"
Non-causal. Must be non causal if you have no certainty then you cannot state cause and effect, merely coincidence. Cause/effect requires evidence of universality, repeatability and certainty, all of which you refute.

"uncertain universe fits the empirical evidence"
Wait a minute. You're arguing against certainty because you have observed reality to be uncertain? To me, a certain and universal reality meets empirical evidence. There's certainly a lot going for it

" I have not removed them, just 'demoted' them from certain to probable. Extrapolation and prediction continue to work usefully. I am only accepting what 'is', and not wasting my time with what 'ought to be'."
I see. But assuming something is probably repeatable is not much use is it really?
Whereas if I do something 1000 times and it results in the same outcome, I find it reasonable to say it is repeatable. And continue with that until proven otherwise. That is assuming certainty.
Your extrapolation is suggeston and opinion (well, if that's the case then I think this may be so too. But I'm not sure) and your prediction is supposition (I think this'll happen. Maybe).

P=C:







Not "acknowledging", 'assuming'. The difference is subtle but significant.



The reality whose existence and nature I assume is universal.







No! The more we consider this, the more I find that I cannot see a useful and constructive application of certainty or objectivity. You have tried to help me (), I know, but the things you say require certainty and/or objectivity seem to proceed just as happily without them. For example:





You can't state *certain* cause and effect, but it seems to me you can state *probable* cause and effect. If you can't, then how have we gained so much from our application of science, when certainty is not accessible to us?



Why?



I'm arguing the inaccessibility of certainty, not its non-existence! So my answer to your question is: yes. From a human perspective, the universe *is* uncertain and incoherent, although we assume (hope?) these problems are a consequence of out imperfect perception, not that the universe is of itself uncertain or inconsistent.



Indeed there is! If only we could perceive and verify such a universe.... But please can we move away from wish-lists, and back into the real world?



No, it's acknowledging the probability indicated by your experimental evidence. Assuming certainty is speculation, not justified by your evidence.



Agreed. I would've expressed it differently (), but that's essentially it.

Pattern-chaser

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Better: From a human perspective, the universe *is* sometimes uncertain and incoherent...

Pattern-chaser

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I think part of the problem here is that we aren't clear what some of the terms being bandied about are actually being applied to.

Firstly, does an external reality exist.

In practice, we accept that it does, and act as if that existence was "certain". But how would we set about assigning a likelihood to the possibility that it doesn't?

I have suggested that solipsism should be restricted to the current contents of consciousness, on the grounds that any other position acknowledges that information exists outside of consciousness (and for the record I think that all of external reality may be regarded as an information store). The selection of any other boundary is then purely arbitrary.

All other *meaningful* judgements of probability seem to depend on the existence of external reality.

I think Ictoan is right about the importance of the assumption that this reality is universal and consistent/coherent. Not because it can be verified, but because without it the concept of verification (and/or falsification) has no meaning.

We also have to start by trusting our perceptions of this external reality, with no assessment of probability as to the truth of the assumption (I'll grant that for many reasons we don't end up with the same trust, but those reasons depend, paradoxically, on that trust existing.)

We can't have Objective knowledge of that external reality, because for us it always appears in the guise of phenomenal reality, already processed into the forms that we reason about.

Noggin

<...and act as if that existence was "certain".>

But more and more - particularly under the influence of this thread - I wonder why do we do this?



I think this may be a consequence of what I mentioned before: we crave certainty because it's *easier*! I suspect that, lacking certainty, we can't precisely quantify even a probability!



I'd like to pursue this thought with reference to the nonconscious mind, but not here, or maybe not yet.



Then, lacking certainty, should we actually consider whether verification *does* have meaning? We've never actually had it, and we've made some significant progress over the centuries. But it's hard to do such things, isn't it?

Pattern-chaser

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<>

I don't think that we do this for any "logically worked out" reason. It's where we start from. We may justify it after the fact, but the justifications aren't the reason.

<>

In some cases we may *need* to act without stopping to ponder whether that sabretooth tiger really exists. In other cases a realisation of uncertainty is be more accurate and useful. But my main point wass that our judgements of probability, however rough and ready, must be a probability of something actually being the case - there has to be something to compare it against.

Noggin

I don't mean why do we act as though external reality exists, I mean why do we assume its *certain* existence? As I've observed before, to assume certainty is an oxymoron.



Isn't a probability a sort of absolute number? A probability of 0.25 indicates that (say), if you do X, then Y will follow about one time out of every four times you do it. Probabilities don't sound particularly relative to me.

Pattern-chaser

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The existence of the thoughts that bounce around within my conscious mind is certain. [The correctness or usefulness of those thoughts is rather less certain. ] But is that certainty useful, or just a curiosity?

I'm still searching for a manifestation of certainty that makes a significant contribution to something....


Pattern-chaser

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I claim no deep understanding of this stuff, but I wonder if something along the following lines is possible:

Having concluded that "I think, therefore I am" Descartes was faced with the problem that it was impossible to add anything to this. So he decided to retreat into the world model that science, logic and philosophy had already built. In there, he could reason logically, in an environment certain and objective - even if it was merely because it was defined to be so.

Although the model is not reality - the map is not the territory - the success of the model is judged by its success in *acting* similarly to reality, and this it does well. So Rene could reason within this world of certainty, and reach tentative conclusions. As long as he checked these conclusions against reality by experiment, what he did was permissible, and maybe helpful too.

This seems to be in accord with the general views that both of you gentlemen are proposing; would you agree (or am I talking rubbish)?

Pattern-chaser

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I think you're wrong about Rene, but closer to the mark for me.

Descartes was trying to establish a firm foundation for philosophy, and to do this he started by doubting everything that could be doubted, up to and including his own senses, until he arrived at "I think, therefore I am", which he felt could not be doubted.

But in fact nothing can be added to this while doubting the senses is a *premise* of the argument. (Doubting the senses also forces us to consider the *meanings* of words like "exist" and "reality", but we'll leave that to one side for the moment.) Descartes ploy was to try and hang a justification for trusting the senses (on taking their deliverances to have "representational reality") on the existence of god. But to establish the existence of god he started by claiming that some of his ideas had "more representational reality" than others, and the one that had the most was his idea of god, who was therefore real, and could act as guarantor for the rest.

I have to go out now, but you can see the circularity of Descartes' argument.

Noggin

I read an interesting thing in bed this morning. You'll remember I have said we shouldn't think along 'certain' lines, because it closes our minds to new discoveries? [If you *know* the truth, you're unlikely to look for alternatives, nor will you notice then if they're waved under your nose. ] An America Buddhist nun advises that we should set aside *all* beliefs, to allow us to partake of the real world directly. AIUI, she justifies this as I did for certainty (above). Food for thought?

Pattern-chaser

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Food for thought, yes. *But*...

The only thing I've been arguing for as "certain"# is the bare existence of external reality, but not of any of its contents, and this special case certainty isn't likely to prevent us discovering anything. (It's a bit like the special case certainty of the existence of our current state of consciousness).

Partaking directly of reality means *what* exactly? And what counts as a "belief" here?

#I'm not sure if certain is the best word, but some philosopher's use this term to mean "that which is inescapable" rather than "that which is proven."

Noggin

I don't ascribe to this Buddhist idea, by the way. I just mentioned it because it seemed connected with our discussion.



Am I deranged, or are you using (a variant on) the Intelligent Design argument here? That an uncertain reality is unimaginable (or maybe unusable), so it must be certain?

Pattern-chaser

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You're deranged

An external relity that didn't exist would certainly be unusable (although it would obviously be imaginable in at least one important sense of the word.) The question is what would the non existence of any external reality mean for our (or rather my) mindworld?

Noggin

And the answer is 'no change'? By which I mean that your mindworld would be as it is now: an *apparently* real and consistent thing of whose 'actual' (objective) nature you are unaware.

If you were *aware* (and certain! ) that there was no external reality in which you existed, then you might be able to deduce that your 'reality' is a product of your imagination, or that of something/someone else's, or....

Pattern-chaser

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I think we may be encountering the consequences of a point I made a while ago. If we adopt a human (not personal, just 'typically' human) perspective, we end up with something more relevant to us.

For example, if we adopt an objective perspective, which is the conventional way of doing things, then such questions as "Is there an external reality, and does it have objective existence?" or "Is there a God and does She have objective existence?" are potentially answerable by "yes" or "no". From a human perspective, these questions cannot be answered "yes" or "no", only "maybe".

I took your question, Noggin (<what would the non existence of any external reality mean for [my] mindworld?&gt to be made from a human perspective, and answered accordingly.

Pattern-chaser

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