"Objective" Evidence

[Subsymbolic]

Your position—radical skepticism—means, basically, that you are talking to yourself.

Absolute nonsense. Does not follow in any way. Something pulled from your backside.

My position is that all we have access to are subjective experiences. An undeniable truth.

What you subjectively make from that is your affair.

I make from it many things.

None of which is that I am the only thing capable of having subjective experiences.

I act as if there are others capable of having subjective experiences. The people I experience.

And it has been fruitful. Sometimes. Not with you.

People that lie about their experiences are not people worth dealing with.

You mean like people who claim that Dennett was humiliated by Dyson and then when the video shows no such thing spend ten pages blustering about it?

 

[untermensche]

Your position—radical skepticism—means, basically, that you are talking to yourself.

Absolute nonsense. Does not follow in any way. Something pulled from your backside.

My position is that all we have access to are subjective experiences. An undeniable truth.

What you subjectively make from that is your affair.

I make from it many things.

None of which is that I am the only thing capable of having subjective experiences.

I act as if there are others capable of having subjective experiences. The people I experience.

And it has been fruitful. Sometimes. Not with you.

People that lie about their experiences are not people worth dealing with.

You mean like people who claim that Dennett was humiliated by Dyson and then when the video shows no such thing spend ten pages blustering about it?

Did you watch the entire video?

Did you see him talk about "wonder tissue"?

Did you see Dyson retort by saying that science deals with wonder tissue every day?

That simple statement destroyed Dennett's entire argument.

Dennett made some good points. All philosophical.

When he strays into "consciousness" he has nothing that isn't very dubious to say.

On appearance he is a very decent man that I have no personal feelings about.

But I disagree with him on many many things and think in terms of consciousness he is a big bag of wind, his ideas have no merit, without one explanation of the phenomena.

His book should have been called. "What isn't Consciousness". And I am serious. And in that it had some use.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Your position—radical skepticism—means, basically, that you are talking to yourself.

Absolute nonsense. Does not follow in any way. Something pulled from your backside.

Well, Plato’s backside perhaps, but not mine. Which, to your position, would be yours ultimately.

My position is that all we have access to are subjective experiences.

Who are “we”?

An undeniable truth.

How would “you” know? “You”—according to you—are a “thing” or “device” called “mind,” generated from brain activity and “subjective experiences” are “presentations” likewise generated by the brain for the “mind” to “experience” (somehow).

Thus, “truth” is nothing more than what your brain packs into these “presentations” right? So all “you” can ever know is what your brain tells you to know, including that “we” exist.

What you subjectively make from that is your affair.

What who subjectively makes from what? What is your brain packing into the “presentation” that “you” are now experiencing?

I make from it many things.

None of which is that I am the only thing capable of having subjective experiences.

Upon what are you basing such a religious assumption? That is an objective statement. Rather, that is a statement that assumes objectivity; namely “I” and that “I” is not the only “thing capable of having subjective experiences.” Your world view, however, precludes you from making any such assertion.

I act as if there are others capable of having subjective experiences. The people I experience.

So your brain does not generate those experiences, or are you simply trusting that your brain is not lying to you in its presentations? And if you are simply trusting your brain, why? Upon what could “you” possibly base such trust upon?

And it has been fruitful.

How would you measure such a thing?

Sometimes. Not with you.

Which is your brain’s fault.

People that lie about their experiences are not people worth dealing with.

I agree. And since, from your position, I am nothing more than a presentation generated by your brain, that’s good for you.

 

[Subsymbolic]

You mean like people who claim that Dennett was humiliated by Dyson and then when the video shows no such thing spend ten pages blustering about it?

Did you watch the entire video?

yes.

Did you see him talk about "wonder tissue"?

Not only did I see it, I went to the trouble of transcribing it. You zombies forget so quickly.

Did you see Dyson retort by saying that science deals with wonder tissue every day?

Not quite

That simple statement destroyed Dennett's entire argument.

And that is simply a big fat lie. I exposed it in detail last time - Dennett took him to the cleaners and Dyson backed down. That's the reality.

You want me to repeat your humiliation and post it all again?

 

[untermensche]

My position is that all we have access to are subjective experiences.

Who are “we”?

Your mind and mine.

What is going on here is two minds are engaging. You experience my words and I experience your words. The words are the products of our minds.

You have to assume there is a mind behind my words though.

It is not something that can be proven.

A negative cannot be proven.

I cannot prove I am not a witch or a so-called zombie.

I am what you subjectively make me out to be.

That is all a human has. Their subjective experiences and the things they subjectively make out of them.

“You”—according to you—are a “thing” or “device” called “mind,” generated from brain activity and “subjective experiences” are “presentations” likewise generated by the brain for the “mind” to “experience” (somehow).

That explains what is going on pretty good.

The act of experiencing includes knowing you are experiencing. That is experiencing. That is what is happening that caused humans to create the word "experiencing".

If you do not know you are experiencing you are not experiencing.

You know when you having the experience that you are driving your car you are having the experience you are driving your car. You are extra careful and very attentive.

What who subjectively makes from what?

Subjective experience.

That is all you have. Your subjective experiences and what you subjectively make out of them.

I do not care how wide you wave your arms or how loudly you wail.

You do not have anything else.

You cannot speak to me of anything else.

You can report an experience or report some idea you experience.

You can report nothing else. You have nothing else.

And it has been fruitful.

How would you measure such a thing?

The happiness I experience.

Like everyone else.

People that lie about their experiences are not people worth dealing with.

I agree.

So tell me about your experiences.

What do you think they are?

Do you know of something that is not one of your experiences?

 

[untermensche]

Did you see Dyson retort by saying that science deals with wonder tissue every day?

Not quite

Then you didn't see it.

Dennett has no argument to show consciousness cannot be an unknown quantum effect that does not behave in ways we understand.

He compared consciousness to a bunch of ants working together.

Absolute rubbish that has gone nowhere.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Your mind and mine.

According to your position, “mind” is generated by brain. Therefore, for me to have a “mind” I must also have a brain that generates it. Which means that you have instantiated a necessarily objective reality, where there are at least two brains, each generating a “mind.” But this contradicts your position.

What is going on here is two minds are engaging. You experience my words and I experience your words. The words are the products of our minds.

You have to assume there is a mind behind my words though.

No, you have to assume there is a brain behind your words and there is a brain behind my words and that your brain is not simply fucking with you.

It is not something that can be proven.

Which is why it is a religiously held belief; i.e., belief in spite of the lack of evidence—or ability to assess evidence—to support it.

“You”—according to you—are a “thing” or “device” called “mind,” generated from brain activity and “subjective experiences” are “presentations” likewise generated by the brain for the “mind” to “experience” (somehow).

That explains what is going on pretty good.

How would you know?

The act of experiencing includes knowing you are experiencing.

Iow, experiencing the act of experiencing. But according to your brain, the only way to “experience” is via a separate thing or “device” (called a “mind”). So there is now a “meta mind” device that is capable of experiencing the “mind” (aka, that which is capable of experiencing)?

You know when you having the experience that you are driving your car you are having the experience you are driving your car.

So, again, there is a “meta mind” device. The “mind” would be the device that is experiencing the driving of a car and the “meta mind” device would be the device that knows the “mind” is experiencing the driving of the car.

You dig sixteen tons and what do you get...?

What who subjectively makes from what?

Subjective experience.

That is all you have.

But your brain just stated previously that there is “your” brain (and your “mind device,” which is a separate thing) and “my” brain (and my “mind device”) and now your brain is stating that “we” each have at least one “meta mind device”, so that’s six devices “we” collectively have, firmly establishing an objective reality.

Your subjective experiences and what you subjectively make out of them.

Wait, now there is a forth device? There is the brain that generates the “presentations” and the other devices. There is the “mind” device, which is “that which is capable of experiencing.” The “meta mind” device, which is “that which is capable of knowing that the mind device is experiencing.” And now the “meta meta mind” device, which is “that which is capable of “making something out of the experiences that the brain generates for the mind device to experience and the meta mind device to know it is experiencing”? So eight devices total?

I do not care how wide you wave your arms or how loudly you wail.

Since you can never accept that “I” am nothing more than your brain fucking with you, shouldn’t “you” care?

You cannot speak to me of anything else.

True. Your brain cannot speak to you of anything else.

And it has been fruitful.

How would you measure such a thing?

The happiness I experience.

But it is I, your brain, that creates the “presentations” that you, the “mind device” experience. Thus, by the terms of your position, it is the brain that creates the “happiness” that you experience.

Like everyone else.

“Everyone else”? So, wait, now there are more than just eight devices objectively existing? How do I, your brain, know this in order to create the “presentation” of “everyone else” to you, the mind device for you to make such an assertion?

People that lie about their experiences are not people worth dealing with.

I agree.

So tell me about your experiences.

I already am. I am your brain.

 

[untermensche]

According to your position, “mind” is generated by brain. Therefore, for me to have a “mind” I must also have a brain that generates it.

I believe from experience, which is all I have and you too, the brain is generating the mind.

To not feel hungry you need to eat.

You don't need to know the food is real. You just have to believe it. You can never know it.

That is life. Being forced to believe subjective experiences point to objects external to the mind.

It is stupidity to question these beliefs. If you stop eating what you experience as food you will have unpleasant experiences.

If you do not avoid what you experience as the tree you will experience pain.

No, you have to assume there is a brain behind your words and there is a brain behind my words and that your brain is not simply fucking with you.

I know there is a mind on my end and I assume there is a brain generating it.

I assume there is a mind on your end and also assume there is a brain generating it.

What makes it interesting is my knowing I am experiencing things.

The act of experiencing includes knowing you are experiencing.

Iow, experiencing the act of experiencing.

No. Experiencing and knowing you are experiencing.

The knowing is just that there is no way to question it.

If you are experiencing red you cannot claim you are not experiencing red. Or claim you are experiencing green.

We call those truisms "knowing". It cannot be doubted.

You cannot speak to me of anything else.

True. Your brain cannot speak to you of anything else.

I am putting these words together.

And I am not a brain. I am something that can experience brains.

I am that which can experience and then subjectively make something of those experiences.

So is every other human. I believe.

 

[ruby sparks]

If I set up a light meter in a room and close and lock the door of the room, then return in the morning to read the meter, if it has detected luminance or light waves of a certain wavelength, then that is as close to objectivity ('the view from nowhere/nobody') that we can get, I think. The basic 'fact' that the detector registered something specific is largely independent of intersubjective agreement. The machine has reported. It's not a subjective opinion, or even a shared one. I could be taken out of the relevant 'equation'. The light meter could be placed there by a robot and the readings could be transmitted to a satellite machine which would analyse them and produce data and/or a prediction. The prediction could be used by yet another machine to decide when to go into the room or not. In theory, this could all happen on a planet where there are no humans and no conscious lifeforms.

Setting up a dozen such detectors and getting the same reading strengthens the evidence, but imo it doesn't seem to add to the objectivity of itself, which is already there.

The OP is talking about intersubjective agreement. In pragmatic terms, I think this provides, in certain situations, at least a degree of objectivity, if we allow that objectivity isn't a binary 'is or isn't' thing, which pragmatically, seems reasonable, and has I think been used that way by Karl Popper, for example.

Interpretation of evidence is another matter. Depends who or what is doing it. If it's human brains then I think intersubjective agreement is about all we can get, at least until we understand how the human system works much much much much better than we do now.

I probably should have read through the thread before posting that.

 

[untermensche]

If I set up a light meter in a room and close and lock the door of the room, then return in the morning to read the meter, if it has detected luminance or light waves of a certain wavelength, then that is as close to objectivity ('the view from nowhere/nobody') that we can get, I think. The basic 'fact' that the detector registered something specific is largely independent of intersubjective agreement.

The OP is talking about intersubjective agreement. In pragmatic terms, I think this provides at least a degree of objectivity, if we allow that objectivity isn't a binary 'is or isn't' thing, which pragmatically, seems reasonable, and has I think been used that way by Karl Popper, for example.

I probably should have read through the thread before posting that.

You experienced some readings on a meter you experienced.

I agree. Those kinds of experiences are sometimes labeled "objective evidence".

They are subjective experiences however.

 

[skepticalbip]

It's totally amazing how you so easily pull such asinine assertions out of your ass. That's gotta hurt. You could do yourself a great favor by investing in a dictionary.

I am not surprised you dribble this worthlessness instead of actually dealing with ideas.

I repeat since you did not even address. It frightens you perhaps?

To say something is real is to say there is a belief it has an existence.

Such drivel. Apparently you have ceded that reality is independent of what someone "experiences" or says about their "experience". What people mistakenly believe and say about reality is another story.

 

[untermensche]

Apparently you have ceded that reality is independent of what someone "experiences" or says about their "experience". What people mistakenly believe and say about reality is another story.

No.

I have said it is beneficial to believe there is a "reality" external to experience.

If you ignore the stairs you may have pain more difficult to ignore.

Did something "real" cause the pain? That is a belief. Who knows?

I only know I experience the pain and do not want any more of it.

 

[ruby sparks]

You experienced some readings on a meter you experienced.

I agree. Those kinds of experiences are sometimes labeled "objective evidence".

They are subjective experiences however.

In my enlarged scenario (which I edited belatedly, sorry), the readings get used by other machines and are never experienced by a conscious entity.

Yes, 'intersubjective agreement' is still a 'type' of subjectivity, yes. Or, I might think of it as somewhere between subjectivity and objectivity, with 'subjectivity' being restricted to one subject/brain/person.

The light meter could be placed there by a robot and the readings could be transmitted to a satellite machine which would analyse them and produce data and/or a prediction. The prediction could be used by yet another machine to decide when to go into the room or not. In theory, this could all happen on a planet where there are no humans and no conscious lifeforms.

 

[untermensche]

You experienced some readings on a meter you experienced.

I agree. Those kinds of experiences are sometimes labeled "objective evidence".

They are subjective experiences however.

In my enlarged scenario (which I edited belatedly, sorry), the readings get used by other machines and are never experienced by a conscious entity.

If no conscious entity is involved anywhere then nothing is ever known about any of it.

And of course it cannot happen unless a conscious entity puts it together.

 

[ruby sparks]

If no conscious entity is involved anywhere then nothing is ever known about any of it.

True. At least in the scenario. Is a conscious entity required for something to be 'evidence'? Maybe it is. It's certainly the common usage. Maybe a non-conscious robot can't be said to recognise 'evidence'. Could we talk of 'objective data' or 'objective information' instead?

And of course it cannot happen unless a conscious entity puts it together.

Yeah, sort of. I mean, I'm assuming there's a possibility that an equivalent 'system' on a much larger scale did not require a conscious entity to put it together. The universe.

'If a tree fell in a forest 10 million years ago, were there any air vibrations' sort of thing.

 

[skepticalbip]

Apparently you have ceded that reality is independent of what someone "experiences" or says about their "experience". What people mistakenly believe and say about reality is another story.

No.

I have said it is beneficial to believe there is a "reality" external to experience.
.

That which is real is real and someone's belief about it is irrelevant as to its actual existence.

But you are right that it is beneficial for someone to believe or accept reality. Those who don't have some extreme mental problems much more serious than bumping into real things they refuse to acknowledge exists.

 

[untermensche]

Apparently you have ceded that reality is independent of what someone "experiences" or says about their "experience". What people mistakenly believe and say about reality is another story.

No.

I have said it is beneficial to believe there is a "reality" external to experience.

That which is real is real and someone's belief about it is irrelevant as to its actual existence.

That is something you believe.

Not something you could ever demonstrate.

All you have access to are experiences.

This thing you call "real" is only a belief about the experiences.

 

[Elixir]

That which is real is real and someone's belief about it is irrelevant as to its actual existence.

That is something you believe.

Not something you could ever demonstrate.

That is something you believe.
Not something you could ever demonstrate.

Must have PhD in "Insipid Studies"

 

[Speakpigeon]

If I set up a light meter in a room and close and lock the door of the room, then return in the morning to read the meter, if it has detected luminance or light waves of a certain wavelength, then that is as close to objectivity ('the view from nowhere/nobody') that we can get, I think. The basic 'fact' that the detector registered something specific is largely independent of intersubjective agreement. The machine has reported. It's not a subjective opinion, or even a shared one. I could be taken out of the relevant 'equation'. The light meter could be placed there by a robot and the readings could be transmitted to a satellite machine which would analyse them and produce data and/or a prediction. The prediction could be used by yet another machine to decide when to go into the room or not. In theory, this could all happen on a planet where there are no humans and no conscious lifeforms.

Setting up a dozen such detectors and getting the same reading strengthens the evidence, but imo it doesn't seem to add to the objectivity of itself, which is already there.

As far as I understand, any observation is done from the point of view of the observer. If you're a human being, I suspect any observation you make is fundamentally subjective. It is first and foremost subjective. Objectivity comes in in a second phase, and it will always depend entirely on your subjectivity, at least as far as we know. I don't think this is even controversial.

The OP is talking about intersubjective agreement. In pragmatic terms, I think this provides, in certain situations, at least a degree of objectivity, if we allow that objectivity isn't a binary 'is or isn't' thing, which pragmatically, seems reasonable, and has I think been used that way by Karl Popper, for example.

Objectivity in the ontological sense is metaphysics. It's about whether some thing exists or not irrespective of whether we know it does. This entails we won't necessarily know that some thing exists objectively in this sense. So, there's also not much to say about that. You assume things really, objectively, exist or you don't.

Objectivity in the epistemological sense only requires that you agree with other people about the existence or otherwise of things. You do or you don't. Here, too, there's not much to say.

Either way we can always be wrong when claiming that some thing exists, except when we do the Cogito thing, and that seems a bit short to get you through your day.

Interpretation of evidence is another matter. Depends who or what is doing it. If it's human brains then I think intersubjective agreement is about all we can get, at least until we understand how the human system works much much much much better than we do now.

I probably should have read through the thread before posting that.

No, it's OK, I think we intersubjectively agree on that. There's, it's objective.
EB

 

[untermensche]

If no conscious entity is involved anywhere then nothing is ever known about any of it.

True. At least in the scenario. Is a conscious entity required for something to be 'evidence'? Maybe it is. It's certainly the common usage. Maybe a non-conscious robot can't be said to recognise 'evidence'. Could we talk of 'objective data' or 'objective information' instead?

All we have are subjective experiences.

We can talk about them and what we subjectively make of them.

We can call anything anything.

But all we have to talk about are subjective experiences.

If there is no experience of some thing to say it is there is absurd. It is pure religion.