Objective/Subjective

[steve_bank]

Thermostats and heaters and heat are all experiences.

I said when we can predict future experiences we label that science. Sometimes. Some people call psychology a science.

It does not make any of it more than a bunch of experiences.

There is nothing else for humans besides their experiences and what they make of them.

Masturbation either mental or physicals is an experience.

 

[untermensche]

Thermostats and heaters and heat are all experiences.

I said when we can predict future experiences we label that science. Sometimes. Some people call psychology a science.

It does not make any of it more than a bunch of experiences.

There is nothing else for humans besides their experiences and what they make of them.

Masturbation either mental or physicals is an experience.

And that is all you do.

 

[steve_bank]

A measurement is a human experiencing something.



This is gibberish.

This is goblety goop, and poor quality gobelty goop at that.

Thanks for the insights.

My pleasure. Here is another one, you are stuck in pre 2oth century thinking. A century or two behind he curve.

You keep repeating all is an experience, ok but to what end or purpose? There are categories of experience and not all experience is the same.

The practice and application of science is no deferent that any other experience and no more objective than astrology?? Answer that question. I know you can not.

I have never seen anyone on the forum so utterly devoid of any understanding of science and observation. Even the creationist theists usually have some understanding.

 

[steve_bank]

Thermostats and heaters and heat are all experiences.

I said when we can predict future experiences we label that science. Sometimes. Some people call psychology a science.

It does not make any of it more than a bunch of experiences.

There is nothing else for humans besides their experiences and what they make of them.

Masturbation either mental or physicals is an experience.

And that is all you do.

Actually I am fleshing out a book on electric circuit theory, something productive and useful to somebody else.

 

[skepticalbip]

Material observations are measured

A measurement is a human experiencing something.

...

This is gibberish.

.... snip ....

Your pontification is refuted by reality, and you really should stop defending your demonstrably false positions with such arrogant pomposity, if you care about not being thought a dogmatic fool.

But is he really being a dogmatic fool? Or is the arrogant pomposity and nonsense assertions purposeful just simply to frustrate and provoke responses?

 

[untermensche]

Thanks for the insights.

My pleasure. Here is another one, you are stuck in pre 2oth century thinking. A century or two behind he curve.

Nonsense.

You keep repeating all is an experience, ok but to what end or purpose? There are categories of experience and not all experience is the same.

Stating facts is the purpose.

There are types of experiences, the visual experience, the auditory experience, the experience of temperature, etc.

The practice and application of science is no deferent that any other experience and no more objective than astrology?? Answer that question. I know you can not.

I have answered this about three times.

What separates the two is the ability to predict future experiences.

I have never seen anyone on the forum so utterly devoid of any understanding of science and observation.

No mirrors in your home?

 

[untermensche]

And that is all you do.

Actually I am fleshing out a book on electric circuit theory, something productive and useful to somebody else.

And I help sick or injured people regain their function.

It doesn't make you right about anything here.

 

[untermensche]

.... snip ....

Your pontification is refuted by reality, and you really should stop defending your demonstrably false positions with such arrogant pomposity, if you care about not being thought a dogmatic fool.

But is he really being a dogmatic fool? Or is the arrogant pomposity and nonsense assertions purposeful just simply to frustrate and provoke responses?

You are describing yourself.

You can't refute a thing I say.

 

[WAB]

Unter, are you an Idealist of some fashion? I mean philosophically speaking?

By and large your position is not that unusual. I remember many threads on the subject of certainty. Many posters insisted that total certainty was impossible.

 

[untermensche]

Unter, are you an Idealist of some fashion? I mean philosophically speaking?

By and large your ideas are not that unusual. I remember many threads on the subject of certainty. Many posters insisted that total certainty was impossible.

What are you?

Are you a mind experiencing things?

Or are you something else?

What do you think you have besides your experiences and what you make from them?

Tell me.

I am not saying the external world is not there.

But you do not experience the table. You experience your experience of the table. The table and your experience of the table are two completely different things. The table (an assumption based on experience) does not have color. Your experience of it does.

 

[WAB]

Thanks, untermensche.

So you do not dispute that an external world exists. Good.

There is no reason to be argumentative and defensive all the time.

There were many philosophical idealists, as you know, I'm sure. And they are not all the same, but mostly they assert the "primacy of consciousness", which it *appears* you do. Note *appears*

But maybe you don't.


***

What am I? Not anything specific, but kind of a realist, kind of a monist, and kind of a nominalist. The great thing about humans is the vast diversity of modes of thinking, and even among groups who voluntarily put themselves into a category (like "utilitarianism, for example), there are all kinds of disagreements and divergence of opinion. I am closest to Spinoza in my essential beliefs and thoughts than to any other philosopher I am aware of.

I am trying to understand you while also trying not to offend you.

Or at least, that's what I'm doing now, in this post.

 

[untermensche]

Thanks, untermensche.

So you do not dispute that an external world exists. Good.

I don't know. But I assume it exists. I am not saying it does not exist.

All I know are my experiences.

There is no reason to be argumentative and defensive all the time.

?

This is what I deal with:

Your pontification is refuted by reality, and you really should stop defending your demonstrably false positions with such arrogant pomposity

Not rational arguments.

What am I? Not anything specific

Not what arbitrary label do you assign yourself.

What are you?

What is your nature?

Are you not a mind?

If not what are you?

 

[fromderinside]

Simply, I control the shit out of her behavioral responses to the protocol and information I provide.

- FDI

Sounds to me like you're more interested in "controlling" the subject's behavior and responses than you are in discovering objective information.

I am not accusing you of that, just responding to your phrasing, and remembering certain things you have said in the past.

I am going to throw Jose Delgado into the mix once again, just for shits and giggles.

I would like to know if anyone else sees something extremely disturbing in the following quote:

“We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated. ... The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective. Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain.”
~ Dr. Jose Delgado

(1915-) Spanish professor of physiology, Director of Neuropsychiatry at Yale Medical School, famed for his research into mind control through electrical stimulation of regions in the brain

Congressional Record, vol. 118, No. 26 (1974)

First Delgado comment completely misses my point. My control is relative to the task to which I put my observer to participate. Purely operational. Its not what to which she responds it's how she responds formally to inputs I provide.

I take establishing and sustaining objective behavior very seriously.

One time I had an observer who wanted to discuss how he felt about what I was presenting. That was not my objective so I dismissed him after three sessions in which he insisted on communicating how he felt about each stimulus presented as he was working in the lab setting. Had I wanted to hear what he had to say, had it been relevant to the purpose of the study, I would have provided rules by which he could so communicate objectively. Every study has a specific purpose and design appropriate to that purpose.


Maybe you'd like to take a whack at finding out how humans perceive silent gaps in tone pairings around a centering frequency at a variety of sensation levels. One reason for doing such work is to get at how humans resolve continuity and tonal separation with the equipment they have for processing sounds. How this is achieved obviously plays a significant a part in intelligibility of speech and tonal coherency. How would you attack the issue?

 

[untermensche]

For humans there is no such thing as objective behavior or an objective perception.

 

[fromderinside]

Material observations are measured

A measurement is a human experiencing something.

and externally verifiable in terms of other measurable material operations and standards.

This is gibberish.

wowl Stumped at first grade level of understanding operationalism.

Let's all join untermenche back in 400 BC at the knee of Socrates. Either that or we must shoot him because he's that chick which keeps missing the grain when he pecks.

 

[untermensche]

A measurement is a human experiencing something.



This is gibberish.

wowl Stumped at first grade level of understanding operationalism.

Let's all join untermenche back in 400 BC at the knee of Socrates. Either that or we must shoot him because he's that chick which keeps missing the grain when he pecks.

That is hysterical hand waving.

You clearly don't have one argument.

 

[untermensche]

Science has made great progress by ASSUMING the external world is out there.

They have never proven it. Because all we have are our subjective experiences and nothing else.

But assuming it is out there and making certain assumptions about how it works is enough to be able to make predictions about future experiences.

 

[WAB]

I don't know. But I assume it exists. I am not saying it does not exist.

All I know are my experiences.



?

This is what I deal with:

Your pontification is refuted by reality, and you really should stop defending your demonstrably false positions with such arrogant pomposity

Not rational arguments.

What am I? Not anything specific

Not what arbitrary label do you assign yourself.

What are you?

What is your nature?

Are you not a mind?

If not what are you?

No, I am not only a mind. I am a human being who has a brain, which is the objective thing that allows me to have a subjective experience, and a body (also an object) which has senses and the ability to perceive and navigate through the external world that I come in contact* with; and I use my mind to do exactly what you use your mind for.



*Yes, humans do have direct contact with the external world. We can look at it and see it and smell it and feel it and touch it, at myriads of points on our bodies. In fact, we are in intimate contact with the external world, and with objects.

Does all this experience occur in the mind? Yes. And the mind depends on the brain.

"Are you not a mind?" is a silly question.

 

[WAB]

- FDI

Sounds to me like you're more interested in "controlling" the subject's behavior and responses than you are in discovering objective information.

I am not accusing you of that, just responding to your phrasing, and remembering certain things you have said in the past.

I am going to throw Jose Delgado into the mix once again, just for shits and giggles.

I would like to know if anyone else sees something extremely disturbing in the following quote:

First Delgado comment completely misses my point. My control is relative to the task to which I put my observer to participate. Purely operational. Its not what to which she responds it's how she responds formally to inputs I provide.

I take establishing and sustaining objective behavior very seriously.

One time I had an observer who wanted to discuss how he felt about what I was presenting. That was not my objective so I dismissed him after three sessions in which he insisted on communicating how he felt about each stimulus presented as he was working in the lab setting. Had I wanted to hear what he had to say, had it been relevant to the purpose of the study, I would have provided rules by which he could so communicate objectively. Every study has a specific purpose and design appropriate to that purpose.


Maybe you'd like to take a whack at finding out how humans perceive silent gaps in tone pairings around a centering frequency at a variety of sensation levels. One reason for doing such work is to get at how humans resolve continuity and tonal separation with the equipment they have for processing sounds. How this is achieved obviously plays a significant a part in intelligibility of speech and tonal coherency. How would you attack the issue?

No, Delgado is most certainly not beside the point. He was (I believe he has passed) a neuroscientist who did all kinds of work involving actual, physical intervention into the brain. I am NOT suggesting that his work was without scientific value. It did and does have value. It is useful, and important.

Nonetheless, his comments about the future and about controlling the mind indicate plainly that he was not only motivated by a desire to discover objective truth, but that there was a political motive driving his experiments and research. A motive that virtually anyone can see is not only disturbing, but in fact evil, if evil is anything at all. Steve was right: all governments are interested in such things, but only a strongly authoritarian government would ever attempt to literally control the masses through mutilation of their brains (Delgado actually uses the word 'mutilate').

Sorry to pester you, or to assume too much, but your response to my last comments to you do not change my suspicions a single iota.

That you dismissed a subject because he wanted to discuss his feelings with you makes me wonder even more about your moral compass.

I DO NOT believe that you are an immoral person! But I couldn't get you to condemn Delgado's words years ago, and it seems likely that I will not get you to do it here. More than likely, you just don't like the idea that an uneducated mope from the herd, from the Great Unwashed, from the stinky underbelly of poor, common "folk", has the nads to discuss this kind of thing with you.

***

How would I attack the issue?

Do everything I can to ensure that psychopaths like Delgado do not go plodding through an innocent person's brain.

 

[DBT]

By all accounts, Dalgado's comments were made naively. Said out of enthusiasm for his research rather than any malicious intent. Many of those who dealt with him described him as a gentleman.