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The Illusion of Self

I can't prove anything out in the world is "real". Because all I will ever have are my experiences of it and nothing more. - Unter

It is not up to you to prove things that happen in the world. (Egads!) Things happen in the world every microsecond of everyday: real events that happen, and 99.99999999999999 percent of them will happen without you knowing about them, and with you having zero experience of them.

Again, that you cannot "prove" that anything out in the world is real" is IRRELEVANT to the world at large - and relevant ONLY TO YOU. Perhaps you weren't aware, but people don't wait around for your approval that such and such an event actually happened. Were you aware of that?

This may come as a surprise, Unter, but you are not the whole world. Lots of shit goes down, and to most of it you will be utterly ignorant.

I really hate talking with dyed-in-the-wool subjectivists. There is almost no way to reach them.

I would personally like a definition of "objective" from fromderinside and untermensche.

fromder and unter: what is your definition of "objective".
 
I have no fancy labels for you but you are wrong.

I am stating a fact.

All is experience. There is nothing else.

Again, show me one thing you know about that wasn't an experience.

You conclude a lot is happening without my knowledge based on your experiences.

But it is a meaningless point.

I am not saying I know there is only experience.

I say that all we have access to are our experiences.

Objective is when you and I conclude we are having the same experience.

You experience the swan and I experience the swan and we label that "objective".

Objective is based on similar experiences.
 
untermensche said:
I have no fancy labels for you but you are wrong.

I am stating a fact.

All is experience. There is nothing else.

Again, show me one thing you know about that wasn't an experience.

You conclude a lot is happening without my knowledge based on your experiences.

But it is a meaningless point.

I am not saying I know there is only experience.

I say that all we have access to are our experiences.



Objective is when you and I conclude we are having the same experience.

You experience the swan and I experience the swan and we label that "objective".

Objective is based on similar experiences.
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No, that is not what objective means. Two religious people have the same experience, they believe that God speaks to them: that agreement does not make their experience "objective". Two people believe they have seen ghosts. Their agreement that they have seen ghosts does not make their experience objective!

There are such things as rocks, and trees, and rivers. Rocks, trees, and rivers, are objective. It is objectively true that there are rocks, trees, and rivers. Scientific discovery has proved the existence of those things beyond a doubt, and those things exist manifestly in EVERYONE'S experience. It DOES NOT depend on any individual's experience of those things for them to be objectively real. There is no reason to doubt them, and no-one doubts them. No one COULD doubt them, in fact, without appearing completely insane.

Your definition of objective is terribly lacking.

I notice that frumder has not offered his definition of objective.

I mentioned it in another thread: but I think a general thread, a general discussion of objective versus subjective, is in order.

Well, hey, why don't I make the thread?

Well, I would, but any thread that I start is doomed to die after a few pages, so I won't.

Perhaps one of the popular folks could do it?

Again, if I do it, the thread won't go anywhere.
 
WAB said:
No, that is not what objective means. Two religious people have the same experience, they believe that God speaks to them: that agreement does not make their experience "objective". Two people believe they have seen ghosts. Their agreement that they have seen ghosts does not make their experience objective!
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So if you and some other person were in a room and a 'god' suddenly appeared, at least some creature that could suddenly appear appeared and you both experienced it you would say that is not objective evidence?

There are such things as rocks, and trees, and rivers. Rocks, trees, and rivers, are objective.
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That is a conclusion based entirely on experiences. But experiences that have a duration of permanence.

The mountain is experienced everyday. Everybody talks about experiencing it.

It is labeled "objective" then.

I am not saying the mountain is not there.

I am not saying it is there either.

There is no way to know but we must act to survive and acting as if things we see are real keeps us alive. There is utility in believing the things we see with a degree of permanence are really there.

Utility does not equal knowing.
 
There is nothing behind the scientific method beyond utility.

We assume our observations are about real entities and that is a very useful assumption.

We don't have to know anything for certain beyond what is useful.
 
There is utility and independence from human tinkering with resultant data to the extent possible which itself is being re-evaluated constantly as time passes. We don't assume, we independently measure using operations each of which are as clearly as possible tied to determination. All measures are related to the most accurate referents we have available. A meters not what we measure in inches.

Our measures were referent to a stable metal instrument measured at the melting temperature of water, The next big advance in precision came in 1960, when the meter was redefined as precisely 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of a specific frequency of light emitted by an atom of krypton-86. And finally (so far), in 1983 the meter was again redefined, this time as “the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second”. So if there is any human intervention it is in the presumption that light speed is constant throughout known measurable space. And we are constantly re-evaluating that against the constancy of time. Useful is being verified and redefined all the time. We determine what is useful all the time.ao measures can be related back to previous referents.

You should not ever make presumptions about what is another's wheelhouse.
 
Our measures were referent to a stable metal instrument measured at the melting temperature of water
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Yes you experienced a machine and you experienced the readings it gave you.

It is all humans experiencing things.

Never more than that.

Impossible to be more than that.
 
I didn't experience the machine. I designed a machine. I used the machine. Then I used the output from the machine against arguments through a process which lead me to use the machine to discover this or that. I bet you failed your rat experiment when you were a sophomore. You may have even failed to keep your assigned rat alive to complete the experiment.
 
fromderinside said:
I didn't experience the machine. I designed a machine. I used the machine. Then I used the output from the machine against arguments through a process which lead me to use the machine to discover this or that. I bet you failed your rat experiment when you were a sophomore. You may have even failed to keep your assigned rat alive to complete the experiment.
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You experienced yourself designing and building a machine you experienced that allowed you to experience "readings".

All the experiences together are never anything more than experiences.

There is nothing more for a human than experiences.

The machine in built to allow humans to experience it's output.
 
Whether I experience has nothing to do with whether I can build an objective methodology.

The output is stuff I can barely outline, much less experience. It is the output that is processed by objective operational tools that provides the information which becomes new objective baseline. The output is not my experience. My experience is an emotion laced side show.
 
fromderinside said:
Whether I experience has nothing to do with whether I can build an objective methodology.
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You can build a methodology that is based on assumptions about experience.

Like the assumption that the things I experience with vision are "real".

The output is stuff I can barely outline, much less experience.
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For the instrument to have any use a human must be able to experience output that can be understood at some point.
 
Which part of that method was not derived from experience?

Which god handed it to your saints?
 
All of it. The method was derived from evaluation of experimental results. Experience is just a word put out by the lazy suggesting such has meaning and capability. It doesn't.

God. There's another non starter.

Given the way the brain works one has to ask "which experience."
 
fromderinside said:
All of it. The method was derived from evaluation of experimental results. Experience is just a word put out by the lazy suggesting such has meaning and capability. It doesn't.

God. There's another non starter.

Given the way the brain works one has to ask "which experience."
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What experimental result is not something a human experienced?

Which experiment specifically did we learn about the results but no human experienced those results or experienced the readings on equipment built to give humans an experience?

The Hadron collider only has use to humans because it was built to convert it's results to things humans can experience.

No experience = cannot get information from.

All of science like every human endeavor is based entirely on experience. If experiences suddenly changed then the science would be no good and another one would have to be constructed.
 
Everything, everything experienced is also processed by the nervous system. All experience is a canister in which one puts things to explain without producing experiments containing any material evidence for that thing existing. You go off with declaration after declaration without supporting evidence. Experience, an immaterial vessel for a logical construct without supporting evidence beyond 'it must be so'.
 
fromderinside said:
Everything, everything experienced is also processed by the nervous system. All experience is a canister in which one puts things to explain without producing experiments containing any material evidence for that thing existing. You go off with declaration after declaration without supporting evidence. Experience, an immaterial vessel for a logical construct without supporting evidence beyond 'it must be so'.
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Experience is the end result of brain activity.

But the brain does not experience. It is not a thing that can experience. It creates experience for something to experience.

The brain does not experience anything. The brain is pure reflexive behavior.

That is why it creates a mind, to not be so reflexive and to have a way to think before the act. The largest part of the will is "no". When children learn this skill (to say "no") they drive their parents crazy practicing.

And all the mind has access to about the external world is information the brain provides in the form of experience.

You can't show me anything you know about that was not something you experienced in some way.

All you have are experiences, like every human on the planet.

Scientists are merely people that strive to be honest about what they experience and to not fool themselves into thinking something is experienced when it is not.
 
The being 'experiences', whatever that is. That construct, experience, has a lot more stuff wrapped up in the way of metaphysical garbage than anyone can imagine. That's a negative. Also its not just the brain that produces what we call experience it is chemical, gustatory, ambulatory, and all those other -atories we bundle in to that thing explaining we don't know how it becomes from what we have going on. Yes the brain may be involved in many of the -atories but, as we both know. The sustaining and animating of being is much greater than brain and -atory processes.

However we do seem to recite in first person, me centered if you prefer, what are being processed at the highest probabilities of becoming behavior in at least auditory, visual, gustatory, proprioceptive, domains.

It's much simpler to understand how these processes work than it is to integrate them into who and how a being is. We are better off concentrating on what we can measure than trying to measure philosophical things we invent that can't be measured such as self and experience.

This latter thing is, after all, what we are blathering about.
 
You experience the words on your computer that other people have written.

That is how you know about them.

And you know beyond doubt you are experiencing the words when you experience them.

Experience is primary.

All else is secondary.

What human minds make from their experiences are secondary. An approximation or a misunderstanding.
 
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