Another Subjective Experience thread (for PTB)

[Subfallen]

(TL;DR---but I've written too much not to click submit.)

I have two reasons for starting a fresh thread on this topic; both of them are self-indulgent.

First, to me PTB seems one of those rare souls who is genuinely thoughtful. Thus I wish to read more of his thoughts. They are welcome relief from the general milieu of SMP captured by Darrow's, "Most men never have but one or two ideas, anyhow, and to these they hang like grim death."

Second, I wish to highlight my argument. (Such is the arrogance of youth!) The plan of attack is simple:

0. A clarification: science's starting domain is reality, no more, no less.
1. All experience is subjective experience.
2. It's how we interpret experience that counts.
3. Every meaningful interpretation limits possible reality.
4. It's how we limit possible reality that counts.
5. Science's limiting choices are the obvious and best choices.

0. Many seem to think that science is limited to what can be empirically verified. This is a severe confusion, one that has never held sway in the field, and has only briefly muddled the minds of philosophers and their ilk. Science makes no such a priori limitation of its scope. Rather, it entertains ANY model of reality that makes testable predictions. This includes models that cannot be "checked out" to make certain the physical world really IS as the model advertises. Thus, there is nothing about gods or immortal spirits that a priori makes them non-scientific.

1. Moving to experience, it is important to note that science does not rely on a different "kind" of experience than any other endeavor. Every hypothesis ever made has been sparked by experiences felt by human senses, filtered through human biases, and, reacted to by human emotions. That is, experienced subjectively. So at this stage, there is also no distinction between the scientific and the nonscientific. "Religious" experiences may be dominantly emotional and "scientific" experiences may be dominantly rational; but the basic perceptual apparatus is the same for both. So let's look a level higher.

2. Language itself is our basic interpretive framework for reality and possible reality. When a new human inherits language, she inherits an entire modeling kit that not only has built-in patterns for the simple experiences of pain and pleasure, but can also build dizzying artifices swaying far above the mundanity of physical perception.
<font color="white">aa</font>So awesome is the modeling power of language, we rarely stop to ask whether it quite covers reality. Of course, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent." But nonetheless, it's important to realize that accepting language as our basic interpretative framework is ITSELF a implicit limitation of reality. Every discussion opens with a silent promise to stay only in the realm of words.

3. And even after we've cruelly limited reality to the word-world, we intuitively demand even further limits. We impose logical consistency: surely no tactful world would allow &lt;P ^ ~P&gt;, anyhow! A possible reality must make sense. (As Kierkegaard put it, "Here at once is the principle of limitation, the sole saving principle in the world.")
<font color="white">aa</font>But thus it is clear that even our most basic framework for interpreting reality is not objective. Rather it is arbitrary---quite arbitrarily human. We can't describe it in words? "Not reality!" Doesn't make sense to us? "Not reality!" Of course, there is no way to debate these limitations; that would mean speaking the unspeakable and comprehending nonsense. But no reasonable person would object to our limitations, for the same reason.
<font color="white">aa</font>So arises the question, "If these limitations are necessary for THINKING of POSSIBLE reality, what new limitations are necessary for KNOWING of TRUE reality?"

4. Mankind's first, natural answer has always been, "No new limitations. Truth need only be reachable by the fingertips of my stretched imagination standing tip-toe on language's fantastic tower." Thus our pantheistic forefathers knew only an unpredictable world torn by the whims of nature's gods and goddesses. It made sense, and it came naturally to mind. So they assumed it was true.
<font color="white">aa</font>The first scientists were those thoughtful souls who saw natural patterns that did not appear to be the work of vengeful child-gods. They plotted charts of the stars, tracked seasons, invented mathematics to aid their record-keeping, etc. But always the great novelty of their pursuit was systematic: they fought their battles to EXPLAIN, not INVENT. The tangible world had the final say on what was true and what was false.
<font color="white">aa</font>Thus scientists do not merely require the FORM of a truth claim to make sense---the CONTENT must "make sense" as well! It's another limitation. You can say nothing about real truth until you predict an empirical impact on consciousness. That impact might be perceptible only with an electron microscope, and it might be the result of a shockingly arcane mechanism, but it must be predicted!
<font color="white">aa</font>So what of this additional limitation? Should we make it THE ultimate constraint on what can be really true? I argue yes.

5. Of course it's here that the religious believer must object, "Wait! You have nullified God and my Immortal Soul! Your sort of thinking is very well for curing diseases and sending men to the moon, but is much too LIMITED for the deep truths of religion and the supernatural!" I must ask my dissenter to do more than special plead, and explain how religious beliefs necessarily supersede science.
<font color="white">aa</font> Say the dissenter is a Christian. Certainly the Christian possesses a great body of doctrine both elaborate and emotive. Nonetheless, the sum of it all lacks a tenth the imagination, subtlety, and insight born in the Greeks' representation of irrationals in 500BC. So of course religious belief's supersession of science cannot be because of some intractable complexity in its structure.
<font color="white">aa</font>Then perhaps the concepts of religion are beyond science's domain? But that is impossible, because any non-scientific truth claim can be "converted" into a scientific truth claim by adding an arbitrary empirical consequence. There is no meaningful concept "beyond" the realm of science. So then religious supersession of science is not supported by any logical progression, but rather is a methodological difference: a denial of science's final interpretative limitation.
<font color="white">aa</font>But why should we deny this limitation? Obviously we cannot deny it on the basis of any predicted empirical observations corroborating religion, or religious beliefs would be scientific. So there is no reason to admit non-scientific claims as possibly true except that it comes naturally to many people to believe such "truths." Scarcely a reason at all.
<font color="white">aa</font>Additionally, there are very good reasons NOT to admit non-scientific truths about reality. Allowing such beliefs to possibly be true encourages their believers. And historically, widespread religious belief does little but prescribe tribal values and intolerance, mind-closing faith, and abject worship of authority. None of which promote the general happiness or well-being of mankind.

[PairTheBoard]

666

YOU HAVE THE MARK OF THE BEAST EMBLAZANED ON YOUR FOREHEAD

You are not just fallen you are SUBFALLEN!

You and your ILK are DOOMED DOOMED DOOMDED

You are damned to the Philisophical Torture Chamber of endless debate over minutia and definitional disection.

Then again, your presentation may be pursuasive. Let me think about it a little more.

PairTheBoard

[Taraz]

[ QUOTE ]
But thus it is clear that even our most basic framework for interpreting reality is not objective. Rather it is arbitrary---quite arbitrarily human. We can't describe it in words? "Not reality!" Doesn't make sense to us? "Not reality!" Of course, there is no way to debate these limitations; that would mean speaking the unspeakable and comprehending nonsense. But no reasonable person would object to our limitations, for the same reason.
<font color="white">aa</font>So arises the question, "If these limitations are necessary for THINKING of POSSIBLE reality, what new limitations are necessary for KNOWING of TRUE reality?"

[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree with the claim that our reality doesn't include things that we can't describe with language. Describe the love you feel for your dog, the love you feel for your mom, the love you feel for a girlfriend, etc. It is really difficult to describe emotion and "feelings". This does not mean that they don't exist or that they aren't real. I believe that by holding this view you are driving people toward religion by denying their experiences.

[ QUOTE ]
Thus scientists do not merely require the FORM of a truth claim to make sense---the CONTENT must "make sense" as well! It's another limitation. You can say nothing about real truth until you predict an empirical impact on consciousness. That impact might be perceptible only with an electron microscope, and it might be the result of a shockingly arcane mechanism, but it must be predicted!
So what of this additional limitation? Should we make it THE ultimate constraint on what can be really true? I argue yes.
. . .
Then perhaps the concepts of religion are beyond science's domain? But that is impossible, because any non-scientific truth claim can be "converted" into a scientific truth claim by adding an arbitrary empirical consequence. There is no meaningful concept "beyond" the realm of science.


[/ QUOTE ]

This touches on what I was trying to say in the thread I started about religion never going away. I agree that there might not be concepts that are beyond the realm of science. But there most definitely are things that we cannot study scientifically at this point in our scientific understanding of the world. For example, you can't tell me how my inner monologue works.

There will always be things that are just beyond the grasp of our scientific understanding of the world. You can't say that these things aren't "real" because we deal with them every single day. I don't believe that we will ever get to a point where we can have a scientific understanding of every observable phenomenon in the universe (and within ourselves).

With all that said, if you want to have a religion it has to mesh with our scientific understanding of the world. If there is a clash between religion and science, science must win out. The boundaries must be fluid. This is why religion can be a problem. Many believers, especially fundamentalists, take their worldview as static.

Wouldn't you find it unsatisfying if you had an experience that can't be explained scientifically and I tried to tell you that it must not be reality?

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
Wouldn't you find it unsatisfying if you had an experience that can't be explained scientifically and I tried to tell you that it must not be reality?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's important we keep separate 'the experience' from what it appears to be of.
The hearing of the voice of my dead aunt is the experience. That my dead aunt is the source of it is likely unverifiable subjectively, objectively ... abjectively :-(
I think it's been shown that there is activity showing up in the speech center that feeds into the hearing center when we hear internal voices.
There's no need to think that hearing our dead aunts voice means the ol' gal was speaking to us. What evidence would there be for that?
( I realize this is my example not yours but I wanted to put some flesh around this ;-)

luckyme

[Taraz]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Wouldn't you find it unsatisfying if you had an experience that can't be explained scientifically and I tried to tell you that it must not be reality?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's important we keep separate 'the experience' from what it appears to be of.
The hearing of the voice of my dead aunt is the experience. That my dead aunt is the source of it is likely unverifiable subjectively, objectively ... abjectively :-(
I think it's been shown that there is activity showing up in the speech center that feeds into the hearing center when we hear internal voices.
There's no need to think that hearing our dead aunts voice means the ol' gal was speaking to us. What evidence would there be for that?
( I realize this is my example not yours but I wanted to put some flesh around this ;-)

luckyme

[/ QUOTE ]

This is exactly what I mean! 500 years ago we would have needed something other than science to deal with these voices and make sense of our world. As science evolves, so must our relationship to the unknown.

I was just trying to point out that there are things that are very real but that science cannot explain yet. That doesn't mean that we should ignore them as being somehow "less real" than everything else.

[Subfallen]

PTB -

Lol, don't bother replying to this. I wrote it in an extraordinarily perverse mood, and don't intend to read it again myself.

Taraz -

[ QUOTE ]
I disagree with the claim that our reality doesn't include things that we can't describe with language. Describe the love you feel for your dog, the love you feel for your mom, the love you feel for a girlfriend, etc. It is really difficult to describe emotion and "feelings". This does not mean that they don't exist or that they aren't real. I believe that by holding this view you are driving people toward religion by denying their experiences.

[/ QUOTE ]

There are two counterarguments I see to this, the first informal and the second more rigorous.

(1) Language's expressiveness should be judged in light of the masterworks, not our wretched hacks. It would be a rare person who could honestly claim a depth and precision of emotion not found somewhere in Proust, heh.

(2) In arguing that language's domain is bounded, you are using language to point across its purported bounds---to some shadowy place haunted with the inexpressible. This is contradictory. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one MUST remain silent."

[Taraz]

[ QUOTE ]
PTB -

Lol, don't bother replying to this. I wrote it in an extraordinarily perverse mood, and don't intend to read it again myself.

Taraz -

[ QUOTE ]
I disagree with the claim that our reality doesn't include things that we can't describe with language. Describe the love you feel for your dog, the love you feel for your mom, the love you feel for a girlfriend, etc. It is really difficult to describe emotion and "feelings". This does not mean that they don't exist or that they aren't real. I believe that by holding this view you are driving people toward religion by denying their experiences.

[/ QUOTE ]

There are two counterarguments I see to this, the first informal and the second more rigorous.

(1) Language's expressiveness should be judged in light of the masterworks, not our wretched hacks. It would be a rare person who could honestly claim a depth and precision of emotion not found somewhere in Proust, heh.

(2) In arguing that language's domain is bounded, you are using language to point across its purported bounds---to some shadowy place haunted with the inexpressible. This is contradictory. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one MUST remain silent."

[/ QUOTE ]

1. I have yet to read any words that accurately describe most human emotions. We have loose placeholders, but nothing that captures the feeling and the intricacy.

2. That saying is pretty retarded. We invent new words all the time. There must have been something "real" for which we needed a word. And just because we can talk about something doesn't mean that our words capture all that there is.

Are you seriously trying to argue that you've never had an inexpressible experience? If so I feel sorry for you.

[Subfallen]

(1) Have you ever read Proust? [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

(2) The point is not whether language is quite precise enough to really do justice to "inexpressible experiences." The point is that, if there IS some form of experience that defies identification by cognitive linguistic structures: that experience could not be expressed.

It's really a tautology, if you think about it...an "inexpressible experience" is impossible.

Gotta run, hope to give you a better response later; I'm sure you have further thoughts.

[Taraz]

With regard to point (2), is that good enough for you? Just because I can refer to experience doesn't mean that I am describing it.

Think about acid trips. I'm using the term "acid trip" but they are different for every person. I'm not really explaining or describing anyone's individual experience.

[PairTheBoard]

[ QUOTE ]
Lol, don't bother replying to this. I wrote it in an extraordinarily perverse mood, and don't intend to read it again myself.


[/ QUOTE ]

Oh great. Now you tell me. Worm had it wrong. It's not women. SMP is the Rake. [img]/images/graemlins/ooo.gif[/img]

PairTheBoard