On Apr 22, 5:17*am, George Hammond wrote:
On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:25:37 -0700 (PDT), Immortalist
wrote:
On Apr 20, 9:53*pm, George Hammond wrote:
On Sun, 20 Apr 2008 16:03:06 -0700 (PDT), Immortalist
wrote:
[Hammond]
* *Fact is, the "Anthropic Principle" simply says:
"observables exist because observers exist". *After all, it
doesn't take rocket science to figure out that if there was
no such thing as an observer, then there would be no such
thing as observables; since the testimony of observers is
the ONLY WAY we know that the observables exist.
[Immortalist]
If a system observable is a property of the system state that can be
determined by some sequence of physical operations and if there was no
such thing as an observer, then it is not determined that there would
or would not be such things as observables even if the testimony of
observers is the ONLY WAY we know that the observables exist since
whether there is or is not someone existing doesn't determine
determinability and the possibility of abstract thought processes
whether they exist or not.
[Hammond]
* *Immortalist, thanks for your refreshing post. *Out of 11
posts to this target article so far, you are the ONLY ONE
who has attempted to say something on topic. *However, you
have COIMPLETELY missed the point!
* *You have FAILED to distinguish between two fundamentally
DIFFERENT cases:
CASE 1: *
* *If I turn my back and look the other way,
* *does the Moon still exist?
* * * * * (correct answer, YES)
CASE 2:
* *If the human race never existed or became
* *totally EXTINCT, would the Moon "exist".
* * * *(correct answer, NO)
[Immortalist]
Case two depends upon how you are defining "exist"
[Hammond]
* *NO KIDDING, Sherlock! *Can't you get it through your head
that "exist" is, and ONLY is, absolutely defined as: *"A
human opinion based on sensory perception". *There is no
OTHER definition of the word "exists". *Ergo, if there are
no humans, then there is no "existence" of anything.
...the world we see in conscious experience is not the real world
itself, but merely a miniature virtual-reality replica of that world
in an internal representation. Representationalism is also known (in
psychology) as Indirect Perception, and (in philosophy) as Indirect
Realism, or Epistemological Dualism.
Why Representationalism?
As incredible as it might seem intuitively, representationalism is the
only alternative that is consistent with the facts of perception.
The Epistemological Fact (strongest theory): It is impossible to have
experience beyond the sensory surface.
Dreams, Hallucinations, and Visual Illusions clearly indicate that the
world of experience is not the same thing as the world itself.
The observed Properties of Phenomenal Perspective clearly indicate
that the world of experience is not the same as the external world
that it represents.
http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/Rep...tionalism.html
Representationalism (or indirect realism) with respect to perception
is the view that "we are never aware of physical objects, [but rather]
we are only indirectly aware of them, in virtue of a direct awareness
of an intermediary [mental] object. (Dancy, 145) Because there are
both direct and indirect objects of awareness in representationalism,
a correspondence relation arises between the mental entities directly
perceived and external objects which those mental entities represent.
And thus perceptual error occurs when the two objects of awareness do
not correspond sufficiently well. In opposition to
representationalism, both (direct) realism and idealism agree that
perception is direct and unmediated, despite their disagreements about
what the object of perception is. (Dancy, 145) In any form of direct
perception, no correspondence relationship is possible, since there is
only one object of perception. Thus only representationalism will give
rise to the view that perceptual errors exist and must be part of a
theory of perception. Nevertheless, both idealism and realism must
still account for the facts that are referred to as "perceptual
errors" by the representationalist.
http://www.dianahsieh.com/undergrad/rape.html
...representation is central to psychology as well, for the mind too
is a system that represents the world and possible worlds in various
ways. Our hopes, fears, beliefs, memories, perceptions, intentions,
and desires all involve our ideas about (our mental models of) the
world and other worlds. This is what humanist philosophers and
psychologists have always said, of course, but until recently they had
no support from science...
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.../art0162.html?
[Immortalist]
Does the existence of humans who can determine, determine or create
the possibility of determinability in the first place?
[Hammond]
YES, a thousand times, YES!
I suppose if the created the world outside the boundries of the world
represented in their head, maybe in five minutes, but I doubt it;
"…how can we know that the universe wasn't created a few minutes ago?
"
--Bertrand Russell
...suppose the universe were suddenly created five minutes ago,
complete with memories, historical and geological records, and so
forth. That is, at the moment of creation, the universe would have all
the evidence that it was billions of years old already "packed in."
How could it ever be known that the creation of the universe did not
occur five minutes ago?
The hypothesis initially seems implausible, yet how can we know that
the universe wasn't created a few minutes ago? Certainly the Five-
Minute World hypothesis is inconsistent with many of our other
beliefs. If it were true, we would have to give up these other beliefs
if we were to hold it, but how could we prove beyond any shadow of
doubt what is the case? From a purely empirical point of view, no
evidence is available which could prove that God isn't constantly
creating the universe moment by moment. In fact, as we will see in
Part III of this text, some persons who believe in predestination
eschew the notion of causality and believe God actually does create
the universe moment by moment.
Main Divisions of Philosophy
http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/i...k2.1/x924.html
----------------------------------
It seems you can think of Russell as giving the following argument: I
can prove that the world wasn't created five minutes ago only if my
evidence that it wasn't created five minutes ago establishes, beyond
any possible doubt, that the world wasn't created only five minutes
ago.
But my evidence for the claim that the world wasn't created five
minutes ago is based on my memories of previous events, and those
memories do not establish, beyond any possible doubt, that the world
wasn't created five minutes ago. Why not? Because it seems possible
that all my memories could have been placed in my mind when the world,
along with everything else, was created five minutes ago. If that had
happened, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that world
and one in which my memories of things are really memories of things
that happened more than five minutes ago. So there is some, admittedly
slight, ground for doubt about my memory evidence that the world
wasn't created five minutes ago. And since there is some ground for
doubt about my evidence, I can't prove the world wasn't created five
minutes ago.
Another way to think of it would be this. If I can prove the world
existed more than five minutes ago, there would have to be no
alternate explanation for the memories I seem to have of things that
happened more than five minutes ago. For the memories are the
evidence, and they'd only allow me to prove the world wasn't created
five minutes ago if the only possible way I would have those memories
is by actually experiencing the world more than five minutes ago. But
that's just not the only possible way I could have got those memories.
For instance, God could have created me five minutes ago and given me
what seem to be memories of things that happened long before. This
seems unlikely, but it's a possible explanation for my having these
memories. And so there is an alternate explanation for the memories
that constitute my evidence that things were going on more than five
minutes ago, and so I can't prove the world existed more than five
minutes ago.
Jacob Miller
http://www.pathways.plus.com/questions/answers_1.html
--------------------------------
Ludwig Wittgenstein - Lectures on Philosophy (1932-33)
22 Let us turn to the view, which is connected with "All that is real
is my experience", namely, solipsism of the present moment: "All that
is real is the experience of the present moment". (Cf. Wm. James'
remark "The present thought is the only thinker", which makes the
subject of thinking equivalent to the experience.) We may be inclined
to make our language such that we will call only the present
experience "experience". This will be a solipsistic language, but of
course we must not make a solipsistic language without saying exactly
what we mean by the word which in our old language meant "present".
Russell said that remembering cannot prove that what is remembered
actually occurred, because the world might have sprung into existence
five minutes ago, with acts of remembering intact. We could go on to
say that it might have been created one minute ago, and finally, that
it might have been created in the present moment. Were this latter the
situation we should have the equivalent of "All that is real is the
present moment". Now if it is possible to say the world was created
five minutes ago, could it be said that the world perished five
minutes ago? This would amount to saying that the only reality was
five minutes ago.
Why does one feel tempted to say "The only reality is the present"?
The temptation to say this is as strong as that of saying that only my
experience is real. The person who says only the present is real
because past and future are not here has before his mind the image of
something moving. past present future .This image is mispast
present future leading, just as the blurred image we would draw of our
visual field is misleading inasmuch as the field has no boundary. That
the statement "Only the present experience is real" seems to mean
something is due to familiar images we associate with it, images of
things passing us in space. When in philosophy we talk of the present,
we seem to be referring to a sort of Euclidean point. Yet when we talk
of present experience it is impossible to identify the present with
such a point. The difficulty is with the word "present". There is a
grammatical confusion here. A person who says the present experience
alone is real is not stating an empirical fact, comparable to the fact
that Mr. S. always wears a brown suit. And the person who objects to
the assertion that the present alone is real with "Surely the past and
future are just as real" somehow does not meet the point. Both
statements mean nothing.
By examining Russell's hypothesis that the world was created five
minutes ago I shall try to explain what I mean in saying that it is
meaningless. Russell's hypothesis was so arranged that nothing could
bear it out or refute it. Whatever our experience might be, it would
be in agreement with it. The point of saying that something has
happened derives from there being a criterion for its truth. To lay
down the evidence for what happened five minutes ago is like laying
down rules for making measurements. The question as to what evidence
there can be is a grammatical one. It concerns the sorts of actions
and propositions which would verify the statement. It is a simple
matter to make up a statement which will agree with experience because
it is such that no proposition can refute it, e.g., "There is a white
rabbit between two chairs whenever no observations or verifications
are being carried out." Some people would say that this statement says
more than "There is no white rabbit between the chairs", just as some
would say it means something to say the world was created five minutes
ago. When such statements are made they are somehow connected with a
picture, say, a picture of creation. Hence it is that such sentences
seem to mean something. But they are otiose, like wheels in a watch
which have no function although they do not look to be useless.
I shall try to explain further what I mean by these sentences being
meaningless by describing figures on two planes, one on plane I, which
is to be projected, and the other, on plane II, the projection:
Now suppose the mode of projecting a circle on plane I was not
orthogonal. In consequence, to say "There is a circle in plane II"
would not be quite the same as saying that there is a circle in plane
I. For a range of angles through which the circle is projected, the
figures on plane II are all more or less circular. But now suppose the
rays of light effecting the projection were allowed to vary through
any range of angles. Then what meaning has it to say there are circles
in plane II? When we give the method of projection such freedom,
assertions about the projection become meaningless, though we still
keep the picture of a circle in mind.
Russell's assertion about the creation of the world is like this. The
fact that there is a picture on plane I does not make a verifiable
projection on plane II. We are accustomed to certain pictures being
projected in a given way. But as soon as we leave this mode of
projection, statements do not have their usual significance. When I
say "That means nothing" I mean that you have altered your mode of
projection. That it seems to mean something is due to an image of well-
known things.
Ludwig Wittgenstein - Lectures on Philosophy (1932-33)
http://www.forum-global.de/soc/bibli...nslectures.htm