GE
Gertie wrote: ↑June 15th, 2022, 2:56 pm
Nothing you say here contradicts what I said. Subjects create knowledge (via/as subjective experience) and we test its reliability inter-subjectively.
Saying we "create" knowledge is, for most knowledge, inaccurate. As Consul said, we acquire it; it comes to us unbidden and with no effort on our part.
No. That's a linguistic habit. The tree doesn't give me its knowledge when I look at it because presumably the tree doesn't know anything.
Only Subjects are Knowers, we each know directly via our interaction with the world which results in us each creating experiential representations of that world. And we compare notes with other Subjects about their private models to create a shared model of the world we share. This shouldn't be controversial.
Intersubjectivity is one way to test the reliability of knowledge, but not the only way --- constancy is another. That is the only available way for knowers in non-social settings (such as Crusoe). Crusoe will know where the beach is on his island, because every time he walks for 10 minutes in a certain direction he reaches it. No confirmation by other people is necessary for him to know that, or for him to consider that knowledge reliable.
Each of us create consistent, coherent models
on the basis of utility from the cacophany of sensory and other experiential states which would otherwise be unintelligible and useless. (Seth calls consciousness an organism's prediction mechanism). But in order to create a shared model of our shared world we use third person inter-subjective falsification. Crusoe might be having a dream, he might be deaf and not know sound, he might be colour blind, psychotic, etc. We can inter-subjectively deal with anomalies from our shared norms, but our shared norms are still limited and flawed models we create.
Same issue. "Objective facts about the world" are not flawed or models of reality. That Paris is the capital of France, that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, that I have five fingers on each hand are "objective facts about the world" and are neither flawed nor models. They are features or aspects of experienced reality (and that is the only sort of "reality" deserving of that name).
You're conflating ontological reality with our subjective experience of that (presumed) reality, and calling them both ''reality''.
Any "ontological reality" is our invention, a hypothetical reality we postulate to to explain experienced reality. I.e., Kant's noumena. And it is presumptuous to consider experienced reality to be "experience of" the noumenal reality. We have no idea what sort of relationship there may be between experienced reality and the noumena, beyond the raison d'etre for postulating the noumena --- that it somehow causes the reality we experience. We can say nothing more about it.
Fair point. But if we're to escape solipsism we each have to assume our experience represents some ontological reality. As soon as you said
''we'' you'd made that assumption, and that's fair enough otherwise you're just talking to yourself.
Same with Kant I think, as soon as he generalises about
''our'' phenomenal experience rather than his own, he's made the assumption other people (experiencing subjects) exist. He's assumed there is an ontological world containing other Subjects. And his knowledge of that comes packaged within a whole lot of other experienced knowledge too, that trees and gravity and Paris exist,etc.
Unless he has a way out of that or I'm misunderstanding? Otherwise Kant's already assumed an ontological world exists and has cherry picked from the experiential package of his own experience the actual existence of the conscious experience of other existing Subjects to treat as ontologically real. (As opposed to their bodies with fingers, trees, gravity, etc which he doubts).
The experience is real, it's a real model/representation of our interactions with the real ontological world.
That "real ontological world" is a theoretical world --- one we have invented.
If you disentangle this I think you're actually left with either -
A) Your personal experience represents something else (a world independant of your experience) which ontologically exists, or -
2) All that exists is your own experience.
Either solipsism is true, or there is an ontological world your experience is representing. We each can't know the answer to that, but solipsism literally isn't worth talking about, so we assume a real world exists which we can inter-subjectively compare experiential notes about. Having made that assumption, we're left with the problem of knowing how accurate our individual and shared representations are. And we devise methodologies like predictability and inter-subjective third person falsifiability to assign more or less credibility and value.
But the problem remains that we are flawed and limited observers and thinkers who create models of the real world we interact with.
A human experience of seeing a tree isn't a tree, it's a flawed and limited experiential representation of something we compare notes about, and call ''a tree''.
The tree we see (and can touch, climb, savor its fruit), is the "real tree." That those sensory experiences "represent" something beyond them is an assumption --- a theory --- we've conjured up (though it's a pretty good theory).
If
''we'' see the tree, there is already an assumed world containing other seeing Subjects, right?. The choice here is solipsism, or a real world exists containing experiencing subjects who each create representations of it, then compare notes to agree something we call a tree exists which we similarly see, touch, etc.
We can postulate other "realities," of course, and indeed are forced to do so, in order to get a satisfying explanation for experienced reality. But we can say nothing about that "noumenal" reality. We can take our experienced reality to be neurogenic model of the noumenal reality, but we have no grounds for assuming any tweaks we make to that model get us any "closer" to the noumenal reality. Improvements to the model only make experienced reality a bit more coherent and comprehensive. That is enough to justify them.
It's enough to justify them as working models of the ontological reality they represent. And the more consistently detailed and predictive the models we create are, the more fine tuned they become at detailing our Subjective interactions with the world. That increased understanding of the interaction in itself might be telling us more about ontological reality. It's a reasonable, but untestable, assumption.
I agree. We just have to keep in mind that is an assumption, a "working hypothesis." And it works pretty well.
Right.
We've found ways of discovering Russell's table isn't solid, brown with defined edges - that's an improved understanding of the flaws and limitations of how we create the experiential representation of a table, which looks like a step closer to ontological reality. Maybe.
Oh, no. The table is still solid, brown, has defined edges, etc. What our physical theories do is provide us explanations for "solidity," color, geometric properties, etc. Those explanations are not more "real" than the experienced properties; they're less "real," being theoretical. But highly useful.
(Again, as soon as you say ''we'', ''us'', ''our'' you've assumed the ontological world exists -the options are solipsism or a real world exists containing other Subjects who are known to us in the same experiential package as tres and tables and every other experience).
I think what you say here would be right if ontological reality is fundamentally relational - by which I mean that there's no 'set' reality of the world to be discovered, rather the fundamental nature of everything exists only in relation to everything else. So to feel a table as solid is as real as to think about a table as made mostly of empty space. QM might be pointing us that way, I dunno.
Otherwise the other explanation for experiencing the table as solid is that we are flawed and limited observers of ontological reality. In other words our direct experiential knowledge of the table is a limited and flawed model we create of the ontological reality of the table.
It's a Subjective experience! Limited, flawed and even when that's accounted for you might be in error. The experience of having 5 fingers is what you know to be real.
"Limited, flawed" --- in what way? "Experience of X" is the same thing as "Knowing that X." Knowledge by acqaintance just is experience.
Yes! Knowledge by acquaintance is experience, experience is knowing. There is no other knowing than experientially by Subjects. If this experience results from interacting with a real ontological world it is either a perfect and complete knowing of that world or it is limited and flawed. Subjects have a specific pov, and when Russell moves around his table his knowing of the table changes, because his experience creates a different perspective.
There is one type of knowledge we can file under Authoritative - knowledge of our own experience. This tells us such authoritative knowledge is possible, but strictly limited to first hand subjective experience. Every other type of knowledge is based on assumptions made about the content of that experience, and comparing notes to assess working reliability.
I agree. But your knowledge that you have five fingers on each of two hands just is your experience of that fact --- you can feel them, move them, count them. Those experiences constitute your knowledge of them.
And no knowledge would exist if Subjective experience didn't exist.
Well, that is true. All knowledge is subjective. I can no more know what you know than I can know what you think, or feel, or what red looks like to you --- unless you tell me. There can be information that is unknown, but no unknown knowledge. To count as knowledge it must be known to someone.
We pretty much agree here.
Because Subjects create all knowledge via/as experience.
No, we don't create (most) knowledge. "Creation" implies intention, and some willful acts to realize that intention. But most of the knowledge we possess just comes to us, unsolicited and unexpected.
Knowing is something experiencing Subjects do, whether it's intentional or not.
What I think PM importantly does is ask us to to take seriously the flawed and limited nature of Subjective experience as the basis for all of those categories, and then grapple with what justifies those categories. When no two Subject's models of the world are identical, because knowledge itself is a form of experience. There is no Authoritative shared model, just ways of categorising the value of knowledge-experience by comparing notes and making judgements. That responsibility lies with us, methodological justifications are tools we use as we deem appropriate.
Oh, but there is an "Authoritative shared model." It is called "science." It is authoritative, not because it is shared, but because its claims for the most part are objective, i.e., publicly confirmable. That is criterion for any model to be deemed "authoritative." If someone constructs or adopts an alternative model whose claims are not publicly confirmable, it will not be authoritative. Contrary to PM, not all world models are equal; some are authoritative and some are nonsense.
''Publically confirmable'' = inter-subjectively comparing notes. When something is observable and measurable this third-person comparison is fairly straightforward, tho it doesn't mean we don't all just share the same flaws and limitations. This third-person falsifiability is what we generally treat as objectively true. But even objective truth is really just a form of inter-subjective agreement by flawed and limited observers and thinkers.
Experiencing Subjects are essential, foundational, to all knowledge. And our knowledge reflects the nature of being a Subject as much as it represents the nature of the world - in that it's what is created when experiencing subjects interact with the world. (Including knowing you have a material body with 5 fingers, a brain which is connected to experience, etc).
Again, wrong criterion. We can't speak of the noumena, and that includes saying what is true of it, or how close our models come to representing it. We have no way to assess that. The criterion for deciding whether our models are adequate is how well they work in explaining experienced phenomena.
We compare notes and use tools like third person falsifiable observation and measurement, and find commonalities and differences. The commonalities become part of our shared world model. How those individual and shared models relate to ontological reality independantly of Subjective experience is ultimately unknowable.
First person knowledge - we each create an experiential model of the world through interacting with it.
Third person knowledge - we compare notes about our experience of what is third person falsifiable (observable and measurable physical stuff I think)
God's Eye Knowledge - complete and perfect omniscience which isn't available to Subjects with a first person perspective.
The noumena is unknowable. But the criterion for the adequacy or accuracy of a model is not how close it comes to "ontological reality" --- which is a theoretical "reality," a will-o-the-wisp --- but how well it integrates empirical knowledge (knowledge by acquaintance) and allows us to predict future experience.
I get your point. Not sure. We can correct our own anomalies, we can theorise beyond what is observable, note patterns, make predictions, etc in meticulous detail. It seems to me this all likely reflects some aspects of ontological reality, if only in a limited and flawed way.
Well, now you're entering a different realm of discourse, the realm of feelings and affective reactions to facts, rather than the facts themselves. That the sun rises in the East and sets in the West is an objective fact, and knowledge. What it "means" to different people, how different people feel about it or think or believe about it or react to it, is a different subject. None of those subjective consequences alter the fact.
To call it a ''different realm of discourse'' is to categorise types of knowing-experience, right? ''Facts'' are what we call one type of knowing-experience which are justified in particular ways - third person falsifiable subjective commonalities which comprise our shared model. Which we consider reliably consistent and predictive - until it isn't.
As I said above, third-part verification is not the only way we distinguish facts from fantasies or delusions. Independence and constancy are also sufficient. Facts are not social constructs, and do not require or presume a social context. Claims alleging facts --- propositions asserting them --- do assume and require a social context to be deemed "objective." Propositions per se assume a social context --- why forumlate or assert one if there is no one to hear it?
We each have our own created world model according to our own experience, no two are identical. We create a shared/social model through comparing notes and categorising types of knowledge we give more or less shared credibility and value to.
There are different types of discourse afforded different types of authority. We should all easily agree on third person falsifiable issues amenable to observation and measurement, I ought to agree that when I move around Russell's table it is my perspective which changes not the table, that the table is mainly empty space even tho it feels solid, etc. But when it comes to areas like psychology, social issues, art, etc we don't have that observation and measurement falsification tool. We have a tradition of authoritative figures making their best guesses inevitably drawing from their own understanding and experience. Even creating the language that discourse is framed in.
Ignoring that isn't helpful, it perpetuates narrow (if often unintentional) bias. You ignored my points about Hobbes' mum and Shakespeare's sister. Our culture, the knowledge air we breathe, isn't someimpartial recording of the world, it's models authored and adapted by the individuals and groups afforded the ability and authority to do so.
PM goes some places which look daft to me too, but we see much exploratory daftness in new ways of re-framing society till new norms emerge which knock off the odd edges and don't rock the boat too much. Our newly adjusted shared model. We're still in a PM limbo I think, and the challenges it presents require responsible reflection. Not defensive dismissal or to take it as license to make everything about me-me-me.
But yes much received wisdom isn't third person falsifiable via observation and measurement. Some people have/had positions where-by they establish what constitutes reliable knowledge which we have come to conform around. They are considered authoritative.
Well, that's true enough. People often do "consider" authoritative claims and doctrines which are not authoritative, per the above criterion.
Our culture is soaked with bias which continues to be taught as authoritative received wisdom.
Nonsense is pervasive in all cultures, and always will be. But we do have tools for identifying it as such and refuting it. PM assumes we do not.
Oh come on. It invites us to think about what knowledge is, who constructs it, how that plays out in a world of Subjects. The Death of the Author is metaphorically akin to the Death of God as the reliable authoritative voice. Shared knowledge is an inter-subjective process of creation by flawed first person Subjects, some of whom are given special privilege in the discourse.
Meh. Evolution Theory is similarly self-refuting in that it tells us we're incapable of creating true theories. (the theologian philosopher Plantinga has a nifty take on this). Logic, our metaphysical toolkit, is refuted if we're designed for utility. Knowledge is created by Subjects, such paradoxes are the nature of the beast. PM takes that on.
There are no "true theories." Theories are only good or bad, depending upon how well they predict future experience. "True" and "false" are properties of propositions, not theories. Nor does evolutionary theory "tell us we're incapable of creating true theories." Where did you get that nugget? Evolutionary theory has nothing to say about such matters.
This isn't difficult - if we evolved for evolutionary utility rather than perfect and complete knowledge, then we are flawed and limited creators of theories - including evolution. We somehow have to integrate such paradoxes of being Subjects into our models.
And PM certainly doesn't "take anything on," in the sense of endeavoring to solve a problem. Instead it seeks to "cancel" the difference between sense and nonsense, so that the nonsense it is can be considered wisdom.
PM is what happens when the old framings no longer hold water, don't do the work of the shared model. Either we deal with it, think through the implications and find ways of dealing with what it means to be a Subject, or retreat to tidy, comfortable authorities which work for those with most say. Right now there's a horrible, irresponsible tribal tug of war going on and we're all over the place.