Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Gertie]

lagaya

Yes, Gertie, that's probably a reasonable asessment of the values many postmodernist aspire to. But I don't think it's fair to berate science for being interested in objectivity and falsifiability. That's just what science is and how it works.

If you consider PM as some alternative world view with competing values and assertions, it fails. What it does well imo, is ask us to question our inherited assumptions and norms. What are they, who created them, why, what are the consequences. And how does our inherited language frame and limit how we think about the world and our selves - our world view. our abilities and limitations, our role in the world. (Think how feminism challenged how patriarchy is built into the language). That's all good.

What PM doesn't do is offer a different set of norms and assumptions which can escape the need for those questions. It's a question without a solution in that way I think, and we're left in something of a limbo. There is no PM value system as such. It leaves us to find a way to come to a post PM consensus if we choose, in the knowledge of the ways that the previous religious and Modernist ones were flawed.

Many postmodernists and New Agers say that they recognise the usefulness of science, but that they don’t like “scientism”. And they lob the terms “reductionism” and “scientism” as insults at anyone who calls postmodernist and New Age excesses into question.

But what do such people mean by the terms “reductionism” and “scientism”? If they take scientism to be the view that science is the best or only objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values, then I, too, would reject scientism. But that is not what scientism means. Science cannot prescribe values or goals. Science is not the place to go for normativity – that can only come from within us, from our own subjective values. Scientism does not argue otherwise. So I don’t think the postmodernist crowd and New Age mysterians can hit scientismists like me over the head with that accusation.

I agree. But if we think about the nature of perspective, then scientific observation reveals inter-subjectively agreed truths, not 'objective reality as it is'. Flawed and limited humans can agree about what we observe, and the implications/theories arising from our observations, but that rests on the similarity of human flaws and limitations. It's the best we can do, and it's incredibly useful, but none of us have direct access to 'objective' reality, because we are all flawed and limited beings with similarly limited perspectives.

So what about the accusations of reductionism? What I’d say about that is that if we want objective knowledge, then science is the tool we need. And science, of necessity, is reductive – that’s how it works. It finds explanations for things by studying their parts and how they all fit and operate together holistically. That is reductionism. How can a galaxy, an ecosystem, the human body, a climate, a bacterium or an atom be understood as a whole without studying the parts and the interrelations and govern the parts and which, together, result in the whole?

Yep. Horses for courses innit. And when Harris tries to say morality is scientifically reducible in that way he finds he misses something meaningful, THE thing which makes morality meaningful. And effectively has to sneak in as axiomatic that the unobservable, and scientifically inacessible qualiative nature of being an experiencing Subject grounds his entire thesis.

As mentioned, whilst science cannot determine values or goals, it can, however, provide explanations for how subjective values and normativity, and perhaps even religion, arose in us and what purpose they might serve. Science can study anything. Scientism is just the view that there is a unity to all knowledge. Science is certainly reductionistic but, overall, it is a unifying view of the world.

Right, we forget that there was no knowing what might have been found when we use the scientific method to look. What seems to be the case is that everything does hang together in an inter-connected way we call 'laws'. We might have discovered chaos, there might have been a zillion clashing laws, we might have found a god-like command and control centre, anything really. The caveat being, we are flawed and limited observers who experientially create the model of the world we see in our heads on the basis of utility to us, and certain levels of resolution. And as our instruments expand that level of resolution, the implications suggest underlying unlawlike, illogical relationships which we're not kitted to notice. Who knows what else we're not kitted out to notice from our human pov...

The unity of knowledge thesis is, IMO, the defining feature of scientism. It sees the real world as a seamless, self-consistent whole, and argues that the best description of it will also be a seamless, self-consistent whole. That is, there should be a "consilience”, or self-consistent meshing of different areas of knowledge and of ways of attaining that knowledge. That is all scientism is about.

Personally I think 'unity' is too big a word for a universe which down to its fingertips is so dynamic and often destructive. I prefer inter-connectedness.

Scientism rejects the idea that knowledge is granular and to be gleaned here and there from various "non-overlapping magisteria", as Stephen Jay Gould put it. The idea that there are distinct and different “ways of knowing”, each appropriate to distinct, walled off, “domains”, is rejected by scientism.

Yes, but he's taking a religious pov, PM sees perspective in a different way.

All areas are open to science. When it comes to acquiring objective knowledge, science is the universal solvent. And if that is what scientism means, as I believe it does, then I am an unashamed scientismist who wears the label as a badge of honor.

Alrighty!

Perhaps those who think there are “other ways of knowing” could tell us what those ways are, and point to an area of inquiry which they think cannot be investigated by science. Some may want to say that science cannot tell us anything about love, or art or morality. But I think that science can tell us a lot about these. Science can study any and all phenomena. And I think that it is this universality which the postmodernists and mysterians don't like. They don't want science impinging on what they see as their turf. That is a problem they have. It does not indicate that there is anything inherently wrong with science or a scientistic worldview or that there really are "other ways of knowing"

Well all knowing is in the form of a unique subject's experience, from a particular pov. Sometimes that particularity will matter, and sometimes it won't. The scientific method works in areas where it doesn't matter who's looking or reasoning from their observations, because the next typical person will see and reason the same. But areas like art,love and morality can't be observed and reasoned about in that way. Science can tell us how to split an atom, but not whether to drop a bomb.

Philosophically I think we have to take on the issues PM addresses, and as a social concern we need to get onto it fast. Because the globalised post-uni-religion and post-modernism limbo we're in is being exploited by powerful dubious chancers right now.

Gertie, you mentioned feminism. I agree that, insofar as postmodernism similarly prompts us to question assumptions and prejudices, it has been useful.

In respect of science’s inability to show us reality “as it is in itself” I would make three points. The first is that I’m not sure that it matters. The second is that nothing else can show us what reality “is in itself” either. And, thirdly, I think science does offer a good measure of objectivity.

In respect of my first point, just because we can never know entirely what things are “in themselves" that is no reason to despair. What we can know is reliable and useful. Whilst science will never be finished, each discovery brings greater understanding. It doesn’t matter that we will never get to an end of scientific understanding, only that we get more of it.

Practically speaking I agree. And I'd say PM more usefully critiques the humanities and social sciences.

My second point is that, whatever science cannot show us, nothing else can either. PM or religion or mysticism tell us nothing about the universe “as it is in itself”. In fact, it’s hard to know what “in itself” actually means here. What we know is that PM and mysticism and religion give us only unfalsifiable claims. I can start a religion today and no one will be able to prove that it is not true. But my religion will not be knowledge of reality “as it is in itself”. It will just be bullsh#t. Science can only deal with what can be falsified and not with any old unfalsifiable claims. Science deals with the physical stuff and forces of the natural universe and the laws that govern their interactions. Scientism says that we have no evidence to suggest that there is anything else. As for "intuition", which the mysterian crowd are wont to resort to, sientism says that intuition is just the outcome of physical brains and minds operating in accordance with the same laws that govern the rest of the physical universe. There is nothing else to see there.

Again, in our practical and everyday lives I broadly agree.

In respect of my third point about objectivity, if you do a repeatable experiment that purports to show that X = n, then, if I and a heap of other people repeat your experiment, and if we all get the same value for X, we can be confident that the value for X is, objectively, n. That is the type of objective knowledge that science provides.

And agreed.

What I'd add that is if we take seriously the issue of perspective (which implies relativism), all the above comes into question, along with social and humanities norms.

The antonym of Objective is Subjective. The scientific method establishes falsifiable Objective facts via inter-Subjective agreement. You point and say to me ''Do you see that green apple?'', and I agree I do. The existence of the green apple has been 'objectively' confirmed by another Subject with a similar visual system as you. But now we're told colour only exists in our minds, not as a property of the apple. Our similar visual systems create similar illusions. Then we taste the apple. The apple doesn't have the property of taste, we create that too. And there are differences in our taste systems which mean I might like the taste and you might not. The nature of the experiences we've created differ this time. From our different perspectives, which are never identical and always unique. We have ways of eliminating some perspectival anomalies anomalies via measurement (eg the apple might look bigger to you if you're closer) and we automatically (often unconsciously) fill for many anomalies in useful shortcut ways. What we do know is that we are all Subjects with private, flawed and limited unique povs, which are similar enough in some ways to create shared useful and predictive models. And that's what science does, incredibly successfully.

In fields like the social sciences, the arts and humanities the role of the individual perspective roams more freely. To take the feminism example, that movement has addressed areas like gender, stereotypes, work, families, politics, heirarchies, history, religion, art, literature, etc and language itself which guides and constrains how we can even think about such things. That's the sort of critque which I think PM most usefully does.



There's a difference between a PM approach to science and to more social fields of study. But a contuum too, in that Modernism's promise wa that we can take our fate into our own hands, and using science and reason make a better world. PM says we've also ended up with mechanised death camps, world wars and dropping bombs on cities of civilians, and a climate crisis. Because you can't separate the science from the people using it.

Evolution gave us rationality, but it is true that it gave us only a “dashboard” from which to read off information about the world outside our heads. However this is enough to enable us to move around and survive in and explore the universe. Augmented by science, it show us that there is something objectively real out there which we can study and manipulate and which behaves in a predictable and law-like manner. And the more we probe with science the more we understand about the stuff that’s out there. And, again, there are no other ways of acquiring such knowledge about anything.

Science provides useful, and to some extent, objective knowledge about the stuff that is actually out there. And, importantly, it can be a reliable guide to (if not absolute proof of) what’s most likely not out there – ghosts, spirits, gods, demons and the like.

Again, for most intents and purposes I agree. Horses for courses.

That said, I think people like Harris seriously over-reach when they claim that science can determine moral values. Science cannot provide normativity or tell us what values or goals we “ought” to have. We can only know that by reference to our “passions” as Hume put it. However, science can help us achieve what we have already determined is worth pursuing. And it can also tell us something about our “passions”. For example, we’ve discovered a lot about how and why morality evolved - it evolved to foster cooperation which fostered survival and the passing on of their genes.

Science can't determine moral norms. And passions come in a million flavours, including social and selfish ones, all evolved for utility. Being a passion doesn't make that passion Right or Wrong either, it just is what it is. Maybe I like the taste of apples, you don't, I like torturing puppies, you don't. So what, it's just evolutionary happenstance playing out. We have to look elsewhere for some justification of Right and Wrong.

Finally, when I mentioned the “unity of knowledge thesis” which is pretty much waht scientism is all about, I didn’t mean “unity” in the trivial sense that everything in the universe is connected to everything else (although it is). What I mean is that nature, and all real knowledge, is of a piece, and the way of gaining knowledge about nature is with rationality and the scientific method. Rationality and the scientific method are the only ways of gaining knowledge that has a measure of objectivity. There are no “other ways of knowing”.

I go back again to Perspective. Knowledge, or knowing, only exists as conscious experience - it's somethings humans do. And that thing we do s create useful experiential models of the world and us within it, accompanied by a linguistic narrative in our heads. Each of us has a our own individual model and narrative, from our own private unique perspective. Which we can never reliably know conforms to each other's, even when observing and measuring 'physical objects', which are 'public' to us both (eg inverted qualia).

But still, science has a created an incredibly vast and intricate model of our shared world which is reliably predictive at a level of resolution we humans operate on. Which means at the very least we are in touch with real patterns of real stuff imo.

I agree with P.Z. Meyers who says that science is incompatible with religion and mysticism in the same sense that the serious pursuit of knowledge about reality is incompatible with bullsh#t. And I think the claim that there are “other ways of knowing” is just that,bullsh#t, because no one is ever able to say what these “other ways of knowing”, so beloved of the PM and mysterian crowds, actually are. Science, on the other hand, can study any real phenomena. I invite those who disagree with this to name any area of inquiry, or any phenomenon whatsoever, that cannot be investigated by science.

Can you scientifically prove apples taste good, when I know with absolute certainty they taste bad.

[Lagayascienza]

Gertie, thanks for your detailed response, most of which I agree with.

I'm not sure about qualia, though, and especially not "inverted qualia". Take taste, for example. Pretty much everyone with a normal array of working taste buds will say that salt tastes salty and that sugar tastes sweet. The same goes for color vision. Pretty much eveyone with normal color vision will say that a ripe tomato is red. And science tells us that red things reflect red light and we can all measure red light to be with the range of 625 - 740 nanometres. This is objectively true.

In respect of what tastes good to humans, well, we just ask them. It will be objectively true that a certain percentage of humans like the taste of apples and a certain percentage won't. So even when it comes to subjective matters there are objective truths to be known. Science can investigate any natural phenomenon. It can even investigate religious claims and the supernatural. And when it does investigate the supernatural nothing has been found to substantiate claims of the supernatural.

Scientism is the thesis that all real phenomena are natural phenomena and that there are no natural phenomena that cannot be investigated by science. And there are no "other ways of knowing" anything about the natural world which is the only world there is. At least, no one who purports that there are other "ways of knowing" can tell us what these other ways are. Therefore, I'll stick with scientism until someone can tell me what those other ways of knowing are.

[Gertie]

Gertie, thanks for your detailed response, most of which I agree with.

Yep. I'd say PM and Scientism can both be usefully applied, but both can stretch beyond their appropriate remits. I'm stretching when I talk about Einsteinian Relativity, the Uncertainty Principle, spooky action at a distance and such. And Science is stretching when it tries to go beyond the physically observable/measurable, where it can't use its objective/inter-subjective falsifiability criteria. Notably when it comes to conscious experience.

I'm not sure about qualia, though, and especially not "inverted qualia". Take taste, for example. Pretty much everyone with a normal array of working taste buds will say that salt tastes salty and that sugar tastes sweet. The same goes for color vision. Pretty much eveyone with normal color vision will say that a ripe tomato is red. And science tells us that red things reflect red light and we can all measure red light to be with the range of 625 - 740 nanometres. This is objectively true.

The point about inverted qualia is that there's no way of checking the fact of whether my salty is your sweet, or the colour which registers as 625-740 nanometres and we both call ''red'' actually looks green to me.

In respect of what tastes good to humans, well, we just ask them. t will be objectively true that a certain percentage of humans like the taste of apples and a certain percentage won't. So even when it comes to subjective matters there are objective truths to be known. Science can investigate any natural phenomenon. It can even investigate religious claims and the supernatural. And when it does investigate the supernatural nothing has been found to substantiate claims of the supernatural.

Yes we have to rely on unfalsifiable reports, which we can then work with. But that's like Boffin A looking down a microscope and telling Boffin B what they see - Boffin B can't scientifically (inter-subjectively) falsify what Boffin A reports without looking herself. When it comes to the taste of apples, there's nothing public/physical 'out there' to check. Ghosts are either public/physical phenomena or they operate under different rules, or they're psychological phenomena. If they were public/physical phenomena they'd have been scientifically verified by now. It's poss they're made of a stuff which operates under different rules, but rather than inventing some new type of stuff, it seems much more likely they're mental phenomena to me.

I

Scientism is the thesis that all real phenomena are natural phenomena and that there are no natural phenomena that cannot be investigated by science. And there are no "other ways of knowing" anything about the natural world which is the only world there is. At least, no one who purports that there are other "ways of knowing" can tell us what these other ways are. Therefore, I'll stick with scientism until someone can tell me what those other ways of knowing are.

I still think you're defining 'ways of knowing' as 'ways of knowing accessible to scientific falsifiability'. Scientific falsifiability only works with what is publically/inter-subjectively falsifiable - ie physical stuff. It's brilliant at that.

But when it comes to Subjects whose thoughts and feelings aren't publically falsifiable, it's limited. And PM works well in areas the nature of being a Subject is relevant, with idiosyncratic thoughts and feelings, values and desires, conscious and unconscious bias, etc.

Both are important.

[Lagayascienza]

Right. The only thing I would say is that thoughts , feeling and desires are natural phenomena and, as such, they can be studied by science - by psychology and neurology for example.

In respect of qualia, we can never know if someone else's red is different to ours. But does that matter? If we both look at an apple and say it's red (even though their red might appear blue to us if we could experience it) this causes no.problem. However, given normal color cones it is unlikely that anyone looking at red would experience blue.

[Lagayascienza]

I still think you're defining 'ways of knowing' as 'ways of knowing accessible to scientific falsifiability'. Scientific falsifiability only works with what is publically/inter-subjectively falsifiable - ie physical stuff. It's brilliant at that.

But when it comes to Subjects whose thoughts and feelings aren't publically falsifiable, it's limited. And PM works well in areas the nature of being a Subject is relevant, with idiosyncratic thoughts and feelings, values and desires, conscious and unconscious bias, etc.

Both are important.

Gertie, further to my previous post, you say that I am defining 'ways of knowing' as 'ways of knowing accessible to scientific falsifiability'. However, I also include everyuday rationality. Apart from these, what other ways of knowing are there?

Just because some things such as thoughts and emotions are not observable through microscopes or telescopes does not mean we cannot observe them or quantify them to some extent. We just ask people what they are thinking or feeling. If 90% or 20% of people say they feel a certain way about something, we have quantities we can work with. Thus, as well as first hand reports of feeling and emotions, we have the sciences of statistics, psychology, neurology etc. So I think emotions are natural phenomena that can be studied by rationality and science.

So I would ask again, if there are indeed ways of knowing other than rationality and science, what do you think these “other ways of knowing” are?

[Gertie]

OK, try this.

Knowing IS Conscious Experiencing.  And Conscious Experiencing IS  Knowing. 

There is no other way of knowing. 


So to know an apple tastes bad is my conscious processes doing what they do, in much the same way as to know the apple is green. 

Some types of knowing are of things which are publically observable/measurable, which I can check with you - like the colour and size of the apple.  And that is basis of the falsifiable scientific method.  It works in the realm of observable physical stuff  (Objects) we can compare notes on, and together we can create a  physicalist ('Objective') model of our shared world. 

But still I can know just as truely that apples taste bad, Caravaggio created amazing art, love is wonderful and awful, tennis is fun, I should try to be kind,  I'll never climb Everest, and a million other things.  No matter what you say to me, no matter your reasoning, I know these things.  Even though they don't fit nicely  in our shared physicalist model of the world. 

So there's this outward facing type of knowing about 'out there' stuff we call Objective, and the inward facing knowing we call Subjective.  But it's all conscious experience, keeping us going in ways which are ultimately rooted in utility, nrather than ontological truth.


And yes I can tell you I hate the taste of apples in your survey, but you don't Know if I'm being honest.  In fact I quite like apples.  Or do I....

[Lagayascienza]

Thanks, Gertie. Yes, I agree that there is a difference between objective and subjective knowing. I just don't think that it matters much. Both are natural phenomena that emerge from the workings of physical matter and the forces of nature, and so both can be investigatied by science. Emotions, thoughts etc. become publically observable when we do a survey, when we do fMRIs, when we look at hormones involved in emotions such as dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin, etc... I guess I just don't see any good reason to divide the world up into the mysterious/subjective and the physical/objective when they are both products of the natural world that can be investigated by science.

In respect of doing a survey of whether, say, apples taste good, I agree that it depends on people telling the truth. But why would they lie? Just to muck up a survey? And even if a few out of thousands did lie, the result of the survey would still be reliable, significant and objective. And since humans are built more or less the same way, I can be confident that their feelings of pain and joy, and their experience of red or blue, will feel to them like mine do to me.

I hope it does not appear that I am being contrary just for the sake of it. It's just that I don't see a need to carve the world up in into objective and subjective, natural and supernatural. I don't see what is gained by doing so. Seeing emotions, values etc. as natural phenomena that can be investigated by science is not to diminish their importance or power in any way, just as knowing the physics behind the production of a rainbow does not diminsih its beauty. The only difference is that there are some things we cannot "prove" objectively. For example. I cannot prove that Leonado's Mona Lisa is a better work of art than Picasso's Guernica or that stealing is objectively morally wrong. But we don't need to prove such things. It doesn't matter. We know that core moral values are a result of evolution and common to almost all humans. And we can be confident that artistic appreciation will also have a physical basis. There is nothing spooky behind emotions, feelings and values. It's just that your "raw feel" is not immediately available to me. Yet I can be confident that they are similar.

In short, if there are two ways of knowing, the subjective and the objective, the public and the private, I don't think it matters because they can both be investigated by science. There are objective truths to be known about the subjective and private.

[Pattern-chaser]

Knowing IS Conscious Experiencing.  And Conscious Experiencing IS  Knowing. 

I consider it a bit risky to equate knowing and experiencing. I don't think they're the same thing. In fact, I think there are significant differences; differences that matter. But maybe I'm quibbling over nothing except words, with a dash of pedantry?

[Lagayascienza]

One can experience drug induced delusions or experience hallucinations during psychosis or religious hysteria. But such experiences is not the same as "knowing". They are just experiences, whereas, if one is of sound mind, and if one stands on a beach and looks out on a windswept ocean, that experience will be both a subjective phenomenological reality and an objectively verifiable phenomenon. Delusions ,too, are real phenomena. The experiential phenomena are real in that something real is happening in the brain of the deluded. But the delusions themselves have no reality beyond the deluded brain, and so they not scientifically verifiable or objective in the way that experiences which correspond to the world outside the head of the person suffering delusions are verifiable and objective. Miracles and perceptions of the supernatural are never verifiable in this way and so we doubt that have any reality beyond the mind of the experiencer. These sort of perceptions are not "other ways of knowing". They are just ways of experiencing without knowing. And that's fine if that's what floats your boat. It's just that it is unreasonable to expect such experiencing to be given the same weight (if any) as actual "knowing".

[Gertie]

Thanks, Gertie. Yes, I agree that there is a difference between objective and subjective knowing. I just don't think that it matters much. Both are natural phenomena that emerge from the workings of physical matter and the forces of nature, and so both can be investigatied by science. Emotions, thoughts etc. become publically observable when we do a survey, when we do fMRIs, when we look at hormones involved in emotions such as dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin, etc... I guess I just don't see any good reason to divide the world up into the mysterious/subjective and the physical/objective when they are both products of the natural world that can be investigated by science.

In terms of everyday practicalities (utility) I agree. 

Except I don't find conscious experience mysterious - it's what I'm doing every moment I'm awake.

In respect of doing a survey of whether, say, apples taste good, I agree that it depends on people telling the truth. But why would they lie? Just to muck up a survey? And even if a few out of thousands did lie, the result of the survey would still be reliable, significant and objective. And since humans are built more or less the same way, I can be confident that their feelings of pain and joy, and their experience of red or blue, will feel to them like mine do to me.

Again, for everyday practical purposes I agree. 

I hope it does not appear that I am being contrary just for the sake of it.

Not at all.  I get you're coming at this from a different angle.

it's just that I don't see a need to carve the world up in into objective and subjective, natural and supernatural. I don't see what is gained by doing so. Seeing emotions, values etc. as natural phenomena that can be investigated by science is not to diminish their importance or power in any way, just as knowing the physics behind the production of a rainbow does not diminsih its beauty.

The only difference is that there are some things we cannot "prove" objectively. For example. I cannot prove that Leonado's Mona Lisa is a better work of art than Picasso's Guernica or that stealing is objectively morally wrong. But we don't need to prove such things. It doesn't matter. We know that core moral values are a result of evolution and common to almost all humans. And we can be confident that artistic appreciation will also have a physical basis. There is nothing spooky behind emotions, feelings and values. It's just that your "raw feel" is not immediately available to me. Yet I can be confident that they are similar.

Conscious experience is problematic for Physicalism, but I don't think it's supernatural, spooky  or mysterious.  

I do think the objective/subjective difference is significant - for a start conscious experience brings into the world knowing, along with meaning, mattering, value, purpose, joy, suffering, etc. 

And that ultimately ''objective''  knowing means inter-subjectively falsifiable.  Which in turn means it 's only reliably falsifiable  when describing physical stuff in the 'public' realm.  And only reliable then with the caveat that we humans agree using our similarly limited and flawed sensory and cognitive toolkit, which will likely be comparable.

Again, I agree for practical purposes re knowing, all this doesn't matter.  And I take on board that the similarities we observe and derived theories have proven to be reliably predictive - which could mean our physicalist model is near spot on, with just a few gaps to fill in, like the emergence of conscious experience.  But we can't know that. 

In short, if there are two ways of knowing, the subjective and the objective, the public and the private, I don't think it matters because they can both be investigated by science. There are objective truths to be known about the subjective and private.

As above.

[Gertie]

Knowing IS Conscious Experiencing.  And Conscious Experiencing IS  Knowing. 

I consider it a bit risky to equate knowing and experiencing. I don't think they're the same thing. In fact, I think there are significant differences; differences that matter. But maybe I'm quibbling over nothing except words, with a dash of pedantry?

How so?

Ultimately I think they're the same thing. In that to experience something involves knowing it - and you can't know something if you're not a conscious being. But we can experience things which aren't 'true', in the sense of not corresponding with ontological reality. In fact the only thing I can know exists with certainty is the content of my conscious experience.

[Pattern-chaser]

Knowing IS Conscious Experiencing.  And Conscious Experiencing IS  Knowing. 

I consider it a bit risky to equate knowing and experiencing. I don't think they're the same thing. In fact, I think there are significant differences; differences that matter. But maybe I'm quibbling over nothing except words, with a dash of pedantry?

How so?

Ultimately I think they're the same thing. In that to experience something involves knowing it - and you can't know something if you're not a conscious being. But we can experience things which aren't 'true', in the sense of not corresponding with ontological reality. In fact the only thing I can know exists with certainty is the content of my conscious experience.

Ah, I think there's a shade of meaning associated with "knowing" that I hadn't thought of.

If I have had a particular experience, I know what it is like to have that experience. I was thinking of "knowing" in the sense of having knowledge; of knowing facts.

[Gertie]

Gertie wrote: ↑
September 19th, 2024, 12:09 am
Knowing IS Conscious Experiencing. And Conscious Experiencing IS Knowing.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑
September 20th, 2024, 4:05 pm
I consider it a bit risky to equate knowing and experiencing. I don't think they're the same thing. In fact, I think there are significant differences; differences that matter. But maybe I'm quibbling over nothing except words, with a dash of pedantry?

Gertie wrote: ↑
September 22nd, 2024, 9:00 pm
How so?

Ultimately I think they're the same thing. In that to experience something involves knowing it - and you can't know something if you're not a conscious being. But we can experience things which aren't 'true', in the sense of not corresponding with ontological reality. In fact the only thing I can know exists with certainty is the content of my conscious experience.

Ah, I think there's a shade of meaning associated with "knowing" that I hadn't thought of.

A bit of context. Lagaya challenged anyone to come up with a way of knowing which isn't rooted in science and reason, and we got into an epistemological discussion.

My view is the root of knowing is consciously experiencing, and there is no other way to know anything, in fact the nature of conscious experience is such that to experience something IS to know something.

What you know is the content of the experience, which IS the experience.

The nature of conscious experience is that it is private to the experiencing Subject, it can't be observed or measured the way physical Objects can, which are in the 'public realm'. So we can linguistically check notes with each other about physical stuff 'out there' we can both see and measure - we call this the 'Objective', scientific method which deals with 'true facts' about the world.

(Note this inter-subjective checking adds an abstract level of language coding we agree on, but can't check, where error might occur)

And when we talk about 'Subjective' knowing, we usually talk about things like opinions, preferences and values, which we can't point to 'out there' and check. And when we talk about Truth, knowing facts about ontological reality, we generally call inter-subjectively falsifiable (checking notes with each other about physical stuff 'out there' we can both observe/measure) Objectively True.

But humans aren't perfect observers who see the complete ontological reality when we look at an apple and agree it's green and 8 cm tall. What we're actually comparing are our own private, flawed and limited experiential models of the reality of what an apple is, which we each experientially construct. Because that's our only way of knowing - this private, experiential model-making process conscious Subjects each do.

Never=the-less humans are similar enough to be able to usefully compare our private experiences of observing apple, etc, to create an entire physicalist model of the world we share - what it's made of and how it works. (with a few gaps). That's the amazing thing Physicalism has done, based on the 'scientific method' of us comparing notes about our private experiential models and extrapolating predictive theories from our observations.

Fantastic, thank you to those boffins who've made the world intelligible to us, created technologies, medicines and all the stuff which makes life easier for us than our ancestors. As well as giving us the confidence we live in a world where we have agency, and predictable ''If...then'' Reasoning works when we apply it. Rather than being dependent on the whims of the gods.

That's the promise of the Enlightenment and Modernism. A truely world changing new way of seeing the world and our role in it.

Then a few centuries later we look around and see what this Brave New World looks like. And Post-Modernism comes along and says ''Here's the problem...''.

[Pattern-chaser]

Thanks for the clarification, and I apologise for not going back and reading the entire exchange. Too lazy, I'm afraid: TL;DR

That's the promise of the Enlightenment and Modernism. A truely world changing new way of seeing the world and our role in it.

Then a few centuries later we look around and see what this Brave New World looks like. And Post-Modernism comes along and says ''Here's the problem...''.

As I have said before, PM is only examining established 'wisdom', to see if it really is wisdom, or just a misunderstanding that we might've overcome years ago, if we'd just noticed the inconsistencies.

N.B. Many of our established wisdoms do turn out to be wise, inasmuch as we are able to judge such things.

[Lagayascienza]

....................................................................................................................................

A bit of context. Lagaya challenged anyone to come up with a way of knowing which isn't rooted in science and reason, and we got into an epistemological discussion.

My view is the root of knowing is consciously experiencing, and there is no other way to know anything, in fact the nature of conscious experience is such that to experience something IS to know something.

What you know is the content of the experience, which IS the experience.

The nature of conscious experience is that it is private to the experiencing Subject, it can't be observed or measured the way physical Objects can, which are in the 'public realm'. So we can linguistically check notes with each other about physical stuff 'out there' we can both see and measure - we call this the 'Objective', scientific method which deals with 'true facts' about the world.

(Note this inter-subjective checking adds an abstract level of language coding we agree on, but can't check, where error might occur)

And when we talk about 'Subjective' knowing, we usually talk about things like opinions, preferences and values, which we can't point to 'out there' and check. And when we talk about Truth, knowing facts about ontological reality, we generally call inter-subjectively falsifiable (checking notes with each other about physical stuff 'out there' we can both observe/measure) Objectively True.

But humans aren't perfect observers who see the complete ontological reality when we look at an apple and agree it's green and 8 cm tall. What we're actually comparing are our own private, flawed and limited experiential models of the reality of what an apple is, which we each experientially construct. Because that's our only way of knowing - this private, experiential model-making process conscious Subjects each do.

Nevertheless humans are similar enough to be able to usefully compare our private experiences of observing apple, etc, to create an entire physicalist model of the world we share - what it's made of and how it works. (with a few gaps). That's the amazing thing Physicalism has done, based on the 'scientific method' of us comparing notes about our private experiential models and extrapolating predictive theories from our observations.

Fantastic, thank you to those boffins who've made the world intelligible to us, created technologies, medicines and all the stuff which makes life easier for us than our ancestors. As well as giving us the confidence we live in a world where we have agency, and predictable ''If...then'' Reasoning works when we apply it. Rather than being dependent on the whims of the gods.

That's the promise of the Enlightenment and Modernism. A truly world changing new way of seeing the world and our role in it.

Then a few centuries later we look around and see what this Brave New World looks like. And Post-Modernism comes along and says ''Here's the problem...''.

I wouldn’t argue with anything you say above, Gertie. We cannot know anything without conscious. We can we have an experience and just leave it there. Or we can try to "know" things more deeply by making repeatable measurements (experiments) ourselves or by learning of the experiments others have reliably performed. The speed of light, for example, will be the same for all who measure it properly and it has been measured many times with amazing precision. But imagine the following exchanges:

Scientist: “The speed of light in a vacuum is 300,000K/s”.
Post-modernist: “Here’s the problem, that’s only true according to you, a white male in a modern, patriarchal, materialist society”.
Or
Ethicist: Stealing is, all else being equal, morally wrong.
Post-modernist: The problem with that is that others can disagree. It is only true in Imperialist, property owning societies.

This sort of thing is where post-modernism over-reaches. Some things, such as the speed of light, just are true. Even in the less clear-cut case of the morality of stealing, the post-modernist is wrong. Although it can sometimes be overridden, the moral prohibition against stealing is seen across all human cultures and societies whether they be hunter-gather or modern industrial societies. It is part of core human morality.

Post-modernism, at its best, alerts us to the need to question biases and grand narratives. However, at its worst, it degenerates into absurdity. If everything is relative and conditional, then so is post-modernism. If there are no truths, only interpretations, then post-modernism is also just an interpretation and not truth. If anything overreaches it is this sort of Postmodernism and not science. But postmodernism has become the dominant narrative in many universities. It denies that there are any objective standards or truths. It thus undermines itself.

You say that “the root of knowing is consciously experiencing, and [that] there is no other way to know anything, and [that], in fact, the nature of conscious experience is such that to experience something IS to know something.”

I think that is right as far as it goes, but raw experience won’t tell us much. I see a flash of light streaking across the night sky which then disappears. That is the raw phenomenological “given”. I know I have experienced this streak of light, but this raw experience tells me nothing about the nature of light itself, or what may have caused light to streak across the night sky then disappear. To go beyond Phenomenology, and get useful, deeper, explanations, to make deeper “knowledge” out of raw experience, we need thought, rationality and science. Unless, of course, we are content to not know much about anything. Maybe some folk are happy with the world as a phenomenological given underpinned by the Idealistic notion that the universe is all mind-stuff. However, for me, Idealism and Phenomenology are a dead end in terms of creating explanations which further our understanding of ourselves and the wider the universe.