WBraun
climber
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Any way you shake a stick at it that picture is a reality.
Modern science teaches that matter is the basis of reality.
That is impersonalism, voidism, and nilhisim.
Thus you you don't exist ultimately.
But that's not true reality ........
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Dr. F.
Big Wall climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 6, 2013 - 01:33pm PT
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Is this real, or part of the "Matrix"?
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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MH2
climber
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JL:
We are at base no thing at all.
WB:
Thus you you don't exist ultimately.
Nice to see some agreement, here.
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WBraun
climber
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I don't agree to impersonalism.
Every individual has personality.
No two snow flakes are ever the same pattern.
Not that one merges into the impersonal void.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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This reality is probably like Hilbert space
Here we go again, using big words. Care to speculate on what the vector space consists of or what the inner product is? Are you sure your space is complete?
;>\
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Bruce Kay
Gym climber
BC
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Here we go again, using big words.
Well I was going to say "Reality is more like a really nice Les Terrasses 2004 Priorat" so I could play with the real big boys....... but then I realized I don't know wine any better than Space Cowboy stuff.
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jstan
climber
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As best I can see, Andy has solved the John Long problem. John's only reality is experiential. Reality is fully defined by what is going on in his mind. He is a writer and his goal is simply to gather words together that generate a certain experience within himself. He assumes that his writing transfers that experience to others. It does not of course. The writing does generate an experience in others. But the fact no one can fully describe an experience (John himself does not even try) we have no way to determine whether his assumption is correct.
Hilbert Space may come up just because he commutes with String Theorists and he has to listen to discussions of this every day. They generate an experience in him, which is his reality.
Until Andy explained this, it never occurred to me anyone would take a metric no one can define, as a reality that can be shared between individuals. A priori it does not work. It is like using a Euclidean space when you have no idea where the axes point or what their scales are. You may have a real vector in mind, but you can't plot it. So we have had these incredible strings of words on ST.
There is no light at the end of this tunnel.
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Dr. F.
Big Wall climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 6, 2013 - 05:47pm PT
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incredible strings of words
yes
maybe we could plot them like the Bible code, and see if they predict what just happened
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Bruce Kay
Gym climber
BC
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As best I can see, Andy has solved the John Long problem
Just goes to show how dense I am. I had no idea he was a problem to start with!
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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John's only reality is experiential. Reality is fully defined by what is going on in his mind.
---
You've lost your way here John. Phenomenologists long ago settled the fact that all human's reality is experiential. What else might it be? However much your evaluating mind might try and objectify things inside and outside of your skin boundary, it can only become real to you as content in your experience. An equation can only be made real to you or can only register as qualia - as content flowing before your awareness. And that, by any definition, is an experience had by a subject.
To have something other than a subjective experience, to know or brush against something beyond the content of your own awareness, is not a doable thing for humans. It seems in some strange way that some of you who are especially fused with your rational mind that the goal is to somehow extinguish the messy subjective aspects of being human and to have a kind of brain in a dish take on what you beleive is "external" or objective reality. But that "take" would have to be passed before your awareness and you're right back to being the subject ingressing said "take."
Reality is not defined by what is going on in my mind, which is in constant flow or flux, as it is for every human being. Such ephemeral stuff can hardly be held as real.
JL
I use Hilbert space not because I get bombarded by my science friends, but as an example of a provisional cognitive tool that allows the exploration of physical reality with predictable results. An organizing principal.
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MH2
climber
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The first step in solving the John Long problem is to realize that there is no John Long problem.
Don Paul,
How about reading a thermometer? Is that a more-objective-but-still-partly-subjective experience of temperature?
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jstan
climber
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The first step in solving the John Long problem is to realize that there is no John Long problem.
Pardon my wordage. The problem is that we have had thousands of posts with no real improvement or evolution in the discussion.
With his statement
Phenomenologists long ago settled the fact that all human's reality is experiential.
John agrees to my basic premise, totally.
He does not discuss my other premise that a reality based only upon experiential data is an entirely personal reality. It is not a reality for two or more individuals.The common definition of reality is that it is independent of the observer.
I do not view this as a pejorative finding at all. I view it as a resolution of the question why it is we seem locked in an endless loop. IMO the structure of the question is now made apparent.
John's suggestion that I have "lost my way" is now entirely understandable. "Lost my way" means something to him. Because the phase produces in John the feeling he has regarding our conversation. Means nothing to me without an enumeration of the data as to how and where I am lost.
Years ago John could add no details as to why he felt there was some non-material extension to humans. His statement was based upon how making that statement made him feel. It felt right. That's great. But it fails to form the basis for any discussion between two different people.
Don Paul,
How about reading a thermometer? Is that a more-objective-but-still-partly-subjective experience of temperature?
Reading of a thermometer is made objective by calibrating the thermometer and by comparing the readings made by two or more observers. And then by publishing the report in a peer reviewed journal where a large number of people practiced in the art can make comment based upon their experience and attempt to reproduce the measurement, where necessary.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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The first step in solving the John Long problem is to realize that there is no John Long problem.
Quantifying IS the process of addressing a problem, so to speak, meaning a discrete thing with measurable dimension. That is material reality. The John long problem is the utter impossibility of using the quantifying model as an end all tool for exploring our fundamental reality - the experiential. It is only a problem if you insist on what works only in a limited way.
The problem is that many people are convinced that it is possible to explore all of reality via a one-size-tits-all. Note that no one has ever agreed that quantifying has any limitations, even when they default into saying "in the material world."
JL
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MH2
climber
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Well, yes. The hypothesis of a non-material basis for experience pretty much begins and ends with the hypothesis. Whatever an individual observer may feel.
I was kind of surprised recently, though, to have an aspect of my own reality yanked out from under me. It was so natural to me that I hadn't even given it a thought. Maybe John can help?
Largo often has said that the evaluating mind likes to work with numbers, or at least measurable quantities. So what is a number? Take a good simple integer like 3. You can point to an example of 3 but can you define 3 well enough so that there will be no ambiguity in what you mean? Or do we just calculate with numbers and not worry too much about what they are?
Is 3 a physical thing? If not, then what is it?
We don't really need to go as far as a Hilbert space.
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jstan
climber
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Note that no one has ever agreed that quantifying has any limitations,
This is seriously in error. Fundamentally in error. When the people at the LHC made the decision to announce their discovery of a new boson, they made it based upon statistical analysis of the data assuring them of statistical confidence at the five sigma level.
The decision was entirely determined by knowledge of the inaccuracies in the data and the support that flawed data provided for the announced conclusion.
All data is flawed. To one degree or another.
There is an old saw.
Theorists are the only ones who believe their theory.
Experimentalists are the only ones who don't believe their data.
So John. you have a lot of friends who also make your mistake.
Edit:
MH2:
The first tablets recovered in cuneiform were billings made to customers who had received deliveries of product. This was in Sumer 4000 years before X. Since there was successful trade the meanings of those indentations were apparently agreed upon between vendors and customers.
The Hindu Arabic number system was introduced to Europe in the fifth (V) century and was used in combination with the abacus. In some parts of the world an abacus is still used and in the hands of an expert can sometimes be faster than a computer. Here too, agreement in the use of numbers was apparently extensive.
Numbers are symbols. If people are in agreement as to the meaning of those symbols, they can play a role in civilization. To see what happens when agreement does not exist one need look no further than our House of Representatves.
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Bruce Kay
Gym climber
BC
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The problem is that many people are convinced that it is possible to explore all of reality via a one-size-tits
All right enough bullshit already. Its one thing to intimidate us with Hildergerg Spaces but don't for a second think we'll ever settle for one size tits.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Where are we going here?
How is my awareness limited? How similar is your awareness to mine..Why can't I see through your eyes?
Does your green look like my green?
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