Please explain how "water boils when heated up" is mind dependent. No generalities. Explain specifically.
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"Reality is not what you perceive it to be. Instead, it's what the tools and methods of science reveal."
- Thread starter mikkel_the_dane
- Start date
I agree with what sayak83 says about the quote in the title that within scientific disciplines it is useful.
If President Kennedy had listened to reason we would have had a nuclear war with the USSR during the blockade, but he knew the flaws of reductionist thinking. We have to think creatively. We have to ignore the problem sometimes in order to solve it. Analogously every puzzle is at times like a finger trap. Every challenge baits you into one way of thinking, but you have to turn it around and look at it in ways that are discouraged by experience and by assumption.
Sometimes more than one view is true. For example its true that we are all going to die and that our existence has no obvious meaning at all in the long run. Shall we all go to Sweden and have ourselves legally put to death? No, because we are people. We do not accept it: the actual reductionist view.
Does Neil D. Tyson ( seeing how tiny we are and how irrelevant our planet is ) conclude that nothing matters? No. He has a TV show, and he talks about how wonderful it is to know the wonders of the universe and how awesome it is to be made of pointless beautiful stardust. Its all just empty talk from a realistic perspective isn't it? He's a religious believer in meaning, and he ignores reality. Death would scientifically be better than continuing, but this is hard to accept. Scientifically death is the end result of humanity, so why go through endless suffering before we get there? Why put generations of humans and cute little furry animals through more evolutionary torment? No!
It is obvious that we are not capable of accepting reality. What other aspects of reality are we getting wrong? Are we even capable of scientific thinking? Not really. Look at how people approach politics for instance. Now look at the crisis in soft scientific publishing. Its full of holes, bad data, bad process. This is the humanity which sometimes tries to tell you that it is so logical, when its logic is barely functional. Which means, because of that, that science should not be taken as the only lens through which we see.
We are people, and a reductionist view of the world is not compatible with us. Does Neil D Tyson never smoke weed? He probably does wherever its legal. Hope does not spring from a reductionist view. It comes from us.
If President Kennedy had listened to reason we would have had a nuclear war with the USSR during the blockade, but he knew the flaws of reductionist thinking. We have to think creatively. We have to ignore the problem sometimes in order to solve it. Analogously every puzzle is at times like a finger trap. Every challenge baits you into one way of thinking, but you have to turn it around and look at it in ways that are discouraged by experience and by assumption.
Sometimes more than one view is true. For example its true that we are all going to die and that our existence has no obvious meaning at all in the long run. Shall we all go to Sweden and have ourselves legally put to death? No, because we are people. We do not accept it: the actual reductionist view.
Does Neil D. Tyson ( seeing how tiny we are and how irrelevant our planet is ) conclude that nothing matters? No. He has a TV show, and he talks about how wonderful it is to know the wonders of the universe and how awesome it is to be made of pointless beautiful stardust. Its all just empty talk from a realistic perspective isn't it? He's a religious believer in meaning, and he ignores reality. Death would scientifically be better than continuing, but this is hard to accept. Scientifically death is the end result of humanity, so why go through endless suffering before we get there? Why put generations of humans and cute little furry animals through more evolutionary torment? No!
It is obvious that we are not capable of accepting reality. What other aspects of reality are we getting wrong? Are we even capable of scientific thinking? Not really. Look at how people approach politics for instance. Now look at the crisis in soft scientific publishing. Its full of holes, bad data, bad process. This is the humanity which sometimes tries to tell you that it is so logical, when its logic is barely functional. Which means, because of that, that science should not be taken as the only lens through which we see.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Simple, you can't point to it or other wise engange with it or even know it, if you don't have a mind.
What you are saying is that it can't be control by the mind. We agree on that, but that doesn't mean that it in the ontological and metaphysical sense is totally mind independent.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Yeah, and you do your thing. You use mental and subjective concepts to explain how you don't like me. As long as your comeback is always in effect that we think differently, it can go on.
You are so special that you don't even have a brain.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Is it your position that water doesn't boil if there is no mind present to observe it?
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Yeah, and you do your thing. You use mental and subjective concepts to explain how you don't like me. As long as your comeback is always in effect that we think differently, it can go on.
You are so special that you don't even have a brain.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Here, it took me about 10sec of scrolling after a google to find a clip where he uses the quote.
I originally saw it in another interview though.
In this clip, he's just answering twitter questions.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson answers your common questions about our universe on Twitter. | By WIRED | Facebook
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson answers your common questions about our universe on Twitter.www.facebook.com
Go to the question asked at 2:47
He gives his answer and then concludes his answer with a more general comment about science and ends with the quote in question in that particular general context at about 4:00
You're welcome.
//thread?
Right now I am behind with answers and don't have the time for now.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
We can't know that. We start with the assumptions as per axioms that the objective universe is fair, knowable and orderly. But that is not true.
This seems to be more of a dilemma for those who are indoctrinated in assumptions, and fail to learn critical thinking skill. These ideas get ingrained in thinking to such a degree tat the mind can't, or is unable, to separate the ideas from thinking. Those who have learned crititical thinking skill have a better chance to discern that they have learned assumptions that are tied to identity and meaning. those who don't have the skill will be in a loop of thinking that they can't escape. Examples of this are what we see creationists do, that they assume a God exists, they observe "design" in creation, therefore a God exists,
Truth is conceptual, but it is also highly contextual. Mickey Mouse is just a concept, but it's also true that it is a cartoon character that we know talks, and gets into all sorts of trouble. Yet Mickey is not an independent being that has autonomy. Replace Mickey Mouse with God and these statements are also truthful, as no Gods are known to exist independently of human minds. You might disagree, and why you disagree is the debate we engage in.
Yet the phenomenon observed is not dependent on an observer, it happens when there is no one looking. You should bring up Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle if you want to go down this path.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
I will answer later.
wellwisher
Well-Known Member
If we suddenly had amnesia, and you could not remember what you once knew or once believed, you would still be conscious, but you would need to depend on real time sensory input to help you recreate your perception of reality, from scratch. If you saw an animal you would not know if it is friendly or scary but have to test it and learn again. What we believe; foundation premises, has an influence on what we will learn, which then becomes a matrix which filters, processes and structures our new sensory data. If we lost our memory, we would have consciousness and sensory input, but no filter and processing area based on our life of learned belief and knowledge.
The wild card is, humans have two centers of consciousness. The older center; called the inner self, evolved along with our human DNA and our primate animal ancestor consciousness. It has built in natural filters, that we could call natural instinct and human nature. The second and newer center is called ego consciousness. Its filter is more of a product of its cultural environment; learning. This is where we engrave and learn by what we believe; sets our foundation premises, and then we build our house of knowledge, that defines our reality.
If we were to have ego amnesia, with the inner self still intact, since it is hardwired in our DNA, our sensory input data would have default to the natural filters of the inner self; human nature and instinct. We would still sense being hungry, and would follow the need to find food. This may involve some trial and error, taste testing, until we have a memory filter we can rely on for food.
During unconscious mind experiment I did on myself, to explore the inner self, such a state of ego amnesia was induced; ego amnesia but with the inner self filters still intact. It was part of an update process. It was induced by the end of an uninstall process, before the update instillation. The uninstall was scary as memory changed potential and was erased.
The amnesia rebirth of my ego, was not scary, but euphoric, and started simple and connected to my basic needs in my inner self paradise image of realty. I was older, but my ego was a baby; tiny, growing but feeling safe. My natural curiosity, that made me choose science, seemed to be part of my inner self filters and urges. I still enjoyed learning. I avoided culture, to avoid adding that noise, again.
I allowed the inner self to teach me, since I was becoming aware of what had happened; the cause of the amnesia, and I was still being a scientist seeing where this continuing experiment was going. The ego filters of my mind needed to be updated and filled back in but I did not wish to relive the past. My initial inner self world evolved from a mythological archetypical type world, beyond the limits of space and time; disconnected space and time. This grew me back to a normal simple life; friends and family.
When I finally felt it was time to attached myself, back to the cultural world, via the internet and discussion forums, I also started to relearn the deeper knowledge, that I once knew, but now it was processed through the filters, that the inner self had taught me. My ego filters, became a composite of cultural knowledge, and more than normal inner self access.
He wasn't asking about the known concept of water boiling at 212 degrees, and how it is a mind that can express this, and learn this. He was asking if minds can observe and acknowledge that water indeed does boil at 212 degrees, and that this phenomenon occurs independently of any minds observing it happen. You keep looping back to your mind is a mind observing/thinking for some reason, and not just being an instrument that can observe without thinking. Krishnamurti went on quite a bit about this dilemma, and how minds have to learn discipline to avoid this trap.
You are confusing abstract ideas and facts. It is a fact that water boils at 212 degree. It freezes at 32 degrees. These are both facts and can't be known as a concept. The actual problem is you getting mired in the fact your mind can be mistaken, yet you disregard that it can know facts without any chance of error.
The irony is that as often as you declare that we can't know anything, you argue what you think you know quite often, but don't apply your uncertainty to that. If you were consistent you wouldn't be able to post anything at all at the risk of being completely wrong. You've gotten past your opinions being wrong, but not known facts about water.
Science has to make sense of the facts and data. That is it's purpose and priority.
What is there to learn that is certain and factual? How we feel? The dilemma with philosophy is that it always relies on the human experience as the determining fulcrum, and that is the essence of subjective and personal. It's not relevant to conclusions in science. It will be there, but it's not relevant to the conclusions.
Mind is required for me to know of X's existence.
Mind is not required for X to exist.
You are confusing epistemic priors with ontological priors.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Whichever of the competing ontological interpretations of QM you prefer, there is no escaping the implication that object, observer and the act of observation are inextricably linked. Just like particles in an entangled system, one constituent cannot be fully described without reference to the other, and description can in any case only be made in the mind of the conscious observer.
Redefining observation as interaction, in the context of QM, is simply a semantic exercise, to freeze out consciousness from the equation. The exercise fails, not least because equations require a consciousness to formulate them.
I defy you to validate your mind independent truth claim, without reference or access to conscious observation. The only way of doing that is to redefine observation as something existing independently of consciousness, but of course that argument, like any argument, cannot be made independently of the mind.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
And you are making the unsupported assumption that consciousness is an emergent property of some objective external reality. You haven’t, in other words, questioned your materialist axioms.
Any interaction is an observation and exists independently of consciousness.
In the morning today, I became conscious when sunlight fell on my eyes. If consciousness is required for sunlight to come into exist in the first place, what was it that made me conscious today morning?
I am making no such assumption. I am a neutral or dual aspect monist. That does not mean that reality stops existing when I am hit on the head.
We humans were created with our own perceptual senses that can detect a specific range of different types of realities. When our senses function correctly, our perception of reality is sufficient to understand our own reality. We can interact with our environment and survive without needing to expand our perception of the universe.
I don't need to know what wave magnitudes a bee perceives with the type of vision that its eyes allow for me to survive as a human being. I also don't need to develop a sense of smell like a dog's if the smells I perceive as a human are enough for me. Although human senses have natural limitations, we have many living beings at our disposal that provide what we need. For example, by learning that a dog smells deeper we can use it to track prey; or if we know that a pigeon has a better sense of direction, we can use it as messengers, etc.
Humans perceive reality to the extent that we need to perceive it. If we had all the senses developed to infinity, we would not be human but something else.
I don't need to know what wave magnitudes a bee perceives with the type of vision that its eyes allow for me to survive as a human being. I also don't need to develop a sense of smell like a dog's if the smells I perceive as a human are enough for me. Although human senses have natural limitations, we have many living beings at our disposal that provide what we need. For example, by learning that a dog smells deeper we can use it to track prey; or if we know that a pigeon has a better sense of direction, we can use it as messengers, etc.
Humans perceive reality to the extent that we need to perceive it. If we had all the senses developed to infinity, we would not be human but something else.
Yes. I do indeed think this.
OK.
Nope. Philosophical materialism is the *conclusion* based on scientific exploration. The basic scientific method (hypothesize, test, rethink as necessary) has no necessary assumption of materialism.
The philosophy of science is that the scientific method is the best method for arriving at the truth.
Well, you distort the position by claiming it starts with materialism. Since I am not 100% sure what you would classify as 'material', this may or may not be the case. For example, is light 'material'? I would say not, but I would also say that it is physical.
Pogo
Well-Known Member
But, but, we might be a brain in a vat or Boltzman Brain so your assumptions of reality may not include some of the things I consider.
That seems to me the gist of this conversation. Philosophically interesting to some but not to me.