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Old 21st May 2018, 06:53 AM   #241
theprestige
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Originally Posted by Darat View Post
Just as an aside - Plato was against learning about the real world through empirical means, he was an idealist believing that there are "ultimate" or abstract essences and what we perceive as being real are merely poor "copies" of these essences.
It may be true that Plato was against empirical inquiry, but it doesn't actually follow from his idealism.
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Old 21st May 2018, 08:34 AM   #242
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Originally Posted by JoeMorgue View Post
"Okay but what if everything is an illusion and nothing we can ever know matters" doesn't strike me as interesting.

The obsession so many people have to reducing all intellectual discourse into nothing but a "who can make up the most nonsense" shared creative writing exercise will never cease to baffle me.

I think it would be interesting (i.e. the highlighted bit), providing people could give some genuinely credible reason for thinking that all we observe might be just an illusion. But I never see anyone offering a convincing reason for why we should take such suggestions seriously.

Apart from which - it really does not take much thought, eduction or intelligence for anyone to dream up countless questions like that ... they might just as easily ask "what if QM is all wrong?", or "what if God really does exist?", or "what if all that exists is one "Brain in a Vat"?" ... etc.

... if they think they have good reason to doubt QM or to doubt "reality", then they ought to submit a paper to Phys. Rev. with at least some proper calculations/maths to show why scientists (or anyone else) ought to spend their research time taking such suggestions seriously.
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Old 21st May 2018, 10:26 AM   #243
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Nah, if you go by strictly the part you highlighted, it's CAN'T be anything else than a brain-fart. It's the "and nothing we can ever know matters" that is the brain-fart, no matter how one might support the first part. Because illusion or not, there are still parts of it that work by very strict rules -- you know, PHYSICS -- and knowing those rules still matters A LOT.

Whether it's phrased as the Evil Demon of Descartes or as a Matrix simulation or whatever, that demon is very OCD about simulating everything down to quark and gluon level. But you don't even have to go that far down. Even just the refraction laws mean you can make glasses, which is one hell of an advantage over not knowing how to do that, and being blind as a bat in your old age like apparently God or the Matrix or the Evil Demon wanted you to be. Even just knowing chemistry means we can cure diseases that would have killed most of us in ages when we didn't. Etc.

So basically whether it's an Evil Demon or God or Matrix or whatever kind of illusion, knowing stuff still does matter. And anyone thinking it's a free pass for anti-intellectualism and believing any random nonsense instead, is still a dumbass.

Mind you, I still call it interesting, but as I was saying, in a Three Stooges kinda way.
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Old 21st May 2018, 12:58 PM   #244
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Originally Posted by IanS View Post
I think it would be interesting (i.e. the highlighted bit), providing people could give some genuinely credible reason for thinking that all we observe might be just an illusion. But I never see anyone offering a convincing reason for why we should take such suggestions seriously.

Apart from which - it really does not take much thought, eduction or intelligence for anyone to dream up countless questions like that ... they might just as easily ask "what if QM is all wrong?", or "what if God really does exist?", or "what if all that exists is one "Brain in a Vat"?" ... etc.

... if they think they have good reason to doubt QM or to doubt "reality", then they ought to submit a paper to Phys. Rev. with at least some proper calculations/maths to show why scientists (or anyone else) ought to spend their research time taking such suggestions seriously.
I'm not aware of anyone here suggesting that perception of the world, or the world itself is an illusion (I certainly am not). In fact, the notion of the world as illusion is more in line with Materialism - which states that there is this intermediary step, a calculation (brain as computer) that occurs, and then there's this magical self that somehow senses the calculations. Most branches of Idealism have experience, and the world as more intimate and less of an illusion.
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Old 21st May 2018, 01:49 PM   #245
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
In fact, the notion of the world as illusion is more in line with Materialism
No. It doesn't.
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Old 21st May 2018, 01:51 PM   #246
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Well, there is the logical problem of dealing with the fact that knowledge is model and representation, such that it comes already packaged for consumption in many ways. Regardless of the fact that what is referred to as reality is mind-dependent, models work, and some better than others. While not suggesting convergence with mind-independent substance by progresses made in modeling (actually, such is impossible), the model of human cognition describes sensory inputs from the exterior, allowing for one to take, at minimum, an instrumentalist stance.

tl;dr: What's "there" is "there," but it isn't one-to-one with what you think. Explains one basis for changing and evolving perspective.

ETA: On dualism: bollocks.
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Old 21st May 2018, 02:02 PM   #247
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Originally Posted by Nonpareil View Post
No. It doesn't.
Why not? The world we can know is a calculation, and it's a calculation biased towards successful reproduction / survival, and not biased towards 'truth'.
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Old 21st May 2018, 02:21 PM   #248
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
Why not?
Because materialism does not propose that reality is an illusion. Attempting to equivocate between "reality has to be perceived" and "reality is an illusion" is fallacious and constitutes a strawman of the materialist position.

Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
The world we can know is a calculation, and it's a calculation biased towards successful reproduction / survival, and not biased towards 'truth'.
And none of this makes materialism "more in line" with reality as illusion than idealism.
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Old 21st May 2018, 02:21 PM   #249
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People do get that "I can contrive an excuse for something after the fact" isn't evidence or a solid logical argument, right?
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Old 21st May 2018, 02:25 PM   #250
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Originally Posted by Nonpareil View Post
Because materialism does not propose that reality is an illusion. Attempting to equivocate between "reality has to be perceived" and "reality is an illusion" is fallacious and constitutes a strawman of the materialist position.



And none of this makes materialism "more in line" with reality as illusion than idealism.
That's exactly what illusion means - it means increased susceptability to being in error or being false
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Old 21st May 2018, 02:37 PM   #251
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
That's exactly what illusion means - it means increased susceptability to being in error or being false
How do you know that the idea that reality is an illusion isn't an illusion?

It's illusions all the way down!
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Old 21st May 2018, 02:38 PM   #252
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
That's exactly what illusion means - it means increased susceptability to being in error or being false
Which is not what I said.

Read before responding.
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Old 21st May 2018, 02:46 PM   #253
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Originally Posted by Nonpareil View Post
Which is not what I said.

Read before responding.
you never did say what the word illusion means (to you) - if different than how I'm using the word
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Old 21st May 2018, 02:48 PM   #254
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
you never did say what the word illusion means (to you) - if different than how I'm using the word
You seem to be borderline incapable of following the conversation currently happening. What part of "materialism does not imply that reality is an illusion" escapes you?
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Old 21st May 2018, 02:51 PM   #255
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Originally Posted by JoeMorgue View Post
People do get that "I can contrive an excuse for something after the fact" isn't evidence or a solid logical argument, right?
and you understand that throwing random words together, or claiming that anyone who disagrees with you is talking about 'magic', isn't evidence or a solid logical argument, right?
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Old 21st May 2018, 02:53 PM   #256
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Originally Posted by Nonpareil View Post
You seem to be borderline incapable of following the conversation currently happening. What part of "materialism does not imply that reality is an illusion" escapes you?
I am questioning your claim "materialism does not imply that reality is an illusion" - you can not simply make a claim and it automatically stands.
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Old 21st May 2018, 02:58 PM   #257
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
I am questioning your claim "materialism does not imply that reality is an illusion" - you can not simply make a claim and it automatically stands.
This is not a claim. It is a statement of fact.

Materialism is the position that an external reality exists. That is all. That is its definition. Illusions do not enter the equation at any point.

If you wish to argue that materialism implies that reality is an illusion, the onus is on you to justify it.

You have yet to do so.
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Old 21st May 2018, 05:45 PM   #258
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
That's exactly what illusion means - it means increased susceptability to being in error or being false
Uh, no. Just no. Redefining words arbitrarily does not a valid argument make.

Plus, you may want to check out such elementary logic concepts as the difference between implication and equivalence. Namely the elementary fact that X => Y cannot be flipped on its head to Y => X.

E.g., "if it's a bird, then it has wings" is NOT the same as "if it has wings, then it's a bird". Trivial example, bats or airplanes.

In your case, what COULD be reasonably assumed is "if it's an illusion, it has a greater susceptibility of being in error or false", but that is NOT the same as "if it has greater susceptibility of being in error or false, then it's an illusion." You can't make something an illusion just because you don't know much about it.

In fact, if you want to turn it around, the proper way to turn it is X => Y is equivalent to Y => X. So basically, "if it does NOT have a greater susceptibility of being in error or false, then it's not an illusion." And considering that actually we are increasingly accurate in knowing how reality works, yeah, that doesn't work in your favour.

Basically, sorry, when some of us said we'd like a good argument, we didn't mean argument from not knowing elementary logic
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Old 21st May 2018, 07:56 PM   #259
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Originally Posted by Nonpareil View Post
This is not a claim. It is a statement of fact.

Materialism is the position that an external reality exists. That is all. That is its definition. Illusions do not enter the equation at any point.

If you wish to argue that materialism implies that reality is an illusion, the onus is on you to justify it.

You have yet to do so.
Illusion is an error or mistake in perception, it is not a description of reality. Materialism predicts that errors and mistakes will be made, either mistakes in calculation or on bias (towards reproduction / survival) instead of correct perception.
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Old 21st May 2018, 10:11 PM   #260
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Originally Posted by surreptitious57 View Post
The role of philosophy is to ask questions rather than provide answers
Anyone expecting the latter is doing it wrong as that is not its function
Originally Posted by IanS View Post
If that's it's role, then it's not needed. Because all of us are perfectly capable of asking questions ourselves (without any academic philosophers telling us what we ought to ask or telling us what we ought to believe).

On top of which, science has discovered literally millions of questions (and millions of answers), which philosophers never even realised existed. Ie the philosophers where completely ignorant of almost all of those millions of things that science has since discovered and explained.
Philosophy is the analysis of problems that prevents us from having bad philosophies. Including the silly philosophical things that can said those that think to speak in the name of science when only do bad philosophy. Quite a common vice in this and other forums of philosophy amateurs who think that they can avoid philosophy just quoting Wikipedia.
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Old 21st May 2018, 10:58 PM   #261
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Originally Posted by David Mo View Post
Philosophy is the analysis of problems that prevents us from having bad philosophies. Including the silly philosophical things that can said those that think to speak in the name of science when only do bad philosophy. Quite a common vice in this and other forums of philosophy amateurs who think that they can avoid philosophy just quoting Wikipedia.
Worldviews are, in and of themselves, philosophy, framing the world from the get-go. There is no escaping philosophy, just ways of ignoring it and botching the job, usually leaving a meandering trail of naive realism going eventually in circles, or a beeline to a Rule Book one can bow to and cede irksome intellectual due diligence to fantasy.

tl;dr: If the obvious were as it seems, and final answers readily available, there would be little to disagree about. Not, of course, the case.
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Old 21st May 2018, 11:29 PM   #262
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
That's only half the problem. Materialism not only can't explain consciousness, all the attempts to explain consciousness fall prey to reducto absurdums, like conscious collections of toilets, and the "real" possibility that we're all being simulated by a person moving rocks around on an endless plain.

If materialism entails those possibilities are taken to be considered "live" possibilities (things that can actually happen), then the theory itself is absurd. I take it you don't think there's a chance in hell your conscious existence if a result of a person moving rocks around? That's absurd right? I can show you the chain of logic that commits materialists to asserting just that possibility. And we used to have materialists here who defended "rock-consciousness" vociferously. It was an interesting time in the forum's history.
Yes, yes, more complaining and strawmen... But I notice that you didn't answer my question.

What superior explanation does materialism have for a seemingly real and consistent world? It's all bits of mind doing mind stuff isn't any different from 'it's all buts of stuff'.
You're not offering an explanation, you're just handwaving.
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Old 22nd May 2018, 12:03 AM   #263
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
I'm not aware of anyone here suggesting that perception of the world, or the world itself is an illusion (I certainly am not). In fact, the notion of the world as illusion is more in line with Materialism - which states that there is this intermediary step, a calculation (brain as computer) that occurs, and then there's this magical self that somehow senses the calculations. Most branches of Idealism have experience, and the world as more intimate and less of an illusion.

No. You have already said here that nobody can reach out and actually touch anything, because you claimed it was only something "experienced in your mind", and you repeated that saying that someones example of a running horse was wrong because according to you there is no actual "running" occurring, and again you claimed that the run only happens in your mind.

You have said exactly the same things countless times in numerous other threads, and each time it has been pointed out to you why your statements are wrong. So now the only possible conclusion is that you are making those statements deliberately (and it is you who must take full responsibility for repeatedly doing that).

And, "No!", science and scientists never claim anything that you just described as "a magical self" ... that's only something that philosophy proponents on the internet are fond of doing/saying.
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Old 22nd May 2018, 12:21 AM   #264
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
Illusion is an error or mistake in perception, it is not a description of reality. Materialism predicts that errors and mistakes will be made, either mistakes in calculation or on bias (towards reproduction / survival) instead of correct perception.
Even skipping past the attempt to tailor your own definitions, the important part remains: that has nothing to do with materialism. The point of materialism is that the persistent external reality is there, regardless of your perception or limitations thereof.

In fact, regardless of if you even exist to perceive it. Our galaxy formed before there was any living organism to perceive it at all, for example, but it formed anyway.

Essentially the picture of a rose is not the same thing as the rose. Materialism is concerned with the rose, not with how distorted you may or may not draw it.

Plus, by now we have better means of studying reality than your limited senses. E.g., what they recently did at CERN (you know, the one that had nutters going "OMG, they're making a black hole") was just measured by matter interacting with other matter. Humans' limited senses had nothing to do with it. It was just the external material world interacting with itself. You know, speaking of materialism.

Any personal illusions that may exist, are entirely spurious to the whole thing.

Back to the rose example, it's like saying, "but someone may have drawn a distorted image of it!" Well, so what? How is that even relevant to the existence of the rose?
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Old 22nd May 2018, 12:32 AM   #265
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
I'm not aware of anyone here suggesting that perception of the world, or the world itself is an illusion (I certainly am not). In fact, the notion of the world as illusion is more in line with Materialism - which states that there is this intermediary step, a calculation (brain as computer) that occurs, and then there's this magical self that somehow senses the calculations. Most branches of Idealism have experience, and the world as more intimate and less of an illusion.
But back to what seems to be the root of your confusion: you seem to sneak in the premise that the world IS what you perceive. As in, outright self-identity, not even equivalence, if you want to actually make it work that "the world IS an illusion." Which is not what materialism says.

Again, the picture of a rose is not the same thing as the rose. I can apply countless calculations and filters to the image. In fact, I can go beyond what the brain does, and run it through Gimp or Photoshop first. I can quite trivially make the petals green and the leaves purple. I can give it wings. Hell, I can give it a swirl. And then come the processing done in the eyes (because the retina already does some) and the brain. But that does not affect the actual rose.

Your PERCEPTION of it may be wrong, sure. Hell, you could be tripping balls on LSD and have a REALLY wrong perception. You could be paranoid schizophrenic and add your own bits to the picture. Etc. But that's about your perceptions and internal model of the world, not about the world itself. The rose is still a rose even if a guy on LSD sees it as a mighty dragon.

Materialism is precisely the idea that the actual rose that I photographed in the first place, is still there, regardless of how or if you see it.

Or to put it less flatteringly, materialism just says: get over yourself, you're not that important. What experiences you have, or how intimate you get with the world, don't actually change what the world is.

So, anyway, basically all you're arguing is basically that, yeah, but illusions could exist TOO. Sure, but... SO WHAT? That's so irrelevant as to be pretty much a textbook case of a Chewbacca defence.
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Old 22nd May 2018, 12:49 AM   #266
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
Illusion is an error or mistake in perception, it is not a description of reality. Materialism predicts that errors and mistakes will be made, either mistakes in calculation or on bias (towards reproduction / survival) instead of correct perception.

If you are making any sensible statements at all in this discussion (and you may not be doing that; you may just be so consumed by your own belief in some sort of philosophy that you are incapable of understanding what science says about the world around us), then what you might say is that whilst scientists do think that what we experience as the world around us, is indeed "real", and almost entirely as we perceive it, nevertheless there are of course limits to how precisely our sensory system can detect certain things …

… for example; human eyesight, or eyesight in other animals, does not provide absolutely 100% accurate colour representation of every object that any of us can ever see. It's perfectly possible to perceive false or different colours or different shades of particular colours. But that is not an illusion of the object itself not existing ... in fact it's not right to even call it an "illusion" at all ... all that is, is a limit to the colour accuracy of precise detection by the human eye and of course more likely a greater degree of inaccuracy or incapacity in the eyesight of many other animals.

But you will not find any sane scientists who think, or claim, that when we see a bird (for example) it is anything other than a small feathered flying animal with a beak etc., or that a mountain is a large upright rocky formation, or that the ocean is a large deep expanse of water containing fish that swim around etc. None of that is an "illusion".

Also, the idea of talking about “materialism” is not something scientists ever talk about. That seems to be just some garbage nonsense term from philosophy.

However, if you think it's perfectly possible that the world around us is just an illusion, such that the objects and events have no actual existence, then you have zero credibility in that belief/claim unless and until you produce a properly credible explanation of how and why none of that actually exists … so what is that explanation of how the observed world may not actually exist? ... and why have no scientists ever published any genuine research papers explaining how the world does not really exist?
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Old 22nd May 2018, 01:07 AM   #267
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I would add/stress though that in the meantime those sensory limitations aren't even relevant any more.

Idealism as a way to explain the world had a point a few hundred years back, when our limited senses WERE the only way we knew that the world was there. So basically Plato kinda was onto something about us perceiving imperfect copies of something that is more than that.

But, as I was saying, in the meantime we are increasingly using just matter interacting with other matter to study the world, and our senses play exactly zero part in that. E.g., when we look at some insect cells under an electron microscope, or when we do a CT scan, or when we look at a pulsar via a radio-telescope, etc, the data is collected and pre-processed without any human senses being involved. If everyone at a radio-telescope takes a vacation and isn't even there at all for a week, or if you spike their water cooler with LSD so their own perception is WAAAY off, the machine can still collect the same data anyway.

Basically way back when, it made sense to wonder how accurate our perception of the world is. Now we actually know the exact answer to that.
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Old 22nd May 2018, 02:19 AM   #268
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It's so weird to hear someone who claims that reality is perception/mind/experience based use words like 'survival', 'reproduction', 'skull', and 'kitten'.

If everything is just a big ball of consciousness, these words are basically meaningless. But by using them, they basically admit that there are discrete units of stuff that mean specific things. And that all this stuff isn't as fluid as a solipsist's fever dream.

Basically, that there is something 'real' that is not dependent on our first person perception.

Yet they still want to argue that a materialist description is fundamentally incorrect, because 'you can't perceive something outside your perception, dude' and 'consciousness is like, really special, man'.
It's all special pleading.

And it introduces far more problems than it solves.
Sure, we don't understand consciousness completely, but saying 'therefore I'm going to replace everything with a system that can't explain or predict anything at all' is stupid and dishonest.
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Old 22nd May 2018, 02:30 AM   #269
David Mo
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Originally Posted by Hlafordlaes View Post
Worldviews are, in and of themselves, philosophy, framing the world from the get-go. There is no escaping philosophy, just ways of ignoring it and botching the job, usually leaving a meandering trail of naive realism going eventually in circles, or a beeline to a Rule Book one can bow to and cede irksome intellectual due diligence to fantasy.

tl;dr: If the obvious were as it seems, and final answers readily available, there would be little to disagree about. Not, of course, the case.
Very good comment!
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Old 22nd May 2018, 03:57 AM   #270
HansMustermann
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Originally Posted by Hlafordlaes View Post
tl;dr: If the obvious were as it seems, and final answers readily available, there would be little to disagree about. Not, of course, the case.
Maybe, maybe not. That's ultimately a case of the ever-popular Argumentum Ad Populum: if enough people believe X, then X. Here it's just X="there's anything to argue about."

You may have a point otherwise, mind you, but appealing to the fact that some people still find there's something to argue about is not a valid inference. Frankly, enough people found (and some still find) something to debate about Obama's birth certificate, 9/11 being a controlled demolition, chemtrails, vaccines causing autism, etc, etc. Enough find it worth a debate whether homeopathy works, or crystal chi pendants, or telepathy, or dowsing, or ouija boards. Enough find it worth debating that there's a medical conspiracy to NOT cure diseases, and hide some miracle drug that cures everything from resistant bacteria to AIDS to cancer to type I diabetes, so the big pharma could sell you insulin/chemotherapy/whatever for ever. Etc.

Hell, there are still people who think it's worth arguing that the Earth is flat.

You'll notice that there ARE slam-dunk arguments against all of those , but people can still argue something stupid anyway.

In fact, according to a recent study, you can make a certain kind of people believe ANY woowoo or conspiracy theory, even one you just made up on the spot, by telling them something like "it's widely disbelieved, but..." They're not actually interested in the evidence, or the merits of arguing that, they just want to feel more enlightened than the rest of the sheeple.

tl;dr: enough people believing something means exactly nothing.

And frankly that goes for the domain of philosophy too. While I like philosophy as a domain, it's kinda like liking a nude beach: you very soon become acutely aware that there's no quality control. For every Descartes or Hume or Russell, there are a hundred whose deepest thought is that their last fart must have legs, 'cause it went all the way to the next room. Just because they find something to debate based on their own ignorance, doesn't automatically make it a valid point.
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Old 22nd May 2018, 04:47 AM   #271
Hlafordlaes
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Originally Posted by HansMustermann View Post
Maybe, maybe not. That's ultimately a case of the ever-popular Argumentum Ad Populum: if enough people believe X, then X. Here it's just X="there's anything to argue about."
The point I was making was that if common sense and naive realism had any basis, it'd be a lot easier to agree to what would be abundant foregone conclusions. Certainly do not wish to suggest that bulk numbers make for good reasoning; see Ancient Alien episodes on YouTube and weep.

[Aside: Having said that, also true that the main check on good reasoning is, in fact, getting more people to agree. Contradictory, imperfect, maddening, but it's all we got (peer review is just that in science). Note that a statement can be correct (best fit to data) when some lone person first formulates it, but to be incorporated into the body of science, it takes others to agree.]
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Old 22nd May 2018, 04:53 AM   #272
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Originally Posted by Hlafordlaes View Post

tl;dr: If the obvious were as it seems, and final answers readily available, there would be little to disagree about. Not, of course, the case.

Well science does not of course merely confirm "the obvious", does it!? No, it most certainly does not. On the contrary almost everything discovered and explained by science, is very (VERY) far from obvious (and certainly not remotely "obvious" to non-scientists, inc. philosophers and theists).

So it's certainly not the case that materialism science just confirms "the obvious" as if to say that science never discovers that things are actually very (VERY) different from what any non-scientists (such as philosophers and theists) would have assumed all those things to be ... IOW - it's not as if scientists needed philosophers to tell them that the world around us may not be quite so simple/obvious as it seems to any of us at first glance ...

... and it is science (not philosophy, or theism) that has explained to us so clearly why the world around us is often not so obvious as to be the way we might imagine or perceive it to be at first sight (in fact, not even anything remotely like anyone previously imagined from philosophy or theism ... what science has shown us is that things are often very different indeed, unimaginably different, from what any philosophers or theists ever believed).
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Old 22nd May 2018, 05:04 AM   #273
HansMustermann
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Originally Posted by Hlafordlaes View Post
The point I was making was that if common sense and naive realism had any basis, it'd be a lot easier to agree to what would be abundant foregone conclusions. Certainly do not wish to suggest that bulk numbers make for good reasoning; see Ancient Alien episodes on YouTube and weep.

[Aside: Having said that, also true that the main check on good reasoning is, in fact, getting more people to agree. Contradictory, imperfect, maddening, but it's all we got (peer review is just that in science). Note that a statement can be correct (best fit to data) when some lone person first formulates it, but to be incorporated into the body of science, it takes others to agree.]
The difference is that it's not actually how science works. There are a bunch of impersonal criteria for checking your hypothesis against reality, and those people are there only to try to disprove your theory by those criteria and hopefully fail. Any other agreement or disagreement is irrelevant.

E.g., probably even most physicists would agree that QM is the most ludicrious thing that ever came down the pike. And they'd love nothing more than to be able to disprove it. (If nothing else, because that would be a Nobel prize right there. Not to mention a whole new chapter in our understanding of the universe.) But in the meantime it checks perfectly against reality in every single way we could possibly check, so that settles it.

Meanwhile other stuff like the multiple universe interpretation has a LOT of physicists agreeing that it makes sense, but as long as there is no way to check it against reality, it remains just an interesting hypothesis.

Basically, no, science is NOT a matter of convincing the old gang that you can talk convincingly out the ass. It's the criteria for checking it against reality that matter.

That checking against reality is the QA on the nudist beach, so to speak. And is something that most schools of philosophy don't really have. (Well, some, like epistemology have an easier time checking against reality, but not all.) So, yeah, everyone is free to disagree for whatever reasons, including in some cases not knowing WTH they're talking about.

Edit: plus, frankly, even Logic evolved precisely to find a more objective reason for agreeing or disagreeing with an argument, than how many people it sounds convincing to. It in fact rose precisely AGAING sophistry, which was the art of making persuasive (if not necessarily sound) speeches to convince the audience. So, yeah, convincing many people stopped being a valid argument for something about 2500 years ago. You know, around the time of this guy Socrates.
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Old 22nd May 2018, 05:23 AM   #274
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Originally Posted by HansMustermann View Post
The difference is that it's not actually how science works. There are a bunch of impersonal criteria for checking your hypothesis against reality, and those people are there only to try to disprove your theory by those criteria and hopefully fail. Any other agreement or disagreement is irrelevant.

E.g., probably even most physicists would agree that QM is the most ludicrious thing that ever came down the pike. And they'd love nothing more than to be able to disprove it. (If nothing else, because that would be a Nobel prize right there. Not to mention a whole new chapter in our understanding of the universe.) But in the meantime it checks perfectly against reality in every single way we could possibly check, so that settles it.

Meanwhile other stuff like the multiple universe interpretation has a LOT of physicists agreeing that it makes sense, but as long as there is no way to check it against reality, it remains just an interesting hypothesis.

Basically, no, science is NOT a matter of convincing the old gang that you can talk convincingly out the ass. It's the criteria for checking it against reality that matter.

That checking against reality is the QA on the nudist beach, so to speak. And is something that most schools of philosophy don't really have. (Well, some, like epistemology have an easier time checking against reality, but not all.) So, yeah, everyone is free to disagree for whatever reasons, including in some cases not knowing WTH they're talking about.

Edit: plus, frankly, even Logic evolved precisely to find a more objective reason for agreeing or disagreeing with an argument, than how many people it sounds convincing to. It in fact rose precisely AGAING sophistry, which was the art of making persuasive (if not necessarily sound) speeches to convince the audience. So, yeah, convincing many people stopped being a valid argument for something about 2500 years ago. You know, around the time of this guy Socrates.
Missed the second chance to grasp any easy point. Not much I can do for you if you feel science has access to independent confirmation in TruReality; dealing with that thorny issue is one good reason to do philosophy.
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Old 22nd May 2018, 05:27 AM   #275
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Originally Posted by IanS View Post
Well science does not of course merely confirm "the obvious", does it!? No, it most certainly does not. On the contrary almost everything discovered and explained by science, is very (VERY) far from obvious (and certainly not remotely "obvious" to non-scientists, inc. philosophers and theists).

So it's certainly not the case that materialism science just confirms "the obvious" as if to say that science never discovers that things are actually very (VERY) different from what any non-scientists (such as philosophers and theists) would have assumed all those things to be ... IOW - it's not as if scientists needed philosophers to tell them that the world around us may not be quite so simple/obvious as it seems to any of us at first glance ...

... and it is science (not philosophy, or theism) that has explained to us so clearly why the world around us is often not so obvious as to be the way we might imagine or perceive it to be at first sight (in fact, not even anything remotely like anyone previously imagined from philosophy or theism ... what science has shown us is that things are often very different indeed, unimaginably different, from what any philosophers or theists ever believed).
Please refer to post #246, preamble and context for the post you are quoting. Not questioning science, rather, naive realism (even if I drive my car like a naive realist).
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Old 22nd May 2018, 06:11 AM   #276
HansMustermann
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Originally Posted by Hlafordlaes View Post
Missed the second chance to grasp any easy point. Not much I can do for you if you feel science has access to independent confirmation in TruReality; dealing with that thorny issue is one good reason to do philosophy.
Actually, there is a very good thing you can do: present a logically sound case for whatever alternative you favour. Because that's the other easy point a lot of people seem to miss: logic is rather impersonal and independent of my feelings or beliefs.

And I'm rather easy going there too. I'm not just asking for binary logic. I'm perfectly fine with probabilistic reasoning as well. You give me some P>0.5 and disproving the null hypothesis for your alternative, and I'll be the first to convert. And to certain reasonable extents I will gladly accept informal logic shortcuts as well.

Not that it matters what I accept. If you can make a sound case for idealism or whatever alternative there, then you are objectively right, and it doesn't even matter whether I believe it or not.

But just that some people still insist on debating something, that just happens to be not a valid argument, let alone sound.

Consider this: probably a LOT more people think that the score isn't settled yet on Feng Shui or Acupuncture, than ever heard of Descartes' Evil Demon or Plato's Cave. Hell, probably more people have a DIPLOMA in Homeopathy or Acupuncture, than people who have a major in philosophy. So if number of people, or even number of experts, who think there's still something to debate actually meant anything, you'd HAVE to concede that Feng Shui, Acupuncture or Homeopathy also are very valid fields.
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Old 22nd May 2018, 06:38 AM   #277
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Originally Posted by Hlafordlaes View Post
Please refer to post #246, preamble and context for the post you are quoting. Not questioning science, rather, naive realism (even if I drive my car like a naive realist).
What's the difference between "as a naive realist" and "like a naive realist"?
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Old 22nd May 2018, 06:41 AM   #278
calebprime
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Err...none?

Please explain?
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Old 22nd May 2018, 08:04 AM   #279
surreptitious57
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Originally Posted by Ian

As for saying science is a branch of philosophy – that sounds like philosophers trying to take credit for the success of science. And it is really
not true. When modern science began - around 1600 with people like Galileo there were only two types of academic thinkers - senior theists
and people who called themselves philosophers … often they were the same individuals i.e. the philosophers were often also deeply religious
( though to be fair almost everyone was deeply religious at that time )

Before the twentieth century scientists were known as natural philosophers and science was known as methodological naturalism. So scientists were philosophers using empirical observation [ the scientific method ] to understand the natural world. And that is why science is a branch of philosophy
even if nowadays they are treated as entirely separate disciplines. There were still philosophers like Kant and Spinoza and Descartes who used logic
rather than empiricism but those who we now regard as scientists like Galileo and Newton and Darwin were also known as philosophers in their time
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Old 22nd May 2018, 08:27 AM   #280
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I can't help but think that any philosophy that calls realism naive is tipping it's hand as to it's true purpose.
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