The Moon is approximately 4.5 billion years old.
Homosapian is approximately 100,000 years old.
How is the age of the Moon “intersubjective”?
This is literally gibberish.
And now you’re just refusing to address my point. I didn’t ask you how it is people understand that snowballs with rocks are dangerous. That is, once again, you swapping out a perfectly ordinary question about reality and replacing it with a statement of human attitude.
The issue is, how can you be hit from behind by a snowball that you didn’t know was there, from a thrower that you didn’t know was there, and be wet prior to discovering the source, if the snowball is intersubjective- you know, occuring between the minds of the thrower and the target. How can there can be a rock in the snowball that bruises the target when neither the thrower nor the target are aware of the rock until after the bruise- or perhaps not even then?
The problem is that you don’t have any straightforward way to speak about the point you’re trying to make without revealing that you can’t support it, I fear.
Which would not mean reality is intersubjective. Not being able to prove the reality of YOUR OWN sense experiences means not being able to prove they relate meaningfully to anybody else’s, or indeed that there is anybody else for them to relate to. I.E, it’s an argument towards solipsism, not intersubjectivity.
In order for intersubjectivity to even be coherent at all, it is you who who needs to prove that people other than yourself are real in themselves. It takes two to ‘inter’ after all. Any argument you want to make against an apple not really being there, I can make against other people not being there.
The good doctor, if indeed he said that, should stick to neuroscience and not get into philosophy, because he's made a rather basic error, it seems. He thinks we are all hallucinating all the time, and yet stands firm in his belief that there is something like DNA, and something like other people we share it with. Nah.
It is only gibberish from your ignorant, narrow and shallow perspective. Monkeys may not have intersubjective consensus on a highly intellectual level and sophisticated language like humans, but they do have basic intersubjectivity because they share the same DNA. There are a lot of research done on this.
Note I used the monkey [note primates] example and if you understood that this point will make sense.
Note I posted an OP on schizotypalism and religion which is one of the basic of this point.
youtube.com/watch?v=4WwAQqWUkpI
This is aligned with the point raised by Dr. Ramachandran.
Not sure of your point.
What I am saying is the philosophical realist cannot prove mind-independence, thus the viable explanation is ‘intersubjectivity’ as discussed.
This is why you are off.
There is no thing-in-themselves including no “I-in-itself” which is the “I AM” of Descartes.
According to Hume the ‘self’ [the subject] is merely a bundle of perceptions.
From Kant the self is more than that, i.e. it comprised more complex a priori variable, but there is no “I-in-itself” i.e. the “I AM”. In Kant case, what is real and verifiable is the “I” that thinks and there is no “I” that is “AM.” The argument is complex so I won’t go into the details.
So what we have here is the ‘inter’ of two “I-think.”
As you can see, physical reality is intersubjective and fuzzy. The subject itself is also fuzzy. What we have as reality is something like jazz [iterative intersubjectivity], i.e. spontaneous emergent.
Dr. Ramachandran’s subject is cognitive neuroscience not purely philosophy.
In the course of philosophy, I have borrowed his point which would have been based in depth analysis and knowledge. You will need to step into his arena and understand from the depth he is speaking from before criticizing him.
Note: when presenting my points I do not simply pick them from the air nor they are from a spontaneous impulse. Personally, to maintain a reasonable degree of integrity and credibility I make sure I have done sufficient research to the best of my ability on the subject and the point I made.
Really? “That they their actualiation of snow and snowball” means something to people other than me, such that the part about monkey’s reading each other’s minds doesn’t sound like crazy ranting? Cause I’m pretty sure that’s gibberish.
If you can't prove mind-independence, then you can't prove the existence of people other than yourself for the exact same reason. If rocks might all be in your head, then so might your neighbor. This is direct from Kant, this is direct from Descartes: they make no special exception for other minds. Just as you can't prove mind-independance of a raindrop that seems to fall on your face, you can't prove mind-independence of a stranger who asks you for the time. No other people means no intersubjectivity. Your argument is self-refuting. Very straightforward.
I have this safe in my apartment and on one side of it there’s a great big stack of american money, like the fiat kind that everyone is so against. On the other side there’s a fairly large pile of gold coins, small bars, (like 1 oz each), and a huge pile of silver.
If I want to get anything for myself, or pay my rent, or satisfy any debt, the bills are useful. The gold and silver are not.
Fiat money is probably the last step before the step of no money: the machines pay instead of the moneyless humans who are more effectively controlled than ever before.
You are the one ranting gibberish from ignorance. Btw, I don’t simply spout on impulse like you do, rather what I post is based on at least some research I have read. Note
Note Kant explained and justified the existence of other minds and the external world within his Refutation of Idealism and yet justify intersubjectivity via his basic Copernican Revolution.
What you do not understand is perspectives. You have perspective blindness and a biasness for concreteness [a degree of schizotypalism].
A diamond is one of the hardest element in one perspective but soft in another. Same for water.
In another perspective, that same diamond is merely a cluster of atoms, electrons and protons in almost empty space, wave or particle, and in another perspective it is ‘nothing.’
Kant’s Copernican Revolution places the the self at the center of knowledge, as in singular, as in not intersubjective. That doesn’t save your argument.
Name dropping and you accusing me of mental conditions doesn’t interest me. Arguments interest me. If mind-independence can’t be established, then that applies to other minds just as much as it does other matter- if not, show me why. If you can’t establish that other minds exist apart from your own, you can’t have intersubjectivity. Your position is self refuting.
You seem to blind to the other part i.e.
“Note Kant explained and justified the existence of other minds and the external world within his Refutation of Idealism …”
The copernican revolution establishes the self as the center of knowledge. It’s an explicit denial of intersubjectivity. It makes intersubjectivity impossible.
Kant’s refutation of Idealism means to established a mind-independant reality, which undermines everything you’ve said. Can realists like Kant establish a mind-independant reality, or can’t they?
You’re the one who wanted to argue so hard that mind-independant reality couldn’t be established. Given that, your argument is self-refuting. You can’t just invoke the name of Kant like a magic spell and make my argument go away.
Again: If you believe mind-independance can’t be established, there goes your evidence for the existence of other minds. No other minds, no intersubjectivity. Self-defeating argument.
Your way out is to explain to me how you can deny that snowballs and such are mind-indepedent while at the same time making a case for the reality of other minds. Kant simply did not do this for you.
Yes, you are blind to see the two perspectives together within the following statement,
Prismatic: Note Kant explained and justified the existence of other minds and the external world within his Refutation of Idealism and yet justify intersubjectivity via his basic Copernican Revolution.
There are two critical elements here;
- Kant basic Copernican Revolution that reality is conditioned upon the human conditions
- Refutation of Idealism - recognition of external world and other minds
1 and 2 are not contradictory, rather 2 is a subset of 1.
Note Kant explained in great detail his refutation of idealism, thus one need to be familiar with the very complex and subtle arguments.
Note my consistence point;
Objectively is ULTIMATELY instersubjectivity, meaning in this case, the objective of an independent world is ultimately rested upon the intersubjectivity from 1.
Subjects recognize they are independent of each other but yet understand the minds of others and that they have the same basic mind explicitly and instinctively.
You are spouting gibberish because you do not understand Kant’s philosophy but want to post as if you are a Kant expert [I am not, but merely very familiar with his work].
Considering I make the fourth person to come to this thread to try to explain to you that you aren’t grasping some basic ideas of what objectivity is, maybe you should be slower to attrbute blindness to others.
No it isn’t. Kant’s point there is that knowledge of the world is dependant on the constitution of the mind It is about how we know things, not what things are. You have consistently ignored this distinction in your replies to everybody in this thread. In other words, I find myself pointing out the same misunderstanding that Only Humean pointed out on page one, and I and James on point two.
kantphilosophy.wordpress.com/so … ng-nature/
You just aren’t getting the difference between metaphysics and epistemology. Oh well!
Numbers alone don’t justify the truth.
Well Kant argued Metaphysics is an impossibility, so your last point is baseless until you can proof the existence of an absolute ontological substance.
The link you provided justify my argument and not yours.
Make measurements? Of what? Each other’s opinions? Their own opinions? The habits and customs of their society?
This is completely irrelevant. If I say it’s 100 miles from NYC to Philadelphia, that’s correct as long as it’s 100 miles from some point in NYC to some point in Philadelphia. And correct enough if I’m within 10 miles or so for the centres, for most purposes. Sub-quark accuracy at all times is not a condition of factuality.
Since it seems most people in the thread disagree with you, can we intersubjectively conclude that you’re wrong?
Delving into monetary economics is maybe pointless (and, anyway, I would not be really capable of that) with respect to your claim, which seems to be ‘reality is intersubjective consensus’.
I guess consensus is necessarily inter-subjective, in the sense that one does not normally use the word unless one is referring to some opinion/belief/idea shared by a plurality. Yet maybe consensus is not the exact word you mean, because you lay its foundation in the human DNA.
Now that ‘reality’, whatever that is, has to have the quality of being intersubjective is somehow easily conceded. The questions becomes if, assuming that intersubjective means only ‘something shared by people’, that is all it takes for that something to become ‘real’.
If we consider consensus as a widespread opinion only, that may be very helpful, but it is not what makes something real. Actually consensus is not even what would define Lyon as the capital of France. In order to make Lyon the capital, the legislative bodies de la République would need not only to agree on that, but also to act. Although a general consensus may be a most sought and somehow necessary precondition, Paris would remain the capital as long as a certain number of laws (and possibly a change of the Constitution) are passed. And once the laws are there, then it’s no longer a matter of consensus - laws are binding regardless what one thinks of them, at least as long as the state has the legal monopoly of violence. (Powers and acts of a similar kind are also what is at the basis of the ‘objective trading’ of the US dollar, though money is a more complex matter).
So, leaving consensus aside, what remains is ‘intersubjectivity’ - and I guess that the OP can be rephrased as ‘reality is intersubjectivity and nothing else’. I guess that you have slowly drifted to to kantian stance, which is to say ‘what comes to my mind because of my DNA is real - I know nothing of the thing-in-itself’. If that is so, this amounts to swapping the word ‘objective’ with ‘intersubjective’. Regardless, what about what comes to your mind and it is not firmly rooted in the DNA? Is intersubjectivity possible at all then?
Let’s take General Relativity. Regardless how much perception is the fabric of a-priori structures or not, I guess that GR cannot be said to depend on human DNA. GR, or many of its tenets, can be qualified as intersubjective? What makes this theory something like ‘knowledge of the real’?
It can’t be said that the theory relies on discovery or experience, e.g. it redefines gravity, but not on the basis of a changed perception of gravity. Surely it is not intersubjective because it’s popular (in fact not many can master it), nor because people agree with it (in fact not many would understand what they would be agreeing with). Its ‘intersubjectivity’ lies in the fact that it presents a character of necessity, it appears inescapable, alternative theories prove wrong or are incapable to yield the same predictions. It is by this necessity that this theory is about ‘reality’ and it is intersubjective. But that used to be true also of Newton’s universal gravitation, before Einstein…
What does that mean, after all?
Well, in utmost honesty… I have only some ideas, I do not feel thoroughly sure about that.
Cutting some corners, it can be seen as a logical necessity - but only for a part of it. It’s not about the ‘facts’, it’s about the frame where ‘facts’ are placed (yet ‘facts’ have to be crafted carefully). My take is that one can predicate intersubjectivity of knowledge when it is possible to representi it through a logical relationship - possibly only one: (if(A) then (B)) iff (if not(B) then not(A)).
Note that I am not implying that logic is the form by which intersubjectivity emerges, instead this is ex-post work, this is ‘justification’ (borrowing from Kant). Also, the tautology above overshadows a semantic component that it is equally important: B needs to be a logical consequence of A, B may be true only when A is true. (Please note that it is well possible that A is a long chain of propositions joined by any kind of functor). That said, what I do imply is that one cannot have the absolute truth of a single generic A or B, one can have the truth (as long as it works…) of both of them - simul stabunt vel simul cadent.
So the question becomes how come would one know when A and B are true (or false)? This is when it gets really difficult… I refer to Henri Poincaré and K.R. Popper - those who are interested may turn to the Value of Science and to the Logic of Scientific Discovery. However, this is where experience may become necessary (experience is not necessarily required, as it would be pointless to refer to experience for a Geometry theorem). Yet experience alone is not sufficient, but at the same time experience has to allow to consider at least that B is true (or false), that it is more the case that B than the case that not(B) (or the other way round).
This is more easily said than done. Nevertheless, as Poincaré noted, rigour in mathematics in a virtuous circle with science, notably physics, managed to single out a very specific perpective (‘regional ontology’, if one likes that better) for looking at facts, so that ascertaining facts, viz. assigning a ‘true’ or ‘false’ value, becomes very possible. Clearly this applies to science only (while Poincaré speaks of moral truths equally ascertainable, but totally independent form Science’s). Popper (maybe) acknowledges that the approach is founded, but he presents a more open and articulated view (which I like better), so that the way to ascertain facts remains more mysterious (and ‘mysterious’ is a kind word allowing me to oversimplify).
Either way, what is intersubjective is what can be represented through that tautology: the truth of the antecedent depends on the consequent and yet the consequent owes its truth to the antecedent. Outside this conundrum, I guess it’s difficult to speak about intersubjectivity.
Well, I could do that, but it seems irrelevant considering;
Make measurement of ‘distance’ between two objects based on inter-subjectivity and implicit inter-subjective consensus.
Note, the standard ‘Foot’ and ‘Feet’ was based on the human foot and the standard was based on implicit consensus, i.e. inter-subjectivity. This is still used commonly in US and USA.
Meanwhile, the Europeans rely on the metric system and standards and this is based on consensus and intersubjectivity with reference to a standard distance,
There is no absolute independent measurement of distance (A) and there is no absolute distance as a referent (B).
What is objective distance is based on the convergence of A and B above based on intersubjective consensus (implicit and/or explicit), i.e. intersubjectivity.
It is completely relevant from the philosophical perspective to understand relative distance and the nearest one can get to the non-existent absolute distance.
When most people agree it is 100 miles from NYC to Philadelphia, there are two elements of intersubjectivity, i.e.
- Intersubjectivity and consensus of what is to be the official standard of the measurement, i.e. a standard ‘foot’, thence to ‘mile’
- Intersubjectivity and consensus on an approximation and acceptable variance.
In such a case, there is still objectivity which is ultimately based on intersubjectivity.
However in 2, there is a lower degree of ‘objectivity’ relative to higher precisions.
Such a lower objectivity is sufficient for many purposes for many people but its limitations will show when the context and perspective change.
Your present focus is on 2 above but you did not bring 1 into focus.
Objectivity [intersubjectivity] in 2 is context driven.
When we deal with nano-levels we may need nano-standards which again is based on intersubjective consensus amongst a group of nano-scientist within a recognized official ‘nano’ body.
Familiar with Copernicus and the majority who think the Sun move around the Earth?
Note this OP was raised in response to Phyllo’s tauntings based on his ignorance relation to the below;
viewtopic.php?p=2531024#p2531024
In application of the above continuum,
the knowledge of ‘it is 100 miles from NYC to Philadelphia’ is represented by the following;
3. Knowledge = 80-99.9% subjectivity : 50-75 % Objectivity
depending on how close is the estimate to the official recognized distance.
You can measure a length with a string or stick, without any units, without anyone around, without anyone agreeing with you. You can use that length to build things and compare sizes and fit.
That’s not just subjective … it’s an objective measurement of distance. :-"
An absolute ontological substance? You mean such as somebody’s mind other than your own? You know, that thing you need in order for intersubjectivity to be coherent? You don’t have an answer to this point.
I notice you’re still arguing with Only-Humean about words like ‘feet’ as if the intersubjectivity of language proves the intersubjectivity of what language represents. How is it that you still fail to grasp that a yard being 36 of something is intersubjective, and yet a yard being shorter than a meter is not? This is rather hopeless I fear.
You guess is right. This OP was raised in response to my following point in the other thread.
viewtopic.php?p=2531024#p2531024
The correlation between ‘objectivity’ and ‘inter-subjective’ is critical to counter the philosophical realist’s views which assert that reality is objective and is absolutely independent of human conditions, so we have;
- Objectivity - intersubjectivity - Kant’s Copernican Revolution versus
- Objectivity - absolutely mind independent of subjectivity
My main stance is 1 with limited use for 2.
If you reflect deeply (re Kant’s reflective judgment) one of the ultimate root of objectivity-intersubjectivity is the generic human DNA that compel necessity and enable universality.
The differentiation of the two senses of objectivity, i.e. intersubjectivity and absolutely mind-independent is necessary for the continual optimal well being of humanity.
Fundamentally type 2 objectivity is useful but it contribute to theism and other evils which will bring net-evil (oppose net-good) to the well-being humanity in the future.
Fundamentally type 1 objectivity-intersubjectivity will promote the building of TEAM-HUMAN thus global co-operation towards the optimal well being of humanity.
How and the details? that is quite a long story.