SV: [Fis] Realism

Do not forget the body's role of being both subject and object at the same
time as Merleau-Ponty pointed out. Here is one object for our perceptions we
know exist in the world. It is also hard to imagine that language can exist
without other embodied persons and further without it being about something
common to us all, such as a intersubjektive cultural life world. It is
further very difficult not to operate with some structure and dynamics in
this world that made language necessary (von Foerster). Not, that we know
what this world is, except that we are part of it and experience resistance
from it (Peirce: Secondness) now and then and then find us self in a
position of intellectual reflecting on it (Heidegger). Thus the
prerequisites for language are embodied conscious persons, with an inner
life and a partly free will, plus a cultural meaningful and a natural
surrounding.

Venlig hilsen / Best wishes
Søren Brier
 
Copenhagen Business School , Management, Politics and Philosophy,
Porcel�nshaven 18 A , DK-2000 Frederiksberg.
Office-phone +45 3815 2208 Cell 28494162
www.cbs.dk/staff/soeren_brier
Home page with full text documents http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
Ed. in Chief of Cybernetics & Human Knowing : home page:
http://www.imprint-academic.com/C&HK
 

-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es] P�
vegne af kj04@chello.at
Sendt: 3. juli 2006 09:27
Til: fis@listas.unizar.es
Emne: [Fis] Realism

Friends,

it is completely irrelevant whether there exists an "outside" or not. We
cannot decide this question, being inside our skulls, encapsulated.
What we can discuss, what kind of picture we make of this outside, the
properties of which we cannot really experience, being slaves of our sensory
organs and of our brains prestructured properties.
So far, we all are in agreement (within this FIS discussion, in literature,
among philosophers and among common-sense people).
Now comes the clever thought:
It is not relevant how the REALITY we believe to be, what we can look at is
our PICTURE OF the reality. And here one may conclude that a PICTURE of
reality is better suited to picture the unknown with if it allows for some
properties of the unknown to be pictured.
E.g.:
we see that Newton has PREDICTED places,
that the concept of inertia is basically a concept of PREDICTIONS,
that the layers of electron start off at 2i**2,
that genetic info transfer translates from a sequence to a commutative
assembly and back,
that genetic info transfer uses 3*4 vs. 64 logical units,
and so forth, each of these properties of the unknown needing a way (method)
to be PICTURED.

Whether the picture will in fact, indeed, really picture Nature or not we
cannot decide, because we do not know how Nature in fact, indeed, really is.
What we can say is that if we make the picture to be accomodating to the
idea of PREDICTIONS, we shall be able to explain more. Maybe this
explanation will be overturned later by an even better explanation, but
today we have to choose between explanational systems where:
heretofore was:
objects incorporate forces, forces emanate from objects,
is now:
no forces inhabit any dead objects, objects have no forces,
but their properties can be PREDICTED.

Heretofore was:
in a logical-mathematical picture, no contradictions and no inexactitudes
exist, the two sides of an "=" are really equal;
is now:
the two sides of an "=" are not quite equal, there is a slight, statistical
inequality (to the tune of about 10E-95%), in our counting system we pretend
an exactitude which we do not have. Our wishes have influenced our thinking.
We wish that we can define something that is apart to be in one piece. We
are too clever by half by DEFINING something instead of counting it.

Like dumb people who are too vain to recognise and admit their error many
steps back (examples from history, business, game theory, diplomacy,
psychology, etc. abound), the scientific community has also its own
"inertia" (its behaviour is predictably unchanging) by insisting that it has
been defined like this.

My proposal (not the first and not the last time) is that we start being
subjective and not pretend we have complete understanding of how we build
our picture of the world. Our wish to congratulate ourselves that we have
found a way to picture Nature consistently and easily understandably appears
to be more rewarding than our wish to build a more complicated picture. The
inner coherence is our own urge, not a property of Nature.

So, let me repeat:
by using a too much simplified measuring-counting system, we keep using the
ideas about Nature that have been evolved by the Babylonians, Egyptians,
Chinese, Greek and Arab, some 3-5 thousand years ago. They lived in an
experienced chaos and have built a measuring system with rigid rules, units,
results, grids.
We have much less anxiety about Nature, so we may allow a picture of Nature
which is more contradictory and complicated by its rules, units, results,
grids, buit thereby allows recognising Nature (or at leasrt our picture of
it) as consistent and whole.
If we introduce two kinds of measurements, one based on similarity, rigid
neighbourhoods and unique results to operations, the other based on
dissimilarity, varied neighbourhoods and most probable resulty, and use the
two systems in tandem, then we can make PREDICTIONS, and this is what we do
as we try to PREDICT Nature's next state, movement, behaviour.

We can do it, specifically in this chat room. There is sufficient
intelligence in this room. Let us hope there is alsso sufficient courage and
common sense, too.

All the best:
Karl

> Von: "Rafael Capurro" <capurro@hdm-stuttgart.de>
> Datum: 2006/07/01 Sa PM 10:06:22 CEST
> An: <fis@listas.unizar.es>, "John Collier" <collierj@ukzn.ac.za>
> Betreff: Re: [Fis] Realism
>
> Folks,
>
> very briefly to (hopefully) clarify: Heidegger remarked once that the
> "scandal of philosophy" (Kant) regarding our lacking of proofs for the
> existence of the "outside world" is in fact the scandal that we still are
in
> search of such proofs. So, no question, for me about this. Sorry for being

> misunderstood.
>
> We are "already" in the world. Every question about the existence or not
of
> something "out there" is, as I already said, a petitio principii. My
remark
> concerning a "declaration of faith" does not concerns therefore the
> existence of "beigns out there" (or "outside my mind") BUT the question of

> what we mean when we start discussing what it means "to be" or what we
mean
> when we say, for instance, there is "just matter" or "just..." This
> statements presuppose that we have a pre-understanding of Being (NOT: of
the
> existence of beings).
>
> I know, this is a philosophic discussion, and may not be interesting for
> everybody in this list.
>
> kind regards
>
> Rafael
>
>
> Prof. Dr. Rafael Capurro
> Hochschule der Medien (HdM) - Stuttgart Media University, Wolframstr. 32,
> 70191 Stuttgart, Germany
> Private: Redtenbacherstr. 9, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
> E-Mail: rafael@capurro.de; capurro@hdm-stuttgart.de
> Voice Stuttgart: + 49 - 711 - 25706 - 182
> Voice private: + 49 - 721 - 98 22 9 - 22 (Fax: -21)
> Homepage: www.capurro.de
> Homepage ICIE: http://icie.zkm.de
> Homepage IRIE: http://www.i-r-i-e.net
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Collier" <collierj@ukzn.ac.za>
> To: <fis@listas.unizar.es>
> Sent: Saturday, July 01, 2006 7:08 PM
> Subject: [Fis] Realism
>
>
> > Dear fisers,
> >
> > I have been grading almost full time the last week, so I did not get a
> > chance to respond to Arne, or comment on the other interesting recent
> > posts on this topic. I will just make a short realist statement, though.

> > It is based on the Realism of C.S. Peirce. He distinguished between
> > imaginary doubt and real doubt. Real doubt is that which gives us
evidence
> > that appears to be contrary to our beliefs. Imaginary doubt is based on
> > possbilities that we have no evidence for, but we believe are at least
> > possible. The problem with imaginary doubt is that it is based on
abstract
> > reasoning, void of ties to evidence by and large, and it is thus very
> > fallible.
> >
> > Here is what I think:
> >
> > I just don't think that we can base epistemology on some consensual
> > agreement about there being an external world, or about some world we
have
> > socially constructed. I think that we can know the world in terms of its

> > features, and that we know many features of the world. I think that the
> > world is an information structure along the lines of a distributed
system
> > in the line of Barwise and Seligman. The logic of such systems is that
we
> > cannot infer backwards to the source in general. We need a special sort
of
> > channel to do that. However, science and evolution tend to make such
> > channels. Obviously I would have to get into more detail. Of course this

> > all assumes there is something "out there". My best evidence for that is

> > that there are things I do not create in my mind. Perhaps they come from

> > other parts of my mind, but that is still "out there" relative to my
> > consciousness. Basically, I think that the evidence that there is
> > something "out there" is very strong, and the evidence that there is not

> > is negligible. That we can't know the "out there" is based on a huge
> > string of inference about the possibility of error in special cases
> > extended to the possibility for all cases. I reject the last part of the

> > argument. I don't think it is possible that everything we believe about
> > the external world is false. My argument again is fairly simple:
whatever
> > the structure of the information that we experience, that which we don't

> > consciously cause comes from "out there", so we know "out there" has at
> > least that much structure. And from there we bootstrap. Part of what we
> > bootstrap to is a consensual world (though I am constantly surprised
that
> > my neighbours see so little of what I see, so I am not sure how much is
> > consensual -- I find myself often faking that the world is more like
what
> > people around me seem to think it is like -- this dishonesty bugs me,
but
> > it saves fights over things like Zulus are much more like
Scots-Canadians
> > than they are different from each other -- if I have a Zulu student who
> > wants to think that Zulus are fundamentally different, then I usually
let
> > it go.)
> >
> > I see no need of any consensual proof of such an abstract entity as a
> > consensually agreed on world in order to have knowledge of an external
> > world, nor do I see that the proof would be very convincing compared to
> > direct experience of things I do not cause myself, and which can
surprise
> > me. I think that the evidence for a consensual world must be weaker than

> > the evidence for a world beyond our conscious experience, and any
argument
> > in favour of doubting that world must have even weaker evidence. Lacking

> > such evidence, I doubt when I am surprised, and have a reason to doubt.
> > Otherwise, I think both sceptical arguments and anti-realist arguments
are
> > all very fallible abstract thinking, which I don't much trust.
> >
> > That said, I think that the evidence is that we construct our
> > understanding of the world out of materials from both our mind and the
> > world, so I fall into the category that is usually called constructive
> > realist.
> >
> > Regards,
> > John
> >
> > ----------
> > Professor John Collier
> > collierj@ukzn.ac.za
> > Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South
> > Africa
> > T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031
> > http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/index.html
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------
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