[Fis] The Realist's Dilemma

Dear FIS-ers,

I think we should hold or horses a bit and think about the different conceptual frameworks we use describing this controversy about reality and perceptual realities. As a matter of fact even the term perceptual reality make reference to something entirely different but the realist's reality.

The realist/objectivist has declared his faith in dualism, as has the anti-realist, the difference between them is that the realist takes the world for given and real. However the definition of "real" is very unclear - if there is any? Nevertheless both the realist and anti-realist can, in this discussion, make a justified use of terms like e.g. real/unreal and outside/inside. Needless to say then the monist (anti-dualist?), both as a matter of courtesy and understanding, must use the "language of realism" to address ontological issues or make his position clear when discussing with the objectivist/realist - at least as long as realism is the mainstream view among scientists. This is the reason for the frequent use of terms like outside, real and reality - even from the monist's pen.

The monist also makes a declaration of faith, but he thinks he is better off, because he can pinpoint an inconsistency in the realist use of these distinctions, which in fact make the realist's reasoning inconsistent according to the rules of science he has formulated (i.e., self-contradictory). This inconsistency arises because he uses distinctions that are undecidable - and therefore are impossible to falsify - which is forbidden even to a realist philosopher like Popper.

Popper is was a convinced realist - convinced by faith as he often declared - and he is the only philosopher read by natural scientists it seems. And why should it be otherwise since the general philosopher very seldom cares about the conceptual frameworks that are use in natural sciences. In fact he does not even care about very much about his own modelling framework - the spoken/written language. In doing so he had been more interested the apparent weakness of language as a modelling tool he should use the language of logics. But philosophers rarely do. And the interest paid to the foundations of science and the different paradigms in use here almost absent in all camps - it seems. So the scandal Rafael is talking about is very much the philosopher's scandal - not being able to convince the community of natural scientists that their point of departure in their thinking misleads them. To be honest - most natural scientists find Heidegger unreadable, and I think most people cannot even make sense out of the writings of Heidegger unless one is versed in the thinking and style of writings of phenomenology.

For these reasons I do not think it is possible to convince the natural scientists that they are heading in a direction that leads nowhere by to more confusion, unless the dualist/monist issue is addressed in terms of the inconsistencies met with in their realist model of human capacity of perception - which is a process of great importance also to natural science. To my mind, the realist subscribe to a model of perception that is misleading and "unrealistic (!)" and this situation I took up a week ago under the heading of the "realist's dilemma" - but the lack of response (apart form John's) has been very evident but I cannot find any acceptable reason for this. I SIMPLY DO NOT THINK THE "REALIST'S DILEMMA" CAN BE SWEPT UNDER THE CARPET IN ATTEMPTS TO DEFEND REALISM/OBJECTIVISM. IN MY VIEW THE CONVINCED DUALIST MUST JUSTIFY HIMSELF BY RESOLVING THIS DILEMMA - otherwise he cannot make credit to himself in my view.

As a first step I think the language problem (as being a modelling problem) is of crucial importance and most often neglected. I think all involved in this debate need to acknowledge that the mainstream dualist's (realist's) experience, thinks and speaks in and of a dual world - and therefore uses a language reflecting this very view. As long he is a sworn realist he cannot even make sense of a statement that make a claim like "there is no inside or outside or real/unreal distinction" unless he tries to understand the monists way of speaking. But in both camps we seem to neglect the fact that the other camps uses, and is forced to use, another way of speaking and therefore language (model).

So when one says that Peirce considered the mind and experience for real, he defined a way of speaking that is totally different from the traditional realist, and one therefore have to take that into account. To my mind Peirce is a monist, not a dualist, but for some reason he, as monist, considered the domain of experience to be REAL (but not even he provided a definition of REAL). Bohr on the other hand, as SOA, counts experience as abstract - this is a crucial difference - since the thinking of Piece cannot be moulded in to the thinking of the traditional realist.

Such terminological issues has crucial importance discussing INFORMATION, both in its classical as quantum aspects, because in the monist situation an "information carrier" having a source in reality and a sink in the observer - that does not make sense to a monist at all. To the SOA monist, information arises in the observer and possibly acts a carrier in processes of inter-subjective communication. "Reality" contains no information at all - reality "is as it is" - and he claims the forms associated with information are created by the observer/describer and in his mind reflecting his accumulated experience - and the agreed upon framework of inter-subjective communication, which is a pure social context of conventions - maybe needless to say. IN THAT VIEW THE OBSERVER/KNOWER IS THE ONE THAT CREATES THE INFORMATION PASSED ON TO OTHER KNOWERS. Even if data is received that have a "probable cause in reality" - no knowable "information" (because of inseparability) can be extracted form such signals (and even said to be transmit features from reality) - which agrees very well with Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation. Therefore to human knowledge there is only private experience, SOA claims - and science must therefore be based primarily on such subjective experience. However not only based on the subject's alone - but the take off point must be subject-oriented - and therefore the classical "direction of causality" (object � subject) is flawed and must be "reversed." This makes a huge difference.

So in the monist view there is no stream of information from "reality" - because we, as humans, are incapable of featuring a "reality" - and reality is apart form the very notion of r-e-a-l-i-t-y a transcendent phenomenon (i.e., cannot be captured by experience). However the monist approach brings along more overthrowing insights, some well-known and others not very well known.

To my mind the entrance to monist/dualist considerations is exactly the "realist dilemma" - since it pinpoints a contradiction of classical reasoning. It also highlights the process of observation/measurement, which is the bridge between the two domains of dualist (realist) science - reality and experience. The process of observation is, needless to say, of crucial importance to both the camp of natural scientists and philosophers and I think a thoroughly examination this process in the only way to bring an end to the vainly processes of word tossing and bring the discussions towards a possible point of decision. Such a discussion is as important and decisive to physicist and philosophers - as it is to the information society. Since IS defines itself as the science of this "very bridge" - maybe the question is even more important to IS?

Best wishes Arne
 

_______________________________________________
fis mailing list
fis@listas.unizar.es
http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
Received on Thu Jul 6 12:01:48 2006