Publius wrote:
>> A large forest can look like a solid green patch from orbit, so I take
>> even everyday objects to be the result of perceptual groupings of
>> smaller objects (or "whatever"). That is, there's a constructivism
>> behind the empirical world that precedes the constructivism of
>> abstract models. Therefore, I personally have no problem in counting
>> detectable atoms as a legitimate part of the phenomenal world like
>> tables and chairs.
>
> I agree that (specific) tables and chairs, along with atoms, are both
> constructs. But the former are empirical constructs, all of whose elements
> are qualia and the relationships among them. Atoms, however, are not
> constructed from qualia (nor are the *concepts* of a table or chair). Those
They appear as "qualia" in the results that devices of detection
present, even if maybe only as monochrome dots or the tracks of their
flying parts in collisions. Extra-solar planets are discovered using
instruments and inferences concerning the data, usually without any
images of the planets at all. Electrons filmed for the 1st time:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-02/src-eff022208.php
> are higher-order (more abstract) constructs. I'd agree that they remain
> part of the "phenomenal realm," since "thoughts," concepts, etc., are all
> part of that realm, but the difference in their ontological orders is
> fairly clear and important.
It's the nature of everyday objects to be composed of smaller objects
(and gets to the bone of that if they happen to be at ground zero
during an atomic blast). Thus, in my opinion, everyday objects and
atoms have a similar practical, "real status". Yet the latter will be
devalued by average people and their sympathizers because we don't
regularly study and manipulate them as chemists / physicists do. Both
are probably something bizarre in the noumenal world, yet both can
nevertheless be detected and represented as spatiotemporal things in
our "phenomenal world" template.
>> At some point (maybe even at the everyday level occasionally), the
>> possible ways of conceptualizing matter and energy become
>> underdetermined, invariably realized, or might oppose each other as
>> antinomies -- like with the multiple realist models of quantum physics
>> and general relativity. Then it becomes questionable whether these
>> rival "reality-interpretations" qualify as being "concrete"-able as
>> tables and chairs.
>
> It would probably behoove us to reserve "concrete" for constructs
> consisting solely of qualia (sense-detectable properties). But that doesn't
> make atoms or quarks any less "real." They are still "things" ("thing"
> being the universal noun).
In the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber Interpretation of QM, I'm most likely to
be located in this room, yet part of even a large phenomenon like
myself is also distributed over the whole universe (as are atoms and
particles). While I seriously doubt that GRW is THE objective reality,
it reflects how macrophysical objects can become as weirdly abstract
as microphysical ones when trying to go down that route. That is, no
special status for the scale that humans favor or empirically
construct apart from it being special for commonsense.
The Earth looks like a featureless pixel from deep space, but that
speck is a kind of perceptual grouping or perceptual summary of the
Earth's finer details that as a consequence obscures what Earth fully
is. Just as a conventional concept conceals the meanings or lesser
concepts it has symbolically integrated (unless intentionally analyzed
for the latter). That's why there comes a stage where I question
whether there is much of a distinction between an empirical object and
a concept, since both are "groupings" that try to make a singular out
of a plural situation.
>> Methodological materialism / naturalism may never lead to "ultimate
>> reality", but I still find the explanations and causes it generates to
>> be fascinating at times.
>
> Endlessly. :-)
>
>> It should eventually provide answers for how
>> subjective properties emerge in a non-brute fashion from matter and
>> energy, even if it means adjusting the foundations in a radical
>> manner. Admittedly, that will probably be well beyond my lifespan and
>> require new trends or interests in that direction.
>
> All of existence is "ultimately" brute. See my response to Andy.
`
Generalizing all its branches, the biotic realm has a gradual history
from primitive to complex, even if evolution isn't supposed to
axiomatically have a tendency for "progress": An uneven sequence from
atoms to self-replicating molecules to polycellular life to cognitive
behavior to social orders to intelligence. If the qualitative aspect
of cognition is also to be classed as natural or physical in the
biological sense, then it might have to eventually get on board this
step-by-step ascension rather than abruptly appearing when neurons or
certain neural systems evolved. Unlike virtual particles or Big Bang
universes fizzing ex nihilo from the vacuum or laws of nature being
deposited via skyhooks before the dawn of time. Even "memory" precedes
the brain, if genetic patterns and fossil records count as that. The
cosmos should bow down before the "mighty brain" if the latter has
truly conjured novel properties utterly unlike anything before.
Nah, nothing so dramatic. In essence I'm only "not completely
excluding the possibility of an atom registering an internal symbol"
for having absorbed and re-emitted a photon (elemental information
processing).
