Publius wrote:
>>> 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>
> Sure, because we construct devices which will behave that way, according to
> theory, when atoms behave in a certain way. But no one takes those visible
> traces to be properties of atoms. They are properties of the phosphors
> coating the display screen.
And subjective properties aren't part of everyday things, either, in
the objective domain of science. Evolution has constructed biochemical
devices that represent them as having colors, odors, haptic "feels",
sounds, etc. IOW, I don't see the reason for avoiding atoms being
"objects" as if it's a sacred a priori game that can't be leaped out
of into another game, like scientific realism (entity realism,
specifically).
>> 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".
>
> I agree that atoms are "real" --- just as real as trees. (A constructed
> entity is "real" if it is necessary to the theory which defines it, and that
> theory has explanatory power). Atoms, are as real as trees, but are of a
> different ontological order.
Unless we want to posit that the environment is not only universally
conscious of its contents, but also prefers perceiving / conceiving
and classifying them intentionally from a human perspective, then the
external world of commonsense and methodology should actually be
scaleless --lacking macrophysical, microphysical, and macrocosmic
substrates. Our own everyday realm would be apprehended and
categorized as a micro level by fantastically huge beings (relative to
us). So I agree that for the sake of understanding that any
epistemological game needs artificial "divisions", but does this make
a difference? Atoms preceded the existence of humans in the natural
scheme, so they hardly have an inferior type of "realness".
>> 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.
>
> I'm an ex-chemist. :-)
But surely this doesn't mean that all chemists and physicists are of a
"van Fraassen", etc, persuasion rather than a "Ian Hacking", etc,
persuasion. According to one poll some physicists had never even
pondered the philosophical issues or noted the constructivist aspect
of their work, before answering the questionnaire. They were default
"realists" about atoms or whatever circumstances they were supposedly
manipulating in their experiments (in what seemed more than an
"abstract object" sense).
> But we "devalue" many nontangible entities because they we don't need them
> to accomplish most of the tasks of daily life. They can be ignored safely.
> One nontangible everyone regards as "real" is money, or value (the $5 bill
> in one's wallet being merely a token for that value, not the value itself).
>
I question, though, that the constructed view of the "objective world"
is THE dominant game in town among philosophers and scientists, that
values can be so pragmatically adjusted without outcries. Richard
Rorty's neopragmatism and the so-called postmodernist movement in
philosophy of science wouldn't have raised so many hackles if that was
the case, or there weren't rival views.
>> 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.
>
> We always seek to produce tangible representions of nontangible, theoretical
> entities --- sketches showing a cluster of spheres orbited by a number of
> smaller balls (or surrounded by onion-like shells), or even a triangle drawn
> on paper. But the drawings are not the things represented, as we define
> those things. (e.g., the line drawn on paper has a color and a width; the
> lines of a defined triangle have no color and no width).
>
>> 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.
>
> Macrophysical objects can become weird when we undertake to explain them
> with weird theories.
>
> But entities on the human scale (and constructed from sense-detectable
> properties) do indeed have a special status --- they are the entities
> constructed entirely from the primary data available to us, and are the kind
> of entities our modeling faculties are optimized to produce. Higher-order
> constructs are viable only to the extent they are reconcilable with those
> base-level entities.
>
>> 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.
>
> They are both groupings, but they differ in the nature of the elements
> grouped. If the elements are all qualia (properties we can detect with the
> senses), then they are concrete, tangible things. As they begin to acquire
> properties which are not sense-detectable they ascend the ontological
> hierarchy.
Because of time constraints and the cumbersomeness of overly long
posts, I'm going to drop this stuff about the status of "atoms" for
the time being. These are minor disagreements, not a huge gulf.
Neither of us seems to have a foaming-at-the-mouth Randian rage about
Kantianism offshoots or the role that humans have played in producing
their knowledge.
>> 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.
>
> The 2nd Law prevails in closed systems. But systems which are contained, yet
> permit energy exchange with the external world, can become increasingly
> complex. Carbon and other atoms on the Earth's surface cannot escape their
> environment, because they are gravitationally bound together. Incoming
> energy allows endothermic reactions among them, yielding complex compounds,
> some of which are stable. Continuing energy input forces further reactions,
> producing more complexity.
>
>> 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.
>
> Not sure how much of Andy's and my dialog you read. A major point I tried to
I tried briefly to catch-up but was strapped for time at that hour,
and it was either not respond at all to that part or reel-off
something quickly that might possibly address it temporarily. Part of
the reason I dropped the middle of this post is to make time for
reading the rest of the thread, but now it looks like I'll have to get
online again later to do that (sounds like every neighbor and in-law
has decided to converge here at the same time, if the social ruckus I
hear developing downstairs is any indication).
> make was that while it is predictable theoretically under what circumstances
> systems experiencing subjective states will appear, no theory will be able
> to predict the "qualitative aspect" of those subjective states. That is
> because those qualitative aspects are inherently subjective: they are the
> primitives of experience, and are therefore unanalyzable (one cannot analyze
> primitives). Because they are unanalyzable, they are ineffable; we cannot
> describe "what they are like." And if we cannot describe a phenomenon we
> cannot explain it theoretically.
Christoff Koch, I think, is one of the neuroscientists slash
"neurophilosophers" who believes a quale could be a symbolic summary
of certain processes or relations (in effect, yet another type of
grouping or generalization). IOW, I don't see the need to make it "a
priori" that the qualia we're familiar with are forever unanalyzable.
They may no more be unfragmentable primitives than most of the
concepts we have that are composed of other meanings / concepts, or
the everyday objects composed of other objects.
During childhood, there were probably "big concepts" that I
occasionally used in speech that I intuitively grasped somehow, yet if
I had been asked to define in detail what they welded together I'd
have been groping around for words in a murky haze. That's possibly
where we're all at in regard to qualia, but maybe we'll grow out if it
in the future. I'm actually also pessimistic about that happening, but
when I start slinging around my certainties, I keep thinking of doors
in the past that were declared impenetrable and then got punched
through by one or more smartasses. ;-)
> We can (in principle) set forth the necessary and sufficient conditions for
> a system to experience subjective states. But what those states will "be
> like" will be knowable only to the system experiencing them.
That circles back to what a thing or system is in-itself, yet I don't
see how that forbids a ubiquitous principle or elemental regularity
(of panexperientialist ilk) that all these various subjective states
might be dependent upon to become what they are. A television and an
electric motor require a "form" or scheme of relations for their parts
to generate what they specifically produce. But all electronic
configurations for devices would be impotent without the fundamental
force they are utilizing and arranging up to a higher functional
complexity: electromagnetism. I feel that should be more involved than
just the right "form" arising for the appearance of our brand of
qualia.
