Posted by zeugma on October 15, 2005, at 15:30:54
In reply to Re: Reality 1 and Reality 2 » zeugma, posted by alexandra_k on October 11, 2005, at 19:22:13
> > > i want to say there is no meaning apart from mind / language.
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> and i've just thought of something to support this notion... have you read any grice? do you remember how grice distinguishes between natural and non-natural meaning?
grice and NM vs. NNM... a cloud means it's going to rain, natural meaning. 'red' means red, NNM. doesn't science become a series of searches into natural meaning then?
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> by 'meaning' i mean non-natural meaning. and non-natural meaning REQUIRES a speaker intending something by what they think / say. and thinkings / sayings are the only candidates for non-natural meanings (though I should also include sign language and writing of course).
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yes, but NNM becomes convoluted. I interrupt a speaker with 'it's a fine day.' Conventional meaning: the sun is shining. my intention: get this annoying character to shut up. NNM of utterance of 'it's a fine day': shut up, annoying character. because that's my intention. Grice is right to zero in on sudden changes of subject as instances where conventional meaning and intention diverge. Grice is good, but intention has to do an awful lot of work.> > hmmm. 'sortal' denotes that we sort items by neans of such terms... natural kind terms are surely a special kind of 'sortal'?
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> yes indeed. in order to grasp the referent (and make determinations on 'same' or 'different' referent across possible worlds) we need to grasp something of the referents accidental as opposed to essential properties.
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> 'water'. you can gesture as much as you like, that doesn't distinguish between the accidental and essential properties of the referent. the world (in itself) does not contain a distinction between its accidental and essential properties. this is a distinction that we make, that we draw, for our various purposes. and of course you need to draw the distinction between which properties count as essential and which properties count as accidental in order to grasp the notion of 'same stuff'. in order to make judgements of similarity and difference you need to preface that with 'same or different in what respects?' and so this is where people come into it. what interests us. what distinctions we care to draw. what distinctions are important to us.
ok. we are interested in the molecular structure of water, and make it the basis for putting substances on the lists of things that are water. now suppose it was observable properties that caught our eye instead (so to speak). nothing wrong with that. but i have certain sympathies with quine's holism, and can't let this go by too blithely. suppose it turned out that chemists were wrong about water. it's like jade (i think that jade is the substance that has several chemical instantiations while looking alike to the naked eye). or, let's say gold and pyrite. now gold is on the periodic table near silver. but we're wrong about gold, it turns out to be like pyrite, a composite of some kind. no big deal, EXCEPT an awful lot of work is now invalidated regarding the nature of gold, and which ripples through the whole web of our beliefs. now i don't take gold's elemental status on faith, so to speak. i take our understanding of gold as interwoven with our understanding of everything else on the periodic table.so if gold is not silver's neighbor on the chart, then what about hydrogen? or carbon? is it merely a set of observations that produced the conclusion that gold was distinct from pyrite, or is it those observations PLUS the fact that the observations cleared a path to putting gold in its slot in the vicinity of silver? And isn't that path the one we follow? and what other paths are there?
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> so in the case of 'water'. we decide that what we are really interested in is its essential properties as are to be determined by science. it is because these scientific properties are considered to be the relevant essential properties with respect to the reference of the term 'water' that 'water' is being treated as a natural kind term here. natural kind terms just do have essential properties that are to be determined by science.
>this portrayal (sorry to be so critical, this is an important matter) makes science a freestanding instituition rather than part of the path we as cognitive creatures follow. Or am i misreading you?
> if you grant that 'water' is a natural kind term then you are saying something about which properties are to be considered accidental and which are to be considered essential to the identity of the referent.
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> if you do not grant that 'water' is a natural kind term then you might think the superficial, observable properties are actually what interests us. if you do this instead then you mean a different thing by 'water' you are drawing a different distinction. the observable properties would be essential and the chemical composition properties would be accidental.
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> and thus you are going to get a different result when you ask 'same or different stuff / thing' across different possible worlds.
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> but the stuff in the world...
> in the world the observable properties (if you cash that out PROPERLY), the observable properties JUST ARE correlated with the scientific 'real nature' properties.
>this partitions observation and 'reality' too strictly. it can be that they JUST ARE, the results of observation have to be sent to the right destination (i.e. woven into the right place in the web of belief).
> there isn't a distinction in reality...
> but we make distinctions according to what interests us...>i disagree. science is driven by what interests us, but it must go down a path that makes sense. but then there is the question of why certain paths make more sense than others. and if we say that some make more sense because they interest us, then it seems like a vicious circle. or if we say they make sense because of mind-dependence, then we have a very strong version of anti-realism that seems to me to go too far).
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> more on universals...
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> i think our grasp of universals is innate...
> don't get me wrong... i don't believe that there would be any redness if there weren't any red things... but there are red things, and so if we see two red things then our minds are such that we judge them to be similar in respect to this notion we call 'redness'. so... i guess our grasp of universals is in abstracting away from our experiences. but this abstracting away... is something that our mind does... the abstraction is general whereas reality... is always particular... though this is senseless really because reality isn't even particular because to say that it is particular is to say that it contains its own conditions of identity (that there is an objective distinction as to essential and inessential properties). but there is no 'identity' in the mind independent world. the world doesn't ask itself 'is that the same (insert identity conditions here) x or not?' that is something that we do...>>surely there is a difference between essential and inessential properties. but i have no argument s available at the moment beyond what i've already said. maybe essential properties are those that are necessary for coherence with the bulk of our beliefs.
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> > > with respect to sense data... they don't seem to me to be mind independent.
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> > agreed. Russell's epsitemology was crap. Sense data are mind dependent and not the place to look for acquiantance (a word whose spelling still eludes me).
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> :-)
> the spelling eludes me too...
> i liked his epistemology (we know because we have direct access)
> its just that it relied on a metaphysical system...
> and that metaphysical system is untenable (as you note)
> :-(
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> > i guess i would say that those... are the meeting point of mind and world.
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> > if all goes well with our senses, yes.
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> and even if our senses are in error... that just means that our minds are contributing other than how they should be...
> > all the problems that we have trying to get face recognition etc up off the ground in AI would seem to crop up quite significantly if objects are to be viewed as merely conjunctions of sense data...
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> > ah. now this is the point i am interested in. Objects as conjunctions of sense data is untenable metaphysics.
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> yeah. and i think... that realisation was the end of logical positivism... :-( it was beautiful (acquaintance gives us certain knowledge) but unfortunately acquaintance cannot be of mind independent reality...
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> > i don't think sense data gets us far at all.
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> no, just a whole heap of trouble...
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> > my self is rapidly slipping away as i write (damn these stimulants with their wretched half-lives). the place to look for a self is not through introspection. damn these stimulants....
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> where do you think we should look for a self?
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> bodily criterion?
> memory criterion?
> narrative?
> behaviour?
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> ??
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> ooh. on reality 1 reality 2 this is a distinction i made in my honours year. apparantly it is similar to a distinction that kant drew but unfortunately i haven't read my kant so i'll just say something briefly about my version...
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> reality 1 is mind-independent reality.
> reality 2 is inter-subjective reality (mind-dependent but also the point that we need different people to converge on their observations)
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> reality 1 is outside the grasp of our minds by definition. by the very meaning of reality 1. because it is outside the grasp of our minds it follows that we cannot have acquaintance with it. we cannot know anything about it. if reality 1 is what is of interest to us then radical scepticism follows and we are left with a very sorry state of affairs indeed. science cannot be about reality 1 because reality 1 is beyond our grasp as a matter of principle.
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> (i think this is noumena? reality in itself or how things are in themselves)
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> reality 2 just has to be what interests us...
> the meeting point of mind and world.
> what is crucial is the point that different observers report the same observation.
> but observations just have to play a crucial part on the world that we experience.
> and isn't that what really interests us anyways?
> the world that we experience?
> isn't that really what science is about?
> explaining the essential properties (to be determined by science) of the world that we experience?
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> (phenomena...)
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> so of course mind is going to play a pivotal role in just what we mean by reality...
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> the distinction between mind and reality is ultimately untenable.
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> though... we do talk about a distinction between 'mind' and 'reality'. in fact, we set them up as being contrasting terms *by definition*. and we need these terms to even describe 'reality' as being the meeting point of mind and world.
>i don't think 'mind' and 'reality' are contrastive. if they are contrastive that presupposes skepticism. the difficulty with 'reality' is that it is not amenable to adjectival modification. is mind as 'real' as 'reality' or is it less? how about paths converging on reality, but not quite there? in this regard contrast with 'truth.' we don't have unlimited access to truth, and there may be many truths that are in principle unknowable to us. but truths (and forgive my convoluted path) can be called part of the 'alpha' content of minds. 'beta' content is content that is not truth-conditional, for instance knowing how to follow a gricean maxim of informativeness is the product of perceptions that need not be put into propositional form, and indeed one may not know how to put the knowledge into propositional form. or take my knowledge that the matterhorn is a jagged mountain on the swiss-italian border. now that is 'alpha' content. i believe the proposition true because i have seen pictures and i know what it means to be a jagged mountain. someone who has seen the mountain, and only knows it as 'that mountain over there,' has 'beta' knowledge. that mountain is the matterhorn, but this lucky person doesn't know that- he just observes the spectacular peak. now suppose i am that lucky person, and i study a map, figure out that 'that mountain' is the matterhorn- now i have done something that is neither given in the map nor delivered by sensory process. I have brought two pictures of the world into systematic correlation. but saying that propositional content and experiential content are anything other than differemces in sense- i.e. differences in cognitive significance- makes no sense because the fact that one can locate one's position is to say that both the map and the sensory qualities are alike in reference.
sorry, can't do any better now....
-z
> sigh.
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> i think i'm heading back towards the inexpressible...
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> (ps i've never read evans...)
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poster:zeugma
thread:561840
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050910/msgs/567209.html