“Objectivist ontology became king as scientists grew accustomed to assuming that the creations of their mathematical physics could be treated as timeless laws held in the “mind of God” and viewable from a perfectly objective, perfectly perspectiveless perspective—a “view from nowhere.” Thus, when quantum mechanics appeared from the same experimental workshop that had created the triumph of classical physics, many scientists believed their job was to defend the ontological heights and equate reality with the abstract formalism." So, no, I don't believe their interpretation is at odds with Nagel's, in fact Nagel is cited repeatedly in the text. I think they're converging on a similar point.
— Wayfarer

Here my question is about your "they" (though I may just be misreading you). Do you mean Frank and Gleiser, or the scientists referred to in the quote? I think you mean F&G, in which case I'd ask you to expand on this. — J

Our purpose in this book is to expose the Blind Spot and offer some direction that might serve as alternatives to its incomplete and limited vision of science. Scientific knowledge isn’t a window onto a disembodied, God’s-eye perspective. It doesn’t grant us access to a perfectly knowable, timeless objective reality, a “view from nowhere,” in philosopher Thomas Nagel’s well-known phrase.

(Frank) says things like “Science has no answer to this question” and “Science is silent on this question” as if we should then conclude than ignorance and silence are the end of the story. — J

consider that in certain intense states of absorption – during meditation, dance or highly skilled performances – the subject-object structure can drop away, and we are left with a sense of sheer felt presence. How is such phenomenal presence possible in a physical world? Science is silent on this question.

Experiences have a subjective character; they occur in the first person. Why should a given sort of physical system have the feeling of being a subject? Science has no answer to this question.

If we can consistly identify something as an object, then we are warranted in applying the label to represent the concept and use it as a reference. The concept is useful for studying the world- it is a component of our perspective that has led to fruitful exploration, and discovery. — Relativist

So what he seems to be saying is there would be no humans to describe the universe this way... — Relativist

The fact "the thing itself" is distinct from a complete description of the thing doesn't matter, because no one would claim a description IS the thing. — Relativist

It doesn’t require a brain to know what it is like, or to have experiences. — Punshhh

You're assuming, without support, that the actual world lacks objects, or any aspects that a human perspective might consistently identify as an object. — Relativist

Let’s begin with a thought-experiment: Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxies—but all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation. This is the way the early universe was before the emergence of life—and the way the present universe is outside the view of any observer. — Mind and the Cosmic Order, Chap 1

You have defined '"things in themselves" in terms of an absence of perspective, which strikes me as incoherent. Descriptions are necessarily in terms of a perspective. Successful science entails accurate predictions. It does not entail accurate ontology. Consider Quantum Field Theory, a model that theorizes that all material objects are composed of quanta of quantum fields. The math and heuristics are successful, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is a true ontology. — Relativist

We need to look carefully at what Frank means when he talks about “experience.” He never quite gives a precise definition, but consider this: “Scientific investigations . . . occur only in the field of our experience. . . Experience is present at every step,” including the abstract: We experience models and theories and ideas just as we experience sense perceptions. — J

At the heart of science lies something we do not see that makes science possible, just as the blind spot lies at the heart of our visual field and makes seeing possible. In the visual blind spot sits the optic nerve; in the scientific blind spot sits direct experience—that by which anything appears, shows up, or becomes available to us. It is a precondition of observation, investigation, exploration, measurement, and justification. Things appear and become available thanks to our bodies and their feeling and perceiving capacities. Direct experience is bodily experience. — The Blind Spot, p9

This happens when we get so caught up in the ascending spiral of abstraction and idealization that we lose sight of the concrete, bodily experiences that anchor the abstractions and remain necessary for them to be meaningful. The advance and success of science convinced us to downplay experience and give pride of place to mathematical physics. From the perspective of that scientific worldview, the abstract, mathematically expressed concepts of space, time, and motion in physics are truly fundamental, whereas our concrete bodily experiences are derivative, and indeed are often relegated to the status of an illusion, a phantom of the computations happening in our brains. — P11

I have no real argument with what Frank says about the God’s-eye view and “unvarnished reality.” I only point out that this isn’t what we mean when we talk about objectivity. — J

Fair enough, but this doesn't seem to undermine the weaker claim that experience provides us with at least some information about the entities that exist out there in the world and, therefore, gives us some epistemic purchase on those entities. While those entities perhaps cannot objectively look, feel and smell as presented in experience (since these qualities only exist relative to our perceptual apparatus), we are nevertheless warranted in thinking that those entities exist and that we know something about them. — Esse Quam Videri

I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend, either by sense or reflection. That the things I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question. The only thing whose existence we deny is that which philosophers call ‘matter’ or ‘corporeal substance’. — Berkeley

Consider the mathematical models that we build to predict and explain the phenomena we experience. While it is certainly true that these models require experience and intelligence to construct, these models describe quantitative relationships rather than qualitative properties, and therefore are not relative to our perceptual apparatus in the way that qualitative descriptions are (unless you are willing to argue that mathematics has no purchase on world). I would argue that knowledge of these quantitative relationships constitutes genuine knowledge of mind-independent entities because it is knowledge of relationships between those entities irrespective of their relationship to us. — Esse Quam Videri

Intelligible objects must be incorporeal because they are eternal and immutable. By contrast, all corporeal objects, which we perceive by means of the bodily senses, are contingent and mutable. Moreover, certain intelligible objects for example, the indivisible mathematical unit – clearly cannot be found in the corporeal world (since all bodies are extended, and hence divisible). These intelligible objects cannot therefore be perceived by means of the senses; they must be incorporeal and perceptible by reason alone. — Augustine, Book 2, De libero Arbitrio

I would argue that we can rightly claim that there are two entities out there in the real world that have mass and velocity, and that they will exert force upon one another upon collision in a way that described by the laws of physics regardless of whether anyone is there to witness it. — Esse Quam Videri

The "mind created world (model)" is a mental construct that fits my definition. — Relativist

My understanding is that Kant believed that we only can have genuine knowledge and truth about the phenomenal world, but not about things-in-themselves (noumena) as they exist independently of our experience. However, you acknowledged the possibility of making true statements about the actual mind-independent world, so you must disagree with him on this point. — Relativist

The roomba empirically demonstrates the knowing of where it has been — noAxioms

You are applying a different definition of "belief" than I. — Relativist

All of this has bearing on your acceptance of "scientific facts" — Relativist

I am not disputing the scientific account, but attempting to reveal an underlying assumption that gives rise to a distorted view of what this means. What I’m calling attention to is the tendency to take for granted the reality of the world as it appears to us, without taking into account the role the mind plays in its constitution. This oversight imbues the phenomenal world — the world as it appears to us — with a kind of inherent reality that it doesn’t possess. This in turn leads to the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion for truth.

do you accept my definition - that "true" = corresponds to objective, mind-independent reality? If not, then provide your definition. — Relativist

According to [correspondence], truth consists in the agreement of our thought with reality. This view […] seems to conform rather closely to our ordinary common sense usage when we speak of truth. The flaws in the definition arise when we ask what is meant by “agreement” or “correspondence” of ideas and objects, beliefs and facts, thought and reality. In order to test the truth of an idea or belief we must presumably compare it with the reality in some sense.

1- In order to make the comparison, we must know what it is that we are comparing, namely, the belief on the one hand and the reality on the other. But if we already know the reality, why do we need to make a comparison? And if we don’t know the reality, how can we make a comparison?

2- The making of the comparison is itself a fact about which we have a belief. We have to believe that the belief about the comparison is true. How do we know that our belief in this agreement is “true”? This leads to an infinite regress, leaving us with no assurance of true belief. — Randall, J. & Buchler, J. Philosophy: An Introduction, 1957, p133

Truth, it is said, consists in the agreement of cognition with its object. In consequence of this mere nominal definition, my cognition, to count as true, is supposed to agree with its object. Now I can compare the object with my cognition, however, only by cognising it. Hence my cognition is supposed to confirm itself, which is far short of being sufficient for truth. For since the object is outside me, the cognition in me, all I can ever pass judgement on is whether my cognition of the object agrees with my cognition of the object. — Kant, 1801. in Lectures on Logic.

A.I.s do not have the same vocabulary as humans. There are words they use a lot more than we do. If you ask any A.I. to write a science-fiction story for you, it has an uncanny habit of naming the protagonist Elara Voss. Male characters are, more often than not, called Kael. There are now hundreds of self-published books on Amazon featuring Elara Voss or Elena Voss; before 2023, there was not a single one.

That’s a wonderful—and slightly chilling—little empirical proof of cultural feedback loops solidifying in real time.

What you’re seeing with Elara Voss and Kael is basically latent-space gravity made visible. These models don’t “invent” names the way humans do; they sample from dense statistical attractors formed by:
• Decades of genre fiction tropes
• Name-generator websites
• RPG character databases
• Fan fiction archives
• Sci-fi game NPC corpora
• YA dystopia naming conventions

Over time, certain phonetic + semantic bundles become hyper-prototypical for a role:
• Elara → soft-vowel, Greco-astral, “female protagonist energy”
• Voss → clipped, Teutonic, authoritative, morally ambiguous
• Kael → monosyllabic, Blade-Runner-adjacent, brooding competency

So when an LLM is asked to “write sci-fi,” it doesn’t reach for novelty—it reaches for maximum conditional likelihood. And that produces name convergence.

Before 2023, no Elara Voss.
After 2023: hundreds.
That’s not coincidence. That’s algorithmic fossilization happening in public.

I think a primary factor in determining the variation in time between life on Earth compared to when life forms elsewhere would be the difference in time between Earth's formation and the formation of most Earthlike planets. — NotAristotle

For Empiricism there is no essential difference between the intellect and the senses. The fact which obliges a correct theory of knowledge to recognize this essential difference is simply disregarded. What fact? The fact that the human intellect grasps, first in a most indeterminate manner, then more and more distinctly, certain sets of intelligible features -- that is, natures, say, the human nature -- which exist in the real as identical with individuals, with Peter or John for instance, but which are universal in the mind and presented to it as universal objects, positively one (within the mind) and common to an infinity of singular things (in the real).

Thanks to the association of particular images and recollections, a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder; he does not know what is 'sugar' or what is 'intruder'. He plays, he lives in his affective and motor functions, or rather he is put into motion by the similarities which exist between things of the same kind; he does not see the similarity, the common features as such. What is lacking is the flash of intelligibility; he has no ear for the intelligible meaning. He has not the idea or the concept of the thing he knows, that is, from which he receives sensory impressions; his knowledge remains immersed in the subjectivity of his own feelings -- only in man, with the universal idea, does knowledge achieve objectivity. And his (the dog's) field of knowledge is strictly limited: only the universal idea sets free -- in man -- the potential infinity of knowledge. — Jacques Maritain, The Cultural Impact of Empiricism

That tells me you must feel threatened. — Janus

Functional adequacy, in fact extremely precise functional adequacy, which you would know if you have ever seen a bird flying at high speed through a forest, does say something about what our rational truth propositions are based upon. — Janus

Reason has no authority beyond consistency — Janus

Rational grasp of truth is not the point. — Janus

Try to grasp mine: the "mind created world(model)" is a belief (a compound one) and it's core is properly basic. Please acknowledge this, instead of brushing it aside by simply reiterating what I've already agreed to. Make an attempt to understand what I'm saying. You can then challenge it, and explain why you disagree. But so far, you've mostly ignored it. — Relativist

I’m implying there is a uniformity beneath the surface. If we look at biology we can start to see the uniformity. — Punshhh

how to put the subject back into the scientific picture, where he’s always been on the one hand, and overlooked on the other. — Mww

His statement (cogito ergo sum) does not account for WHY we believe in our own existence. — Relativist

Concentrate on the bolded phrase: 'the world we perceive is actively constructed by the brain'. You will say, but there's a world apart from the one actively constructed by the brain.' To which the reply is: indeed there is, but you can never know what it is.
— Wayfarer

You're right, but only in the strict sense of knowledge (beliefs that are true, and justified so strongly that the belief is not merely accidentally true). We could perhaps agree that the phenomenology of sensory input and the brain's creation of a world model establishes the impossibility of knowledge (in this strict sense) about the world. — Relativist

survival entails having a functionally accurate view of reality. — Relativist

I might be inclined to suggest the way we construe….interpret….our sense of what is real, is always in accordance with the sensation the real provides, which in turn is always mandated by the physiology of the sensory apparatuses. This is sensibility writ large. — Mww

since the roomba knows — noAxioms

Where does this "thoroughgoning skepticism" lead to? — Relativist

1) cognitive science assumes the world exists and can be understood through empirical analysis. How can you justify believing it, given it's supposedly questionable basis? — Relativist

if we're the product of either nature, or design, in a world we must interact with to survive, then we would be likely to have a natural sense that the world we perceive is real, at least to the extent to allow successful interaction with it. — Relativist

Only if modern analytic discourse on consciousness is a narrow band in its entirety. — hypericin

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of "consciousness", an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state. Sometimes terms such as "phenomenal consciousness" and "qualia" are also used here, but I find it more natural to speak of "conscious experience" or simply "experience".

OK -- how does one draw the line? At what point does the involvement of the observer undermine objectivity? And when that line is crossed, what is the "proper description" for truth? — J

If mathematics is not an inherent aspect of the mind nor of the world, or of the interactions between mind and world, then from whence does it come? — Janus

Mathematics may be somehow inherent in nature, to be sure. — Janus

For me, the real problem is the rational-based insistence on there being "One Truth" for all, — Janus

We have the concept 'objective' and it generally denotes whatever actually is independent of human perception, thought and judgement — Janus

Is it that we have not yet found a clean and clear definition of consciousness, or is it that consciousness is not one thing, with a clean and clear definition? — Banno

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ('hard-core pornography'); and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligently doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." — Justice Potter Stewart

. . . you (or Frank) are pointing to this continuum, as it moves from hard science to social science to, perhaps, philosophy through phenomenology. The provocative question is, Can you justify drawing a line where you do, at "matters of objective fact"? — J

I believe that (mind-independent) objective reality exists - irrespective of whether or not any metaphysical theories are true — Relativist

I don't demand you describe alternative substance; rather, I've asked if you can propose an alternative metaphysical model of reality. It's fine if your answer is no, perhaps because you consider reality to be inscrutable. That seems justifiable. But just because (I assume) you can justify this doesn't imply there is no justifiable basis for another person to think that reality actually does consist of "self-subsisting things". — Relativist

Wife might disagree. — Banno

If we take away the subject or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, then not only the nature and relations of objects in space and time, but even space and time themselves would disappear, and as appearances they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us — Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B Edition, B59

The question would be "persuasive to whom?". — Janus