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

Hopefully to the person one is trying to persuade. But relativism does seem impossible to avoid.

Yes, but it is relativism of belief, not of truth. We may indeed intuitively know truths, but just can't rationally or empirically demonstrate that we know, even to ourselves let alone others. For myself, if something seems intuitively true to me, that seems sufficient. I don't expect others to agree, and many of the things I hold true I would not even attempt to argue for.

And how all things in that context seem to me may not be how they seem to you―even though there will likely be commonalities due to the fact that we are both human.

I don’t think this is such a big issue (although it may be a stumbling block empirically), yes it’s true that there is no way of making a direct comparison between minds. But it may be the framing of the question that’s at fault. Rather like what J said.
For me this question is tackled by changing perspective. We know that we are (biologically) a colony. Indeed, we are largely clones (I am aware of sexual variation and heredity). Our constitution is identical, similar to how it is for trees. So it might be worth viewing people as one being (colony) divided into units within a colony. So we are identical, like trees, but with variation in the shape of the tree, or the variety (let’s put speciation to one side for now), some seed might fall on fallow ground some on fertile ground etc.
Now this brings collective consciousness more to the fore. If we treat humanity as one being, the question of what someone else is thinking disappears. If you think about it 99.9% of what we do is identical, with variation, as in trees. Variation in thinking and knowledge, indeed belief might be of little import and as a whole, the colony includes the full spectrum of thought and mental activity and each individual contributes in their own unique way.
Personally I go further and regard the entire biosphere as one colony with each kind of plant, or animal expressing a different aspect of the whole. A lot can be worked out about each from comparison with others. All animals and plants (leaving viruses etc to one side for now), are colonies of identical cells, with very slight variation and where the differences to be found between different kinds encoded in the DNA, not in different cell architecture, (in multi cellular organisms the DNA dictates different roles for cells, which will cause them to adapt to perform different tasks, like people playing different roles in society).
This enables me to view one being (colony) interacting with one material (the world). One being and one neumenon. One soul approaching one (instance of) neumenon producing one being. One undifferentiated soul* approaching one undifferentiated neumenon, resulting in, well the history of the world.

* replace the word soul with your own preference.

Because part of the problem with experience is that it’s so close to us that we don’t even see it. And it’s only in contemplative practice that you really have to deal with it.

It’s a bit like the idea that a fish in a fish bowl doesn’t know that it’s suspended in water. It doesn’t notice the water, the way that we don’t notice air, unless it’s windy. The fish can’t comprehend what water is, perhaps we can’t comprehend something too.

The practitioner of meditative practices knows about this and experiences, at some point, being, being absent our conditioned world.

What I see in your response, and also in @Janus's, is what I was hoping to see, namely an agreement that consciousness is not by definition something utterly apart from the rest of the world we inhabit. How we get a common perspective on it is a matter of differences in degree. So when you say:

We are outside of or apart from the subjects of the natural sciences. As Frank says, 'billiard balls' - and a whole bunch more, up to and including space telescopes - all of these are matters of objective fact. Less so for the social sciences and psychology. — Wayfarer

. . . 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"? I'm pretty sure I understand why you want to do this, since scientific realism does seem to have earned the title of "being objective" in some important sense. And yet . . . doesn't this whole discussion remind us that the line may not be that clear? Maybe we need a terminology tweak, some other way to talk about this crucial difference that doesn't invoke "objective fact."

we're thinking about something that can't be treated in an objective manner, because we're not outside or apart from what we're thinking about. — Wayfarer

Yes and no. As I suggested to Janus, we are in one sense outside of consciousness, in that we are self-reflective, and can observe our own minds and subjectivity, and seek agreement from others. Is that "outside enough"? You would say no. This is the infinite regress problem. If I am observing my consciousness, I must be leaving something out, namely the observer's stance. Very well; I take a step back and include the observer; I observe myself observing my consciousness, and I also continue to observe my consciousness. But that leaves out the observer who's observing the observer who's . . . etc. ad infinitum.

I don't find that persuasive. I would need to know what is being left out of an account that stops at the first step. One of the features of consciousness is self-consciousness, and self-consciousness is iterative. End of story. Do we deepen our understanding of this feature by trying to push further and further into it?

Now of course, if you define "objective manner" as "not from my subjective point of view," then it's true that we can never observe consciousness objectively. But why do this? Every single thing a scientist observes is from their subjective point of view. The goal of science is to find ways of negating the idiosyncratic or incorrect observations that may occur, and finding intersubjective agreement. I don't see how observing consciousness is any different. If it's different, it's because of what is observed, not the nature of the observation. The phenomenon of consciousness is subjective, in that it only appears from a point of view. There wouldn't be any consciousnesses if their weren't any conscious beings. That is not true of trees or stars, presumably. But how significant is this difference, in terms of problems or methodology?

whether or not it is conceivable that there could be a completely satisfying explanation as to how the brain produces consciousness (if it does). — Janus

Right, we don't have such a thing, and no one can say for certain whether we ever will. As you know, I'm a cautious optimist in that regard, though I'm pretty sure that "produces" will turn out to be the wrong term.

we say we know how consciousness seems, and give accounts of that, but how can we tell whether language itself is somehow distorting the picture via reification? How would consciousness seem to us if we were prelinguistic beings? That's obviously a rhetorical question. — Janus

A fair point. Maybe this is a good place to remind ourselves that there are other ways of "observing consciousness" than doing phenomenology. Deep meditation is also a type of experience that pares down subjectivity to some sort of essence that is surely prelinguistic. So I don't think your question is merely rhetorical. It's very hard to answer, though! My cat knows the answer, but is unable to tell me.

I don't know how to compare the extent of the differences between people and the commonalities. I don't think we are one "hive mind" at all―look at the great differences between cultures, and the polarizations within particular cultures. I think we do basically understand others (well perhaps some people do that better than others) and I don't think we are locked in our own little solipsistic worlds. I even think it is possible that we share some kind of collective unconscious, as Jung suggested, but the work involved in bringing anything from that to consciousness precludes the vast majority, even if they thought about the possibility, from doing that.

I don't even believe that each cell is identical to all the others. Like the leaves on a particular kind of tree, each has the same metabolic function, but no two are exactly the same. I don't know, of course, but I suspect the same is true of individual cells. I see Nature as endlessly creative and diverse.

Maybe this is a good place to remind ourselves that there are other ways of "observing consciousness" than doing phenomenology. Deep meditation is also a type of experience that pares down subjectivity to some sort of essence that is surely prelinguistic. So I don't think your question is merely rhetorical. It's very hard to answer, though! My cat knows the answer, but is unable to tell me.
8 hours ago — J

Yes, I agree meditation is a way of (potentially) getting free for a time of the discursive, analytical mind and seeing what is there 'beneath' that superficial layer of consciousness. The problem is that we want to translate whatever we find there into the terms of discursive, analytical consciousness, and that doesn't really work very well. Poetry is a better language for that, I think.

. . . 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 think it's generally recognised that the objective sciences proper begin with Galileo. with mathematical idealisation, the primacy of observation and experiment, and the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. All of these were a crucial step toward defining an objective reality independent of subjective human perception. This was completed with Newton's publicaton of Principia 54 years later. Together these were the bellwethers of the Scientific Revolution. They displaced medieval science, with its reliance on authority and archaic notions of teleology.

Also of note that Auguste Comte's introduction of the idea of the positive sciences, and the application of scientific method to society and culture. He envisaged culture evolving through three stages, the theological (dependent on God or gods), the metaphysical (dependent on abstract causes and essences) and the scientificI (dependent on objective observation, experiment and the discovery of inevitable natural laws.) Though Comte is not often mentioned, his influence is fundamental.

I think the acceptance of the universal nature of objective laws was the hallmark of modernity proper. And that Heisenberg's introduction of the uncertainty principle at the Fifth Solvay Conference in 1927marks the end of m odernity proper and the advent of post-modernity, where the idea of universal objectivity had been undermined by physics itself. The problem that quantum physics threw up was precisely that it threw into question the clear separstion of observer from observed.

Consider that an heuristic principle or rule-of-thumb, rather than a fully elaborated historical theory. But I think it marks the boundary between the acceptance of universal objectivity and its eclipse.

Yes, good precis. So what do you think -- can we speak about "objective facts" in the post-Heisenberg world?

You seem to be identifying the idea of objectivity with naive realism. To think that there is nothing apart from the human seems unsupportable. On the other hand we have perceptual access only to what affects human senses. And we have conceptual access only to what is embodied in our common languages.

We have the concept 'objective' and it generally denotes whatever actually is independent of human perception, thought and judgement. We don't have to know just what it is, but our experience shows us that it is. It also doesn't follow that human perception, thought and judgement have no access to what is. We think that way because we rationally conceptually distinguish human experience from what is and then imagine that they are separate, which leads us to think our experience may be mistaken. But this is just a thought construction, like any other.

So, there are two points here. First, it seems inescapable, given human ignorance and confusion regarding what is really real, to think that there is nonetheless a reality, and that it should count as an objective reality. It is arguably not the objective reality as envisaged by naive realism. It may not be in itself like any system humans have envisaged. That may be because our envisaging is always in terms of our dualistic thinking. Or it may be that our intuitions do show us something of the Real. How can we know which is true?

It seems undeniable that the world presents itself to us, and to other animals, and that there are commonalties between the way animals perceive the world and the way we do. For instance we see trees bearing fruit, and we pick the fruit and eat it. Birds and other animals, including even insects, also perceive and eat the fruit (much to our dismay sometimes). This shows that we and these other species see the fruit and understand it as a source of food.

This suggests the existence of an actual world that is perceived by all and is independent of all in itself. It is also possible that consciousness is in everything, and we and the animals all see the same world due to some kind of entanglement. Or it is all in God's mind. We can imagine many possibilities, but how to tell between them? They might all be wrong, or not so much wrong, as inadequate to the reality.

It seems odd to even have to say that we and the animal share a world as well as each of us inhabiting our own perceptual Umwelts, as obvious as that seems to be. It is perhaps when our discursive, analytical minds start working on this basic perceptual human reality that we can cook up all kinds of weird and wonderful schemes, without realizing that all of those are only artefacts of the discursive mind―our rationality perhaps leading us astray.

Surely we can. Water still boils at 100c at sea level. COVID vaccination is effective. The problem is, though, that objectivity has come to be a stand-in for the idea of truth or veracity in general. There are things that are true for which objectivity is not necessarily the proper description.

Consider mathematics. It is said that mathematics is objectively true, but if 'objective' means 'inherent in the object of cognition', then I wonder if that is the proper word. Not that I can suggest an alternative. Transcendentally true might be one, but then 'transcendental' has a specific meaning in mathematics. But the very absence of alternative terms for 'objective' indicates a gap or absence in modern thought.

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

But is mathematics independent of human perception? Yes, in that mathematical proofs are not dependent on your or my assent or agreement (C S Peirce). But no, because they're only comprehensible to a rational mind capable of grasping mathematical proofs. They're not objective, but are the means we use to determine what is objective, through quantitative analysis. I think the problem here is confusing what the domain of necessary facts with that of empirical observation. Objectivity properly speaking pertains to the latter, mathematical proofs to the former. (It was Kant who identified the connection between the two by way of the synthetic a priori.)

In our post-theistic culture, there is no longer any sense of a transcendent guarantor of the veracity of natural laws ('ideas in the Divine intellect'). So we can only fall back on objectivity as the only criterion of truth - hence the gap, lacuna or absence. One of the main causes of the 'predicament of modernity'.

As a consequence, the modern mindset is deeply committed to the idea that real knowledge must come from outside the self. It must be grounded in an external, shared world (the object). Alternatives like "axiomatic" or "necessary" knowledge are seen as less grounded because they are generated internally by reason and logic, even if their conclusions are unimpeachable (hence indeterminable by empirical means.)

The fear is that if we admit that some truth is not "objective," we fall into a philosophical void where all truth is personal or cultural (relativism). By insisting on using "objective" for mathematics, we are creating a linguistic shield to protect it from being dismissed as merely a matter of convention or opinion.

In essence, the difficulty in finding an alternative highlights that we haven't yet settled on a concise, positive term that acknowledges the relational or rational nature of certain truths while retaining the unassailable veracity we associate with the term "objective."

Mathematics may be somehow inherent in nature, to be sure. Or it may be a formal abstraction from the human experience of diversity, or both. Wigner's "unreasonable effectiveness" may only relate to human experience if we assume that human experience tells us nothing about what may be beyond it.

You offer psychological explanations for what is generally believed by materialists in terms of "commitments" and "fears" and you say this constitutes a predicament of modernity. I think this is a projection, and I think the real problem is that our society is polarized. There is still plenty of religion around―in terms of traditional religious cultures and syncretic new age beliefs, and the religious are often opposed to the materialists and vice versa. Why can people not accept that we may have different faiths in the presence of unknowing?

For me, the real problem is the dogma or rational-based insistence on there being "One Truth" for all, rather than a more relaxed pluralistic acceptance of different worldviews, and the understanding that good, sensible ethics is not wedded to any particular system of metaphysical thought.

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

No, I'm not at all sure. I see mathematics along Husserlian lines as necessary structures of intentional consciousness. So neither 'in' the mind nor 'in' the world. That's the rub.

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

The 'jealous God' dies hard.

Water still boils at 100c at sea level. COVID vaccination is effective. — Wayfarer

Yes, and this is why we still need a term to use that can refer to such facts, and differentiate them from opinions and mistakes. But how does "objective" square with this?

the idea of universal objectivity had been undermined by physics itself. The problem that quantum physics threw up was precisely that it threw into question the clear separstion of observer from observed. — Wayfarer

The catch, presumably, lies in "universal". Some things remain objective, according to this account, but others are undermined because there is an observer/observed problem. 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?

BTW, I substantially agree with the thrust of this, but we need to be really clear on what we're committing to.

No, I'm not at all sure. I see mathematics along Husserlian lines as necessary structures of intentional consciousness. So neither 'in' the mind nor 'in' the world. That's the rub. — Wayfarer

Note, I said "may be, to be sure" not "is, to be sure". I think the notion of "intentional consciousness" is somewhat vague. 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? We know number is inherent in the world of experience simply because there is diversity, and there can be no diversity without number.

Potted histories don't really explain anything.

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

I still recommend The Blind Spot. I posted this link on the Forum in 2019, well before you joined, and it was thoroughly bollocksed by everyone, a complete pile-on. Nevertheless, it went on to become a book, and in my view an important one.

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

That's a very deep question. I'm studying Husserl's philosophy of mathematics. Husserl sees mathematics as absolutely necessary, ideal truth that is constituted by the universal structures of intentional consciousness, making it the transcendental condition for the possibility of objective science itself. But at the same time, he critiques Galilean science (in his Crisis of the Modern Sciences) for over-valuing the abstract and objective, at the expense of the subject to whom mathematics is meaningful. That is why Husserl and phenomenology forms the basis of many of the arguments in the Blind Spot.

Husserl sees mathematics as absolutely necessary, ideal truth that is constituted by the universal structures of intentional consciousness, — Wayfarer

I am not seeing how that is different than saying mathematics is constituted by mind.

I still recommend The Blind Spot. — Wayfarer

Thanks. I'm reading it now. So far, there are a number of important insights offered, and I can see why you value it. I also see a number of weak arguments and unquestioned assumptions. I'll say more after I finish and reflect.

I don't think we are one "hive mind" at all―look at the great differences between cultures, and the polarizations within particular cultures.

Those differences don’t preclude what I’m suggesting here. Yes there are many differences even between individuals in a family. But these differences are on the surface, the world of surfaces that we know. I’m implying there is a uniformity beneath the surface. If we look at biology we can start to see the uniformity. If we list the organs in the body we will find that they are present in most animals without exception. This is even more so when we look at internal cellular structure. Cells as we find them now have changed little in their essential structure for over a billion years.

Each tree has a unique pattern of branches and twigs, the possibilities for variation are almost infinite, so we can conclude that no two trees in the universe will be alike. But this is an approach which only sees the variation. I’m suggesting an approach from the opposite direction, that of unity, unity in life. Rather than looking for infinite variation, to look for unification. If one is able to view all life on earth as one being, one is able to follow a line of reasoning stripped bare of many of the tripping hazards in these discussions. I don’t like to get bogged down in discussions about DNA, but in essence all DNA is the same, it’s only the sequence that differs, the encoding. This encoding determines everything about the variation in the body of the being in question. Perhaps there is a uniformity beneath the workings of the DNA, there is probably a whole world to discover about how quantum theory can be applied to this. Not to mention discoveries about how life first developed and can be synthesised.

and I don't think we are locked in our own little solipsistic worlds.

I’m only suggesting this in viewing the one being (our biosphere as one being), as a whole, this being lives in a solipsistic world in it’s interactions with the neumenon of the world. All individual animals and plants are living in different aspects of that whole experience. It is solipsistic in the sense that it is an isolated arena, that of a planet in space (the sun does exert some influence).

I even think it is possible that we share some kind of collective unconscious, as Jung suggested,

Quite, but not just unconsciousness, but a common arena of activity. A common landscape, scale, temporal manifold. Take two people sitting in a restaurant eating pasta. They may have different hair clothes sauce on their food. But so much of what is going on is a shared experience and circumstance, one which may well require an underlying unity of being for it to happen.

I see Nature as endlessly creative and diverse.

None of this precludes what I am proposing. It is a diversity within an isolated arena of activity.

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

Language and politics vary tremendously, but hearts and lungs are the same everywhere.

I’m implying there is a uniformity beneath the surface. If we look at biology we can start to see the uniformity. If we list the organs in the body we will find that they are present in most animals without exception. — Punshhh

Right, but I don't see that as "uniformity, but as similarity. By 'animals' I presume you mean invertebrates. If evolution is right, then all we animals without exception, and even plants and fungi, share a common ancestor. We find repetition and difference.

I don’t like to get bogged down in discussions about DNA, but in essence all DNA is the same, it’s only the sequence that differs, the encoding. This encoding determines everything about the variation in the body of the being in question. — Punshhh

I don't think that is in line with current understanding in biology. It's now thought to be also a matter of which genes are activated―eopigenetics. Also Michael Levins works suggests other factors in play.

I’m only suggesting this in viewing the one being (our biosphere as one being), as a whole, this being lives in a solipsistic world in it’s interactions with the neumenon of the world. All individual animals and plants are living in different aspects of that whole experience. It is solipsistic in the sense that it is an isolated arena, that of a planet in space (the sun does exert some influence). — Punshhh

Yes, it is true that we are corporeally isolated from the rest of the Universe here on Earth. I am certainly not denying that we (all organisms) share a world that is in itself (as opposed to the myriad experiences of it or "Umwelts"), independent of all of us.

Quite, but not just unconsciousness, but a common arena of activity. A common landscape, scale, temporal manifold. Take two people sitting in a restaurant eating pasta. They may have different hair clothes sauce on their food. But so much of what is going on is a shared experience and circumstance, one which may well require an underlying unity of being for it to happen. — Punshhh

I think that shared experience requires an actual world, which is in various ways perceived by all.

I've lost track of what we were disagreeing about, or whether we were disagreeing at all.

"The aim of this essay is to make the case for a type of philosophical idealism, which posits mind as foundational to the nature of existence. Idealism is usually distinguished from physicalism — the view that the physical is fundamental — and the related philosophical naturalism, the view that only natural laws and forces, as depicted in the natural sciences, account for the universe."


Physical Vs Mental

The problem(or absurdity) that I arrive at with an actual physical existence is that space would need to be infinite whereas with a mental existence there would be no actual physical space but just the illusion of it. The latter, as far as I can tell, is an internal mental unfolding of four-dimensional reality that occurs within the 'mind' of the primordial(or absolute).

This results in the absolute being the only 'real' existence functioning beyond our reality as a 0-dimensional to 1-dimensional temporal construct where the three spatial dimensions are then fabricated to render the illusion.

I've lost track of what we were disagreeing about, or whether we were disagreeing at all.

I quite liked the way the thread had become a peaceful, friendly, discussion about the topic. So I went off peste about the idea of a general theory of consciousness, or mind.
What I was suggesting is that there are ways to look at the issue which do accommodate idealism etc, but which take a new approach, as opposed to the orthodox materialism, reductionism, dualism, versus monism etc etc. I gave one example, to view all life as one being, as a starting point, there are many more.

*

The problem, I think, comes when we ask which of these points of view (if any) reflect how the world really is. Is there any way to make the case that some points of view are ontologically privileged? -- that is, that they describe the world more accurately than their competitors? — J

The question in the first sentence presupposes that there is some way we can know how the world really is. But there isn't. Or rather, how the world really is depends on your point of view.

If you say "There are no fundamental notions," you have nonetheless made an important statement about what is and isn't fundamental. — J

I haven't said that there are no fundamental notions. In some cases, there clearly are. In other, there don't seem to me. Much turns on what you mean by fundamental.

As to the Wheeler diagram, it says nothing about whether the ways in which the world can be divided up are more or less in accordance with the actual structure of the world. — Janus

We need to resist the temptation to think that there is just one answer. In some cases, how we think of the world does reflect the actual structure of the world. In others, it doesn't.

Individually we inhabit the inner world of our own experience―yet that experience is always already mediated by our biology, our language, our culture, our upbringing with all its joys and traumas. Our consciousness is not by any means the entirety of our psyche. — Janus

No, we don't. We inhabit the world in which we live. Inner experience is what reveals that world to us.

that our usual construals of how the world is are useful because they're true, not vice versa -- but the problem is, truth isn't enough. — J

No, truth isn't enough. But the truths we recognize reflect our interests and our way of life. That's the something more you are looking for.

I gave one example, to view all life as one being, as a starting point, there are many more. — Punshhh

You could start there. But you could also start from viewing the world as one being. But the starting-point will depend on the project, so it's more a matter of what you do next.

I think that shared experience requires an actual world, which is in various ways perceived by all. — Janus

Definitely.

he critiques Galilean science (in his Crisis of the Modern Sciences) for over-valuing the abstract and objective, at the expense of the subject to whom mathematics is meaningful. — Wayfarer

It is true that the new science was set up to remove the subject from the description of the world. But it failed, of course, because the presence of the subject is revealed in the description.

a new approach, as opposed to the orthodox materialism, reductionism, dualism, versus monism etc etc. — Punshhh

I think the problem may go deeper than that. As things stand, if you developed a new approach, a label would be slapped on it, and it would join the list you gave. It's easy to see why - a label is very convenient short-hand and makes it easier to argue about it in the familiar confrontational, binary, ways.

The question in the first sentence presupposes that there is some way we can know how the world really is. But there isn't. Or rather, how the world really is depends on your point of view. — Ludwig V

I think the question presupposes not so much that there is some way, but that the question can be meaningfully asked, and is important. We want to know whether any point of view can be said to describe the way the world really is. You may be right that there is not. But we both know there's a lot more to say than just "depends on your point of view." If my point of view is such that aliens have secretly replaced my family, that is not how the world really is.

If you say "There are no fundamental notions," you have nonetheless made an important statement about what is and isn't fundamental.
— J
I haven't said that there are no fundamental notions. In some cases, there clearly are. In other, there don't seem to me. Much turns on what you mean by fundamental. — Ludwig V

Sorry, I didn't mean "you" but rather the British "one." There are those who argue against the idea of fundamental notions.

Yes, the meaning of "fundamental" is in play here. For Sider, what's fundamental is structure, grounding. Maybe we should have a new thread focusing on his ideas.

that our usual construals of how the world is are useful because they're true, not vice versa -- but the problem is, truth isn't enough.
— J
No, truth isn't enough. But the truths we recognize reflect our interests and our way of life. That's the something more you are looking for. — Ludwig V

Perhaps. That's the standard quasi-pragmatic or perspectival response. If we compare a "bizarre truth" such as the grue-and-bleen people say, with "The sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees", we're supposed to conclude that the only reason the latter truth is more important than the former is because it reflects our interests and our way of life. Sider would disagree. So would I, in many but not all cases.

Individually we inhabit the inner world of our own experience―yet that experience is always already mediated by our biology, our language, our culture, our upbringing with all its joys and traumas. Our consciousness is not by any means the entirety of our psyche. — Janus

No, we don't. We inhabit the world in which we live. Inner experience is what reveals that world to us. — Ludwig V

What I meant was that each of inhabits an individual Umwelt. Others of course appear there. We know that others have their own Umwelts, and we also know they see what we see, and from this we know (leaving aside radical scepticism which is fuelled by mere linguistically imagined
possibilities) that there is a real world distinct from all our Umwelts. We experience, and only experience, that world via our Umwelts (world models). So for me it is meaningless to say that our experience gives us no true picture of the real. It doesn't give us a complete picture, but that is a different consideration.

So here are some reflections on “The Blind Spot”:

Frank focuses on two “intractable problems,” scientific objectivism and physicalism. He’s very good on physicalism, giving us (as many others have) the philosophical reasons we should not be physicalists. What’s interesting is that one of his main arguments against physicalism ought to give him pause when he talks about objectivism and experience. He say, “If ‛physical reality’ means reality according to some future and complete physics, then the claim that there is nothing but physical reality is empty, because we have no idea what such a future physics will look like . . .”

I think much the same thing can be said concerning Frank’s conception of “experience” -- that it is an empty claim, because on his usage we have no idea what “non-experience” would be.

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.

This seems tendentious to me. Generally speaking, that is not how we use the word. I don’t say, “I experienced a theory last night.” We usually divide our conscious life into what we personally experience, and what we might know or theorize that is beyond that experience. To understand is, in a trivial sense, to have an experience, but the tension lies in the fact that the very concept of “understand” is supposed to transcend that experience. If it doesn’t, then we haven’t actually understood. Are there perspectives on the Pythagorean theorem, in the same way there are perspectives on sunlight?

So we need to be able to say that we can understand things we can’t experience, that understanding is not a form of experience except by fiat. Now it is possible to stipulate that “experience” needs to cover absolutely everything, but then Frank’s point becomes merely a linguistic one. Yes, if experience means everything we know, then we can’t know anything we don’t experience. But we want a metaphysical conclusion, not a linguistic one. Is it in fact the case that we can’t know anything that isn’t experienced? Is knowledge itself an experience? My having such knowledge, perhaps, but the knowledge itself? Is “objective knowledge” really the same thing as “knowledge I don’t experience”?

Now 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. Trivially, we can’t know what things look like when there’s no one to look at them except God (and even God can be left out, so no one at all is looking). But that is not because our experience somehow changes them. It’s because the concept is empty, since it lacks any intuitions. At least since Kant, we’ve had to acknowledge that “how things really are” in that sense is unknowable and/or meaningless. But when a chemist shows me the molecular structure of water, I don’t for a moment believe she is talking about that kind of objectivity. I suppose we could add a footnote to every single statement of objective fact which said something like, “But this of course depends on whether there are really atoms and fields and . . .” but again, this strikes me as way beside the scientific point.

Frank’s position leads him to say, “‛Objective’ simply means something that’s true to the observations agreed upon by a community of investigators using certain tools.” Why? Because “science is essentially a highly refined form of human experience.” But that can’t be the whole story. Even leaving aside my objections to Frank’s totalizing use of “experience,” we’re asked to accept that, were the observations and tools of our community of investigators different, we would have a different set of objective facts. This is surely wrong. The scientific project is a two-way, up-and-down street. Scientists begin with their tools and observations, yes, but then compare their experimental results and theoretical postulates, and revise accordingly. Something is not “objective” because everyone currently agrees about it. Pushing back hard on this is central to what science does.

I’d like to quote Thomas Nagel here, because as usual I find his take on this problem to be closer to how I understand it. This is from The View from Nowhere:

Only a dogmatic verificationist would deny the possibility of forming objective concepts that reach beyond our current capacity to apply them. The aim of reaching a conception of the world which does not put us at the center in any way requires the formation of such concepts. We are supported in such an aim by a kind of intellectual optimism: the belief that we possess an open-ended capacity for understanding what we have not yet conceived, and that it can be called into operation by detaching from our present understanding and trying to reach a higher-order view which explains it as part of the world. . . .

It is the same with the mind. To accept the general idea of a perspective without limiting it to the forms with which one is familiar, subjectively or otherwise, is the precondition of seeking ways to conceive of particular types of experience that do not depend on the ability either to have those experiences or to imagine them subjectively. It should be possible to investigate in this way the quality-structure of some sense we do not have, for example, by observing creatures who do have it – even though the understanding we can reach is only partial.

But if we could do that, we should also be able to apply the same general idea to ourselves, and thus to analyze our experiences in ways that can be understood without having had such experiences. That would constitute a kind of objective standpoint toward our own minds. — The View from Nowhere, 24-5

We should note that Nagel qualifies this in an important way. “Something will inevitably be lost,” he says – namely, what it is like to have the subjective experience. “No objective conception of the mental world can include it all.” But do we ask the objective viewpoint to include everything, or only (only!) to understand everything? This is where I think Frank goes wrong. He conceives of “experience” in such a way that there is no differentiation between these two modes of grasping reality.

Lastly, I think Frank is biasing the case when he speaks about science as if it’s a finished project. He 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. Why? Why would anyone think we were anywhere near the end of scientific inquiry? We’ve all noticed this tendency in loose talk about Modern Science and its supposed pinnacles, but I’m surprised Frank indulges in it.

Well, that’s a lot, but I wanted you to know that I read the piece carefully, and I appreciate your pointing it out to me.

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

True - but I think this comes from the way the term has been used in phenomenology and in consciousness studies discourse. Me, I think it's actually a more familiar term for what elsewhere might be better designated 'being'. But then, the term 'being' is (as Aristotle famously says) 'used in many ways', so you already have considerable risk of equivocation.

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

But then, the next section is devoted to the 'Parable of Temperature', which begins with the sensation of hot and cold, but then proceeds through a series of abstractions to the point where the thermodynamic termperature is said to be more fundamental than the experience of hot and cold

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

Who is this "we?"

Sir Roger Penrose, surely an esteemed scientist, is actually a good counter-example to the claim that objectivity no longer means anything like “unvarnished reality.” Penrose has repeatedly argued that quantum mechanics must be wrong or at least deeply incomplete precisely because it fails to give a clear, observer-independent account of 'what is really there'. In other words, for him the problem with quantum theory is not empirical adequacy but that it is ontologically opaque. That suggests that the demand for a God’s-eye level of description is not a straw man imported by philosophers — it is alive and well inside physics itself. In that sense, what Frank calls the “blind spot” is not a misunderstanding of science but a tension within the scientific community itself (and Penrose is far from alone in this demand.)

Furthermore, quantum physics, in which both Adam Frank and co-author Marcello Gleiser have expertise, is an excellent case in point about the limitations of objectivity and the role of consensus. The fact that there are competing and incommensurable interpretations of the same objective set of facts is illustrative of that. People talk of the 'many worlds community' (of which David Deutsch is the patron saint.) They devote a whole chapter to qm and to the vexed question of interpretations (noting that none are necessary to actually applying it.) They point out that many scientists will defend the (to me, obviously preposteious) 'many worlds interpretation' BECAUSE it appears to support complete objectivity. '“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.

But thanks for those detailed comments, it's reminded me to return to this book for a more thorough reading. Because I've been predisposed to it, I've skimmed quite a bit, but they really do put a lot of flesh on the bones.