Then you contradicted yourself. You said doubt is like jello, there is always room for it... but apparently not for cogito ergo sum according to you. — intrapersona

I just assumed that everybody in the discussion would agree that necessary truths are exempt from global skepticism. Although, one could argue that this isn't so, I wouldn't.

Is it not possible to arrive at that conclusion without reason alone? — intrapersona

Uh.... what?

What I'm describing is known as a recursive self-assembling analog "scalar" logic and they say the first thing you learn about systems logic is half the world has no clue such a thing is possible. That includes the English speaking half of the world because classical logic is way too dualistic and digital. Unfortunately, digital just doesn't cut it when you start talking about extreme contexts such as the countless neurons in your brain.

E=MC2 is simple due to the recursive nature of the logic involved and it should be possible to reformulate Relativity and quantum mechanics as a systems logic that reconciles the two. Poetry in motion and crap rolling downhill can be considered the analog and digital perspectives or wave and particle. Poetry in motion is the lowest possible energy state of the system with a car in idyll being a good example because the lowest energy state can leap faster into any higher one.

I think perhaps we are thinking about different aspects of the problem of objectivity. I was alluding to what sometimes seems to be taken as the 'ultimate' or absolute nature of objectivity, that 'objectivity' signifies the idea that things simply (materially or physically) exist 'in themselves'. This idea is often taken for granted, perhaps it is a kind of fundamental intuition, but we don't really know what it means.

I wasn't trying to suggest that there is any significant degree of difficulty in making a distinction between subjective and objective in the ordinary sense of everyday usage.

I can't really see what DMT has to do with this discussion. What is experienced, according to my own experience at least, under the influence of DMT is strange, for sure, but not incomprehensible. If an experience were really incomprehensible to you, then it would be as nothing, and you could not remember anything about it at all; it would not even count as an experience that is.

I'm not too sure what you mean by "two parallel evolutions" Punshhh, are you thinking of something like cultural vs natural evolution?

Not only religions but physics as well. Such as the hypothesised 11-dimensions of string theory/m-theory etc. — intrapersona

OK, but the 'greater reality' I had in mind would be a greater dimension of possible experience. And I don't think String theory qualifies; it is nothing more than a mathematical theory. Really the same goes for QM and Relativity. We cannot directly experience, or even visualize, the warping of three-dimensional space-time, for example.

OK, but the 'greater reality' I had in mind would be a greater dimension of possible experience. And I don't think String theory qualifies; it is nothing more than a mathematical theory. Really the same goes for QM and Relativity. We cannot directly experience, or even visualize, the warping of three-dimensional space-time, for example. — John

I would say our experience of (what we call) gravity just is our experience of space-time curvature under General Relativity. Similarly, if we live in a quantum world and not a classical Newtonian world then the quantum world is what we always experience. We may have trouble making sense of our experience sometimes (for example, with the double-slit experiment) but that is really an issue of our knowledge not our experience.

I disagree for two reasons. Firstly, we don't experience space-time as being curved; we experience the 'weight' of gravity, and the curvature of space-time is just an explanation for our experience of that 'weight' (amongst other things). Likewise we don't experience the world as Quantum mechanics tells us it 'really is'.

Secondly, the advents of those theories have not, in themselves, (as opposed to technological advances that may be associated with them) expanded our realm of experience.

One might add that experiences have a hierarchical structure which goes all the way from what fundamental physics describes to the objects and states of affairs that we see, hear etc..

We can't experience each and every part of it, only those that an organism can detect, such as the presence of photons and the objects which emit or reflect photons into the visual field and system of the organism. But we can identify other parts dervivatively, and deduce that without this structure there would be neither objects and states of affairs, nor visual experiences of them.
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I disagree for two reasons. Firstly, we don't experience space-time as being curved; we experience the 'weight' of gravity, and the curvature of space-time is just an explanation for our experience of that 'weight' (amongst other things). — John

Most of the time we would just say that Alice fell off the cliff rather than invoke scientific terms like "gravity" or "space-time curvature". But on the view that our experience is of the world as it really is, a scientific description is simply a description of our experience at a more complex level of abstraction. That's the hierarchical structure that jkop mentions above.

So I guess I'm curious whether you are intending to make some kind of experiential/real distinction here or else would agree with the above.

Likewise we don't experience the world as Quantum mechanics tells us it 'really is'. — John

What would our experience be like if we were to experience the world as Quantum Mechanic describes it?

Secondly, the advents of those theories have not, in themselves, (as opposed to technological advances that may be associated with them) expanded our realm of experience. — John

True, those theories have simply expanded our understanding of our experience.

You are conflating what it might be thought that what we experience 'really' is, with what we experience it (whatever it might be) as.

Put another way, in Sellarsian terms, you are dissolving the distinction between the scientific and the manifest images.

Right, I reject Sellar's distinction and representational realism generally.

Anyway thanks - that clarifies for me the view you hold now.

Though I'm not sure how your claim that "we experience the 'weight' of gravity" works on this distinction. Is that a manifest image claim (but then why the scientific term "gravity")?

I don't see that there's a necessary connection between Sellar's distinction and representational realism. Husserl pointed to the same phenomenon, that science cannot explain human life as it is lived, in the Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.

To me it seems to be simply an undeniable phenomenological fact that we cannot understand our own behavior in terms of causes, but instead we understand it in terms of reasons; a fact which is attached to no particular metaphysics but is despite all of them. The response: "because of neuronal activity in my brain" is never going to be a satisfying, or even really an intelligible, answer to the question "why did you go to the shop?".

I think we do experience a force that acts on our bodies that we call 'gravity'. This is so whatever we might think, or come to think, the explanatory mechanism of gravity is. The Greeks of antiquity, the Aboriginals of Australia and the ancient Chaldeans all felt it just as surely as we do. Of course they would not have called it 'gravity'; they would have had other names for that bodily feeling of being acted upon by some force or power.

I don't see that there's a necessary connection between Sellar's distinction and representational realism. Husserl pointed to the same phenomenon, that science cannot explain human life as it is lived, in the Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.

To me it seems to be simply an undeniable phenomenological fact that we cannot understand our own behavior in terms of causes, but instead we understand it in terms of reasons; a fact which is attached to no particular metaphysics but is despite all of them. The response: "because of neuronal activity in my brain" is never going to be a satisfying, or even really an intelligible, answer to the question "why did you go to the shop?". — John

I agree. But I think that Sellar's distinction assumes and reinforces a particular (Humean) idea of science and causality that leads to just the kinds of concerns you raise. Whereas something like the Aristotelian idea of causality can better capture the notion of reasons and explanations that are relevant to human life as it is lived. On this view, the sciences are a natural extension of what we do every day rather than something that is a distinctly separate kind of activity with different objects of interest.

I think we do experience a force that acts on our bodies that we call 'gravity'. This is so whatever we might think, or come to think, the explanatory mechanism of gravity is. The Greeks of antiquity, the Aboriginals of Australia and the ancient Chaldeans all felt it just as surely as we do. Of course they would not have called it 'gravity'; they would have had other names for that bodily feeling of being acted upon by some force or power. — John

Would you similarly say that you experience a force that pushes you back in your seat when you are in a car that suddenly accelerates?

It seems to me that we can feel like we are being pushed back in our seats (or are being pulled towards the ground) without also supposing that we are experiencing an actual force that acts on our bodies.

I actually do agree with what you write in your first paragraph; I think Sellars is ultimately aiming at the primacy of science. And I do agree that science is an extension of lived experience; it's just that when it leads to the objectification of the human (which it inevitably seems to) it has separated itself (and us, if we follow it) from lived experience. You may not agree, but for me the most important part of lived experience consists in spiritual experience; and science endangers that dimension of human life by excoriating it as 'mere superstition' and exiling it from its conception (and by extension any 'respectable' conception) of human life.

Would you similarly say that you experience a force that pushes you back in your seat when you are in a car that suddenly accelerates?

It seems to me that we can feel like we are being pushed back in our seats (or are being pulled towards the ground) without also supposing that we are experiencing an actual force that acts on our bodies. — Andrew M

You've raised a tricky point. Are the push-back of acceleration and the push-down of gravity experienced, or merely conceived, as external forces? You say we need not suppose "that we are experiencing an actual force that acts on our bodies". On immediate impulse I want to say 'actual' in this context just means 'acting upon', so the phenomenological question becomes 'do we feel acted upon?'. I would say we do insofar as we experience something that is not volitional; the pushing is not experienced as something we are doing, but something which is done to us by 'something else'.

That's my cursory take on it, anyway, but it is very much based only on preliminary consideration; so I am certainly open to other thoughts that may move in different directions.

Uh.... what? — Mongrel

Is it possible to arrive at to the conclusion "I think therefor I am" without using reason alone.

I can't really see what DMT has to do with this discussion. What is experienced, according to my own experience at least, under the influence of DMT is strange, for sure, but not incomprehensible. If an experience were really incomprehensible to you, then it would be as nothing, and you could not remember anything about it at all; it would not even count as an experience that is. — John

It has everything to do with the discussion, perhaps you just haven't read enough trip reports yet.
You said:
"but we have no idea what it could be to wake from our reality to some other reality that wasn't either a displacement/ and or extension of our reality or something so incomprehensible that we could not even make sense of it let alone alone deem it to be a reality that would make our ordinary experience a dream."

It would be true of an experiencer to say something like this which is nearly identical to what you just wrote:

"Via dmt we can wake from our reality to some other reality that is a displacement and or extension of our reality. It is something so incomprehensible that we can not even make sense of it let alone alone deem it to be a reality that would make our ordinary experience seem like a dream."

How you can't see the parallels is beyond me. Maybe you have no faith in it's use or feel that because it is outlawed that it is worthless in this discussion.

OK, but the 'greater reality' I had in mind would be a greater dimension of possible experience. And I don't think String theory qualifies; it is nothing more than a mathematical theory. Really the same goes for QM and Relativity. We cannot directly experience, or even visualize, the warping of three-dimensional space-time, for example. — John

Nothing more than a mathematical theory? Is that people who take DMT all report seeing visuals that are akin to the visual computation models of this mathematical theory (see video) as well as report travelling to an extra dimensions.



Now, If there was no correlation between the molecule and higher dimensions or even mathematical models... (as I know you want to say there isn't) then what would be the case is that people would be seeing all sorts of weird, mutated, distorted objects that are not discreetly defined, have no intelligible pattern and bare no resemblance to a highly ordered mathematical theory about multi-dimensionality... errr which is the exact opposite.

What is even more curious is that it is a naturally occurring alkaloid in your brain and among many other animals and trees of which we don't know it's function or purpose in them.

You say that "We cannot directly experience, or even visualize, the warping of three-dimensional space-time, for example." but you forget to take in to account you are working with an operating system within your mind. This is a default state coupled with many years of conditioning via education. Psychedelic substance change the way the brain operates to an extensive and intense degree (multiple areas of the brain disabled and activated coupled with firing rates changed like alpha delta beta etc.) to the point where majority of people are reporting being able to visualize the warping of three-dimensional space-time among many other things. The problem is once their brain returns to baseline function, they can't integrate what they experienced and have no ability to think about it anymore. Similar to how if you install a new operating system you can run programs on it but if you revert the operating system to the old one those programs won't function on it anymore.

I have never seen it when I have ingested DMT. And even if I had I don't see how it would prove String Theory to be anything more than a mathematical model. Other than that, I don't know what point you are trying to make.

This is all nonsense, I'm sorry to say. I have taken DMT numerous time, and I've read DMT: the Spirit Molecule, and I've read quite a few "trip reports". If an experience is utterly incomprehensible to us, then it is worthless, and cannot prove anything about anything at all.

Then perhaps you didn't ingest enough and you are right, it wouldn't prove String Theory to be anything more than a mathematical model BUT it does say something is going on. There are relationships, correlations that can't be ignored.

It's almost like if a child complains his teeth hurt, there is no evidence but a child's own testimony. Yet we have theories about how at this age a child's teeth hurts because of tooth rot or a double set of teeth or something (hypothetical). Now, you are saying that the child's testimony isn't worth even considering, that it doesn't help us in our quest to scientifically identify the cause of teeth pain in children of that age. Actually, if there were no testimonies we wouldn't have clues to it's importance. And likewise with DMT, if we didn't have so many congruent testimonies about the experience of dimensions and the visualisations of the CGI of these mathematical constructs while under it's influence then we wouldn't have clues to the likelihood of string theory being relevant and more likely to be true.

"If an experience is utterly incomprehensible to us, then it is worthless, and cannot prove anything about anything at all." <- that is not true. The experience is incomprehensible and therefor causes dramatic shifts in perception which in turn causes dramatic changes in a persons life. There is a plethora of people reporting DMT healing their lives after would in ceremonies in south america drinking it in a brew called ayahuasca. Lindsay Lohan being one of them. I hope this shows you the incomprehnsible can change our lives because you are dependent on an incomprehensible system to begin with (the unconscious mind) which is making the decision you think you are making and which is being effected by these drug experiences which you are labelling as "useless" all because you think you aren't effected by the incomprehensible.

After reading what you wrote, I doubt we mean the same thing by "incomprehensible". So, we'll just be talking past each other if we continue.

using terms of reference that derive their whole sense from a context that assumes a reality, in a claim that purports to be skeptical about that whole reality (global skepticism), is to be inconsistent. — John

Why is it inconsistent? Just because the terms use the context of an assumed reality that can be doubted?

Einstein once said "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough"

But keep going until it is simple enough for my simple mind to understand ;)

That is just a cheap way to say "I think you are right, but I am too prideful to concede" — intrapersona

It's really not; it's a polite way of saying that I don't have any interest in pursuing this any further. I know what I mean, and I know what I think, and whether you don't understand it, or do understand it and don't agree with it; either way it's just fine with me.

I'm not too sure what you mean by "two parallel evolutions" Punshhh, are you thinking of something like cultural vs natural evolution?

I mean the evolutions of the spirit(soul) and the body(world).

I actually do agree with what you write in your first paragraph; I think Sellars is ultimately aiming at the primacy of science. And I do agree that science is an extension of lived experience; it's just that when it leads to the objectification of the human (which it inevitably seems to) it has separated itself (and us, if we follow it) from lived experience. You may not agree, but for me the most important part of lived experience consists in spiritual experience; and science endangers that dimension of human life by excoriating it as 'mere superstition' and exiling it from its conception (and by extension any 'respectable' conception) of human life. — John

I think those are really philosophical issues rather than statements about science itself. In its most basic form, science is methodological naturalism, which can be effectively practiced regardless of the philosophical views that the scientist (or the consumer of science) brings to it.

So, in that sense, there is no undermining of lived experience from science, but there may well be from philosophy.

You've raised a tricky point. Are the push-back of acceleration and the push-down of gravity experienced, or merely conceived, as external forces? You say we need not suppose "that we are experiencing an actual force that acts on our bodies". On immediate impulse I want to say 'actual' in this context just means 'acting upon', so the phenomenological question becomes 'do we feel acted upon?'. I would say we do insofar as we experience something that is not volitional; the pushing is not experienced as something we are doing, but something which is done to us by 'something else'. — John

Yes, so the question then is what is the 'something else'? In the case of the car's acceleration, it isn't an invisible force that is pushing us back into the seat, it is the seat (attached to the car) that is pushing us from behind. Similarly our experience of gravity isn't as an invisible force pushing us down (per Newton), it is the ground that is pushing us from below (due to space-time curvature caused by the earth's mass).

I think those are really philosophical issues rather than statements about science itself. In its most basic form, science is methodological naturalism, which can be effectively practiced regardless of the philosophical views that the scientist (or the consumer of science) brings to it.

So, in that sense, there is no undermining of lived experience from science, but there may well be from philosophy. — Andrew M

I agree it is not science per se that leads to devaluation and attenuation of lived experience it is scientism; which as you rightly point out is philosophy, not science.But, the problem is that the rise of science has inexorably led to the rise of scientism; and scientism has permeated the thinking of the woman or man in the street.

It seems kind of ironic that practitioners of science are called scientists, because a scientist is an adherent of scientism. So practitioners of science would better be called 'sciencers', perhaps. This would relegate science to an activity; instead of framing it as an overarching bestower of correct world views, which it has become in the popular, as well as arguably, the academic imagination.

Yes, so the question then is what is the 'something else'? In the case of the car's acceleration, it isn't an invisible force that is pushing us back into the seat, it is the seat (attached to the car) that is pushing us from behind. Similarly our experience of gravity isn't as an invisible force pushing us down (per Newton), it is the ground that is pushing us from below (due to space-time curvature caused by the earth's mass). — Andrew M

I don't see how this account can be right. If I am in a vehicle that accelerates powerfully and if I am leaning forward with my body out of contact with the seat, I am pushed back into the seat.

Likewise if I jump off a cliff I will as though I am being inexorably pulled down, although I am not in contact with the Earth at all.

The way the physical world (including our bodies) behaves, as science has described in great detail, is as a fully integrated cohesive material realm, which unswervingly adheres to the processes described by science as spacetime, gravity, mass, spin, motion etc. However, acknowledging this, or disputing aspects of it doesn't address the question in the OP. That from the stand point of our being, it could simply be a world we experience due to a tuning in, or orientation of our being. Whereas it might be the case that the orientation of our being could be altered, or adjusted resulting in our experiencing an entirely seperate world, or worlds, rather like our experience of being in another world when dreaming, is an alteration in some way of our experience of being in a realm.

I know that a dream is illogical, surreal and we wake from it. But it is not proposed that a dream is equivalent to our world, only that it is an illustration of our being experiencing a different realm, which seems entirely real during that experience. This being the case, it is quite natural to consider that upon death, or attaining enlightenment, we would experience a change in the orientation of our being equivalent to switching channels into another real world, heaven, or a newly born baby, for example. That this real world we know, is just one channel, or frequency and our being, as a receiver could simply be tuned in to another channel, if one could find and operate the switch.

The way the physical world (including our bodies) behaves, as science has described in great detail, is as a fully integrated cohesive material realm, which unswervingly adheres to the processes described by science as spacetime, gravity, mass, spin, motion etc. — Punshhh

If that were true then wouldn't we have a theory of everything?

There are a lot of unsolved problems in physics.

Not necessarily, I was talking only of the physical world in that comment. Also by "world" I mean what we find when we are born, a physical realm, one which can be experienced in many ways, this does not require an explanation of its existence. So what science is doing I suppose is describing what we find and how what we experience seems to be happening.