What's curious here is why we even have the capacity to do physics at all, and also why the universe seems to be "built" in such a way that math can see into her secrets.

It doesn't make sense in terms of a survival purpose.

It is not so much a matter of "beginning with the subject" in my view, but of forming a distinction between appearance and reality. For Kant, we can know only appearances, but he also was the first to show that we can know what are the necessary conditions for any knowledge of appearances. — Janus

The fundamental premise of phenomenology is that there is nothing but appearance. No veil between what is ( the thing in itself) and what seems to be. The appearance IS the thing in itself.

Modern physics is not anthropocentric, other than in the definitional sense that any human inquiry is anthropocentric in that it is an inquiry by the anthropos, by us. The notion of the human is a "derived abstraction" as are all notions altogether, including those of Heidegger, Derrida, etc. — Janus

Modern physics , to the extent that it accepts a form of realism, assumes a split between what appears to a subject and reality. There is the remnant here of Descartes’ res cogito, which is traceable back to medieval theology as the soul which reality appears before. Anthropos is the knowing , feeling subject, the ineffable internality making the hard problem hard. The empirical notion of the human , as a concatenation of physical bits, implies the conscious experience of the meaning of this concatenation, the awareness of the bits that belong to the real.

By abstraction I mean entities such as objects having spatial extension and temporal duration. They are ideal entities, intended as having no ‘subjectivity’ within themselves but instead only enduring properties. What is abstracted away , and attributes to the ‘subject’, is the pragmatic relevance which allows them to appear as what they are in the first place. Derrida and Heidegger don’t abstract away the relevance in a subject, but begin from the irreducible relation, which is neither subject nor object but the in-between.

This wasn't a refutation at all, just a simple assertion. But it's really a defeatist attitude. If we say that reality extends beyond our capacities of sensation (and what science shows us is that it does), yet we claim that reason has not the capacity to understand this reality, then we render science as impotent. Science uses hypotheses to understand what is beyond the limitations of sensation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Science is accepted because it works. We can make observations and measure and model the world as it appears to us. We can think in terms of causation and imagine ways in which the things of the observed world and their observed parts and functions might work. Then we can think of what we would expect to observe if our hypotheses were right, and if, on experimentation, we do observe what we predicted, then we accept our hypotheses, and they become established as theories. None of this relies on any belief that we can know the nature of things in any "absolute" sense.

The fundamental premise of phenomenology is that there is nothing but appearance. No veil between what is ( the thing in itself) and what seems to be. The appearance IS the thing in itself. — Joshs

Sure, you might say that for phenomenology a thing is the sum of all its possible appearances, and nothing beyond that. On the other hand, it is always possible that things are constituted in ways that do not, even cannot, appear to us. Of course we can also say that that possibility is of no relevance to us at all. These are all possible ways of thinking about it.

Modern physics , to the extent that it accepts a form of realism, assumes a split between what appears to a subject and reality. — Joshs

I don't think this is true, or least not necessarily true. There are many physicists and they no doubt have different ideas about what is real. All that has to be accepted is what appears to our observations, and the testing of the explanations that can be imagined and modeled.

By abstraction I mean entities such as objects having spatial extension and temporal duration. They are ideal entities, intended as having no ‘subjectivity’ within themselves but instead only enduring properties. — Joshs

These are concrete entities that can be measured, studied and modeled, not "abstract" entities. Of course they are appearances, but they are concrete appearances, not abstractions. It is our ideas, our models, of them that are abstractions. Now, that is one way of thinking about the situation, and there are others of course. But they are all just ways of thinking with their different starting assumptions. There are no presuppositonless ways of thinking.

What's curious here is why we even have the capacity to do physics at all, and also why the universe seems to be "built" in such a way that math can see into her secrets.

It doesn't make sense in terms of a survival purpose. — Manuel

But does math really "see into her secrets"? We seem to be able to model things mathematically and make extraordinarily accurate predictions. We accept such modeling if it works (if what is predicted is what is observed). Now imagine reducing those modeling processes back to their basic levels, of say predicting how hunted animals will behave, how traps will work, what are the most effective sizes and shapes of weapons and other implements or what effects burning will have on the landscape, and so on and we can see that it makes very good sense in terms of survival.

as evident by knowledge derived through fundamental particle physics / astrophysics, evolutionary molecular biology, pure mathematics (e.g. Lie Groups, Number Theory, Axiomatic Set Theory), as examples, which we cannot perceive directly (via "intuition") and are "beyond" human experience. — 180 Proof

Kant would agree with you that we have knowledge of the empirical, and analytic and/ or synthetic a priori knowledge in the form of logic and mathematics. Does any of this, insofar as these are all human activities, say anything about anything beyond the human domain, though?

Well, correct. I think math helps us discover some of the abstract structural characteristics of the universe. But it doesn't apply well to things well beyond it's scope in physics (biological beings).

I think the inner nature of nature (pardon the redundancy) will remain a secret, beyond our understanding. But, that's idiosyncratic.

Without dialectics and dialogue no perspective can be seen. Localized interactions are an a priori to get a focus on reality and perceive depth. Without them, reality stays a fuzzy, out of focus, superposition of potential possibilities without depth.

I think the inner nature of nature (pardon the redundancy) will remain a secret, beyond our understanding. But, that's idiosyncratic. — Manuel

I agree; all we have are various ideas about what we are able to imagine as possibilities. We can say the whole question is irrelevant, incoherent or even meaningless, but that would just be another idea.

I think the inner nature of nature (pardon the redundancy) will remain a secret, beyond our understanding. But, that's idiosyncratic. — Manuel

Why do you think we can know the innermost fundaments of nature. Why should nature hold secrets?

]

Pretty much. All we have in the end is speculation.



Why shouldn't it? Strictly speaking, nature holds no secret. We just don't have the necessary equipment (brain/mind) to pierce through all the layers it may have.

Why shouldn't it? — Manuel

Yes indeed. I wrote "we can know" which had to be "we can't know". So, why you think we don't have the necessary equipment? I think we get a pretty good view on nature. Even the smallest can be visualized.

Word are merely the final stage in consolidating a set of ideas that begin as felt intuitions. I can tell you that these intuitions had a profound effect on me , guiding my thinking implicitly well before I was able to make them explicit with words. — Joshs

I've had the same kind of experiences you have - experiencing things without naming them or putting them into words. I don't call those "concepts" until they are put into words. People often need words before they even become aware of the experience. They certainly need them to communicate the experience to others or even to put it into a form that you can process yourself using reason. Whatever it is you end up with when you put something into words, it is not the same as the experience. You've created something new. You've taken a experience and jammed it into the boxes that fit.

I think babies are born with some instincts and a lot of built in capacities, but they have to learn about anything specific. I think intuition is learned, not innate. Language, learning the names for things, is an important part of the process.

Well we would be us judging ourselves, so it would make sense to be impressed with what we know. Which, I admit, is quite a bit. For an "evolved" ape, it's very impressive.

But there's no reason to believe that we have all the faculties needed to know everything. That would be almost religious, God-ish thinking, imo.

We are natural beings, with limitations, as all are creatures in nature. It has to be the case.

If we had no limits, we wouldn't have any scope. Thus we wouldn't be able to do any inquiries.

But this line of thinking simply denies that there is anything "there" in some emphatic, irresistible way. I may not know what things are, but THAT they are, notwithstanding "are" being interpretatively indeterminate, is impossible to deny. — Constance

This really makes no sense. You say "I know that things are", but "are" you say, has a completely indeterminate meaning. How can you possibly know that things "are", when you cannot know what "are" means. Your statement is basic contradiction "I know that things "are', but I don\t know what 'are' means".

We can think in terms of causation and imagine ways in which the things of the observed world and their observed parts and functions might work. Then we can think of what we would expect to observe if our hypotheses were right, and if, on experimentation, we do observe what we predicted, then we accept our hypotheses, and they become established as theories. — Janus

I think you're missing something here. When a hypothesis produces a prediction which works, this does not necessarily mean that the hypothesis ought to be accepted. Prediction is mostly produced from observation of temporal patterns, statistics, and mathematics, and a hypothesis generally goes far beyond the simple mathematics. So for example, imagine that I watch the sun rise and set day after day, and I produce a hypothesis, that a giant dragon takes the sun in its mouth around the back side of the earth, and spits it out every morning. I might predict the exact place and time that the sun will rise, and insist that my theory has been proven by my uncanny predictions. Clearly though, the successful predictions are nothing more than successful predictions, and my hypothesis hasn't been proven at all.

Therefore we must consider the logical relationship between the hypothesis and the prediction. It's very easy to be fooled into thinking that a certain prediction proves a specific hypothesis, when in reality we have to rule out all other possible competing hypotheses which could equally be said to be proven by the same prediction. This is a logical process which is crucial in designing experiments.

Clearly though, the successful predictions are nothing more than successful predictions, and my hypothesis hasn't been proven at all. — Metaphysician Undercover

You misunderstand the nature of science; hypotheses are never proven, if by proven you mean rendered absolutely certain. Hypotheses, even established theories, are always provisional.

We (the community of inquirers) accept theories for as long as observations continue to manifest what is predicted of those theories.

Is that all that language does is ‘say’ what ‘is’? Doesn’t language PRODUCE what is rather than merely express an already extant ‘it’? By language we don’t have to limit ourselves to words. Derrida said there is nothing outside of text , but he didn’t mean
symbolic language. He meant to include pre-linguistic perception , affect and valuation. This self that comes back to itself via a detour through the other is already a kind of pre-verbal language game. Could not the divine or the Good reproduce itself always differently through this enacting of subjectivity? — Joshs

If I take you correctly, since there is no interpretative standard that can stand as a center to deny one over ay other perspective, then each perspective is thereby no less real or proper or privileged than any other, and I find this kind of stunningly right. BUT: value, ethics, affectivity, aesthetics: this dimension of the world is, using the best term available, absolute. "Centers" are interpretative variables. My sprained ankle is, qua painful, not an interpretative event.
The divine reproduce itself differently? I don't think I follow. Things, affairs can always be different from what they are. Accidents, is the old term. But it is impossible, I hold, that pain can be recontextualized out of its, as best one could say, badness.

You misunderstand the nature of science; hypotheses are never proven, — Janus

Isn't that exactly what I said, predictions do not prove hypotheses? So why do you think it constitutes a misunderstanding?

We (the community of inquirers) accept theories for as long as observations continue to manifest what is predicted of those theories. — Janus

What you express here is a mistake. As in my example, it's a mistake to accept hypotheses solely on the basis of successful prediction, because it's not the hypothesis which enables the prediction, it's the mathematics which does. There's a common form of trickery in which the deceiver uses mathematics to make predictions, and claims that the predictions support a pet hypotheses. Anyone who does not apply the required analysis, and rigorous logic, which is usually very arduous, may be deceived.

Therefore it is a mistake for us to accept theories just because observations "manifest what is predicted of the theory". The fault here is in your notion of "predicted of the theory". It's not theories which make predictions, it's human beings.

This really makes no sense. You say "I know that things are", but "are" you say, has a completely indeterminate meaning. How can you possibly know that things "are", when you cannot know what "are" means. Your statement is basic contradiction "I know that things "are', but I don\t know what 'are' means". — Metaphysician Undercover

Take my cat: The term 'cat' is arbitrary: you know, the noise we make and the knowledge we have of those furry living things never gives us something indubitable, not that is is wrong to think of it as a cat, but that this kind of knowledge has no determinate foundation. It is up in the air when questions about it are the most basic.
But what happens when we remove ourselves from this, if you will, ready to hand environment of knowing and we ask ontological and epistemic questions, not just in academic curiosity, but existentially, apart from the text, IN the world? Can we meaningfully say that because our language is indeterminate, then, say, my cat does not exist? So here: there is something intuitively absolute, "pure" even, about the givenness of the presence of the cat that is not language bound, and this is a kind of "knowledge" that exceeds the usual contextualized knowing.

vacuous quip. — 180 Proof

Talking out of your hat. Dissing Kant, then saying nothing at all about this. You know, the pragmatists are all closet phenomenologists, if you give pragmatism is full due. Rorty was a big fan of Kuhn, the professed Kantian, as well as Heidegger and Derrida. Dewey, a naturalist, but what does this mean to a pragmatist? It means that Kant's empirical reality, minus the noumena, is all there is to talk about. Like Quine, he gets his empiricism from a hundred and fifty years of talkin, indirectly or otherwise, about Kant.
All analytic philosophers know they work in his shadow, that rises and falls, and takes many forms, but never disappears. Analytic philosophy always begs an essentially Kantian question: that of epistemology.

I think the inner nature of nature (pardon the redundancy) will remain a secret, beyond our understanding. But, that's idiosyncratic. — Manuel

Just to say, I know you are not fond of postmodern thinkers, but your recognition of this redundancy is the kind of thing that puts language itself on the foreground of, well, suspicion. The nature of nature is an excellent redundancy, because it forces the hand of inquiry: what can this possibly be if not a reference to itself? Do our ideas EVER reach a world that is not "idea"? This kind of thing puts "aboutness" in serious peril.

I mean if people actually read Locke and Hume, instead of reading about them, they'd find a lot of material on these things, of the highest quality.

But, putting that aside, the important thing here is the destination, not so much the journey, and I agree, these are very big problems. I think that perhaps physics does show promise of being about the world and not limited to an idea only. The other special sciences are different in crucial respects.

But I don't think there's a way to get out of our "ideas", any more than it's possible to get out of bodies to look at whatever exists absent us.

I think that perhaps physics does show promise of being about the world and not limited to an idea only. The other special sciences are different in crucial respects. — Manuel

Who knows. I don't see the promise, though. There is only one true "undiscovered country" and this lies with revealed philosophy, with revealed phenomenology, which is already in our midst. the whole enterprise of what we are and do has only one dimension that survives deconstruction: affectivity. That is, foundational questions like, what is it all about? are questions about value, affect, a reduction of suffering, procuring happiness, and the like. "Knowledge" is mostly pragmatically incidental to this foundation of what we are.

When a hypothesis produces a prediction which works, this does not necessarily mean that the hypothesis ought to be accepted. Prediction is mostly produced from observation of temporal patterns, statistics, and mathematics, and a hypothesis generally goes far beyond the simple mathematics. So for example, imagine that I watch the sun rise and set day after day, and I produce a hypothesis, that a giant dragon takes the sun in its mouth around the back side of the earth, and spits it out every morning. I might predict the exact place and time that the sun will rise, and insist that my theory has been proven by my uncanny predictions. Clearly though, the successful predictions are nothing more than successful predictions, and my hypothesis hasn't been proven at all. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think a better example would be the Ptolemaic cosmological system. It was very complicated and it turns out in the end it was wrong, but it worked well until Copernicus and Kepler came along. Their theory eventually superseded Ptolemy's. Ditto with Newton and Einstein. I guess Newton was wrong, but we still use his theories for non-relativistic applications, which is most of what we deal with.

You know, the pragmatists are all closet phenomenologists ... — Constance

:sweat:

The various anthropocentric views expressed here (including those that want to exempt themselves) are in one sense correct in so far as they share Protagoras' insight that man is the measure of all things. But in another sense they are wrong to the extent that they take statements determined by our human limits to be statements about what is or must or might or cannot be beyond those limits.

Although we cannot say what is beyond our limits it is hubris to think that there is nothing beyond those limits. I think Zhuangzi got it exactly right with his sage stories of the relativism of species perspectivism.

Take my cat: The term 'cat' is arbitrary: you know, the noise we make and the knowledge we have of those furry living things never gives us something indubitable, not that is is wrong to think of it as a cat, but that this kind of knowledge has no determinate foundation. It is up in the air when questions about it are the most basic.
But what happens when we remove ourselves from this, if you will, ready to hand environment of knowing and we ask ontological and epistemic questions, not just in academic curiosity, but existentially, apart from the text, IN the world? Can we meaningfully say that because our language is indeterminate, then, say, my cat does not exist? So here: there is something intuitively absolute, "pure" even, about the givenness of the presence of the cat that is not language bound, and this is a kind of "knowledge" that exceeds the usual contextualized knowing. — Constance

I can't see how the analogy works. You can point to your cat and say "I know that's a cat, but I don't really know what a cat is". But you cannot point to an are, and say "I know that's an are, but I don't really know what an are is. That's the difference, you can point to a particular cat, as an example, but you cannot point to an example of "are" because it's purely universal.

I think a better example would be the Ptolemaic cosmological system. It was very complicated and it turns out in the end it was wrong, but it worked well until Copernicus and Kepler came along. Their theory eventually superseded Ptolemy's. Ditto with Newton and Einstein. I guess Newton was wrong, but we still use his theories for non-relativistic applications, which is most of what we deal with. — T Clark

Yes, you're probably right, it's a better example because it's a real example. I just went to a ridiculous example to make the point more obvious.

Now take away humans, take away animals. We get a view from nowhere. Here is true metaphysics. What then exists in the view from nowhere? If you’re imagining a world as perceived and inferenced and synthesized by humans you would be mistaken. What is a non-perspective world? In what way can we talk of it intelligibly? Planets planeting? Particles particling? What does that even mean when there’s no perspective?

Although I could be misinterpreting you, I think that your OP is primarily associated with the ontological aspect of this and not metaphysical: you are essentially asking what exists apart from observance (which I would argue is ontological not metaphysical, but I can see how it could bleed over into metaphysics the deeper one contemplates it). With that being said, I think you have formulated a question which is itself a contradiction: you are asking for a "perspective" (as I understand your definition) when their are "no perspectives" available. Therefore, to answer "nothing is there" or "something is there" are both incorrect because the question itself is contradictory. It is like if I asked "what does a square circle look like?": no matter what one posits in terms of the appearance of a square circle, they are inevitably wrong (doomed from the start). To be brief, I think that the question "what is a non-perspective universe" is nothing more than the combination of concepts in a manner that merely (and only) produces a description of a contradiction (albeit sometimes enticing to pursue as if it did postulate something more than that).

How is information akin to perspective? Perspective, a point of view, seems to be attached to an observer, not an information processor. How can information processing simpliciter be the same as a full-blown observer? I think there are too many jumps and "just so" things going on here to link the two so brashly.

I would agree that, indeed, "understanding" is non-computational. The verification of something being true is computational, but the understanding that it should be accepted as true is non-computational. So, in other words, yes: information processing is not synonymous with "perspective" in the sense outlined previously.

So if not information, where is this "perspective" in the view from nowhere?

Again, I think this, specifically speaking, is nothing more than a description of a contradiction. However, if one were to contemplate what their "perspective" (or "understanding") is, then it inevitably becomes a question of metaphysics (however, the contemplation of your OP question I would say is ontological because it is questioning what is left when "perspectives" are removed--regardless of any metaphysical inquiry into what "perspectives" actually are).

If localized interactions, "what" makes the perspective happen from these interactions?

I think that you are thinking of it in the wrong order. "from these interactions" seems like you are trying to derive where "understanding" (or "perspective") arises from what has been produced from the understanding itself. I can never look at a brain, which is an interpretation derived from understanding, and figure out my understanding therefrom. The best I can do is inquire recursively (i.e. reason upon itself) to understand the mechanisms of my understanding via that understanding. That's the best that can be done.

I understand the appeal, but don't see the necessity.

Isn't that exactly what I said, predictions do not prove hypotheses? So why do you think it constitutes a misunderstanding? — Metaphysician Undercover

When you say this

When a hypothesis produces a prediction which works, this does not necessarily mean that the hypothesis ought to be accepted. — Metaphysician Undercover

it shows the misunderstanding I'm talking about, Scientists don't imagine that observed predictions prove hypotheses, so that is not the reason they are accepted. They are accepted because they work as long as predictions are observed to be accurate.

Your following paragraphs are nonsense, so I won't bother responding; if scientists didn't (provisionally) accept hypotheses and continue to test them, then science would grind to a halt.