Is there a way to know the world without our modeling of it? — Mww
Rather than doing so randomly, we do so by minimising variance — Isaac
have I said anything I don’t really believe? — Mark Dennis
If you don’t believe someone has countered your claims effectively enough for you to believe it — Mark Dennis
We don't need to know anything about what's 'really' there, we seem, just as a species, to be fundamentally interested in variance minimising. There appears to be a white square when the black circles are (what appears to be) behind it. As soon as the black (what now appears to be) pacmen are removed, there no longer appears to be a white square. We want to reduce this variance, we prefer a model which has either a white square or not. Not a model which has a white square one minute but none the next. So we choose one to be 'accepted' and label the other 'illusion'. Rather than doing so randomly, we do so by minimising variance with a whole host of other models too. The white square being the 'illusion' does this best. At no point in the whole process do we need access to reality nor even to care which is which. — Isaac
...and this isn't an abstraction? — Isaac
I'm struggling to see any more depth to your argument — Isaac
No, I specifically asked you about the square you see, not the optical illusion as a whole. I want to know what the objective properties of that square are and in what they obtain. — Isaac
T1 is an infinitesimally small point, so I don't see how it can coherently have any data attached to it. — Isaac
I didn't ask about the notion of optical illusions though did I? I asked what the properties of the square you see there really are. — Isaac
The justification that we do not directly observe light waves are the numerous optical illusions where what we are convinced we observe are actually retinal negatives, polarisation, inferred colour in the peripheral region (which can't even detect EM wavelengths) and downright hallucinations. — Isaac
I got to wondering if anyone could make a good argument for the existence of a perfect something. — Mark Dennis
A few things perhaps unrelated to each other...
1. Obviously we'd be talking about a situation where we're comparing two participants both in A's place, just at different times, experimentsttry to eliminate variables so, place is a really obvious one to start with.
So to follow through you'd have to say that at t1, when A is there, was different (had different properties?) from @ at t2, when B is there. — Isaac
But if this is the case then we cannot say anything at all about because all we know about it is what it was like at t1. — Isaac
The jump from the situation of two observers to say "we can just talk about A and B as locations, without people. The same thing would be the case." is unjustified. — Isaac
The table seeming to be some way is an activity of the observer. — Isaac
We still haven't escaped the fact that we do not access light waves — Isaac
We are only aware of visual representations after they've been presented from the occipital cortex, they've already been subject to modulation from backward acting neural connections, and filtered through architecture built by prior experience. — Isaac
What are the properties of a Kaniza square? — Isaac
If two people give differing, contradictory accounts of some state of affairs, it seems reasonable to assume neither necessarily has clear access to the state of affairs both are trying to describe. — Isaac
but observing is a model-mediated process. I don't 'observe' without modelling. — Isaac
Everything I think is some model or other of the reality I'm thinking about, so there is no question that I can answer outside of some model or other. — Isaac
Is there something about this multiple model idea you're not understanding? — Isaac
I'm asking about the placeholders in my model, the same model I presume you have since were both human beings — Isaac
We do generally act in the natural mode of being — I like sushi
I'm sure you're aware the we completely alter our actual cellular make up, so I presume you're not associating other people with their material matter. — Isaac
Yep. — Isaac
Can you elaborate / give examples? — Pfhorrest
I don't see how they can be distinguished. When a chimpanzee rejects a previously gratefully accepted cucumber as reward on the grounds that the other chimp has been given a grape, are they not using a model of justice, or fairness? — Isaac
Terrapin, That statement is purely mine as an original Duane assertion; — Duane Meehan
No person in fact ever determines to act or forbear action on the basis of given published language of law, — Duane Meehan
You say it that way.
What if I said: Things appear (where 'thing' is taken in the broadest sense as objects, processes, colours, basically anything you can think of). What is it then that "has" properties? Are not properties just among the "things" that appear (if we allow that shapes, colours, textures and so on are even separable from shaped, coloured and textured objects)? — Janus
For example, we say things like, "what do you mean?", — Harry Hindu