OBIJ - Levendis vs. Helix

did anyone here say "the meat" is evil? i don't think i did, anyway. i do however consider the meat to be less than all-important.

you speak of meat with an edge in your voice and a glare in your eye. amputation is as pointless as martyrdom.
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puellae pulchurae sunt / cetera desunt

you misunderstand. i often go without any notice from typing about something personal to me to making some quite broad comment on something. it's probably safest to take each sentence of mine on its own, and not assume that some broad statement is m eant as something more personal than a broad statement.

and i type about "the meat" with quotation marks, not an edge in my voice nor a glare in my eye. it's this stupid cold/flu/whatever that's making my voice sound peculiar and my eyes look peculiar.

in one way i respect the meat more than many do, more even than many who think that the meat is the measure of all things.

Sunday PM From [smash it, smash it] Helix Quark {silly goof} [kill the christmas tree.]

unhuh. well, let me point out that even if you think there isn't a connection, there is one anyway. Everything that you do is part of you, whether you like it or not. Everything I do is part of me, whether I like it or not.

There is an unavoidable synergy in even the most non-sequitur statements. This is Universe of relationships, there are no absolute beings; all things, not only do they possess relationships but, are relationships in and of themselves. However, since NO-THING exists independent of relationship there is a greater unkn own set that is the set of all sets including itself; this is what trips many.

I will try to avoid more specific analysis, mainly to spare Lev.
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puellae pulchurae sunt / cetera desunt

<whole room turning its eyes in the direction of Federal Way>
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This is the wrong time for the right thing.

Actually, this room had been excluded until now, because about three months back you and Violet were making cute noises in here and it was gagging me. But I actually agree with you, Helix. Even if you have no foundation to hang your assumptions on ("n othing can be known -- but this is what I know") you're absolute right.

Case in point, I run around being an asshole. Particularly to people like Todd, or Megan, two people I absolutely _love_ to rank. Can I totally disassociate myself from what I say? Of course not. When I give Todd shit about being a suburban wank, ther e is a reason for it. I beleive it's true -- I also beleive that being such is grounds for ranking on people.

I bury what I've already said in contradictions or any other conveinient smokescreen because in spite of whatever I actually think of people I also find I have an impulsive urge to alert them to my favorite topic -- what's wrong with them.

Sometimes it's just me amusing myself. And sometimes I actually have something to say and bury it in something else. I'm the last to say, even though I don't often point it out, that there are not times when I don't want to scutinize my actions or mot ives too closely.

It's that I also quite adamantly hate these aspects of myself. Who wouldn't be a very different person if they were who they wanted to be?

To say that you cannot divorce one's self from one's actions invokes a totally different philosophical structure for me than it does Helix. On my end of it, the reason for these things being so is that events happen and do not, generally, tend to un-h appen. Once an event has occured, it becomes a matter of record. You can't reach backwards and touch the past but you can remember. This lends history a solidity -- dare I say it? -- an absoluteness that can be relied upon. It's straight binary. A thing e ither is or it is not, nature does not allow the existance of contradictions on a tangible level. It's only humans which impose it on a conceptual level, and unfortunately this does not work, else I should surely use it to make my poor ass very rich...
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Truth in a vinager and piss flambee.
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This is the wrong time for the right thing.

But I meant "in" at the time.
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This is the wrong time for the right thing.

Saturday AM From [smash it, smash it] Helix Quark {silly goof} [kill the christmas tree.]

yeah, lev, I'd certainly say that history is a function of memory and memory is not only organic in and of itself, but it's a function of perception which is an organic process.

I certainly wouldn't agree that organic process is binary or immutable, therefore history is modal, fuzzy and mutable.

The idea that history is a certain thing has been greatly engendered by the invention of the printing press ... tho the idea has been around a long time ...

our views on a lot of stuff is very different, but the kind of things we disagree on aren't the kind of thing that are easy to resolve.

it's stuff that's not falsifiable, and the only way to know is to KNOW, so there's no real resolution. We're in two different paradigms and the terms mean different thing to you than they do to me ...
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puellae pulchurae sunt / cetera desunt

I think I can explain it, though. You describe paradigms as organic. I can understand that. You discribe history in a similar sense. Bette Midler saying that how the show looks depends on which seat you bought.

Your take on philosophy encompasses a much larger view than mine. It assumes that there is a human component and that it's flaws and limitations must be accomodated in order to create an accurate model.

Mine simply states that the acurate model exists externally to that component. Do you see? Everything that happens outside of our perception happens in an absolute sense. We perceive these events only in the most skewed sense of the term, but these th ings have an existance which does not depend upon our perception of them. Rocks are still rocks even after you're dead.

In a lot of ways I'm a very simplistic thinker. There is absolutely nothing to contradict my epectations of a rock behaving as a rock, inductively or by any other label you'd care to slap on it. Sometimes in order to create a whole picture, it is nece ssary to omit details. You can't photograph a moment and expect to capture every element present, it's not a human possibility. You _can_ make a photograph and have an accurate record, however, even if it is merely symbolic, because all the information yo u'll need is inherant in that single document. It is in no sense complete, but it's still as acurate as it will ever need to be.
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No animals were killed to make this product. But they should have been.

Sunday PM From [smash it, smash it] Helix Quark {silly goof} [kill the christmas tree.]

and that is a major difference and in fact exactly what I mean when I say that the difference between our philosophies isn't varifiable a priori and it isn't falsifiable since the only way to falsify it is to know for sure and the only way to know for sure is a posteriori knowledge; a posteriori knowledge only comes from knowing it to be true. it's about expectations.

The problem I have is the presuposition that there is an external reference, and the reason is simply that there is no way to verify the actual state of the external without the use of the probability of the external being some way other than the way we perceive it.

perception can never give you the whole story about the thing which is the object. the blind man who feels the elephants trunk and declares an elephant to be like a snake has only part of the story. the only way to get the whole story is to step outsi de the limitations of the blind man. Further sampling of the state of the elephant can only lead to tentative statements about the elephant because there is always the posibility that there was some part of the elephant that wasn't sampled, or that someth ing changed while a different part of the elephant was being sampled (like maybe the tusks get stolen or something) ...

in our cases, our view of reality is provisional at best, because not only do things change but our perceptions of things are incomplete and differ for divers states of mind. it depends on which seat in the house you have.

but in our case there is no way to know what seat in the house we have because the existence of the house is a dimension beyond our ability to perceive because it is non-perceptive realm.

the external model is supossed to be something that is independant of perception, but the only connection to the external we have is our perception of it. there's a serious flaw in that.

however, If our model of reality is based entirely on our perception, i.e, we recognize that our perceptive reality tells us acurate information about subjective reality then there is no problem, but when when someone says that they can get percpetive information about non-perceptive subjects ... that's just a little bit fishy and doesn't hold water. er, I mean non-perceptive information about the non-perceived by perceiving, that's just too wierd. It doesn't make sense; it's self-contradictory.

the interesting thing about this dilemma is that there actually is a third answer besides rationalistic or empricistic ... and that answer comes from the mystics who say that is is possible to get true-knowledge (noetic experience) thru mystic states of consciousness.

in fact the hindu cosmology nobly answers and explains this dilemma in terms of ultimate reality and the veil of maya that separates mankind from it.

the point of the book 'behold the spirit' by Alan Watts was, well, one of the points anyway, that the mystic interpretation of the christian doctrine also holds the same message. It's the mosaic, literal, interprtation that gets people so messed up, a nd in the process totally misses the point and the message.
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puellae pulchurae sunt / cetera desunt

I disagree utterly, but then you knew that. I had a bit of trouble following what you said about 'apriory', but I'm not familiar with the term. I have a vague enough sense of it to admit that it's something I >should< know, however.

Picture it this way for a moment. The entirety of existance is a collection of particles, moving in paths or orbits. Taken at a distance, it resembles a rutherford atom or a phonograph record if grossly simplified. Omniscence would then be the knowledge of each particle, it's path and location at a given time.

It is the final element which eliminates the possibility of omniscence. Time is the mindkiller. It is the final word in badass, because nothing escapes it.

Since we cannot defeat that single element, we build models or concepts. To imbue them with an absolute quality is rediculous, however there are rules which govern the accuracy of these models. The Hubble didn't work as expected; it was deeply flawed. It still did not invalidate the data it was created to obtain. The state of that data existed independantly of it's capacity to gather it. It's still there and it can still be had.

Things work for very real reasons, and it is the relationship of the premises behind them to the objective state of the universe which grants them validity.

Induction is a tricky subject. But it's a case, really, of some versus all. The possibility of being wrong does not automatically invalidate a claim. Perception certainly CAN be wrong, because SOME perception IS wrong. But SOME isn't ALL, nor can ther e be any dispute of the two separate states.

I suppose our final dispute is empirical. If I say that in order to traverse the distance between A and C requires that one first arrive at B before proceeding to C, then it might be supposed the mysticism proposes that this is not necessary. My belei f is that because A, B and C exist independantly of anyone's assumptions about them, that the nature of traveling between these fixed points prevents the contradiction of their order. In order for the assumption that C can be arrived at without first arri ving at B, then the nature of C is inclusive of it's following A, and B is never arrived at. In either instance, the question of traversing these points is still entirely dependant on thier pre-existing states. Merely altering my perception or understanding of these points will in no way have any impact on thier identities, and the only way I can do so accurately is by observing thier natural order and basing my premises accordingly.
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No animals were killed to make this product. But they should have been.

Things are what they are. What you 'see' isn't what a thing is, it's that thing's symbollic representation. Because a thing is already what it is before you see it, how you see it can be gagued for accuracy simply by how well it corresponds to what th e thing was in the first place.
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No animals were killed to make this product. But they should have been.

Monday AM From [smash it, smash it] Helix Quark {silly goof} [kill the christmas tree.]

but see that's my point or one of them is that the idea of guaging perception for accuracy in that sense doesn't make sense, and the reason is, is that it begs the question. See the only way to verify is to use another perceptive process and you have to assume that that other perceptive process is accurate in order to prove that the first process was accurate, but then how do you know that the second process was accurate? you have to check it again by yet a third process and then it just keeps going. There is no end to the cycle be cause at some point you have to assume that one of the processes is accurate, and that begs the whole question of accuracy.

see this thing is that we don't disagree all that much it's just that the thing that we think about when we say objective reality and subjective reality mean different things I think.

um, 'a priori' is a term that basically means 'from before' so it's knowledge before perception. 'a posteriori' is knowledge after perception. 'a priori' knowledge is allegedly knowledge that doesn't need to be varified by perception because we alread y know it to be true ... silly I think, but hey, decartes was really hip to it ... (giggle)

see the thing is that as far as I'm concerned we can gain a perceptive model of the world and we can compare perceptive models and get a more and more probable perceptive model and THAT model may get closer and closer to the limited set in which we li ve, but our limited set is not the set of all sets (which set includes itself)

"Since we cannot defeat that single element, we build models or concepts. To imbue them with an absolute quality is rediculous, however there are rules which govern the accuracy of these models. The Hubble didn't work as expected; it was deeply flawed. It still did not invalidate the data it was created to obtain. The state of that data existed independantly of it's capacity to gather it. It's still there and it can still be had." (Levendis)

Okay. I agree that WE cannot defeat that element, but that element is a function of the limited set (subjective reality) and is not a limitation of the set of all sets (objective) ... the LIMIT is in the fact that our set is not fully functional, but the fully functional set wouldn't be limited by that since it includes all sets.

I certainly do agree that our models cannot be imbuded with any absolute quality, but I would hold that the rules which govern our models are intrinsic to the models themselves not the other way around (the frame of a painting is a limitation of a pai nting, but there is no equivalent limitation on the thing being painted. the frame-limit is intrinsic to the painting-model) ...

any data derived from any process is a limited set derived from the greater set (which corresponds to the the 'phenomena' being sampled) no set of data can EVER be identically equivalent to the thing being sampled, the data set is ALWAYS less complex than the set from which it was derived. The idea of data is the concept that is identical to the limited set of information derived from the more complex set. 'Data' is a limited-set model adn does not exist previous to the sampling. What MIGHT exist prev ious to smapling is the more complex-set of the phenomena that is the parent set of the derived-set data.

so I disagree that the DATA exists independant of the process used to sample it. and saying that the phenomena exists 'a priori' to the process of percieving that phenomena begs the question of the phenomena's existence.
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puellae pulchurae sunt / cetera desunt

Part of the problem is that we have two different definitions for data. You've described data as being subjective, the symbol set used to describe existants, and I have used it to classify existing characteristics of existants, mostly because I still draw no distinction between the two.

The significance of this is that while there can be errors of perception, there are no 'errors of nature'. The defining characteristics of existants exist a priori. If we agree that an objective existance exists, then we have defined an axiomatic a priori characteristic. Hence existance exists, ergo cognita, ergo su m.

In spite of the limitations of induction, there also exists no means of defeating it. However there is a single advantage here. When a consistant, reproducable result is achieved, there is no way of undoing that result. By way of example, a helium fil led balloon is released and rises upward. The conclusion drawn from this is that the balloon itself (I'm deliberately making an error here) and not the helium, is lighter than air. Inductively, the result can be reproduced. 10 of 10 balloons rise upwards when released, thereby 'verifying' the result. However, later, a balloon is filled with water, and when released, splatters on the floor. Syllogistically:

In this instance, the second premise is false, because balloons are not lighter than air. Helium IS, however, and it was the unobserved corelation between the helium and the experiment that caused it to function.

The problem of induction, however, is that it does not necessarily hold true in 'all possible worlds'. The question here is whether or not this is relevant. Even postulating a world in which helium is heavier than air, however, the scientific method w ould still hold, simply by virtue of the fact that it could be tested and acted upon accordingly.

Not that I presume for an instant that I'm telling you anything you don't know, but I wanted to establish my argument so that you could see how I structure things (badly; I have no formal background here outside of some light reading) and because I wi sh to explain what I fail to understand.

When a reproducable result is achieved, it's validity is dependant on it's concurrance with natural law. The accuracy of premises is dependant on thier relationship to a priori characteristics which they represent. When a reproducable result is achiev ed, is it granted validity by the level of that concurrance. This does not prevent the premise from ultimately being wrong; indeed balloons are not lighter than air. But the correspondance of some characteristic of the experiement was accurate and made th e result reproducable. Even if each result is treated as an isolated and specific phenomina, the corelation existed.

Even in proving that the method of proof is fallible, the ultimate proof of proof's invalidity is a proof in and of itself.

What I fail to grasp, however, is how this is significant. Even by a flawed process, a proof of some sort has been attained. Your argument thus far has appeared to be an attempt to invalidate this method altogether, and this could only be done by citi ng that proof is not proof in all possible worlds or by saying that the inductive method has no validity whatsoever. Even given the assumption that these statements were wholly false, what has been achieved?

If negation of all truth could be proven in an absolute sense, you'd still be working with an absolute truth. The argument between all and some again.

My final question, then, is what would you substitute? You seem to be wholly bent on simply negating everything, without offering any alternative whatsoever. Even to propose a form of mysticism, rules and relationships would necessarily have to be est ablished in order to prove that it functioned, and ultimately determined by the methods already outlined. Under a system where balloons fell up, down, sideways and then turned into rabbits, no reproducable results would be achieved, and there would be no means of establishing a set of workable guidlines. What then?

Perhaps the disagreement, then, ultimately, is the purpose of philosophy in the first place. My assumption is that the idea is to know something, simply to know nothing is not an end, but rather a beginning. If knowing nothing was the end, what process could have said to have occured to reach that conclusion?
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No animals were killed to make this product. But they should have been.

the world is always around you, more importantly, even, it is always in you, seeping though you, your senses. it >is< your senses, since you, your senses, do not exist independant of an enivironment.

science is a human endeavor to impose order in a world that is hopelessly complex. mathematical rules are not intrinsic to the physical world. rather, they are a human attempt to compartmentalize, simplify, separate physical phenomena in a messy existence. such rules, when agreed upon by multiple humans, can become a basis for what might be called objectivity. the rules that are defined and chosen to be agreed upon are rules that appear to >accurately< define some aspect(s) of the physical, materi al world. by accurately, i mean that when a rule is applied by various people, different bundles of nerves, quantified results (based on the agreed upon measuring rules) agree within some relatively small amount of error. results are accurate consistently. in order for them to be precise there would need to be an absolute applied-mathematical truth, which there cannot be since math based science is purely a mental framework. there can be truth within mathematics alone, since it is a cognative creation, but as the physical world is not, mental devices cannot establish absolute truths within it. once a mental framework is established, tho, there can be relative precision, based within that framework.

i don't like to be picky, or at least, i don't like to >think< that i like to be picky, but. the analogy of a painting to a model of some aspect of the material world kind of irks me. it serves its intended purpose, i suppose, but generally, i hate to think of paintings as such, models of segments of reality bounded (as models must be) by frames, moste likely square ones in this case. most often paintings are not supposed to serve as mere representations of pieces of the world. a painting >can< exist in and of itself, not as a model. while the inspiration for the arrangement of the paint on a canvas may be derived (and ultimately it m ust be) from one or more environments, it is not a random slice out of a field of vision.

why are frames traditionally square? the shape is so unquestioned and expected that it could seem to emminate an almost mathematical, geometric presence, unnatural, at least. one might think that the only truly natural shapes are organic, but really straight horizontal and vertical lines exist everywhere you look (even out of the shadows of concrete hulks). they are always there, if you're wandering around on the surface of the earth (and provided that you have eyes).

Wednesday AM From [smash it, smash it] Helix Quark {silly goof} [kill the christmas tree.]

but, Lev, scientific "truth" is really only hypothetically true, as you've said pretty much.

I'm not invalidating it all, but what I'm saying is that when speaking of oranges stick to oranges. When using phenomenal evidence, the arguement is only valid when making statements about phenomenal reality.

Natural laws are statements derived from observation. We observe the way a particular phenomena behaves and make a hypothetical 'RULE' which explains that behavior. The fact that we make the statement about it's behavior doesn't mean that it actually FOLLOWS the rules we've made to describe the phenomena, what it means is that we've derived a system from which we can make proabable predictions about future phenomena.

and as for the idea that there are no 'errors of nature' ... how do you know that? the only way to verify it would be to check perceptive models and that still doesn't answer the question. you've begged the question here and assumed that there is a co nstant, definite nature. that has not been shown yet.

there is an idea in Leibniz, that the universe doesn't 'exist' as objects but that the universe is a set of relationships ... in this model there would be no 'things' at all just descriptions of a relationship.

there HAS to be a difference between the data and the phenomena being sampled, if there weren't then my idea and perception of you would actually be you, and this violates your model of the universe. If my idea of you and you are identically the same then there are more than one of you, or your state of 'existence' violates the standard concept of Time.

actually, you are right. a painting can exist independant of any actual object, and as a matter of fact so can a model of the universe. For example, the idea that the moon is made of cheese, or the idea of Hell, or the idea of a good nights sleep, or a dream.

we have all created a painting of reality so detailed and beautiful that we tend to think that our idea of the way things are, is the way that they "really" are.
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puellae pulchurae sunt / cetera desunt

Wednesday AM From [smash it, smash it] Helix Quark {silly goof} [kill the christmas tree.]

do you remember a really long time ago during one of our chat sessions on the digital I and we were talking about the difference between saying that the idea I have of a piece of pizza and the 'actual' slice of pizza exists?

remember how we were talking about the fact that there is a fundimental inability in our language to make the difference clear?

to say that it exist in my head as an idea is to say something totally different than to say that there is a pizza on the table, it exists.

in one sense I'm saying that for the idea X, there is an X in the real world, but in the other I'm just saying that there is an idea of X, but not saying anything about it being an 'actual' instance.

what I'm saying really is the difference between the data and the thing being sampled; but taken to a wider application. I'm saying that I can know data and I can manipulate data and make models out of data, but all I'm doing is saying that my idea X is an idea. The data doesn't have any intrinsic existance in any 'real' sense. (if it did then my IDEA of a moon made of cheese would imply that it REALLY was that way, and that violates some principles that I think both of us agree shouldn't be violated ... tho there is an argument to be made that even logically impossible things are true in an set that is the set of all sets ... but we'll avoid that issue :) to the relief of everyone including myself ... )

so, in essence what I'm trying to point out is that our model of reality, our perceptive model is just an idea, and that there is a fundimental gap in going from the idea to saying that tthere is an 'actual' X in 'reality' ...

part of this is that the only way to verify that there is an ACTUAL X in reality is by perceiving an X, but that doesn't answer the dilemma, because we already have the data, an addition perception of X only makes the idea more strong and probable, ou r hypothetical Natural Law is more likely to produce accurate predictions, but it is still only an hypothetical model, a model based on our perception.

the only way to verify that something exist outside of our perception of it, outside of our ideas of it, is to be able to step outside of our model, outside of our perception, move to a different seat in the house, so to speak.

there is to my knowledge no way to step outside of perception. the way that the good bishop Barkeley solves this dilemma was to say that things existed outside our perception because there is an omniscient, omnipotent eye which perceives all that we d o not.

I don't find that solution adequeate, and I have not found yet a solution that I do find satisfactory.

I suspect that there is a non-religious solution akin to the one that bishop barkeley gave, and it can be derived from the idea of the universe of relationships; in that all things are a sum of the relationships to all other things, they 'exist' becau se everything they are related to 'exists'

this is something like the idea of a chain of infinite causality, each existance is dependant on the existence of every other existence, ad infinitum.
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puellae pulchurae sunt / cetera desunt

I'll come back to all of this later, when I have some time to spend on it. In the meantime, if I have a slice of pizza, I will eat it. I can't eat a slice of pizza I don't have, therfor the act of eating it qualifies it as existing. Make sense ?
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No animals were killed to make this product. But they should have been.

Okay, from the top: you have yet to point out what your Grand Unified Theory of Pizza accomplishes. This is generally where conversation broke down and we began belittling each other's ideas in times previous, but hopefully this is past history.

Take your focus away from WHAT you beleive and turn it to illuminate what it accomplishes at this juncture.

A child can see a peice of pizza and know that it is there because it sees it. It may lack the intellectual distinction to differentiate a slice of eggplant supreme and a slice of liverwurst and onion but it can certainly make sense of them existing. It makes the deductive leap required to understand that such things are eaten and complies, in which instance the situation becomes no more complex than it was previously.

A total working model has been invoked which has functioned flawlessly respective of it's component concepts and navel-lint contemplation. No deeper understand or assembly required.

Respective of what abstractions we make of it, reality continues chugging along it's merry path, totally oblivious to what people in the way make of it. Be it a question of it's actual existance or the perception of some vast and insane, demonically possessed fury from Hell, it will proceed in the direction it was moving, without getting out of the way.

You've got a wonderful executive descision maker where as I have only a quarter to flip, but it's a step away from being a speadsheet and a functional implementation.

You seem to have no model at all, however this could not be entirely true, because you have to interact with the existing one all the time. Yes, the machinery that moves your legs around is almost staggeringly complicated but fortunately most of us on ly have to decide where to move them in order to get from point A to point B. It doesn't unlock the vast cosmic mysteries of the universe but it does get us from point a to point b while we're waiting around for them to explain it to us.

Relinquish all correlation between objective existance and your perception of it. That leaves you with nothing. Then what? Your only choice is to start reclaiming them again.
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No animals were killed to make this product. But they should have been.

Well, I deny that relinquishing correlation leads to nothing. There's an assumption there. I think the set of all sets is more complex than that; leading to nothing.

The distinction betweem the pizza you have in your hand versus the one in your head (thinking of) is the distinction Plato was making about the realm of objects versus to realm of ideals:

"... Theory of the Forms. The forms are supersensible realities that provide a firm ground for all our beliefs. If I have an opinion about numbers, my opinion is verified when I 'see' the truth. If I have an opinion about justice, my opinion is verifi ed when i 'see' the ture and absolute Form of Justice itself.

It is in this Realm of Forms (a Reality that can only be seen thruough the eye of the mind) that all truth is to be found."

Now, what plato is talking about when he's talking about verification of the TRUTH is comparing sense data to the IDEAL OBJECT, which is, to him, a universal, unchanging object. These Ideal Objects, for plato, 'exist' in a higher realm, beyond humans and even beyond the gods, which can only be reached by mind.

(aristole later devoloped an objection to the idea of there being another realm and held that the ideal object was IN eachimperfect instance of the object, so that each 'chair' contained the Ideal Chair. This is an interesting idea, which mirrors the idea of a soul.)

Now the thing is, and this is where I differ from plato, (one of the places anyway) ...

The separation of the ideals and the 'instances' I tend to agree with, but I think plato assumed that they occur in an order which doesn't quite work.

The 'ideals' do not inform the object, rather the various objects inform our 'ideas' of them. So when I 'see' a chair, I know it is a chair because I've come to associate certain characteristic with the 'idea' I call chair. So I am indeed comparing ea ch instance with the 'ideal' but the idea is a family definition based on instances.

There is a very distinct difference between the 'ideal' chair and the chair istelf, but since any perception of the chair itself is not the chair itself, when I 'see' a chair I am STILL only seeing an 'ideal' chair. I imagine that this statement might be a point of contention, so I will say that the reason this makes sense to me is because the process of perception is a process of mind.

Now, this does not at any point say that there is NOT a real chair, but what it does say is that the 'ideal' chair and even the chair that I percieve do not encompass the 'actual' chair. I hold that there is NO WAY in which to get any idea of the chai r which is not an IDEA of the chair, and that any process of perception can only produce an IDEA of the chair.

Now, even the label 'chair' is part of the IDEA I have about it. the letters that make up the word, the idea of words even, are parts of the mind and it's models of perception.

" A total working model has been invoked which has functioned flawlessly respective of it's component concepts and navel-lint contemplation. No deeper understand or assembly required. "

Which I tend to agree with, but I wish to point out that it is the objective reality which has functioned flawlessly, and that our working models have constantly changed over time in order that a better utilization of the objective for some specific mental purpose be attained.

That no deeper understanding is required of objective reality is a functionally true statement, simply because there can be no deeper understanding of something we will never know anything of :) but the realization that our paradigms are a limited set description allows one to make use of a different paradigm for a different purpose. There is some application here in that 'if a paradigm works, use it.'

And from this, perhaps, a new science of paradigms may arise. The paradigm that objective reality and subjective reality are the same functions for daily life, yes, but it is only one paradigm and is no more true than any other paradigm that works either.

On the quantum level, that paradigm doesn't work. In a relationship with another person, that paradigm doesn't work. :)
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puellae pulchurae sunt / cetera desunt

In a relationship to another person this will not work? How so? We've already established the importance of the correlation between objective and subjective states. That being the case, in the instance of two conflicting paradigms, the answer is quite simple: one of them is wrong.

The problem is much simpler than you've stated it. If there is no correlation between subjective perception and the objective state, then no knowledge of anything can be had. There is nothing to know, because there is no way to know it. By the same token, if a correlation between subjective perception and the objective state exists, then the subjective state can be said to be acurate. Not that in niether instance is the subjective state compared to any other; that would be wholly irrelevant.

Yet correlations exist, they are verified merely by the initial comprehension of existance, the 'state of consciousness', and thus they may be labeled, quite neatly, true or false.

Throughout all of this I've looked at two things: one, you are bent on proving me wrong. Two: the purpose of this bent is not to establish the validity of another paradigm, but merely to place both paradigms on a par with each other. From experience, I've learned that people who do this do so for a single reason: to suspend judgement. Generally the logic follows "everything is an opinion, your opinion is no better than mine, who are you to say?"

Witness for the defense?
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No animals were killed to make this product. But they should have been.

I am not 'bent' on proving you wrong, any more than you are 'bent' on proving me wrong. Don't be paranoid.

I have NOT established a correlation between subjective and objective at all, at all. In fact, the opposite. I have been pointing out that they are both very different animals.

Two paradigms that clash are not proof that one is wrong, rather one paradigm answers different questions about the same sensory data. It's like watching the same play done by different actors, or a different director. One version is not the WRONG ver sion, rather they are different versions, not mutually exclusive.

And that there is no correlation says only that there is nothing that can be known OBJECTIVELY about the OBJECTIVE nor OBJECTIVELY about the SUBJECTIVE. There is subjective knowledge. Is subjective knowledge then not knowledge in your book? If so then there is no knowledge, but since all the knowledge that could exist, barring some extrasensory or noetic reality, is subjective knowledge. I can make an opinion based on that data, but the data is not opinion. There is not a judgement involved.

The first purpose you stated is not worthy of comment, but the second is my point pretty much. I ask you to tell me why there is something wrong with recognizing that two paradigms are both valuable? I do not say that a paradigm is good for explaining data beyond its scope; all paradigms are by their very nature limited and there is a boundry where a paradigm becomes useless. This boundary is where a paradigm shift occurs. I do however disagree with Mr. Kuhn when he says that the paradigm shift is irr eversable. I think that it is perfectly valid an useful to explain data from a different paradigm if the data is not explicable from some original paradigm.

You have failed to show any case where there is experience without experience, so then there is no case where a sample of the alleged objective is not a subjective example. There is no case where data is not subjective data. Therefore, all knowledge o f the objective is SUBJECTIVE in nature.

I cetainly deny your strawmann fallacy; in that you say that this precludes any knowledge. What it precludes is OBJECTIVE knowledge; this case does not however preclude ALL knowledge.

The idea that a thing can be true or false is a misapprehension. When looking at a thing, there are many shades of truth. A lake can look blue, but another lake also look blue but a different colour of blue. This does not make one lake false.

This is modal logic. Aristotelean true-false values on work in a particular model of reality, and this is a model, not reality itself. It is pure and simply an post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy to presume that logic makes reality, or that our percepti ons are in fact the way things are 'really' objectively.

And what's so wrong about things being subjective? You say that this precludes knowledge, but that is nonsensical, in the way that I have mentioned above. I would be very upset to live in a world that existed entirely exactly the way in which I see it. That would preclude the independant existence of anything, in fact the assumption that a person's subjective perception of things is the definition of the REAL precludes a reality any more complex than that person's understanding of the REAL.

'The universe is not only more strange than we know; it is stranger than we can know' - i forgot who.

The idea that perception accurately models the world is saying that man is the measure of all things, and frankly that attitude lost a great deal of validity even before the middle ages.

I suspect that any conception of Universe that doesn't include the realization that Universe is greater than one's own mind is poorly designed.

So the fact that one can't understand calculus causes calculus to be non-existant. This is absurd, but it is the conclusion of a world-view that requires that subjective and objective correlate.
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puellae pulchurae sunt / cetera desunt

That was meant as a joke; but a true one. My observation involves how in so many interactions between people it becomes so very obvious that each person has developed a different idea about what occured or was said at some particular time. This, and t his was the part that was meant as a joke, seems especially evident in relationships, and in the arguments between people in relationships.
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puellae pulchurae sunt / cetera desunt

Subjective knowledge. Very well. At what point does it begin? Had to come from somewhere, right? We've already established that subjective knowledge exists. That's pretty objective, actually/.

Obviously it doesn't simply happen. It occurs for some reason. There has to be some basis for it actually doing so, however. The law of conservation, to the extent that it holds, prohibits this.

In a nutshell, as I keep saying, if the subjective model applies to the objective reality, then a correlation is established. That doesn't make the model flawless nor does it make the model the same as the reality. But it establishes the basis for the model.

I find it ironic that you point out being overwhelmed by it all. I'm only overwhelmed by what I can do with it. That it exists is of no particular interest. Why should it be? I'm as much a part of it as anything else, yet 'it' can't do a damned thing with me (at least not because it wants to) so in the final analysis who has the greater power? (Yes, that is an ego trip you smell cooking).

Really, before we can continue, we have to establish a couple of things. First: what is the relationship between the subjective and the objective? Second, if the latter does not determine the former, what does?

Third if you haven't made a determination, what is your point? Obviously if you tell me all you've learned is how little you know then you haven't actually accomplished anything except to render yourself impotent. Even the worst kind of false informati on is better than none. If I lived in the dark ages I'm sure I'd find it preferrable to worship volcanoes but at least I'd know a little about the world I lived in.

So far you've presented absences, man. I STILL don't see the point. I won't ever accept that, I guess, so if this is where we run into a bias problem I'm happy to report that it's mine.
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No animals were killed to make this product. But they should have been.

actually we have an even more fundimental dialectic going on here behind the scenes ... you see we have very different ontologies informing our epistemology. We have different view of BEING which colour the way in which we view knowledge.

but a while back you did hit the nail on the head about one thing: one of the major reasons why I spend so much time on the separation of the universals is that I am trying to create a model that doesn't fail under the presence of faliable perception. It's the cat in the box problem, sort of.

I said I was overwhelmed by it all? mayhaps I gave the wrong impression: I'm not insecure with the idea that the universe is larger than my eyes and mind can contain, in fact I find the idea quite envigourating. :)

Obviously it doesn't simply happen. It occurs for some reason. There has to be some basis for it actually doing so, however. The law of conservation, to the extent that it holds, prohibits this.

one, it's not obvious: you've made an assumption there that the LAWS of logic of science of anything necessarily apply to the non-phenomenal; when it is however the fact that those LAWS are a derivative of the process of perception. The very concept of versification by observation assumes a particular world-view that hasn't been shown, and this in fact is the dialectic I was talking about.

We are talking about the nature of our knowledge of the things that 'exist' and yet we are still haphazardly stumpling over our, perhaps, clashing ideation of what 'existences' are and just what it means to talk about 'existence' in the first place.

I'm afraid that I've let a certain lack of focus to continue, and what we've been doing is flipping around somewhat playfully, somewhat irresponsibly (to the goal of understanding anyway :) ...

I may not have all the answers, really tho that may surprise you. I fully admit that I don't know everything. But, I can however recognize that there is something fishy with any notion that holds a direct correlation from obj to sub exists.

There may be a certain synergy between some obj and subj reality, if they both exist, but I've been trying to make a clear distintion between the two and to point out that difference. I've tried to show a bit of an epistenology that isn't dependent up on a particular ontology, by separating the ontological questions from the epistemological questions, which is the reason in part for the separation on the universals.

however, I certainly can't claim to have done a very good job of explaining the things that I'm thinking about. Perhaps I should have started a socratic dialog by more directly examining your view without burning the candle at both ends by taking both dialogs together. I'm afraid clarity ends up lost.

And you are right, this needs to be shorter, but for a different reason. I'm afraid that I've just started three 400 level phil classes and I have far too much reading to do. I've still got a whole chapter left in one book due by tomorrow and two chap ters by thursday in a different class.

I wanted to let you know what was up before I started calling much less frequently.

at any rate ... I now return you all to your regularily scheduled IN LOVE>
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puellae pulchurae sunt / cetera desunt

John Griogair Bell - Arlecchino Malbenvolio

“Clown with a Bad Attitude”

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