this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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Not really, no. Our sensory experiences are the brain reacting to objectively real things rather than creating them. We know that they are objectively real because too many people experience them, usually in similar if not identical ways that the chance of it being coincidental or a shared delusion is astronomically remote.
The scientific method + Occam's Razor says the world objectively and verifiably exists outside of our brains, beeyotch! drops mic
The scientific method is a consequence of believing the world around you to be emprically provably real, not the other way around.
Absolute nonsense. That's like saying that you lose your voice in order to fill out a health insurance card as you wait for treatment. Don't put des hoarse before des carte.
Well, drole response I suppose, but there's no way of applying the scientific method without first believing in the non-phenomenal world, so the scientific method can't act as the horse there.
Prove to me the spiritual world exists.
Not relevant to what they said. Is your sensory input actually telling you what you think was said?
Yes my senses match with the real world pretty well. If I need greater accuracy I just use equipment.
Not really relevant!
I think it is. If you are going to make claims about the spiritual world you should demonstrate existence first.
I'm not talking about the spiritual world and I don't even really know what you mean by it.
Yeah, someone arguing that there's no objective reality WOULD claim that the best method to objectively prove reality depends on already believing in objective reality.
I've seen coins less circular than your logic.
It never goes anywhere with them. They keep presenting useless skepticism until finally you admit that in theory you could be brain in a jar. Then they "win" and get to claim God.
I assume you are like me. I take the evidence and see where it goes. What they do is they throw away the evidence so they can get the result that they want.
These things break my theory
Me: my theory must be wrong.
Them: you can't really know anything.
I didn't say anything about it being the best method, and just that something helps my case doesn't make my logic circular. You could say that it'd be circular to say "the scientific method relies on the real world existing, and the real world existing relies on the scientific method", but that's exactly what I'm saying is not the case; in fact, my whole point is that you can't use the scientific method to prove that the real world exists exactly for that reason. I literally typed "not the other way around". The results of the measurements you make of the non-phenomenal world exist themselves in the non-phenomenal world so they can't be proof that that world exists. I don't know how to put it in simpler terms!
You don't have to believe in bullets to get shot in the leg.
Science doesn't involve beliefs. It involves measurement. There is reason why no one likes presups, so maybe stop being one
Try measuring something without believing it exists and see how far you get. Belief is a binary so it's not like you can neither believe nor disbelieve in the thing you're measuring. Even besides that, science is very much about belief, because the scientific method implies that every new finding can be falsifiable. The theory of relativity is a very good example of that phenomenon.
Ok.
:reads his horoscope, takes an IQ test, speaks to a reiki healer, analysis of the fungi shei of his bedroom, using a dowsing rod, and gets his thetan level checked.
What do I win?
Assertion please prove this.
My understanding of Kant isn't that the world exists outside of our brain, but that what we perceive as the world can never be determined because we perceive things differently. I mean, many of us don't even see the exact same colors for example. And this can be extended to quantum physics even when you consider that certain things are based on when they are observed.
I'd actually argue that that is proof that the world CAN be determined: if several people with different perception and perspectives agree on how something looks, feels, tastes etc, that commonality in spite of differences is proof that the shared experience of something is objectively real.
But most of us do, which can't be a coincidence.
Hey! No fair bringing physics to a philosophy discussion! How would you like it if I used football to prove that golf is boring? 😉
That's a bit of a weak point. It's proven that with propaganda enough people can be made to be convinced of something that can even be very untrue.
Definitely 5 lights there.
Ok? You don't need consensus to determine truth. It is about model making and evidence building.
Is it hot?
Touch it, have someone else touch it, use an IR gun on it, smell it, feel the warmth air around it, put a thermometer on it, get a witness account of how it got warm....
Each piece of data builds confidence. Eventually you get a wonder theory about how it got warm and a model from how it returns back to normal.
Yes it's quite an ok basis for the scientific method, but op was referring to objective truth. Shared subjectivity might be the best approximation, however it's no basis for objective ontology
How can an IR thermometer have a shared subjectivity with me?
How can you be sure it's not a Cartesian ghost trying to fill your senses into seeing one?
If you think there is a ghost it is up to you to provide evidence for it. And after you do that please explain how your ghost interacts with the real world in a perfectly consistent manner.
Remember it is always up to the person claiming something exists to advance evidence
Ontology is about how we would objectively prove there is such a thing as the real world. There is a reason in science we're not talking about truth finding, but falsification.
Basically we can only come up with theories and try to disprove them. Objectively proving existence is an unsolved problem.
But that's a tldr of the entire history of philosophy, there's plenty of there to explore.
We got it backwards from the beginning. It is all these weird brain in the jar arguments that need to prove themselves not the physical world that does.
Kant: you can't know anything
Also Kant: I know the Christian religion is true
That's ridiculous. 90% of people only perceive others as either men or women. Even if they see a nonbinary person, their occipital lobe would still generate a man schema or a woman schema. Are you gonna use that as evidence that binary gender is objectively real, because billions of people wouldn't hallucinate it? Cause that's the same argument you're making now. And it's not an empirical argument.
That sounds ridiculously high. Where's that study from, Prager U? 😛
That's a learned bias though, not an inherent state of the occipital lobe or any other part of the brain.
Nope. I'm gonna use that as an example of learned bias and other outside influences can affect how we experience the world in a very literal sense. In fact, I just did. Twice.
Nope, not at all. Please stow away all strawmen before proceeding.
It is and it isn't: paradoxically, it's impossibly to establish the existence of objective reality with 100% certainty.
That being said, what IS possible is logically deducing a conclusion so overwhelmingly likely that there's no valid counterargument.
To give you an example: the only way to know without a doubt that the sun is hot is to touch it yourself. Given that it's impossible to get to it and touch it, we rely on more indirect measuring which are still reliable to the point that no well-informed and rational person doubts that the sun is indeed very, very hot.
That's how both logic and science works: in the absence of the possibility to positively prove or disprove something, you rely on what's most likely.
Plase stop doing science in the field of phylosophy, we are not looking for "whatever works" here.
That much is evident.
To elaborate: You have absolutely no empirical evidence to back up your claim that homo sapiens don't suffer consistent illusions. And you never will. It's entirely vibes based metaphysics. And even so, we do have empirical evidence that homo sapiens do suffer consistent illusions, and your vibes are wrong. "The chance is astronomically remote" how did you calculate that? Did you go check our perceptions against a magic crystal ball? Or did you check them against themselves, which is a tautological and unscientific endeavour?
As I alluded above, belief in veridical perception directly harms nonbinary people. And other groups too. You're sitting in an armchair and speculating over metaphysics that you'll never be able to confirm, while your misconceptions hurt people. Belief in objective reality that aligns with perception is a religion as made up and as harmful as christianity.
"And even so, we do have empirical evidence that homo sapiens"
You're trying to have it both ways by equating "homo sapiens [at times] don't suffer consistent illusions", which is obviously true since we don't all have the same experiences, and "homo sapiens [never suffer] consistent illusions" which is equally obviously false because of the evidence you alluded to in the second part.
That's irrelevant to the question of whether perceptions like spacetime are illusory, which was the actual point of the conversation.
If Homo Sapiens don't always suffer consistent illusions that leaves open the possibility they sometimes perceive reality more or less correctly.
Also, if there were no possibility of some "veridical perception" there would be no way to gather evidence that some perception is illusory. That's a good place to look. Demonstrations of consistent illusion must include some new mode of perception that reason dictates is closer to reality.
You keep putting the burden of proof on the skeptics. You keep asking that we "prove" your armchair metaphysical conjectures false. Tell you what, I'll prove that veridical perception doesn't exist after you prove that Russel's Teapot isn't orbiting Mars. Deal?