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Yeti101

What we can say on what Is (or Isn't)

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I got thinking about this again after reading Change and Sally’s recent conversation.

I don’t know if this will help them see each others' point of view, but here’s hoping. This idea isn’t well developed. And I can’t take much credit for it – it’s mostly based on the ideas of another philosopher, John N Wright - and he based his ideas on what he read of Athur Eddington and Laurence Bonjour.

We argue about what there is, and isn’t – what exists or does not. Some of our arguments are based on what we perceive, others on what we can infer from these perceptions, and still others from more abstract reasoning.

Regarding what we decide or infer from our perceptions, I’d like to tell you a little story.

On a voyage of discovery, there was a biologist surveying a newly found ocean for fish species. He was doing this using a net. This net had holes 4 inches wide – meaning that the smallest fish it could catch was just a shade over 4 inches long. It is no surprise then that he never caught anything smaller than 4 inches, but did collect fish in a range of sizes from 4.1 inches up to whale-shark sized leviathans.

Still, the man worried about what to report in his survey. He had evidence for fish of certain sizes, but not others. He could safely report that there were fish bigger than 4 inches. And he could say that he had not observed or perceived any fish smaller than 4 inches. But the thought nagged him: What could he say about hypothetical fish that the net did not catch? He raised his concerns with the rest of the crew.

On one hand, many of the crew advised that he can say nothing about the existence of things that might have slipped though the net, because he has no evidence - no observations - that they in fact exist. (This is the position of the philosopher of science called Eddington - I think – it’s been a while).

But one crew member, an astronomer, took a different view. She said that since the biologist had perceived fish of a range of sizes, he has the right to infer the probable (but not definite) existence fish of less than 4 inches in length.

The biologist was taken aback. “How can you justify this”, he asked, “and why as a probability?”

The astronomer wryly arched an eyebrow at the biologist. “What are the odds that the size of your net exactly corresponds to the size of the smallest fish in this ocean?”
“Umm”
“I mean, it would be a massive, cosmological coincidence that the fish, in this ocean we’ve never observed until this week, exactly match the size of that net that you’ve had for years.”

Later, when trying to write up his findings, the biologist weighed up the choices in his mind. What was more likely, that his net just happened to match this size of the smallest fish in the ocean, or that there might be fish smaller than those he had observed? While he couldn’t assign a specific probability to either, he had an intuition as to what seemed more likely. On the basis of his, he wrote home saying that, all things considered, there were definitely fish 4 inches and larger and probably fish smaller than 4 inches. And could someone send him a new net.

If this sounds outlandish, consider what we can perceive with the un-aided eye. Wouldn’t it be a massive coincidence if the smallest animal that existed was exactly the same size as the smallest thing we could see with the naked eye? I think so, (as does John Wright, whose views I am clumsily relaying). This pattern applies to anything that enhances our perceptions – it would be a coincidence if the smallest thing that existed just happened to be the smallest thing that we could see with the best microscope we had at any given time.

How does this apply to the kinds of things we argue about existing or not, here in this community?
Well, as the eye and microscope example is supposed to illustrate, the net, that things can slip through, can be our perceptual limits. I would, personally, go further. What if the net is not just made of the limits of what we can observe? What if the net that things slip through is also made up of our concepts and ideas? It’s a bit radical, but something to think about. Even if you pull back from that, I think the idea of our perceptual limits as the net has some pretty wild implications concerning what we might say is probable, cosmologically speaking. It allows for the possibility that the universe could be quite radically unlike what we observe. But (and I can't stress this enough), it's also possible that the universe is exactly as it seems to our perceptions.

Now, I’m not coming down in favour of one side or another in any argument about whether or not plant-spirits/machine elves/hyper-spatial entities/non-material souls exist. Rather, I wonder if the net analogy gives us a different way to consider these things – maybe that is helpful for those on both sides of the debate.

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But as Incog summed up quite succinctly, 'Reality is subjective'.

We seem to get caught up in beating each other over the head with whats 'real' and what 'isn't. I believe that infants and young children accept reality instead of attempting to define it, and we adopt these control mechanisms as we grow up. We can learn from them. Accept each others realities and enjoy the sharing of different perceptions and ideas.

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Reality may or may not be subjective. Big topic. Deserves it's own thread.

For those who don't accept that reality is subjective, I hope what I've written is of interest.

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Have you heard of 'English Prime'? the basic concept is to abolish the verb "to be" ie. "is" from the English language.

I don't have time to elaborate much now but Robert Anton Wilson puts it well:

TOWARD UNDERSTANDING E -PRIME

Robert Anton Wilson

E-PRIME, abolishing all forms of the verb "to be," has its roots in the field of general semantics, as presented by Alfred Korzybski in his 1933 book, Science and Sanity. Korzybski pointed out the pitfalls associated with, and produced by, two usages of "to be": identity and predication. His student D. David Bourland, Jr., observed that even linguistically sensitive people do not seem able to avoid identity and predication uses of "to be" if they continue to use the verb at all. Bourland pioneered in demonstrating that one can indeed write and speak without using any form of "to be," calling this subset of the English language "E-Prime." Many have urged the use of E-Prime in writing scientific and technical papers. Dr. Kellogg exemplifies a prime exponent of this activity. Dr. Albert Ellis has rewritten five of his books in E-Prime, in collaboration with Dr. Robert H. Moore, to improve their clarity and to reap the epistemological benefits of this language revision. Korzybski felt that all humans should receive training in general semantics from grade school on, as "semantic hygiene" against the most prevalent forms of logical error, emotional distortion, and "demonological thinking." E-Prime provides a straightforward training technique for acquiring such semantic hygiene.

To understand E-Prime, consider the human brain as a computer. (Note that I did not say the brain "is" a computer.) As the Prime Law of Computers tells us, GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT (GIGO, for short). The wrong software guarantees wrong answers. Conversely, finding the right software can "miraculously" solve problems that previously appeared intractable.

It seems likely that the principal software used in the human brain consists of words, metaphors, disguised metaphors, and linguistic structures in general. The Sapir-Whorf-Korzybski Hypothesis, in anthropology, holds that a change in language can alter our perception of the cosmos. A revision of language structure, in particular, can alter the brain as dramatically as a psychedelic. In our metaphor, if we change the software, the computer operates in a new way.

Consider the following paired sets of propositions, in which Standard English alternates with English-Prime (E-Prime):

lA. The electron is a wave.

lB. The electron appears as a wave when measured with instrument-l.

2A. The electron is a particle.

2B. The electron appears as a particle when measured with instrument-2.

3A. John is lethargic and unhappy.

3B. John appears lethargic and unhappy in the office.

4A. John is bright and cheerful.

4B. John appears bright and cheerful on holiday at the beach.

5A. This is the knife the first man used to stab the second man.

5B. The first man appeared to stab the second man with what looked like a knife to me.

6A. The car involved in the hit-and-run accident was a blue Ford.

6B. In memory, I think I recall the car involved in the hit-and-run accident as a blue Ford.

7A. This is a fascist idea.

7B. This seems like a fascist idea to me.

8A. Beethoven is better than Mozart.

8B. In my present mixed state of musical education and ignorance, Beethoven seems better to me than Mozart.

9A. That is a sexist movie.

9B. That seems like a sexist movie to me.

10A. The fetus is a person.

10B. In my system of metaphysics, I classify the fetus as a person.

The "A"-type statements (Standard English) all implicitly or explicitly assume the medieval view called "Aristotelian essentialism" or "naive realism." In other words, they assume a world made up of block-like entities with indwelling "essences" or spooks- "ghosts in the machine." The "B"-type statements (E-Prime) recast these sentences into a form isomorphic to modern science by first abolishing the "is" of Aristotelian essence and then reformulating each observation in terms of signals received and interpreted by a body (or instrument) moving in space-time.

Relativity, quantum mechanics, large sections of general physics, perception psychology, sociology, linguistics, modern math, anthropology, ethology, and several other sciences make perfect sense when put into the software of E-Prime. Each of these sciences generates paradoxes, some bordering on "nonsense" or "gibberish," if you try to translate them back into the software of Standard English.

Concretely, "The electron is a wave" employs the Aristotelian "is" and thereby introduces us to the false-to-experience notion that we can know the indwelling "essence" of the electron. "The electron appears as a wave when measured by instrument-1" reports what actually occurred in space-time, namely that the electron when constrained by a certain instrument behaved in a certain way.

Similarly, "The electron is a particle" contains medieval Aristotelian software, but "The electron appears as a particle when measured by instrument-2" contains modern scientific software. Once again, the software determines whether we impose a medieval or modern grid upon our reality-tunnel.

Note that "the electron is a wave" and "the electron is a particle" contradict each other and begin the insidious process by which we move gradually from paradox to nonsense to total gibberish. On the other hand, the modern scientific statements "the electron appears as a wave when measured one way" and "the electron appears as a particle measured another way" do not contradict, but rather complement each other. (Bohr's Principle of Complementarity, which explained this and revolutionized physics, would have appeared obvious to all, and not just to a person of his genius, if physicists had written in E-Prime all along. . . .)

Looking at our next pair, "John is lethargic and unhappy" vs. "John is bright and cheerful,' we see again how medieval software creates metaphysical puzzles and totally imaginary contradictions. Operationalizing the statements, as physicists since Bohr have learned to operationalize, we find that the E-Prime translations do not contain any contradiction, and even give us a clue as to causes of John's changing moods. (Look back if you forgot the translations.)

"The first man stabbed the second man with a knife" lacks the overt "is" of identity but contains Aristotelian software nonetheless. The E-Prime translation not only operationalizes the data, but may fit the facts better-if the incident occurred in a psychology class, which often conduct this experiment. (The first man "stabs," or makes stabbing gestures at, the second man, with a banana, but many students, conditioned by Aristotelian software, nonetheless "see" a knife. You don't need to take drugs to hallucinate; improper language can fill your world with phantoms and spooks of many kinds.)

The reader may employ his or her own ingenuity in analyzing how "is-ness" creates false-to-facts reality-tunnels in the remaining examples, and how E-Prime brings us back to the scientific, the operational, the existential, the phenomenological--to what humans and their instruments actually do in space-time as they create observations, perceptions, thoughts, deductions, and General Theories.

I have found repeatedly that when baffled by a problem in science, in "philosophy," or in daily life, I gain immediate insight by writing down what I know about the enigma in strict E-Prime. Often, solutions appear immediately-just as happens when you throw out the "wrong" software and put the "right" software into your PC. In other cases, I at least get an insight into why the problem remains intractable and where and how future science might go about finding an answer. (This has contributed greatly to my ever-escalating agnosticism about the political, ideological, and religious issues that still generate the most passion on this primitive planet.)

When a proposition resists all efforts to recast it in a form consistent with what we now call E-Prime, many consider it "meaningless." Korzybski, Wittgenstein, the Logical Positivists, and (in his own way) Niels Bohr promoted this view. I happen to agree with that verdict (which condemns 99 percent of theology and 99.999999 percent of metaphysics to the category of Noise rather than Meaning)--but we must save that subject for another article. For now, it suffices to note that those who fervently believe such Aristotelian propositions as "A piece of bread, blessed by a priest, is a person (who died two thousand years ago)," "The flag is a living being," or "The fetus is a human being" do not, in general, appear to make sense by normal twentieth-century scientific standards.

Edited by paradox
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I think this is getting waaay too meta for me haha :P

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astronomers would never simply infer that something exists unobserved simply because it's too small for our instruments to catch. in fact i think the opposite has taken place in particle physics.

for an astronomer to spend decades claiming something exists and spending tens of billions of dollars searching for it, first it would need to be crucial missing evidence for their patched up theories. does the standard paradigm call for the existence of countless unobservable small fish? yes? then 90% of the ocean is unobservable fish keep sending us money and nobels and we'll continue our farcical search.

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OK, so maybe the astronomer wasn't such a good example - there was almost no significance to me picking that profession - just needed someone for the dude with the net to talk to.

Ha, I think (after almost 12 hours) I just got what you are saying - fucking unobservable fish! It's not a bad point.

Anyway, like I said, it wasn't well thought out, just wanted to present another possible angle to the argument between those who think that what exists is best described by our observations, and those who think there might be something else.

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Well you raised an interesting irony anyway. The scenario has been framed in different ways over the years but we think of people with "spiritual beliefs" as the ones who invoke unobservable fish to make their views plausible.

In fact leading scientists have been doing this blatantly for a long time and their search for non-baryonic fish continues under the assumption that these fish exist because otherwise their existing theories are implausible.

The cruellest part of this irony is that these mathematicians tell us how the universe began and sitting in the pews we believe. Detractors are roundly and often falsely accused of pseudoscience and burned at the stake.

This is a serious problem.

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I have no idea what reality is most days. its a hour by hour day to day thing. its kind of subjective to the moment. I cruise along doing okay until I get sucked into reading the daily telegraph. "Just look at the pictures" I keep telling myself, but no I cant help myself. Now I keep a wide birth of anything "news", I struggle enough getting through whats in front of me! this is a conversation for doctors and mathematacacians. was just so stoked to have been quoted so the quotee can realise I have no idea myself about reality. I don't think I need to know, or if ITS knowable, I would be very wary of a person who would tell me the nature of reality with conviction in deed!!

anyhoo ill follow this wrong path out of here!! love reading these discussions they are awesome!!

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Well you raised an interesting irony anyway. The scenario has been framed in different ways over the years but we think of people with "spiritual beliefs" as the ones who invoke unobservable fish to make their views plausible.

Oh, I know this applies to science - that's what the original authors (Eddington, Bonjour, Wright etc.) were all arguing about. I just wondered if we might apply a bit of their thinking to a more immediate disagreement here.

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Ahh sorry yeti, I forgot that this thread was re: Conversation.

I'm sitting that one out, but as far as your fishing analogy relates to it, I think it could be polished up in that you can't just find more fish with a finer net. Maybe you need to drive the boat differently, or corral then like whales, or hold your tongue the right way and jiggle. What I mean is that science and contemplation are closely related and neither is a straightforward affair. Reductionism doesn't come close to answering everything, for instance, it only pushes in one direction. even very smart people seem often to only think in certain directions and colours.

There are so many ways to swing a net, both in the act of science and the act of contemplation, and because of this we're usually/always wrong when we start making conclusions.

The ocean is stunning though, and all the more for us monkeys with our net.

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yeti are you pushing Christianity on us subconsciously with all these fish metaphors?

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Theres interesting philosophy on the nature of reality in numbers. Pythagoras and those greek guys came up with a lot of cool theological mathmatical ideas, one of them is essentially an intological meditation on the phenomena of everything and nothing, one and zero. All that is, born from all that is not. The illusion of reality, numbers 2 through to 9, are the divisions of 'all that is', seeking to know itself by defining boundaries within its infinity. Divisions in the whole creating parts which in themselves are wholes that again divide, on and on. This idea is actually represented in some ways in the Tarot and in Kabbalistic mysticism, amongst many other 'occult' belief systems. But thats another fascinating discussion.

Reality is then a dance between order and chaos, between the controlled and the uncontrollable, the conscious and the unconscious, the describable and the indescribable, the 'tonal' and 'nagual'. One and zero.

My subjective reality is all that I perceive, but the being the observer requires the illusion of separation from that which is being observed. This disconnection becomes an existential ache.

I guess its why I often yearn for the void, that beautiful destruction of ego, being dissolved back into the indescribable infinity.

One becomes Zero.

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It might feel like taking a piss. Not inherently pleasurable but for the displeasure of its delay.

A lifetIme of holding back a piss.

Not that I yearn for the void. If its anything like relieving yourself, I must have ten thousand more pisses left in this ambling fleshmode.

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I was served bouts of sleep paralysis after writing that post, and now i feel silly. I didn't mean that passing beyond might be a mundane experience, I only meant that it may involve an element of release.

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Ahh sorry yeti, I forgot that this thread was re: Conversation.

I'm sitting that one out, but as far as your fishing analogy relates to it, I think it could be polished up in that you can't just find more fish with a finer net. Maybe you need to drive the boat differently, or corral then like whales, or hold your tongue the right way and jiggle. What I mean is that science and contemplation are closely related and neither is a straightforward affair. Reductionism doesn't come close to answering everything, for instance, it only pushes in one direction. even very smart people seem often to only think in certain directions and colours.

In some ways I'd prefer to use the analogy as a starting point - I wouldn't want it to overtake the original idea. That said, I agree it could be tweaked quite a bit. The idea, as other have used it, is pretty much limited to conventional observation/experience/perception-based information and what we can infer from it - hence the story is just about the net. My ideas, that your system of beliefs, or less radically, your methodology, can be the net - that could be better written into the story. Also, I'm pretty anti-reductionist, mainly if it's reduction for it's own sake.

yeti are you pushing Christianity on us subconsciously with all these fish metaphors?

Well I thought having the biologist catching octopi so you would start worshiping Cthulhu was a bit obvious.

Now I just need Thelema to jump in and tell me what Rorty would say about this.

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