Reading Epistemology Intro - now I'm really piste

I really don't see what the problem is. That paragraph is an allusion to Plato's theory of the forms, that reality is a shadowy reflection of real reality and not immediately apprehendable to our senses. It is a common theory brought up in epistemology and metaphysics, when we talk about the reliability of the senses. Objectivists hold that the senses are not detached from reason and we can apprehend reality as it is. Reason keeps us from being fooled by illusions and such. his is not far rom what Bob believes anyway, that reason fills the gaps. Objectivists reject the empricist/rationalist dichotomy.

Hey, I'm not even an Objectivist, but I know that.

There are problems, though, with Objectivist epstemology. John Galt does imply that we, as rational creatures, already know that realty is what it is, that existence exists, and we deny it from time to time, when we are immoral. This does present problems which Objectivists on this board have failed to solve, like what guides that initial choice to be rational.

bis bald,

Nick

Post 21

Friday, August 4, 2006 - 9:24pm

Now this brings us to one of the main thrusts of Kelley's book. The senses provide us information, but we interpret the information. The fact that we perceive the same thing in different ways due to different context doesn't invalidate our senses. On the contrary, it gives us more information....
Ok, that's one way of looking at it, no problem, but what if our senses gives us info that isn't there. No, not a hallucination with origins in the mind, but a ringing in the ears because of a loud concert.

The ringing in the ears is not causeless; it is caused by the loud concert, just as the sounds from the concert are caused by the source of that sound, e.g., the musical instruments. What needs to be kept in mind here is something that Peikoff points out in his book on Objectivism: "The senses do not interpret their own reactions; they do not identify the objects that impinge on them. They merely respond to stimuli, thereby making us aware of the fact that some kind of objects exist. We do not become aware of what the objects are, but merely that they are. 'The task of [man's] senses, writes Ayn Rand, 'is to give him the evidence of existence, but the task of identifying it belongs to his reason, his senses tell him only that something is, but what it is must be learned by his mind.'" (OPAR, p. 40). So, you learn that the ringing in your ears is a due to inner ear stress caused by the loud noise from the concert. This does not mean that the senses have erred. They are simply responding in a certain way to a certain kind of stimuli.

More...
If I drew a sketch of what I see and gave it to you, you'd have my version of things, which might not be accurate. But if you see it for yourself, you don't have the middleman who picks and chooses what you see. All of it gets to you, and since there's no selection process along the way, there's no room for mistakes. I hope that makes sense.
One version of things is "inaccurate". The other version has "no room for mistakes". But neither is "unrealiable". Hmm...

I don't think you're paraphrasing him correctly. He's not saying that one version (the sketch that he draws) is inaccurate; he's saying that, as far as you're concerned, it might not be accurate, because you're not able to compare it to reality in order to confirm its accuracy. Nor is he saying that neither version is unreliable. Since he says that his sketch might not be accurate, he's saying that it's unreliable. What's "reliable" is only what you see directly without a "middleman" picking and choosing what you see.

- Bill

Post 22

Friday, August 4, 2006 - 9:58pm

Nick wrote,

There are problems, though, with Objectivist epstemology. John Galt does imply that we, as rational creatures, already know that realty is what it is, that existence exists, and we deny it from time to time, when we are immoral. This does present problems which Objectivists on this board have failed to solve, like what guides that initial choice to be rational.

Right. If I understand you, you're saying that the initial choice to be rational must itself be rationally chosen. Yes, I've had trouble with this question myself, and I think that it can pose problems for Objectivists, depending on how they interpret "rationality" in this context. What Rand evidently means by saying that one must "choose to be rational" is that one must choose to engage in a certain mental process (i.e., choose to think and to focus) which enables one to reason efficiently and to arrive at subsequent decisions that are rational, rather than approaching an issue out of focus, a process which results in sloppy and unreliable thinking and reasoning. That's the best interpretation I can place on it. But it would seem that one must already, in some sense, be thinking rationally, albeit at a lower level of awareness, in order to know that this process of mental focusing is desirable and therefore worth choosing.

- Bill
(Edited by William Dwyer
on 8/04, 9:59pm)

Post 23

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 12:47am

Bob Mac:

To say that it's only our thinking that can be wrong is arbitrary in many ways. The line between perception and cognition is arbitrary. We know that our senses are incomplete and have blind spots, limits, varying frequency responses and so on that can lead to all sorts of effects, illusions and error, but somehow that can't be the root of the deception? Arbitrary.

Our senses are incomplete to what? We know we are getting better descriptions of reality, but to say that are incomplete doesn't make a whole lot of sense considering we don't know what complete looks like so how do we know what is therefore incomplete?

There can be no possible way you could know any errors one could make without relying on senses. Our senses are the starting point to understanding reality.Then we go on with interpreting these observations. I don't see how that is arbitrary. On the contrary it seems to me you have come to that conclusion arbitrarily. If you accept anything about the scientific method, it's not arbitrary at all. Observations are what they are, hypothesis and theories are what they are. One is raw data, the accumulation of information through our senses, the other is the interpretation of that raw data. It seems like a pretty clear demarcation to me. For example, do you think observing a waterfall is the same as explaining Newtonian physics? Whereas one is the initial observation of reality, a waterfall, the latter is the process of conceptualizing that observation with many others, which doesn't require the senses but instead the mind.

For example, when we immerse a straight stick in water, it looks bent - an optical illusion - but the illusion is not due to any inherent unreliability of the senses, which simply provide a different appearance of the stick in the medium of water than in the medium of air, which is something we must discover.

Poor example, the bent stick is not seen because of any error or limitation, but because of how light behaves. How about when we "see" a line of light when a point source moves quickly?

Again, we are given a different appearance of the light when moved quickly as opposed to it moving slowly or standing still. It's not due to any inherent unreliability of the senses, it's something that we must discover. We are observing light in different contexts. It's not a poor example, in fact your example conceptually is exactly the same example as the bent light stick example. You just seem to be having trouble understanding the concept here, or you are consciously refusing to understand. I don't know which.

Conclusions are not 100% reliable....

????

How did you come to that conclusion if conclusions are not 100% reliable? So another words you're not sure conclusions are not 100% reliable? Which means by your own argument, they could be 100% reliable? Huh? What kind of bullshit is that?

We know we have been deceived, but only because we have used our rationality and other sensory evidence (although still not 100% reliable) to conclude this to some acceptable level of certainty - whatever that may be.

Exactly, whatever that may be, which is no acceptable level of certainty. There is nothing to be certain about is there if it can never be 100% reliable? So what on earth do you mean by an acceptable level of certainty? What would be acceptable and how would you even know it was acceptable? Does that make any sense? It doesn't to me.

Sometimes we know we're deceived, but probably not always.

How do you know? What if we are always deceived and life is a constant never-ending exploration riddled with deceit because of our unreliable flawed senses? This is precisely the possibility you leave open by suggesting this which undercuts and refutes the original argument you give. What you mean is we don't have a full description of reality.

Or at least there's simply no way to know that we're not being deceived with absolute certainty

Bob, there is no other kind of certainty. Certain means indisputable. So why is there any such thing as absolute certainty? There isn't, that's just redundant. So what you're saying is "there's no way to know that we're not being deceived with certainty", or to take out the double negatives "we know we are being deceived with certainty" again to which I ask how could you possibly know that? Are you not being deceived then right now as you tell us this? Is the existence of Bob Mac and his posting on this forum a deception to me or is this the one time we make an exception? If so then how do you know this is where we make the exception? Isn't that arbitrary? Indeed, it is. You are trapping yourself in the stolen concept fallacy or a self-refuting argument.

If you can be deceived EVER, it is not possible to EVER be 100% sure

(this is fun!) So Bob are you sure about that if it's not possible to ever be 100% sure? So are you sort of sure that it's not possible to ever be sure? And are you sort of sure that it is possible then to always be sure? Which means you are no longer sort of sure but you are sure? (brain now explodes) So Bob, what kind of bullshit is that?

(Edited by John Armaos on 8/05, 1:10am)

Post 24

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 12:49am

Jenna wrote:

Well, you're talking to a hardcore individualist

Aren't we all? :)

Post 25

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 6:03am

John:

How did you come to that conclusion if conclusions are not 100% reliable? So another words you're not sure conclusions are not 100% reliable? Which means by your own argument, they could be 100% reliable? Huh? What kind of bullshit is that?

You're ignoring the context. Bob was talking about conclusions we derive about the physical world on the basis of the data of our senses. There is no contradiction in saying that these conclusions are never 100% reliable, as this statement is a metastatement, the truth of which does not depend on 100% reliable senses. And even if you suppose that he is only 99% certain about that statement, so what? Are all statements that are "only" 99% certain bullshit because there is a very small probability that they are incorrect?

Post 26

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 6:14am

Jenna Wrote:

I'm not sure how to help/respond here... because I don't know what kind of problems you have. Why are you thinking about being swayed? Do you think you need to be? Whatever problems you see, have you found solutions?

Maybe you misunderstood. I have an interest in Objectivism because I admire the rationality and logic. I cannot however get around some of the fundamental problems in the roots of the philosophy. By "swayed", I mean swayed from my conclusion that serious problems exists in the philosophy and not somewhere else, like a misunderstanding or an error in logic. In this sense no solutions have been presented here nor elsewhere. The arguments against Objectivism are consistently more compelling to me.

Bob

Post 27

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 6:20am

Bill Wrote:

The ringing in the ears is not causeless; it is caused by the loud concert,

Days ago, so that's a big stretch. There's also the problem with audio and visual background noise that has no outside cause. You conviently ignored that.

He's not saying that one version (the sketch that he draws) is inaccurate; he's saying that, as far as you're concerned, it might not be accurate, because you're not able to compare it to reality in order to confirm its accuracy....

What's "reliable" is only what you see directly without a "middleman" picking and choosing what you see.

What? The jist of this is that the middleman has unreliable senses, but you don't? WTF? Your senses are good, but others aren't. This is a really stupid argument. It's a contradiction.

Bob

Post 28

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 6:46am

John Wrote:

Our senses are incomplete to what? We know we are getting better descriptions of reality, but to say that are incomplete doesn't make a whole lot of sense considering we don't know what complete looks like so how do we know what is therefore incomplete?

C'mon now. We can build an instrument that detects a larger light spectrum and come to a highly confident rational conclusion that our eyes only detect a small part of the spectrum.

There can be no possible way you could know any errors one could make without relying on senses.

Wrong. We must use senses AND logic to evaluate evidence to be confident we have discovered errors. What is arbitrary and non-sensical is to assert that somewhere down the line we can inherently trust our senses when we know they are fallible. The problem here is assuming that we need to have perfect confidence that we erred, but this is impossible if our senses aren't perfect. Fine, it's logically consistent, but it's a floating abstraction, not connected to reality. This is a stupid argument.

One is raw data, the accumulation of information through our senses, the other is the interpretation of that raw data. It seems like a pretty clear demarcation to me.

Really?? Enlighten us to where exactly your eyes/vision end and your visual processing begins.

You just seem to be having trouble understanding the concept here, or you are consciously refusing to understand. I don't know which.

In one case you see a exact representation of light as it appears/behaves through different media. The other examples are of things that ARE NOT THERE IN ANY WAY - DO NOT EXIST. Get it now? Accuse ME of REFUSAL? I'll forgive you if you're retarded. The stupid bent-stick is NOT an example of the problem, but every Objectivist when confronted with illusions pulls this out of his ass - who's refusing now?

Cal explained/refuted the other crap about certainty. I'm taking a break from this nonsense. I might not return.

Bob

(Edited by Mr Bob Mac on 8/05, 6:50am)

Post 29

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 7:53am

People sure get worked up about this stuff.

One point that hasn't been explicitly made is that our sense organs are part of the reality we are sensing. They have characteristics that we can study, just like things that are external to our bodies. The fact that we can't see in the infrared part of the spectrum doesn't make our eyes flawed or unreliable. And we only discovered that we couldn't see infrared by using our other senses and our reasoning minds. I think the main point Objectivism makes about the validity of the senses is that the senses are giving us an accurate view of reality, and the fact that they have a specific nature and specific limitations does not change that. It's wrong to say that because we are not omniscient, we can't be certain of anything.

Post 30

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 8:25am

Bob, did you even read my post?

Our senses are incomplete to what? We know we are getting better descriptions of reality, but to say that are incomplete doesn't make a whole lot of sense considering we don't know what complete looks like so how do we know what is therefore incomplete?
C'mon now. We can build an instrument that detects a larger light spectrum and come to a highly confident rational conclusion that our eyes only detect a small part of the spectrum.

And? So we need our visual senses to even build the instrument and look at the instruments data, why would you say at one point your sense of sight is unreliable and then all of a sudden in the next step, it is reliable enough to build an instrument and see the data it produces? Isn't that an arbitrary assertion of where you think all of a sudden our senses are unreliable and then magically become reliable? How else do you know the instrument is right other than by looking at what it does? So the point I was making Bob it's pointless to say our senses are incomplete. Incomplete does not mean flawed or unreliable.

There can be no possible way you could know any errors one could make without relying on senses.
Wrong. We must use senses AND logic to evaluate evidence to be confident we have discovered errors. What is arbitrary and non-sensical is to assert that somewhere down the line we can inherently trust our senses when we know they are fallible. The problem here is assuming that we need to have perfect confidence that we erred, but this is impossible if our senses aren't perfect. Fine, it's logically consistent, but it's a floating abstraction, not connected to reality. This is a stupid argument.

Excuse me? Stupid argument? Pot calling the kettle black here? Who's the one that said these little gems of wisdom right after throwing a little temper tantrum and claiming others were making stupid arguments?

you can be deceived EVER, it is not possible to EVER be 100% sure

Conclusions are not 100% reliable....

....and so on. But to get back to the previous quote. You can't possibly know you are wrong unless you start somewhere. And since you start with sensory perception, there is no other starting point. So how could you know your wrong without relying on your senses? Simply put, if you find out you were wrong about something, how could you trust yourself in knowing this if your senses are unreliable? That is what doesn't make sense Bob. In every step of the way, you are relying on senses, both to accumulate data and to accumulate corroborative evidence to be able to change a wrong interpretation of that sensory data.

One is raw data, the accumulation of information through our senses, the other is the interpretation of that raw data. It seems like a pretty clear demarcation to me.
Really?? Enlighten us to where exactly your eyes/vision end and your visual processing begins.

What? I don't even understand what you are asking, your sense of sight entails a visual process. I don't understand what you mean when you imply there is a beginning and an end to that process. When you see a waterfall it's instantaneous. When you see an object drop from someone's hands it's an instantaneous observation, when you start to integrate this observations into any kind of conceptual knowledge, you get laws and theorems, more specifically in this case Newtonian physics. There, you have been enlightened.:)

You just seem to be having trouble understanding the concept here, or you are consciously refusing to understand. I don't know which.

In one case you see a exact representation of light as it appears/behaves through different media. The other examples are of things that ARE NOT THERE IN ANY WAY - DO NOT EXIST. Get it now? Accuse ME of REFUSAL? I'll forgive you if you're retarded. The stupid bent-stick is NOT an example of the problem, but every Objectivist when confronted with illusions pulls this out of his ass - who's refusing now?

Bob, the other example given shows the stick to be straight in air but bent in water, it's something that DOES NOT EXIST! What part of that don't you understand? This bending of the stick isn't occurring! It's still a straight stick, get it? It's the exact same thing in principle of seeing a line of light when there is none, in the other example you are seeing a bent stick when there is none, yet you accuse others of being retarded and throwing childish temper tantrums and this most basic a principle you don't get? Seriously are you just refusing to understand or is this really honest error on your part?

Cal explained/refuted the other crap about certainty

Wouldn't you like to think so. Cal wrote:

You're ignoring the context. Bob was talking about conclusions we derive about the physical world on the basis of the data of our senses. There is no contradiction in saying that these conclusions are never 100% reliable, as this statement is a metastatement, the truth of which does not depend on 100% reliable senses. And even if you suppose that he is only 99% certain about that statement, so what? Are all statements that are "only" 99% certain bullshit because there is a very small probability that they are incorrect?

Saying our conclusions are never 100% reliable implies the conclusion that "they are not 100% reliable" is not itself a 100% reliable conclusion. Which means there is a possibility the conclusion is 100% reliable, which is to then say our conclusions are 100% reliable. Which would make the statement our conclusions are never 100% reliable in Bob's eloquent terms a stupid argument. Or as I'd rather call it the fallacy of the stolen concept. Either take it or leave it Cal, no better way that I can think of to better convey this basic principle. And again, there is no such thing as saying something is 99% certain. Certain mean indisputable. You are either sure or unsure about something. The most basic of axioms here that keeps being dropped is that A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time. We have probabilities, we can be certain for example there is an 80% chance it will rain tomorrow. That we are certain of! You don't say we are 80% certain it will rain, that doesn't make any sense.

I'm taking a break from this nonsense.

Wise choice, I think I'll follow your lead.

Post 31

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 8:51am

Bill Wrote:
The ringing in the ears is not causeless; it is caused by the loud concert.
Days ago, so that's a big stretch .
Bob, it doesn't matter. There's a stimulus and a response; the time element is irrelevant.
There's also the problem with audio and visual background noise that has no outside cause.

In this case, as well, you simply have a stimulus and a response. It is the job of your mind to learn to identify the cause. For example, it's been discovered that tinnitus is often caused by a problem with the "sensorineural" system, which is involved in transmitting signals from the inner ear to the brain.

I wrote, "He's not saying that one version (the sketch that he draws) is inaccurate; he's saying that, as far as you're concerned, it might not be accurate, because you're not able to compare it to reality in order to confirm its accuracy.... What's "reliable" is only what you see directly without a "middleman" picking and choosing what you see."

What? The jist of this is that the middleman has unreliable senses, but you don't? WTF? Your senses are good, but others aren't. This is a really stupid argument. It's a contradiction.

Bob, this is funny! You're missing the point. It's an analogy, like the analogy I gave about a person's telling you something without your being able to confirm or deny it. The middleman is simply an example of an intermediary between your senses and reality.

- Bill

Post 32

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 9:54am

Replying to Bob Mac, John wrote, "How did you come to that conclusion if conclusions are not 100% reliable? So another words you're not sure conclusions are not 100% reliable? Which means by your own argument, they could be 100% reliable? Huh? What kind of bullshit is that?" Cal replied,

You're ignoring the context. Bob was talking about conclusions we derive about the physical world on the basis of the data of our senses. There is no contradiction in saying that these conclusions are never 100% reliable, as this statement is a metastatement, the truth of which does not depend on 100% reliable senses. And even if you suppose that he is only 99% certain about that statement, so what? Are all statements that are "only" 99% certain bullshit because there is a very small probability that they are incorrect?

I think what John was getting at (and he can correct me if I'm wrong) is that if you come to a conclusion about something, you necessarily believe the conclusion is 100% reliable. Otherwise, you would have drawn a different conclusion - one that you do believe is 100% reliable.

- Bill
(Edited by William Dwyer
on 8/05, 10:05am)

Oops! I see that he beat me to it in Post 30.

(Edited by William Dwyer
on 8/05, 10:41am)

Post 33

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 11:06am

Yes Bill absolutely. All of this should be clear that Cal and Bob are resorting to the fallacy of the stolen concept. Every time they say "you can never always be sure of something" how is it that they are sure of that? Wouldn't that statement leave doubt to its validity and allow us to reject the argument as valid? It's a self-refuting statement.

Post 34

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 11:13am

John:

Saying our conclusions are never 100% reliable implies the conclusion that "they are not 100% reliable" is not itself a 100% reliable conclusion.

No, that doesn't follow. As I already pointed out in my previous post, you're omitting the context of Bob's remark, namely that the discussion was about conclusions about the physical world based on sensory evidence, not about any conclusion whatsoever. You can very well conclude with 100% certainty that 2 + 2 = 4 for example, that cannot be falsified by experimental evidence.

But even if his conclusion is not 100% certain, there is no problem. In common parlance we don't make qualifications of statements that are 99.99% certain, only logic choppers do that. If you insist on a qualified statement, it could be: "the evidence that conclusions about the physical world based on sensory evidence is never 100% reliable is overwhelming."

Bill:

I think what John was getting at (and he can correct me if I'm wrong) is that if you come to a conclusion about something, you necessarily believe the conclusion is 100% reliable.

You may believe that, but that doesn't necessarily imply that it is correct. People have been proven wrong sometimes. And some people realize that, but see no problem in ignoring the negligible possibility that they are wrong. We can live very well with 99,99% certainty and see no need to make qualifications every time we make such a statement, we do that only if there is a substantial doubt about the correctness of the statement.

Post 35

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 11:26am

John:

Saying our conclusions are never 100% reliable implies the conclusion that "they are not 100% reliable" is not itself a 100% reliable conclusion.

No, that doesn't follow. As I already pointed out in my previous post, you're omitting the context of Bob's remark, namely that the discussion was about conclusions about the physical world based on sensory evidence, not about any conclusion whatsoever.

LOL! Then to what is Bob referring to when making this conclusion if he's not referring to the physical world? The supernatural? LOL!!! What do I use to even read his conclusion from his post on this forum if we are not referring to our senses? Do I not have to use sensory perception to even read the conclusion? Was the thought just transmitted via telepathy into my mind? LOL!

Cal seriously, you crack me up! :)

You may believe that, but that doesn't necessarily imply that it is correct

LOL! Is that statement correct? The fun continues!
(Edited by John Armaos
on 8/05, 11:28am)

Post 36

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 11:52am

You can very well conclude with 100% certainty that 2 + 2 = 4 for example, that cannot be falsified by experimental evidence.

How do you falsify something by experimental evidence, if you can never be sure of the evidence that it's false?

- Bill

Post 37

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 12:03pm

John:

LOL! Then to what is Bob referring to when making this conclusion if he's not referring to the physical world? The supernatural? LOL!!! What do I use to even read his conclusion from his post on this forum if we are not referring to our senses? Do I not have to use sensory perception to even read the conclusion? Was the thought just transmitted via telepathy into my mind? LOL!

So for example drawing conclusions about the logic of an argument is referring to the supernatural? Do you think we couldn't arrive at the certain conclusion that 2 + 2 = 4 if the information of our senses is not 100% reliable or if our physical theories are not 100% certain?

LOL! Is that statement correct? The fun continues!

If you keep ignoring my arguments and think that such logic chopping constitutes an argument I see no reason to continue this discussion, I'm not interested in sophistry.

Post 38

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 12:12pm

Bill:

How do you falsify something by experimental evidence, if you can never be sure of the evidence that it's false?

Can we only falsify something if we're 100% sure of the evidence? Isn't evidence that is 99% certain good enough to discard a theory?

Post 39

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 1:27pm