The View from 40,000 FT and the Tip of Ones Nose

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I mean, we can deconstruct reality down to the point of unknowingness. I spent a LOT of time reading, and googling as a result of reading, Being and Nothingness. I think it took me a good year of picking up that damned book, putting it down, googling and googling terms, definitions, hot takes, papers, and everything in between as I trudged and trudged my way through it. When I tell you I am not a bright man, I’m not being self-deprecating. I’m not a bright man. I’ve proven that over and over again on this forum. No doubt.

But I’m fairly confident, after having read everything I’ve read, that this reality definitely has rules, in so far as I can understand them given the senses I have. If you can’t trust your own eyes, then how can you trust anything? If the purpose of your mind right now is to determine truth, we’re going to have to agree on an objective fact, otherwise we’re into apologetics territory where nothing is true, except something definitely is, depending on how you process it.

So let me pose this question to you, Honor:

What is one thing you can assert is an objective fact that is universal?

- Doc

[honorentheos]

Well, this is a funny example.given money is a human construct if there ever was one. The idea I lent them something we both agreed had value of a reasonably agreed on amount is very much in line with the idea reality is a product of shared her man experience. So supposng they then claim that I in fact never leant them this money, and I had a signed contract (which I would hope to have given the sum involved) I would rely on other human constructs of law and contracts to obtain what I freely acknowledge to be an abstraction of value back in return.

Thank you for the nice example. : )

But under the circumstances stated, there is no way you would accept that they don't really owe you the money (human construct or not), is there? I asked:

Do you triangulate their view with yours and try to avoid telling them to "stop playing games and get on the bus that is my way of perceiving the world"?

No you don't. And it's clear that when something matters to you, the truth is not a vague negotiable thing, but something you will insist upon until you get your own way.

When I want to know what your attitude to truth is, I'm not very interested in how you talk. I'm interested in how you act.

In this situation, I'd have a contract that we agreed on before I gave someone $100,000. Or, I would give it as a gift. This idea of insisting I get my way without having established clear expectations and shared understanding would be immature. And that's the point here. Behaving as if the world must confirm to your assertions rather than engaging with the complexity of human behavior and psychology is flawed and failure-prone.

I think your example highlights the flaws in believing a person could go around asserting reality complies with their stated view without establishing many, many agreed upon understandings. There is no objective law, no objective ownership rights that make that claim just so. You have to care about a person's view of ownership before lending them money or you are a fool. The evidence of that foolishness? Your protesting loudly that someone owed you $100,000 without knowing they didn't agree on what constitutes ownership and lacked the willingness to sign a contract agreeing to repayment terms. I'd argue a person who does what you propose is struggling with sharing space with others at many levels and would benefit from stepping away from their certitude about the world. Skepticism would be a fine tool to add to that person's toolbox.

[honorentheos]

I mean, we can deconstruct reality down to the point of unknowingness. I spent a LOT of time reading, and googling as a result of reading, Being and Nothingness. I think it took me a good year of picking up that damned book, putting it down, googling and googling terms, definitions, hot takes, papers, and everything in between as I trudged and trudged my way through it. When I tell you I am not a bright man, I’m not being self-deprecating. I’m not a bright man. I’ve proven that over and over again on this forum. No doubt.

But I’m fairly confident, after having read everything I’ve read, that this reality definitely has rules, in so far as I can understand them given the senses I have. If you can’t trust your own eyes, then how can you trust anything? If the purpose of your mind right now is to determine truth, we’re going to have to agree on an objective fact, otherwise we’re into apologetics territory where nothing is true, except something definitely is, depending on how you process it.

So let me pose this question to you, Honor:

What is one thing you can assert is an objective fact that is universal?

- Doc

Hi Doc,

If you plowed through Being and Nothingness you are one up above me.

It seems I need to clarify that I do believe the universe we are in clearly operates by rules that are predictable and we seem to have processes whereby we can gain understanding and assurances certain results will be obtained if certain processes are followed. But what we discover of the universe has human fingerprints on them. Likewise, aspects of the nature of the universe are probably unobservable for us due to limitations in our biology and relationship to it that bound our ability to discover reliable processes that explain everything adequately.

But I don't think any of that is "objectively" factual in that they are outside of subjective human perception. So, I guess the answer to the question is nothing is an objective fact.

I don't think something must be demonstrated to be objectively true to be reliable.

[Res Ipsa]

I mean, we can deconstruct reality down to the point of unknowingness. I spent a LOT of time reading, and googling as a result of reading, Being and Nothingness. I think it took me a good year of picking up that damned book, putting it down, googling and googling terms, definitions, hot takes, papers, and everything in between as I trudged and trudged my way through it. When I tell you I am not a bright man, I’m not being self-deprecating. I’m not a bright man. I’ve proven that over and over again on this forum. No doubt.

But I’m fairly confident, after having read everything I’ve read, that this reality definitely has rules, in so far as I can understand them given the senses I have. If you can’t trust your own eyes, then how can you trust anything? If the purpose of your mind right now is to determine truth, we’re going to have to agree on an objective fact, otherwise we’re into apologetics territory where nothing is true, except something definitely is, depending on how you process it.

So let me pose this question to you, Honor:

What is one thing you can assert is an objective fact that is universal?

- Doc

My hat's off to you, Doc. I tried hacking through Being and Nothingness last year and had to give up. I might take another crack at it again this year. (I'd also love to hear a report on your current reading.)

I don't start with my eyes. I always start with my coffee table. I think it's objectively true that the object I refer to as my coffee table exists. Every time I try to walk through it, I get bruises on my shins. Every time. By the same token, I don't think "coffee table" exists. (I am not a Platonist.) "Coffee table" is a human construct. My coffee table exists.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Honor,

Well. I like that you mentioned we have our fingerprints all over our own discoveries. We’re definitely locked into place ontologically speaking, by our physical realities. I think we’re also locked into a sort of metaphysical reality by one another when we’re discussing what is and what is not - what I mean by that is that we’re ultimately unknowable to one another, and so we’re discussing unknowable things with essentially a creation of our own imaginations (the Other) - we can’t help but to misunderstand one another because we can’t be one another, and that further translates to all objects. I’d even go as far to say we’re our own creation because we don’t actually know what we are, what makes us tick, and thus we’re literally a figment of our own imagination, whatever that means, practically speaking.

Anyway.

I do think that gravity is an unassailable fact, regardless of how we perceive anything. Why else do my tits sag?

- Doc

[canpakes]

I do think that gravity is an unassailable fact, regardless of how we perceive anything. Why else do my tits sag?

- Doc

Choose lighter nipple piercings.

[honorentheos]

I don't start with my eyes. I always start with my coffee table. I think it's objectively true that the object I refer to as my coffee table exists. Every time I try to walk through it, I get bruises on my shins. Every time. By the same token, I don't think "coffee table" exists. (I am not a Platonist.) "Coffee table" is a human construct. My coffee table exists.

I read your comment regarding coffee table and "coffee table" as distinguishing between the ideas and properties that one experiences as "coffee table" when one interacts with coffee table. So the question about objectivity is focused on coffee table since we already agree that "coffee table" is subjective.

It's valuable to reaffirm that what we are discussing is truth, not the existence of a material universe. I'm not agnostic towards the existence of what we may call a material universe, I'm just not sure humanity can meaningfully engage with it in a way that isn't subjective.

So if you asked me if i believed it's true that there is a coffee table in your living room, supposing I had experiences with this coffee table of some kind to have built up a sense of "coffee table" of my own, I wouldn't argue with you about it. if you then said this proves that coffee table is an objective fact, I would be a bit bemused at your definition of objective fact if this is what you mean by it.

Supposing that by it you mean that even if your wife were to move coffee table to a location you didn't expect it to be, you'd still run into it in the dark and bruise your shin not expecting it to be where you could interact with it and didn't go about the world projecting reality onto things, I would find it odd you didn't realize that when this interaction happened and your brain went to work figuring out why your shin hurt and arrived on "coffee table" that coffee table didn't replace "coffee table" in some way that we would be compelled to say separated "coffee table" from coffee table. Whatever is going on with coffee table, the properties it has when it interacts with Res Ipsa are always "coffee table". Even if Res Ipsa isn't manifesting coffee table by projecting "coffee table" onto the bit of the universe that is coffee table and with which interaction with Res Ipsa produces "coffee table" that Res Ipsa does not control.

So I am perplexed that you insist that coffee table exists while "coffee table" does not when for you every interaction with coffee table is always and can only be "coffee table".

[honorentheos]

Building on the above, I think of it similarly to how I view free will. I don't believe the evidence supports our having free will, and what we have is an illusion of free will. What that means for me is complex, though.

On the one hand, I live life as if I have free will. I own what I do and think regardless of the philosophical questions around that ownership. But I also seek to use my understanding of non-free will to work on myself and find ways to make better decisions, exert more "will" towards what I believe are positive aims, and use my belief regarding the lack of free will as a means of improving on the ways I live my life. I don't believe society can ignore individual actions just because free will is an illusion. But approaching anti-social/criminal behaviors with an eye on the free will problem suggests looking for solutions that don't just involve punishing actions so much as influencing future action. Or something like that.

Likewise, I recognize that Res Ipsa and I may both interact with the same coffee table but this produces distinct "coffee table" understandings. When Res Ipsa and I disagree about coffee table I don't assume Res Ipsa is denying the properties of coffee table but rather I try to understand why, when Res Ipsa encounters coffee table and arrives at "coffee tableR" and I "coffee tableH", this can help refine my understanding of coffee table by seeking to understand "coffee tableR" and rotating it around my model of coffee table that is "coffee tableH". It also is critical to realize in doing so I'm compelled to understand Res Ipsa, too, since "coffee tableR" is not separate from Res Ipsa. It helps me build my map of the universe which is always and can only be a subjective interpretation of whatever we may mean by calling something the material universe.

Does that mean there is objective truth available? That somehow or other I can assume "coffee tableH" can become coffee table? I don't think so. I think we can get very, very close to mapping out coffee table through comparative "coffee table" experiences. But the truth is a human creation even in this case, not the universe just being. It's always going to be "coffee tableH" even were every interaction with coffee table to become perfectly predictable. As to the existence of coffee table when H is not interacting with it? What's the point? To contemplate coffee table is to create "coffee table". I don't know what it means for someone to insist that coffee table IS without some form of interaction between coffee table and a human being that also produces meaning. And that produces "coffee table" which is what is being considered. Recognizing this doesn't deny coffee table. It just forces us to consider our access to the truth when we engage with it, engage one another in discussions of it, and hopefully make one a little less likely to complacently believe they have coffee table all figured out and anyone who views coffee table differently is denying reality.

[Res Ipsa]

Thanks for the response Honor. I am very much enjoying this conversation. But I need to ask for a rain check. I'm taking a mental health break from the internet, news and politics. Usually, posting here helps me think through issues and helps reduce whatever anxiety I might be experiencing. But I think it's working backwards right now, and my brain is sending me signals that it needs some rest.

Stay well, stay safe, and I look forward to further discussion.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

My hat's off to you, Doc. I tried hacking through Being and Nothingness last year and had to give up. I might take another crack at it again this year. (I'd also love to hear a report on your current reading.)

I don't start with my eyes. I always start with my coffee table. I think it's objectively true that the object I refer to as my coffee table exists. Every time I try to walk through it, I get bruises on my shins. Every time. By the same token, I don't think "coffee table" exists. (I am not a Platonist.) "Coffee table" is a human construct. My coffee table exists.

There are three things in your statement above that I want to address.

#1 - I would 100% encourage you to give it another try. If you want to try and 'back door hack' B&N I'd suggest reading de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. Sartre's entire philosophical view is captured through her lens as it relates to the dynamic between men and women. You get a concrete idea of existentialism through a feminist's eyes.

#2 - This is my current status with regard to my current endeavor:



#3 - Speaking of bumping into things you couldn't see. You'll note the book is resting on a stump. We literally moved that stump there Monday night. The stump, prior to Monday night, was never there. I am not used to the stump being there. This morning I got up, and meandered into the pictured space above, in the dark, not having any awareness whatsoever that the stump was there. Until I did. I cracked my toes on the stump. I get that my human construct-mind identifies that stump as a stump, however, due to me cracking my toes on the unremembered object, I'm forced to admit that the object exists independent of my toes. THE ONLY WAY AROUND THIS is we live in a simulation where nothing exists until its rendered based on programming used in this simulation. I see no other way.

- Doc