Philosophical essay from a few years ago

[surrealist_geek]

I wrote the bulk of this essay from 1:16-2:20am 20/9/03, having read 279 pages of Jostein Gaardner's thought-provoking book "Sophie's World". I finished it off a little on Wednesday 6/7/05, and fixed a few typos just now. I haven't given much thought to the content this time around, but a quick skim didn't toss up anything I didn't still agree with

Comments

[surrealist_geek]

I tend to separate "spirituality" from "religion" here
So do I. I'm talking about religion here - I have no issue with spirituality.

"religion," ... discourages free thought
Religions don't necessarily discourage free thought - I used to belong to an evangelical Anglican church which actively encouraged it. This does seem highly unusual, though, and the congregation was composed mostly of uni students.

including other, more "traditional" scientists
Indeed. One of the ways in which science can be subverted is if an established and respected scientist uses his influence to suppress later discoveries with which he disagrees. This shouldn't happen, but it has happened before and almost certainly will happen again. Mind you, good scientists are by definition open to persuasion by evidence of a counterintuitive phenomenon.

no matter how much the scientists refine their instruments, the act of perception is and will still always be involved in the analysis, and as such, there is no real way to prove with 100% certainly (at least not by a

[surrealist_geek]

rather than accept those as "truth," I actively seek information to challenge them, so they can be refined and improved. Even the ones that seem to have held steady over the years (such as the theory that there is, in fact, a "real" universe that we are a part of) are not ones I wish to state as fact.
OK, fair enough to avoid stating uncertainty as fact. I was about to query the feasibility of constantly seeking information to challenge all of your best-guess hypotheses, but it an answer occurs: you acquire this challenging information as and when it becomes available by whatever means, and are therefore mostly expressing an openness to same? Fair enough also to make absolute statements about yourself - in that particular abstract field, you *are* the definitive authority.

Assumptions, assumptions... ;-)

[uncledark]

I would disagree that science is the systematic removal of perceptual filters. Rather, I'd say that it is the systematic synchronizing of a specific set of filters.

In saying this, I am assuming that a perceptual filter is a set of value-judgments which we (often unconsciously) use to triage incoming information. Filters are used to prioritize input for our attention, and to weed out information we can/should ignore in a given situation.

In the case of science, things which can be measured are given more weight than things which can't. Perceptions which can be shared by others are valued over ones which are unique to one person. Experiences which can be replicated are more important than one-time-only events...

So science is a set of perceptual filters (hopefully under constant improvement) which narrows the view of the scientist to those aspects of the theoretical material world which are measurable and replicable. "Science is speaking about the universe in words that bind it to a common reality," to quote Neil Gaiman.

[surrealist_geek]

Ah, I hadn't realised that my metaphor was ambiguous. I'm not talking about filters in the sense of a mesh which blocks things; rather, I'm talking about filters in the sense of coloured transparent objects (not necessarily flat). It's not that they triage incoming information - I'd argue that that is a separate process happening later in the processing chain - it's that they 'colour' and 'focus' our perceptions to begin with. Everything we perceive with our 6 or more physical senses (people tend to forget about balance) is filtered through our expectations (prejudices) and slotted into our body of 'information'. If there is no slot for it, then we don't understand it - the option then is to expand our knowledge to accommodate it, which children do all the time and which adults don't tend to do often enough

[lynore]

It looks as though I got to this party a little late seeing as folks have pretty much laid out what I was thinking as I read this.

One question I have for you is what you mean by a "valid" religion:
To me, only a religion which welcomes (or at least tolerates) such critical thought can be a valid religion.Are you saying it is not a religion that can explain the universe unless it has room for questioning the universe and the religion itself

[surrealist_geek]

Welcome to the party, sweetie. It ain't over yet ;-)

One question I have for you is what you mean by a "valid" religion
My bad - that's a very loose use of the word 'valid'. What I actually meant by a 'valid' religion was more or less 'one I can respect'.

That's some fascinating work you've done there. In particular, I hadn't made the distinction between the level of 'truth' that people are able to deal with and the level of 'truth' to which they are actually exposed. Mass media is all about stories, and real science doesn't tend to make good enough stories. Not to mention the vested interests threatened by some scientific findings - global warming, anyone? Good adaptation of the filter metaphor, incidentally - in this context, it makes perfect sense to refer to filters through which the information passes before it even reaches the consumer's senses.

I am still on the fence about math as TruthMath is a precisely-defined and internally consistent construct, which is very useful in describing our universe. In and of itself it is

[lynore]

I didn't get enough sleep last night to adequately respond to this but let me say...

I think in order for me to fully grok what you are trying to get at, we need to step back and decide what your concept of a "true" material world is. How is it true? I do think that Truth is appropriate here as a stand-in for "immutable, unchangeable by perception, outside of conciousness or experience". Is that what your "true material world" is?

I assert that every concept not discernible in the visible universe is a human invention. Some (like love) are extremely important, but they are still human inventions with no concrete grounding in the real universe.

Hmmm... slippery.
Discernible how? With human eyes? With human instruments? With human consciousness? What about indirect observation? Does this mean that invisible material forces aren't real?

Some (like love) are extremely important, but they are still human inventions with no concrete grounding in the real universe.So let's talk love

[surrealist_geek]

Truth is appropriate here as a stand-in for "immutable, unchangeable by perception, outside of conciousness or experience". Is that what your "true material world" is?
Roughly speaking, though I'm a little unsure of the "outside experience" part. Not dependent on experience, but in many cases available to experience.

Discernible how? With human eyes? With human instruments? With human consciousness? What about indirect observation? Does this mean that invisible material forces aren't real?Human instruments, including the few built-in ones. I don't think invisible forces are material, though they do generally act on matter (which is possibly what you meant). Invisible forces can be 'real' by some definitions, but they are not concrete. Such 'forces' are human concepts invented to describe and explain observable properties of the universe. Let's take gravity as an example. The concept of 'gravity' as an attractive force between two massive objects, though a breakthrough in its time, has since been superseded by Einstein's General