On Ontology
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@Bereshith said
"This represents the difference in what I consider actually provable and worthy of presentation as fact, and my own personal hypotheses as to why something is true (explanation), which I confess cannot be proven to be more than meaning projected onto facts by myself. The scientist in me continually tries to isolate the difference between the two, and I call this process "learning." "
Agreed.
One is the attempt to make models of your surroundings, the other (what you call "meaning projected onto facts by myself") is the attempt to make a model of your-self.
@Bereshith said
"I do reject, however, any argument that attempts of science to prevent me from being personally convinced regarding anything *at all *regarding my own why-hypothesis. As long as I do not demand universal acceptance of my why-hypothesis (or explanation of causal relationships), I'm only speaking of my own meaning-making as opinion and not trying to pass it off as fact. Therefore, science, which by your definition should deal with facts alone, has no claim on what I have already conceded is merely personal conviction (complicated by the false distinctions assumed by words themselves) as to why."
If what you're saying is that the objective parts of science are concerned with outside facts - and you with your personal meaning-making - partially based on these facts - then I agree.
@Bereshith said
"I believe that the attempt to create a fact-informed why is the whole motive behind science, though it must carefully limit itself to what it claims are the objective facts that inform the process of individual why-making."
I do not agree. The purpose of objective science is the production of models that make good predictions.
As you argued above (and I concur), the meaning-making is more subjective - and if that should happen as a science, there would have to be subjective science, too. Which I argued to be possible in principle in the ontology text above, but is not done in today's natural sciences.
@Bereshith said
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@Simon Iff said
"There is currently no unequivocal method to decide which of these paradigms is the case. "I whole-heartedly agree, despite how I am interpreted."
Cool!
@Bereshith said
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@Simon Iff said
"The paradigm we will use for our psychic research is therefore a Holistic Functionalism. That paradigm will only accept strictly experience-oriented, empirically generated predictive models that include information from all steps of the intersubjectivity scale (from objective to partially intersubjective - aka astral in occult worldviews - to subjective).
""Holistic Functionalism" - that's a new term to me, and one that I will work to remember. I would say, yes, this concept already is at work in me to discern fact from belief, despite how I am interpreted."
Happy the new term turns out to be useful for you!
@Bereshith said
"See, if someone is going to argue outside of empirically demonstrated * facts *that someone else's projected why-hypothesis is stupid (i.e. more subjective than their own subjectively projected why), then I'll work to point out the subjectivity that they have hidden from themselves.
I do not presume to do so from a position of superiority of my own subjectively projected why-hypotheis, but from what I consider to be equal footing. I work to get people to see precisely that "There is currently no unequivocal method to decide which of these paradigms is the case.""
You can also test subjective or partially-subjective partially-objective claims, are you aware of that? That was part of the point of my whole text. The distinction between objective and subjective is perhaps not as sharp as you would think it to be ...
You can for example test the hypothesis that Liber O works for "all people with attributes XYZ" and/or you can test the hypothesis "Liber O works for me"! Consider that also others could test if "Liber O works for Bereshith" is the case! (That does not devalue your argument, but blurs the lines a bit)
@Bereshith said
"So...
Bad facts - I try to point that out.
Bad logic - I try to point that out.
Falsely superior why-hypothesis - I try to point that out."Makes perfect sense to me.
@Bereshith said
"I completley accept that we are all playing a game of making subjective meaning of facts and that each person has the inherent right to do so.
If I find myself to be breaking this rule, I do try to fix it, but not at the expense of forfeiting what actually can be argued from facts or logic."
Agreed.
@Bereshith said
"An individual is allowed personal delusions if they like them.
An individual is not allowed to proclaim their personal delusions as undeniable fact without being challenged.
I mean, ultimately, they are allowed, but if we are going to attempt to value discussion and debate of these things with one another, these are the rules I try to play by."
The question I would ask at that point would be if it isn't a quite destructive pasttime to keep one's personal delusions, but that is another topic.
One last comment. I have the massive suspicion that the phenomenon termed the HGA here and differently in other places / cultures / contexts is an inner, subjective model that realises itself subconsciously through certain (usually contemplative) exercises and lifestyle. A model of self that becomes so good in its predictions that it supersedes the original self.
And that further modifies the distinction between objective facts and subjective meaning - which you uphold - a bit , this would be my only but perhaps fundamental criticism. It implies that there are also subjective facts and objective meaning(s) and stuff inbetween.
Long text, whoever finds grammar mistakes due to length may keep them.
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@Patthana Gati said
"I like what you said about "subjective facts and objective meaning(s) and stuff inbetween"."
The "stuff inbetween" subjective and objective (or clearer not-intersubjective and totally intersubjective) - that which is partially intersubjective, something that does not even have an established mainstream word in modern western thinking - is functionally exactly stuff like "the astral", "aura", "chi", etc. Not just in your head - but not objectively there the same for everyone else like most tables, either.
Note that means that you can empirically - via induction-deduction loop - design predictive models about the astral. How's that?
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@Simon Iff said
"I do not agree. The purpose of objective science is the production of models that make good predictions."
I concede the distinction between my own motives for implementing scientific methodology and the strictly-defined purpose of scientific methodology as that of producing models that make good predictions.
In other words, I find myself motivated to use the tool that produces good predictive models for my own purpose of refining my personal why-hypothesis by limiting that hypothesis to non-contradiction of demonstrable facts. (Forgive my possibly over-simplistic terms.)
"As you argued above (and I concur), the meaning-making is more subjective - and if that should happen as a science, there would have to be subjective science, too. Which I argued to be possible in principle in the ontology text above, but is not done in today's natural sciences.
. . .
You can also test subjective or partially-subjective partially-objective claims, are you aware of that? That was part of the point of my whole text. The distinction between objective and subjective is perhaps not as sharp as you would think it to be ..."
I would need further instruction in the construct and methods, which I'm open to hearing.
"The question I would ask at that point would be if it isn't a quite destructive pasttime to keep one's personal delusions, but that is another topic."
I agree, but I do not deny a indivdual's ultimate right to do so - until they become a hazard to others. I don't care if they are a hazard to themselves, personally. I consider it their right.
"One last comment. I have the massive suspicion that the phenomenon termed the HGA here and differently in other places / cultures / contexts is an inner, subjective model that realises itself subconsciously through certain (usually contemplative) exercises and lifestyle. A model of self that becomes so good in its predictions that it supersedes the original self."
Interesting way to present that. I'd like to ponder it a bit...
"And that further modifies the distinction between objective facts and subjective meaning - which you uphold - a bit, this would be my only but perhaps fundamental criticism. It implies that there are also subjective facts and objective meaning(s) and stuff inbetween."
Hmm... I think I'd have to hear this fleshed out with some possible examples to understand what you intend.
Thanks for the conversation.
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So... How do you justify rejecting an ontological approach based on a specific theoretical model?
Wouldn't you then necessarily have to adopt the ontology of the theoretical model?
What is the ontological approach of the Orch OR theoretical model?
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Hi guys, just writing to say I haven't forgotten this thread.
Patthana, you actually raise some quite important points with your questions & criticisism - when my life beyond the keyboard yields more time again, I will have something to say in response!
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Hi P,
So sorry for delay.
@Patthana Gati said
"I don't agree with the a priori basis of this."
Let me cite wikipedia:
"A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience (for example "All bachelors are unmarried"). Galen Strawson wrote that an a priori argument is one in which "you can see that it is true just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical world. You don't have to do any science."; a posteriori knowledge or justification is dependent on experience or empirical evidence (for example "Some bachelors are very happy"). A posteriori justification makes reference to experience; but the issue concerns how one knows the proposition or claim in question—what justifies or grounds one's belief in it."
In other words, a priori is only possible in already defined relations between already modelled principles. Any other knowledge "independent of experience" does not even make sense as a concept, what would you base your knowledge (which, after all, must deliver predictions for future experiences) on?
In light of this, you probably have to clarify what you mean with this sentence to me.
@Patthana Gati said
"The Orch OR model says that consciousness intersects with any object that can be perceived before the moment of perception and then learning can begin. So I have to say that as a fan of Orch OR - it is my view that while perception must be processed to make it useful and functional, we can know things about the world before they are processed and even before they are perceived by the senses."
There are diverse logical errors in this sentence.
First - as Bereshit has already pointed out, I think - you base models on ontology and not the other way around for obvious reasons. You can only criticise an ontology from experience, never from a model about experience, it's putting the cart before the horse.
Secondly, you cannot say "perception must be processed to make it useful and functional" on the one hand and then "we can know things about the world before they are processed and even before they are perceived by the senses" on the other hand. It is reality (?) -> perception -> language game (Wittgenstein) of models ... and knowledge is part of the modelling or language game. You can't jump over the perception step.
Third, funnily enough I found out that I have already known the Orch OR model, for more than a decade. I just didn't know that some people call it like that. I knew people who knew the people who developed it. The model does indeed say "consciousness intersects with any object that can be perceived before the moment of perception" - as does every model and also paradigm except extreme spiritualism and constructivism - but it does not claim "... and then learning can begin". As far as I can see, that is a claim you added, nowhere even implied in the Orch OR model, perhaps you can elaborate how you came to that conclusion?
@Patthana Gati said
"For this reason I would also be disinclined to favour Holism, or Holistic Functionalism as a paradigm for psychic research."
Later, you wrote "... there is a prime philosophical objection to using a model for predictive purposes that has a faulty ... assumption to them ..." Well, my counter-argument is basically what I wrote above.
@Patthana Gati said
"While you may not be interested in "finding the one true model""
It's not a question of interest, it's a question of possibility. If you have understood how realism is not the last word ontologically, you should have understood that it is simply not only not possible to achieve something like this, it is not even possible to find out how close to "the true model of reality" you are. So, this would be a blind alley anyways.
@Patthana Gati said
"Even if a chain of reasoning, or model building manages to correctly make predictions of an event, because the chain was based on a false a priori assumption then it will obscure the reason for the successful prediction and leads to a sort of blind sight at the core of the research, because the fundamental a priori assumption itself is going untested."
A priori again. A priori would be something that, without having to make an experiment - ever - is obvious to everyone just by thinking about it. That is the meaning of a priori. Meaning, that it is useless to use the term in a reflection about ontology.
Also, "if a chain of reasoning, or model building manages to correctly make predictions of an event" is the only objective consensus we can ever have about the quality of models. The sentence "Even if a ... model ... correctly ... predictions ... an event, because the chain was based on a false a priori assumption then it will obscure the reason for the successful prediction and leads to a sort of blind sight at the core of the research, because the fundamental a priori assumption itself is going untested" is entirely useless due to that.
An a priori assumption cannot be tested, ever - it is an assumption not based on experience or experiment - OK?
If I take your above argument at face value, you can rest literally 100% assured that any and every model we have now - even in the hardest natural sciences - has that blind sight at the core that you suggest. It doesn't matter. Wrong assumptions will be found by partially wrong predictions in specific data regions and eventually the error will be fixed - such is the ongoing process of science.
So, conclusion, I take issue with four layers of your arguments:
- Look up again what a priori means. In the context here it is a useless term ... and the way it is usually used, it is useless in generating knowledge anyways.
- You can't argue against an ontology coming from a model. You have to counter the ontology on its own terms, or you are building the roof before the foundation.
- The only thing relevant to the quality of a model is its quality of successful predictions, nothing else. Go anywhere else with this, and you will land yourself in a believer script.
- The Orch OR model uses the paradigm of Materialistic Constructivism, most quantum mechanical models do. The really interesting question is - which interpretation of quantum mechanics is going to turn out to be the correct one? There are other "the brain is wholly or partially a quantum computer" models out there and all of them agree on certain aspects. Many-worlds? Many-minds? Collapse or no collapse? And so on. You based some assumptions on your understanding of Orch OR, which is not complete in this regard.
Hope that is an answer you can answer to, if you will
Simon
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Been meaning to go through this thread for a while now,
Doing so slowly so if my query is answered later on, my apologies:@Simon Iff said
"It is essential for the ability to differentiate between beliefs and facts, between unprovable ideas and knowledge, to understand that any fact will offer testable predictions about the future, while a belief will not."
Would a belief from which testable predictions are derived become a fact?
Or in that case it was never a belief to begin with, merely mislabeled as such?
I feel the distinction is a fact can be used to objectively predict (with a certain threshold of accuracy),
Where a belief is an untested or contested and can through mutation become a fact -
Hi Uni_Verse!
@Uni_Verse said
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@Simon Iff said
"It is essential for the ability to differentiate between beliefs and facts, between unprovable ideas and knowledge, to understand that any fact will offer testable predictions about the future, while a belief will not."Would a belief from which testable predictions are derived become a fact?
Or in that case it was never a belief to begin with, merely mislabeled as such?"Please note that the term "Belief" is used with a specific meaning here, and the sentence above is only correct when this term is used in that context. For example, I found out that both Mr. Eshelman and Los use the term "Belief" differently than what is meant here and different from each other also, so for both "Belief: Index Eshelman" and "Belief: Index Los" the sentence is not the case, simply said: wrong.
That cleared up, in the sense and context that the word "Belief: Index On Ontology text" is used here, "a belief from which testable predictions are derived", actually, can be derived at all, would cease to be a "mere belief" and become a potential fact (potential as we would not yet know if its predictions will be verified or not).
So, you are entirely correct, I cite you, "in that case it was never a belief to begin with, merely mislabeled as such"!
@Uni_Verse said
"I feel the distinction is a fact can be used to objectively predict (with a certain threshold of accuracy)"
A fact can even be used to predict subjective or partially intersubjective connections, or stuff that is not always the case but "sometimes" (which you can quantify as a probability) and even phenomena that do not follow normal causality.
So what you say is the special case of something that could be treated in physics, yet facts are not so narrow to be only appliable to the hard sciences - a point I (unsuccessfully) tried to get over to Los.
@Uni_Verse said
"... a belief is an untested or contested and can through mutation become a fact"
No, a belief in the way the term is meant here is differentiated from even a potential fact that it cannot, even in principle, be tested. It literally has no prediction, or a prediction that is a word game and as such not even a statement.
The moment it can in principle be tested, it is a potential fact (again, in the sense of the word how it is used here). Which still doesn't mean it's the case (a fact) - for that we have to experiment, in other words, experience systematically
Did I clear that up? Ask or debate away at will!
Regards,
Simon
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Hullo!
@Simon Iff said
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Please note that the term "Belief" is used with a specific meaning here, and the sentence above is only correct when this term is used in that context. "Yes, it has been noted.
My questions were engineered to better my understanding of your definition.While I feel you may actually be speaking of something else, it is a moot point as far as this thread is concerned...
( Recent happenings , though, have put the notion of creating a lexicon in my head for use on the forum)@Simon Iff said
"Did I clear that up? Ask or debate away at will!"
You did, thank you.
I read through the post and some of the responses and insofar can not say I disagree.
Am I understanding the following correctly:
About
Could we say this ? :
At 100%, it is an objective phenomenon, not requiring an observer (or experimenter)
Around 50%, the phenomenon can only occur when an observer exists, though it need not be observed directly or observed to occur
At 0% it is entirely reliant upon the perceptions of the observer@Simon Iff said
"* Retrocausal: If A always happens before B, but A happens with the probability C if B will happen (in the future), and not the other way around!"
C would be the probability that A will occur if and only if B shall occur at some point?
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Hiho!
@Uni_Verse said
"Am I understanding the following correctly:
About
Could we say this ? :
At 100%, it is an objective phenomenon, not requiring an observer (or experimenter)
Around 50%, the phenomenon can only occur when an observer exists, though it need not be observed directly or observed to occur
At 0% it is entirely reliant upon the perceptions of the observer"You are mixing two different questions here: How intersubjective a phenomenon is - this is what the stand-in "D" is for - and if and how far a phenomenon is observer-dependent or independent of what anyone thinks about it.
At 100% you have an objective phenomenon, at reliable for one observer only (so not exactly 0%) a subjective phenomenon. With a margin. Even hardcore physical phenomena might sometimes be, say, 95% intersubjective and would still be considered as objective, and even very personal experiences might be, for example, 10% intersubjective and still be considered basically subjective.
The wide margin inbetween about 5% and 95% usually manifests itself in experience as the kind of "energetic", prana, chi, astral (in the sense of both yetziratic and briatic, as the terms are used here) phenomena which western thinking has such trouble to even formulate due to a culturally deep-ingrained "inner-outer" dualism.
But the question if something is observer-dependent or not is another question. Some phenomenon can be as good as 100% intersubjective, but be very dependent on how and even if it is observed. This is, for example, the case with most quantum mechanics experiments. Or something can be very personally subjective, but still not budge if one changes their way of thinking about it. We all know such stuff. We decide to for example not to feel bad when we really have to come down on someone who earned that, but even though our feeling is a very subjective one, we can't simply change the subjective experience by thinking differently about it.
You are correct on the objectivity/partially intersubjectivity/subjectivity front, but not as far as observer-influences are concerned. This is a different question and can be this way and that way in specific cases, irrelevant how the "intersubjectivity status" of the phenomenon in question is.
@Uni_Verse said
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@Simon Iff said
"* Retrocausal: If A always happens before B, but A happens with the probability C if B will happen (in the future), and not the other way around!"C would be the probability that A will occur if and only if B shall occur at some point?"
Yes, exactly.
Regards, Simon