Starboy

Amos, lets got something clear. The experiments are not performed on the mind. They are performed on nature, on reality if you will. If our mind and reality were one and the same then experiments on nature would not be necessary. The conclusion I draw from this is that the mind is at most a small part of reality. So even if we could know the full extent of our minds we would not know much about reality. The only way for us to know about the reality that is not part of our minds is to explore that reality by performing experiments on nature. Why do you identify our mind with all of reality? Are you an idealist?

Starboy

Tani

i think the subject of the original post answered the question itself

Amos

Experiments are performed on nature but in my concept of omniscience we, in our higher self, are omniscient and one with nature. BTW, this is not my idea but it is universal in most/all mythologies.

Yes we are smaller than the whole of reality but we only deal with the reality that we have access to with our own mind and therefore we can be omniscient in our own world, ie, that which we have knowledge off. So I do not hold that we can be the sum total of all omnisciene. How 'far' we can reach into nature with our own mind is not really part of my position so I don't go there.

You mean as oppose to realist? I am reluctant to say because of my limited exposure to these terms. I do hold that essence precedes existence and that intelligence is needed to make evolution possible. In this way nothing is real except the intelligence behind the creation (not just "my idea" of it; I reason as if an apple has intelligence of its own).

King's Indian

Starboy, my dear old thing! Are you sure you're not mixing him up with St. Anselm? And are you really sure that maths (I mean, math) and science have nothing in common? In any event, his greatest contribution must surely be the Cartesian Diver. Hours of fun, and very easy to make yourself, if you have a spare eye-dropper to hand.Hmm. If you read what I wrote again, it almost looks as if you're agreeing with me about the myth part, what with phrases like "thought experiment" and "you don't think he really..." that I so freely scattered in my post. Careful.Books about which you obviously dip into on the sly. You'll go blind.

Take care,
KI

PS: Yeah, yeah. Let me guess: "Aha! but this proves my point! etc."

Starboy

Indian, I am not referring to St. Anselm of Canterbury, but Descartes. He could be the poster child for the reality challenged. I know that there are many philosophers who claim that he was involved with the creation of science but this is just another indication that philosophers don’t get science. His meditations are an excellent example of the philosopher at work. He attempts to understand reality by performing his explorations from an armchair. The emperor has no clothes! No philosopher has called him on it to this day! So much for philosophers, they do not get reality or science. I am no expert on philosophy but I have read enough to know that for the most part it is nonsense.

Starboy

Starboy

Hi Amos,

Philosophical idealism is the proposition that what is real is more or less confined to or related to what is in our minds. It is how you would see existence if you were an armchair realist. Your concept of our higher self as being one with nature is a form of philosophical idealism.

Amos, as far as I can tell all you are saying is that we are omniscient because we know what we know and we don’t know what we don’t know. I agree with you but this is hardly a startling revalation.

Amos, it never ceases to amaze me how philosophy is so religious at its core. I see it now. They both make the same mistake. Philosophers would claim that philosophical idealism is in opposition to philosophical realism, but it ain't so. The philosophical Gordian knot is that all of philosophy is framed around the mind. In the philosophical scheme of reality they give the mind more importance than it deserves. I will admit that our experience and comprehension of reality is limited by our minds, but by framing the discussion about reality entirely from the viewpoint of the mind it sets the mind apart from reality (this is the religious aspect of philosophy). I have seen several times on this forum philosophical arguments of the form “x only exists in our minds and therefore it is not real, thus there are things that exist that are not real.” When you release yourself from the chains of philosophy and take a scientific point of view it becomes obvious that the statement is just a combination of ignorance and the mind centric bias of philosophy (and religion as well). I suspect that your essence is nothing more than another word for the mind. From your last sentence I would suspect that you would agree with the statement "we are all of one mind." If so you are definitely a philosophical idealist.

Starboy

Hugo Holbling

We'll see.

Here's a few questions for you, Starboy, without any motive other than curiosity: what do you make of philosophy of science? Do you exempt it from your contempt for philosophy? If not, how do you explain the influence that philosophical considerations have had on scientific praxis if it's mostly "nonsense"? Would you like to see more discussion of falsification, verifiability and other demarcation criteria amongst scientists or has philosophy of science gone far enough that it no longer warrants more than a passing mention as the practical business continues? For that matter, would you agree that philosophy of science is one aspect that does have practical application?

Edit: I just found out that some more friends of friends have died, so i may not be able to muster the strength to continue this. I'll try.

Starboy

Hugo, which philosophy are you talking about? Philosophers have been trying to get their “mind” wrapped around science for some time now. Because of this they have been unable to see the forest for the trees. There are several factors at work that prevents philosophy from making any significant contributions to understanding science. They are the methods of philosophy, the viewpoint of philosophy and the deciding authority of philosophy. As for the methods, well as long as philosophers continue to hold parsimony and other preconceived notions of reality as important philosophical principles, they are shooting themselves in the foot. It is not very productive to explore something by insisting beforehand that you know what it is. Such principles make assumptions about reality that do not appear to be warranted. As for viewpoint, as pointed out in a previous post it is clearly mind centric. Such a viewpoint implicitly separates the mind from reality. As such it also makes assumptions about reality that are not warranted. And lastly philosophy has no deciding authority. Without a deciding authority there is no way to separate the wheat from the chaff. If you don’t like a particular philosophy about science, well than just pick another one. There is no dearth of philosophers out there churning out philosophy and the net result is to produce this giant historical glob of conflicting ideas with no criterion with which to choose one over another other than intuition. As long as philosophy sticks to its methods and viewpoint and lacks a working authority it will be more like religion than anything else (religion suffers from very similar problems). But you know if philosophy didn’t stick to its habits it wouldn’t be philosophy. Just don’t try to convince me that it is important or relevant. Like religion, at most it is influential. I have said this before and I will say it again, if your goal is to know and understand reality there is no substitute for actual explorations of reality. You can sit in your armchair and debate it from your “mind” to your hearts content but you will end up where you started and no better off for it other then a self delusion of how clever you think you are.

I have been trying to stick to the OP but if you want to dive into philosophy as it applies to science pick your poison.

Sorry to hear about your friends. Life is hard and then you die. Someday we will both be dead, but until then, ain’t life grand. If death is anything it is an affirmation of how important life is.

Starboy

Tani

starboy:

everyday when you involved yourself with science, what must you do? what makes you scientific? the answer to the question is using the scientific method - and this "scientific method" is precisely what philosophy of science is all about.

philosophy of science is the foundation of science, it's the assumption that one must consider true before science can be considered true. there is no science without the philosophy of science, that's to say that science revolves around the philosophy of science, and not the other way around. the whole of science depends on the philosophy of science being true. science seems to be unaltered and stable only because the major dispute on the fundamentals of empiricism, which is one of, if not by itself the most, important pillars of science, happened three hundred years ago during the enlightenment instead of now (another major dispute is the use of induction in science. it's worth noting that neither issue has been completely settled even to this day.) and i can tell you if there is a major change in the philosophy of science, science as you know it now will collapse - of course this is extremely unlikely to happen, but this hopefully shows you that the philosophy of science is the whole body of axioms and rules as to science is only a body of theories that derived from the prior.

Tani

btw, "what is the point of philosphy?" is exactly the point of philosphy.