John Page

Maybe I was a little obtuse. Words are part of a language and language is used to describe things(sometimes itself or another language). Therefore, all words are adjectives. Nouns are words used to describe identity. Verbs are words used to describe action.

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: John Page ]</p>

John Page

Yes, its how do you get from sense data to the abstract thats the issue. I find it curious that people readily agree that the abstract exists, even that they can see an "abstract" painting, even that computers contain information which is abstract, they will even agree that a flying object possesses kinetic energy, but you try and get agreement that the mind is based on a "physical sub-system" you get disbelief.

I think the reality you perceive/experience is private to your mind. That we are able to communicate about our private realities is evidence that there is a common external reality (of which our private understanding may be imperfect).

Cheers!

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: John Page ]</p>

Laurentius

John Page

Not as far as I am concerned, though.
(in case i might have been misunderstood)
AVE

snatchbalance

John Page

How about this:

1. Both private and public understanding can be imperfect(I would probably argue that both are imperfect to some degree).

2. Abstraction is wrapped up in the need to communicate. The need to communicate is driven by our DNA.

3. Without the ability to form abstractions, we could not get past specifics; that chair, this plant, etc.

4. All this, in my mind, raises 2 questions:

A. My original question remains, can there be, even conceptualy, a "private reality". In other words, ariving at the concept of reality was originally a communal undertaking. There had to be some sort of agreement on the abstraction of reality, or such an abstraction, along with all others, couldn't exist.

B. What is it about brain physiology, that allows humans to form abstractions in the first place? Complexity of neural connections seems to be the pat answer.

Snatchbalance

John Page

DNA? How about "competitive reality", which also drives DNA innovation. As to abstraction and communications, I would argue that in the first instance abstraction is necessary for thought. Without thought, there is nothing useful to communicate.

Agreed, but I would say specifics only exist because of abstraction. Abstraction is a prerequisite to comparison with other abstractions in order for the mind to apprehend similarities/differences within reality.

From these detected differences across space and time coordinates emerge patterns. Some of these patterns we call matter.

Disagree. Example. I have travelled halway round the world and met Russian. I never met him before, we never communicated before, we speak different languages. We did, however, share reality. Oh yes, and vodka. Thus, a priori agreement as to the abstraction of reality is not necessary.

"Allows" implies we wanted to in the first place. I suggest "Caused" or "Faclilitated". See first response in this posting. I think abstraction is very simple, aggregating abstractions to make sense of our reality is the tricky bit and the indications are "Mother Nature" is still working on it! Evidence, this thread.

Cheers.

snatchbalance

John Page

Yeah, no problem; feedback loop, that sort of thing. Abstraction needed for thought, no problem. All good.

OK


1.Well, you and the Russian share very similar backgrounds.

2. You may not fair so well with say, a Bushman or some people who have never come into contact with the concepts that we take for granted.

If you were to somehow return to the 12'th century, could you then convince the Russian the the Earth revolves around the Sun?

3. Even the concept of "chair" or "chairness" is a developed, cummunal, concept. Think of requesting a chair from someone who has never seen one, never sat in one, never seen a picture of one.

4. You walk into a room with someone else, you see a chair. The other person insists that there is no chair. In the abscence of other confirmatory evidence, how do you know the chair is acutally there?

5. Through interactionwith others you have learned to trust your senses. Without this initial confirmation of the accuracy of your perseptions, you would have had no way to build up your repetiore of communal abstractions.

You never would have had a way to determine what is real, and what is not.

Fine, cause or facilitate works for me. As far as aggregateing abstractions, see above.

Yes, I'm sure "mother nature" is still working on the process.

Snatchbalance

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: snatchbalance ]

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: snatchbalance ]</p>

John Page

I have no problem with this, if there are two minds with no common external reality then no vodka drinking will take place. Arguably, a common internal reality is required also (bats are much more difficult to communicate with than Russian's, in my experience).

My conclusion is that there must be a common external reality for us to communicate through and with reference to. Your examples illustrate how a reduction in the effective common external reality support this conclusion, so I fully agree.

Agree. However, I used the phrase "aggregating abstractions" in a different sense than "communal". The point I was making, not very well, is that the perceived form of reality is an implied construct within us. We perceive a car but an engineer will understand it as comprising many components. We will notice a tree and walk by but a kid will look at the leaves and investigate - it is still building up its understanding of the total concept 'tree'.

From classical philosophy there is the Third Man debate between Socrates and Parmenides. Socrates proposes that man is the abstract form of man, but when Parmenides suggests that such a theory requires an infinte series of higher ideas, Socrates cannot respond. I suggest he might have responded sarcastically with "By Zeus, everyone’s mind learns to recognize a man by comparing it with their memory of you, Parmenides, the paragon of men”. <a href="http://www.valdosta.edu/~jnewton/jan/plato/njtma0.html" target="_blank">Here is a link to a more learned analysis of the original dialog</a>

Cheers!

snatchbalance

John Page

The major premise is contained in 4 and 5; my point is this:

It is simply not possible to form any abstraction independently. There can be no concepts of brake, clutch, motor, etc., never mind the aggregate concept of car, without a communal agreement on what these things might be.

No matter what you may think of, or see, or feel, without external confirmation, how can you ever know that you have it right?

If you built a car by yourself, drove it around, but nobody ever saw you. You told people about it, but no one ever saw it. how would you know that you weren't imagining it? Could you be and not know it?

It seems to me that this problem extends to all(?) reality.

Maybe I need to work on the expression of this concept. Or maybe it's not real(but it seems obvious to me). I can't get any confirmation.

Snatchbalance

John Page

Hey snatch:

I'm with you on all the other points - that's the reality of relativism for you! However I cannot agree the above for two reasons:

1. We do form abstractions idependently - its part of the cognition process. If we could not do this, there would be no "mind". A common external reality is necessary for these initial abstractions to become "sharable".
2. Think of what an inventor does, comes up with new and hopefully new concepts. They then need to get the concept patented (i.e. follow a method developed for describing and quantifying new concepts) and educate investors etc.

Cheers!

snatchbalance

John Page

First, I would like to thank you for bearing with me on this.

Now:

1. We do form abstractions indepently, but thier validly, or the only way that we can know if they're valid or not, is by the confirmation of others.

A concept requires that it can be shared, and it requires that it be accepted by others. Or, you have no way of knowing if it matches external reality or not.

Galileo looks through the telescope and sees moons orbiting Jupiter. No one else will acknowledge this phenomenon. What is Galileo to think?

Until, his observations are acknowledged, he has no way to know if he is right or not.

Additionally, without the benefit of social interaction, how would anyone, except on possibly some sort of primitive basis, start the process of seperating what is real from what is not?

An animal(person) if burned, will stay away from fire(primative reality). Could a person develope the concept of heat in isolation? Well, never mind the practical difficulties of how to start the process by himself, he would have no reason to. If there were no one to share concepts with, no other creature capable of acknowledging reality, there would be no reason to have concepts.

2. Inventions, to the best of my knowledge, do not come out of the blue. Concepts and technologies build on concepts and technologies.

Granted, this is not some sort of cut and dry linear progression. And many times it does require asort of genius to see the connections where no one else does, but the "infrastructure" of technology and theory is there.

I would still maintain that reality is a community affair. In isolation, it seems to me, one cannot know what is real, and what is not.

Enonugh rambling. Thanks in advance for reading this.

If anyone else has thought on this, I would appreciate hearing them.

Snatchbalance