Unknowable Ontology?

[watcher]

Originally Posted by coldcreation

It can be said too that philosophy cannot advance without science.

As areas of scientific endeavour proliferate and expand, so will the philosophical questions that they generate.

What is the point you're trying to make?

i am refuting your earlier post that i quoted. science is not opposed to ontology and metaphysics, they go hand in hand as you have exactly posted here.

[coldcreation]

Originally Posted by watcher

i am refuting your earlier post that i quoted. science is not opposed to ontology and metaphysics, they go hand in hand as you have exactly posted here.

Not.

I am claiming that philosophy cannot advance without science.

And I would dump the metaphysics, since being an enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence, one can claim whatever she likes, even if vague or untrue.

Metaphysical statements that imply ideas about nature are not falsifiable or empirically verifiable.

That says it all.

CC

[watcher]

Originally Posted by coldcreation

Not.

I am claiming that philosophy cannot advance without science.

And I would dump the metaphysics, since being an enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence, one can claim whatever she likes, even if vague or untrue.

Metaphysical statements that imply ideas about nature are not falsifiable or empirically verifiable.

That says it all.

CC

metaphysical claims always lead to new science because it is also involved in speculative thought with basis on solid scientific body of knowledge. Higg's field is a metaphysical claim. is it not?.

this was always been the role of metaphysics in the evolution of science thru history. and science was used to be called natural philosophy and metaphysics as the queen of sciences.

[AnssiH]

Originally Posted by watcher

reality present itself objectively through identity.
without identification, there is nothing for you to work with,

But there is! That's the whole point. See my reply to Jedaisoul.

It's not immediately obvious what that is, but I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that there is something to work with. After all, somehow we all come to build a worldview from "scratch" so to speak. I.e. whatever there is "to work with" is also an explanation to what human worldview is founded on at its "root" (<- that's not a good word but I trust you understand what I'm getting at). I.e. if you trust that our learning mechanism is explainable, you also trust there is something to work with prior to the definitions that arise... ...and that is exactly the issue at hand!

the only problem with constructivism was while you are living and functions in the "real world", you have constructed your worldview in utter abstraction. and thus fall prey to the pitfalls einstein had cited in the above post,
and afterwards, the temptation to ask "what is the physical meaning?" of my equations will set in. an ontological issue you cannot escape.

Now what would you say if I told you that that Einsteinian worldview arises as a necessary character of a self-coherent worldview, purely as a consequence to the data ordering mechanisms, without ANY connection to ontological nature of the "data to be explained"? (somewhat analogous to how complex organisms arise from evolutionary processes without any intentional design mechanism to themselves... ...and likewise before one understands those mechanisms, they only see amazingly appropriately "designed" organisms/systems/objects that perform somehow incredibly appropriate interactions between each others)

-Anssi

[watcher]

Originally Posted by AnssiH

But there is! That's the whole point. See my reply to Jedaisoul.

but what if identity is universal and not a sole function of the human nervous system? i.e. however we perceived the natural principles of the world persists regardless of human presence. what would become of pure epistemological models? the so called modeling the models are quite redundant.

It's not immediately obvious what that is, but I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that there is something to work with.

yes it is the substance (brain) that the mind seats upon, so while the mind brags about the world is known through itself, it forgot it owes it existence to that substance.

After all, somehow we all come to build a worldview from "scratch" so to speak. I.e. whatever there is "to work with" is also an explanation to what human worldview is founded on at its "root" (<- that's not a good word but I trust you understand what I'm getting at).

no if it is from scratch, that "something to work with" is not an explanation as to how concepts are formed in the mind. i cannot see the connection..

I.e. if you trust that our learning mechanism is explainable, you also trust there is something to work with prior to the definitions that arise... ...and that is exactly the issue at hand!

our learning mechanism is not explainable. there is a whole school of t thoughts to support this claim. so there is no prior to work with. in this view, the mind knows this ontological elements, they are not unknowns, other wise how can we make conceptions of them and represnet them in mathematics if they are unknown?

it is quite a stretch to assert that our conceptions of reality is an illusion at all and brought about by self deception, it is like a hindu mystic proclaiming to that the whole world is an illusion and a dream.

Now what would you say if I told you that that Einsteinian worldview arises as a necessary character of a self-coherent worldview, purely as a consequence to the data ordering mechanisms, without ANY connection to ontological nature of the "data to be explained"? (somewhat analogous to how complex organisms arise from evolutionary processes without any intentional design mechanism to themselves... ...and likewise before one understands those mechanisms, they only see amazingly appropriately "designed" organisms/systems/objects that perform somehow incredibly appropriate interactions between each others)

it would say reality is a malleable substance. it's essence is in its activity and potentials.

[coldcreation]

Originally Posted by watcher

metaphysical claims always lead to new science because it is also involved in speculative thought with basis on solid scientific body of knowledge. Higg's field is a metaphysical claim. is it not?.

this was always been the role of metaphysics in the evolution of science thru history. and science was used to be called natural philosophy and metaphysics as the queen of sciences.

But today science is a different animal.




CC

[AnssiH]

Originally Posted by watcher

but what if identity is universal and not a sole function of the human nervous system? i.e. however we perceived the natural principles of the world persists regardless of human presence.

You must mean, "what if one of all those specific ontological views that one could validly believe in, would in fact be true?" (after all, what you refer to as "natural principles" can be understood in quite many prediction-wise valid ways)

what would become of pure epistemological models? the so called modeling the models are quite redundant.

If one specific worldview happened to perfectly co-incide with the way reality ontologically is, the epistemological principles that I'm talking about are still just as valid because they are consequences of the transformation process from unknown data patterns to a valid predictive model of those data patterns.

Also it would still be just as impossible to prove which one is that "ontologically correct model", because there always are many facets to our worldview that can be transformed from one representation to another without changing any observable properties (You can readily think tons of examples from physical interpretations I'm sure).

That is btw the central point of Korzybski's "general semantics" also, and on that same note I should continue that the mechanisms that are used to generate a prediction-wise valid world model without ANY a-priori information about the meaning of the "data to be explained", are also exactly the mechanisms from which so-called semantical understanding is springing. I.e. the resulting "knowledge" about reality is not immutable, it is always a subject to change upon coming up with a new "meaningful interpretation".

yes it is the substance (brain) that the mind seats upon

That's not what I meant. I meant, even without any a-priori information about reality, there is "something to work with", in the sense that there exists a mechanism for building a meaningful worldview. I.e. there is a way to start interpreting the data in meaningful way, even without any pre-existing knowledge about it.

And actually you could say it is "an explanation as to how concepts are formed in mind".

no if it is from scratch, that "something to work with" is not an explanation as to how concepts are formed in the mind. i cannot see the connection..

Well it's not a trivial subject, but I hope I can spark your interest!

our learning mechanism is not explainable. there is a whole school of t thoughts to support this claim.

Yes, and I find those ideas a bit behind the curve at present time. For instance Searle's idea that semantics is intrinsic "human property" as in he does not think any mechanical process can yield a behaviour like that... ...I think it is fairly easy to prove that idea wrong (I kind of touched exactly that subject above). Well, easy to prove if it wasn't for some people who have already made up their mind on the issue and thus refuse to seriously think about it :P

so there is no prior to work with.

Yes, no a-priori information about reality to work with. That is in fact important aspect of semantics! Start with too much given information, and the learning system becomes constrained into very narrow perspective about how everything else falls into place in the worldview.

in this view, the mind knows this ontological elements, they are not unknowns, other wise how can we make conceptions of them and represnet them in mathematics if they are unknown?

Now I think you are asking the right questions! That is what the epistemological analysis is about. Begin with thinking about, what sorts of collections of ideas would be invalid just for the simple reason that they would contradict themselves. One defined pattern cannot also mean a different defined pattern. I.e, a defined pattern is something that leads to a known outcome by some large probability. A defined persistent element is in one way or another a defined pattern that leads to a similar pattern over and over. (Since you think about this in terms of "brain" and neurological concepts, you can take brain as a pattern recognition device)

Communicating this in english language is painfully sloppy and even I think the above is almost impossible to understand absolutely correctly. That is why the epistemological analysis is working in terms of differential statements about probability functions. That is quite a bit more powerful tool in logic than english words and intuitive conceptualization.

it is quite a stretch to assert that our conceptions of reality is an illusion at all and brought about by self deception, it is like a hindu mystic proclaiming to that the whole world is an illusion and a dream.

Yes, good thing I haven't said anything like that!

it would say reality is a malleable substance. it's essence is in its activity and potentials.

Okay but you already formed concepts in your mind when you refer to something as "substance". You must also recognize that it is easy to change perspective and understand the "same thing" in different ways (general semantics and all that)

-Anssi

[watcher]

Originally Posted by AnssiH

You must mean, "what if one of all those specific ontological views that one could validly believe in, would in fact be true?" (after all, what you refer to as "natural principles" can be understood in quite many prediction-wise valid ways)

what i wanted to say, previous to our discussion of identity, is that the identity of the world we observed was not subjective purely based on our mental interpretation. identity of the world as the nature of its existence and being is consistent and not immutable. there is a common unbroken thread from the time the ancients contemplated the observable world up to this day.

to make a priori that how we identify this world based on our observation is not reliable because of the unknown nature of our existence is false. as a matter of fact, i think it is imperative for us to understand the world by an ontological approach.

for example, we observed gravity, we ask question, what is it? the math (measurable relationship of observable variables ) can remain the same and with predictive powers but the physical explanation can be numerous. like the earth and the apple accelerates toward one another, or the space has pressure and push them together or there is an invisible force field that attract them together. the point is unless we know what gravity actually is ( and there could only be one answer to that) we will never fully understand it. the current body of scientific knowledge we have just needs tweaking from time to time.

it is impossible to start from scratch because you will have to violate your own a priori of unknowable ontological elements. somewhere along the line, you will have to make an assumption ( yes, that the ontological elements are unknown is already an assumption).
to identify the unknown you must make a leap of faith from this is what i don't know --------------- leap of faith --------------- to this is what i know.

That is btw the central point of Korzybski "general semantics" also, and on that same note I should continue that the mechanisms that are used to generate a prediction-wise valid world model without ANY a-priori information about the meaning of the "data to be explained", are also exactly the mechanisms from which so-called semantical understanding is springing. I.e. the resulting "knowledge" about reality is not immutable, it is always a subject to change upon coming up with a new "meaningful interpretation".

you should really make distinction between knowledge and interpretation.

lao tzu said ... the tao that can be spoken is not the eternal tao. then he went on to write a voluminous book called tao te ching about the unspeakable tao.

the general semantics of Korzybski was that you can't say something specific about reality. and for good reason, a part cannot completely represent the whole . ie that is what the mind does, break reality into bits in order for us to comprehend.

but, this doesn't mean that reality is unknown, they are just hard to explain. and epistemological approach is as susceptible as the ontological approach to that fact.

That's not what I meant. I meant, even without any a-priori information about reality, there is "something to work with", in the sense that there exists a mechanism for building a meaningful worldview. I.e. there is a way to start interpreting the data in meaningful way, even without any pre-existing knowledge about it.

And actually you could say it is "an explanation as to how concepts are formed in mind"

the data is already the a priori information about reality.
the mechanism needs these data to build a meaningful worldview.
and the data must come to its (the mechanism) knowledge to be able to start interpreting.

in the mental world, the ultimate constitution is "thought". the mechanism is thought associated with another thought becomes concepts, opinions, world views etc.

obviously, matter has also an ultimate constitution, but how do these thoughts can represent these final constitution? you anser is it can't and we don't have to. but is this correct, is the nature of knowledge strictly a logical mechanism only?

Yes, and I find those ideas a bit behind the curve at present time. For instance Searle's idea that semantics is intrinsic "human property" as in he does not think any mechanical process can yield a behaviour like that... ...I think it is fairly easy to prove that idea wrong (I kind of touched exactly that subject above). Well, easy to prove if it wasn't for some people who have already made up their mind on the issue and thus refuse to seriously think about it :P

look at it this way, what is the universe? is it an organism or a mechanism? can you tell for sure? or you have already made up your mind about it? for i suspect that the epistemological approach you spouse assumed that the universe is the latter rather than the former. you think that the universe is a computer, no?

Now I think you are asking the right questions! That is what the epistemological analysis is about. Begin with thinking about, what sorts of collections of ideas would be invalid just for the simple reason that they would contradict themselves. One defined pattern cannot also mean a different defined pattern. I.e, a defined pattern is something that leads to a known outcome by some large probability. A defined persistent element is in one way or another a defined pattern that leads to a similar pattern over and over. (Since you think about this in terms of "brain" and neurological concepts, you can take brain as a pattern recognition device)

Communicating this in english language is painfully sloppy and even I think the above is almost impossible to understand absolutely correctly. That is why the epistemological analysis is working in terms of differential statements about probability functions. That is quite a bit more powerful tool in logic than english words and intuitive conceptualization.

as i have said, when you start to use this method, you will also violate the essence of general semantics. you cannot start the analysis without making first the axioms of your system.

Okay but you already formed concepts in your mind when you refer to something as "substance". You must also recognize that it is easy to change perspective and understand the "same thing" in different ways (general semantics and all that) -Anssi

perhaps i should introduce the word "experience" to the discussion. since we are also talking the nature of knowledge and human experience is also an aspect of knowledge which is more substantial and encompassing than the mental processes we possess. so this same thing is experience and known. that is a a priori info, the unknown data you refer if you will. when we change perspective or adopt new explanation to that thing, it doesn't mean that the thing constantly changes with our concepts. our experience of this thing is not a concept. they are just begging for the right explanation.

(Since you think about this in terms of "brain" and neurological concepts, you can take brain as a pattern recognition device)

exactly!. the brain to me is sufficient, it has a "software" of its own that does the explaining for us.

[AnssiH]

Originally Posted by watcher

for example, we observed gravity, we ask question, what is it the math (measurable relationship of observable variables ) can remain the same and with predictive powers but the physical explanation can be numerous.

I think what you refer to as "physical explanation" here is what I would refer to as "ontological interpretation".

like the earth and the apple accelerates toward one another, or the space has pressure and push them together or there is an invisible force field that attract them together. the point is unless we know what gravity actually is ( and there could only be one answer to that) we will never fully understand it. the current body of scientific knowledge we have just needs tweaking from time to time.

And I think what you call tweaking I would call "paradigm change"
Anyway ->

it is impossible to start from scratch because you will have to violate your own a priori of unknowable ontological elements. somewhere along the line, you will have to make an assumption ( yes, that the ontological elements are unknown is already an assumption).

You have misinterpreted what I'm saying a bit. Of course a worldview will contain assumptions about the "meaning of the noumena" at some point. But I am not claiming to know anything about ontological reality, nor am I claiming that the epistemological analysis will tell you anything about the ontological form about reality. I'm saying, that there exists mechanism that will allow a meaningful worldview (a self-coherent set of assumptions) to become formed, and that those mechanisms themselves already give rise to many relationships that are normally thought to be part of ontological reality (i.e. part of the actual content of the "noumena to be explained"). In your examples you are referring to those relationships as possibly ontological of nature. "Possibly", but there is no reason to believe so, when those relationships are shown to be a function of "any meaningful object identification mechanism".

And there where I said "relationships", I refer to those relationships that you in your terminology refer to as "the math relationships that remain the same while the physical explanation can be numeros".

I.e. there are certain relationships that are immutable for any self-coherent worldview because they arise from the symmetries related to the transformation process from "patterns" to "discreet entities". Of course those relationships can be transformed, i.e. expressed in the terminology of many different defined entities. (That would be, taking a semantically different perspective about the same things)

And in this context, you can't really say that it is an assumption that the ontological meaning of the "noumena" is unknown. There doesn't exist any explicit information about what sort of pattern constitutes an object, until there exists a way to make some interpretation about that noumena (let's say "sensory data"). I.e. there must exist a mechanism that makes that interpretation. I am talking about exactly the kinds of mechanisms that any AI system needs to perform so to be able to interpret any input data stream in terms of a useful 3D environment (for instance). It's not like reality just hits the surface of our eye and that's how we see it :P

you should really make distinction between knowledge and interpretation.

I put the word "knowledge" in quotation for that exact reason. I am actually quite fond of the word "interpretation" in this context

the data is already the a priori information about reality.
the mechanism needs these data to build a meaningful worldview.
and the data must come to its (the mechanism) knowledge to be able to start interpreting.

I sometimes refer to those interpretation mechanisms as "data ordering mechanisms" because there are some surprisingly limiting constraints to how the data can be understood (when the interpretation involves a transformation from "data with unknown meaning" to "a meaningful model of discreet entities"). In this context, it's bit of a misnomer to call the mere existence of the "data" as a-priori information about reality, because nothing about its explicit meaning is known. (and I don't really care if it's called "data" or "patterns" or "noumena").

look at it this way, what is the universe is it an organism or a mechanism can you tell for sure or you have already made up your mind about it for i suspect that the epistemological approach you spouse assumed that the universe is the latter rather than the former. you think that the universe is a computer, no

I don't claim to know anything about the ontological form of reality. You can find me reminding people about that in quite many posts in the past, and also it's important that results of DD's epistemological analysis are not taken as ontological claims.

perhaps i should introduce the word experience to the discussion. since we are also talking the nature of knowledge and human experience is also an aspect of knowledge which is more substantial and encompassing than the mental processes we possess.

What does it mean to experience before having some worldview? (some way to interpret sensory data in some meaningful way). I don't suppose you are talking about naive realism?

-Anssi