Scientific Realism
I think that scientific realism can be characterized as a conviction that the world exists independent of our awareness of it and that we are capable of discovering stable knowledge about this world.
Descartes, in his search for absolute truth, has left us with the legacy of a mind/body dichotomy. Descartes ‘discovered’ that there are two kinds of substancesâ€â€bodily substance, which is extension in space and mental substance, which is thought having no spatial essence. Descartes has imprinted upon Western philosophy the belief that there is a mutually exclusivity between mind and body.
It seems to me that Western philosophical tradition has gone through all sorts of intellectual contortions to accommodate this bifurcation. This philosophically created anomaly, ‘disembodied scientific realism’, has never been seriously dealt with until cognitive science has recently proposed ‘embodied scientific realism’ as a system of thought that has treated the bifurcation by eliminating the bifurcation.
Cognitive science argues for an embodied realism as opposed to philosophy’s metaphysical realism. Embodied realism provides us with a link between our ideas and the worlds we experience. “Our bodies contribute to our sense of what is realâ€Â.
Spatial-relations concepts are not part of the world but are embodied and provide us with our ability to make sense of the world. “They characterize what spatial form is and define spatial inference.â€Â
Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh†by Lakoff and Johnson.
Scientific Realism
Scientific Realism
Diuretic wrote: Not sure of this but Descartian dualism is pretty much debunked now isn't it?
And you know I think about this a lot, I know we're (as humans) just individual collections of bits and pieces all working together and there's nothing supernatural about us but it's just a bit disappointing. I try not to think of it but it does keep coming back.
Is God an Acident?
“Despite the vast number of religions, nearly everyone in the world believes in the same things: the existence of a soul, an afterlife, miracles, and the divine creation of the universe. Recently psychologists doing research on the minds of infants have discovered two related facts that may account for this phenomenon. One: human beings come into the world with a predisposition to believe in supernatural phenomena. And two: this predisposition is an incidental by-product of cognitive functioning gone awry. Which leads to the question Is God an Accident?†This is an article in the December issue of “The Atlantic†http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200512/god-accident
I am not sure but you may have to subscribe to read this on line. I will give a short review because I think it is a very good read.
“Enthusiasm is building among scientists for the view that religion emerged not to serve a purposeâ€â€not as an opiate or a social glueâ€â€but by accident. It is a by-product of biological adaptations gone awry.â€Â
“We see the world of objects as separate from the world of minds, allowing us to envision souls and an afterlife; and our system of social understanding infers goals and desires, where none exist, making us animists and creationists.â€Â
“Nobody is born with the idea that humanity started in the Garden of Eden, or that martyrs will be rewarded in heaven; these ideas are learned. But the universal themes of religion are not learned. They are part of human nature.â€Â
“The theory of natural selection is an empirically supported account of our existence. But almost nobody believes it. We may intellectually grasp it, but it will never feel right. Our gut feeling is that design requires a designer.â€Â
And you know I think about this a lot, I know we're (as humans) just individual collections of bits and pieces all working together and there's nothing supernatural about us but it's just a bit disappointing. I try not to think of it but it does keep coming back.
Is God an Acident?
“Despite the vast number of religions, nearly everyone in the world believes in the same things: the existence of a soul, an afterlife, miracles, and the divine creation of the universe. Recently psychologists doing research on the minds of infants have discovered two related facts that may account for this phenomenon. One: human beings come into the world with a predisposition to believe in supernatural phenomena. And two: this predisposition is an incidental by-product of cognitive functioning gone awry. Which leads to the question Is God an Accident?†This is an article in the December issue of “The Atlantic†http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200512/god-accident
I am not sure but you may have to subscribe to read this on line. I will give a short review because I think it is a very good read.
“Enthusiasm is building among scientists for the view that religion emerged not to serve a purposeâ€â€not as an opiate or a social glueâ€â€but by accident. It is a by-product of biological adaptations gone awry.â€Â
“We see the world of objects as separate from the world of minds, allowing us to envision souls and an afterlife; and our system of social understanding infers goals and desires, where none exist, making us animists and creationists.â€Â
“Nobody is born with the idea that humanity started in the Garden of Eden, or that martyrs will be rewarded in heaven; these ideas are learned. But the universal themes of religion are not learned. They are part of human nature.â€Â
“The theory of natural selection is an empirically supported account of our existence. But almost nobody believes it. We may intellectually grasp it, but it will never feel right. Our gut feeling is that design requires a designer.â€Â
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nvalleyvee
- Posts: 5191
- Joined: Thu Apr 21, 2005 8:57 am
Scientific Realism
Coberst.............you are back in all of your non-reply glory. If you truely want conversation...........answer.
The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement..........Karl R. Popper
Scientific Realism
I think our schools and colleges have stolen from young people the excitement of learning. One should be excited about learning something new and not fear approaching something new as if it were an exam question. There is no need to fear what you do not know. Ignorance should be embraced and overcome so that one can move on to other domains of ignorance. The world is filled with marvelous ideas to explore if one moves out of their intellectual shell. Ignorance should be a catalyst and not a barrier.
I had once concluded it to be natural that when confronted by a new idea humans tended to do a turtle; withdraw into their shell until the coast was clear.
After some time posting in cyberspace I have modified my view somewhat. I think that we tend to display two types of turtle responses to our encounter with new ideas.
The terrapin withdraws quickly into its shell and the snapping turtle hisses, spits, and snaps when such an encounter happens. I suspect that cyberspace has allowed many people to display a more vulgar attitude than they would in face-to-face encounters.
I think that age is a factor in this equation. The young tend to be snappers and the older tend to be terrapins. I think that our teachers and professors have imprinted on the minds of their pupils that there is a legitimacy aspect to knowledge. That knowledge introduced by the teacher is legit and the rest should be avoided when possible.
Instead of graduates eager to learn and to earn we have constructed an educational system that qualifies citizens for a life of mindless production and consumption. Instead of turtles we need cats as a model for schooling.
A cat travels through the forest alert and curious to all that is in her range of perception. Instead of withdrawing into a shell the cat stealthily examines everything in its path. After a quick examination the cat very well may dart away for cover. The cat is, I think, more likely to survive in a dynamic and dangerous world than is the turtle.
I had once concluded it to be natural that when confronted by a new idea humans tended to do a turtle; withdraw into their shell until the coast was clear.
After some time posting in cyberspace I have modified my view somewhat. I think that we tend to display two types of turtle responses to our encounter with new ideas.
The terrapin withdraws quickly into its shell and the snapping turtle hisses, spits, and snaps when such an encounter happens. I suspect that cyberspace has allowed many people to display a more vulgar attitude than they would in face-to-face encounters.
I think that age is a factor in this equation. The young tend to be snappers and the older tend to be terrapins. I think that our teachers and professors have imprinted on the minds of their pupils that there is a legitimacy aspect to knowledge. That knowledge introduced by the teacher is legit and the rest should be avoided when possible.
Instead of graduates eager to learn and to earn we have constructed an educational system that qualifies citizens for a life of mindless production and consumption. Instead of turtles we need cats as a model for schooling.
A cat travels through the forest alert and curious to all that is in her range of perception. Instead of withdrawing into a shell the cat stealthily examines everything in its path. After a quick examination the cat very well may dart away for cover. The cat is, I think, more likely to survive in a dynamic and dangerous world than is the turtle.
Scientific Realism
nvalleyvee wrote: Coberst.............you are back in all of your non-reply glory. If you truely want conversation...........answer.
Answer what?
Answer what?
Scientific Realism
Judging by literal definition, Scientific Realism seems to parallel Ojectivism which is the scientific examination of reality. Reality, being everything which exists. That would include all physical objects, as well as, abstractions which exist only in the human mind, and things like gravity which can be proven to exist.
Leo
Leo
Scientific Realism
nvalleyvee wrote: Coberst.............you are back in all of your non-reply glory. If you truely want conversation...........answer.
Say something pertinent. I love to reply to comments or questions that are pertinent to my OP. So many responders never get past the filler in the essay and focus on the essence of the post.
Say something pertinent. I love to reply to comments or questions that are pertinent to my OP. So many responders never get past the filler in the essay and focus on the essence of the post.
Scientific Realism
LeoGold wrote: Judging by literal definition, Scientific Realism seems to parallel Ojectivism which is the scientific examination of reality. Reality, being everything which exists. That would include all physical objects, as well as, abstractions which exist only in the human mind, and things like gravity which can be proven to exist.
Leo
I think you are correct. I suspect many people have problems with Objectivism because they associate it with Ian Rand.
My interest is really in cognitive science and its attempt to promote 'embodied realism'.
Embodied Realism
Cognitive science argues for an embodied realism as opposed to philosophy’s metaphysical realism. Embodied realism provides us with a link between our ideas and the worlds we experience. “Our bodies contribute to our sense of what is realâ€Â.
Spatial-relations concepts are not part of the world but are embodied and provide us with our ability to make sense of the world. “They characterize what spatial form is and define spatial inference.â€Â
We do not see neither nearness nor farness but see objects in the world as they are and attribute the characteristic of nearness or farness to them. “We use spatial-relation concepts unconsciously, and we impose them unconsciously via our perceptual and conceptual systems. We just automatically and unconsciously ‘perceive’ one entity as in, on, or across from another entity. However, such perception depends on an enormous amount of automatic unconscious mental activity on our part.â€Â
We might see a butterfly ‘in’ the garden. We conceptualize a three-dimensional container that is bounded by the garden and that which contains the butterfly. We locate the butterfly as a figure relative to that container. “We perform such complex, though mundane, acts of imaginative perception during every moment of our waking lives.â€Â
Spatial relations have built in “logics†by virtue of their image-schematic structure:
Given two containers, A and B, and an object, X, if A is ‘in’ B and X is ‘in’ A, then X is ‘in’ B. Such is self-evident and requires no deduction. A container is a gestalt structure, its parts make no sense without the whole, it has an inside, outside, and a boundary.
“Container schemas, like other image schemas, are cross-modal. We can impose a conceptual container schema on a visual scene.†We can impose it on something we hear, on music perhaps to separate components, on our motor movements such as breaking down our movements in a tennis stroke and deal with these parts as within the whole.
Another important schema commonly used in perception and conception is the source-path-goal schema, which has an internal spatial “logic†with built in inferencesâ€Â:
*If you have traversed a route to a current location, you have been at all previous locations on the route.
*If you travel from A to B and from B to C, them you have traveled from A to C.
*And so forth.
“Our most fundamental knowledge of motion is characterized by the source-path-goal schema…One of the important discoveries of cognitive science is that the conceptual systems used in the world’s languages make use of a relatively small number of basic image schemas…The spatial logics of these body-based image schemas are among the sources of the forms of logic used in abstract reason.â€Â
The embodied mind hypothesis “radically undercuts the perception/conception distinction. In an embodied mind, it is conceivable that the neural system engaged in perception (or in bodily movement) plays a central in conception. That is, the very mechanisms responsible for perception, movements, and object manipulation could be responsible for conceptualization and reasoning.â€Â
Leo
I think you are correct. I suspect many people have problems with Objectivism because they associate it with Ian Rand.
My interest is really in cognitive science and its attempt to promote 'embodied realism'.
Embodied Realism
Cognitive science argues for an embodied realism as opposed to philosophy’s metaphysical realism. Embodied realism provides us with a link between our ideas and the worlds we experience. “Our bodies contribute to our sense of what is realâ€Â.
Spatial-relations concepts are not part of the world but are embodied and provide us with our ability to make sense of the world. “They characterize what spatial form is and define spatial inference.â€Â
We do not see neither nearness nor farness but see objects in the world as they are and attribute the characteristic of nearness or farness to them. “We use spatial-relation concepts unconsciously, and we impose them unconsciously via our perceptual and conceptual systems. We just automatically and unconsciously ‘perceive’ one entity as in, on, or across from another entity. However, such perception depends on an enormous amount of automatic unconscious mental activity on our part.â€Â
We might see a butterfly ‘in’ the garden. We conceptualize a three-dimensional container that is bounded by the garden and that which contains the butterfly. We locate the butterfly as a figure relative to that container. “We perform such complex, though mundane, acts of imaginative perception during every moment of our waking lives.â€Â
Spatial relations have built in “logics†by virtue of their image-schematic structure:
Given two containers, A and B, and an object, X, if A is ‘in’ B and X is ‘in’ A, then X is ‘in’ B. Such is self-evident and requires no deduction. A container is a gestalt structure, its parts make no sense without the whole, it has an inside, outside, and a boundary.
“Container schemas, like other image schemas, are cross-modal. We can impose a conceptual container schema on a visual scene.†We can impose it on something we hear, on music perhaps to separate components, on our motor movements such as breaking down our movements in a tennis stroke and deal with these parts as within the whole.
Another important schema commonly used in perception and conception is the source-path-goal schema, which has an internal spatial “logic†with built in inferencesâ€Â:
*If you have traversed a route to a current location, you have been at all previous locations on the route.
*If you travel from A to B and from B to C, them you have traveled from A to C.
*And so forth.
“Our most fundamental knowledge of motion is characterized by the source-path-goal schema…One of the important discoveries of cognitive science is that the conceptual systems used in the world’s languages make use of a relatively small number of basic image schemas…The spatial logics of these body-based image schemas are among the sources of the forms of logic used in abstract reason.â€Â
The embodied mind hypothesis “radically undercuts the perception/conception distinction. In an embodied mind, it is conceivable that the neural system engaged in perception (or in bodily movement) plays a central in conception. That is, the very mechanisms responsible for perception, movements, and object manipulation could be responsible for conceptualization and reasoning.â€Â
Scientific Realism
I have issues with some of Ayn Rand's conclusions, especially regarding government. But, Objectivism provides the best and most viable philosophy available to everyone.
On the other hand "Scientific Realism" appears to be another name for "Ideal Subjectivism" which is a doctrine holding that the world has no existence independent of sensations or ideas. Or, the doctrine that all knowledge is limited to experiences by the self, and that transcendent knowledge is impossible. In other words reality exists only in the mind of the perceiver. So, the term "Scientific Realism" is neither scientific nor real.
That is the opposite of Objectivism which holds that reality exists independent of human experience. And, reality can not be created by human thought. What is , is, regardless of human experience or opinions.
On the other hand "Scientific Realism" appears to be another name for "Ideal Subjectivism" which is a doctrine holding that the world has no existence independent of sensations or ideas. Or, the doctrine that all knowledge is limited to experiences by the self, and that transcendent knowledge is impossible. In other words reality exists only in the mind of the perceiver. So, the term "Scientific Realism" is neither scientific nor real.
That is the opposite of Objectivism which holds that reality exists independent of human experience. And, reality can not be created by human thought. What is , is, regardless of human experience or opinions.