Poll about the relation between human observers and the external world :)

[Kyriakos]

A poll mostly about how the 'external world' is related to human observers/humans moving in it.

Poll question is:

-Which of these options describes more closely your view on the relation between human observers and the external world?

Poll options are:

1) The external world exists in a form that human observers can know. (Materialism)
2) The external world exists, but not in a form which can be known by anything observing it. (Idealism)
3) Human observers and the external world are in reality One, and this can be theorised logically but is likely impossible to prove (Positive Eleatic Monism).
4) Human observers and the external world may not be One, but then humans are even further away from reality (Negative Eleatic Monism).
5) Humans can reach, through logic, at least shadows of what is real, of anything external to them (Socratic/Platonic theory of the Eide)
6) Other/Aliens

Some important notes:

*I used Materialism and Idealism mostly generically, although at least for Idealism it is defined as such. I made it distinct from Platonic Eide/Eidos theory, cause current 'idealism' is about ideas, and not archetypes/eide. Briefly the difference is that you are idealist if you think there is no mind-independent knowledge, but to be platonic you should also be of the view that there is some ability to tie finite human logic to 'eternal' forms of thoughts or any other idea, the so-called Eide/Categories/Archetypes.

*Eleatism is not officially divided to positive and negative, i used those terms to make things a bit more distinct. The first is the view that while humans cannot prove it, we are One with the rest of phenomena, and all one 'Changeless Oneness'. The second is that we may not be One, but then are even worse off since we are merely in chaos and no tie (even a shadowy one) to a reality.

Happy voting

 

[Perfection]

It's all mathematics

 

[Kyriakos]

Personally i am between option 2 and option 4:

I think that we probably are distinct on all levels from external phenomena, but we also are projecting our own unknown mental world onto anything we experience/think, so in the end we feed back to some inner examination of our labyrinthine being

But i will just vote 4, cause Parmenides>most others

 

[warpus]

There is an object in this world - a piece of paper. It is on my desk.

I am looking at this piece of paper right now and getting information about it via my visual sensory organs.

I now know something about a part of the external word that I didn't before.

I vote (1)

 

[bhsup]

I think anything but the first or last options just exist so people can sound self-absorbed and egg-heady talking about them. I'm going with option 1, but I guess the aliens one -is- possible, just not really likely.

 

[sophie]

7) The external world merely is, and our knowing or not knowing it has no bearing on its existence.

 

[Kyriakos]

There is an object in this world - a piece of paper. It is on my desk.

I am looking at this piece of paper right now and getting information about it via my visual sensory organs.

I now know something about a part of the external word that I didn't before.

I vote (1)

On the surface it would seem logical that you do indeed.
But you saw a form by using human eyes, and the properties of light on their related parts, further more fed to parts of the brain which feature in eyesight at some level or other. The paper is not apparently having any set tie to your eyes, or to light, or even to a system of sensing things in 3d.
The paper has (for a human observer) a color, a form, a purpose given to it, but it is not any more known than what an infant can deem as knowing by drawing lines in his notebook as an expression of the vista in front of him which features unknown symbols. The child grants the letters he creates some tie to the unknown symbols, like we (instinctively) identify the product of our senses with what is 'out there', eg the piece of paper in your example.

But those things are not viewed from a point of view tied to them. They are viewed from a human pov, and thus translated to human meaning and forms, which already tie to human (mostly non-conscious) mechanisms of thinking

 

[Kyriakos]

I think anything but the first or last options just exist so people can sound self-absorbed and egg-heady talking about them. I'm going with option 1, but I guess the aliens one -is- possible, just not really likely.

Aliens is a serious option, in fact. But option 1 is the weakest, in my view

(also, pls don't make me turn this into RD. DONT. MAKE. ME. DO IT. ).

 

[bhsup]

My comment was sincere. It would be legitimate whether this is an RD thread or not.

 

[warpus]

On the surface it would seem logical that you do indeed.

It does indeed. Your point #1 read:

The external world exists in a form that human observers can know.

This is undeniably true.

We can know things about the external word. If we couldn't - how was your computer put together? Surely not by trial and error.

Now, perhaps we can't know everything about the external world... but you can't dispute that we can know it to some degree. If we couldn't, we wouldn't be having this discussion since the internet wouldn't exist.

 

[Kyriakos]

It does indeed. Your point #1 read:



This is undeniably true.

We can know things about the external word. If we couldn't - how was your computer put together? Surely not by trial and error.

Now, perhaps we can't know everything about the external world... but you can't dispute that we can know it to some degree. If we couldn't, we wouldn't be having this discussion since the internet wouldn't exist.

By that logic how can we have a discussion about politics when we have so different views of it? (cause it is hugely dependent on particular/individual mental formations).

There are degrees of knowing-related to what context you mean. Yes, if i say "please take seat here" ( ) you will know that i mean you can seat down, or that i allude to a meme about pedophiles and tv programs. This doesn't mean that if i think of the term "chair" and imagine something, i can communicate to you in a finite number of steps exactly the form i had in mind- let alone what it makes me feel, or how i sense it as a term in my own mental world.

 

[warpus]

Just because we are unable to convey information about an object with 100% accuracy, in a way that perfectly relays the parameters of its existence, via our senses, does not mean that we are not able to know things about the external world.

Like I said, the fact that we are able to know things about the external world is undeniable. If we couldn't know things about the external world - the history of our species would have gone a lot differently....

 

[Kyriakos]

Just because we are unable to convey information about an object with 100% accuracy, in a way that perfectly relays the parameters of its existence, via our senses, does not mean that we are not able to know things about the external world.

Like I said, the fact that we are able to know things about the external world is undeniable. If we couldn't know things about the external world - the history of our species would have gone a lot differently....

That is an epidermic use of the term "know", connoting that one can organise human projections/impressions onto external phenomena, something very obviously true. [do note that it is not 'negative', of course. Already in the 6th century BC people used solar clocks (shadows of pillars on level ground, noting the position of the Sun at different times) and applying trigonometry to the shadows so as to calculate solstices and later on also equinoxes. It just is not an actual knowledge in other, non human-bound, manners: ) ].
But to know also means to know a reality of something, which here juxtaposes any possible inherent identities of some object to any identities which may be identified on it by a human observer in human perceptive manners. Ie forms in the world are in 3d. This hardly is proof that 'in reality' they are in 3d. Maybe there is no reality in that sense anyway, but even so there is no reason to view the human perception as tied to actual phenomena and not manifestations of phenomena for a human observer

 

[warpus]

If you define "to know" to mean "to become the object and to understand it inside-out", then of course it's impossible to know anything. We learn by using our brain to model the world around us - what we see and hear isn't the real world - it is the model our brain has built for us, given the incoming information. So in that sense, yes, we are not really seeing or hearing the world - just a flawed model that only exists in our heads.

But if you define "to know" in a bit more reasonable way, the answer is clear. If the model in our heads was so flawed that it didn't correspond to reality in some sort of a meaningful way, I'd agree with you. But that isn't the case at all - the models we see in our minds are decent approximations of reality. They allow us to know objects in many ways. Maybe not in a 100% perfect "I am a chair" way. But that's not what you were asking.

 

[Kyriakos]

If you define "to know" to mean "to become the object and to understand it inside-out", then of course it's impossible to know anything. We learn by using our brain to model the world around us - what we see and hear isn't the real world - it is the model our brain has built for us, given the incoming information. So in that sense, yes, we are not really seeing or hearing the world - just a flawed model that only exists in our heads.

But if you define "to know" in a bit more reasonable way, the answer is clear. If the model in our heads was so flawed that it didn't correspond to reality in some sort of a meaningful way, I'd agree with you. But that isn't the case at all - the models we see in our minds are decent approximations of reality. They allow us to know objects in many ways. Maybe not in a 100% perfect "I am a chair" way. But that's not what you were asking.

I do agree with you, namely i accept - of course - that for us there is evident, and "real" in human points of view, correlation between our logical/adequate models and external phenomena. If one claims that if an infant moving carelessly close to the edge of the balcony, is at risk of falling to his/her death, they are very correct, cause indeed the weight would pull them to the position where something would stop their movement by applying an equal force on them (thus harming them very significantly). Moreover if one claims that a comet is leaving the solar system once it reaches a parabolic (and then hyperbolic) course in regards to the Sun, it is (afaik) also true to model and provides experimentally (through telescopic observation of distant objects in space) testable information.

But:

The above are entirely in the realm of the human translation of such phenomena into human sense/thought models and experience. The comet *may* not be a 3d object, and it *may* exist within entirely different rules which are not possible (due to our mental world) to be modelled anyway. True: this doesn't mean we should shrug when an infant is in danger of obliviously falling to his death, for he is human and experiences phenomena as a human. But that is not to say that in a non-human, or over-human, or other model, gravity or other human concepts and sensory perceptions would have to feature in some manner

 

[warpus]

The comet *may* not be a 3d object, and it *may* exist within entirely different rules which are not possible (due to our mental world) to be modelled anyway.

Yeah, it may, but given our past experience with comets and the way they behave - that would not be a reasonable assumption to make.

In the end we know things about how comets behave because it is possible to know things about comets.

 

[uppi]

(8) The external world becomes real through our observation (quantum mechanics)

 

[Kyriakos]

Yeah, it may, but given our past experience with comets and the way they behave - that would not be a reasonable assumption to make.

In the end we know things about how comets behave because it is possible to know things about comets.

You are missing the point (but judging from the poll votes, you are in some company ) , look at it this way:

If you have in front of you a 2d image of an ellipse, you can know a number of stuff about it, size of primary and secondary diameter, focal points in this dimension, etc. Imagine someone for whom the 2d ellipse is 'known' and 'real'. Now imagine a 3d ellipse, ie one formed on a cone intersected by a plane. The 3d ellipse may cast as a shadow the 2d ellipse, but there are vastly more characteristics of the 'same' ellipse to observe and 'know' there. You can know the highest and lowest point. You can know the actual distance of the focal points to the vertical line from the single point of the top of the cone (inverted or not) to the primary diameter of the ellipse. And many other things.
The conclusion here is that what is 'real' for a human observer is never independent of the human observer. The external object is external, most likely, but it is perceived in the very set and bounded and limited dynamics of its appearance as a phenomenon in the mind/senses of the human observer. In that bounded set it can be termed as known to a degree, and indeed it is logical for it to be termed thus, but only there. You are in effect arguing that points A and B are specifically meaningful in their relation to each other, regardless of having the center of the axis they are in set in one way (metaphorically having their observer be human) or any other way, or no way at all

(8) The external world becomes real through our observation (quantum mechanics)

'Things are indistinct and the same, before the mind divides them', Anaxagoras

 

[gozpel]

I picked 5.

A lighting strike hits a tree, the warrior walks up closer and grab a burning branch. Hey, he says: I now have torch and see further into the darkness.

By using this torch, the warrior can see that nothing is there to hurt him....well, right now. But he can see water flowing and so on.

Now the warrior waits to be shot down by a mean Kyriakos.......