I do not believe the universe is merely an abstract concept. In philosophy, that sort of belief is called Idealism. (Kant is usually sorted into that school. I hope you're enjoying his company.)
Sometimes I wonder if you actively strive to misunderstand me. I was not asserting that the Universe is “merely an abstract concept” but was 'merely' objecting to Godwin's complaint the 'science' uses the term without 'understanding' what it is. I consider this an amateur complaint.
I would think that you know me well enough by now to know I am not that limited. And considering all of the posts I have made deriding Kant's sophistry I would think you would know better than to lump me in with him in any fashion.
But I am a philosophical Realist who recognizes that the substantial reality of the living universe is not dependent on me noticing it.
The “living Universe” - now that's an interesting turn of a phrase.
In other words, my answer to the question: If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? is: YES.
Ahh, definitions again. Depends how you define sound. Is it just vibrations through the air, or is it the perception of vibrations through the air? My Webster's has the latter as the first connotation and the former as the second. In Zen, from whence this Koan arises, it would be the first, without a hearer there is no sound.
From my perspective, the universe pre-exists (and post-exists) me; and because I notice it as something independently real apart from myself, I can engage with it and think about it. IOW, It is something real without any help from me at all. And I am a part and participant in it. And so are you
Agreed.
In short, you evidently regard the universe as an immaterial abstraction, a figment of thought, so to speak, and nothing more. And I do not. No wonder we have such difficulty understanding one another!
No, as I have explained, I do not regard the Universe as an immaterial abstraction. It appears to me that you are so intent in proving everything I write wrong that it all is extrapolated in extremis, thus you end up construing meaning I did not intend. I do make a distinction between the object under discussion that the concept that represents it. There is a way of looking at this that was illuminated in a dictum by philosopher/scientist Alfred Korzybski, “The map is not the territory.”
The Universe is what it is and what we are building in the concept “universe' is the map of what we have learned about it. This is the abstraction and Godwin's comment, to me, conflated the two. His objection that we (science) doesn't 'understand' the Universe I thought was unfounded. As I said before , if we already knew everything about the Universe and 'understood' it, there would be no need to study it. So we aren't supposed to have a concept 'universe' because we don't understand “Universe?” That was my point, not that all we have is the abstract concept but we do have a working model or map, in fact must have a working model or map, in which to place what we learn about it into a coherent context.
Well, at least you admit that science is somehow about gathering knowledge "about reality." But it seems according to your method, "reality" may be only a "reification" of your own. And, from your own statements, I gather you do not trust reifications. So, where does that leave you?
Have I sufficiently explained this to you that you understand that this is not the case? This not an accurate assessment of my position?
One might say that science, as it is currently understood and practiced, is excessively devoted to abstractions, in a sort of process of "reification" in reverse. But reification of what? Anomie? Mindlessness??? If science is not permitted — by its own method — to understand what it knows, then what is the point of science?
Well, I think abstractions are unavoidable, and since science is so mathematically based in this day and age it must needs be abstract. Abstractions are ubiquitous and unavoidable, even in ordinary language, so it isn't surprising to me that science consists of mostly higher level abstractions. And, I don't know what 'science is not permitted' means. Scientists 'understand' what science 'knows' but a formal discipline (for lack of a better identifier) cannot 'know' anything.
I won't repost your Rosen quote but I quite agree, since I see abstractions as more prevalent than most people.
Fortunately for us, the greatest scientific minds of all time did not follow your definition of science (above, bolds). I'm speaking of (for example) Newton, Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, oh so many others. Not even Charles Darwin followed your definition!
As I have explained, you have misinterpreted my definition. I hope I've cleared this up.
What all these world-class thinkers had in common was: They practiced intuition-led science. They were not what I call "bean counters."
From which, a trial conclusion: Were it not for "intuition-led science," science could not advance at all.
I do tire of arguing these points that are merely opinion, cannot be proven and thus are, yes, Begging the Question. Even if the men you quoted all believed they were following an intuition-led discovery I do not accept the idea that the formulations themselves were not rooted in the sum total of their sensory experience as a working background for their 'intuition.' Neither do I accept your aforementioned conclusion. We will just have to agree to disagree on this point. (BTW – I consider the comparison to 'bean counters' a typical 'Straw Man' fallacy. Setting them up as diametrically opposed to this in order to prove, unsuccessfully, they are that.)
I was perplexed by your question: "I guess psychology doesn't exist then?"
I was being facetious. You had written:
Of course, the problem for the scientific method is this Self is immaterial, intangible, immeasurable, and thus unisolatable as a datum of scientific observation and experiment.
And since psychology is the study of this “immaterial, intangible, immeasurable, and thus unisolatable” self then it would follow psychology is attempting something it cannot do. But then you say:
Some people have actually empirically isolated it — e.g., William James — but will not give it a name. (James — perhaps the greatest American psychologist who ever lived, a rigorous experimentalist with — arguably — positivist leanings — just referred to it as "Thought" — with a capital "T".)
And a little later say:
Then you argue that Self itself is something that I must prove to you. But that would be like asking me to prove that you exist: But I cannot even conceive of you absent the idea of a unique Self. So what do you want me to prove?
So why didn't you just refer me to James, if he 'empirically isolated' it? I didn't ask you to prove it exists, I was asking if it is,' immaterial, intangible, immeasurable, and thus unisolatable' then how do you know it exists? Yet you say James did empirically isolate it. So which is it?
Especially in light of the fact that, for me, other than the problem of Life itself, the problem of Mind (psyche) is the single most important question in the world.
Let me ask you, do you make a distinction between psyche and consciousness?
Catch you on the flip side.
Putting you into the same category as Kant was just my way of poking some gentle fun at my worthy correspondent. :^) I meant "no harm," and so I'm truly sorry if I've offended you.
Notwithstanding, we definitely seem to be pretty much agreed on one point, dear LogicWings: For I gather you, like me, generally have little use for German Idealist philosophers (e.g., Kant), and perhaps even less use for German Transcendental Idealist philosophers (e.g., Hegel). It seems to me they are "system-builders," not "system-describers." And generally, I deplore that sort of thing....
But that is not to say that these men did not have profound insights about the relations between mind and world of inestimable value and influence on the evolution of human thought. For instance, Kant's radical distinction of phenomenon and noumenon.
In a nutshell, the phenomenon is basically a "reduction" of a perceived object into human-readable form via the inputs of sense perception. But Kant insisted that sense perception could never disclose the thing-in-itself in its fullness. All we see of it is what the senses (as technologically aided if need be, given means provided) can report. This unknown and in principle unknowable thing-in-itself is the noumenon.
Perhaps it's only in my imagination; but it seems to me William James [in The Principles of Psychology] was imbibing something from Kant's insight in saying:
There are two kinds of knowledge broadly and practically distinguishable: we may call them respectively knowledge of acquaintance and knowledge about. Most languages express the distinction; ... I am acquainted with many people and things, which I know very little about, except their presence in the places where I met them. I know the color blue when I see it, and the flavor of a pear when I taste it; I know an inch when I move my finger through it; a second of time, when I feel it pass; an effort of attention when I make it; a difference between two things when I notice it; but about the inner nature of these facts or what makes them what they are, I can say nothing at all. I cannot impart acquaintance with them to anyone who has not already made [the acquaintance] himself.Which — to me — is just more evidence for the truth of Alfred Korzybski's observation: “The map is not the territory.”
Anyhoot, I brought James up again because if we are to find any common ground between us, he seems to be the best "mediator" I can find.
Especially on your question: "Do you make a distinction between psyche and consciousness?"
James was not an Idealist — to put it mildly. William James above all was a philosophical "Pragmatist," an attitude characterized by George A. Miller (the writer of the Introduction to my current volume of Principles of Psychology) as "the characteristically American version of [British] empiricist philosophy."
On the faculty at Harvard, William James taught at various times the academic disciplines of physiology, psychology, and philosophy. The truly tremendous feat he accomplished in his lifetime of arduous work was to take psychology out of the provenance of philosophy entirely, especially out of metaphysics, in order to ground it in empirical (scientific — for surely James was a man of his Age, an Age inspired by Newtonian Optimism, and Darwinian Fitness) methods of investigation.
On the question, "do you make a distinction between psyche and consciousness?" I'd have to answer: Not much of one. To me at the most basic level they are effectively synonymous.
But at this level of discourse, the problem that James raised — the problem of Soul — does not typically arise in science.
And yet, James worked this very problem through a pragmatist, empiricist, skeptical-bordering-on-Positivist (with a good deal of Stoicism added in for good measure) viewpoint, thereby exemplifying at once his unique genius as a thinker and man of his time. I give him the "public podium" here:
My final conclusion, then, about the substantial Soul is that it explains nothing and guarantees nothing. Its successive thoughts are the only intelligible and verifiable things about it, and definitely to ascertain the correlations of these with brain-processes is as much as physiology can empirically do. From the metaphysical point of view, it is true that one may claim that the correlations have a rational ground; and if the word Soul could be taken to mean merely such problematical ground, it would be unobjectionable. But the trouble is that it progresses to give the ground in positive terms of a very dubiously creditable sort. I therefore feel entirely free to discard the word Soul.... If I ever use it, it will be in the vaguest and most popular way. The reader who finds any comfort in the idea of the Soul, is, however, perfectly free to continue to believe in it; for our reasonings have not established the non-existence of the Soul, they have only proved its superfluity for scientific purposes.Thank you, dear William James! :^) I shall continue to have converse with "entities" that you yourself seemingly confess cannot be "obviated" by scientific/empirical methods....
As James said: "Through feelings we become acquainted with things, but only by our thoughts do we know about them."
Which insight seems to suggest a possible resolution of any "dispute" between you and me, dear LogicWings, regarding "abstractions from Reality" and Reality Itself — the fullness of the latter of which is as incomprehensible to me as it is to you. (I suspect.)
Must close pretty quickly now, having run on so long. But I absolutely have to say one thing more about Albert Einstein, following-up our last — in which I proposed that he was an "intuition-led" scientist.
My first attempt to describe the situation of Einstein's "intuition-led science" having seemingly failed, please allow me to have recourse to the same thing, by way of analogy, as stated by William James, in a footnote:
Mozart describes ... this manner of composing: First bits and crumbs of the piece come and gradually join together in his mind; then the soul getting warmed to the work, the thing grows more and more, "and I spread it out broader and clearer, and at last it gets almost finished in my head, even when it is a long piece, so that I can see the whole of it at a single glance in my mind, as if it were a beautiful painting or a handsome human being; in which way I do not hear it in my imagination at all as a succession — the way it must come later — but all at once at it were. It is a rare feast! All the inventing and making goes on in me as in a beautiful strong dream. But the best of all is the hearing of it all at once.I daresay, that way was the very "way" that motivated Einstein....
But bidding adieu to William James for now, just let me say — in eternal tribute to him — that he recognized: "My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will."
Speaking personally, I just gotta love a guy like that....
I'll just leave it there for now. And wait for you "on the flip side!"
Dear LogicWings, thank you so very much for your fine correspondence in these matters!
Indeed it is. It is also interesting that there are scientists — mainly physicists of Eastern/Central European origin — who take the hypothesis of a "living universe" seriously; though mostly the idea is scoffed at on this side of the Great Pond....
Yet it seems to me the American mathematician Robert Rosen gives us a reason to take this hypothesis — originally proposed by Plato believe it or not — seriously. In Life Itself, he wrote:
...theoretical physics has long beguiled itself with a quest for what is universal and general. As far as theoretical physics is concerned, biological organisms are very special, indeed, inordinately special systems. The physicist perceives that most things in the universe are not organisms, are not alive in any conventional sense. Therefore, the physicist reasons, organisms are negligible; they are to be ignored in the quest for universality. For surely, biology can add nothing fundamental, nothing new to physics; rather, organisms are to be understood entirely as specializations of the physical universals, once these have been adequately developed, and once the innumerable constraints and boundary conditions that make organisms special have been elucidated. These last, the physicist says, are not my task. So it happens that the wonderful edifice of physical science, so articulate elsewhere, stands today utterly mute on the fundamental question: What is Life?Just some stuff to think about, dear LogicWings!
One of the few physicists to recognize that the profound silence of contemporary physics on matters biological was something peculiar was Walter Elsasser. To him, this silence was itself a physical fact and one that required a physical explanation. He found one by carrying to the limit the tacit physical supposition that, because organisms seem numerically rare in the physical universe, they must therefore be too special to be of interest as material systems. His argument was, roughly, that anything rare disappears completely when one takes averages; since physicists are always taking averages in their quest for what is generally true, organisms sink completely from physical sight. His conclusion was that, in a material sense, organisms are governed by their own laws ("biotonic laws"), which do not contradict physical universals but are simply not derivable from them.
Ironically, ideas like Elsasser's have not had much currency with either physicist or biologist.... Elsasser was only carrying one step further the physicists' tacit supposition that "rare" implies "nonuniversal."...
The possibility is, however ... that this supposition itself is mistaken.... [T]here is no reason at all why "rare" should imply anything at all; it needs to be nothing more than an expression of how we are sampling things, connoting nothing at all about the things themselves.... Why could it not be that the "universals" of physics are only so on a small and special (if inordinately prominent) class of material systems, a class to which organisms are too general to belong? What if physics is the particular, and biology the general, instead of the other way around?