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[Hereandnow]

I real Steven Hawkings latest and read that he was not at all pleased by the responses of the philosopical community to his opinions on the objectivity of science. Scientists tend not to think about philosophical issues and they don't understand how anyone could question their work. But what if i challenged Hawkings by arguing that perceptions about time/space, about partical physics , indeed, any empirical claim whatever, was no more than a claim about the interior of the mind itself? But I put on the table a simple but powerful statement made by Richard Rorty the Amercian pragatist: No one has ever been able to make clear how anything "out there" in the world independent of perceptual systems, could get in here, into the thinking, perceiving mind. Can anyone address this very counterintuitive claim that so resists attempts refute it?

[Jklint]

Since science is now more complex, abstract and speculative than philosophy ever was or can hope to be why would scientists need to worry about anything "philosophers" have to say? Haven't they got enough problems already? I mean "real" problems not the ones philosophers create to prove how brilliant they are.

Next, how does "content" get into the mind in the first place? In short, what are your senses and your memory for? Put another way receiving data and storing it as experience, knowledge, etc.

Also, what would be the point of a "perceptual system" if it cannot perceive what is external to it?

If Mr. Rorty had been chased by a saber-toothed tiger a hundred thousand years ago what was "out there" would have become very personal very quickly.

It was fortunate for the human race that there weren't any philosophers around at the time otherwise Mr. Rorty would never have had the opportunity to come up with such brilliant ideas.

[Hereandnow]

"If Mr. Rorty had been chased by a saber-toothed tiger a hundred thousand years ago what was "out there" would have become very personal very quickly.

It was fortunate for the human race that there weren't any philosophers around at the time otherwise Mr. Rorty would never have had the opportunity to come up with such brilliant ideas."

Ha! But seriously, Rorty does not say there are no tigers; he is no idealist. He is an antiessentialist: Tigers and the rest have their meanings bound to the subjective,pragmatic conditions of mental functions; but what is "out there" is in some unfathomable sense still "there," but at most all you can say is it has causal impact in our world. Not much else to say. It is a bit like talking about god. Granted, philosophy is little help in avoiding wild animals, but then, string theory isn't much help here either, is it? And look, you do have to take the time to at least grasp the issue. Did you not notice that it is true that you cannot explain how things exteriorto the mind get in the mind? Well, Physics will have to deal with this very question; indeed, it is The mother of all questions: The hundred billion neurons in your head are physical, and the physicality of all things that cross your perceptual path issue from that matrix.

[Misty]

Maybe all things external are actually only in the confines of brains. Maybe there is no external anything.

[Maldon007]

Since science is now more complex, abstract and speculative than philosophy ever was or can hope to be why would scientists need to worry about anything "philosophers" have to say? Haven't they got enough problems already? I mean "real" problems not the ones philosophers create to prove how brilliant they are.

Next, how does "content" get into the mind in the first place? In short, what are your senses and your memory for? Put another way receiving data and storing it as experience, knowledge, etc.

Also, what would be the point of a "perceptual system" if it cannot perceive what is external to it?

If Mr. Rorty had been chased by a saber-toothed tiger a hundred thousand years ago what was "out there" would have become very personal very quickly.

It was fortunate for the human race that there weren't any philosophers around at the time otherwise Mr. Rorty would never have had the opportunity to come up with such brilliant ideas.

Said better than I was gonna say it.

[Partinobodycular]

Maybe all things external are actually only in the confines of brains. Maybe there is no external anything.

True freedom comes in the acceptance of that one simple truth. Look beyond the cruelty, futility, and injustice of this world, and realize that the only things over which you truly have control, are the purity of your intentions, and the honorability of your actions. Whether the world is real or not, does not alter the fact that the only thing over which you ultimately have any control, is yourself. No matter how the world chooses to judge you, or treat you, your life will testify to the content of your character. And in the end, that more than anything else, defines the value of a man.

When all is said and done, your only judge, may be yourself.

.

[Maldon007]

Or at least the one that counts the most.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Science is a practical methodology that can fit into a broad range of philosophies. It makes as few philosophical claims or assumptions as possible. Philosophically, I think one needs to understand the relative findings and claims of science and scientists in relation to the context and specific methodology of science. To illustrate, if you take a cooking class that teaches you some science and empirical information regarding making meals for yourself and presumably enjoying the food you will learn to cook, it does not necessarily make a claim whether this food is real in the strictest most straight-forwardly objective sense or whether we live in the Matrix and the 'food' is actually an illusion and the pleasure will actually be artificially induced or whether you are dreaming and it is only through some subconscious belief that the rules of physics hold that they appear to hold within your dream and that that leads you to have the dreamed sensation of eating good food as a result of taking the cooking class. The science holds as a practical means either way. This is why science not philosophy saves us from tigers, or the starvation that nihilism would lead to.

This particular value of science does not undermine philosophy. There are two different things. I suspect the seeming conflict between philosophy and science stems from a common misunderstanding about what each is.

I would like more specific report of how Hawking was allegedly displeased by the response of the philosophical community to his book. It was book of the month recently so for those who read it they can click here to discuss it, so I will only summarize my views on his book here: I read it, and it explained some science but it contained a lot of philosophy and philosophical claims and arguments, so Hawking may not like that his philosophical claims were not accepted by philosophers but that is different than philosophers rejecting the science presented.

[Hereandnow]

I had to look. No, it comes from Back Holes and Baby Universes. That is not the most recent. In the biographical part he voices his complaint against philosophers of Science. He thinks they are a bunch of physics drop outs (not in so many words) and does not like the epithet "positivist" they give him. Positivists are metaphysical realists. They think, in Cartesian fashion, that there are real things out there that we can somehow Know. Typically they hold Descartes view that while so called secondary qualities are dispositional only (requires, say, the eye and brain to be there to manifest them), objectives there are conditions of time and space. Thus, things out there really do exist in time and space, though this has to modified: Scientists will agree that we live in theory and that our theories are works in progress. See Thomas Kuhn for this, though Kuhn goes much farther than this and steps int the philosopher's world when he says truth, the scientist's truth, is made and not discovered! And this is where many modern philosophers are now. Also: the view that is at issue here is not some marginal bit of philosophical extravagance. One must look first to Kant. Einstien read him when he was 13. And I am sure a genius like Hawking has read him. Whether the argument regarding his being a positivist sticks, I am not sure. Yes, science is a practical methodology; but few, af any, would take modern noepragmatism (the language centered extension ofthe orignal Dewey, James, Peirce concept) seriously.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

These disagreements between Hawkings and these unnamed philosophers are philosophical disagreements, not scientific ones. Any given scientist may share Hawkings' philosophical views or not, as they and the philosophers would presumably agree with the science.

[Hereandnow]

The question here is less along the lines of looking for a consensus, and more toward presenting exactly the kind of challege Hawkings despises: Can anyone, Hawkings included, explain how anything out there gets in here, the mind. If one cannot explain it, then why assume it? Philosophy is all about this kind of conundrum.It is perhaps a tough sell, though: One has to look at this blooming mental world as an adaptive mechanism and nothing more. Its reality, truth are merely evolved tools for making things work better. Indpendent of these operations, truth has no application since there is no logic, no language to propositional value at all out of the meaning generating matrix of language. I no more KNOW the world OUT THERE, than a dented fender KNOWs the offending guard rail. The relationship betwen the mind of Hawkings and the black holes he studies are, though this is rather hermeneutically confusing, just one causal complexities (hermeneutically confusing because 'causal' is a term that belongs to the same problematic language. I use it because, as the pragmatists say, it works; it is the only wheel that rolls.)

[Z3RO]

Will we ever know what contents are beyond the depths of our minds?


Such as, can an idea become real through the inception of the thought?


As well as numbers, they aren't real. Although we use them as a base of civilization


and to approximate time.

[Hereandnow]

Agreed Z3R0! Lots of people hold this, though they say it differently: Our purpose here is a moral one. All else is secondary. Christians believe this; and so do I though I 'd have to put in my own two cents. We live in a complex problem solving world of values.The hard part is simply not being cruel to others as we pursue them. I am reading Manuel Levinas (sp?) and he puts it to you with terrible force: In the face of the other (sufferer) you see raw compulsion to rectify. (I don't have him that solidly yet.)

[Misty]

What if the universe and reality exist only in the mind? What if the mind, pre-programmed with the senses and all knowledge, projects from within the perceived external world? Each brain similar but different in content so understanding is achieved, sharing mind perception to achieve evolution of intelligence. In other words, the tree I see in front of me is projected from my own mind as reality. Therefore, reality is subjectively objective.

[Half-Six]

But I put on the table a simple but powerful statement made by Richard Rorty the Amercian pragatist: No one has ever been able to make clear how anything "out there" in the world independent of perceptual systems, could get in here, into the thinking, perceiving mind. Can anyone address this very counterintuitive claim that so resists attempts refute it?

I don’t think Rorty would criticise physics in this way. What he did criticise is the notion of the mind being a representation of reality, “a mental mirroring of a mind-external world” as the Stanford entry puts. It isn’t, so there isn’t this problem how things get from out there to in here. Though there may be a problem whether science does as much as Hawking claims it does.