The distinction between appearance and reality is one of the oldest distinctions in human thought.
Your elaboration implies that all appearances are effects induced on the observer, which is fine.
But we don't want to lose the appearance vs reality distinction. So, the 'axiom' is something akin to 'all observations are effects'. Their fallibilty is one of the most discussed topics in the history of philosophy.
Because it conveys important information about what's observed. In some sense all distinctions can be dissolved, but that destroys cognition, which requires differentiation within the observed field. The best distinctions are distinctions that carry important information, and whose loss entails a loss of information. Cognition has to be lossy to generalize, but it must generalize from highly structured data to be able to generalize at all.
What is meant by “reality” that is opposed to/discriminated from appearance?
I assume third-person public is the standard for that, or invoking the noumena. The noumena is ontologically vacuous and without reality, an epistemic placeholder for something idealized but unrealized. And third-person public is not a view from nowhere, but every conceivable situated first-person perspective rectified
— universalized first-person appearance as proxy for totality. But there is no conceivable total observation possible. There is only appearance.
Conceptual placeholders can be useful, of course, but they are too often mistaken for something real.
Insisting on an objectively describable real is unnecessary to make reality work. A reality entirely comprised of relata is sufficient.
The distinction between illusion and veridicality is important for an observer that's trying to survive in the world. The level of distortion can vary, with systematic deception being the limit, meaning zero veridicality. If you have a distorted perception and act on it, you might die. By a roundabout way, it's why we care about truth, which in most cases is operationalized as independent of observation and belief, though you can contest that. So, I'm not saying there's some fundamental or metaphysical distinction a la Kant, i'm saying the distinction serves a pragmativ purpose and, even abstractly, carries useful information i.e. some perceptions can be veridical and others not. By keeping the distinction you lose nothing, but you gain a lot.
I agree with the pragmatic point: organisms need to discriminate between appearances that support successful action and appearances that don’t. But I don’t think that requires an appearance/reality distinction in the strong sense.
Distinctions among appearances is sufficient. Stable/unstable, shared/private, action-guiding/misleading, repeatable/non-repeatable, internally generated/externally constrained, etc.
“Veridicality” need only mean the success of an appearance within a wider field of appearances. Veridicality requiring correspondence to a reality outside appearance is a tall order, and asks for comparison against an object that is in effect unknown and unknowable.
The distinction can do useful work, yes, but I’d say the useful distinction is not appearance vs reality so much as it is appearance under different constraints.
Although, I can anticipate your objection. If you're a brain in a vat, there's a good case to be for collapsing the distinction. But you'd still need the distinction in the systematic illusion for average conditions, just as you would not being a brain in a vat.
for some reason i thought you implied there was a contridiction in axiom 1 and i wrote a whole thing explaining it in detail... i wont let it go to waste though!
It can be incomplete but it can never be faulty.
The act of observation is infallible because what i define as observation is the system effected by an effect. For example: a tree is burning by fire and you are standing infront of the tree. Here in this example there are two systems.
first one: you are irrelevant and not the observer the non-burnt tree is the system fire is the effect ane burt tree is the observer.
second one: you are the system(or your eyes and brain) photons that are emmited by the tree and the fire are the effect and now you are the observer.
Here the tree is burning/burnt and that is observed by the tree which is a true observation.
The photons went through ur cornea(or the things in ur eyes that i dont remember) and excited a couple of neurons which made an effect on your brain this effected you in the way it shouldve effected you so you observed what happened which was a true observation.
Ill just copy paste another answer because i think it explains my point deeper and im lazy. Basically like i stated in my axiom my definition of an observation is different you observed a pink elephant and that observation was true irrelevant of any elephant you have observed your neurons excitation
It can be incomplete but it can never be faulty.
The act of observation is infallible because what i define as observation is the system effected by an effect. For example: a tree is burning by fire and you are standing infront of the tree. Here in this example there are two systems.
first one: you are irrelevant and not the observer the non-burnt tree is the system fire is the effect ane burt tree is the observer.
second one: you are the system(or your eyes and brain) photons that are emmited by the tree and the fire are the effect and now you are the observer.
Here the tree is burning/burnt and that is observed by the tree which is a true observation.
The photons went through ur cornea(or the things in ur eyes that i dont remember) and excited a couple of neurons which made an effect on your brain this effected you in the way it shouldve effected you so you observed what happened which was a true observation.
Yep, on the definition of observation as effects induced we are in agreeement.
But for the sake of eliding falling into 'incomplete' and 'faulty' being purely semantic differences, I'd invite you to consider that systematic deception is not exactly the same as incomplete, though you can define it as that. So, if you stimulate the brain and generate simulacra that the agent can't distinguish from veridical stimulations, then we have here a case where veridicality is completely eschewed.
Second, if the observer and the observation are part of the system, and observation is defined in the third person, then that's a different definition of observation that is tantamount to interaction. This is also an acceptable definition, but it does create problems for the first definition that are too complex to get into here. If observation is just interaction, then you have a description that can accommodate say quantum decoherence.
My first and main criticism is that you never really come to terms with the fact "reality" is an abstract concept. One can never "observe reality", since "reality" is itself an interpretation of observation. And different people come up with different ideas about what reality is.
You cannot make sense of "reality" this way. Because "reality" is the sense that you make of observations. You're simply chasing your own tail, trying to reinvent the wheel that Hume and Kant set in motion.
Axiom 1 recalls Galileo's attitude to observation. He didn't believe that any observation could contradict Church doctrine, because all he was doing was looking at God's creation. And God was not so capricious as to create anything that contradicted the Bible. Similarly, the counterpart to Descartes' cogito ergo sum, was the idea that God (being perfectly good) would not deceive us by making observation different from reality, ergo reality is real.
You also seem to repeat Wittgenstein's axiom that begins the Tractatus, i.e. The world is everything that is the case.
Axiom 1 depends on a further unstated axiom, i.e. that there is some sui generis distinction to be made between observation and interpretation. This needs defending because, especially in the light of Kant, it's not obviously true. As already noted, "reality" is itself an interpretation of experience.
Axiom 2 could be seen as just a truism. But it relies on other axioms, such as Aristotle's three principles of logic. And again, the precedent for this is centuries old. It was Newton, for example, who established that the laws of motion applied in the heavens as well as on earth. Right?
"Identical systems under identical conditions produce identical outcomes"
I get that you are trying to idealise experience in order to arrive at metaphysical conclusions. However, under what conditions are two objective systems ever identical? None that I can think of. Physicists tell us that electrons are indistinguishable. But of course this assumes that other things are equal. Is an electron with energy X identical to an electron with energy Y? Clearly, not. In fact they have measurably different properties. And if it doesn't appear to work on this scale, it definitely doesn't work on larger scales.
"Identical" is also problematic for you because its another abstract concept that is never observed in practice.
Idealising the situation to the extent that simple propositions fall out of it, you have ceased to comment on the world we experience. And this problem plagues all metaphysics.
You also err when you say:
>"At quantum scales this axiom may reduce to: identical systems under identical conditions produce identical probability distributions."
This is to take seriously one interpretation of the obviously incomplete mathematical theory of quantum mechanics, which has no viable metaphysics associated with it (despite a plethora of metaphysical interpretations being proposed). Bohr and Heisenberg, influenced by logical positivism, denied that any metaphysics of the nanoscale was even possible. But this is an ideological position not a philosophical position. Copenhagen is a minority view these days, despite still being orthodox in undergraduate quantum courses.
I don't say you are wrong per se, although your "just two axioms" are only afloat because they rest on a whole raft of unspoken assumptions.
Life is all just that much more complex than any of us would wish. Simple is not always better, especially when situations are objectively complex.
In my view the whole metaphysical discourse around "reality" is hopelessly mired in subjectivity. I call "reality" the funniest concept in philosophy because, despite being an a priori abstract concept that we impose on experience (following Kant), almost everyone unconsciously hypostatises and reifies it.
While phenomenology briefly provided some hope of escaping this morass, it didn't deliver, because each phenomenologist arrived at their own conclusions, and they couldn't all be right. All that's left to us now is pragmaticism. We run with what works, with "good enough" to be getting on with, and we abandon the quest for a God's eye view of the universe as impractical and having no obvious benefits over and above what works.
We cannot define "reality" from experience; because "reality" is already an idea about experience.
yes there are no identical systems yes reality is subjective and undefinable in any objective way. However what i am doing is not about metaphysics nor i am trying to prove something. For me there is no objective anything and you cant know anything about anything i am basically an agnostic nihilist and i acknowladge that in ontology nothing can be proven or disproven. That is why we make assumptions because its the best thing we can do. Intrinsically every blief system has assumptions.
also wow. just wow i honestly cant believe you wrote all of this and like there was no problem in it with getting the point across too what is your occupation? Because from what i see youre either a proffesor or unemployed /j
I don't like the wording of axiom 1. I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to get at.
Observations are not infallible. That's kind of the purpose of science to separate the relative from the absolute and isolate variables to predict an outcome. There's also situations where it's difficult to make observations on something which leads to empirical interpretations from science. There's also the uncertainty principle.
When axiom 1 is challenged it will just mean that physics is the operandi of the universe, then I think it simply breaks down into axiom 2 which is fine.
I think it'd be better to compliment axiom 2 with conservation of information
It can be incomplete but it can never be faulty.
The act of observation is infallible because what i define as observation is the system effected by an effect. For example: a tree is burning by fire and you are standing infront of the tree. Here in this example there are two systems.
first one: you are irrelevant and not the observer the non-burnt tree is the system fire is the effect ane burt tree is the observer.
second one: you are the system(or your eyes and brain) photons that are emmited by the tree and the fire are the effect and now you are the observer.
Here the tree is burning/burnt and that is observed by the tree which is a true observation.
The photons went through ur cornea(or the things in ur eyes that i dont remember) and excited a couple of neurons which made an effect on your brain this effected you in the way it shouldve effected you so you observed what happened which was a true observation.
Maybe I don't understand what you mean between incomplete and faulty. The way I read your examples is that physics happens, which doesn't really mean much more than your axiom 2. I think what you're trying to say is that causality is infallible which I think I agree with.
The act of observation has to mean something. And ultimately when humans observe something, we do it through our own human condition/senses. We do not directly observe external reality among other things which makes observation infallible.
In your second system example where I am the observer, the photons go into my eye and my brain perceives the fire as red where in reality the color red does not exist. I can also here pops and crackles from the fire burning the tree which causes pressure waves in the air which our ears interpret as sound but we know sound doesn't actually exist in reality. As we get closer to the tree we realize it's actually a decorative plastic tree so our eyes fooled us there as well.
Also you say that in the first system the tree observes me standing in front of it. But we know that trees can't really observe.
first of all tree does not observe you i think you didnt really understand what i mean by observation you can read my definition of an observer in axiom one. To explain "incomplete" i can examplify it easily basically you cannot see some wavelenghts of light so your observation of something is incomplete. It isnt faulty since what you observed was the truth however the point is what you didnt observe. also yes "physics happens" but science is not an objective truth and it requires assumptions and axioms
... Your reply consists of four words. How does that represent a partial observation? Is there an unobservable "5th word" whose presence can only be inferred through subsequent data?
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>"You can’t observe the motivation behind those words."
.... Motivation is a subsequent "inference" based on what has already been directly observed.
>"You can’t observe whether there was a typo in those words."
A posteriori absolutely allows me to observe that there are no typos are in those words. A distinction can me made if there were.
>"And a million other things."
... And they would all be subsequent inferences based on the initial observation ... which was complete. There are no missing data left to be observed. All that is left are subsequent "inferences" and "conclusions" based on the initial observation.
Example: I directly observed "five downvotes" to my reply to nysalor's reply. I "infer" from that observation that the ones who issued the downvotes are behaving like children, but that is not something that's directly observable and serves as a subjective conclusion made by me.
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You need to make inferences and conclusions about what actually happened because you couldn’t directly observe it - otherwise no inferences would be necessary.
>"You need to make inferences and conclusions about what actually happened because you couldn’t directly observe it - otherwise no inferences would be necessary."
... That's not true. You are conflating "inference" with "observation" when they are two distinct processes. I can observe (1 + 1 = 2) and state with repeatable accuracy everything observable in that equation without drawing any conclusions whatsoever. As a subsequent act, I can conclude / infer that the equation is either true or false.
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Axiom 1 is good but it needs careful interpretation. An observation is always factually true in the server that the observation occurs. I see s pink elephant floating in the sky is a true observation in that sense. I really an experiencing that visual hallucination. It's s true fact of experience. But it doesn't imply that my model of reality actually reflects reality as it is. There may not really be an external pink elephant floating in the sky. But there is certainly something in really resulting in that observation.
Axiom 2 is weaker. It could be that identical circumstances can lead to distinct next steps in reality. I think identical circumstances were probably impossible, so it doesn't really matter either way though.
“Error arises only in the interpretation of what the observation means” - This has been the case for the best part of 2500 years if not longer. Nothing new.
“For any system A and effect B, the resulting system C is invariant it will always be the same across all instances of A under B. This holds at scales where complete state description is possible”: This is just Liebniz’s PSR couched in systems language, again nothing new.
What work are these ‘axioms’ doing? What’s new or novel?
You’re right, it’s an uncharitable reading on my part. But I do think it’s arguably PSR adjacent, if you forgive me for tying to wriggle out of my first analysis. Here’s my interpretation:
If we paraphrase it into a simplified form it essentially says: For any given initial state and effect, exactly one resulting state follows. Now, that is a philosophical commitment but it needs to be explained, especially if it’s axiomatic, otherwise it’s not very informative. It’s just a determinism principle. It’s a brute fact in this understanding.
PSR states that every fact has a sufficient reason. And this present Axiom states that every pair of inputs yields one output. They’re both not arbitrary, they both commit to intelligibility, one (PSR) is more about explanation and the axiom is about prediction (if I’m reading it right). In my reading they both have an underlying assumption of structure as opposed to chaos, but again that’s not particularly insightful on my part.
I guess my initial intuition was that at their core they both imply dependence relations.
Yes, you are close to stating a version of determinism.
But PSR only implies that effects were necessitated by sufficient reasons/causes, but any number of causes could induce those effects. So it imposes no conditions on the reasons or causes being identical.
Nothings new i guess. First axioms situation is kind of self explenatory. I honestly didnt know liebniz had used the second one in his axioms of mathematical logic however even if its used whats different is my axioms are closer to a blief system rather then a formal system.
As stated, the two systems cannot be numerically distinct. You'd need another axiom for that statement to refer to two numerically distinct systems. And if it refers to two numerically distinct systems, it's not nor clear it's an axiom as it could be false.
>"I honestly didnt know liebniz had used the second one in his axioms of mathematical logic however even if its used whats different is my axioms are closer to a blief system rather then a formal system."
.... I am upvoting your post and all of your replies to offset the downvotes because you presented an axiomatic challenge that requires us all to think deeply about axioms. Sure, people can disagree with your axioms, but downvoting your post and replies that challenge our thinking is counterproductive. ... At least that's my observation.
We can debate your axioms in the comment thread without the senseless downvoting. We are not children. Creative thinking should be supported - not discouraged.
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Thats the best approach ive seen to a topic.
My axioms are mainly about making reality make sense from a naturalistic and deterministic perspective. I acknowladge that axioms are generally used in formal systems that are built and not really in ontologic topics however since all bliefs have presupposions tied to them that people generally mistake "finding them through logic and understanding" even though they dont seem like assumptions they are. So after that i said to myself well ifti have assumptions why not make axioms out of it for a system not we have created but observing. Also i would love to debate anything about my axioms (even though axioms are not really debatable)
>"An observation can never be wrong; because the observation simply is what is there. It can be incomplete,"
... An observation can be deemed wrong when more than one observation is available; each option is equally viable, none of the options serve a preestablished reference point, and yet a conclusion is drawn regardless.
Example: "Old Woman - Young Woman" illusion.
For an observer to claim it is an image of a young woman would be "wrong" because it equally depicts an old woman. For an observer to claim it is an image of an old woman would also be "wrong" because it equally depicts a young woman. To claim both observations are "correct" is to claim that an old woman is the same as a young woman which results in a contradiction. To claim both observations are "incorrect" is also wrong because a young woman and an old woman can be observed within the same image.
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What you're describing is the underdeterminatiom of theories by data and the theory ladenness of observation. The first holds that the same data can support two competing inferences, in your example two percepts. The second holds that all observation is conditioned by prior concepts and cannot occur in a vacuum.
>"What you're describing is the underdeterminatiom of theories by data and the theory ladenness of observation."
... I can see where that would be applicable when addressing phenomena that cannot be directly observed or can only be observed via subsequent data, (like cosmic fields, superposition and the interior of black holes) but in the case of this b&w image, all available data is present, easily observable and there are no constraints to issuing a conclusion to what is being observed.
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No. It's not applicable to those. My comment was generalizing your example. The theses I stated refer to observations. Yes, you could distinguish between direct and indirect, as data encompasses both in the first thesis. However, it's possible to have a set of direct observations that differ in explabation. Cognately, that differ in inferred percept, as your example demonstrated, which is textbook thesis 2, theory ladeness of observation. Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit example is another text-book case.
>"However, it's possible to have a set of direct observations that differ in explabation. Cognately, that differ in inferred percept, as your example demonstrated, which is textbook thesis 2, theory ladeness of observation. Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit example is another text-book case."
... Fair enough. Thank you for your explanation.
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Error arises only in the intrepertation of what the observation means. Two people look at the picture and if their sensory is identical (or close to identical for practicality) their observation would be the same however what they intrepert it as may differ. The observation is not "a women" or "a painting" the observation is the effect of sensory data in photons emitted by the painting.
>"Error arises only in the intrepertation of what the observation means"
... But the meaning attached to whatever is being observed is all we have available to make our inferences and draw our conclusions. Otherwise, we can't make any "meaningful statements" about anything we observe. In fact, without meaning we couldn't make any statements at all.
>"Two people look at the picture and if their sensory is identical (or close to identical for practicality) their observation would be the same however what they intrepert it as may differ."
... But we can also determine if one interpretation is accurate whereas another is erroneous based on a posteriori / a priori. Example: (1 + 1 = 3). Two people can observe this equation and both accurately describe what they've observed. It is possible that there is no dispute over what's been directly observed by the two.
However, if one person concludes that (1 + 1 = 3) is an accurate statement and another concludes that (1 + 1 = 3) is not, then we can invoke a priori via logic and our a posteriori using other nonmathematical observations involving "1 of something" plus "1 of something" and conclude that one observation is wrong and the other correct.
In this case, the difference in conclusions is no longer considered subjective as would be with "good painting" vs "bad painting."
>"The observation is not "a women" or "a painting" the observation is the effect of sensory data in photons emitted by the painting."
... Since the human mind is necessarily involved in the formation of every axiom and every observation, we have to accept it as the most practical framework for determining if an observation is correct or incorrect. We can't argue that "Well, how do we really know that (1 + 1 ≠ 3) since the human mind is subjective and relies on sensory data?"
... If we can't rely on the human mind, then what other data processing mechanism are we left with to use in its place?
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seldomtimely | 9 hours ago
"Axiom 1 — Observations are infallible"
The distinction between appearance and reality is one of the oldest distinctions in human thought.
Your elaboration implies that all appearances are effects induced on the observer, which is fine.
But we don't want to lose the appearance vs reality distinction. So, the 'axiom' is something akin to 'all observations are effects'. Their fallibilty is one of the most discussed topics in the history of philosophy.
XanderOblivion | 8 hours ago
Why would we not want to lose that distinction?
seldomtimely | 3 hours ago
Because it conveys important information about what's observed. In some sense all distinctions can be dissolved, but that destroys cognition, which requires differentiation within the observed field. The best distinctions are distinctions that carry important information, and whose loss entails a loss of information. Cognition has to be lossy to generalize, but it must generalize from highly structured data to be able to generalize at all.
XanderOblivion | 2 hours ago
What is meant by “reality” that is opposed to/discriminated from appearance?
I assume third-person public is the standard for that, or invoking the noumena. The noumena is ontologically vacuous and without reality, an epistemic placeholder for something idealized but unrealized. And third-person public is not a view from nowhere, but every conceivable situated first-person perspective rectified
— universalized first-person appearance as proxy for totality. But there is no conceivable total observation possible. There is only appearance.
Conceptual placeholders can be useful, of course, but they are too often mistaken for something real.
Insisting on an objectively describable real is unnecessary to make reality work. A reality entirely comprised of relata is sufficient.
seldomtimely | an hour ago
The distinction between illusion and veridicality is important for an observer that's trying to survive in the world. The level of distortion can vary, with systematic deception being the limit, meaning zero veridicality. If you have a distorted perception and act on it, you might die. By a roundabout way, it's why we care about truth, which in most cases is operationalized as independent of observation and belief, though you can contest that. So, I'm not saying there's some fundamental or metaphysical distinction a la Kant, i'm saying the distinction serves a pragmativ purpose and, even abstractly, carries useful information i.e. some perceptions can be veridical and others not. By keeping the distinction you lose nothing, but you gain a lot.
XanderOblivion | 57 minutes ago
I agree with the pragmatic point: organisms need to discriminate between appearances that support successful action and appearances that don’t. But I don’t think that requires an appearance/reality distinction in the strong sense.
Distinctions among appearances is sufficient. Stable/unstable, shared/private, action-guiding/misleading, repeatable/non-repeatable, internally generated/externally constrained, etc.
“Veridicality” need only mean the success of an appearance within a wider field of appearances. Veridicality requiring correspondence to a reality outside appearance is a tall order, and asks for comparison against an object that is in effect unknown and unknowable.
The distinction can do useful work, yes, but I’d say the useful distinction is not appearance vs reality so much as it is appearance under different constraints.
seldomtimely | an hour ago
Although, I can anticipate your objection. If you're a brain in a vat, there's a good case to be for collapsing the distinction. But you'd still need the distinction in the systematic illusion for average conditions, just as you would not being a brain in a vat.
[OP] Repulsive_Area_5516 | 8 hours ago
for some reason i thought you implied there was a contridiction in axiom 1 and i wrote a whole thing explaining it in detail... i wont let it go to waste though!
It can be incomplete but it can never be faulty. The act of observation is infallible because what i define as observation is the system effected by an effect. For example: a tree is burning by fire and you are standing infront of the tree. Here in this example there are two systems. first one: you are irrelevant and not the observer the non-burnt tree is the system fire is the effect ane burt tree is the observer. second one: you are the system(or your eyes and brain) photons that are emmited by the tree and the fire are the effect and now you are the observer. Here the tree is burning/burnt and that is observed by the tree which is a true observation. The photons went through ur cornea(or the things in ur eyes that i dont remember) and excited a couple of neurons which made an effect on your brain this effected you in the way it shouldve effected you so you observed what happened which was a true observation.
[OP] Repulsive_Area_5516 | 7 hours ago
Ill just copy paste another answer because i think it explains my point deeper and im lazy. Basically like i stated in my axiom my definition of an observation is different you observed a pink elephant and that observation was true irrelevant of any elephant you have observed your neurons excitation
It can be incomplete but it can never be faulty. The act of observation is infallible because what i define as observation is the system effected by an effect. For example: a tree is burning by fire and you are standing infront of the tree. Here in this example there are two systems. first one: you are irrelevant and not the observer the non-burnt tree is the system fire is the effect ane burt tree is the observer. second one: you are the system(or your eyes and brain) photons that are emmited by the tree and the fire are the effect and now you are the observer. Here the tree is burning/burnt and that is observed by the tree which is a true observation. The photons went through ur cornea(or the things in ur eyes that i dont remember) and excited a couple of neurons which made an effect on your brain this effected you in the way it shouldve effected you so you observed what happened which was a true observation.
seldomtimely | 3 hours ago
Yep, on the definition of observation as effects induced we are in agreeement.
But for the sake of eliding falling into 'incomplete' and 'faulty' being purely semantic differences, I'd invite you to consider that systematic deception is not exactly the same as incomplete, though you can define it as that. So, if you stimulate the brain and generate simulacra that the agent can't distinguish from veridical stimulations, then we have here a case where veridicality is completely eschewed.
Second, if the observer and the observation are part of the system, and observation is defined in the third person, then that's a different definition of observation that is tantamount to interaction. This is also an acceptable definition, but it does create problems for the first definition that are too complex to get into here. If observation is just interaction, then you have a description that can accommodate say quantum decoherence.
Prajnamarga | 9 hours ago
My first and main criticism is that you never really come to terms with the fact "reality" is an abstract concept. One can never "observe reality", since "reality" is itself an interpretation of observation. And different people come up with different ideas about what reality is.
You cannot make sense of "reality" this way. Because "reality" is the sense that you make of observations. You're simply chasing your own tail, trying to reinvent the wheel that Hume and Kant set in motion.
Axiom 1 recalls Galileo's attitude to observation. He didn't believe that any observation could contradict Church doctrine, because all he was doing was looking at God's creation. And God was not so capricious as to create anything that contradicted the Bible. Similarly, the counterpart to Descartes' cogito ergo sum, was the idea that God (being perfectly good) would not deceive us by making observation different from reality, ergo reality is real.
You also seem to repeat Wittgenstein's axiom that begins the Tractatus, i.e. The world is everything that is the case.
Axiom 1 depends on a further unstated axiom, i.e. that there is some sui generis distinction to be made between observation and interpretation. This needs defending because, especially in the light of Kant, it's not obviously true. As already noted, "reality" is itself an interpretation of experience.
Axiom 2 could be seen as just a truism. But it relies on other axioms, such as Aristotle's three principles of logic. And again, the precedent for this is centuries old. It was Newton, for example, who established that the laws of motion applied in the heavens as well as on earth. Right?
"Identical systems under identical conditions produce identical outcomes"
I get that you are trying to idealise experience in order to arrive at metaphysical conclusions. However, under what conditions are two objective systems ever identical? None that I can think of. Physicists tell us that electrons are indistinguishable. But of course this assumes that other things are equal. Is an electron with energy X identical to an electron with energy Y? Clearly, not. In fact they have measurably different properties. And if it doesn't appear to work on this scale, it definitely doesn't work on larger scales.
"Identical" is also problematic for you because its another abstract concept that is never observed in practice.
Idealising the situation to the extent that simple propositions fall out of it, you have ceased to comment on the world we experience. And this problem plagues all metaphysics.
You also err when you say:
>"At quantum scales this axiom may reduce to: identical systems under identical conditions produce identical probability distributions."
This is to take seriously one interpretation of the obviously incomplete mathematical theory of quantum mechanics, which has no viable metaphysics associated with it (despite a plethora of metaphysical interpretations being proposed). Bohr and Heisenberg, influenced by logical positivism, denied that any metaphysics of the nanoscale was even possible. But this is an ideological position not a philosophical position. Copenhagen is a minority view these days, despite still being orthodox in undergraduate quantum courses.
I don't say you are wrong per se, although your "just two axioms" are only afloat because they rest on a whole raft of unspoken assumptions.
Life is all just that much more complex than any of us would wish. Simple is not always better, especially when situations are objectively complex.
In my view the whole metaphysical discourse around "reality" is hopelessly mired in subjectivity. I call "reality" the funniest concept in philosophy because, despite being an a priori abstract concept that we impose on experience (following Kant), almost everyone unconsciously hypostatises and reifies it.
While phenomenology briefly provided some hope of escaping this morass, it didn't deliver, because each phenomenologist arrived at their own conclusions, and they couldn't all be right. All that's left to us now is pragmaticism. We run with what works, with "good enough" to be getting on with, and we abandon the quest for a God's eye view of the universe as impractical and having no obvious benefits over and above what works.
We cannot define "reality" from experience; because "reality" is already an idea about experience.
ipreuss | 8 hours ago
No, reality is not an interpretation of observation. Your understanding of reality is, but that’s not reality itself.
[OP] Repulsive_Area_5516 | 8 hours ago
yes there are no identical systems yes reality is subjective and undefinable in any objective way. However what i am doing is not about metaphysics nor i am trying to prove something. For me there is no objective anything and you cant know anything about anything i am basically an agnostic nihilist and i acknowladge that in ontology nothing can be proven or disproven. That is why we make assumptions because its the best thing we can do. Intrinsically every blief system has assumptions.
[OP] Repulsive_Area_5516 | 7 hours ago
also wow. just wow i honestly cant believe you wrote all of this and like there was no problem in it with getting the point across too what is your occupation? Because from what i see youre either a proffesor or unemployed /j
UnID_Aerial_Threat | 10 hours ago
I don't like the wording of axiom 1. I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to get at.
Observations are not infallible. That's kind of the purpose of science to separate the relative from the absolute and isolate variables to predict an outcome. There's also situations where it's difficult to make observations on something which leads to empirical interpretations from science. There's also the uncertainty principle.
When axiom 1 is challenged it will just mean that physics is the operandi of the universe, then I think it simply breaks down into axiom 2 which is fine.
I think it'd be better to compliment axiom 2 with conservation of information
[OP] Repulsive_Area_5516 | 8 hours ago
It can be incomplete but it can never be faulty. The act of observation is infallible because what i define as observation is the system effected by an effect. For example: a tree is burning by fire and you are standing infront of the tree. Here in this example there are two systems. first one: you are irrelevant and not the observer the non-burnt tree is the system fire is the effect ane burt tree is the observer. second one: you are the system(or your eyes and brain) photons that are emmited by the tree and the fire are the effect and now you are the observer. Here the tree is burning/burnt and that is observed by the tree which is a true observation. The photons went through ur cornea(or the things in ur eyes that i dont remember) and excited a couple of neurons which made an effect on your brain this effected you in the way it shouldve effected you so you observed what happened which was a true observation.
UnID_Aerial_Threat | 7 hours ago
Maybe I don't understand what you mean between incomplete and faulty. The way I read your examples is that physics happens, which doesn't really mean much more than your axiom 2. I think what you're trying to say is that causality is infallible which I think I agree with.
The act of observation has to mean something. And ultimately when humans observe something, we do it through our own human condition/senses. We do not directly observe external reality among other things which makes observation infallible.
In your second system example where I am the observer, the photons go into my eye and my brain perceives the fire as red where in reality the color red does not exist. I can also here pops and crackles from the fire burning the tree which causes pressure waves in the air which our ears interpret as sound but we know sound doesn't actually exist in reality. As we get closer to the tree we realize it's actually a decorative plastic tree so our eyes fooled us there as well.
Also you say that in the first system the tree observes me standing in front of it. But we know that trees can't really observe.
[OP] Repulsive_Area_5516 | 3 hours ago
first of all tree does not observe you i think you didnt really understand what i mean by observation you can read my definition of an observer in axiom one. To explain "incomplete" i can examplify it easily basically you cannot see some wavelenghts of light so your observation of something is incomplete. It isnt faulty since what you observed was the truth however the point is what you didnt observe. also yes "physics happens" but science is not an objective truth and it requires assumptions and axioms
nysalor | 9 hours ago
Any observation is partial.
Prajnamarga | 9 hours ago
Including this one?
nysalor | 9 hours ago
Exactly!
0-by-1_Publishing | 9 hours ago
"Any observation is partial."
... Your reply consists of four words. How does that represent a partial observation? Is there an unobservable "5th word" whose presence can only be inferred through subsequent data?
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ipreuss | 8 hours ago
You can’t observe the motivation behind those words. You can’t observe whether there was a typo in those words. And a million other things.
0-by-1_Publishing | 7 hours ago
>"You can’t observe the motivation behind those words."
.... Motivation is a subsequent "inference" based on what has already been directly observed.
>"You can’t observe whether there was a typo in those words."
A posteriori absolutely allows me to observe that there are no typos are in those words. A distinction can me made if there were.
>"And a million other things."
... And they would all be subsequent inferences based on the initial observation ... which was complete. There are no missing data left to be observed. All that is left are subsequent "inferences" and "conclusions" based on the initial observation.
Example: I directly observed "five downvotes" to my reply to nysalor's reply. I "infer" from that observation that the ones who issued the downvotes are behaving like children, but that is not something that's directly observable and serves as a subjective conclusion made by me.
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ipreuss | 6 hours ago
You need to make inferences and conclusions about what actually happened because you couldn’t directly observe it - otherwise no inferences would be necessary.
0-by-1_Publishing | 6 hours ago
>"You need to make inferences and conclusions about what actually happened because you couldn’t directly observe it - otherwise no inferences would be necessary."
... That's not true. You are conflating "inference" with "observation" when they are two distinct processes. I can observe (1 + 1 = 2) and state with repeatable accuracy everything observable in that equation without drawing any conclusions whatsoever. As a subsequent act, I can conclude / infer that the equation is either true or false.
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Mono_Clear | 8 hours ago
That first axiom is weird mostly because of the way you seem to be emphasizing it. It's like you know that it will lead to push back.
It's phrased in a way that seems deliberately designed to invite misconceptualization.
>Axiom 1 Observations are infallible
It's like it's daring me to challenge it.
>An observation can never be wrong; because the observation simply is what is there.
Deliberately vague and ambiguous, again screaming to be challenged.
telephantomoss | 8 hours ago
Axiom 1 is good but it needs careful interpretation. An observation is always factually true in the server that the observation occurs. I see s pink elephant floating in the sky is a true observation in that sense. I really an experiencing that visual hallucination. It's s true fact of experience. But it doesn't imply that my model of reality actually reflects reality as it is. There may not really be an external pink elephant floating in the sky. But there is certainly something in really resulting in that observation.
Axiom 2 is weaker. It could be that identical circumstances can lead to distinct next steps in reality. I think identical circumstances were probably impossible, so it doesn't really matter either way though.
Meet-me-behind-bins | 12 hours ago
“Error arises only in the interpretation of what the observation means” - This has been the case for the best part of 2500 years if not longer. Nothing new.
“For any system A and effect B, the resulting system C is invariant it will always be the same across all instances of A under B. This holds at scales where complete state description is possible”: This is just Liebniz’s PSR couched in systems language, again nothing new.
What work are these ‘axioms’ doing? What’s new or novel?
seldomtimely | 10 hours ago
I don't see how axiom 2 is PSR.
Meet-me-behind-bins | 9 hours ago
You’re right, it’s an uncharitable reading on my part. But I do think it’s arguably PSR adjacent, if you forgive me for tying to wriggle out of my first analysis. Here’s my interpretation:
If we paraphrase it into a simplified form it essentially says: For any given initial state and effect, exactly one resulting state follows. Now, that is a philosophical commitment but it needs to be explained, especially if it’s axiomatic, otherwise it’s not very informative. It’s just a determinism principle. It’s a brute fact in this understanding.
PSR states that every fact has a sufficient reason. And this present Axiom states that every pair of inputs yields one output. They’re both not arbitrary, they both commit to intelligibility, one (PSR) is more about explanation and the axiom is about prediction (if I’m reading it right). In my reading they both have an underlying assumption of structure as opposed to chaos, but again that’s not particularly insightful on my part.
I guess my initial intuition was that at their core they both imply dependence relations.
seldomtimely | 9 hours ago
Yes, you are close to stating a version of determinism.
But PSR only implies that effects were necessitated by sufficient reasons/causes, but any number of causes could induce those effects. So it imposes no conditions on the reasons or causes being identical.
[OP] Repulsive_Area_5516 | 11 hours ago
Nothings new i guess. First axioms situation is kind of self explenatory. I honestly didnt know liebniz had used the second one in his axioms of mathematical logic however even if its used whats different is my axioms are closer to a blief system rather then a formal system.
seldomtimely | 9 hours ago
Your axiom 2 is ambiguous or underspecified.
As stated, the two systems cannot be numerically distinct. You'd need another axiom for that statement to refer to two numerically distinct systems. And if it refers to two numerically distinct systems, it's not nor clear it's an axiom as it could be false.
[OP] Repulsive_Area_5516 | 8 hours ago
well... yeah youre right thank you for that
0-by-1_Publishing | 9 hours ago
>"I honestly didnt know liebniz had used the second one in his axioms of mathematical logic however even if its used whats different is my axioms are closer to a blief system rather then a formal system."
.... I am upvoting your post and all of your replies to offset the downvotes because you presented an axiomatic challenge that requires us all to think deeply about axioms. Sure, people can disagree with your axioms, but downvoting your post and replies that challenge our thinking is counterproductive. ... At least that's my observation.
We can debate your axioms in the comment thread without the senseless downvoting. We are not children. Creative thinking should be supported - not discouraged.
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[OP] Repulsive_Area_5516 | 8 hours ago
Thats the best approach ive seen to a topic. My axioms are mainly about making reality make sense from a naturalistic and deterministic perspective. I acknowladge that axioms are generally used in formal systems that are built and not really in ontologic topics however since all bliefs have presupposions tied to them that people generally mistake "finding them through logic and understanding" even though they dont seem like assumptions they are. So after that i said to myself well ifti have assumptions why not make axioms out of it for a system not we have created but observing. Also i would love to debate anything about my axioms (even though axioms are not really debatable)
0-by-1_Publishing | 10 hours ago
>"An observation can never be wrong; because the observation simply is what is there. It can be incomplete,"
... An observation can be deemed wrong when more than one observation is available; each option is equally viable, none of the options serve a preestablished reference point, and yet a conclusion is drawn regardless.
Example: "Old Woman - Young Woman" illusion.
For an observer to claim it is an image of a young woman would be "wrong" because it equally depicts an old woman. For an observer to claim it is an image of an old woman would also be "wrong" because it equally depicts a young woman. To claim both observations are "correct" is to claim that an old woman is the same as a young woman which results in a contradiction. To claim both observations are "incorrect" is also wrong because a young woman and an old woman can be observed within the same image.
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https://preview.redd.it/9ba9jjkgiu5h1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=92633e29b186d6cdd9088ed111eb9d1ed88689ba
seldomtimely | 10 hours ago
What you're describing is the underdeterminatiom of theories by data and the theory ladenness of observation. The first holds that the same data can support two competing inferences, in your example two percepts. The second holds that all observation is conditioned by prior concepts and cannot occur in a vacuum.
0-by-1_Publishing | 9 hours ago
>"What you're describing is the underdeterminatiom of theories by data and the theory ladenness of observation."
... I can see where that would be applicable when addressing phenomena that cannot be directly observed or can only be observed via subsequent data, (like cosmic fields, superposition and the interior of black holes) but in the case of this b&w image, all available data is present, easily observable and there are no constraints to issuing a conclusion to what is being observed.
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seldomtimely | 9 hours ago
No. It's not applicable to those. My comment was generalizing your example. The theses I stated refer to observations. Yes, you could distinguish between direct and indirect, as data encompasses both in the first thesis. However, it's possible to have a set of direct observations that differ in explabation. Cognately, that differ in inferred percept, as your example demonstrated, which is textbook thesis 2, theory ladeness of observation. Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit example is another text-book case.
0-by-1_Publishing | 9 hours ago
>"However, it's possible to have a set of direct observations that differ in explabation. Cognately, that differ in inferred percept, as your example demonstrated, which is textbook thesis 2, theory ladeness of observation. Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit example is another text-book case."
... Fair enough. Thank you for your explanation.
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[OP] Repulsive_Area_5516 | 7 hours ago
Error arises only in the intrepertation of what the observation means. Two people look at the picture and if their sensory is identical (or close to identical for practicality) their observation would be the same however what they intrepert it as may differ. The observation is not "a women" or "a painting" the observation is the effect of sensory data in photons emitted by the painting.
0-by-1_Publishing | 7 hours ago
>"Error arises only in the intrepertation of what the observation means"
... But the meaning attached to whatever is being observed is all we have available to make our inferences and draw our conclusions. Otherwise, we can't make any "meaningful statements" about anything we observe. In fact, without meaning we couldn't make any statements at all.
>"Two people look at the picture and if their sensory is identical (or close to identical for practicality) their observation would be the same however what they intrepert it as may differ."
... But we can also determine if one interpretation is accurate whereas another is erroneous based on a posteriori / a priori. Example: (1 + 1 = 3). Two people can observe this equation and both accurately describe what they've observed. It is possible that there is no dispute over what's been directly observed by the two.
However, if one person concludes that (1 + 1 = 3) is an accurate statement and another concludes that (1 + 1 = 3) is not, then we can invoke a priori via logic and our a posteriori using other nonmathematical observations involving "1 of something" plus "1 of something" and conclude that one observation is wrong and the other correct.
In this case, the difference in conclusions is no longer considered subjective as would be with "good painting" vs "bad painting."
>"The observation is not "a women" or "a painting" the observation is the effect of sensory data in photons emitted by the painting."
... Since the human mind is necessarily involved in the formation of every axiom and every observation, we have to accept it as the most practical framework for determining if an observation is correct or incorrect. We can't argue that "Well, how do we really know that (1 + 1 ≠ 3) since the human mind is subjective and relies on sensory data?"
... If we can't rely on the human mind, then what other data processing mechanism are we left with to use in its place?
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