In Defense of Subjective Reality

 

Mrs. iWe lives in a much more colorful world than I do. She sees thousands of shades of every color, filled with rich chromatic consonance and dissonance – whereas I, as a normal male with normal eyeballs, am clearly impoverished by comparison. I would go so far as to say that our relative color sensitivity gives her life meaning (such as through her museum-quality quilts) that I can only understand by feeling the joy that quilting brings her.

Pick any two people, and you will find different realities. Twins raised in the same home can have wildly divergent ideas about the nature of their home or their parents’ marriage. 2+2 might equal 4 in arithmetic, but humans are rationalizing animals, and we have no problem making all of our perceptions match what we have decided is our own reality.

I think this is not a bug – it is one of life’s features. And it is one that is divinely approved! The Torah tells us what happened in Egypt and the wilderness – and then the final book, Deuteronomy, is Moshe’s summation of those events. His summation is not merely Cliff’s Notes, and his words do not, in all cases, leave the reader with an identical impression about what happened.

The lesson is simple enough: G-d approves of different versions of reality. The Jewish people heard things one way at Sinai – and then, years later, they heard a different version from Moshe’s perspective. Both are interesting and useful and valid (think of different aspects of the same elephant).

As you may know, I consider the idea of an Objective Reality to be part of Plato’s religious faith, since it is impervious to empirical data: it cannot be proven or disproven.

The Torah endorses, by contrast, each person’s own thoughts and perceptions and sense of what is “real.” To the extent that two or more people agree, then shared perceptions are useful. But the fact that different people have different perceptions is a celebration that each person has value, and, to at least some extent, is capable of creating, in their minds, their own reality.

 

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  1. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    iWe (# 33):

    Henry Racette (View Comment):
    but I think anyone who concludes that there isn’t an underlying objective reality — unless that conclusion is reached for essentially religious/metaphysical reasons — is being silly.

    I disagree, of course.

    So you think it’s not silly to conclude that there is no underlying objective reality?

    I refer you to you:

    iWe (# 10, “Projection Is Reality”):

    There may or may not be an underlying physical Reality . . . . I think this is probably unprovable either way, . . . .

    It looks like you quoted the wrong sentence from # 28. You should have quoted the first sentence:

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    And yet Henry R. specifically says that what he is doing is believing in an underlying objective reality.

    I accept it as axiomatic, . . . .

    • #61
  2. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    iWe (View Comment):

    Michael Brehm (View Comment):
    There is too much objective reality for any one person to behold at once,

    That is the joke by itself: beholding something changes it, so any so-called objective reality has to be independent of perception!

    By definition what we see is not precisely what is there.

    And yet what we effect by perceiving still exists without our help, and still constrains us.  In many cases it constrains us far more than we could ever dream of affecting it.

    • #62
  3. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    iWe (View Comment):

    Doug Watt (View Comment):
    Every generation believes that their ideas are somehow new, and have never been tried before. They have some new knowledge, and it must be tried to save the world. As Lord Acton stated; “There is nothing more irritating than the discovery of the pedigree of ideas.”

    That is one reason why I really enjoy my analyses of the Torah. The pedigree of Torah knowledge is highly literate and extremely well documented. And yet it is possible to have entirely new understandings.

    Your new ideas might not be new. I know mine are.

    Rubbish.

    When you’re right, your ideas are mostly found in the great philosopher William James.

    When you’re right about your ideas being Torah interpretations, your ideas are as old as the Torah.

    When you’re wrong, your ideas are as old as the lousy philosophers who happened to tout them first.

    • #63
  4. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):

    Barfly (View Comment):

    iWe (View Comment):

    Michael Brehm (View Comment):
    There is too much objective reality for any one person to behold at once,

    That is the joke by itself: beholding something changes it, so any so-called objective reality has to be independent of perception!

    By definition what we see is not precisely what is there.

    That’s silly. Beholding something does not change it. Looking will certainly change your perception of it. I suppose the second sentence is vaguely truthlike, but then you had to add the “by definition” thing.

    Usually not in any big way, but it’s hard if not impossible to behold anything (at least anything physical) without affecting it. If it’s true of electrons, then it’s true of mountains that have electrons in them.

    If we’ve simply been misled about those electrons–as suggested by #s 48 and 50–then . . . never mind!

    That’s awfully careless. First, let’s get the causality right. Observing the mountain doesn’t mean shining a light on it. Observing it only means receiving light from it. That does not affect the mountain in any way at all. Where that other light came from, the light that the mountain reflected, is of no consequence.

    Also, let’s admit that we live in our own scale, not down in the Planck realm. If it’s night and I have to shine a flashlight on the mountain, then I’m changing it only at the quantum scale, not at mine. I have not changed the mountain in any way that can be measured, and I’d have to use a light the size of an atomic bomb to do so.

    The common idea that we change things by observing them isn’t worth much if all it means is that a few electrons had to change an energy state, when they do that all the time anyway whether we’re observing or not.

    • #64
  5. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    I should try to make this point more plainly: The fact that measurement of a quantum system requires an interaction that alters the thing being measured does not imply that human observation of anything alters that thing.

    Human observation, the act of taking perception into the mind, does not alter anything at all outside the human doing the observing. That is true at all scales.

    Even if we expand the notion of “observation” to mean “poke it with an electron then observe it”, then the quantum laboratory is still the only place we’ve shown “observation” to change the observed. That doesn’t seem a good neutral spot from which to elaborate. 

    Neither the double slit experiment nor any of its variations imply that observation changes anything. The fact that measurement at the quantum scale requires interacting with other quanta is just due to there being nothing smaller we can use. I can observe a mountain without altering it because light is so much smaller that it works on a scale so remote it really is a different realm.

    How many ways are there to say that reasoning from quantum experiments to human philosophy isn’t justified by logic?

    • #65
  6. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Barfly (View Comment):
    I have not changed the mountain in any way that can be measured, and I’d have to use a light the size of an atomic bomb to do so.

    Need to borrow one of mine?

    • #66
  7. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Barfly (View Comment):
    I have not changed the mountain in any way that can be measured, and I’d have to use a light the size of an atomic bomb to do so.

    Need to borrow one of mine?

    Maybe. The button on my flashlight is getting iffy. Are you in the storm’s way?

    • #67
  8. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Barfly (View Comment):
    Maybe. The button on my flashlight is getting iffy. Are you in the storm’s way?

    Not here in Michigan.

    • #68
  9. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Barfly (View Comment):
    Maybe. The button on my flashlight is getting iffy. Are you in the storm’s way?

    Not here in Michigan.

    Well, I guess if you’re not using it, sure, I’ll take an atomic bomb. Is there an A-bomb show loophole or do we need to go thru an FFL?

    • #69
  10. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Barfly (View Comment):
    Is there an A-bomb show loophole or do we need to go thru an FFL?

    I’ve got this buddy Hans Blix. I usually make delivery through him.

    • #70
  11. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Barfly (View Comment):
    Is there an A-bomb show loophole or do we need to go thru an FFL?

    I’ve got this buddy Hans Blix. I usually make delivery through him.

    I think you guys are fine, as long as this is not an “assault nuke.” (That would be one with any two of the following features: a pistol grip, a detachable magazine, a ported barrel to reduce recoil, a laser scope, or a lithium hydride yield multiplier.)

    • #71
  12. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Barfly (View Comment):

    I should try to make this point more plainly: The fact that measurement of a quantum system requires an interaction that alters the thing being measured does not imply that human observation of anything alters that thing.

    Human observation, the act of taking perception into the mind, does not alter anything at all outside the human doing the observing. That is true at all scales.

    Even if we expand the notion of “observation” to mean “poke it with an electron then observe it”, then the quantum laboratory is still the only place we’ve shown “observation” to change the observed. That doesn’t seem a good neutral spot from which to elaborate.

    This seems overstated, unless you restrict the word “observation” to the sense of mere looking.

    I, James, Dewey, and iWe are interested in observation in a much broader sense.  Observation involves tools, and extends into areas we cannot see without having an effect.

    I dream of a day when Star Trekkish technology makes our insides fully scannable with computers. Until then, our procedure for observation of the colon is the colonoscopy.  Many of us can testify that some things are at least temporarily altered.

    Neither the double slit experiment nor any of its variations imply that observation changes anything. The fact that measurement at the quantum scale requires interacting with other quanta is just due to there being nothing smaller we can use.

    Yet you apparently concede in # 64 that there is a small-scale change.

    • #72
  13. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Barfly (View Comment):

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):

    Barfly (View Comment):

    iWe (View Comment):

    Michael Brehm (View Comment):
    There is too much objective reality for any one person to behold at once,

    That is the joke by itself: beholding something changes it, so any so-called objective reality has to be independent of perception!

    By definition what we see is not precisely what is there.

    That’s silly. Beholding something does not change it. Looking will certainly change your perception of it. I suppose the second sentence is vaguely truthlike, but then you had to add the “by definition” thing.

    Usually not in any big way, but it’s hard if not impossible to behold anything (at least anything physical) without affecting it. If it’s true of electrons, then it’s true of mountains that have electrons in them.

    If we’ve simply been misled about those electrons–as suggested by #s 48 and 50–then . . . never mind!

    That’s awfully careless. First, let’s get the causality right. Observing the mountain doesn’t mean shining a light on it. Observing it only means receiving light from it. That does not affect the mountain in any way at all. Where that other light came from, the light that the mountain reflected, is of no consequence.

    Yes, fair enough: For certain rudimentary forms of visual observation, we need not have any affect on the mountain.  (And my # 58 appears to be in error!  Good job: You got me!)

    Touching, walking, seismic testing, and taking soil samples would have some small effect.

    • #73
  14. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Barfly (View Comment):

    How many ways are there to say that reasoning from quantum experiments to human philosophy isn’t justified by logic?

    Barfly (View Comment):

    Also, let’s admit that we live in our own scale, not down in the Planck realm. If it’s night and I have to shine a flashlight on the mountain, then I’m changing it only at the quantum scale, not at mine. I have not changed the mountain in any way that can be measured, and I’d have to use a light the size of an atomic bomb to do so.

    The common idea that we change things by observing them isn’t worth much if all it means is that a few electrons had to change an energy state, when they do that all the time anyway whether we’re observing or not.

    James, Dewey, and iWe are still correct that there still is an effect, yes?

    The question is whether we should make anything much of this.

    James’ further point that we are still constrained by reality is very good: The mountain seems completely uninterested in treating us differently in any interesting way just because we shine a flashlight on it.

    In other words, you are quite right: The objective reality remains!

    Continued:

    • #74
  15. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    A bit more from James and Dewey (and I believe iWe) is that many realities that matter are not like inert mountains.  They are human and social realities like relationships, businesses, economies, governments, political parties, parties with beer, political parties with beer, schools, families, friendships, and Disneyworld.  Or they are things effected by our behavior like houses, backyards, frontyards, Dubai, Disneyworld, and shipping containers.  These realities are very much under the influence of our behavior, which is in turn under the influence of our ideas.  And they can often by affected by our efforts to understand them.

    Whether this extends to all of reality by the very nature of observation, whether physics a good illustration for it, whether physics is actually good evidence for it (as Dewey and iWe think)–all separate questions.  (Questions on which I would perhaps be well advised to say very little!)

    But I think there are important insights here, and I think they do matter in philosophy and even religion.

    The very idea that human beings are made in the image of G-d and given responsibility to cultivate creation tells me that some of these insights were in the Torah long before William James got his hands on them.

    I’m still with you, HR, and others in thinking that objective reality remains, that it should not be denied, that it should be affirmed, etc.

    • #75
  16. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    James, Dewey, and iWe are still correct that there still is an effect, yes?

    I think probably not. Your remarks indicate you think of reality as infinitely divisible. If that were true, then the merest hint of some effect would be enough to claim total victory, that yes! we do always influence by any observation. (Using “observation” in your extended sense.)

    But reality is not infinitely divisible – not at our scale, since it emerges from quanta, and not at the quantum scale either. It’s statistical, is the best word I can find at hand. That means we can employ a tremendous range of tool use at small scale before we begin to affect reality at the emergent scale. I think in the broadest category of normal human poking-and-observing (like using a flashlight) that there is really, truly, no effect at all. 

    That is not to say that some atoms aren’t moved. It is to say that you can’t distinguish the resulting states from random ones. That means, in the emergent reality, no effect. And at the quantum reality, it’s just another experiment. 

    • #76
  17. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    The objective reality remains!

    Yes, I think so. I do hope there’s something beyond the uncertainty veil; the alternative seems to be to accept multiple objective realities.

    • #77
  18. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):

    Barfly (View Comment):

    I should try to make this point more plainly: The fact that measurement of a quantum system requires an interaction that alters the thing being measured does not imply that human observation of anything alters that thing.

    Human observation, the act of taking perception into the mind, does not alter anything at all outside the human doing the observing. That is true at all scales.

    Even if we expand the notion of “observation” to mean “poke it with an electron then observe it”, then the quantum laboratory is still the only place we’ve shown “observation” to change the observed. That doesn’t seem a good neutral spot from which to elaborate.

    This seems overstated, unless you restrict the word “observation” to the sense of mere looking.

    I, James, Dewey, and iWe are interested in observation in a much broader sense. Observation involves tools, and extends into areas we cannot see without having an effect.

    I dream of a day when Star Trekkish technology makes our insides fully scannable with computers. Until then, our procedure for observation of the colon is the colonoscopy. Many of us can testify that some things are at least temporarily altered.

    Neither the double slit experiment nor any of its variations imply that observation changes anything. The fact that measurement at the quantum scale requires interacting with other quanta is just due to there being nothing smaller we can use.

    Yet you apparently concede in # 64 that there is a small-scale change.

    Since this whole discussion tends toward the esoteric, entertaining as it does the possibility that the very idea of “objective” reality might be suspect, I think it’s a little miserly to impose the burden of significance on the impact of observation. At some preposterous extreme, it remains true that anything that shifts the state of the observer necessarily impacts the observed — in fact, impacts the entire universe, since everything is inextricably bound to everything else by at least one, and perhaps as many as four, fundamental forces.

    For myself, a happy proponent of the simplistic idea of a mechanistic universe progressing in lockstep from initial conditions to final entropic rest, I think the philosophic speculation is largely word play. Subjectivity is important to consider when thinking about how we understand and interpret ambiguous input, but reality — not objective reality, but just reality — holds all the cards: it is what it is, and doesn’t much care whether or not we get it.

    Which reminds me of my favorite Stephen Crane poem, which I’ll repeat now more because I like it than because it is necessarily relevant:

    A man said to the universe:
    “Sir, I exist!”
    “However,” replied the universe,
    “The fact has not created in me
    A sense of obligation.”
    • #78
  19. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Barfly (View Comment):

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    James, Dewey, and iWe are still correct that there still is an effect, yes?

    I think probably not. Your remarks indicate you think of reality as infinitely divisible. If that were true, then the merest hint of some effect would be enough to claim total victory, that yes! we do always influence by any observation. (Using “observation” in your extended sense.)

    Reality? Heavens, no!

    Matter?  Maybe.  I don’t actually know what I think about that.

    It looks like you’re misreading me.  All I was doing here was reading you in # 64, apparently conceding that there is a quantum effect from human observation of electrons.

    . . .

    That is not to say that some atoms aren’t moved. It is to say that you can’t distinguish the resulting states from random ones. That means, in the emergent reality, no effect. And at the quantum reality, it’s just another experiment.

    Yes, so . . . back to the old objective-reality-remains theme we agree on, if I’m not mistaken.  Jolly good.

    • #79
  20. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    there is a quantum effect from human observation

    I still object to the word “observation.” It lets us slide too easily between meanings. Let’s say a “measurement” involves probing the subject then observing, but “observation” is the passive receipt of information. That distinguishes the case where one observes but doesn’t provide the illumination himself.

    But I guess it’s not material to whether the Torah encourages “personal realities.”

    • #80
  21. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Barfly (View Comment):

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    there is a quantum effect from human observation

    I still object to the word “observation.” It lets us slide too easily between meanings. Let’s say a “measurement” involves probing the subject then observing, but “observation” is the passive receipt of information. That distinguishes the case where one observes but doesn’t provide the illumination himself.

    Ok. That seems fine.

    • #81
  22. Muleskinner, Weasel Wrangler Member
    Muleskinner, Weasel Wrangler
    @Muleskinner

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    Matter? Maybe. I don’t actually know what I think about that.

    But is reality independent of how you think about it?

    • #82
  23. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Muleskinner, Weasel Wrangler (View Comment):

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    Matter? Maybe. I don’t actually know what I think about that.

    But is reality independent of how you think about it?

    Only the parts my thoughts and actions cannot effect, which I figure is most of it.

    Note that I was in that comment talking about infinite divisibility, not about mind-independence.

    • #83
  24. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Maybe I can offer this in a different perspective:

    The Torah is not a book of science or zoology or economics or even history. So it has little or nothing to offer us on those subjects.

    It is a text on how to have and grow a relationship with the divine (whether found in the human soul or in G-d).

    For the purposes of that goal, any so-called Objective Reality is entirely irrelevant. In part this is because G-d is not ensouled in Nature (nature “merely” is His creation), and so studying the physical world is not studying or understanding G-d.

    The reason I care so much about this is that in general, mankind’s trendline in recent decades has been very different: glorifying science (and degrading engineering) because the former is somehow more pure, that nature has itself become an object of worship (see all things green/sustainable/organic). 

    And yes, I believe that Plato’s Cave is all about an Objective Reality, and that it is a religious belief that can neither be proven or disproven by data.  These two things dovetail neatly: Objective Reality describes something of religious significance to those who see G-d in nature.

    This is really not a very odd idea in human history. Many or even most physicists in history have said that G-d is found in nature, so to study nature is to study G-d. Kepler was famous for it.

    • #84
  25. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    When you’re right about your ideas being Torah interpretations, your ideas are as old as the Torah.

    I am not sure how to respond to this. If nobody (whose ideas are available today) has ever read the text the way that I do, then the ideas are new.

    I do not understand why you are so opposed to the notion that a person can have a new idea. Is your position logical?

    • #85
  26. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Muleskinner, Weasel Wrangler (View Comment):

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    Matter? Maybe. I don’t actually know what I think about that.

    But is reality independent of how you think about it?

    Here we go again. 

    • #86
  27. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):

    Barfly (View Comment):

    That’s awfully careless. First, let’s get the causality right. Observing the mountain doesn’t mean shining a light on it. Observing it only means receiving light from it. That does not affect the mountain in any way at all. Where that other light came from, the light that the mountain reflected, is of no consequence.

    Yes, fair enough: For certain rudimentary forms of visual observation, we need not have any affect on the mountain. (And my # 58 appears to be in error! Good job: You got me!)

    . . .

    Wow, iWe and I have been here before!  (I think I got it right last time, Barfly.)

    Saint Augustine (# 22, “Appraising Belief”):

    iWe:

    Saint Augustine: Third, your defense of this account of reality depends on there being no empirical knowledge of an absolute truth. I think there is such knowledge.

    The observation of a thing changes it.

    In many cases, yes. I’ve never yet affected the sun by observing it, however. . . .

    • #87
  28. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    iWe (View Comment):

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    When you’re right about your ideas being Torah interpretations, your ideas are as old as the Torah.

    I do not understand why you are so opposed to the notion that a person can have a new idea. Is your position logical?

    That is not my position.  That is an absurd misreading of what I said.

    I said that your ideas, as it happens, are not new.

    I am not sure how to respond to this. If nobody (whose ideas are available today) has ever read the text the way that I do, then the ideas are new.

    If they are correct Torah interpretations, then your ideas are in the Torah, and have been ever since G-d gave the Torah to man.

    • #88
  29. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    iWe (View Comment):

    Maybe I can offer this in a different perspective:

    The Torah is not a book of science or zoology or economics or even history. So it has little or nothing to offer us on those subjects.

    Neither is it a textbook on metaphysics, but you’ve still been known to tout exotic theories in metaphysics and dress them up as Torah interpretations.  (See, e.g., “Appraising Belief.”)

    True, the Torah is not a textbook of any modern sort.

    But it is the very Word of G-d, and if it should happen to tell us something in the area of zoology, history, or metaphysics, what it tells us is true.

    It is a text on how to have and grow a relationship with the divine (whether found in the human soul or in G-d).

    For the purposes of that goal, any so-called Objective Reality is entirely irrelevant.

    I don’t understand why you’re so opposed to the idea that the Torah tells us something about the objective existence of G-d.

    This, of course, is a normal way of reading the Bible–as writings largely about informing us that G-d exists and has some instructions for us, whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, whether we listen or not, whether we observe it or not.

    In part this is because G-d is not ensouled in Nature (nature “merely” is His creation), and so studying the physical world is not studying or understanding G-d.

    Very good!  (However, “The heavens declare the glory of G-d” (Psalm 19), so there is something about G-d to be learned from or at least illustrated in nature–just never mistake it for G-d, or think its lessons equal to his Holy Word.)

    The reason I care so much about this is that in general, mankind’s trendline in recent decades has been very different: glorifying science (and degrading engineering) because the former is somehow more pure, that nature has itself become an object of worship (see all things green/sustainable/organic).

    Jolly good, says I!  Right on, right on!  Preach, brother!

    • #89
  30. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    iWe (View Comment):

    And yes, I believe that Plato’s Cave is all about an Objective Reality, . . . .

    Well, yes, it is.

    . . . and that it is a religious belief that can neither be proven or disproven by data.

    And no, it’s not.

    In Plato’s philosophy the Forms are easily proven when we encounter them.

    It’s proof, and it’s data from experience in some senses of the term.  (It’s just not physical data because it’s not physical experience.)

    These two things dovetail neatly: Objective Reality describes something of religious significance to those who see G-d in nature.

    Are you taking this as evidence that those of us who think there’s an objective reality are getting that idea from Plato?  That’s a fallacy of causal reasoning if ever there was one; the premise that one idea dovetails with another provides precious little support for the theory that it caused it.

    • #90
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