Objective truth - from a Buddhist perspective #01

I'm confused now..
How can you disagree with the second sentence if you agree with the first ??

de⋅pend⋅ent
–adjective
2. conditioned or determined by something else; contingent: Our trip is dependent on the weather.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dependent

 

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Agree with what?

You must agree that you still don't know what I'm actually saying?

The properties and the qualities of objects depend absolutely on perception. you agree with this. Obviously I'm misunderstanding you.

And if this dependence is absolute, there are no "independent properties or qualities" anywhere in the universe.
You cannot build a machine that can select even a single independent property and "look" at it, can you?

 

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I think we have a language problem here..

See the blue part in my last post.

 

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Yes, I would say there's a language "problem".
You refuse to believe something, that's ok, you don't have to believe a thing.

So what happens when you wake up, and it's daytime? How do you know it is? Is this knowledge dependent on anything, or is it independent of anything?
It's "daytime', whether you notice or otherwise? Or if you don't wake up until it's dark?

P.S. where is your machine that can select independent objects, how does it select them?

 

Look, you already agreed that perception is dependent on properties that have their origin somewhere outside of your mind i.e. the world around you.

If you agree with that, how can you say that those very properties have their origin in our minds ?

 

Yes, this is true. Properties are things we perceive, that objects "have".

No, I said no such thing, you did.

What is "outside your mind"? What could anything look like that you can't perceive?

 

You at least agree that the objects 'have' the properties right ?

Are the objects in your mind, or out in the real world ?

 

They're in your/our mind, of course. If they weren't there would be an empty set, right? A list with only one member, which is "nothing"?

The real world is a construct of that mind. Or there's a real physical world and our minds intersect with it, interact with it via perception. There is no way to step out of this domain, because we are part of the domain.

 

Ok, I have decided that you are a nut. Have a great fantasy then..

 

Congrats on the decision, then.
you managed to make one, I see...

 

Ha! The brick wall wins again!

Enmos... how is your head feeling, buddy?

 

So then, if it is true that independent characteristics exist (properties, qualities, qualia, whatever-you-want-to-call-them), then we should be able to select such things independently of our perception, our experience of them.

Or construct a machine, even an abstract logical one, that has only abstract inputs and outputs, which can select an independent "object" based on no known perceptual quality or character.
Just selecting such an object is a problem though (isn't it)? Why can't we just "grab something with independent properties"? Because, such things are non-existent. To "grab" something already implies it's something "grabbable".

Then, such objects are in fact, dependent on perception of: "which objects can I pick up"?
This remains the case, even if you try to build a machine, that can manipulate the largest, or smallest objects it can find.

 

P.S. Obstinate points-of-view are also dependent on something. Something called "irrationality".

Nya nya!

 

I don't know.. it's gone numb..

 

Take something independent, and call an independent doctor, when the sun next rises (independently).

 

AN objective truth, for someone with no sight or hearing, say, would be that they could only feel, themselves and what 'themselves' felt. Let's say a sense of taste & smell is gone as well, from the scenario.

What could this person, someone who has no concept of 'seeing' or 'hearing', etc, know about an independent world? Their sense of 'themselves', in terms of a surface of some kind, that 'feels' things?
They would have a sense of weight and motion too of course, a normal somatosensory 'engine', but no audio-visual, or taste (or smell). What could they differentiate, minus two big 'differentiators', if you see what I mean.

 

Yes, the things they can feel would be Objective Truths about the world. Nobody is claiming that humans can know everything about Objective Reality, only that it exists. Humans are blind in more spectrum than they can see, are deaf to more frequencies of sound waves than they can hear. Nobody argues that our understanding of Objective Reality is complete, only that our Subjective senses are indeed getting information from something that is REAL outside of ourselves.

We can deduce this from the consistency of these experiences and the fact that 6 billion of us, and thousands of other species, and all of our inanimate contraptions all keep agreeing with each. They keep bumping into the same things, reacting to the same stimuli, measuring the same results... etc...

 

What does "outside of ourselves" mean? How do you even begin to conceive of something that's outside your experience?

We can deduce an external reality, that we call "the real world", which is a construct of "the group" and each individual mind in it?

So reality is in our minds, then?

 

Empathy. When I read a good novel, about a kid who's father died while he was young, I feel sadness for an experience that has never happened to me.

Having seen millions of colors, I can have my wife describe a color that I am not looking at and have never seen, and approximate it. Through words which can not capture the essence of the qualia.

When my wife turns off the lightswitch, I can't see shit anymore. I try really hard to turn on the lightswitch with my telekinetic powers, but the switch doesn't move. I try really hard to grab things in the dark, but I still can't see. I try to "will" my wife to hit the switch, but she doesn't want to. It seems that these things are beyond the power of my brain to control. They must be outside of my brain. Thinking that they are a construct that I can not control of my own making takes some mental gymnastics for which we have no cause to even attempt

No. We evolved from simpler organisms. All the way back to single-celled life. What are the chances that we evolved a brain, with no input from a reality, that is able to interact with whatever is out there with remarkable precision? It is IMPOSSIBLE. We evolved our senses according to information in our environment... an environment which IS reality. The fact that we only approximate it, and have limited senses, and the bias of imperfect memory of a singular past is our Subjective understanding of this Objective reality.

The school of Philosophy must start thinking in evolutionary terms or risk becoming irrelevant.

 

Assumption: Objective Reality exists.
Assumption: Our understanding of this objective reality can only ever be subjective.

Conclusion: We can never "know" objective reality... it is beyond comprehension.
NB: Objective Reality is an absolute position. There are no degrees of knowledge with it... you either know it or you don't. If you know 99% of what there is to know, this is still subjective, not objective.


Question: Can something be said to exist if it is beyond comprehension? If the best we can achieve, by assumption, is a subjective reality, how can we lay claim to existence of an objective reality?

You are still making implicit assumptions - such as you not being a brain-in-a-jar.
If you can not even demonstrate / prove this to be untrue, what value are your confidence statements of impossibility?