What Is More to Blame (Looking Back)

[BjornP]

The effects can be predictable and objective, but your perception of them is entirely subjective.

There is no “sound” of the rifle firing, only air vibrations interpreted by the brain as such. There is an “impact” of the bullet on the pre-existing systems of your body, but it’s merely a reordering of molecules. There’s no objective “meaning” to the event, though you can predict what will happen.

So because sound is "only" air vibrations, there isn't really a sound? Not objectively so? And because the impact is "merely" a re-ordering of molecules, there is no objective trauma to the body to body due to force of impact?

Or however it's supposed to be understood. After all, you admit that the effects can be objective and predictable. Meaning "everything" is not actually subjective, after all.

[Speaker to Animals]

It's hilarious that GCF is unwittingly defending dualism.

Your brain is a material object just like the atoms and molecules in the air, and just like the physical objects generating the sound. You are not some spiritual being locked inside a physical cage who can only experience an illusion created by fabricated sense data. That's a modern form of gnosticism. It's silliness to the highest degree.

You are seeing the light waves reflecting off objects, not some mind theater representation of the light. Your brain processes that data and tacks on quite a lot of semantic and ontological information that you trained it to do since birth. That's not the same thing as only seeing some cartoon representation of the objective world.

[SuburbanFarmer]

It's hilarious that GCF is unwittingly defending dualism.

Your brain is a material object just like the atoms and molecules in the air, and just like the physical objects generating the sound. You are not some spiritual being locked inside a physical cage who can only experience an illusion created by fabricated sense data. That's a modern form of gnosticism. It's silliness to the highest degree.

You realize that's the basis of your entire religion, right?

[SuburbanFarmer]

The effects can be predictable and objective, but your perception of them is entirely subjective.

There is no “sound” of the rifle firing, only air vibrations interpreted by the brain as such. There is an “impact” of the bullet on the pre-existing systems of your body, but it’s merely a reordering of molecules. There’s no objective “meaning” to the event, though you can predict what will happen.

So because sound is "only" air vibrations, there isn't really a sound? Not objectively so? And because the impact is "merely" a re-ordering of molecules, there is no objective trauma to the body to body due to force of impact?

Or however it's supposed to be understood. After all, you admit that the effects can be objective and predictable. Meaning "everything" is not actually subjective, after all.

Not everything, no. But there is no "objective reality". There are only layers of reality, depending on what you look at.

To continue the analogy, there is no "body" - merely a collection of chemicals, which are made up of atoms, which themselves are made up of subatomic particles, which themselves may just be vibrations on a string. It's all held together by electromagnetic energy, in complex bonds and patterns, few of which we even understand.

There is no absolute truth, only mostly predictable results of interactions.

To broaden it a bit, look at a sunset. If you're in a happy mood, it's a beautiful, poetic thing that inspires deep thoughts. If you're alone in the wilderness, it's a terrifying countdown to darkness and oblivion. If you're orbiting the planet, it's just a line of darkness spreading across the globe.
The only "truth" about it, is that the planet is rotating away from its electromagnetic power source. Less radiation is hitting that area for a while. Nothing more.

[de officiis]

It's hilarious that GCF is unwittingly defending dualism.

Your brain is a material object just like the atoms and molecules in the air, and just like the physical objects generating the sound. You are not some spiritual being locked inside a physical cage who can only experience an illusion created by fabricated sense data. That's a modern form of gnosticism. It's silliness to the highest degree.

You realize that's the basis of your entire religion, right?

[Speaker to Animals]

It's hilarious that GCF is unwittingly defending dualism.

Your brain is a material object just like the atoms and molecules in the air, and just like the physical objects generating the sound. You are not some spiritual being locked inside a physical cage who can only experience an illusion created by fabricated sense data. That's a modern form of gnosticism. It's silliness to the highest degree.

You realize that's the basis of your entire religion, right?

LMFAO

You don't know anything about my religion. Dualism is not Catholicism. That's gnosticism. You are defending dualism here, genius.

[BjornP]

The effects can be predictable and objective, but your perception of them is entirely subjective.

There is no “sound” of the rifle firing, only air vibrations interpreted by the brain as such. There is an “impact” of the bullet on the pre-existing systems of your body, but it’s merely a reordering of molecules. There’s no objective “meaning” to the event, though you can predict what will happen.

So because sound is "only" air vibrations, there isn't really a sound? Not objectively so? And because the impact is "merely" a re-ordering of molecules, there is no objective trauma to the body to body due to force of impact?

Or however it's supposed to be understood. After all, you admit that the effects can be objective and predictable. Meaning "everything" is not actually subjective, after all.

Not everything, no. But there is no "objective reality". There are only layers of reality, depending on what you look at.

To continue the analogy, there is no "body" - merely a collection of chemicals, which are made up of atoms, which themselves are made up of subatomic particles, which themselves may just be vibrations on a string. It's all held together by electromagnetic energy, in complex bonds and patterns, few of which we even understand.

There is no absolute truth, only mostly predictable results of interactions.

To broaden it a bit, look at a sunset. If you're in a happy mood, it's a beautiful, poetic thing that inspires deep thoughts. If you're alone in the wilderness, it's a terrifying countdown to darkness and oblivion. If you're orbiting the planet, it's just a line of darkness spreading across the globe.
The only "truth" about it, is that the planet is rotating away from its electromagnetic power source. Less radiation is hitting that area for a while. Nothing more.

Dude, you reject that there is a body, then go on describing the objective composition of the body. Your argument is self-contradictory. You're saying that because we are - objectively - a collection of chemicals made up of atoms, etc., we don't "really" have a body. You just explained that we do! That "collection of chemicals, made up of atoms, etc. etc." is what we have given the shorter name of "body". Simply naming something X, does not take away its objective nature. Calling the natural processes that make up a hurricane a "hurricane", does not take the fact of its nature away.

You keep saying things like we "merely" are a collection of atoms, our bodies and minds "just" a collection of chemicals, etc. Why use words like that? As if that was something that invalidates objectivity. Or as if being biological itself, was some sort of inferior state of being and only something/someone else was able to judge the world objectively.

The last analogy is what most people would agree is a proper distinction between objective and subjective, however. The stars are balls of gas and energy, but that doesn't make them any less pretty to look, first one's objectivity and second observation subjectivity. That analogy works, GCF. The "there is not really a body" analogy, does not.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Being charitable, GCFs argument isn't contradictory, it is just a sort of clumsy description of phenomenalism, but not necessarily dualism.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Works for me. I’m not rejecting that there IS a body, just the “absolute truth” that there is a body.

[Speaker to Animals]

Being charitable, GCFs argument isn't contradictory, it is just a sort of clumsy description of phenomenalism, but not necessarily dualism.

I'd argue most forms of naive phenomenalism that you will encounter today are really forms of dualism. When you unpack it and start to try to untangle what these people try to say, it always comes down to something like a man in a box who can only experience sense data, sort of like Plato's cave in which he is sitting in his cave watching sense data that is derived somehow from the external world. Aside from -- again -- representing a category mistake of confusing sensing with sense data, that really does amount to a form of dualism in which the mind is like a little man locked in a cage (the body) and is disconnected from the objective world, only able to perceive or interact with it through sense data, which they usually define as a totally constructed reality that has little if anything to do with the real world. This might not be expressed in religious language, but it's essentially the same thing as the kinds of dualism espoused by gnostics.

Even legitimate phenomenalism is a ridiculous set of propositions that turn an act into an object, and confuse the perceiving with an object of perception.

It's that same big mistake carried over from idealism.