This is fun! I haven’t spent any time thinking about computational models of the environment, but this is tangentially related to some of the philosophical works I’ve read analyzing how decartes internal turn (ergo sum) lead to this understanding of the observable environment as an abstraction to be experienced, not a fundamental reality. For me what’s most interesting about this is the later development of the romantics who tried to resolve alienation through the imagination - finding universal principles common to the interior of the human being. Jung comes from that line, for example.
But also - so does gender theory! Gender theory builds on this line of thought through treating identity as something internally constructed and externally preformed - not something fixed.
It’s really interesting to trace the philosophical roots of these things out. For me, it also helps me understand why the idea of the environment as experienced and not “real” would be such a strong argument
I think it really depends on why you’re making that assumption in the first place! If jt has utility when you’re preforming some research go at it I think that’s fine.
But I think the inward turn in philosophy has both done a lot of wrong for us, has contributed to antichristian thinking and also honestly a lot of narcissism (Paglia’s perception of it).
1) it’s most obvious that gender theory is a huge problem. The biological reality doesn’t matter at all because the internal reality takes precedent. It’s like a form of derangement when people allow their children to sexually mutiliate themselves because they “feel” like it (ofc I know there’s also pressures from teachers and the medical system who tell them their kids will kill themselves if they don’t - also horrifying and deranged). The form of transgenderism we’re witnessing today clearly goes against common sense : there is a man and a woman and how you were constructed in the womb determines whether or not they are a man or woman. If the environment has NO objective reality, 1 billion genders is a plausible argument. The reason why extreme transgenderism flies in the face of common sense is because we intuitively know that the external environment is real, more so than how someone feels internally, especially a child.
2) antichristian thinking has emerged over the years, but I think it started with Luther, not decartes. The claim of the Orthodox Church is that the Trinitarian god is a fundamental reality, that heaven and hell are fundamental realities, that His life on earth as Jesus Christ fundamentally occurred in reality - not as him as a man, but as fully God and fully man. The orthodox churches secondary purpose is to defend the faith against heresies. Luther, for example, took the view that you could read the Bible for yourself without the church and determine what it means for yourself through your own knowledge. Even without the internet and myriad of dangerous heresies out there, it’s very difficult to understand the Bible without the scaffolding of the church. Not being able to understand the Bible as the church understands it is a really big problem — as soon as you step away from church doctrine and towards heresy, you’re stepping away from the fundamental reality that is God. Heresies matter because they misalign us from an objective reality. Thus - reality is objective even when it’s not perceivable.
3) Paglia’s perception of narcissism is that it’s a self erotic form of alienation, where someone stops seeking to form social bonds (such as marriage) because they become a self enclosed system. If you’ve ever seen the movie American psycho I think the characters exemplify this very well - they are so far alienated from each other that they don’t even know each other’s names. Transgenderism also is a form of alienation in my view, alienation from the body. I think the only natural result of the environment being deemed “not real” is that we see increasing levels of this type of narcissism - which I think is just not good, nor is it functionally healthy for any human being to believe it.
So in summary - I think the premise is objectively wrong because we don’t have to be able to observe the environment perfectly in order to know truth. We don’t need a perfect system of language to follow god - but we do need to submit ourselves to his truth, and not our own conceptions of it. The idea that the environment is not real has caused a lot of problems, and I think it’s an outright unhealthy premise for the vast majority of people to take on. Unfortunately it’s also hard to prevent them from doing so without fully realizing it when our academics and philosophers have taken up those precepts…
I think it’s pretty necessary that there’s some fundamental reconciliation between us and the environment but it is very difficult to argue that it’s possible to know the environment, and much easier to argue that it’s not
Agree with many of your conclusions, even if I arrive at them through very different means. I definitely agree with this sentiment:
"I think the premise is objectively wrong because we don’t have to be able to observe the environment perfectly in order to know truth."
I would point to all of our achievements in applied science and engineering, from pyramids and cathedrals to satellites, rocket ships, and the world wide web.
How have humans, with their varying subjective internal experiences, been able to cooperate and coordinate with each other to build such complex systems that we all experience as real if there aren't certain fundamental external "things" and processes that exist outside of us?
While I find Von Foerster's perspective useful since it nudges me to deeply consider the role of observers, I've also found much more practical utility in the work of systems scientists who argue for the existence of fundamental processes and patterns that exist in our shared reality.
Yeah that’s a good - and more simple - way to take down the argument for reality not being real in systems science actually. Talking about God to disprove von forester’s notes is prob too big of a jump.
But then again, thinking about it again I was going to argue that the existence of color blindness disproves the argument but you could just as easily argue that it proves it. Ugh it’s annoying how difficult it is to disprove “reality is not real arguments”
Do people like Von forester defend against questions like “how can we agree on what reality is (in concrete terms) and coordinate behavior to construct non abstract systems (like hard tech) if reality is merely constructed in individual minds?”
I'm sure there are good defenses against the question, possibly having to do with the nature of communication, but I'm not deeply familiar with them.
I personally am a big fan of Bertalanffy's "perspectivist" philosophy. Objective reality exists as evidenced by the physical constants we've discovered and used, but human perception is incapable of "seeing" reality directly. The best we can do is gain more and more knowledge about the nature of objective reality by taking different perspectives.
This is fun! I haven’t spent any time thinking about computational models of the environment, but this is tangentially related to some of the philosophical works I’ve read analyzing how decartes internal turn (ergo sum) lead to this understanding of the observable environment as an abstraction to be experienced, not a fundamental reality. For me what’s most interesting about this is the later development of the romantics who tried to resolve alienation through the imagination - finding universal principles common to the interior of the human being. Jung comes from that line, for example.
But also - so does gender theory! Gender theory builds on this line of thought through treating identity as something internally constructed and externally preformed - not something fixed.
It’s really interesting to trace the philosophical roots of these things out. For me, it also helps me understand why the idea of the environment as experienced and not “real” would be such a strong argument
I appreciate the connection to other philosophers/schools of thought that have explored this!
Where do you stand personally on the notion that the environment isn't objectively real in any meaningful sense?
I think it really depends on why you’re making that assumption in the first place! If jt has utility when you’re preforming some research go at it I think that’s fine.
But I think the inward turn in philosophy has both done a lot of wrong for us, has contributed to antichristian thinking and also honestly a lot of narcissism (Paglia’s perception of it).
1) it’s most obvious that gender theory is a huge problem. The biological reality doesn’t matter at all because the internal reality takes precedent. It’s like a form of derangement when people allow their children to sexually mutiliate themselves because they “feel” like it (ofc I know there’s also pressures from teachers and the medical system who tell them their kids will kill themselves if they don’t - also horrifying and deranged). The form of transgenderism we’re witnessing today clearly goes against common sense : there is a man and a woman and how you were constructed in the womb determines whether or not they are a man or woman. If the environment has NO objective reality, 1 billion genders is a plausible argument. The reason why extreme transgenderism flies in the face of common sense is because we intuitively know that the external environment is real, more so than how someone feels internally, especially a child.
2) antichristian thinking has emerged over the years, but I think it started with Luther, not decartes. The claim of the Orthodox Church is that the Trinitarian god is a fundamental reality, that heaven and hell are fundamental realities, that His life on earth as Jesus Christ fundamentally occurred in reality - not as him as a man, but as fully God and fully man. The orthodox churches secondary purpose is to defend the faith against heresies. Luther, for example, took the view that you could read the Bible for yourself without the church and determine what it means for yourself through your own knowledge. Even without the internet and myriad of dangerous heresies out there, it’s very difficult to understand the Bible without the scaffolding of the church. Not being able to understand the Bible as the church understands it is a really big problem — as soon as you step away from church doctrine and towards heresy, you’re stepping away from the fundamental reality that is God. Heresies matter because they misalign us from an objective reality. Thus - reality is objective even when it’s not perceivable.
3) Paglia’s perception of narcissism is that it’s a self erotic form of alienation, where someone stops seeking to form social bonds (such as marriage) because they become a self enclosed system. If you’ve ever seen the movie American psycho I think the characters exemplify this very well - they are so far alienated from each other that they don’t even know each other’s names. Transgenderism also is a form of alienation in my view, alienation from the body. I think the only natural result of the environment being deemed “not real” is that we see increasing levels of this type of narcissism - which I think is just not good, nor is it functionally healthy for any human being to believe it.
So in summary - I think the premise is objectively wrong because we don’t have to be able to observe the environment perfectly in order to know truth. We don’t need a perfect system of language to follow god - but we do need to submit ourselves to his truth, and not our own conceptions of it. The idea that the environment is not real has caused a lot of problems, and I think it’s an outright unhealthy premise for the vast majority of people to take on. Unfortunately it’s also hard to prevent them from doing so without fully realizing it when our academics and philosophers have taken up those precepts…
I think it’s pretty necessary that there’s some fundamental reconciliation between us and the environment but it is very difficult to argue that it’s possible to know the environment, and much easier to argue that it’s not
Agree with many of your conclusions, even if I arrive at them through very different means. I definitely agree with this sentiment:
"I think the premise is objectively wrong because we don’t have to be able to observe the environment perfectly in order to know truth."
I would point to all of our achievements in applied science and engineering, from pyramids and cathedrals to satellites, rocket ships, and the world wide web.
How have humans, with their varying subjective internal experiences, been able to cooperate and coordinate with each other to build such complex systems that we all experience as real if there aren't certain fundamental external "things" and processes that exist outside of us?
While I find Von Foerster's perspective useful since it nudges me to deeply consider the role of observers, I've also found much more practical utility in the work of systems scientists who argue for the existence of fundamental processes and patterns that exist in our shared reality.
Yeah that’s a good - and more simple - way to take down the argument for reality not being real in systems science actually. Talking about God to disprove von forester’s notes is prob too big of a jump.
But then again, thinking about it again I was going to argue that the existence of color blindness disproves the argument but you could just as easily argue that it proves it. Ugh it’s annoying how difficult it is to disprove “reality is not real arguments”
Do people like Von forester defend against questions like “how can we agree on what reality is (in concrete terms) and coordinate behavior to construct non abstract systems (like hard tech) if reality is merely constructed in individual minds?”
I'm sure there are good defenses against the question, possibly having to do with the nature of communication, but I'm not deeply familiar with them.
I personally am a big fan of Bertalanffy's "perspectivist" philosophy. Objective reality exists as evidenced by the physical constants we've discovered and used, but human perception is incapable of "seeing" reality directly. The best we can do is gain more and more knowledge about the nature of objective reality by taking different perspectives.
But we can never know everything!
That’s honestly a pretty good answer to Kant