There is no God’s Eye View of Reality

[coberst]

There is no God’s Eye View of Reality

Thus spake Mr. Hilary Putnam in Reason, Truth, and History.

Putnam speaks of metaphysical realism and objectivism, from both an externalist and an internalist point of view.

Objectivism is a special case of metaphysical realism. Putnam argues that metaphysical realism is incoherent from an internalist perspective. This incoherence results from the impossibility of the externalist view; one cannot place the self outside of reality in order to find a unique perspective in which to view reality.

Putnam shows that the externalist view is logically impossible because metaphysical realism is formulated within symbol systems. “The metaphysical realist views of meaning, reference, knowledge, and understanding all make presuppositions about symbol systems and their interpretations that are logically incoherent.” Putnam argues that there cannot be “exactly one true and complete description of the ‘the way the world is’…there can be no God’s eye view of reality”.

Putnam is not arguing that there is no reality, i.e. basic realism, but only that the epistemology of the externalist view is logically incoherent. The problem rests on the assumption of the availability of a “God’s eye view”, which is inherent in the externalist perspective. We can not step outside of reality, we are part of reality. What is needed is an internalist view of reality, i.e. we must develop an epistemology that recognizes that we are functioning as part of reality and that it is impossible for us to just step outside and become an observer with a God’s eye point of view.

In place of metaphysical realism Putnam proposes another form of realism: internalist realism wherein we take a point of view in accordance with the human functioning within the world of objects and not externally from the object. To quote Putnam:

“I shall refer to it as the internalist perspective, because it is characteristic of this view to hold that what objects the world consists of? is a question that it only makes sense to ask within a theory of description…‘Truth’, in an internalist view, is some sort of (idealized) rational acceptability—some sort of ideal coherence of our beliefs with each other and with our experiences as those experiences are themselves represented in our belief system—and not correspondence with mind-independent ‘states of affairs’. There is no God’s Eye point of view that we can know or usefully imagine; there are only various points of view of actual persons reflecting various interests and purposes that their descriptions and theories subserve.”

[bekaboo2u]

god is everything, everywhere.
he is my only idol and i cherish him/her/it muchly.
god is light he is the sun and the moon.
but everybody has freewill to make there own decisions, but god lights the pathway of the good choice.

[blp]

This is kind of Kant-esque. Kant begins The Critique of Pure Reason and, therefore, the description of his entire, mature philosophical system, by defining what he calls the Transcendental Aesthetic, which is empirical reality as experienced by humans. He allows that other animals may experience this reality too. Other than that, he says it is impossible to have any knowledge of things in themselves. The Transcendental Aesthetic is the limit of human experience and knowledge.

[NikolaiI]

It seems he's making some progress. In my words I say something similar... each person's view of reality cannot be totally invalid, since they are part of reality, and they cannot but view some part of reality. In other words, everything which exists is true.

This is what I believe also; that we all have some perspective of the world, etc.. but I also believe we are part of the same reality, in other words, not separate from reality. We make up a tapestry of consciousness together; as John Donne said, "No man is an island," No one exists completely separately. But we sometimes feel as if we do, and it is the primary cause of illusion/suffering.

[coberst]

It is so important that we learn the fallacy of our traditional view of objectivism.

We have been able to adequately adapt to "reality" as we normally think of it but such may no longer be the case. "Reality" as it really is, is perhaps not like tradition informs us and that difference may be crucial in a world that changes at rocket speed due to technology. When our level of intellectual sophistication changes at a snails pace we may no longer be able to adapt as Darwin informs us we must do. What happens when our changing world overwhelms our unchanging intellectual sophistication?

Our present financial crisis may be an omen of what is to come.

[billyjack]

sounds like some richard rorty i found on wikipedia:


"Truth cannot be out there—cannot exist independently of the human mind—because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own—unaided by the describing activities of humans—cannot.”

to get past a fallacy like objectivism we'd need a new perspective on thought, adopting the embodied mind thesis for instance. perhaps prototype theory would be an elegant way to incorporate a view, on a massive scale, that rejects the god's eye view of reality??

[coberst]

Objects for us cannot exist independently of our conceptual schemes.

Knowledge is not a narrative with no constraints, it is a narrative with the internal coherence demanded by our internal conceptual system. There are no data inputs unconstrained by our concepts—preconceptual structures.

Our objectivity is “internal” because it does not take an external perspective that stands outside of reality.

“Our way of understanding the world in terms of objects, properties, and relations is an imposition of our conceptual schemes upon external reality” “Because objects and categories of objects are characterized internal to conceptual systems, not external to them, the problem of the indeterminacy of reference disappears.”

For more than a millennium Western philosophy was controlled by intellect and powerful hand of the Catholic Church. That control is still embedded in our Western philosophical and scientific tradition.

Galileo (1564—1642) faced the Inquisition because he proposed scientific theories unfavorable to the Church and was severely chastised. Descartes (1596—1650) formulated his philosophical theories in accordance with Church doctrine and was not chastised. Descartes’ philosophy remains as a fundamental element in today’s philosophy of objectivism.

[blp]

Galileo (1564—1642) faced the Inquisition because he proposed scientific theories unfavorable to the Church and was severely chastised. Descartes (1596—1650) formulated his philosophical theories in accordance with Church doctrine and was not chastised. Descartes’ philosophy remains as a fundamental element in today’s philosophy of objectivism.

But Descartes, while considered immensely important, wasn't really even fully accepted by his immediate successors. By the time you get to Berkeley, the subject is well on the way to being acknowledged as a fundamental constituent of the reality it perceives and by Kant the idea is central. It's even been said that this was Kant's most important and lasting innovation.

[coberst]

But Descartes, while considered immensely important, wasn't really even fully accepted by his immediate successors. By the time you get to Berkeley, the subject is well on the way to being acknowledged as a fundamental constituent of the reality it perceives and by Kant the idea is central. It's even been said that this was Kant's most important and lasting innovation.

Descartes' "Meditations" is a fundamental course in philosophy and is considered to be the begining of our traditional Western philosophy.

I was educated in engineering but also had some interest in philosophy. My first philosophy course was Descartes' "Meditations on First Philosophy". I suspect this is an introductory course for most students studying philosophy. Descartes has left Western tradition with a gigantic legacy that only now is this legacy being undermined by cognitive science.

Descartes goes through a sequence of analysis in an effort to find an absolute truth upon which to build his philosophy. He settled on "Cogito, ergo sum". "I think therefore I am". The conclusions of this series of analysis by Descartes have set the course, more or less, of Western philosophy. What are the fateful conclusions derived from the work of Descartes?

"I am, I exist, that is certain. But how often? Just when I think; for it might possibly be the case if I ceased entirely to think, that I should likewise cease altogether to exist...But what then am I? A thing that thinks."

The Folk Theory of Essences
Every kind of thing has an essence that makes it the kind of thing it is.
The way each thing naturally behaves is a consequence of its essence.

Descartes knows he exists because he thinks. Because he exists he has an essence. He assumes nothing else causes his thinking but his essence. Conclusion: thinking must be at least a part of the human essence.

"Just because I know certainly that I exist, and that meanwhile I do not remark that any other thing necessarily pertains to my nature or essence, excepting that I am a thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists solely in the fact that I am a thinking thing."

"It is certain that this I [that is to say, my soul by which I am what I am], is entirely, and absolutely distinct from my body and can exist without it."

To have reached that last conclusion Descartes must assume an additional:

The Folk Theory of Substance and Attributes
A substance is that which exists in itself and does not depend for its existence on any other thing.
Each substance has one and only one primary attribute that defines what its essence is.

The following is what his introspection has made him “see”:

There are two kinds of substance, one bodily and the other mental.
The attribute of bodily substance is extension in space.
The attribute of mental substance is thought.

[blp]

Oh, come on, coberst. You're getting in a stew about nothing. Descartes is an introductory text because he is, indeed, the beginning of Modern Philosophy, but for one reason only: he represents the decisive break with the Artistotelian tautologies (a stone rolls because it is in its nature to roll) that had marked the tradition throughout the scholastic period. Descartes' important contribution was to strip back philosophical inquiry to a position of radical doubt, effectively saying, how can we be sure about anything, then building from there. But most of his conclusions, including all the ones you have problems with, were pretty much demolished by other, even more rigorous thinkers very soon afterwards. Yes, he set a course for Western Philosophy, but only in that he freed philosophical inquiry from any and all of the assumptions that might hold it back. After him, nothing, including his own conclusions, was taken on faith.

You're trying to reinvent the wheel if you're out to critique him now. It's been done, thoroughly. Contemporary philosophers barely even talk about him now, whereas they still refer to his immediate successors, Spinoza and Leibniz - though they hardly take everything they said on faith either. Seriously, you should read some of the people who came after him rather than just assuming they were all footling around with his untenable propositions and you've got to singlehandedly save philosophy from Cartesian dualism.

[mono]

Cicero addressed this almost precise subject of "God's Eye View of Reality" at great length in The Nature of the Gods, a debate between three individuals, an Epicurean, a Stoic, and a skeptic.
Objectivism aside, blah, blah, blah, because it sounds as witty as the flatuence of Oscar Wilde!
Cicero argues at great length of the externalist perspective (Epicurean), that the polytheistic gods sit outside the world, watch, and, as in Beatles terms, 'let it be' (from heaven, paradise, or what have you); also of the internalist view (Stoic) that the polytheistic gods exist everywhere beside us, and shall reward us for our good or bad actions (in heaven, hell, or what have you). Lastly, he (Cicero) tell us of the skeptic perspective, insulting both of the characters (as the work consists of a dialogue), that no god, according to the definition of infinity, can exist outside the world, nor outside humans for the sake of observation (thereby having to create borders and splits, contradicting infinity). One thing, however, did not change between the opinions of the Epicurean, Stoic, and skeptic - the ability for a Divine Being to observe with an Objective eye.
As blp mentioned Kant, what have we but our faulty senses? Even if Descartes found cogito, ergo sum, what can we use with such thought contingent upon existence? Perceive objective reality? Never in all of our existence! Nonsense, even the greatest of minds, nor the individual with the most acute senses could define objectivity; we forever have a plague that reduces us to ourselves, even if our hopes and expectations, driven my motivation, pushes us further, we cannot avoid our biased subjectivism.

[coberst]

It is very difficult to speak with preciseness because we do not have a vocabulary to do so, because we have seldom before had the need to do so, because our common sense and our traditional Western philosophy led us to belief that mind-independent reality exists and that we can know it.

We need a word like body-mind to use to replace our commonly used mind and body. Body-mind means that every thought, perception, and knowledge that we have is a result of the mind-body.

We cannot bracket the body. All of our experiences and all of our abstract ideas are filled with structures relating to our body’s reaction. Like a tennis player’s concepts of serving have the moves required to hit a serve likewise all of our concepts contain our bodily reaction to the experience. That is why we are so inclined to speak with our hands and with our bodies.

[blp]

our common sense and our traditional Western philosophy led us to belief that mind-independent reality exists and that we can know it.


You don't listen do you? This is just wrong and I've already explained why. Kant, (who had a few salty words to say against 'common sense', by the way) premised his entire philosophical system on the firm, and he felt, proven belief that we cannot know a thing about what you call 'mind-independent reality'. Kant is a much much more influential figure than Descartes and did much more to shape the way philosophy looks today, though I feel I should emphasise, that still doesn't mean he he's been accepted wholesale by his successors.

This debate is much more complex than you're allowing, hinging, as it does, on the perpetually tricky relationship between philosophy and science. I can't help feeling from the things you say that you imagine philosophy to operate much more like science than it does, to whit, a perpetual process of building on previous thinkers' discoveries. It's really not like this. Since it's based on deductive logic, not empirical proofs (even Empiricism operates like this), everything remains up for debate and even philosophers who are contemporaries may hold radically different views about reality and how we perceive it.

There's always a bit of a question about whether any of this is necessary, given the advances of science. By the early twentieth century, AJ Ayer was arguing (in vigorous opposition to Kant) that philosophy really had nothing left to do except help define scientific method. Even reading Kant, who's ideas depend so very much on the relationship of mind to reality, it's interesting to speculate about how his view would have been affected by the later discoveries of Descartes, Einstein and, yes, cognitive science. In the end, though, part of what's fascinating about him for me is that he arrives at his picture of the limited subject over a hundred years before most of these discoveries purely through debate about what is logically possible and, open to debate is it certainly is, it's an extraordinarily, rather beautifully coherent and intricate system that provides us with extraordinarily rich soil in which to bed our own speculations.

Thanks, mono, that's really interesting. I look forward to reading some of this stuff. Anyone who thinks they have an original critique of philosophy (as if it's some monolithic body of consensual opinion anyway) should try to keep in mind that they're up against a 2500 year old tradition. If you can think it, it's likely it's been thought.

[mono]

It is very difficult to speak with preciseness because we do not have a vocabulary to do so, because we have seldom before had the need to do so, because our common sense and our traditional Western philosophy led us to belief that mind-independent reality exists and that we can know it.

We need a word like body-mind to use to replace our commonly used mind and body. Body-mind means that every thought, perception, and knowledge that we have is a result of the mind-body.

We cannot bracket the body. All of our experiences and all of our abstract ideas are filled with structures relating to our body’s reaction. Like a tennis player’s concepts of serving have the moves required to hit a serve likewise all of our concepts contain our bodily reaction to the experience. That is why we are so inclined to speak with our hands and with our bodies.
As much as I agree with the Cartesian mind-body dualism, neither Descartes, Kant, nor Cicero could indeed find words to describe certain ideas or objects; I agree that we lack the vocabulary, but I have no doubt that even Cromagnons attempted expression of thoughts, yet did not have the ability. Emerson, inspired by Kant, along with his fellow transcendentalists, wrote of the restrictions upon the human senses and knowledge at great length.
Proving that one's self undeniably exists seems quite a task, but Descartes performed that; proving that an object exists independent of the mind I would like to see. Another thinker who wrote of the senses and restrictions/abilities of human knowledge, George Berkeley, provided enough proof for me that, to put it as briefly as possible, something sensed cannot exist without something sensing it (thus answering that timeless question, if a tree falls in a forest, and no one stands there to hear it, does it make a sound? No, Berkeley would reply).
In adhering philosophy to science, even in the deepest of empirical science, no one can deny that mystery persists; most of physics and both organic and inorganic chemistry rest upon theories, some created centuries ago - having studied engineering, I have no doubt you know this. Things even exist inside of us that we cannot explain. Stealing your analogy of the tennis player, as I work as a critical care nurse, specializing in neurology, the voluntary, non-reflexive movement of the right arm, since statistically most have right-handed dominance, originates from the left motor cortex of the brain, on the front (anterior) piece of the parietal lobe. An electrical impulse from there descends through the thalamus, races through the pons and brain stem, to the mid-to-lower cervical spine, and into the shoulder and arm muscles, causing them to contract. I would love to know what spontaneously causes the very first impulse in the motor cortex to fire, but that seems beyond all human knowledge (for now, as thinkers like Stephen Pinker and Oliver Sacks perform nearly infinite research).

Thanks, mono, that's really interesting. I look forward to reading some of this stuff. Anyone who thinks they have an original critique of philosophy (as if it's some monolithic body of consensual opinion anyway) should try to keep in mind that they're up against a 2500 year old tradition. If you can think it, it's likely it's been thought.
Indeed, I consider Cicero's The Nature of the Gods an absolutely essential work in religious and ontological philosophy; ironically, it even reads with some ease.

[0=2]

Lawl.

Now wouldn't it be ironic if a heated debate took place in a thread called "There is no God’s Eye View of Reality"?

[blp]

Now wouldn't it be ironic if a heated debate took place in a thread called "There is no God’s Eye View of Reality"?

Only to someone who imagines that implies a universe of hermetic entities between which no common ground or shared reality is possible.

[0=2]

Or to anyone with a basic understanding of human humour and paradox.

Course, not funny, very very serious. Ahem, excuse me, allow me to contribute to this solemn discussion.

Could it not be said that science, as an interpretation of man's world as perceived by man, is simply a more rigorous and applied form of philosophy and that truly they act as the same art, concerned with the same idea of allowing us a greater understanding over and in our world?

Indeed there was a time when both were one and I think that science, when looked at from a philosophical perspective, can achieve a greater array of effects. At the same time philosophy flesh's itself out fuller under hte careful supervision of scientific reason. These two ideas lie intrinsic within each other and allow for a greater understanding, and whether or not this is dependent on a subjective viewing matters little.

It's PERCEIVED impact becomes it's impact.

Now excuse me, I must go wash my mouth out for it tastes of horse****. My hands... oh God my hands... fetid little filaments defiling this forever spiraling serenade of wit banter and human machine.

Love is an ugly God, we pihlosophers found this
and replaced him with word. The word is
Him.

[mono]

Could it not be said that science, as an interpretation of man's world as perceived by man, is simply a more rigorous and applied form of philosophy and that truly they act as the same art, concerned with the same idea of allowing us a greater understanding over and in our world?
Science, yes, an interpretation of humankind's world, but science bases itself entirely off of empiricism, including the many, many theories; the empiricist part of science, however, has its basis upon an agreed set of measurements (whether the metric system, mathematics, or what have you), hence, not objectivity (impossible to prove), but the closest to objectivity attainable. Philosophy, though sometimes based upon units of measure, seems a bit more abstract and malleable; in ethical philosophy, no two individuals will ever agree how to fully act 'just,' the best way to rule a nation, nor what defines virtue or vice.
Several theories in science, I have no doubt of it, having read some Stephen Hawking, have bases in philosophy; I would not call astronomy or quantam physics my strongest subjects, but humankind has developed small foundations, then built from there by logic.
In that way, I certainly agree with you, 0=2, that both philosophy and science have a similar striving for truth, but both seem such broad areas of study that it seems difficult to classify the strict right-wrong rules of physics in the same category as political philosophy that can get easily tainted by Sophism, where not truth, but where the best debate determines truth, where might makes right.

Indeed there was a time when both were one and I think that science, when looked at from a philosophical perspective, can achieve a greater array of effects. At the same time philosophy flesh's itself out fuller under hte careful supervision of scientific reason. These two ideas lie intrinsic within each other and allow for a greater understanding, and whether or not this is dependent on a subjective viewing matters little.

It's PERCEIVED impact becomes it's impact.
I feel that this may contradict your previous paragraph that 'an interpretation of man's world as perceived by man' . . . 'allow for a greater understanding, and' . . . 'subjective viewing matters little.'
I strongly agree that we live in a world based upon humankind's interpretations, but subjectivity, in my opinion, means far from little. As I said, science has its bases upon units of measure, established upon the agreed perceived objectivity, objectivity existing as a similar perception of many individuals (humans invented the centimeter, not so-called 'objectivity'). This shared perception, shared subjectivity, I agree, allows for a greater understanding, until disproven by either logic (philosophy) or empiricism (science), and both logic and empiricism will likely make great revolutions even in our lifetimes, yet this 'interpretation' will inevitably always make itself an 'interpretation,' even among an epoch.

Now excuse me, I must go wash my mouth out for it tastes of horse****. My hands... oh God my hands... fetid little filaments defiling this forever spiraling serenade of wit banter and human machine.

Love is an ugly God, we pihlosophers found this
and replaced him with word. The word is
Him.
What? :confused:

[pagebypage]

Well I may be a little confused with all this forced formal writing style but if the original posting position was that a member of a set and only of that set can't be in a position to "comprehend" (for want of a better word) the set in its totality, I thought Godel already addressed that when he thumped Russel et al.

[mono]

if the original posting position was that a member of a set and only of that set can't be in a position to "comprehend" (for want of a better word) the set in its totality, I thought Godel already addressed that when he thumped Russel et al.
He did, and Russel even went as far as to claim that an omniscient Being existed as part of the sequence, thus had the inability to have an Objective perspective of the world, and everything beyond it. Godel and another mathematician (I cannot remember the name, but it started with a 'Z,' he-he, and I cannot find it anywhere) took the more skeptic point of view that it seemed more a decision of faith than logic; William James wrote of similar things in The Varieties of Religious Experiences.
I know very little of mathematics, just enough to get by, or I would like to think so, but I must refer back to my reference to Cicero that, as most religions define their monotheistic Deity as Infinite, nothing can perceive or split Infinity, or, in this case, add Infinity to a sequence. The closest I can get to Infinity seeming a part of a sequence: when St. Thomas Aquinas suggested that God placed the universe in motion as the first Mover.

[mangueken]

For more than a millennium Western philosophy was controlled by intellect and powerful hand of the Catholic Church. That control is still embedded in our Western philosophical and scientific tradition.

Galileo (1564—1642) faced the Inquisition because he proposed scientific theories unfavorable to the Church and was severely chastised. Descartes (1596—1650) formulated his philosophical theories in accordance with Church doctrine and was not chastised. Descartes’ philosophy remains as a fundamental element in today’s philosophy of objectivism.

Descartes had an easier time not being prosecuted by the church because he accepts, a priori, the "benevolence of God". I can accept and work with most everything else he says about knowledge but his major weakness is the above. Why, in a world of doubt, and even the possibility of demons controlling our thoughts and deceiving us, should we accept the escape hatch of a "benevolent God" which we can't identify or even be sure is the one communicating to us?
Galileo had a harder time for the simple reason that his observations led him to acknowledge that God was superfluous. He didn't need to deny God, he just didn't find a god necessary.
We may never know the exact reason (s) of why Descartes felt it necessary to put this release valve in his philosophical writings, especially because he was so exact in other areas. Although, explaining why Newton thought he could find an alchemist solution to producing gold is just as much a mystery. In turn, we may never know the exact reason (s) why Galileo insisted on disobeying the Roman Catholic church and writing about his scientific results. Or why the Church just didn't burn his *** the first time around. But what a fortunate set of events in both cases. Descartes continues to help us with his mathematical and philosophical views and Galileo's observations have been built upon.
Now, if we can get the general population of today's world to catch up to these great thinkers from hundreds of years ago...