OT: Crazy Programming

[Steve Holden]

"Huaiyu Zhu" <huaiyu at gauss.almadan.ibm.com> wrote ...
> Christopher Encapera <ChrisE at lantech.com> wrote:
> >Interestingly, if one admits archetypes (Plato) then the greatest
> >instruments of the senses (i.e. 'scientific' instruments) do not get one
> >inch closer to the archetypes themselves.  All instruments, and all
> >measurement, depend on one of the five senses (sight, sound, taste,
touch,
> >smell).  The post powerful microscope, and the Hubble space telescope,
are
> >nothing more than extensions of plain old human sight.  If there is some
> >fundamental epistemological barrier to getting at the REAL with the
senses,
> >instruments instead of being the solution, only extend the original
> >limitation, possibly even magnify it.  Thus, no matter how
> >accurately/extensively/etc. you sense the shadow, you never get closer to
> >the REAL itself
>
> There are so many incoherent statements in this paragraph that I should
> probably just ignore it.  But I couldn't resist the temptation ...
>
As Oscar Wilde once saud, "I can resist anything but temptation".

> It is not a logical conclusion that if the final recipient has some
> limitations then the delivery system cannot help.  One of the main
function
> of scientific instruments it to transform signals from a range that is
alien
> to human senses to a range that is suitable.  Thanks to the
transformations,
> the *effective range* of our senses augmented with the instruments is
> fundamentally and substantially larger than that of the five senses alone.
> A mere extention, you say.
>
Well, perhaps he was arguing that such instruments represent an extension to
the human senses. Before charging the epistomological barricades, however,
you should consider whether Christopher isn't trying to represent the same
point of view promnoted by (for example) Bertrand Russell. The point is that
the only basis we ever have for knowledge is the interpretation of
sense-data - quite simply, the human organism isn't built to accept
information in any other way.

Thus, no matter how sophisticated the "amplification" of our senses provided
by instrumentation, there is really no way to conclude whether our
interpretation relates to an "objective reality", since even if we assume
that there *is* such a thing as objective reality we have no way to perceive
it other than by interpretation of sense-data.

> Is there a fundamental epistemological barrier to getting at the REAL with
> senses?  This is a rhetorical and meaningless question.  An
epistemological
> barrier is a fundamental barrier to knowledge, and by definition it is not
> dependent on the senses.  Is there a fundamental epistemological barrier
to
> knowing that pi is an irrational number with the senses?  :-)
>
> Of course there are plenty of limitation to our senses.  Our sense of
> electromagnetic field is limited to a very narrow frequency range.  We
> cannot tell most chemicals apart with our senses.  And so on.  But these
are
> not epistemological barriers.  With correct instruments we can study these
> phenomena just as easily and accurately (if not more) as things perceived
> directly with our senses.  In fact, most of human knowledge today is about
> things that are outside the direct range of human senses (but are of
course
> in the extended range with the help of instruments).
>
But arguably most human knowledge os not about objective reality. We simply
agree that particualr interpretations of sense-data we cna both experience
allow us to engage in meaningful communication.

> So far there is only one fundamental epistemological barrier known to
human
> knowledge - the quantum uncertainty.  But how could you say "you never get
> closer to the REAL itself"?  Our senses could only get to the details of
> about 10^20 quanta apart, but with instruments we can get at the accuracy
of
> about a single quantum.  This is 20 orders of magnitude improvement.  The
> fundamental barrier has nothing to do with the limitation of human senses.
> The high way speed limit has nothing to do with how fast we can walk.
>
> And all these are only about physical properties.  Through social
> interactions we can perceive things that are far way, things that happened
> in the past, or things that are only imagined.  We can feel the emotions
of
> others.  Most of the time these properties are not transmitted directly
> through the senses, but rather via various encodings (literature, art
> recordings, photos, broadcasts, etc).  Furthermore, it is not beyond
> imagination that in some future days we might be able to transmit directly
> such information from brain to brain without going through the senses at
> all, not even with encodings.
>
But we have no way to distinguish between physical properties and social
interactions, since the only ways we can communicate involve agreement about
the ground-rules. It is, for example, very difficult to engage in
philosophical discussions with a determined solipsist, who sees all
perceptions as generated by the operation of her own senses - that is,
"objective reality" is produced by the operation of the human brain.
Therefore you are, to a solipsist, simply a manifestation of their own
thought processes, and have no objective (i.e. external) reality atr all.

> You could dismiss all these as merely seeing the shadows.  But that is a
> very poor analogy [1].  It does not convey the sense of twenty orders of
> magnitude sharper image of the shadows, nor the magnificent stories told
by
> these images.  This much detail itself is knowledge.  Unless you discount
> all this knowledge and instead seek some else-worldly "truth" I cannot see
> how you can say we cannot get more knowledge than through direct sense.
>
> I'll left alone the statement that if there is such a fundamental barrier,
> instruments might actually magnifies the limitation of senses.  I hope you
> do not mean that not knowing our limitation somehow reduces our ignorance.
>
> Note:
> [1] Incidentally, the Chinese word for movie consists of two characters
> "electric showdow".  This could be used as a much better but still very
poor
> analogy.
>
Our ignorance is absolute. We can only agree to agree, or to disagree. And
no matter how much we agree, this does not affect the nature of "objective
reality", which we can never perceive directly.


regards
 Steve
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Steve Holden                                 http://www.holdenweb.com/
Python Web Programming                http://pydish.holdenweb.com/pwp/
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