OT: Crazy Programming

[Christopher Encapera]

Sense this thread is seems to no longer be all about country music and
modern art, I thought I would break my self-imposed promise not to comment
further (although, I would expect the flames for it not being about Python
to occur very soon :)


>Greg Ewing wrote:
>
>> Laura Creighton wrote:
>> >
>> > The ability to rank something and whether it is objective or not are
>> > independent concepts.
>>
>> But for the ranking to be objective, it has to be
>> independent of the person doing the ranking.
>
>I think the argument is that there EXISTS an objective interpretation
>independently of whether we humans can perceive it.
>
>Plato argued this, furthermore suggesting that humans perception in the
>matter is rather inaccurate.  He used the analogy that reality was like
>actors on a stage and we humans were chained in a position where we were
>only able to observe the shadows these actors made on the wall.  The fact
>that our perception may be faulty and may admit some degree of
>subjectivity and other misperceptions does not contradict the notion that
>an objective reality truly exists.  Even so-called objective scientific
>experiments often yield results that include some percentage of error or
>otherwise are ambiguous.
>
>Perhaps a clearer illustration: physical objects can be measured by humans
>to varying degrees of accuracy depending on what instruments we use.
>Without the instruments we can still estimate physical dimensions and we
>can make fairly objective decisions about relative size.  We can be misled
>by optical illusions or other misdirection.  Nevertheless, the objects
>themelves still possess those physical characteristics, whether we measure
>them or not.

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

>
>> Which says to me that the ranking process is *not*
>> completely objective. Not because the process involves
>> people using their senses, but because the result
>> depends on who is doing it.
>
>Laura's choice of a particularly subjective example actually underscores
>the point.  Although there is a lot of inescapable subjectivity regarding
>ranking wines, a general consensus nevertheless emerged regarding a great
>number of "measurements".
>
>Of course, there are some matters that are purely subjective.  I think the
>difference is when humans begin to pass judgement on things, rather than
>merely measure them.  E.g,, I can imagine two similar wines of equal
>overall quality.  Some people will prefer one and others may prefer
>another.  Make it easy and say the wines were a red and a white and some
>people's preferences will be even more pronounced.  That's not to say one
>wine is better than the other, it's mere subjective Judgement -- a matter
>of taste.  But there are objective qualities that separate the wines
>(e.g., acid, sugar and tannin levels) that form an objective basis for the
>subjective judgement.  Measurement is (can be) objective but judgement by
>it's nature is subjective.  Measurement implies an objective framework of
>reference while judgement generally implies extrapolation beyond commonly
>agreed upon criteria.
>
>Of course, the debate of whether or not an objective reality actually
>exists independently of human subjective perception and judgement has been
>argued at length by smarter philosophers than me, long before I was born.
>E.g., Physicsts get rather dogmatic about equating unmeasureable with
>unknowable, leading to some curious paradoxes.
>
>A lot of geeks tend to go overboard on the 'objective reality' side of
>things.  They presume that everything is knowable if only we can gather
>enough data.  Often they mistakenly include things that are purely
>subjective, purely a matter of personal judgement rather than objective
>reality.  Many flames and religious wars otherwise would be averted.
>


One of those domains that dogmatic philosophical materialists reject on the
basis of their presuppositions are the domains that most of us admit are
real, but nonetheless do not admit to the measurement of the five senses, is
the domain of the 'spiritual'.  Hope, Love, the human soul, etc, are by
their nature not amenable to measurement by the senses, and thus will never
be understandable, provable, etc. to the materialist mind.  Fortunately, the
search for truth, which is at the bottom of the scientific method, is not
restricted to materialist notions of reality.  Unfortunately, today the
domain of the "Scientific community" and "Dogmatic philosophical
materialist" overlap, to a very high degree (98, 99%?).  This leads to
unfortunate consequences for the search of truth, namely it obstructs/delays
it.  Let me cite an example from my own experience:  As an undergraduate
psych major, I noticed that standard psychological theory (which is
materialist to the core) could not explain why Alcoholics Anonymous happens
to be the most effective treatment for alcoholism.  Every attempt to
understand/study/explain it by psychologists either ring hollow, or they
themselves admitted were weak.  The answer is obvious to a non-dogmatic
materialist - AA admits and works with a non material side of man - namely
the spiritual.  One day in class I brought this point up and the embarrassed
professor said something to the effect of "well, that is not what we do
here".  He was right, the spiritual can never (by definition) be part of a
materialist understanding.  Fortunately for alcoholic, and the future of
science, a truthful understanding is not necessarily a materialist one.  "He
that is good with the hammer tends to see everything as a nail".
Philosophical materialists have been very successful at explaining/taking
advantage of (i.e. technology) material(5 sense) reality.  The domain of
Truth is larger than the domain of 'the material', even in such a small part
of the universe as a single human person... (: repeat after me, "I am not
merely a brain, I am not merely a brain" ;)




>Regards
>
>--jb