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jack1. The world is largely as we perceive and remember it.
Background
I was originally hoping to produce a decent list of basic axioms I seem to have accepted, and then say something optimistic like "I believe the great majority of reaosnable people should be able to agree with these statements." And perhaps, work down the list to see if everyone agreed. But I fell at the first, most fundamental one.
This one, in fact, often isn't true. A small but significant part of the time I am dreaming. But I always choose to believe it.
I considered saying something like 'I should act as if...' but: (1) 'Should' is a tricky concept. I don't think I have a moral imperative to believe this, I just think it makes sense to. (2) I realised that I did believe this whether it was reasonable to or not.
Quibbles
I say 'largely' because there are things like mirages and deja vus that don't fit. In fact, you can argue that the world isn't very like it seems at all, but I'd maintain that it is compared to what it might be like, we just don't notice the lot of things that *do* behave like we expect.
About some things we disagree what is evident. For instance, I think I don't perceive God, but some people think they do. Despite the magnitude of that difference, I think it's still more alike than someone who thinks most of what they see isn't true.
And some people, eg. paranoids, might see things noticable differently.
Reasons for belief
This will be in no way official, since the reasons don't make much sense without the beliefs they're supposed to justify. But it feels nice to explain on a couple of levels, relying on common assumptions that I in part try to codify.
Here, the reasons are a bit superfluous, since they're fairly obvious, and accepted or not. But when I get to "Thou shalt not kill, much" the reasons will be very interesting.
Evolutionary: Obviously, thinking you're in a dream the whole time and it doesn't matter what happens is bad not-being-eaten-by-tigers-wise.
Social: Much the same. Going around thinking you're in the matrix is bad because (1) You might do bad things to other people without realising and (2) People might do bad things to you. Of course, this reasoning isn't valid if you *don't* believe this, which is why I wrote para 1.
History
Descartes is most famous. Quick summary: French philosopher/mathmo who a fair number of things are named after (eg. Cartesian coordinates). He doubted (Cartesian Doubt) that he wasn't dreaming the world, or something (eg. a (Cartesian) Demon had him in a primitive form of the matrix and was arranging the world to fool him.)
He reasoned that at least he, or the demon, or someone dreaming they were him, existed, because *something* must be thinking this, summed up as the famous "Cogito ergo sum", ie. "I think therefore I am".
That he went on to (imo fallaciously) deduce the existance of God, and then (also, imo, fallaciously) that God wouldn't deceive him, and from that my axiom (1), doesn't really matter here. Nor does whether you accept his argument, because I like it, but at that level almost any reasoning is a bit doubtful, so I just jumped to assuming the conclusion, since I'd do that even if I didn't have a nice argument for it.
There was also some ancient chinese poet who said he might be a butterfly dreaming he was a poet. I don't know if there are any other earlier references. The modern incarnation is, as you'll all know, the matrix.
Background
I was originally hoping to produce a decent list of basic axioms I seem to have accepted, and then say something optimistic like "I believe the great majority of reaosnable people should be able to agree with these statements." And perhaps, work down the list to see if everyone agreed. But I fell at the first, most fundamental one.
This one, in fact, often isn't true. A small but significant part of the time I am dreaming. But I always choose to believe it.
I considered saying something like 'I should act as if...' but: (1) 'Should' is a tricky concept. I don't think I have a moral imperative to believe this, I just think it makes sense to. (2) I realised that I did believe this whether it was reasonable to or not.
Quibbles
I say 'largely' because there are things like mirages and deja vus that don't fit. In fact, you can argue that the world isn't very like it seems at all, but I'd maintain that it is compared to what it might be like, we just don't notice the lot of things that *do* behave like we expect.
About some things we disagree what is evident. For instance, I think I don't perceive God, but some people think they do. Despite the magnitude of that difference, I think it's still more alike than someone who thinks most of what they see isn't true.
And some people, eg. paranoids, might see things noticable differently.
Reasons for belief
This will be in no way official, since the reasons don't make much sense without the beliefs they're supposed to justify. But it feels nice to explain on a couple of levels, relying on common assumptions that I in part try to codify.
Here, the reasons are a bit superfluous, since they're fairly obvious, and accepted or not. But when I get to "Thou shalt not kill, much" the reasons will be very interesting.
Evolutionary: Obviously, thinking you're in a dream the whole time and it doesn't matter what happens is bad not-being-eaten-by-tigers-wise.
Social: Much the same. Going around thinking you're in the matrix is bad because (1) You might do bad things to other people without realising and (2) People might do bad things to you. Of course, this reasoning isn't valid if you *don't* believe this, which is why I wrote para 1.
History
Descartes is most famous. Quick summary: French philosopher/mathmo who a fair number of things are named after (eg. Cartesian coordinates). He doubted (Cartesian Doubt) that he wasn't dreaming the world, or something (eg. a (Cartesian) Demon had him in a primitive form of the matrix and was arranging the world to fool him.)
He reasoned that at least he, or the demon, or someone dreaming they were him, existed, because *something* must be thinking this, summed up as the famous "Cogito ergo sum", ie. "I think therefore I am".
That he went on to (imo fallaciously) deduce the existance of God, and then (also, imo, fallaciously) that God wouldn't deceive him, and from that my axiom (1), doesn't really matter here. Nor does whether you accept his argument, because I like it, but at that level almost any reasoning is a bit doubtful, so I just jumped to assuming the conclusion, since I'd do that even if I didn't have a nice argument for it.
There was also some ancient chinese poet who said he might be a butterfly dreaming he was a poet. I don't know if there are any other earlier references. The modern incarnation is, as you'll all know, the matrix.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-10 05:32 pm (UTC)About a third of the time, no?
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Date: 2005-03-10 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-10 05:38 pm (UTC)Though it's disturbing to realise there is such a high chance...
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Date: 2005-03-10 05:41 pm (UTC)But apparently it didn't sound like that. Perhaps because I plunged in with #1 wihtout a preface :)
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Date: 2005-03-10 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-10 05:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-10 05:45 pm (UTC)I just assumed that you sort of lie there recuperating, like it *looks* like you do, but I have no basis for that belief. Damn, another belief :)
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Date: 2005-03-10 05:48 pm (UTC)I admit I'm not entirely happy with the phrasing. What I want is something like 'what I see can be misleading, but is invariably caused by something in a reasonably deterministic way' but I can't figure out a way of saying it.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-10 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-11 12:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-11 01:03 pm (UTC)One can look at something twice and see something different each time (typos being an obvious example); and two people can remember contradictory things about the same events.
Whereas if you measure something, and (say) find it to be 5mm long, and write that down then I'm confident that, if perception didn't fail you at that particular point (and if you didn't just make a mistake and if your ruler isn't buggy etc etc) then it really is 5mm long and furthermore if you look at your recording later (and again, if perception doesn't happen to fail you at that point) you will still end up believing the truth about the length of whatever it was.
So do I got through life worrying that I won't fit through doorways until I've measured them? Not at all, because my experience tells me that perception pretty much never fails in that case. But I do assume that I'll make typos that I won't spot, that my impressions of other people's behaviour in various contexts will be hopelessly biased because of 'where' I'm looking from, etc.
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Date: 2005-03-11 01:41 pm (UTC)oh no, actually, it doesn't at all.
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Date: 2005-03-11 06:31 pm (UTC)"Let's try assuming absolutely nothing!
Well, that was fun. Let's try assuming something now."
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Date: 2005-03-15 01:53 pm (UTC)*Of course* it's a *superior* form of perception. And you do need some way of deciding which of contradictory perceptions mean what. But I still think you need to start with something more general.
How would you reformulate the axiom? I don't think you can define 'measurement' enough to rely on them alone, so what can you do?
no subject
Date: 2005-03-15 01:53 pm (UTC)