Philosophical essay from a few years ago
I wrote the bulk of this essay from 1:16-2:20am 20/9/03, having read 279 pages of Jostein Gaardner's thought-provoking book "Sophie's World". I finished it off a little on Wednesday 6/7/05, and fixed a few typos just now. I haven't given much thought to the content this time around, but a quick skim didn't toss up anything I didn't still agree with
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Roughly speaking, though I'm a little unsure of the "outside experience" part. Not dependent on experience, but in many cases available to experience.
Discernible how? With human eyes? With human instruments? With human consciousness? What about indirect observation? Does this mean that invisible material forces aren't real?
Human instruments, including the few built-in ones. I don't think invisible forces are material, though they do generally act on matter (which is possibly what you meant). Invisible forces can be 'real' by some definitions, but they are not concrete. Such 'forces' are human concepts invented to describe and explain observable properties of the universe. Let's take gravity as an example. The concept of 'gravity' as an attractive force between two massive objects, though a breakthrough in its time, has since been superseded by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. An attractive force between two massive objects is not the same concept as a curvature in spacetime, and yet these descriptions are both used to explain the same evidence. On the basis of this (and similar things which aren't as easy to express here), I conclude that 'invisible forces' and concepts based on 'indirect observation' are human inventions which may or may not correspond to whatever degree with the reality underlying what we can see. Oh, and human consciousness offers no guarantees of concreteness. Much of our personal realities are made up of abstract concepts (justice being an obvious example, and a better example than love).
So let's talk love...
Yay! <.<
OK, to take your 'dark celestial body' analogy precisely... this 'dark matter' is still speculative - it is a human invention which may or may not correspond to reality (and has been referred to as 'theory-saving' by far more informed people than I). However, I'd like to adapt your analogy. Let's simplify it to inferring an attractive force 'gravity' from observations of the behaviour of massive objects. As above, gravity (the attractive force) is merely one human explanation of what seems to be a property of the universe. Apologies if this seems a bit like straw-man tactics <.<
Now, to love. In short, qualia are not concrete. They are caused by concrete neurotransmitters and hormones, but the qualia themselves are not concrete. Much as the concrete brain hosts the abstract mind, I'd argue. Observations of concrete things can certainly be used to inform our understanding of abstractions, but that does not mean that the abstractions themselves become concrete.
My basic concept is that the mind/body world/self split is an interesting thought experiment but completely bogus in practice
I disagree. I'm fairly sure you still maintain your opinion, so do go ahead and shred any fuzzy thinking on my part <3
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