Objectivity

[etherealstill]

Buckle up that tin foil hat kids, and be prepared for the consequences as we disregard modern neuroscience with a wave of our hands! We'll explain how a spider walks! It's magic! We'll explain how animals do not evolve to adapt, because there are bees who drink from flowers which makes bees codependent on the flower! Magic!

See? Pseudoscience IS valid! Because, as pseudoscience, we don't have to back up our claims with experimental evidence (we've waved that off too)!

[thebigpaul666]

@etherealstill your arrogance kind of make me sick. you don't even know what francisco varela is talking about. you are not better than a creationist or a priest: smartasses who think they know what they're talking about but don't know shit.

[etherealstill]

@thebigpaul666

You're right. I mastered chemical engineering and earned a phd in nuclear physics and I don't know what I'm talking about. The truth is so obvious, all you need to grasp the meaning of the universe is a bathrobe, a BS in philosophy, and magical insight. All of my education was for naught in the face of this YouTube video.

[thebigpaul666]

you can be fuckin' albert einstein, i don't give a damn. you still showing an arrogance hard to avoid. i can try to explain you what was varela tryin' to say or we can show our curriculums and who has the bigger penis. you choice

[etherealstill]

I'll humor you. Explain to me what the good Varela was tryin' to say.

[thebigpaul666]

First of all, watching the video again... I mean, what's the part that you think is PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC? Varela is only speaking about the imposibility of to speak of an objective world, not because that world it doesn't exists but because you are embebbed in that world, something that is backed by his own research in biology. Type Autopoiesis in google. Is not precisely a marginal theory in biology man! Maybe the words "magic" and "dream" can dismay some people but are only used as a metaphor

[etherealstill]

@thebigpaul666

If that's your assumption, then this isn't just pseudoscientific, it's anti-scientific.

The very assumption that it's "impossible to speak of an objective world" is unscientific. Science depends on objectivity. One might say that science IS objectivity. Without that assumption, nothing you speak is factual or communicable.

[thebigpaul666]

Of course we can speak bout reality but it is only factual in our especific context. Have you read Thomas Kuhn 'The structure of scientific revolutions'? I am defending Varela because he is not talking in the air, is supported by all his scientific research. And two, why if someone says something that it's not with the orthodox scientific discourse is something "wrong". We can't disagree here? You talk almost like "science is the only truth" which is kind of fundamentalistic.

[etherealstill]

@thebigpaul666

This assumption that reality is "depends on it's context" has no factual basis. That's a claim that is both beyond proof and is out of the realm of science.

Science is a discipline that never claims absolute truth, but it does make well-defined assumptions and one of those is a concrete, objective reality. Without this, you can't communicate statements that are either provable or consistent.

[etherealstill]

@thebigpaul666

We aren't arguing "orthodox" science. You're claiming that the very pillar science, objectivity, is compromised by out subjective interpretation. This leads to a myriad of interpretations on what is "real" or not, and in effect nullifies any attempt to create a model of reality that is communicable and consistent.

Yes, of course I reject your assertion. Many make the same, empty claim that you make without an iota of proof.

[threelegduck]

seems like a really smart guy, it's just too bad that he seems to use the language of pseudoscience. i've been trying to learn more about the ideas of maturana and varela ... thanks for posting this video

[DivisionbyZer0]

Read Mind in Life. He is definitely not a pseudoscientist nor is he using it's language. If you happen to be unaware of non-traditional and heterodox approches to problems in the sciences of mind and life then you need to start doing some reading. I suggest learning German and reading the transciptions of the Macy conferences on Cybernetics.

[DivisionbyZer0]

If you don't want to do that then look at a mainstream cognitive scientists critique of the field which he helped to pioneer -- Cognition and Reality by Ulrich Neisser. The Autopoeitic theory of biology and it's implications for cognition are not trivial or pseudoscientific. It is science by it's own dynamics that has constructed itself in such a way to be reactionary against non-traditional approaches or counterveilling pressures against the standard metaphysics and practice of science.

[DivisionbyZer0]

But Kuhn talked already about the sociology of science 40 years ago. You've got some catching up to do.

[DivisionbyZer0]

Or you could actually read maturana and varela's papers in the peer reviewed journals they were originally published in if you are interested in "hard" science -- See "Bio-Systems"

[phobosx12]

i hate it when people even use the word 'pseudoscience' as if to say if it isnt in my 11th grade text book its irrelivant

[takezaspirit]

Thank you so much for posting this. He has been a big influence for me.

[aikiroots]

thank you for bringing us the posibility of viewing one of the great thinkers of our time,probably not recognized as such because his thinking was to disturbing for our rational positivist way of seeing and thinking "reality".

[zencat]

Fransico points to relativity or duality, Evan to the absolute or non-duality. Albiet paradoxically, the two conditions exist together inseparably- not one, not two.

[ThatsBSman]

The rocketman is back!

Yeah, who wants to be meta-saved.?

[ThatsBSman]

Bridging the convergence gap between metaphysics & material science seems like the quest for the Holy Grail.

Question: Can science,philosophy,terminology­, concepts,language etc., ever fully express the ineffable,inexpressible quality that is life.?

(Might be fun trying though).

[redliterocket4]

I don't think science, philosophy, terminology, language, etc. can fully express the felt presence of immediate experience precisely because if they could, experience would cease to exist as something immediately present. Life would become a process of gear turning and equation crunching, something mediated rather than existential. But I don't think this is at all possible.

[redliterocket4]

I think Varela is motivated by the notion that this search for an objectively definable reality is not a requirement of science. I think he wants to replace it with "objectivity in parentheses," or the notion that science can work as if there were a world independent of observers, but that the metaphysical assumption that such a world actually exists is unnecessary.

[ThatsBSman]

Wonders to self... Would self really change if this were possible?

[redliterocket4]

Scientific facts would regain their cultural context and people would no longer expect theory and technology to save us from ourselves.

[GeraldP1983]

thanks for this good info

[normonics]

His mission "let's take this perspective and make it into a respectful science".....systems.........S­ymbiosis.....Thse are already ideas good science considers, varelas project is not lost or ignored.....be careful not to assume people using different jargon than varela just 'don't get it'....I think that is dangerous thinking.

[redliterocket4]

I hear you. I don't think he has been ignored at all. I just wanted to resurrect him in cyberspace.

[zezt]

"the bee dreams up the flower, the flower dreams up the bee"

I LOVE that!!!

Relation~ships

[cardellacole1]

thanks for this middle home bit iv not thought of it with others as a home of experience ive more thought about it as is and no one else would agree so great yes

[cardellacole1]

we are not subject to unique fixed laws, i dont believe in phisical reality........i like this midle experience home concept and the way the bee dreams up the flower i agree that we are not subject to fixed laws, but i have a problem with just dismissing the idea of phisical reality, i allready believed the bee dream because reality for me is the manifestation of dreams and thoughts but thats what i call phisical reality

[Ignare]

Explanatory pluralism is a great pragmatist notion. But when we realise that this first person defense is a direct consequence of our third person understanding of the function and evolution of the brain why not admit that third person is more fertile perspective ?

[tyrbolo]

I would think that Isaac Newton's work would

have penetrated into these peoples reality

model by now. Well maybe in another 300

years. Color is frequency. The stars of the

heaven proclaim this with their doppler shift.

[redliterocket4]

Frequency is an abstract measurement constructed by the brain's ability to use language and symbolize. This symbolic activity opens up an emergent domain which we cannot naively assume is nothing more than a mirror of the "objective" world. Color, on the other hand, is a directly experienced reality, something we experience without having to learn how to speak or understand a language.

[redliterocket4]

Newton invented a language to describe a phenomena which all other humans with similar brains and language using abilities can verify. What he did not do is prove that our experience of color is really just a frequency of light. Our experience of color is related to the quality of light, but not reducible to it.

[cardellacole1]

so if colour was to the emotions what an angel is to the mind, aingels would be real if angels were also colours

[cardellacole1]

also like colours i should say

[cardellacole1]

there fore an aingel can be related to the QUALITY OF LIGHT but not reduceable to it

[ContraWagner]

I have been quite troubled about the problem of qualia for a while now. You probably know where I stand on this.

I think that even if qualia turns out to be something genuinely irreducible to physics, I think that it won't be anything like we previously have been thinking about. Something beyond substance dualism we think about in daily life.. I think that it's a truly ineffable subject.

[redliterocket4]

I don't think we have to wait to find out if 1st person experience can be reduced to physics or not. Physics is an activity which makes sense only to persons with a 1st person perspective. The activity of devising and testing new physical theories is also something which requires a conscious awareness of what counts as evidence, of what is convincing, etc.

[redliterocket4]

My position is something which leans in the direction that physics can be reduced to phenomenology, or at least that our phenomenal experience always comes first. Physical science is the most abstract of all the sciences, and in this sense the most distant from our 1st person experience of the world. In my mind, it is impossible for an abstract system of physical science to somehow swallow up the directly present reality of conscious awareness.

[redliterocket4]

The best physics can do is come up with a reasonably convincing description of the process which is neurally correlated to consciousness. But this does not amount to reducing consciousness to physics. This is consciousness describing itself in one of the many valid ways it can develop to do so.

[blackcrow6667]

If consciousness can be shaped by physical means, we have evidence enough to sustain a materialist and deterministic approach to consciousness.

You can accept new perspectives with your "explanatory pluralism" but it must somehow be additive or complementary which is to say, you have to integrate the two at some point ..you can't just accept another as distinct and unrelated.

[cardellacole1]

blackcrow i believe love to be the force that holds wave and particle together ..ie is light so for me its not a pluralism

[ContraWagner]

Well, many philosophers and cognitive scientists already reject "folk psychology" as we all reject something like pre-Newtonian mechanics.

[redliterocket4]

If a cognitive scientist is an eliminative materialist, they have a vested interest in rejecting normal people's way of talking about mental states and motivations. But I would say that the desire to devise some privileged language purporting to be the only true explanation of mental activity is the most pernicious example of scientific hubris since Descartes declared that animals cannot feel.

[redliterocket4]

I'm more a proponent of explanatory pluralism. There are many ways to approach describing this reality we call home. It all depends on what your goals are, on what is most important to you, one what you choose to measure and what you choose to ignore, etc.

[cardellacole1]

well said

[ContraWagner]

A materialist must be eliminativist as well. But we don't have to accept what science reveals to us in real life. For example, we are quite sure of ourselves and human vegetables are no more sentient than cows and pigs, but we still value his or her life more than cows and pigs.

[StevenErnest]

Redlit, you do a lot of interesting vids, but it's always kind of hard to hear your low audio -- if you could ever find a way to up it, in "post production," or a better mic -- would be great! Not just this vid, but the ones where you talk. Keep up the good work!

[redliterocket4]

I can hear it on my speakers reasonably well. Is it completely inaudible on yours?

[StevenErnest]

No, no, I can make it out if I turn up my volume. Mainly the ones where you're talking -- I can understand you, but just have to strain a bit. Maybe it's just me.

[inmendham]

boo

[redliterocket4]

Knowledge as representation implies that our brains are involved in the business of internally mirroring the outside world. What Varela is saying is that the brain is not a mirror but a reality stabilizer. It allows human beings to live in and share a world of relative consistency. What it does not do is open up our perception to some objective world which exists as it does independently of us. The world does not exist outside of the observer. Worlds and brains are co-constitutive.

[redliterocket4]

Different brains have different worlds, but because all human brains are nearly identical, we can do science and have conversations. Animals have entirely different nervous sytems, and so they live in and exploit worlds entirely different than ours. Wittgenstein once said that even if a lion could talk, we could not understand it. This is because the lion lives in another world.

[redliterocket4]

The intellect is a function of the human brain, a quite useful function. It allows us to step outside our emotional biases and make statements about our world which apply to everyone, not just ourselves. But to extend the power of the intellect beyond revealing truths relative to the human realm into the so-called objective world seems to me to ignore the reality of our biological existence.

[redliterocket4]

Our perceptions are limited by the biological tools we possess. We do not see the birds, the trees, and the sky as pre-existing objects. We see what two retinas and a complicated network of neural cells make out of the birds, the trees, and the sky. A different set of biological tools would see a different natural setting. Who is to say which is the "real" or "objective" version?

[normonics]

reread my paper for mundale.

[normonics]

oops disregard that comment I thought this lengthy response was to me ;) I say boo too boo.