| Welcome to Jared's house o' coffee and pretense A friend of mine has been kind enough to send me her thoughts about the post of the twelth (ding an sich). I thought I might post some of her thoughts here and go through them a bit. What follows is her letter (heavily excerpted) and my responses.
> I first note that I know nothing of "Hyperion" other than its modeling on the > Canterbury Tales, and that the first story frightened me quite a lot.Neat. The first, uh canto (seems fitting, keeping the poem of the same name in mind... work with me here :) ), is frightening. It's hard to think about pain on that scope. It's a shame Simmons seems to give up on that theme. I suppose it would have been difficult for the story to proceed with father Hoyt trapped among the plateau dwellers.
> By thing-in-itself, we seem to mean the essence or truth of a thing, correct? > Its totality? The assumption seems to be since we cannot know the totality of > the thing, we must then deny the thing. I take the opposite tack and say that > since the thing persists in producing observable phenomena, I must then believe > in the thing, even if I can only approximate it through its phenomena. If I > find a footprint in the forest, but no person nearby, I do not then deny that a > person made the footprint. I conclude that the person left the area. The > counter-argument, of course, is that I am "creating" the phenomena. This may be > so, but I note then that despite my ongoing creation of the world, I still make > some damn annoying figments.I believe that would be the same thing. I don't believe there is any implicit denial here, however. The phrase itself seems to only indicate positive existence. Semantic issue, I suppose. I was just questioning the proposition. That is, can anything exist independent of observation. I feel a little dumb about it now. I accidentally wandered in to the world's most famous koan. I do very much like the idea of an object producing observable phenomena.... it has a certain grace to it. In the end I guess I have to trust my senses or spiral farther off into this kind of pretentiousness. *grin*
> All right then. If we take as givens that the thing-itself exists and that it > produces observable phenomena, the question is then if one's observation of said > phenomena changes the thing itself. Again, I say no. It's true in psychology > we have a saying, "Observation changes the behavior of the observed," but I > think this is true only with regard to things that have behavior. I could > culture mold and observe it while standing on my head reciting the Bhagavad Vita > backwards, but I daresay the mold will not react. If I look at a painting and > observe that there are haystacks in it, the painting is no less a painting. > Likewise, if I observe you dislike Russian food, you're no less the totality of > yourself, but I know not to take you out for borscht.Ok. Point well taken. I think I misspoke. I should have worded my initial proposition differently. What I had in mind is more like assembling an object in a clean-room. That is, is there any way to handle, mentally, an object without observing it. I warned you that it was mental masturbation of the highest order. I remember thinking about this when I learned about the uncertainty principle... I should have written my thoughts on the matter down then. I am often amazed at how much time I spend retracing my own steps. I don't believe that my observation of a thing changes it... if anything I have only added the weight of my internal representation to some kind of collective idea of the object and that is kind of a stretch. :)
> Incidentally, this raises a question that's always puzzled me: if there are > multiple observers and an object, how does the object decide which observer its > behavior derives from? And if we are all imposing our own worldview on the > object, how is it we then may describe the object to each other and recognize in > the description the object we observed? Or do the words change to match each > worldview? If I see a red block and you see a yellow ball, when you tell me you > saw a yellow ball, do I hear you say a red block because I need to believe in > the integrity of my own perceptions?In the immortal words of Emeril, let's kick it up a notch. This, of course, would stipulate that you believed observation affected the observed... I'm now completely befuddled as to where we stand on that issue. It is a neat question, though, and one of the coffin-nails for the whole argument. Occam's razor would seem to rule out the on-the-fly type of translation between representations for communication's sake... er... That was a dumb statement, on my part. What is linguistic communication if not that very translation? Oh well. I guess that leaves us with enough of a common representation for each of us to be able to understand the other's description. This is a lot more complicated issue, yes? I just completely talked myself around on this one. Anyone else want a piece of the confusion? Chris? I know you have a certain disdain for this sort of thing but it would be fun to have your two cents.
> I believe that things exist regardless of whether or not we think they should, > that they show us pieces of themselves, and that we can only ever hope to > approximate what they truly are. I also believe that sometimes we meet people > who reflect us and who act as keys to let us into new areas of ourselves. In > closing, I know I'll never know the totality of Jared, but I can certainly try > to collate as much observable phenomena as I may in order to approximate as well > as I can. :)lol. I gotta agree with you on this one. You can now add big ol dork to your observations of me.
> Tori said it, too: "and I think maybe there're pieces of me you've never > seen/maybe she's just pieces of me you've never seen...." Fun, non? I guess I'll stop now. *ignores the sigh of relief* Thanks, KH, for chippin in. I always enjoy it. :) Some stuff My music rec today is a single song: Feel the Pain by Dinosaur Jr. I don't know why I like this song. *shrug* Plug o' the day: Bobby's Big Page of Nothingness. There's nothing there but maybe if I embarrass him he'll put something up. *evil grin* The net is beginning to change the way we speak. I, for one, think it's neat. I has a sexy terseness to it. "Forgot my woman, lost my friends. Things I've done, and where I've been. Sleep and sweat, the mirror's cold, see my face, it's growin old" As always, if this sparks you or you want to share something with me, please do so. |