In the beginning

[Hlafordlaes]

Only if you accept our possibly backwards concept of cause and effect. If time is actually backward, we got that wrong too-- then falling isn't caused by a potential, it is the cause of potential.

I agree that normal causal thinking appears to fail. That's why I pointed out that we really don't know that normal causal thinking has anything to do with how the universe actually works. It may very well have a lot more to do with how intelligence works.

Sooo, I can be a smart alec and complain about your post and in so doing, cause it! Hey, me and my keyboard, we's gots us some licks!

[Ken G]

Or perhaps we should say my post would still cause your complaint, but your complaint, being the effect of that cause, is what required the cause-- thereby coming "first" from the universe's perspective. Of course, the real lesson here is, there is not a "universe's perspective" in the first place, and that's why we cannot use our own perspective to dictate to the universe how it should behave.

[George]

Only if you accept our possibly backwards concept of cause and effect. If time is actually backward, we got that wrong too-- then falling isn't caused by a potential, it is the cause of potential.

Your effect is causing me to have a headache, so perhaps things can be backwards. Is there much weight [in the physics community] to the idea of reverse time, or are you pushing the envelope given that it will take some novel thinking to gain siginificant progress? I read little of such things.

I agree that normal causal thinking appears to fail. That's why I pointed out that we really don't know that normal causal thinking has anything to do with how the universe actually works. It may very well have a lot more to do with how intelligence works.

Nicely put. Engineering requires both to work together, so don't let them get too independent.

Yes, it's an important point-- disorder increases expressly because of our concept of what disorder is (to wit, states with larger numbers of ways of happening). It's all on us-- what we call "disorder." The second law says that disorder must increase, but it does not say that the most disordered state must occur-- there has to be a path to that state that obeys the laws. The laws tend to select paths that lead to complexity on small scales and disorder on large scales, but not states of complete disorder, at least not right away.

Yep. I think when I read the article's statement that I immediatley considered a corollary that if we provide an energy source to move through a system of stuff, then negative entropy is inevitable, though localized only since the 2nd law is active for the whole, and given enough time for complexity to form.

This is fortunate-- the second law of thermodynamics by itself would not lead to an interesting universe, it is only when it is augmented by all the other laws that these more interesting paths to disorder get selected.

Yes. Personally, I think the 2nd law deserves top billing. Would it not be easy to add the simple points of the first law to the second since understanding the second makes the first superfluous? Or do some need that first baby step?

[Ken G]

Your effect is causing me to have a headache, so perhaps things can be backwards. Is there much weight [in the physics community] to the idea of reverse time, or are you pushing the envelope given that it will take some novel thinking to gain siginificant progress?

What I'm pushing is that the "arrow of time" is not something that is "in" the universe, it is something that is "in" how our minds conceptualize the universe. We haven't the least idea what cause and effect really means, it is just a convenient way to organize our thinking that helps us survive and achieve other goals. The universe needs not give a hoot about our survival, or our concepts, and it could be "just as true" that effects are what lead to causes by virtue of needing them to be there. In that sense, we cannot find any inconsistency in a universe that has effects come first, like falling bodies, which logically require what we see as causes, like gravitational potentials. Effects are not necessitated by causes, causes are necessitated by effects, and so we can just as easily say that effects precede causes in some equally "real" sense, that's just not how we define the concept of time.

Personally, I think the 2nd law deserves top billing. Would it not be easy to add the simple points of the first law to the second since understanding the second makes the first superfluous? Or do some need that first baby step?

I guess we think a bit differently about those two laws. To me, the first law has real teeth-- we define a concept of energy, and find that its conservation is an extremely powerful unifying principle. But the second law is rather tautological once we have accepted the usefulness of the concept of randomness. In essence, the first law is a law about the reasons that things happen, and the second law is a law about what happens when occurences do not require any reason. So the two laws work in tandem, with considerable tension between them, much like the "yin-yang" concept of some eastern modes of thought.

[George]

What I'm pushing is that the "arrow of time" is not something that is "in" the universe, it is something that is "in" how our minds conceptualize the universe.

You've made many helpful arguments of this in the past, and it is important since we must understand what "seeing" is in order to advance it. We see a time arrow based on tons of circumstantial evidence, so we plug the hole that connects the seqence process observed with our arrow, but there is no bow that shot it and no sound explanation of why the arrow is there in the first place. Thus, it seems wise to ask if it is really there.

We haven't the least idea what cause and effect really means, it is just a convenient way to organize our thinking that helps us survive and achieve other goals.

That may be a little strong since we define effect in a way that justifies its logical connection with cause. I wonder if another word rather than "effect" would better suit the idea of "effect" being the cause, or complimentary with it? This would avoid an apparent definitional ambiguity, assuming I'm right. [Grammar ain't my strong suit.]

In that sense, we cannot find any inconsistency in a universe that has effects come first, like falling bodies, which logically require what we see as causes, like gravitational potentials. Effects are not necessitated by causes, causes are necessitated by effects, and so we can just as easily say that effects precede causes in some equally "real" sense, that's just not how we define the concept of time.

Gravity would a be a good example of your claim, but there are many examples where our definitions are quite reasonable. This is especially true in social behavior involving the idea of free will. If we set aside the arrow of time, then the physics examples fade quickly away, apparently. Perhaps the old antipodal apples example is one that has logical merit when taken as a whole; regardless of cause, it is the apples that move toward the Earth because it is illogical to claim the Earth moves in all directions all the time, contrary to compiled observations. [Here we go again. Did you smack your forehead? ]

I guess we think a bit differently about those two laws. To me, the first law has real teeth-- we define a concept of energy, and find that its conservation is an extremely powerful unifying principle. But the second law is rather tautological once we have accepted the usefulness of the concept of randomness. In essence, the first law is a law about the reasons that things happen, and the second law is a law about what happens when occurences do not require any reason. So the two laws work in tandem, with considerable tension between them, much like the "yin-yang" concept of some eastern modes of thought.

I still see the meat and potatoes in the 2nd law as I don't think it would be hard to include conservation with it. It's the 2nd law that has so much impact upon thermo. But I'm just rambling, really.

[Ken G]

That may be a little strong since we define effect in a way that justifies its logical connection with cause. I wonder if another word rather than "effect" would better suit the idea of "effect" being the cause, or complimentary with it? This would avoid an apparent definitional ambiguity, assuming I'm right.

I'm not aware of any definition of "effect" that is different from "something that could not have happened without the cause it is connected with." Note there is no time arrow anywhere in that statement, the statement is nought but a logical connection-- the time arrow is something we add on top of it. Time is the act of noticing that all causes come before all effects, there's never a mixture one way and the other, but what we mean by "coming before" versus "coming after" is nothing beyond that splitting into two sets-- there's no "arrow" there except what comes from the architecture of our minds-- we can recall the past but not the future, and because of that, we assert a particular connection between cause and effect that is more specific than what we can demonstrate (that the effect follows the cause). In fact, it is a bit odd how we do this-- a given cause can have many effects, and a given effect can stem from many causes, so there would not appear to be any fundamental difference between a cause and an effect that would allow us to say that one really was the reason for the other.

If I shoot someone, and they are dead, you could say that the reason they are dead is that I shot them. But I could also say that the reason I shot them is that they became dead by gunshot, and I had a gun, so it was logically necessary that I shoot them. The fact that my mind was not aware of their death at the time I pulled the trigger did not in any way liberate me from the logical necessity that they would soon be dead by gunshot, so one could say that the idea that I had a choice in shooting them is a kind of mental illusion I created as part of the whole cause/effect hoax that we are perpetrating on ourselves to make sense of our reality.

I don't say this view is necessarily correct, only that it is just as correct as any other-- the universe does not reveal this kind of secret to us, we just put it together in a way that works for us and makes sense to us. It's all about how our brains cope-- that's pretty much what science is too.

Gravity would a be a good example of your claim, but there are many examples where our definitions are quite reasonable. This is especially true in social behavior involving the idea of free will.

Yes, but free will is also a mental construct, a way of coping. It is how we interact with and make sense of our experience, and that's all well and good, as long as we recognize it is coming from us-- not necessarily from the universe (and the same for "determinism", which is also one of our coping strategies, and is not the logical complement of free will as it is sometimes described). That's my core point here-- we must not confuse our ways of making sense with how things actually are, so we must also not impose our ways of making sense onto aspects of the universe (like its beginnings) that we are really in no place to dictate.

If we set aside the arrow of time, then the physics examples fade quickly away, apparently. Perhaps the old antipodal apples example is one that has logical merit when taken as a whole; regardless of cause, it is the apples that move toward the Earth because it is illogical to claim the Earth moves in all directions all the time, contrary to compiled observations. [Here we go again. Did you smack your forehead? ]

Yes-- for I would say that neither the Earth nor the apples move, motion is a relationship between the two that does not require that we take sides in the issue of attributing it to one or the other.

I still see the meat and potatoes in the 2nd law as I don't think it would be hard to include conservation with it. It's the 2nd law that has so much impact upon thermo.

It does have a huge impact on thermodynamics, but remember, thermodynamics includes our ways of collecting, classifying, and attributing importance to various events. The universe by itself might not give a hoot if the air in the room is spread out evenly or concentrated on one side-- it only cares about the actual state of the gas, and any such state is just as vastly unlikely as the states that we attribute special importance to (like a special state that would suffocate us). Thus, the second law of thermodynamics is as much a sociological principle as a physics one.

[Len Moran]

What I'm pushing is that the "arrow of time" is not something that is "in" the universe, it is something that is "in" how our minds conceptualize the universe. We haven't the least idea what cause and effect really means, it is just a convenient way to organize our thinking that helps us survive and achieve other goals. The universe needs not give a hoot about our survival, or our concepts, and it could be "just as true" that effects are what lead to causes by virtue of needing them to be there. In that sense, we cannot find any inconsistency in a universe that has effects come first, like falling bodies, which logically require what we see as causes, like gravitational potentials. Effects are not necessitated by causes, causes are necessitated by effects, and so we can just as easily say that effects precede causes in some equally "real" sense, that's just not how we define the concept of time.

I must admit that I sometimes get the idea (maybe incorrectly) that you separate the mind from the universe in a kind of dualist manner, the universe being “something out there” that is interpreted by our minds. So cause and effect, physical laws, space and time, matter, movement, are products of the mind interpreting the raw data of the universe.

Thus data from the universe may seem to imply a moving object once our mind (in a dualist sense) gets hold of “data” (whatever that data may be, I’m not imparting any form to it), but outside of that data collection and interpretation by the mind, there is no such thing as an object and movement, just data. However this scenario seems to bring in an element of dualism that seems to be a matter of convenience – a physical entity (the mind), takes in raw data (the universe) and then constructs our reality. But isn’t that dualist notion of a mind being separated from the raw data a construction from a construction?

I think what I am trying to say is that perhaps our reality is not an interpretation from our minds (treated as a separate observing and interpreting entity in a dualist sense), but rather that our minds are a part of the construction. Within this "whole" such entities as cause and effect, space and time, localised objects, stars, galaxies are real - they have substance outside of the mind as we define the mind in a dualist sense, but outside of the "whole" they all cease to have intrinsic properties or meanings.

I don't think I am departing from you in general terms - it's just this issue of seeing the mind as "something" and everything outside of the mind as being "something else" with the physical mixing of the two giving our reality that I can’t quite get on with – if indeed that is what you are saying. It is entirely possible that I am misinterpreting your philosophical stance.

[Ken G]

But isn’t that dualist notion of a mind being separated from the raw data a construction from a construction?

Yes. Once we recognize the undeniable truth that all we ever get is constructions, then everything is a construction from a construction from a construction. There is no "base" to the pyramid, it's constructions all the way down. What else could it be? The idea that we perceive the universe just as it is is quite a bit past "naive"-- it's downright crazy. Unless, of course, we take the vastly more reasonable step of simply defining what we mean by "the universe" as our constructions of it, and then it is how we perceive/imagine it by definition. The key step is noticing our part in the play, because once we see our own fingerprints on everything "around" us, we can begin to take a more rational stance about what we think we know.

I think what I am trying to say is that perhaps our reality is not an interpretation from our minds (treated as a separate observing and interpreting entity in a dualist sense), but rather that our minds are a part of the construction. Within this "whole" such entities as cause and effect, space and time, localised objects, stars, galaxies are real - they have substance outside of the mind as we define the mind in a dualist sense, but outside of the "whole" they all cease to have intrinsic properties or meanings.

If the problem is with the dualism, then the solution is not to unite the parts, but to step pretending there are two parts to unite. Our minds are having a kind of conversation with the universe, akin to a phone conversation with people on either end and a phone line between them. Except, the people on each end are part of the phone line, because they are all part of the same universe. So there is only the phone line, that's all there is, but the only way to make sense of what is happening in the phone line is to imagine that there are people at each end-- that's the model that our brains use to interpret the chatter on that line. It's a good model, it serves its purpose, but it's not to be taken seriously-- more to the point is the idea that what is happening in that line is a kind of conversation or interchange, not a fly on the wall observing the other side.

To me, this approach is "idealism done right"-- I don't know what flavor Berkeley intended, but most people who have a problem with idealism seem to intepret it as suggesting that we can change our reality by imagining it differently. That's not a power that we are afforded-- imagination and idealism are two very different concepts. Idealism cannot assert that everything that we imagine in our minds is real, it can only assert that everything that is real is in some way imagined in our minds. That's not the fault of idealism, it's our fault-- we forgot to make the distinction between reality and how we make sense of it, the distinction between truth and meaning. Our own imprecision is the source of the objections to idealism, but they are objections all the same.

I don't think I am departing from you in general terms - it's just this issue of seeing the mind as "something" and everything outside of the mind as being "something else" with the physical mixing of the two giving our reality that I can’t quite get on with – if indeed that is what you are saying. It is entirely possible that I am misinterpreting your philosophical stance.

I think the problem there is on which side of the "truth or meaning" divide is the separation between mind and reality-- I would place that separation on the meaning side, not the truth side. So when I make that separation, I am not claiming it really exists, I'm claiming it's part of how we can try to make sense of things. But we must not take it to the extreme of the "fly on the wall", nor the extreme that the reality is "out there" independent of us, but merely to the point that we can notice the role our intelligence has taken on in the whole endeavor of understanding "reality."

[Hlafordlaes]

I was thinking of getting on-line today and just come out and request a philosophical statement, but see Len Moran beat me to it.

I'll agree that we need to separate the meaning we make of truth from truth/reality itself. There are good linguistic arguments to be made to support that, strong neural feedback loops to the senses that can impose expectation on perception (illusion), and the distinctions you address between data models and physical systems in the notorious butterfly thread. And akin to the way we only see a small part of the EM spectrum, we can only deal with that range of data and concepts that is within our wetware specs. All meaning is circular in that all definitions use parts of the same whole to derive meaning, a whole that unobservable from without and can be never described.

But even while admitting that mental representation is a surrogate shadow, are we then free to play with time or cause and effect so drastically as you describe? Can't some argument be made that there is a great deal of reliability in our mental models in that we are highly successful in interacting with our environment?

Stated elsewise, what if we go down the sentience curve to, say, butterflies. They must be modeling in some fashion, yet in no way imposing as much baggage as we might. Or, are microbes the ones who live life in the purist connection, simply being and dealing with truth without filters? Then, would not evolution seem to indicate we, too, have come thus far because our models are, as the saying goes, good enough for government work?

(Keep in mind I am "quite a bit past 'naive'-- and downright crazy.")

[Ken G]

But even while admitting that mental representation is a surrogate shadow, are we then free to play with time or cause and effect so drastically as you describe? Can't some argument be made that there is a great deal of reliability in our mental models in that we are highly successful in interacting with our environment?

Absolutely, the issue is very much in what is the success we are seeking for these models. There is a right way and a wrong way to use a model-- the right way is to empower predictions, to unify and simplify and make sense of outcomes, to meet objectives-- often survival objectives, or just personal goals. That's all well and good, that's just what cause/effect does, just what time does, what any chapter in a physics book does. My issue is when we forget what we set out to accomplish, and make the mistake of thinking that our models at some point become masters of the reality rather than servants of reality. There are many examples of the former problem, but the relevant one here is the oft-claimed idea that "something does not come from nothing", so the universe cannot have a beginning. George raised a very valid objection to the idea that simply making all the energy in the universe add up to zero satisfies any issues with gravity being responsible for the creation of the universe (the Hawking-esque idea that a universe can spring from nothing because it merely generates an equal negative gravitational energy whenever it causes positive kinetic energy to appear), but I pointed the finger at what I feel is the proper target of that objection: the very idea that what the universe can or cannot do is somehow superceded by the laws we have derived to understand what it can and cannot do. So I pointed out that it might be just as correct to claim that effects necessitate causes, as it is to claim that causes are responsible for effects. So to anyone who is troubled by a universe having a beginning, yet not troubled by it having an end, I would just say call the beginning the end and assert that we have mistaken the direction that it serves our intelligence to imagine that time flows. We have forgotten that the flow of time is yet another model with some set of specific goals, not an overarching logical necessity involving the actual progress of time independently of that (rather short-sighted) set of goals. In a universe with no intelligences, the sense of time, in terms of logical necessity, could go in either direction with no difficulty, for who would be there to object to either interpretation of that direction?

Stated elsewise, what if we go down the sentience curve to, say, butterflies. They must be modeling in some fashion, yet in no way imposing as much baggage as we might. Or, are microbes the ones who live life in the purist connection, simply being and dealing with truth without filters? Then, would not evolution seem to indicate we, too, have come thus far because our models are, as the saying goes, good enough for government work?

No question, our models are good. They do what we want them to do. But what is it that we want them to do, that's the rub.

(Keep in mind I am "quite a bit past 'naive'-- and downright crazy.")

That's the ultimate Catch-22: to use our intelligence to function at all in this bizarre and mind-boggling universe, we may all need to be quite a bit crazy.

[Len Moran]

So when I make that separation, I am not claiming it really exists, I'm claiming it's part of how we can try to make sense of things. But we must not take it to the extreme of the "fly on the wall", nor the extreme that the reality is "out there" independent of us, but merely to the point that we can notice the role our intelligence has taken on in the whole endeavor of understanding "reality."

So what you would say is that our reality, (our “whole” as I like to put it) is “something”. Within this “something” our intelligence makes sense of the same by establishing a workable interpretation of the “something”. That plays out in terms of space and time, cause and effect. It’s very tempting to think that that interpretation is precisely what the “something” is – that there is a one to one correspondence, but of course since the interpretation (or model) is all we can ever know (how can we ever step outside of the “whole” and examine it), it is plain to see that we can not assert that such a one to one correspondence is the case, and it borders on (or is worse than) naivety to make such an assumption.

I’m not sure if this is a strong stance of idealism – it seems to me that an acknowledgement that we are modelling “something” is to assign a form of realism to the “something” – it exists as an ultimate source, although inaccessible (because we cannot step outside of our “whole” and look at the “something”).

Of course such a definition of realism is very weak, hardly on the same scale as the form of realism held dear by most physicists, but still, I think it is realism all the same – a source that gives rise to our modelling. If we are to say that space and time, cause and effect are models of the “something” then that does seem to place the “something” on pretty much the same point on a sliding scale as my opted for open realism as expounded by Bernard d’Espagnat. Of course, as we have discussed before, that sliding scale goes from naive realism to radical idealism, and you have pointed out that the distinction between realism and idealism gets very blurred in the middle.

I think you have clarified the issues of dualism I had – I did slip (yet again) in placing an ontological status on to some of these concepts (one might have thought I would have learned by now) - as you say, dualism is the model, it’s all we have to make sense of the “something” – we shouldn’t confuse the notion of the mind at point A making sense of an object at point B giving an interpretation C as actually playing out in a one to one correspondence with the “something” – it is just the only way in which we can model the “something”.

[Ken G]

So what you would say is that our reality, (our “whole” as I like to put it) is “something”. Within this “something” our intelligence makes sense of the same by establishing a workable interpretation of the “something”.

The latter sentence seems clear enough, but the former sentence, it's not so clear what that actually means. The "something" may just be our act of making sense, what that act is based on is as much a part of us as the making sense part. But there has to be some "we", and there's the things we use our brains for, so we say there was something there "first"-- though this all lives inside our making sense, none of that can be said to come before our making sense.

I’m not sure if this is a strong stance of idealism – it seems to me that an acknowledgement that we are modelling “something” is to assign a form of realism to the “something” – it exists as an ultimate source, although inaccessible (because we cannot step outside of our “whole” and look at the “something”).

To me, the main point is that either realism or idealism lies in part of our making sense. The problem with some idealism is that it makes a claim prior to our making sense, then says "see, that's what makes sense." That's inconsistent-- if we accept that all we ever get is what we make sense of, then we cannot claim to be making assertions about anything prior, above, or outside of, our process of making sense. So idealism is not a claim about reality, it is a kind of noticing of a tautology-- we are, in effect, making sense of our own process of making sense, not of anything else. The flip side of that is it also prohibits us from making claims about the things we cannot make sense of, so if someone wants to say that realism applies beyond what we can make sense of, then idealism cannot contradict that-- it can only be skeptical of the coherence or testability of such a claim. Basically, I'm saying the difference between idealism and realism is not a stance about what exists, it is a stance about what we are trying to accomplish in thinking about what exists. Hence it is a debate for the words themselves, a struggle for command of the field of battle, moreso than a determination of which is right or wrong. It is even more fundamental than right and wrong, for before one can claim to be right, one must agree on the criteria for determining rightness.

If we are to say that space and time, cause and effect are models of the “something” then that does seem to place the “something” on pretty much the same point on a sliding scale as my opted for open realism as expounded by Bernard d’Espagnat. Of course, as we have discussed before, that sliding scale goes from naive realism to radical idealism, and you have pointed out that the distinction between realism and idealism gets very blurred in the middle.

Right, it's not even clear if there is any important distinction at all between saying we are modeling "something" that we don't understand, or saying we are modeling what we do understand and making no claims at all about what we don't. In practice, those two mindsets function pretty much indistinguishably-- it comes down to the chosen meaning for the word "existence". We can say that because things exist, we can talk about them to whatever extent we can understand them, or we can say that before we can even say what "existence" means, we have to first understand something, and therefore the term can never be extended beyond our understanding. That's why my sig says that intelligence can only recognize itself, it can never bootstrap itself beyond its own capabilities. We can explore the knowable unknowns, but not the unknowable unknowns, and so when the choices only differ in the realm of those unknowable unknowns, there is no fundamental distinctions between the stances any more.

I think you have clarified the issues of dualism I had – I did slip (yet again) in placing an ontological status on to some of these concepts (one might have thought I would have learned by now) - as you say, dualism is the model, it’s all we have to make sense of the “something” – we shouldn’t confuse the notion of the mind at point A making sense of an object at point B giving an interpretation C as actually playing out in a one to one correspondence with the “something” – it is just the only way in which we can model the “something”.

Yes, I agree with that, and I point out that even the concept of the "something" at B is not separable from the interpretation C made by mind A-- we only have A, B, and C as all part of C. Idealism says this means there is only C, realism says there is also A and B, but the differences there only appear in the realms beyond A, B, or C, and whether or not any such realms exist is impossible to say expressly because coherent language is restricted to the A/B/C model, which is itself part of C. That is the realm of our intelligence, what could we gain by leaving it?

[George]

I'm not aware of any definition of "effect" that is different from "something that could not have happened without the cause it is connected with."

Yes, if I understand your direction, however, I see the reversing of the time arrow swapping the definitions, where the effect becomes the cause yet still labeled "effect" but effect always follows cause. It's not much of an issue considering the bigger bizarre claim, and only slightly less frivolous, than the 2nd law moving up a notch.

Note there is no time arrow anywhere in that statement, the statement is nought but a logical connection-- the time arrow is something we add on top of it. Time is the act of noticing that all causes come before all effects, there's never a mixture one way and the other, but what we mean by "coming before" versus "coming after" is nothing beyond that splitting into two sets-- there's no "arrow" there except what comes from the architecture of our minds-- we can recall the past but not the future, and because of that, we assert a particular connection between cause and effect that is more specific than what we can demonstrate (that the effect follows the cause). In fact, it is a bit odd how we do this-- a given cause can have many effects, and a given effect can stem from many causes, so there would not appear to be any fundamental difference between a cause and an effect that would allow us to say that one really was the reason for the other.

Yes, but I'm just saying that if we reverse the time direction and, thus, the order, but hold to the definions, then are we not attempting to make the effect be seen as the cause, hence the definition ambiguity, contrary to the definition?

If I shoot someone, and they are dead, you could say that the reason they are dead is that I shot them. But I could also say that the reason I shot them is that they became dead by gunshot, and I had a gun, so it was logically necessary that I shoot them. The fact that my mind was not aware of their death at the time I pulled the trigger did not in any way liberate me from the logical necessity that they would soon be dead by gunshot, so one could say that the idea that I had a choice in shooting them is a kind of mental illusion I created as part of the whole cause/effect hoax that we are perpetrating on ourselves to make sense of our reality.

Oooh, free will is on stage. "Why" can not be ignored if reason counts for anything. Why would you pull the trigger on someone that has already been shot? Why is this person bad -- assuming you don't shoot good guys? A reverse arrow only reveals you shooting a dead person, and even then it is the dead person somehow getting the bullet to go into the barrel of your gun and seal nicely into the casing where all that exploding stuff generates negative entropy almost instantly, etc. Given a choice of either arrow, the reverse is worse than bizzare [or even bizarre].... but only on the macro scale.

I like your thinking, nevertheless, if taken to the Planck scale, which, I assume, is where this has bubbled-up from. What if both arrows exist at the Planck level, given time is woven into space? It is thought that anti-matter existed briefly with matter, but they cancelled yet matter, somehow, was dominant. If time works both ways but the standard arrows pop in and out of the fabric slightly more often than the reverse, then the macro efffect is to see the standard arrow as the flow. An analogy would be a hot (or cold) water river has zillions of molecules that constantly move upstream and downstream over a tiny distance, but the net flow is always down hill. [Not studying quantum physics may have me up the wrong creek here, but I like your attempt to look under the hood of time, if we can find the hood. ]

I don't say this view is necessarily correct, only that it is just as correct as any other-- the universe does not reveal this kind of secret to us, we just put it together in a way that works for us and makes sense to us. It's all about how our brains cope-- that's pretty much what science is too.

I don't see the harm in disconnecting to find better connections, assuming such things can be defined. Hopefully so, else I'll go back to trees and bananas.

That's my core point here-- we must not confuse our ways of making sense with how things actually are, so we must also not impose our ways of making sense onto aspects of the universe (like its beginnings) that we are really in no place to dictate.

I like this view but nonsense can only be traversed if the bridge is short.

Yes-- for I would say that neither the Earth nor the apples move, motion is a relationship between the two that does not require that we take sides in the issue of attributing it to one or the other.

But we define motion as observed changes in position relative to time. Our observations present a mutually exclusive scenario with just two apples falling simultaneously. Ok, the last word's a wrinkle, but now use millions of "falling" apples and the logic becomes more established.

[Ken G]

Yes, but I'm just saying that if we reverse the time direction and, thus, the order, but hold to the definions, then are we not attempting to make the effect be seen as the cause, hence the definition ambiguity, contrary to the definition?

We can use the standard definition of time, and the standard definition of cause and effect, and we will find that effects come after causes, as per our definitions-- no matter what the universe is really doing there. I'm saying that the universe, on the other hand, might include some previously undiscovered reason to expect that our version of time is logically backward-- that effects precede causes by this other meaning of time. So none of the definitions need to change-- only their logical connections. It might be that effects require causes, so when effects appear, it is logical to expect their causes to crop up shortly-- in this different version of thinking about the arrow of time (it would be a different kind of time, not our definition of it, but perhaps one equally valid-- if so, it removes the usual objection around something coming from nothing in our version of time. The objection then becomes that something cannot turn into nothing-- but that is far from clear.)

"Why" can not be ignored if reason counts for anything.

That is indeed the whole point here-- just what does reason count for? I'm saying it is common for reason to count for more than we have any reason to imagine it should count for-- when we start telling the universe it needs to follow our preconceived version of reason, instead of educating our reason based on what the universe does. That reverses the proper mode of thinking in science.

Why would you pull the trigger on someone that has already been shot?

Why wouldn't I? If they've been shot by me, I can hardly not be their shooter. The concept of cause and effect takes its meaning within the model of determinism, and determinism comes with an interesting consequence-- it allows us to move quite freely in either direction in time. Indeed, it is common for a detective, following a deterministic trail, to track in the opposite direction of the flow of time (they start with the body, then analyze how they died, then analyze what could have caused such a death, then considered who had been on the scene, when they were there, where they can from, what motives they had, etc.-- all the logic is in reverse). Given this fact, by what authority do we then reverse the flow of that descriptive logic, just to tell the story in the more familiar direction of time? It's nothing but a convention.

I like your thinking, nevertheless, if taken to the Planck scale, which, I assume, is where this has bubbled-up from. What if both arrows exist at the Planck level, given time is woven into space? It is thought that anti-matter existed briefly with matter, but they cancelled yet matter, somehow, was dominant. If time works both ways but the standard arrows pop in and out of the fabric slightly more often than the reverse, then the macro efffect is to see the standard arrow as the flow. An analogy would be a hot (or cold) water river has zillions of molecules that constantly move upstream and downstream over a tiny distance, but the net flow is always down hill.

That seething froth of time going in both directions is like the sea of virtual particles in the vacuum-- particles that can be matter or antimatter (and as you know, antimatter is like matter going backward in time). That's an astute observation, but what I'm saying is that even the "net flow" in the river cannot be said to have a logical direction that comes from physics-- instead, it has a conventional direction that comes from something about our minds (whatever it is that allows us to recall the past but not the future). We take that observation and establish a convention around it, closely connected with the ways we partition independent states into categories that allows us to define the concept of entropy.

But we define motion as observed changes in position relative to time.

Changes in position relative to what? What is a position?

Our observations present a mutually exclusive scenario with just two apples falling simultaneously. Ok, the last word's a wrinkle, but now use millions of "falling" apples and the logic becomes more established.

When a million apples fall, they move relative to the Earth and to each other. But why should that require the Earth not be moving? We cannot assert anything about "which one is moving", for it all depends on our choice of reference frame. We could as easily choose any one of those apples as our stationary object, as choose the Earth for that distinction. Yes, it might seem arbitrary to choose one apple-- but not if we are an ant on that one apple.

[Len Moran]

Right, it's not even clear if there is any important distinction at all between saying we are modeling "something" that we don't understand, or saying we are modeling what we do understand and making no claims at all about what we don't. In practice, those two mindsets function pretty much indistinguishably-- it comes down to the chosen meaning for the word "existence". We can say that because things exist, we can talk about them to whatever extent we can understand them, or we can say that before we can even say what "existence" means, we have to first understand something, and therefore the term can never be extended beyond our understanding. That's why my sig says that intelligence can only recognize itself, it can never bootstrap itself beyond its own capabilities. We can explore the knowable unknowns, but not the unknowable unknowns, and so when the choices only differ in the realm of those unknowable unknowns, there is no fundamental distinctions between the stances any more.

So we have a reality that we agree models a “something”, and within that model space and time, cause and effect, form part of the construct. All we can say about the “something” is that it lies “outside” (and I use that word "outside" in a very loose sense - I don't mean it in a literal familiar kind of way) of our reality, and we have no means in which to access it. All we have is our reality, and all of our science (and intelligence) explores and defines that reality, it is not exploring or defining the “something”.

But I am still left with some nagging issues. A tree makes full use of space and time in the sense of it having an individual existence. Of course a tree is not aware of itself, and there is no means to describe what a tree’s perspective is – we extrapolate from our experience the oak growing from the acorn in terms of cause and effect, we notice that it makes use of space and time. So in a sense the tree can only ever be expressed in terms of our understanding of reality, we can’t get “inside” the tree so to speak and experience things from the tree’s perspective.

But does the tree depend on us “creating” space and time in our minds for it to exploit ?(well perhaps radical idealism would claim this), it presumably has some kind of source within the “something” - we can’t access that, and I know all we can do is to represent the tree in term of our reality, but even so, what does the tree think of that?

A monkey is aware of space in terms of a survival mechanism, but it doesn’t rely on us establishing a concept of space - surely that space is there for it just as it is there for us, it just may not appreciate it in the manner we think of it.

The question for me is what “exists” for rocks, trees, insects, fish, mammals, and humans? Does space and time exist for each of these, or is it out of bounds for us to ask that question (as I think you imply) – can we only ask in terms of referencing everything to our concept of space and time, cause and effect and dualism?

Or can we say, that emanating (in a manner that we can have no scientific conception of) from the “something” are intrinsic properties of space and time, laws, mind, dualism – in other words our “whole”? Within the “something” these properties have no meaning – they have no individual intrinsic properties in the manner those trees or rocks or humans make use of them. In this sense, the “whole” does have a one to one correspondence with our perception – space is the same for a tree as it is for us. This is not to assign ontological status to a tree or a rock independently of the “whole” – a rock doesn’t exist as a rock within the “something”, but within the “whole” (which is everything associated with our reality, but not referenced from any vantage point of a human or a fish or whatever – it’s just everything that emanates from the “something”) the rock is actually a rock existing in space and time.

I’m only really exploring here a concept of reality that doesn’t depend on intelligence to establish space and time, cause and effect which is the line you pursue. I can certainly see where you are coming from, and it makes a lot of sense. And I’m not pursuing the tree in the woods scenario, It’s more about me trying to establish the framework for thinking about these questions. I’m prepared to accept that it makes no sense to try and establish what reality is outside of our intelligence and that our means of modelling the “something” can only ever be framed in human terms – but is it legitimate to ask what the oak tree growing from the acorn within space and time thinks of this approach?

[Ken G]

But I am still left with some nagging issues. A tree makes full use of space and time in the sense of it having an individual existence.

More precisely, it is our concept of what a tree is that makes use of those other concepts. Trees don't make use of concepts like space and time, intelligence does. Of course the natural response to this is, surely the tree would still act the same way without our intelligence, but I would respond that we haven't the least idea of how trees act outside of our perceptions and conceptions-- what we mean by "how a tree acts" is exactly the same thing as how we perceive and conceive a tree as acting. There never was any distinction there, the former set of words is just a lazy shorthand for the latter-- and not a harmless shorthand, but an inevitable one.

Of course a tree is not aware of itself, and there is no means to describe what a tree’s perspective is – we extrapolate from our experience the oak growing from the acorn in terms of cause and effect, we notice that it makes use of space and time. So in a sense the tree can only ever be expressed in terms of our understanding of reality, we can’t get “inside” the tree so to speak and experience things from the tree’s perspective.

Exactly.

But does the tree depend on us “creating” space and time in our minds for it to exploit ?

Everything that we mean by "the tree" does so depend, which is not the same thing as the "tree itself" depending on us. Meaning is always dependent on the meaner, that's also why my sig says that truth and meaning are incompatible (one likes to imagine that truth is something independent, but meaning isn't).

(well perhaps radical idealism would claim this), it presumably has some kind of source within the “something” - we can’t access that, and I know all we can do is to represent the tree in term of our reality, but even so, what does the tree think of that?

If it thinks, then it has its own meaning. I believe this is what Wittgenstein might have meant when he said "if a lion could talk, we wouldn't understand it."

A monkey is aware of space in terms of a survival mechanism, but it doesn’t rely on us establishing a concept of space - surely that space is there for it just as it is there for us, it just may not appreciate it in the manner we think of it.

This gets to the issue of similar intelligences. Certainly your intelligence and my intelligence are highly similar, which is why we can communicate in a common language. Monkeys may be a bit different, but they might have similarities too. It's hard to know until there is communication and understanding, but there may be something inherent about intelligence, and the meanings associated with it, or there may be many fragments of intelligence and many fragments of different meaning to go along with it. Perhaps true intelligence is understanding all these fragments, and their possibly non-overlapping meanings (but hopefully not contrary meanings).

The question for me is what “exists” for rocks, trees, insects, fish, mammals, and humans? Does space and time exist for each of these, or is it out of bounds for us to ask that question (as I think you imply) – can we only ask in terms of referencing everything to our concept of space and time, cause and effect and dualism?

I would say space and time exists for them if their intelligence has access to those concepts. Perhaps their intelligence is too rudimentary to hold those constructs, or one might even imagine superior intelligence that views those constructs as childishly simplistic. Perhaps to some alien somewhere, it is perfectly obvious why space and time are a joint manifold in relativity, and the extents to which they are similar or different are as clear to them as their nose (or probiscus).

Or can we say, that emanating (in a manner that we can have no scientific conception of) from the “something” are intrinsic properties of space and time, laws, mind, dualism – in other words our “whole”? Within the “something” these properties have no meaning – they have no individual intrinsic properties in the manner those trees or rocks or humans make use of them. In this sense, the “whole” does have a one to one correspondence with our perception – space is the same for a tree as it is for us. This is not to assign ontological status to a tree or a rock independently of the “whole” – a rock doesn’t exist as a rock within the “something”, but within the “whole” (which is everything associated with our reality, but not referenced from any vantage point of a human or a fish or whatever – it’s just everything that emanates from the “something”) the rock is actually a rock existing in space and time.

I think you are looking for the reason that the concepts are useful, they can't just be random constructs with no connection to anything or they wouldn't work. We can consider a bird, which knows how to fly but has no idea why it can fly. Then we can look at an aerodynamics expert, who may be able to write equations that show why birds can fly, but has no idea why those equations work. Then we can imagine a superintelligent alien who views those equations as obvious, like 2+2=4, once you have defined the parameters they exploit, but doesn't know why it's obvious. And so forth-- one can imagine all different levels of understanding, perhaps deeper in some sense or maybe just different in nature (for example, people talk about "emotional intelligence" as a kind of intuition that seems obvious to them but they cannot write any equations for). The "actual reality" may be the sum total of all possible intelligences, all possible perceptions and intuitions, and all possible workable meanings, of which we only experience a tiny fraction.

It's possible the sum does not even converge to something finite-- reality may be infinite, and intelligence finite, like the number line is infinite but line segments are finite. I'm afraid this would seem to fall in the "unknown unknowns" category-- where I suspect lives the "ultimate" reality. Perhaps that's not such a bad thing-- we thrill to the idea of understanding reality, but complete understanding might be a kind of curse. Like the curse of getting everything you ever wish for, or living forever with a memory that can remember it all.

[Len Moran]

Purely for my benefit, would this be a reasonable summary encapsulating the core points of your (and I think mine to a large extent) philosophical stance.

1. There exists “something” and within that “something”, our reality resides. Our intelligence models that “something” and that model is unique to our intelligence. We cannot escape from our model and examine the “something” (at least not in any direct manner), all we have is our model – nothing else.

2. We model our reality in terms of space, time and dualism. Since it is we (humans) that do the modelling, everything within that model (and that means everything) is referenced to our intelligence – no entity can have (known to us) intrinsic properties that match our perception of that entity, the intrinsic properties of those entities are unknowable to us since they lie outside of our model - we can only view an entity via the way we model the "something".

3. A monkey (for example) could be considered to have intelligence, but one that is dissimilar to ours, therefore they would have a model of everything that differs from ours – but since we can’t communicate like for like with a monkey, presumably we will never find out what kind of model of reality they have.

4. A stone (for example) has no capability of modelling the “something”, so that object can only have a one way correspondence from the modeller (be it a human or a monkey).

5. Any historical time line of events such as the formation of the solar system does not have an intrinsic historical scientific timeline - it is an extrapolated timeline based on the way we model our reality in terms of space and time. In other words, the solar system would have formed in the manner we extrapolate on the basis of a hypothetical human observer being present to observe it. Without invoking that hypothetical observer, the formation of the solar system has no correspondence with our extrapolated scientific timeline.

6. All humans experience the model in the same manner – we all perceive space and time. Where that intersubjective agreement comes from I have left until last, since we have had some discussions on that before – it still gives me some problems (unless we say that intersubjective agreement is derived from the “something” as per d’Espagnat and open realism). But I know you differ in this respect, you don’t require a “source” for intersubjective agreement, you consider (I think) that it can be inherent within the model.

[Ken G]

Yes, I think that's a fair summary. Of particular importance are points #5 and #6, which are often the sources of the confusion around points #1-4. In #6, you ask for a reason why there is any such thing as intersubjective agreement. The "default" position that most people hold is that there exists intersubjective agreement because there is a reasonably close correspondence between our models and the "something" we are modeling, based on the fact that the models are both successful and widely used throughout our species. But this is kind of a pipe dream in my view-- if you place similar intelligences into a similar environment and give them access to similar modes of interaction with that environment, it is not terribly surprising that what will result is some form of intersubjective agreement. We cannot reason much about the "something" just based on that, our survival rested on the success of our models, and the possibility for that success is one reason that intelligence exists in the first place. But what does that tell us about what is "really going on" around us? When intelligence looks in the mirror, and recognizes itself there, it is easy to fall into narcissism. That's pretty much how I would characterize naive realism, and to a lesser extent, all forms of realism. Unless, that is, we take the quite acceptable step of simply defining what is real in terms of our various ways of thinking about what is real, and then the distinctions between realism and idealism just kind of vanish. That vanishing is a success, in my view, because those distinctions only persisted in that otherworldly realm of unknown unknowns-- that which holds little point in even trying to discuss.

[whatdoctor]

I have often wondered where the gases came from that started the Big Bang at the beginning of the Universe.:surprised

Quantum theory allows for spontaneous creation of something out of nothing. The larger the object, the lower the probability of it occuring. The big bang may have been one of these unlikley events.

[George]

[Sorry I'm slow with this.]

We can use the standard definition of time, and the standard definition of cause and effect, and we will find that effects come after causes, as per our definitions-- no matter what the universe is really doing there. I'm saying that the universe, on the other hand, might include some previously undiscovered reason to expect that our version of time is logically backward-- that effects precede causes by this other meaning of time. So none of the definitions need to change-- only their logical connections. It might be that effects require causes, so when effects appear, it is logical to expect their causes to crop up shortly-- in this different version of thinking about the arrow of time (it would be a different kind of time, not our definition of it, but perhaps one equally valid-- if so, it removes the usual objection around something coming from nothing in our version of time. The objection then becomes that something cannot turn into nothing-- but that is far from clear.)

Uncle! Such labeling that causes effect to be the cause and cause the effect is effective because those roles are reversed effectively.

Why wouldn't I? If they've been shot by me, I can hardly not be their shooter. The concept of cause and effect takes its meaning within the model of determinism, and determinism comes with an interesting consequence-- it allows us to move quite freely in either direction in time.

It's hard to imagine that degree of determinism. "How" did the bullet acquire the forces -- ones described by consistent hypotheses or laws -- necessary to go from body to barrel? "Why", or by what motive, did the dead person, after coming into life for the first time, eject the bullet necessary to accomodate the determined effect of the bullet arriving to you?

Indeed, it is common for a detective, following a deterministic trail, to track in the opposite direction of the flow of time (they start with the body, then analyze how they died, then analyze what could have caused such a death, then considered who had been on the scene, when they were there, where they can from, what motives they had, etc.-- all the logic is in reverse). Given this fact, by what authority do we then reverse the flow of that descriptive logic, just to tell the story in the more familiar direction of time? It's nothing but a convention.

Every detective works backwards from effect to cause; they always take the evidence discovered and look both directions to fit the timeline knowing reason, even if circumstantial, will be found upstream at the cause, and not ever, that I can imagine. Perhaps I'm taking too pragmatic an approach to your viewpoints because, admittedly, physics requires looking both directions regardless of where the cause and effect labels are initially assumed.

That seething froth of time going in both directions is like the sea of virtual particles in the vacuum-- particles that can be matter or antimatter (and as you know, antimatter is like matter going backward in time). That's an astute observation, but what I'm saying is that even the "net flow" in the river cannot be said to have a logical direction that comes from physics-- instead, it has a conventional direction that comes from something about our minds (whatever it is that allows us to recall the past but not the future). We take that observation and establish a convention around it, closely connected with the ways we partition independent states into categories that allows us to define the concept of entropy.

Agreed.

Changes in position relative to what? What is a position?

Physics, though Greek to me.

When a million apples fall, they move relative to the Earth and to each other. But why should that require the Earth not be moving? We cannot assert anything about "which one is moving", for it all depends on our choice of reference frame. We could as easily choose any one of those apples as our stationary object, as choose the Earth for that distinction. Yes, it might seem arbitrary to choose one apple-- but not if we are an ant on that one apple.

Yes, one apple might be valid and I assume GR grants that view, ignoring the potential Mach challenge you have raised in the past. But the point is the consideration of mutually exclusive events. If the Earth travels to one apple it can not travel to all the others at the same time. Of course, I admit that this can never be proved because the UR (Ultimate Reality -- always beyond our reach) might take my royal flush hand and throw down 5 jokers. But if we are playing with the standard deck, then...

["UR" because you think therefore you are. I'm rebooting like Descartes, I think.]

[Len Moran]

In #6, you ask for a reason why there is any such thing as intersubjective agreement. The "default" position that most people hold is that there exists intersubjective agreement because there is a reasonably close correspondence between our models and the "something" we are modeling, based on the fact that the models are both successful and widely used throughout our species. But this is kind of a pipe dream in my view-- if you place similar intelligences into a similar environment and give them access to similar modes of interaction with that environment, it is not terribly surprising that what will result is some form of intersubjective agreement.

I can see the validity of suggesting that if we introduce similar intelligences into a similar environment with similar modes of interaction then intersubjective agreement would seem to be a sensible extrapolation. Likewise we could envisage introducing aliens into our environment with no assumption of any similarities with us as humans and not expect intersubjective agreement between them and us (though obviously between the aliens).

But I can’t help thinking here about constructs upon constructs – it is within the model that we have our reality (i.e. a dualism that incorporates our senses in one corner and an object in another corner with space in between). Now I am taking that dualistic model to be just that – a model of a “something” from which we have no escape from (I mean the model) in which to examine “the something”.

The dualistic model, which is our reality, allows us to say that similar intelligence with similar sensory capabilities will agree that we have a mind and body in one corner looking at an object in another corner with space in between – but is that telling us anything fundamental about intersubjective agreement? It seems rather that it is telling us something about intersubjective agreement within a model built around intersubjective agreement.

The issue I have is not really about the nuances of models and what they do or don’t represent, it is more a case that the notion of intersubjective agreement (for me) forms a philosophical focus from which one may make a kind of separation between realism and idealism, albeit at a point on our sliding scale that is very blurred.

This reasoning can offer a philosophical route that suggests that intersubjective agreement emanates (in part) from the “something” to some degree, not in any manner that we can access, it is simply saying that our reality doesn’t entirely depend on our intelligence – there are within “the something” properties (again, properties not having any familiar form or understanding – they are beyond the remit of science which cannot escape our model) that extend to our model (our reality) and govern the model (to some extent).

You rightly make the point that an unknown unknown is not worth discussing, and perhaps the category involving unknown properties extending from an unknown “something” giving our reality some form of external intersubjective agreement pretty much falls into your category of unknown unknowns. However, I don’t quite see it like that because what it says for me is that we can use the notion of intersubjective agreement as a philosophical argument for establishing a notion of realism that underpins our reality. But just to reiterate (in case there is any confusion on this) – this notion of realism is in no way to be thought of as comparing with the usual realist positions taken on board by most people – I am certainly not of any naive realist school that uses intersubjective agreement as a means of justifying that kind of realism (or any of the similar flavours of realism). It is simply a realism that places our reality in a philosophical context that says “it’s not just us – there are (unknowable) properties of the “something” underpinning (to some degree) our reality and the way our reality maps out".

[Ken G]

It's hard to imagine that degree of determinism. "How" did the bullet acquire the forces -- ones described by consistent hypotheses or laws -- necessary to go from body to barrel?

The same way they always do, the "how" is not affected by the direction of logical necessity.

"Why", or by what motive, did the dead person, after coming into life for the first time, eject the bullet necessary to accomodate the determined effect of the bullet arriving to you?

The molecular forces that "ejected" the bullet are completely time-reversible, so there is no difficulty with that either. It's the result of having fundamental equations of physics that work in either direction of time.

Perhaps I'm taking too pragmatic an approach to your viewpoints because, admittedly, physics requires looking both directions regardless of where the cause and effect labels are initially assumed.

I'm not saying your approach is or is not suitably pragmatic, I'm saying that it, like pragmatism itself, is merely a function of our intelligence.

But the point is the consideration of mutually exclusive events. If the Earth travels to one apple it can not travel to all the others at the same time.

I would say the problem there is your desire to have a globally unified or universal description of what is happening there. Relativity tells us not to use global descriptions, reality is a kind of sum total of all the observations made by all the observers-- and nothing more. I'm saying that there is a perfectly clear reason for this-- reality, framed by science, is a product of our intelligence, which requires observations to analyze and cobble together into the very concept of reality. We used to think the pieces fit together into a universal whole that could be described as well by any of the individual observers because it transcended the observers, but relativity is supposed to disabuse us of that pipe dream. Instead, each observer is master of only their own corner of the universe, the part that they observe. Any language that can piece those parts together never escapes the need to have local observers describing each part, even if those observers are purely hypothetical.

So what I'm saying is, we never need to take a position on whether the apples move to the Earth, or the Earth to the apples, in any global sense-- the motions are described locally by those who could (at least in principle) be present at the events in question. When physics does not require us to take a position on something, it also cautions us to avoid taking a position that stipulates more than we can demonstrate in a mutually consistent way (that's how you avoid issues like whether or not black holes can really exist if observer A thinks they take an infinite time to form using some bogus universal time coordinate). I guess my core point about the incoherence of the claim "something cannot come from nothing" is that it is an example of using a bogus universal time coordinate, in association with a bogus universal arrow of time. The concepts should properly be thought of as products of observers and the application of their intelligence, including the device of using hypothetical observers to generate a language to talk about nonlocal events. When the ability to generate an observer to bear witness to an event breaks down, like the "initial moment" of the Big Bang, then it is simply an incoherent device, not a device that reality must be beholden to that could allow us to rule out a priori certain types of creation models.

[Ken G]

But I can’t help thinking here about constructs upon constructs – it is within the model that we have our reality (i.e. a dualism that incorporates our senses in one corner and an object in another corner with space in between). Now I am taking that dualistic model to be just that – a model of a “something” from which we have no escape from (I mean the model) in which to examine “the something”.

Models need not be unique, and we use them rather than marrying them, so we can always "escape" them simply by considering a different model. We gain many things by using a dualistic approach that we are "one thing" and our reality is "something else", but we can at the same time recognize that this cannot actually be literally true. After all, there is no dividing line between us and what we observe-- that was the original argument by Berkeley for idealism (the difficulty in drawing the line, for example if we look at something, between the thing, the light coming to us, the cells that register the light, the brain that interprets the light, etc.-- where in that process does "it" end and "we" begin?). So another model we could use is the self-referential model, where the "something" includes both "us" and "it", and the "it" is trying to understand itself. All perception can then be viewed as a form of introspection by an intelligence whose association with our own brains is merely another element of the models generated by that introspection. Perhaps some alien intelligence would recognize the sentience of humanity as a whole, but not the sentience of individual humans, whereas humans recognize the sentience of humans, but not the sentience of humanity. It's all how the action of our minds is getting modeled, and intelligence is a model of itself-- it is a kind of looking in the mirror.

The dualistic model, which is our reality, allows us to say that similar intelligence with similar sensory capabilities will agree that we have a mind and body in one corner looking at an object in another corner with space in between – but is that telling us anything fundamental about intersubjective agreement? It seems rather that it is telling us something about intersubjective agreement within a model built around intersubjective agreement.

Right, there's the mirror.

The issue I have is not really about the nuances of models and what they do or don’t represent, it is more a case that the notion of intersubjective agreement (for me) forms a philosophical focus from which one may make a kind of separation between realism and idealism, albeit at a point on our sliding scale that is very blurred.

I don't see how it makes that separation. Let's define idealism to be the belief that there is no coherent definition of reality beyond the sum total of everything that intelligence (or sentience, or consciousness-- the differences between these terms is quite unclear) thinks or perceives about reality, and realism to be the belief that intelligences couldn't think anything unless there was some final reality underpinning them that transcends those intelligences and would exist even in the absence of any intelligence at all. Note a key element of these definitions hinges not on what we are asserting exists, but rather on what we can coherently assert, using our intelligence, exists. We could take any stand we want on what exists, including that we are all hooked into The Matrix, and there's no forum for debate-- the forum is around what we can assert that actually means something and has testable elements, or at least some advantages for streamlining our thinking or language.

That's the part where I see no distinction between realism and idealism as defined above-- once we recognize that intelligence is talking about itself, it is moot whether or not there is something outside what intelligence can understand, an "unknowable unknown." Realism asserts that the unknowable has consequences for the knowable, and idealism asks does that claim not assert knowable aspects of something unknowable? What difference does it make-- if we can make coherent assertions about what is fundamentally unknowable, then whatever we are claiming is not inscrutable to us, so it should reside on the knowable side, in which case it is subject to perception and analysis, in which case it is part of what idealism asserts is the coherent reality. So as soon as realism seems more streamlined, it has been converted into idealism. Naive realism says the map is the territory, which leads to problems understanding what models are, whereas open realism asserts the map is not the territory but there is a territory all the same. Idealism just says the territory is the maps, it's maps all the way up-- there's a map in our hands, a map in our eyes, a map in our brains, etc. Both open realism and idealism invite us to treat the concept of a model in just the same way, they only differ in the irrelevant stance they take on what is being modeled.

However, I don’t quite see it like that because what it says for me is that we can use the notion of intersubjective agreement as a philosophical argument for establishing a notion of realism that underpins our reality.

Let's test that. If you were the only person on Earth, or perhaps born from a crashed alien spaceship on a planet devoid of intelligence, would you not form some concept of realism? You might not have as sophisticated a language, because your internal dialog has different needs than an intersubjective communication system, but it seems to me the flavor of realism you might concoct could be quite similar to the one that rests on intersubjective agreement-- without that agreement. An insane person, on the other hand, can also be a realist-- without the corroboration of intersubjective agreement, they still believe their reality is the actual one and other people are trying to deceive them. So I can't buy the idea that we receive evidence that realism is correct from the fact that other like-minded people think like we do-- it seems an orthogonal issue to the correctness of realism. For both the sane, and the insane, realism is just a mental device, it is one of the models that falls within the purvey of idealism.

It is simply a realism that places our reality in a philosophical context that says “it’s not just us – there are (unknowable) properties of the “something” underpinning (to some degree) our reality and the way our reality maps out".

My issue what that seemingly perfectly rational stance is that if one digs into it, the exent to which it differs from idealism are ultimately incoherent. That doesn't make it a wrong view, it makes it idealism with bells on.