From: henken@ocf.berkeley.edu (Matthew J. Henken)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Re: *Virtual* Reality
Date: 28 Sep 1992 16:20:59 GMT
Organization: U. C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: headcrash.berkeley.edu


In article <d+_p8+q@lynx.unm.edu> hillman@carina.unm.edu (Dan Hillman) writes:
>Matthew J Henken, bilious with righteous indignation, head lodged firmly up
>his backside, writes:
>
>>Let's get one thing straight:  I say "My dog has fleas."  There's my dog,
>>and I even point to him as I say it.  Where would you ever get the idea
>>that I was talking about my own "interpretation of a visual stimulus"?  I
>>assure you that the retinal pattern isn't the thing infested with fleas.
>>If you were right, people could never really disagree:  We all be talking
>>about our own interpretations.  I say my dog has fleas, you say he doesn't.
>>If this were the same thing as my saying "On my interpreation (or, if you
>>prefer your own absurd terminology, in my reality) Spot has fleas" and your
>>saying "On my interpretation (in my reality) Spot doesn't have fleas" then
>>we wouldn't be disagreeing in the least.
>
>That's right, Matthew, people don't go around saying "on my interpretation,
>Spot has fleas." They make an assumption that other people will experience
>the stimuli of Spot scratching and have similar associations of this stimuli
>with the existence of fleas.
>
>That's fine in a universe in which nothing else causes Spot to scratch.
>There are, however, many things which could cause Spot to exhibit similar
>symptoms. In your own flatulent reality, that metaphorical place where you
>interpret things based on your associations, you only think "fleas" because
>fleas are what you associate with the stimuli of Spot scratching.
>
>Now let's bring in a crusty ol' country vet: Spot scratches and you rub your
>chin in what you imagine to be a professorial sort of pose and proclaim, "My
>dog has fleas. There's my dog, and I even point to him as I say it."
>
>Experiencing the same stimuli of Spot scratching, the vet drawls, "That dog
>ain't got nothing but a patch of dry skin on his ass. If he had fleas, he'd
>be biting at them. You may be ostentatious, Boy, but you don't know shit
>about either dogs or cognition. If our realities were the same, you'd have
>known that." And with a short pause to spit something gooey and brown on
>your black turtleneck, he gives you an incredulous look and leaves.
>

The vet may be right.  My dog, rather than having fleas, may simply have
a patch of dry skin.  In that case, I would be wrong, having drawn an
incorrect conclusion from the behavior I observed.  This is just a summary
of what you say above.  But the problem is that the very possiblity
of the vet being right and I being wrong is undermined by your system of
different "individual realities."  What does it mean for the vet to be
right?  It means that, in fact, my dog *does* have a dry patch of skin
and *does not* have fleas.  But what does that mean?  Does that mean only that
the vet thinks or believes that he has a dry patch?  No:  Even if he
didn't think so, it would be true that my dog has a dry patch of skin.
And if the vet had concluded that he did not, the vet would have been wrong,
regardless of what he believed to be the case.  So far, this is completely
straightforward and should be uncontroversial.  The problem, Dan, is this:
You have said that what I am talking about when I say "Spot has fleas" is
some organization of sense data, rather Spot himself.  Even if, as you note,
we don't go around saying "On my interpretation, Spot has fleas," that is
really what is going on when I simply state "Spot has fleas."  If that is
the case, then when the doctor says "Spot has dry skin," he is, in effect,
describing some feature of his organized sense perceptions.  Imagine, on
your view, what it would mean for the vet to have made a correct diagnosis.
He would have correctly described the condition of his own "reality," his
own organized sense perception.  Notice that this does not in any way
pose any obstacle to my being right in precisely the same way.  Our two
statements, on your account would really be something like this:

Me:  On my interpretation, Spot has fleas.
Vet: On my interpretation, Spot has dry skin and not fleas.

But there is nothing wrong with these two being right at the same time.  The
claims "Spot has fleas," and "Spot has dry skin and not fleas" *are* logically
incompatible:  They contradict one another.  On your account, they don't.
The flaw is with your account.

What you've done is confused the question of what there *is*, with what
we *know* (ontology with epistemology, since you seem to like the big
philosophy words).  The vet's last words to me are "If our realities were 
the same, you'd have known that."  Why not look at this commonsensically?
The dog is part of the real world.  I looked at him, concluded from the way
that he was acting that he had fleas.  The doctor examined the same dog
more carefully and finds, not fleas, but dry skin.  There is one reality,
one dog, two contradictory opinions.  The fact that we can get information
only through our senses does not mean that this sense data are the entire
content of reality.  If that were the case, disagreement could never
occur in the way that they do every day.

>>Clearly though, in the case of
>>"Spot has fleas" "No he doesn't" we have not only genuine disagreement,
>>but a logical incompatibility of our two statements.  This sort of
>>disagreement can be accounted for only through the fact that we are
>>talking about external reality.  In other words, about Spot.

>Not quite. The external reality is the *stimuli* of Spot. Individuals do not
>have logical incompatibilities, merely differing interpretations of what the
>stimuli mean. Think about the turning-up-the-heat thread from about three
>weeks ago (if you've been reading a.p that long). Those people are
>experiencing the same temperature stimulus, but in one reality it's too hot
>and in the other reality it's too cold.

A nice, self-serving choice of example.  The problem is that anyone more
intelligent than yourself (that is, anyone) can see that the cases of 
"It's too hot" and "It's too cold" are subjective in a way that "Spot has
fleas" and "Spot does not have fleas" is not.  As a result, your example
isn't going to persuade anyone.  As a matter of fact, there is a fact of
the matter *related* to "It's too hot" and "It's too cold."  For instance,
imagine a child of an age where his mother still bathes him (no, Dan, not
28).  He is a troublesome and mischeivous scamp and tells his mother "It's
too hot" when put in the water.  She adds cold water.  "It's too cold."
She adds hot water.  "It's too hot." This continues through several cycles
until she decides that it isn't true that it is too hot or too cold for her
child.  She can be wrong:  The water might be killing him.  She can be
right:  The water is, in fact, perfectly comfortable.  The judgement she
makes is a judgement about the internal state of her child and its relation
to water temperature.  There is a reality here which is the arbiter of truth
for claims about the world. 

A dead giveaway in the problem with your example is the word "too."  It is not
an objective word (at least not when used in the sense of "excessively").
Someone can say of a 20 pound pair of boots (weight, not cost, you UKers) that
they are "too heavy" but of a 20 pound automobile that it is "too light."
"Too" used in this sense (as in the case of "too hot" and "too cold") 
expresses that something is excessive in relation to some particular standard.
Implicit in the meaning of the word is a relativity to another standard.
No one claims that it is a property of the water itself that it is too
hot or too cold in itself.  It might be too hot to bathe a baby while too
cold to boil an egg.  This is how people can say "It's too hot" and "it's
too cold" without making logically compatible statements:  The two claims
use the word "too" to compare the temperature of the water to different
standards.

>>Your whole
>>"philosophical program" with its "individual's reality" as the referrent
>>of all discourse is totally bankrupt and sounds like the product of ten
>>minutes of thought by the rankest freshman in Philosophy 1.
>
>It's rather simple, maybe even for you. The external stuff is the same for
>both of our points of view, we're merely debating the interpretative
>process. You're talking about a reality in which things are absolute and
>there's no argument because one can see obviously what those things are. I,
>on the other side of the flounder, see reality as an individual construction
>subject to individual interpretation. I'm tired of explaining the same thing
>to you over and over.

Nice shift in position, Dan.  You *now* say we are arguing interpretation.
This has never been your position.  You said that what I am actually talking
about when I say that "Spot has fleas" is some personal interpretation
of Spot, rather than Spot himself.  You said that there are many "realities"
without ever mentioning the reality that I (and every other thinking person
in the world) am talking about when I make claims about the world.  Now,
all of a sudden, it's "The external stuff is the same for both of our
point of view, we're merely debating the interpretative [sic] process."

Unfortunately, you're not smart enough to pull off the radical shift cleanly.
You have again confused the question of what there is with how we come to
know something.  What in the world would lead you to conclude from my
position (which says that there is a real world, a unitary reaelity which is
the arbiter of the truth of our claims) that "there's no argument because
one can see obviously what those things are."  Sometimes it is damn hard 
to figure out what those things are.  That does not change the fact that
there is a fact of the matter about how things are.  Yours is a lazy man's
philosophy:  "Oh, it's soooo much work to figure out how things really are,
lets just say they are how we think they are."

You say "The external stuff is the same for both of our points of view" and
then say "I...see reality as an individual construction."  You are far worse
than any freshman.

>Indeed, you may be rather competent at parroting whatever shrink-wrapped
>philosophy the professor handed to you as an undergrad, but your inability
>to grasp, much less directly refute, this simple idea says much for your
>chances of professional success. One can only hope that your students
>(should they be cursed with you as a TA) read your pathetic arguments here
>and ridicule you as the wanker you are.

Uh-huh.

What's even more pathetic is that you claim your position is really true.
That is, its really the way things are.  How you can't see that this
contradicts your claim that reality is an "individual construct" is really
extraordinary.

Miscillaneous matters to clear up:

1.  Yes, I've been monitoring a.p this long.  About three-and-a-half years,
    participating more my e-mail than post because I don't really have the
    same sense of self-importance that you do.  I'm involved in this now only
    because I had a peeve I had never seen here before, that of the psuedo-
    philosopher.

2.  I don't wear turtlenecks.  They, along with knit ties, are the only
    articles for which I have an active dislike.

3.  Humorless?  Hardly.  This group is often hilarious.  It's just that you
    have been so pathetic in your personal attacks that I have neither
    laughed nor felt compelled to defend myself.  Also, attacking you might
    take some of your precious brain power away from your philosophy lesson.

4.  You're the one saying that reality is purely individual and I'm the one
    who is part of the pretentious cafe culture?  Sheesh.

5.  I mentioned that I am a graduate student in the specific contenxt of
    showing Norman that philosophers do logic, rather than in the (absurd)
    attempt to impress Peevetown with irrelevant "credentials."  Banta was
    completely correct in saying you can't import respect into Peevetown
    That is expecially true when you're dealing with something like being
    a grad student which a very large portion of this group either is or
    was or could have been one, had they so desired.


Matthew J. Henken :-{<6.  I don't even have a dog.
		      7.  Even if I did, I wouldn't name it something dumb
			  like "Spot.">]
henken@ocf.berkeley.edu