Is this a good argument? (RE: Subjectivism)

[NoXion]

I notice a thread on "objective truth" in another forum I frequent, and seeing what was in my opinion the utter crap posted there I decided to refute some of it.

What I want to know is: Did I make a good case for my position? Was it consistent? Did I use any logical fallacies? (Tried my best to avoid them)
Basically I want to improve my debating skills and feel that some criticisms from more skilled debators could help me make better arguments.

Note: I'm not asking for help winning this debate or anything, I just want an honest assessment of my debating tactics.

My first missive:

If a person believes the Earth to be flat, then it is to them. And since you believe it's round, it's round to you. I don't see why that's so hard to comprehend.

Except for the small matter that, in reality, the Earth is round (Or if you want to be pedantic, an oblate spheroid). It's been measured thousands of times by different people for different purposes, and they have all come up with the same answer, or near enough as to make no meaningful difference. One can go into orbit and see for themselves.

The Earth is round, and that is a fact.

Besides that, how can it be possible for there to be a reality, if that reality can't be experienced?

Nonsense. One experiences reality every waking hour, although this experience can be coloured somewhat by extreme fatigue and drugs.

If nothing perceives the object, then how does the object exist?

If it can't be percieved in any manner, neither by the senses or by instruments (Or by any consistent effect it has on things that can be percieved), then to all intents and purposes it does not exist.

Much like God, really.

How could you yourself know it exists, or contend that you know anything outside of your own perception of things?

Because my perception of many material objects is shared by lots of different people. Everyone agrees that water is wet, and so water is wet. Anything else is solipsism.

And what if all of reality is merely a dream, being dreamed by the dreamer? It's impossible to prove that it isn't.

Neither is it necessary. "Reality as a dream" is not a falsifiable concept and is thus invalid.

The supposed resoluteness of logic has its own bias, and objective reality is easily questioned.

Easily questioned and perceptions of it changed maybe, but never proven wrong. Water at 15 centigrade is always wet.

His reply, which I qouted and countered:

In reality? Whose reality is it round in? Yours.

I object to the assertion that I have my own personal "reality". I have my own personal perceptions of things, but there is also an objective reality outside my head that is confirmed by many different people with different perceptions (As well as scientific instruments with no mind of their own, which give consistent results) on non-prejudicial subjects such as the roundess of the earth and wetness of water.

If someone lived refused to believe that the Earth was round, to them simply the Earth would be flat. And in their mind, the determining factor in what they see and choose to believe, the Earth is flat.

But only in their mind. And reality demonstrates otherwise. If they travelled round the world in a straight line relative to Earth's gravity, they would not fall off - they would end up back where they started. Reality is something which, if you stop believing in it, does not go away.

You can say the Earth is flat because I say so, look at this and this and this but that wouldn't change the other persons opinion and in their view of existence it'd be flat, which is why everyone experiences things subjectively.

Then they would simply be wrong. The Earth is round. This can be confirmed with different measurements made by different people at different points of the earth at different times of the day. The earth beyond any reasonable doubt, is round.

The only thing that makes it an "objective truth" is when enough people get together and have a consensus reality.

Only true if reality confirms that consensus.

I remember a professor saying every proof that the Earth was round, was possible to counter (In a college, it didn't happen to me firsthand), and none of the students in the college could come up with an argument.

How strange that you do not list them.

The point is anyway that the individual defines what they see, choose to accept, and believe, and in doing so create their own version of reality.

No, they choose their perception of reality. Reality itself remains unchanged by the couple of pounds of soggy porridgy stuff we call our brain.

You misunderstand me on the second point. I'm saying if reality can't be experienced then there is no reality. You're right that we experience it every waking hour, if we didn't experience it it wouldn't be real.

Are you saying reality would not exist if we were not around to experience it? Such anthropocentric hubris!

To the third point, we agree entirely. (Minus the fact that believing something exists
means there's a possibility it exists, whether true or not.)

And yes, anything else is solipsism. And solipsism is entirely impossible to disprove.
Easily questioned yes, and changing perception alters the existence itself on a personal basis, and all we can understand anything from is a personal basis.

I don't know atoms or the surface of Betelgeuse on a personal basis.

Because something is unfalsifiable doesn't mean it's untrue. Reality is real. This statement is unfalsifiable, therefore it's invalid?

Invalid != Untrue. Attempting to prove reality is real is invalid because A) it's self-evident and B) one can come with endless rationalisations as to why one can't prove the reality of reality; mass hallucination, we're all running on the same simulation, we're all being dreamt in the mind of the same god, etc etc Ad Nauseum.

He did not deign to reply after that.

How did I do?

[CmdrWilkens]

I'd say deent enough though you're up against someone who is aplying the truthful matter that the only rhing any person can e 100% sure of is "I think therefore I am." Taken beyond the logical into the extreme it is impossible to absolutely prove that you or I actually exist or that anythign is more than your brain composing a vast scientifically ordered world with others in it. Now again he's taken the extreme position on it, thus you simply point that if he is correct how does he prove that you are anything other than a voice in his head? We rely on one simple tenant to live life: We all percieve the same world when viewed from the same perspective. This guys problem stems from the fact that he is unwilling to accept this basic tenant in full. Ask him that if he percieves a dollar bill to be worth $100 why doesn't he simply give the chick at a cash register one for every shopping trip and then demand change?

[drachefly]

Your second-to-last comment was irrelevant.

Our viewpoint is restricted to ourselves; he or she is correct on that. I do not see what you say has to do with it.

Incidentally, here is the argument I would take:

You seem to be denying the existence of external reality (the 'nuomenon' ) based on our inability to determine what it is (we only perceive a subset, the 'phenomenon'). However, just because our phenomena cannot strictly determine the nuomenon, does not mean we cannot constrain it: the nuomenon must be able to produce the phenomena we experience. A nuomenon which is inconsistent with our phenomena is impossible.

And that gives us enough information about it that we can claim it exists.

[drachefly]

Oh, incidentally, I should add to that argument that there must be something we aren't perceiving, just because it's possible to be surprised.

My point is, attack the root if you can.

[Darth Wong]

The subjectivity of human perception is why we insist on quantifying things in science. If two people say that the column is thick, it is entirely possible that one or both of them is just being delusional. Hell, the column might not even exist at all. However, if two people measure the column to be precisely 1.21 metres in diameter, the likelihood of this being coincidentally matching delusions is extremely small. Ergo, the most reasonable interpretation is that neither of them is delusional, and they are measuring a real object.

Of course, they could counter with pure solipsism, by arguing that the other person and the column are both figments of your imagination, but solipsism is the graveyard of philosophy, not its citadel.

[Captain Newland]

The subjectivity of human perception is why we insist on quantifying things in science. If two people say that the column is thick, it is entirely possible that one or both of them is just being delusional. Hell, the column might not even exist at all. However, if two people measure the column to be precisely 1.21 metres in diameter, the likelihood of this being coincidentally matching delusions is extremely small. Ergo, the most reasonable interpretation is that neither of them is delusional, and they are measuring a real object.

Of course, they could counter with pure solipsism, by arguing that the other person and the column are both figments of your imagination, but solipsism is the graveyard of philosophy, not its citadel.

I'm just playing "devil's advocate" here, so don't think I'd actually ever argue this myself, but one could argue that the possibility of anything that happens is ridiculously tiny in the major scheme of things.

[Darth Wong]

I'm just playing "devil's advocate" here, so don't think I'd actually ever argue this myself, but one could argue that the possibility of anything that happens is ridiculously tiny in the major scheme of things.

Bullshit. That is just a gross misinterpretation of probability.

[Ariphaos]

Your friend is arguing from an essentially solipsist perspective. That's all well and good, but in the end it is an utterly meaningless viewpoint. It can be fun to entertain for awhile but there are some important points.

#1: Things exist which are outside control
#2: Things grow, sometimes in unexpected ways.
#3: There is a horizon, and there are things beyond it.
#4: It is possible to be dramatically incorrect.

And others. Whoever says "What you can't see can't hurt you." has forgotten the last time he stubbed his toe in the dark.

Because of such factors the more logical assumption is to consider that we are actually a part of a Universe, or whatever, and do not define it with our assumptions. Through repeated observation we can see that some things are constant, inviolate, whatever, and we consider these things to be facts.

The speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second. The Earth is round.

These things are outside our control, but not outside our observation. We can make amatuer measurements and verify these things, but our reality is the way it is no matter what someone believes.

[Zero]

I'm just playing "devil's advocate" here, so don't think I'd actually ever argue this myself, but one could argue that the possibility of anything that happens is ridiculously tiny in the major scheme of things.

Bullshit. That is just a gross misinterpretation of probability.

I too am playing devil's advocate, but one could say that probability is a construct of the human mind, and the human mind can only be shown to probably reflect reality through usage of rationality, another construct of the human mind. Rationally, if our brains didn't have some relation to reality, we wouldn't survive, because we wouldn't be able to interact with the world properly, but this rationality comes from the very thing you're trying to defend, so if the brain is flawed, so is your rationality.

Solipsism is shit, though. Even if the world isn't real, so what? If I believe that it isn't real, I'm fucked either way. If it is real, I'm being a stupid shithead, and if it isn't, nothing matters anyways. If you assume the world is real, and it isn't, then you've lost nothing over the solipsist position, and if it is real, you're significantly better off.

But there I go trying to use logic again.

[Kuroneko]

Of course, they could counter with pure solipsism, by arguing that the other person and the column are both figments of your imagination, but solipsism is the graveyard of philosophy, not its citadel.

Solipsism is not just a dead end--it's an ultimately meaningless position. Both the solipsism and anti-solipsism would acknowledge that there are some mechanisms which are responsible for the experience of other people, things, etc.; the only difference is that the former concludes that, in fact or possibility, these are part of the mind, while the latter excludes them from it. Thus, the distinction is only a kind of quibble over definitions, and since definitions aren't capable of being wrong without a conventional standard of correctness (which is disputed here), the only way one can reasonably rank them is by comparing the performance of their respective systems. And here solipsist model of experience loses. There are two possibilities--strong solipsism denies the existence of objective reality, in which case it is clearly only a matter of definition, or weak solispism acknowledges another class of reality (objective but non-experience-causing), in which case it's a job for Ockham's razor.

[Durandal]

I'm just playing "devil's advocate" here, so don't think I'd actually ever argue this myself, but one could argue that the possibility of anything that happens is ridiculously tiny in the major scheme of things.

You'd be wrong. The probability that a six-sided die will roll a number N is 1/6. That is not "ridiculously tiny", so that whole line of argument falls apart. Despite what armchair pseudo-philosophers might want to believe, probability can be measured.

[Surlethe]

I'm just playing "devil's advocate" here, so don't think I'd actually ever argue this myself, but one could argue that the possibility of anything that happens is ridiculously tiny in the major scheme of things.

The reason Darth Wong's measuring scheme works is precisely because the possibility of "anything" is ridiculously tiny. Let's assume, for example, that both people are delusional about the nature of the pillar; then, if this assumption is correct, their delusions can be considered as samples drawn from a sample space of all possible pillar delusions. Presumably, the delusion each person has is a random one from that sample space; thus, the probability of the two delusions being within 0.001 m of each other is vanishingly small. Ergo, it is wildly improbable for both of them to be delusional, and we conclude our initial assumption is incorrect. As we pile on more and more people measuring the pillar, the evidence against our initial assumption piles up, until we are all but certain there is actually a 1.21 m pillar.

[SWPIGWANG]

The probability that a six-sided die will roll a number N is 1/6.

That is how we model probability, and it isn't "probability itself."

After all, the dice could be loaded, and we can never be sure unless we roll it infinite amount of times or use some other measurement other than rolling. (through if the die is time-indepedent, we can put a probability bound on it as we roll enough times.)

The real problem is that using a system where probability can only be trivially measured result in the pratical problem similar to pure Solipsism.

[SWPIGWANG]

for example, that both people are delusional about the nature of the pillar; then, if this assumption is correct, their delusions can be considered as samples drawn from a sample space of all possible pillar delusions. Presumably, the delusion each person has is a random one from that sample space; thus, the probability of the two delusions being within 0.001 m of each other is vanishingly small.

That is if you assume a certain shape to the distribution of delsions, as not all out comes are equally likely. For some some cases 1.21m would be the mean and the standard deviation tiny for some reason. In real life, they could have just talked to each other and "reconstructed" their memories with suggested hints, even if they had originally no basis in reality.

Consider the number of Gods that exists. If we model it on the real number line from one to infinity, it won't even converge. By observation, the probability of a random person believeing in gods being a exact number exceeding something they can count in their lifetime is extremely unlikely. (for example, how many people believe there is exactly interger(pi*10^20) number of gods) Just because most people believe in one god doesn't mean that 3255134 gods is any more delusional.

Or else we'd have proven god exists by majority..... hahaha.

[Surlethe]

That is how we model probability, and it isn't "probability itself."

After all, the dice could be loaded, and we can never be sure unless we roll it infinite amount of times or use some other measurement other than rolling. (through if the die is time-indepedent, we can put a probability bound on it as we roll enough times.)

Actually, rolling a die is a binomial random variable. We can measure the actual results against theoretical results: essentially, what we do is assume the die has a proportion π = 1/6 -- i.e., that rolling a given face on the die is asymptotic to 1/6 -- and then we roll the die n times. After rolling n times, we find the sample proportion p, and then calculate the theoretical probability of our experiment giving p instead of π. If it's lower than some small arbitrary threshold α, which is usually set at 0.05, then our results are statistically significant; however, if not, then we accept the hypothesis that the actual results are not significantly different from the theoretical results. So, we actually can measure how different the statistic is from the paramater; we can never be sure, but 99.99% is close enough.

[brianeyci]

Time to add some pointless facts to the discussion.

Given the state of the die now, can you predict what the state of the die will be the next roll?

No, not really, because it's sensitive to initial conditions, among other things. So it's a chaotic dynamical system.

So even though you know the probability is N/6, you won't ever be able to predict what the next die roll will be. It's a completely deterministic system (in that there is only one outcome for one time period), but it's chaotic like the weather.

Brian

[Surlethe]

Time to add some pointless facts to the discussion.

Given the state of the die now, can you predict what the state of the die will be the next roll?

No, not really, because it's sensitive to initial conditions, among other things. So it's a chaotic dynamical system.

So even though you know the probability is N/6, you won't ever be able to predict what the next die roll will be. It's a completely deterministic system (in that there is only one outcome for one time period), but it's chaotic like the weather.

Brian

Right. The independence of the result of each successive observational unit is one of the sufficient conditions of a Bernoulli process: the others are it must fall into one of two categories ("success" and "failure"; in the case of our little die experiment, it has either the chosen face up, or it doesn't) and the probability of success is the same for each successive observational unit.

I suppose this makes a Bernoulli process a simple chaotic dynamical system?

[brianeyci]

No, I do not think so, because you are not talking about a dynamical system. Yes, idealized die rolls should be independent from one another, but in reality they are not (I am talking about reality). You might damage or slightly deform the die, meaning the next die roll is somewhat dependent on the old die roll. Plus there are other variables like you getting tired after a dice throw, etc., that makes a dice roll be affected by the last one. Countless others too. A Bernoulli process with failure and success doesn't depend on iteration, since it's idealized. I don't even think it's a dynamical system since you can't take the old input and plug it in to the function for a new input, as you said.

But that doesn't change the probability for N/6, that just means we can't predict its orbit for a given initial set of variables. In real life that set of variables would be too many to count, but even if we knew them all and could somehow track them, over a long period of time the orbit would eventually become unpredictable. We could predict over a short period of time, like how we predict the weather, but we can't forecast for a year from now. That doesn't have anything to do with the number of variables involved, but how unpredictable the iteration becomes as you tend to infinity.

Brian

[Surlethe]

for example, that both people are delusional about the nature of the pillar; then, if this assumption is correct, their delusions can be considered as samples drawn from a sample space of all possible pillar delusions. Presumably, the delusion each person has is a random one from that sample space; thus, the probability of the two delusions being within 0.001 m of each other is vanishingly small.

That is if you assume a certain shape to the distribution of delsions, as not all out comes are equally likely. For some some cases 1.21m would be the mean and the standard deviation tiny for some reason.

However, any such case would be entirely meaningless, since the majority of delusions would be within the measuring error, and the model would thus correspond to reality; if the standard deviation is significant at all, my point still stands.

In real life, they could have just talked to each other and "reconstructed" their memories with suggested hints, even if they had originally no basis in reality.

This violates the spirit of the exercise; there's no reason to have permitted the individuals to meet at all, with perhaps the exception of beforehand, to compare measuring devices.

Consider the number of Gods that exists. If we model it on the real number line from one to infinity, it won't even converge. By observation, the probability of a random person believeing in gods being a exact number exceeding something they can count in their lifetime is extremely unlikely. (for example, how many people believe there is exactly interger(pi*10^20) number of gods) Just because most people believe in one god doesn't mean that 3255134 gods is any more delusional.

Or else we'd have proven god exists by majority..... hahaha.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the proposed test of reality: you are neither quantifying nor observing any object, so if you're trying to reduce the test ad absurdum, you're not doing a very good job.

[brianeyci]

EDIT : That should be taking the output and plugging it in as input back into the function, the definition of iteration and an iterative process or dynamical system. So a Bernoulli system appears not to be a dynamical system at all. Dice rolls should not be either, but in real life they are.

Brian

[SWPIGWANG]

However, any such case would be entirely meaningless, since the majority of delusions would be within the measuring error, and the model would thus correspond to reality; if the standard deviation is significant at all, my point still stands.

No you missed the point. The point is that agreement with other people is not a sufficient "proof of correctness." For example we can easily have a visual illusion set up that distorts the views to an object, and the systematic measuring error would give an answer different from reality on default.

All agreement does is prove consistancy between measurements, and one needs additional properties to link it up with reality. (no systematic error, time invariance...etc) Most of such properties are assumed rather than proven in practice.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the proposed test of reality: you are neither quantifying nor observing any object

Well, perceived reality often have objects derived not out of direct observation. I suppose we can consider all that delusional through. (which would make up the vast majority of humans)

I wonder about the cognitive structure of the mind however, since that is not derived out of observation but is used in every observation.

Remember the question here isn't external reality, but the mind's ability to comprehend it and the validity of such comprehension.

[Darth Wong]

However, any such case would be entirely meaningless, since the majority of delusions would be within the measuring error, and the model would thus correspond to reality; if the standard deviation is significant at all, my point still stands.

No you missed the point. The point is that agreement with other people is not a sufficient "proof of correctness." For example we can easily have a visual illusion set up that distorts the views to an object, and the systematic measuring error would give an answer different from reality on default.

As expected, you rely on Matrix-style solipsism. Congratulations, you're an idiot and it is you who missed the point.

[SWPIGWANG]

ARG, you are right.....

Remind me to actually think about the argument in the entire context before making them, and not make them only reading the immediate post.

point conceeded.

[Durandal]

The probability that a six-sided die will roll a number N is 1/6.

That is how we model probability, and it isn't "probability itself."

Completely irrelevant. Newland's argument was that the probability of anything happening is tiny, which is simple idiocy. If the actual probability of a six-sided die rolling the same number twice in 6 trials was "ridiculously tiny", then we'd never see it happen.

[Lord Zentei]

I'm just playing "devil's advocate" here, so don't think I'd actually ever argue this myself, but one could argue that the possibility of anything that happens is ridiculously tiny in the major scheme of things.

While the probability of anything that happens can be low, the probability of anything happening is 100%. Lol, am I rite?