Barbelith Underground > Head Shop > Sci, Rat, Emp. Or "Where have all the qualia gone?"

1) The state of reality is determined by the collective beliefs of all those who inhabit it.

This is an anthropocentric fallacy, given that implicit within this paradigm and the idea of "paradigm shifts" is that humans somehow make up a majority force in shaping the universe, a position that cannot really be given a justification given the cosmological infinity that is the physical universe and the potential infinite expansion of the spiritual. Hell, gut flora outnumber humans on some ration like 10^20 to one...how did they shape the shift from "mysticism" to "science"? Or are they denied agency because their cognitive processes are not indentifiable viable our perceptual capacities. Maybe if they had cute little faces....
Even if you accept that human cognition shapes how events function within the sphere of this planet - thus the change from the validity of a "mystic" paradigm to a "scientific" one, as determinable by observation or empirical methodology -the "proof" of this assertion lies in a straw-man interpretation of history that emulates simplistic evolutionary models in postulated a single line of thought experiencing gradual change, not to mention the establishment of incredibly dubious distinctions between "stages" of human thought. I would further point out that this model is cripplingly eurocentric, and odiously reminiscent of text-book image of the Renaissance as the "triumph of Reason."
Also implicit in this argument is that one can represent an a unified body of "the mystic" or "the scientific" at any point in human history that could truly be asserted as somehow a majority opinion. Considering that both constructs cointinue to be in daily contestation. I further fail to see how ine can claim that "Christian paradigm" has at any time prior to the colonial period of history can be asserted as the governing system of thought, given that numerically through most of its early history, Christians have been outnumbered by Hindus and Chinese pantheists by a fare share. And I am being generous and will not pick apart at length the idea of presenting Christianity as an undifferentiated whole.
While this does not dismiss the concept of consensual reality, my point is that there has never been a consensus that could be easily correlated to a formulaic ideolgical cluster: perhaps consensus determines that soil is down and sky is up, that stone is pretty hard and water wet.
Furthermore, how about when reality fails to match belief in terms of outcome?How do you deal with the millions of medieval peasants who "knew" beyond certainty that prayer to the Virgin would cure the Black Plague, yet died of the disease? How about the bulk mass of Europe who "knew" beyond a shadow of a doubt that black Africans and Jews were intellectually and morally inferior? Were they because of the power of collective belief?
And how about the power of collective ignorance? If a mass of people know nothing about something, does that make it less real?

2. "Flat Earth. Earth as centre of universe. All scientific data really. Part of evidence being meaningful to someone is believeing its authenticity. No belief, no evidence. "

Ummm. No. This is misinformation. Postulators of both these positions, when they existed in regional majority in some place like Hellenic Greece or Dark Ages Europe, did not use empirical-model reasoning, but rather rhetoric grounded in a religio-mythic standard established by text precedents. Even common-sense logic, like "if the earth is a sphere, why do we not fall off the bottom?" is sceondary within counterargument to the assertions of astronomers such as Copernicus and Galileo. Unless you are really stretching your definition of "scientific data" to the point of meaningnessless. The fact that individuals in modern groups like the Flat Earth Society retrofit empirical reasoning onto the earlier assertion does not mean that the initial sustenance of the idea.

3. (Alchemy) Competing against the dominate paradigm of the period (In europe, christian religion) and thus was bound to fail. But alchemy did actually produce some results that still important to science today, some not so (like drinking mercury!). The actual processes of alchemy and science is probably quite similar.

Again, there is a contestable initial premise that magic/alchemy/science can actually be split within the historical record that is not sustainable on closer examination of the record of the advent, progression, or dying-down of constructs within these three categories of thought. The history of magick/science, especially within the cited axial point of European Renaissance, is far more confabulated. As I have said elsewhere, science and magic used to operate using the same system of trial-and-error attempts to get results, using a canon of precedent material from other experimenters.

This position, of course, also begs the question of how, if a Christian paradigm governed Europe at the time at which alchemy was practiced, how could alchemical experiments, such as the extractions of chlorine gas from the [presumed to be a pure element since the time of the Hellenes] mineral lime, have worked in the first place.

It is notable however, that there is a mid-shift from a universalized model of consensus to a localized-field model, which in and of itself pleads the question of where, on what scale, the process of universe-rules determination occurs. Do a group of alchemists in a locked room in a casle in the country side have better odds of finding the Philosopher's Stone than the same alchemists on a street on the Left Bank of Paris, surrounded by syphilitic prostitutes? Where are the boundaries of mass-consensus and the solipsistic power of the individual will? Furthermore, how can one explain when the individual will transcends the mass-consensus. The example of the Buddha attaining nirvana, contrary to the entirity of Hindu paradigm (high and low) around him, or how that Greek astronomer (name?) came to the conclusion that the Earth is a sphere after observing the curvature of the shadow of the planet upon the moon during an eclipse.

4) I wouldn't say impossibile, just difficult. Paradigm shifts do occur. Once the concept of human flight was ridiculous, now it is commonplace.

The latter statement is spurious in it's claim of some sort of absolute shift, and hence is a poor example. The idea of a human flying external to any mechanical device is still preposterous. On the other hand, throughout mystical, magickal, and technological treatises one can find the idea of a human flying utilizing spiritual or mechanical technology often entertained. The myth of Daedalus is but one mechanical example, but also to be considered are mystical methodologies of the Shinto, the Austrlians Natives, or the in-between constructs presented in certain more obscure Tantric documents (which involve building a flying chariot powered by four fires and a vat of boiling mercury).

5) [paragraph up until]...Thus science triumphs over mysticism, after mysticism triumphed over barbarism.

Have you ever been around any purportedly "barbarian" cultures, or is this a reference to some kind of state of nature?

Again, though, the reliance here on a model of historical overturning that really doesn't stand up to scruntiny. Mystical ideological systems exist in a continued state of alternating tension and harmony with scientific ones, and have since recorded history. In other words, there's no room in this assertion for the double-think, triple-think, and unresolved contradictions that make up most people's internal life and perception of the world.

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The very attempt to quantify the nature and extent of qualia, and their value for describing the universe is self-defeating given that the criterion to be "qualia" is that state of fluctuated subjective meaning. You cannot catalogue qualia, or given then attributes of greater of lesser validity, because there is no guaranteed proportion between and object and the viewer's interpretation of the object.
A stone cannot be "more true" than another object, because the the specific objects (the stone) is not simply a stone, but possessing of potential infinite interpretations of what it is...granite, a lingam, big, small, brown, speckled, the one I tripped on, etc. based within the eye of the beholder and its hypercontext in time and space.

>>Also, when you say the media has a high falsity value, Fool, you surely don't mean this? I read papers, watch the news and I see the conflict in the Middle East. I haven't been there so I rely on these sources for my information. Are you saying that I should consider this to be "highly false"? <<

Perhaps, more 'unreal' is a better term here. The further you are from direct experience the more 'unreal' the experience becomes. Media of all kinds requires the 'belief' of the viewer to function. News needs to have you believe that what you are being told is fact. Entertainment media needs you to suspend your disbelief in what you are being told. Either way, media is not direct experience and as such has a layer of interpretation and possible falsification over it.

>>This is an anthropocentric fallacy, given that implicit within this paradigm and the idea of "paradigm shifts" is that humans somehow make up a majority force in shaping the universe<<

I never mentioned humans, I just said 'all those who inhabit it'. But I see what you mean, and I guess it was implied.

>>It is notable however, that there is a mid-shift from a universalized model of consensus to a localized-field model,<<

I think I meant it to be more a localised-field. Like the way the internet is a localised reality within the larger scope of 'reality'. Collective belief allows communication between individuals, only what is essential to maintenance of this communication goes into the core of the software. And people do use different software, so even the core may vary.

>>Monkey disects the Fools glib use of history<<

Yes, I was being VERY general. I was trying to show shifts in thinking and how they modify society as an intellectual process of evolution. And like evolution, outdated forms are not extinguished. They are retained, like pressing save everytime something interesting happens in a game.

But to cover some of the points you raised.

>>How about the bulk mass of Europe who "knew" beyond a shadow of a doubt that black Africans and Jews were intellectually and morally inferior? Were they because of the power of collective belief?<<

While this meme was in place it did affect reality in Europe. Black Africans and Jews were treated as inferior. And this was due to the collective belief of Europeans of that time.

>>How do you deal with the millions of medieval peasants who "knew" beyond certainty that prayer to the Virgin would cure the Black Plague, yet died of the disease?<<

They didn't really believe it would work. It would be hard to believe in the power of prayer when confronted daily with the reality of death. And also who is to say it didn't work for some people.

>>And how about the power of collective ignorance? If a mass of people know nothing about something, does that make it less real?<<

Yes it does, to a certain extent. One could say that collective ignorance of Alien Abductions makes them less real, but they do happen, whether they are real or not. Mass ignorance is used daily by major corporations to sell product and make product seem more attractive on a daily basis. It might not force a thing into unreality but it certainly changes mass perception of a thing.

>>Do a group of alchemists in a locked room in a casle in the country side have better odds of finding the Philosopher's Stone than the same alchemists on a street on the Left Bank of Paris, surrounded by syphilitic prostitutes?<<

Maybe. Scientists work better in labs rather than brothels, dontchathink?

>>Again, there is a contestable initial premise that magic/alchemy/science can actually be split within the historical record<<

Not at all, I'd say they are all the same thing. Observe reality, record results, use results to achieve change.

>>The example of the Buddha attaining nirvana, contrary to the entirity of Hindu paradigm (high and low) around him<<

Buddha, I would suggest, saw things for what they are, just stories. And as such he could make up his own. Buddhism does use hindu mythology though, and builds on hindu thought (extending the notion of Brahman or non being).

>>4) I wouldn't say impossibile, just difficult. Paradigm shifts do occur. Once the concept of human flight was ridiculous, now it is commonplace.
The latter statement is spurious in it's claim of some sort of absolute shift, and hence is a poor example.<<

I was mearly challenging the idea that a paradigm shift is impossible. And that change can take surprising forms, including forms previously thought impossible.

>>On the other hand, throughout mystical, magickal, and technological treatises one can find the idea of a human flying utilizing spiritual or mechanical technology often entertained. The myth of Daedalus is but one mechanical example, but also to be considered are mystical methodologies of the Shinto, the Austrlians Natives, or the in-between constructs presented in certain more obscure Tantric documents (which involve building a flying chariot powered by four fires and a vat of boiling mercury).<<

So, man imagined the idea of mechanical flying and then realised it. Isn't this part of what I'm suggesting. Ideas can move from the ureal (imagined) to the real through the use of science/technology/magic (belief actualliser).

>>Have you ever been around any purportedly "barbarian" cultures, or is this a reference to some kind of state of nature?<<

No, once again I was trying to show change in culture, and the gradual increase in complexity of intellectual constructs. Perhaps hunter>hunter&gather societies is a more acceptable term.

>>Again, though, the reliance here on a model of historical overturning that really doesn't stand up to scruntiny. Mystical ideological systems exist in a continued state of alternating tension and harmony with scientific ones, and have since recorded history. In other words, there's no room in this assertion for the double-think, triple-think, and unresolved contradictions that make up most people's internal life and perception of the world<<

When I buy a new game for my ps2 I don't throw away my old games. And I wasn't showing how one idea replaces and destroys another but rather how ideas can change, modify and mutate. I'm arguing for double-think, triple-think, and unresolved contradictions that make up most people's internal life and perception of the world. I just want to make sense of it.

>>A stone cannot be "more true" than another object, because the the specific objects (the stone) is not simply a stone, but possessing of potential infinite interpretations of what it is...granite, a lingam, big, small, brown, speckled, the one I tripped on, etc. based within the eye of the beholder and its hypercontext in time and space.<<

Of course, but isn't this what I'm saying, or part of what I'm saying. And a rock is more true than say a drawing of a bunyip. Both can be said to exist in the sense that both rock and paper are 'things' but the paper contains the representation of a mythological creature. Myth requiring a culture contruct, story construct, metaphor construct, language construct, and the ability to imagine and concieve from the above contructs. All of which require someone to percieve and understand it for it to exist. Otherwise the drawing is just colour on paper. The rock, even with all its multiple interpretations, could be said to exist without a viewer present (though not for certain). Thus the rock manifests in this reality more that the bunyip, and is 'more real'.