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Dear terry, Things are only ever A because someone asserts/affirms that they are A. That is, calling things anything makes them symbols and hence they, as As or Bs, exist within a symbolic system. Within the symbolic system, the As and Bs have a reality as part of the system which is independent of anyone asserting they are As or Bs. Still, they only become As and Bs when someone asserts/affirms that they are As or Bs by using the system. That is, they are As and Bs because they are OBJECTS before a mind. The role of science is to hypothesis relationships between symbolic systems and things that are presumed (hypothesized) as existing independent of the symbolic system being used to attempt to account, in some way, for the presumed and quantifiable features of things. This means that symbolic systems can also treat themselves as independent objects and hence symbolic systems can form relationships with themselves. Validation is about finding ways to prove the projected relationships are false. Validation is a mode of hypothesis. It is also an attempt to limit uncertainty. There are no concepts based purely on self-perception. All concepts, no matter how silly, reaffirm the relationship between a perceiving being and a thing being perceived. So, your example of the moon being perceived as green cheese is identical, at the ontological level, with the perception that the moon is mostly made of basalt. (The case of psychosis might seem to indicate that one can have pure self-perception but there is still a distance between the person who is psychotic and their psychosis - the difficulty is that the psychotic person struggles to establish and maintain this difference as the ground for review of their experience.) Is it a difference of degree? One could start with a hypothesis that the moon is made of green cheese and progressively, using various methods of falsification, come to a subsequent hypothesis that the moon is made mostly of basalt. Is this what you mean by "degree"? By degrees of reasoning (experiment) we come to better propositions? I am happy to see operational differences and functional differences between the two propositions and I think that we all know how to navigate these differences in our daily lives. We aren't always right which indicates that perception is an ongoing problem that we would like to have a science to fix once and for all. cheers from the land of soggy trifle keith >>> Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> 03/06/12 3:38 PM >>> Hi Keith, You seem to be heading down a path in which theory is only validated by self-perception (it is A because I think it is A)? Two questions: 1. Where is the role of science in that kind of theory and its validation? 2. How do you differentiate between concepts purely based on self-perception and other means? As an example, how do you differentiate between a self-perception-based theory such as 'I think the moon is made of green cheese'' and a theory based on empirical testing such as 'the moon is made mostly of basalt rock' ? Is this a matter of ontological difference or degree? All the best, Terry -----Original Message----- From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Keith Russell Sent: Tuesday, 6 March 2012 11:13 AM To: Dr Terence Love Subject: How a Calculator works Dear Terry, you wrote, in part: >>>>> I suggest, any ideas we have about how we think and what are minds are illusions/delusions as a matter of course. An example of a similar situation, if you do a calculation on a calculator, you can watch yourself and attempt to infer what is going on in the calculator (equivalent of watching yourself thinking). You can even get to the point that you can believe your theory of how the calculator works (equivalent of theory of mind) is right because it fits all the available evidence that you see in how the calculator responds (equivalent of confirmation with self -perception of a theory of thinking and mind). Almost certainly you are wrong and the calculator internally does not work anything like you have deduced (e.g. it may be working using reverse polish or...). There is likely no elements of what happens are similar to your model of how the calculator works (equivalent of theory of mind is a self-perceptual illusion/fallacy). This seems to be a useful a general principle: the subjective and objective worlds are incommensurable. >>> Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> 03/06/12 12:08 PM >>> I suggest that the calculator works exactly as I think it works. That is, based on my understanding of the expected outcome of my operating a calculator, I will, or will NOT, say "the calculator works". For example, if I want it to add 2 and 2 and 2 and it gives the answer of 6, then I will say that it works. When, however, I ask it to give me the square root of 2 and then multiply the answer by itself and it gives me back 2 then I know, even more, that the calculator works. Why? Because it gives back false information based on a set of rules that only a person with a mind would bother inventing. Of course I am giving a "mindful" definition to the word "work" but then the concept of "work" only makes sense to a mind. The sub-atomic operations of particles located in proximity to the calculator might be described as "works of god" or "works of nature", but again, such concepts only make sense to a mind. The fact that all relationships are a bridging of the incommensurable, including my current account of relationships, simply points to the infinite regress of all forms of realism ( there will always need to be another state/thing/event to attempt to deal with the next illusion or layer of the onion). One might ask "what do atoms do" but then we are still faced with the realization that any general account is inadequate for any instance and any instance always exceeds itself and hence fails to be defined in particular. Sure, there is no bucket in my head that amounts to a "mind" and one might better talk, as I do above, of "mindfulness" but I still await serious experiments that show what is happening when we are rehearsing, when we are reiterating, when we are practicing, when we are calling to mind knowledge as distinct to memories. Cheers keith