Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!CCH.BBN.COM!bnevin From: bnevin@CCH.BBN.COM (Bruce E. Nevin) Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: Consensus and Reality, Consensus and Reality Message-ID: <19880613195058.8.NICK@INTERLAKEN.LCS.MIT.EDU> Date: 13 Jun 88 19:50:00 GMT Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 120 Approved: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu Date: Mon, 13 Jun 88 09:36 EDT From: Bruce E. Nevin Subject: Re: Consensus and Reality, Consensus and Reality In-Reply-To: Your message of 10 Jun 88 18:22 PDT To: hayes.pa@xerox.com cc: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu, jmc@sail.stanford.edu, bn@cch.bbn.com We have some confusion of persons here. It was in "Simon Brooke's acidic comments on William Wells' rather brusquely expressed response to Cockton's social-science screaming" that you perceived "a three-hundred-year old DOUBT about the world, and how we know it's there." (V7 #24) On the contrary, my opening remark was: BN> I can't speak for Simon Brooke, but personally I don't think anyone BN> seriously doubts the existence of the physical world in which we live. BN> Something is going on here. The question is, what. I then said that it is the anti-consensus view that lays claim to an absolute reality (WYSIWYG realism--the "naive realism" I thought was unhorsed by Russell in 1940, in _An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth_), and that a consensual realist, like myself, acknowledges that we should not attribute such absoluteness to what we perceive and know. PH> . . . I am more impressed by the way in which HP> speakers of different languages can communiate so easily, ie by the apparent PH> unity of LofT in the face of an external babel; whereas you seem to be more PH> impressed with the opposite Speakers of different languages can communicate when there is mutual good will and intent to communicate, and when they come to (or come with a prior) agreement on a domain that constrains the semantics and pragmatics sufficiently to make the ambiguities manageable. Same applies to speakers of the same language. Get into rougher waters where the discourse is no longer constrained by subject-matter (sublanguage syntax) and social convention, however, and lifelong speakers of the same neighborhood dialect can and often do find one another incomprehensible. PH> Of course its not obvious that all the terms we use are learned: I tend PH> to think that many cant be ( eg enough about spatial relationships to PH> recognise a visual cliff, and see T. Bowers work ). I was trying to lean PH> over as far as I could in the `social' direction, and pass you an olive PH> branch. Thanks, an easy olive branch to accept and to reciprocate as follows: it seems obvious to me that some of this is learned, some biologically innate. With the caveat that I believe it is sounder science not to _assume_ a lot is innate (reference here to the sillier biologicist claims of Generativists). BN> I only want to establish agreement that we are BN> NOT talking about some 'absolute Reality' BN> . . . that we do not and cannot know BN> what is "really Real" PH> My point was that there is no NEED to establish agreement I did not intend that you and I should be the only parties to such agreement. Some earlier messages seemed to claim that the world of naive realism was in some sense absolute, e.g. Mr. T. William Wells. TW> OK, answer me this: how in the world do they reach a consensus TW> without some underlying reality which they communicate through. PH> . . . this idea of a reality which is somehow more absolute than ordinary PH> reality is just smoke. I DO think that we can know what is really real, PH> that some of our beliefs can be true: REALLY true, that is, true so that PH> no reality could make them truer, as absolutely and ultimately true as PH> it is possible to be. "Some of our beliefs." Certainly. The hard question is, which ones, and how can we tell the difference. PH> They [some of our beliefs] are true when the world is in fact the way PH> they claim it to be, thats all. If one takes the appropriate perspective, has the appropriate purposes and intentions, is prepared to ignore irrelevancies, and is able to get away with ignoring what doesn't fit, then, yes, the world is "in fact" and "really" the way our beliefs claim it to be. From another perspective, with other purposes and intentions, ignoring other irrelevancies that the world (in that context) lets us get away with ignoring, the world is in fact the way our rather different beliefs claim it to be. For all practical purposes, the earth is flat with lots of hills, valleys, cliffs, bodies of water, plains, etc. From an astronomical or astronautical perspective, different beliefs apply. Neither view can falsify the other (pace my 9th grade science teacher, many years ago), because they are incommensurate, they do not communicate with each other. We can "act as if" the world were flat most of the time, and get away with it. And most of the time the astronomical "truth" about the shape of the earth is irrelevant and pointless to talk about. Lucky for us! We might otherwise have to include a quantum physical statement about the shape of the earth in everyday discourse--and act on it! So sure, some of our beliefs are REALLY true--as far as they go. However, where one set of beliefs contradicts another set of beliefs couched in another perspective and serving another purpose, they can't both be REALLY true, can they? Well, yes, they can. You just have to assume one perspective at a time, and not try to reconcile them. To try to reconcile them all is tantamount to trying to establish knowledge of Absolute Reality, and we know that is a fruitless quest. I am willing to let this dialog between you and me rest here. I hope that it is plain to those who objected to "consensual reality" that the consensual aspects of knowledge and belief are neither silly nor trivial. I have tried to clarify that "consensual reality" refers to shared beliefs, institutionalized as social convention, that the world lets us get away with. Our late 20th century American (techie subculture) consensus reality has no greater and no less claim to being absolutely real than any other. It works really well in some respects. It courts disaster in others. Time will tell how much the world will let us get away with. It is of course an evolving consensus, and the process of adaptation can allow for better accomodation with other competing/cooperating perspectives that do exist in the biosphere. Bruce Nevin bn@cch.bbn.com