PH: Prove H2O-in-itself exists as Real by Itself?

[Flannel Jesus]

Part of what he's said makes it sound like he just thinks anything that is emergent isn't real independent of human thought, which... kinda makes sense, and I can partially agree with that, but that also means water itself isn't "real", not just h2o, and humans aren't "real", and the planet earth isn't "real".

If the only thing that can be real is non-emergent fundamental things, then everything bigger than a proton or electron or photon isn't real, and even those things are arguably emergent themselves according to quantum mechanics.

[FlashDangerpants]

I see, perhaps I should stop trying to understand his position then. I'm still left with all sorts of questions about how he thinks the world works, like, if someone digs in the ground and finds dinosaur bones, were the dinosaur bones not there before the digging? Were they only there after someone decided they were there? Are people materialising findings by some magical mind force? Is there any reality, to him, that is not dependent on human thought, but that humans may "discover" and interact with?

It still feels like he's just saying "nothing, at all, is real ever".

That mainly goes back to an old problem he had with moral objectivity. His workaround was to decide that there is no such thing as objectivity because there is only this negotiated illusion of reality. Thus morality isn't objective, but neither is anything scientific, thus his moral theory remains equivalent to science.

Understanding his position may not confer direct benefit because he is quite stupid and his output lacks any value. But as an object lesson in how anybody can rationalise any weird shit as long as they want the end result badly enough, it sort of has a charm.

[Iwannaplato]

Part of what he's said makes it sound like he just thinks anything that is emergent isn't real independent of human thought, which... kinda makes sense, and I can partially agree with that, but that also means water itself isn't "real", not just h2o, and humans aren't "real", and the planet earth isn't "real".

If the only thing that can be real is non-emergent fundamental things, then everything bigger than a proton or electron or photon isn't real, and even those things are arguably emergent themselves according to quantum mechanics.

I think the best interpretation would be something like this:
What we refer to and think of when we use the idea of water or H20 is mingled with/includes our particular primate sensory systems and models. IOW when we think of 'water' we think about something in terms/symbols/sense impressions that are necessarily affected by and made up of how we as advanced primates experience [something]. Even H20 which seems very abstract is still a model. And we have ideas of those atoms, probably from the old tiny solar system model we were taught in school, those who were taught that way. This model is useful, but it's not really what it's like (and quantum images of the atoms would look quite different). Whenever we talk, think reality is at least something like realityourbrainsensesmodels.

So, when he says 'water did not exist', he would not mean that whatever is the reality portion the ding an sich version of that clump word I coined above didn't exist, but whatever we conceive of did not exist.

Again, this is a best interpretation, I think. I am not saying that is what he really believes or asserts, though honestly in some discussions with others, I think he sees the others as naively missing that the clump is what we know and what we refer to and not a ding an sich.

That said, other times he does seem to want to use QM to deny the existence of unexperienced things.

I am not, myself, completely closed to that, though I have panpsychist leanings so I avoid some of the problems that arise in time issues if one thinks humans need to experience something for it to exist.

I think VA has to some extent, as an autodidact, reinvent some philosophical wheels, but not as well as the earlier versions.

As I've said I think PH and sometimes you talk past each other because he is a kind of virtue ethicist.

I don't blame you guys because he contradicts and he is sloppy/unclear in his presentation.

Note: I am not saying that if he knew the names of his philosohpical positions and could present them clearly he would be right. But I think the argument could be fruitful. OH, I get what you mean, but......

[Flannel Jesus]

Right, so I get that there's a model in our minds, and I get that that model may not match reality as it is, and usually doesn't in fact,

but the common sense interpretation is that there is *something* that exists, that we are bumping up against when we drink and touch water, and our models are deeper and deeper attempts at understanding just what that something is.

If we put quantum mechanics aside for a moment, I think we have a lot of really solid evidence that our model of atoms and how they form bonds with each other is not JUST a model, but that it has a strong tethering to something that *really is happening*. In fact, that's largely the point of the development of this model in the first place.

I know some people like to take the very philosophical approach to say that science isn't about discovering truths about how the world works, but just about developing models that make useful predictions. There's validity to that, but if you've ever read the writings of real scientists, plenty of them are really and truly drawn by the idea of understanding reality, real reality. It's naive, perhaps, when compared against the ultra pragmatic view of science as a useful tool that doesn't tell strict truths, but that naivety is pervasive among the most intelligent, most accomplished scientists, the biggest drivers of scientific advancement.

And so our atomic model is in that vein. Yes, it is a model, but the functioning of that model and the root of it may still be literally and naively correct. And the success of the model - and it has indeed been remarkably successful - is further indication that the model has some real tethering to what's really going on.

When I have a glass of water in front of me, I just genuinely do think that it's composed of elements which are in some sense bonded to each other, in an emergent sense, and that those elements are composed of protons and neutrons and electrons. The quantum nature of our reality makes the exact state of those protons and neutrons and electrons a bit fuzzy (literally), but there are layers and layers of evidence that electrons and protons and neutrons really do interact in the ways our chemical models say they do.

I accept a moderately naive vision of reality. I accept the reality of weakly emergent phenomena. I accept that, when a model has as much evidence as atoms do, that that model is probably saying something really true about reality. My exact mental picture of it almost certainly doesn't identically resemble what's really happening, but I think there's enough reason to think that aspects of the model are basically and generally naively correct.

Reality is messy, but there's something really there, and I think we're doing a remarkably good job at prodding into it to discover real truths, whatever that means.

[Flannel Jesus]

One of the important points here that can't be stressed enough, but which may be disagreeable to some, is that if some alien intelligence tried to prod reality like we are, and they had any success, they would almost certainly end up with an atomic model of chemistry extremely similar to our own. They wouldn't call it chemistry, they wouldn't use the symbol "h2o", they would have their own vocabulary and symbolic system, but if we could translate their textbooks on chemistry, we would find remarkably similar concepts to our own, based probably on remarkably similar experiments to our own.

Which is what makes it a scientific discovery and not an invention.

And it's not just me saying that, scientists themselves decided that chemical and atomic knowledge is so likely to be a universal among intelligent species that they put it on the Voyager records as a symbol of our own intelligence.

[Walker]

VA

Prove that H2O-in-itself didn't exist as real by itself before it emerged as a fact entangled with the human conditions as conditioned within a credible chemistry framework and system of knowledge.

As you must know, proving non-existence is a logical fallacy, and proving existence requires a view, although I’m at sea as to what you’re assumed to must-know affirms, or what lines it crosses, according to other tightly clenched views.

- Water is food, for thought.
- Existence of past water and its effects upon the earf can only be an inference, proven by evidence that is consistent within a view that imaginatively, and perhaps also experimentally, replicates inferred conditions that are considered relevant to a desired outcome.
- For example, some folks say that the Grand Canyon formed over millions of years of flowing water, based on inferences drawn from current sensory evidence, and consistent with a view of how things might have happened.
- Other folks say that the Grand Canyon formed quickly, within the years of a single human lifetime, based on inferences drawn from current sensory evidence, and consistent with a view of how things might have happened.
- Each view measures the probability of its own accuracy, and the probability of the other view’s accuracy, within the framework of the measuring view, and it’s probable that the predictions will not match based on the view of cats and dogs being diametrically opposed on certain issues.
- I figure it's also probable that one view might be more accepting of the other view.

- We also know that the view is the glue … the glue that binds predictions to what’s known of now.
- Speaking of the glue that binds the universe together …

- Another example is dark matter.
- Existence of current and past dark matter can only be an inference, proven by evidence that constitutes proof within a view.

[Peter Holmes]

Any description of reality exists within a descriptive context. So the assertion that a descriptive truth-claim depends on its context is trivially true and inconsequential. There's nothing else it can do.

Given physicalism, if someone says there's a chair in the room next door, we can verify or falsify the claim. So the assertion that non-existence is unverifiable is false. (If it's supposed to be a non-physical chair, all bets are off.)

[bobmax]

The fact that Pluto is no longer a planet may seem trivial.
However, even if imperceptibly in this downgrading it is perceived as a lack. Pluto is no longer the Pluto it used to be...
Yet it is still the same object damn!

In moments like this it is as if the network with which we want to define reality is fraying.

And this happens even more dramatically in the face of sudden changes in who we love.
Where the object of love is no longer that.
Maybe it never was either...

Who, what, did I love?

This phenomenon is drastic in the face of death.
The dead body is not the living body. Although only a moment ago he was alive.
He is no longer him.

And now am I loving a simple memory?
Or is not the true reality in this same love?

[Sculptor]

This thread seems to have reached down to a new low for PN.

A moral statement is of a completely different order of reality to a statement concerned with a matter of material reality.
This makes the OP utterly ridiculous, and get the "NOT EVEN WRONG" of the week award.

[Sculptor]

VA

Prove that H2O-in-itself didn't exist as real by itself before it emerged as a fact entangled with the human conditions as conditioned within a credible chemistry framework and system of knowledge.

Asking to prove a negative is even more silly than the entire thread.

[Sculptor]

The way VA's description of science operates:
How do we know a science fact? We ask "science".
How does "science" know science facts? Ask scientists.
How do scientists know science facts? Ask scientists.

He doesn't allow for any need to look at the actual world.
He discusses nothing but bandwagon credibility.

This would be perfectly analogous to morality - ask a moralist.

But science is different, because at some point it includes asking nature in some way that that is never necessary with morality.

[Sculptor]

He expressed doubt that H2O existed before its discovery - does he also doubt that it exists now, after its discovery? Is this a case of "nothing that we think exists actually exists"? Or something else?

Unfortunately you do not understand my points.

My points are;
1. Water=H20 exists as an EMERGENCE which is conditioned upon a specific FSK [framework and system of knowledge FSK or reality FSR].

2. Water=H2O is an emergence of the common sense FSK, the scientific FSK and the Chemistry FSK.

3. As such any claim of water=H20 must imperatively be conditioned, linked and qualified to various FSK, i.e. the Chemistry being the most credible.

4. Water=H20 cannot be claimed to have pre-existed awaiting discovery independent of any FSK.

If you insists otherwise, demonstrate or justify how Water=H20 had pre-existed awaiting discovery independent of any FSK, i.e. human conditions accumulated since humans first emerged and the Big Bang.

Did someone come along and swap out the contents of Haley's comet which is largely made of water and attested to have existed long before chemical science?
Or do you disagree that Homer's accounts of the "Wine Dark Sea" was a description of sea water thousands of years before "H2O" was a glimmer in science's mind?

Or maybe you have just lost your mind?

[Peter Holmes]

VA

Prove that H2O-in-itself didn't exist as real by itself before it emerged as a fact entangled with the human conditions as conditioned within a credible chemistry framework and system of knowledge.

Asking to prove a negative is even more silly than the entire thread.

I was teasing.

[Peter Holmes]

My diagnosis. VA has a Kantian bee in his bonnet. We can perceive, know and describe reality only in a human way. Therefore, the way we perceive, know and describe reality could 'emerge' only when we turned up.

But then, unlike Kant, he leaps to the conclusion that the reality we perceive, know and describe didn't exist, before we perceived, knew and described it - wouldn't exist had we not perceived, known and described it - and won't exist after we're gone.

My prescription. Trepanning to let the bee out.

[Sculptor]

VA

Prove that H2O-in-itself didn't exist as real by itself before it emerged as a fact entangled with the human conditions as conditioned within a credible chemistry framework and system of knowledge.

Asking to prove a negative is even more silly than the entire thread.

I was teasing.

I get it.