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Amaros -> RE: what is TPE 24/7? (10/3/2009 9:24:10 AM)
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I'd love to sort all of this out once and for all, the temptation is great, although experience tells me that once this is accomplished, some sweet little thing will pipe up "but I'm a real slave".
Identity is a tricky thing, what are we? A collection of beliefs and behaviors, not always in synch with one another. The human ability to form abstractions is a Two edged sword - it allows us to construct models of cause and effect that allow us to make predictions about things that have not yet occurred, process we cannot directly observe - we can't tell the future, but we can make educated guesses.
On the other hand, it also allows us to construct false models, to invent alternative realities that seem as real as any reality - reality itself is a model, a construct, a set of predicitons of cause and effect and expectation that can be entirely abstract, and yet to which we react and interact as if it were real.
Thus, there is, for humans, esentially not One, but Four distinct realites: - Objective reality: the state of all energy in the universe at any given moment.
- Subjective Reality: the model of reality we construct as we assimilate Objective reality filtered through our perceptions.
- Objective Consensus Reality: that which is demonstrable and which we agree is real and predictable.
- Subjective Consensus Reality: that which we agree is real, even if not demonstrable.
Objective reality is ungraspable in it's entirety through the senses, too vast to model with any degree of accuracy and detail, even individual processes are elusive due to the uncertianty principle, we can at best describe in terms of individual facts (predictive models of distinct objects and processes), and sets of related facts, linked through heuristics and process, and construct a consensus model that can be tested for predictive validity - that is Objective Consensus Reality.
The senses process information: visual, aural, tactile, etc., and processed into models in the brain, Subjective reality, which we can then describe through linguistic symbolism to others who can then counter it with their own subjective perceptions.
That which survives the contest, and is predictive becomes part of the objective consensus: the Sun is warm, the sky is Blue, to keep it simple.
Objective consensus reality is then further broken down and examined: why is the Sun warm? (Nuclear fusion). Why is the Sky Blue? A person who is color blind will perceive this differently, they see the sky as what we call green - we tell then that the color of the sky is Blue, they think Green is called Blue, and they call Green Blue. In fact, Green and Blue are defined by the spectrum of visible wavelength perceivable by the human eye, the Blue is photons refracted off of gaseous elements in the atmosphere, water vapor particularly, the objective consensus description of the color Blue is a wavelength of approximately 475 nanometers, and that remains constant, even if you are color blind.
Calling it Blue is a convention, it's the name of the Color the statistical majority of us see when we look at the sky.
Green is around 510nm in wavelength - we can call Blue Green, but we cannot call 475nm 510nm.
Another example, as an subjective consensus, we generally agree that the sun will probably rise tomorrow, we call it "a fact", it's reasonably predictive, precluding some cosmic disaster. Of course objectively, the Sun does not really rise, the Earth rotates and the Sun appears to rise, travel across the sky, and set.
It illustrates the difference between objective consensus and subjective consensus, there was a time when people thought the Earth stood still and the Sun revolved around it, and that was the objective consensus reality, and many people believed it even after it was demonstrated to be a perceptual effect - believing it did not make it so, there never was a time when the Sun revolved around the Earth, no empirical model that supports it, no matter how many people believed it to be true - belief does not equal fact.
Fact is that which is empirically and demonstrably predicable, subject to independent confirmation - the scientific method, through which we painstakingly construct increasingly sophisticated models of objective reality.
To the point, if you feel you are a slave, it does not make it so: if you have a birth certificate and a Social Security number, it is empirically demonstrable that you are a free citizen of the US, or what ever equivilent in whatever country you happen to be a citizen of, that is the objective reality.
Identity, however, is very much a subjective thing - it's practically impossible to define identity objectively in fact - is a writer a writer if he doesn't write? How much writing do you have to do to be a writer? If you can write at all, does that make you a writer?
Most of these values are assigned through subjective consensus: if you sell books, we'll call you a writer, and if you act like a slave, we'll call you a slave, we'll treat you like a slave, and for all practical puposes you will be a slave.
It's simply that objectively and empirically, this can only be described as a role, subjectively, if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and quacks like a duck, we'll call it a duck and treat it like a duck - and I don't know how that makes it any less real - objectively or subjectively speaking, identity being objectively speaking, subjective.
Say it three time fast.
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