"Mind independent reality" requires a definition of mind and reality.
It is interesting that the invariant physical observer has a space-time interval of zero (the apex or waist of the light cone). See https://drsimonrobin.substack.com/p/our-reality which also defines mind and reality in chapter 6.
I enjoyed this writing immensely! However much I may personally prefer this framing of 'reality' as invariance, limited by but inextricable from observing minds, I am still not convinced that it has much potential to (re)build a world of collaboration through epistemological participation. It seems to me that the current troubles with collective epistemology is driven by other factors unrelated to authoritarian concepts of reality. I do agree that *something* needs to change in the public discourse. But, the popular narrative of a lone, heroic speaker of truth against a sea of delusional conformists is too treasured, the self-serving idea that the one who voices dissent (variance) is noble and virtuous is too appealing, and the conceit that one has a privileged and secret truth most others cannot access is too gratifying, especially for conspiracy theorists. I suspect other factors such as factors involving the balance of human desires for both distinctiveness and group-membership-belonging, bear more responsibility for the mistrust in scientific consensus than the influence of a 'mind-independent reality' framework. But, again, I do appreciate this explanation and agree the shift toward ontological-epistemological integration would cary many benefits. Thanks again for posting this! Made my day better just to read it!
Enjoying this essay a lot though I confess to having a hard time understanding mind invariance versus mind independence. The universe existed prior to earth. So is one wrong to imagine the possibility of traveling back in time to when earth was not yet formed, when no minds existed as far as we know?
Of course this imagined time travel would be mind invariant (wouldn’t matter who travels back in time) but isn’t the fact of the existence of the Universe independent of any mind? Having a hard time with this.
Isn’t this begging the question against the mind-independence view? Presumably those who believe in mind-independent reality would instead define facts as “something that IS true”, with no presumption of a doxastic/epistemic operator.
Secondly, you give the example of the sun being invariant because almost all observers can perceive it to exist in some fashion. But what about cases of possible worlds where nearly all the observers can’t see or perceive the sun in any way due to some inherent observer sense limitation? Maybe, for example, they can only interact with dark matter. The observers themselves won’t know the sun exists, but it seems like the sun should still exist if all we’ve changed are the observational properties of the world.
So it seems like the invariance view must presuppose that we can make changes to the propositional content concerning the physical characteristics of the sun (or the other external objects of the world), without actually changing any of the characteristics of those objects, but instead by changing the properties of the observers themselves. Would you accept this criticism, and if not, how would you avoid it?
Very informative. Thanks. Coincidentally a video with some similar and dissimilar ideas on this subject landed in my inbox today. It deals with "quantum physics meets Vedanta". I'm posting the link below. It may be of interest.
Interesting article. In fact the "observer effect" on wave function collapse can be understood with this approach. Objective reality is ultimately a subjective experience. Similar approach is discussed in "My View of the world" by Schrodinger. He takes it further to conclude that non duality (Advaita vedanta) gives more convincing explanation of the reality.
"Mind independent reality" requires a definition of mind and reality.
It is interesting that the invariant physical observer has a space-time interval of zero (the apex or waist of the light cone). See https://drsimonrobin.substack.com/p/our-reality which also defines mind and reality in chapter 6.
I enjoyed this writing immensely! However much I may personally prefer this framing of 'reality' as invariance, limited by but inextricable from observing minds, I am still not convinced that it has much potential to (re)build a world of collaboration through epistemological participation. It seems to me that the current troubles with collective epistemology is driven by other factors unrelated to authoritarian concepts of reality. I do agree that *something* needs to change in the public discourse. But, the popular narrative of a lone, heroic speaker of truth against a sea of delusional conformists is too treasured, the self-serving idea that the one who voices dissent (variance) is noble and virtuous is too appealing, and the conceit that one has a privileged and secret truth most others cannot access is too gratifying, especially for conspiracy theorists. I suspect other factors such as factors involving the balance of human desires for both distinctiveness and group-membership-belonging, bear more responsibility for the mistrust in scientific consensus than the influence of a 'mind-independent reality' framework. But, again, I do appreciate this explanation and agree the shift toward ontological-epistemological integration would cary many benefits. Thanks again for posting this! Made my day better just to read it!
Enjoying this essay a lot though I confess to having a hard time understanding mind invariance versus mind independence. The universe existed prior to earth. So is one wrong to imagine the possibility of traveling back in time to when earth was not yet formed, when no minds existed as far as we know?
Of course this imagined time travel would be mind invariant (wouldn’t matter who travels back in time) but isn’t the fact of the existence of the Universe independent of any mind? Having a hard time with this.
“A fact is something that is known to be true. ”
Isn’t this begging the question against the mind-independence view? Presumably those who believe in mind-independent reality would instead define facts as “something that IS true”, with no presumption of a doxastic/epistemic operator.
Secondly, you give the example of the sun being invariant because almost all observers can perceive it to exist in some fashion. But what about cases of possible worlds where nearly all the observers can’t see or perceive the sun in any way due to some inherent observer sense limitation? Maybe, for example, they can only interact with dark matter. The observers themselves won’t know the sun exists, but it seems like the sun should still exist if all we’ve changed are the observational properties of the world.
So it seems like the invariance view must presuppose that we can make changes to the propositional content concerning the physical characteristics of the sun (or the other external objects of the world), without actually changing any of the characteristics of those objects, but instead by changing the properties of the observers themselves. Would you accept this criticism, and if not, how would you avoid it?
Very informative. Thanks. Coincidentally a video with some similar and dissimilar ideas on this subject landed in my inbox today. It deals with "quantum physics meets Vedanta". I'm posting the link below. It may be of interest.
https://youtu.be/MI3TXsPtOAE
Interesting article. In fact the "observer effect" on wave function collapse can be understood with this approach. Objective reality is ultimately a subjective experience. Similar approach is discussed in "My View of the world" by Schrodinger. He takes it further to conclude that non duality (Advaita vedanta) gives more convincing explanation of the reality.