Planck, one quotation

ronan said:
Don't you agree that most scientists (if not all) are assuming the existence of a reality behind our perceptions?
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Sure. I would go further and claim that most (if not all) human beings make that assumption.

Scientists tend to make their assumptions more explicit. When they matter, as they seem to in, say, QED.
 
lightgigantic said:
a blind person may beg to differ
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lol So the blind man by simply being blind, looses his other senses, does he. lol


lightgigantic said:
a blind person could lodge the exact same argument against the visual appearance of a tree
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lol But he can lodge the same argument, against the way it feels, smells, sounds, or tastes.
However he cant perceive a god/gods, via any of his sense. lol
 
iceaura said:
Sure. I would go further and claim that most (if not all) human beings make that assumption.

Scientists tend to make their assumptions more explicit. When they matter, as they seem to in, say, QED.
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Ok fine, but Planck is not talking about assumptions in general but about a particular assumption, namely that there exist a reality behind our perceptions.

In this sense, according to Planck :
It is a metaphysical belief. Now that is something which the skeptic questions in regard to religion; but it is the same in regard to science.
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ronan said:
In this sense, according to Planck :
“
It is a metaphysical belief. Now that is something which the skeptic questions in regard to religion; but it is the same in regard to science.
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Well, "according to Planck" is not much of an argument for what appears to be a fairly silly assertion. Do you have a better argument handy ?
 
I know Carcano that conceptions and perceptions have different meaning, but I think, especially in the writing of Einstein and Planck, that "direct perception" is used to emphasize that it is not only a belief but a true belief, conception would indeed imply that this can be false.
Because I prefer to be skeptic I use the term belief.

anyway, I am trying to give an interpretation that makes sense.
don't you agree that the following interpretation makes sense ? :

The cornerstone of science’s own structure [is] the belief in the existence of a reality behind our perceptions.
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You could not be a scientist if you did not believes that there was a reality behind our perceptions.
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ronan said:
anyway, I am trying to give an interpretation that makes sense.
don't you agree that the following interpretation makes sense ? :
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I agree that those assertions make more sense than Planck's assertions.

I note that they are specifically denied by some scientists, especially the first one.
 
iceaura said:
Well, "according to Planck" is not much of an argument for what appears to be a fairly silly assertion. Do you have a better argument handy ?
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I post his quotation to know what people think about that.

iceaura said:
I agree that those assertions make more sense than Planck's assertions.

I note that they are specifically denied by some scientists, especially the first one.
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Scientists who deny this are called instrumentalists but most of them still believe in a reality behind our perceptions except that they say we cannot know about it.

For my point of view, it seems quite evident that there is something that generate (in some sense) our perceptions.

So I believe in this reality behind our perceptions and I understand why Planck use the words direct perception instead of belief even if I would not use these words. We know that there is something, it is not simply that we believe.
 
The cornerstone of science’s own structure [is] the direct perception by consciousness of the existence of external reality. As Einstein has said, you could not be a scientist if you did not know that the external world existed in reality; but that knowledge is not gained by any process of reasonning. It is a direct perception and therefore in its nature akin to what we call Faith. It is a metaphysical belief. Now that is something which the skeptic questions in regard to religion; but it is the same in
regard to science.
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The only error here is that a true skeptic should hold the belief in an external reality as an operating assumption, not as truth.

~Raithere
 
ronan said:
So I believe in this reality behind our perceptions and I understand why Planck use the words direct perception instead of belief even if I would not use these words.
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I too think I understand why Planck used such language, and I regard it as a fundamental metaphysical error.

I think he approaches reality from the outside - as if his mind were outside reality, attempting to perceive it more or less as one perceives an object by seeing it.

This approach, reflected in his use of "direct perception", contains something I regard as a deep insight - that mathematics and scientific reasoning operate as a sense organ for perception of matters and properties and features unavailable to our physical sensory apparatus. If we were totally blind, we would "see" by such endeavor alone, for example. One might imagine a fishlike midocean intelligence having no approach to geometry other than mathematical.

But the serious misapprehension it leads to is also important - the reality is not "behind" our perceptions as the tree is "behind" the appearance of the bark and leaf, but as our eyeball is "behind" our seeing of that bark and leaf. One doesn't directly perceive the existence of reality - one perceives, directly and otherwise, as a function of that reality.

So the faith necessary is not in a correspondence of reality and perception brought about by the a priori or Creator established reliability of the perception in reflecting reality, but in the assumed or deduced common origin of the perceiving and the perceived. Common source, common nature, in some ways at least.
 
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