John - a few responses - essentially in agreement with you, but with an
issue or two:
sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
I mostly
agree with your comments, but I just wanted to add
a few
clarifications:
> "Lebenswelt" is the set of mental models to which
I've been
> referring - and thus is distinguished from the reality in
the
> way I think John means.
Husserl was using the word
'Lebenswelt' for the perceived world,
which is based on one's percepts,
which could be considered part
of one's mental models. But I'd
hesitate to identify them by
placing the word 'is' between 'Lebenswelt' and
'mental models'.
Okay - I wouldn't disagree with this, although I'm not sure whether the
distinction is important (but maybe it is; see further discussion below). I was
speaking somewhat loosely - perhaps it would have been better if I'd said
"'Lebenswelt' is associated with the set of mental models ...". In any case, we
generally act as though our perceived world is actually the reality. It
is our perceived reality (by definition). It's only because the
correspondence is largely rather good (true) between our perceived world
(associated with our mental models, if not, in a sense a version of them) and
reality that our actions work and our lives are functional. In fact, this must
be the basis on which our capacity for such perceptions, with an adequate degree
of truth, evolved.
This reminds me of an interesting classic experiment by George Stratton in
the 1890s, in which he wore glasses that turned the visual world upside down.
After four days, his perceptions adjusted to "flip" the world back over, so that
his perceived world again corresponded more directly with the existing reality,
allowing him again more directly to relate to it. (For a description and
references, see
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/mar97/858984531.Ns.r.html ).
I would note here that our perceptual reality shifts as we adapt to any
situation or learn any skill. Something similar may be at work when dentists
learn to do their work in a mirror, for example.
For
two related German words, I'd suggest the title of an important
book by
Jakob Johann von Uexküll, which was published in 1909:
_Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere_
The word 'Umwelt' is the usual German
word for 'environment',
but Uexküll used it in a sense that is sometimes
translated as
'subjective universe' of humans and animals (Tiere, in
German).
The word 'Innenwelt', literally 'inner world', would
probably
be a better equivalent for "the set of mental models".
That
would enable a three-way distinction:
1. The world as it
actually is (i.e., reality).
2. The world as perceived by any
individual of any species
(his, her, or its Lebenswelt
or Umwelt).
3. The world as modeled by any individual (the
Innenwelt).
I'm not familiar with the work directly, but this question occurs to me:
Would not the "Umwelt" be the perceived outer world, and the "Innenwelt" be the
perceived inner world of thoughts, which would typically include thoughts about
the world, or the "Umwelt", but removed from direct perception of that world,
and also including any other thoughts? Would "Umwelt" or "Lebenswelt" mean the
directly perceived world, in real time? Would "Innenwelt" mean the inner
processing of any thoughts - an inner "imagined" world - which of necessity
involves models of the outer world and relationships in it, and variations and
created imagined entities based on it, and additional manipulations or ideas of
that model, all entirely in thoughts? The direct perception, as you point out,
is a form or part of one's mental model of the world. The thoughts about it
become another level of mental models that we manipulate in our minds, including
what we anticipate will happen and how we remember what we perceived in the
past. I think there is a way in which the distinction between these (direct
perception in real time and thoughts beyond that) is not entirely clear
(i.e. one fades into the other), but it still is probably worth making.
>
Rather than saying "scientifically God does not exist ...", I'd
> rather
say that consideration of God is outside the realm of science.
I have
two quibbles about that discussion:
1. If you ask people who
either believe in God or don't believe
in God how they
define the word 'God', you won't find any two
who give
exactly the same answer -- and usually the answers
they
give are so wildly different that it's almost impossible
to find much, if any similarity. (If you think the
discussions
about reality are confused, they are
crystal clear in comparison
to whatever definitions
you'll find for the word 'God'.)
I don't see how this is a quibble; it's essentially what I was saying, I
think. Perhaps I did not make my meaning adequately clear. Consideration of God
is outside the realm of science partly because we can't easily agree on a clear
definition of what "God" means - and agreement on the meaning of any subject of
scientific inquiry is one of the steps required to seek agreement about the
reality (existence) or nature of the subject of study.
2. Given any definition whatever, I would hesitate to say
that it
is impossible to find any scientific evidence
for or against
the existence of anything matching such
a description. And some
definitions are so vague
(e.g., Einstein's) that it's almost
impossible to deny
that whatever they might refer to exists.
I would agree with this. But people who have a different definition of what
God is than Einstein's, or than any given definition, probably couldn't even get
to the point of agreement about the meaning or importance of testing the
existence of the entity defined by THAT definition, when theirs is more
important and true to them (due to their belief). Therefore, the entire
endeavor of considering tests or proofs or evidence of whichever one we
consider, at least as anything with the label of "God", would seem to be outside
the realm of science. See above comment about needing to agree on what we're
testing.
Another, more commonly cited reason it's outside the realm of science is
that many definitions of God and stipulations of what would prove God's
existence are not subject to the rational types of tests that scientific inquiry
uses to seek agreement of the model with reality. That is, there is no
conceivable test that could disprove the existence under that definition or
model, so the existence is outside the realm of an endeavor designed to test the
accuracy or truth of models of reality. This might be considered to be because
of the all-encompassing nature of ideas of God, which makes them unable to be
subject to tests within that all-encompassing field, which is what science
does.
Someone who wants to deny the existence of God will either a) not accept a
definition of God that makes it impossible to deny God's existence, or b) accept
that a God with THAT definition exists, but not one with the deniable
definition. Existence of God is still not directly a matter of scientific
inquiry or proof, but rather is a matter of definition (however vague) and
acceptance (belief).