If the only thing we can truly know with certainty is our own individual mind's existence, it stands to reason, that in order to move forward with any meaningful life, we must accept as axiomatic, at least the idea that what we perceive via our senses is in someway indicative of a present reality. Is there any grounds outside of pragmatism for accepting this belief as an axiom? There are at least a couple for me. One, I have a deep intuition that the physical universe is real, that what I perceive is based on a physical reality. It seems preposterous to me that a different explanation would be correct even though I know there are other possible explanations with adequate explanatory power I cannot disprove. Two, it is the explanation that provides the most meaning to my experience.

We all agree on accepting the above axiom, but why should I stop there? Do I not have similar grounds for believing in objective morality? I have a deep intuition that there really is right and wrong. It seems preposterous to me that they are simply constructs programmed into me via natural selection without any basis in external realities. Objective morals also provide a more meaningful explanation to my experience. Without them right and wrong describe mere preference, which runs counter to how I experience emotion related to the two.

Is that not grounds enough for rationally believing in objective morality? Is it less rational to believe in objective morality than it is to believe in the reality of the physical universe? If so, why?

Why is it too far? I get that my senses give me a very limited model of the actual reality, but the things I sense are real things, with rare exceptions (e.g. hallucinations). On what basis can I believe that if I sense something, that something is part of reality? Why would my "sensing" of moral value be less reliable?

Sometimes our senses misconstrue reality in very fundamental ways. Like the universe apparently being made of solid objects which very much isn't the case.

But I fundamentally agree that we have to presuppose some basic reliability of our senses

Aggrad08 said:

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Like the universe apparently being made of solid objects which very much isn't the case.

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Always thought this was a strange take. Solid is a qualitative description of, historically at least, macroscopic objects. That the object's microscopic nature is different than what we naively expect does not make it any less solid. All of the microscopic phenomenon associated with macroscopic objects are way different than we'd naively expect anyway.

Why not presuppose some basic reliability of our sense of morality?

Seems totally unnecessary and with evidence that challenges the notion

Of course it's qualitative at a minimum otherwise we wouldn't have thought of them that way. Most of our engineering and scientific models work under this simplification.

But it is a simplification all the same. Reality here is under defined both deliberately and by accident to match our intuition.

It's hardly a big deal as under defining reality is all we can hope to do with our puny little ape brains.

Perhaps it is unnecessary, but to some extent, nearly everyone does it. You may not assign objectivity to it, but I imagine you try to behave as though your sense that empathy is good is actually correct.

What evidence exists to the contrary?

What do you mean by "actually correct"

Just because beliefs are subjective doesn't mean I can't judge mine as superior to another's.

Aggrad08 said:

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Of course it's qualitative at a minimum otherwise we wouldn't have thought of them that way. Most of our engineering and scientific models work under this simplification.

But it is a simplification all the same. Reality here is under defined both deliberately and by accident to match our intuition.

It's hardly a big deal as under defining reality is all we can hope to do with our puny little ape brains.

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I really hope one day our physical models will be able to do better than that (and maybe we already have an answer but haven't proved it yet). Our puny little ape brains have already grasped quite a lot.

If matter was really solid, what should it look like at the microscopic scale?

That would be awesome. So far what I've seen is very far from that but I'm sure I'm well behind the most advanced and up to date stuff.

As far as what it looks like-I dunno. Not 99% empty space for starters I suppose.

Aggrad08 said:

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As far as what it looks like-I dunno. Not 99% empty space for starters I suppose.

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It's permeated by an electromagnetic field, which interacts with all sorts of things, so it doesn't seem correct to call it empty space. The electric field is what makes an object look and feel solid. To me, this is just part of what a solid is at the microscopic level.

That's a different definition of empty that isn't necessarily wrong but doesn't seem intuitive to me. Under that definition there is no such thing as empty space.

It seems we called space space because it's 99%…space. But if we include electric and magnetic fields it's just a different kind of solid object isn't it?

dargscisyhp said:

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Aggrad08 said:

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As far as what it looks like-I dunno. Not 99% empty space for starters I suppose.

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It's permeated by an electromagnetic field, which interacts with all sorts of things, so it doesn't seem correct to call it empty space. The electric field is what makes an object look and feel solid. To me, this is just part of what a solid is at the microscopic level.

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If you go even smaller than microscopic things get crazy. The electrons that make up an atom are farther from the nucleus then the planets are from the sun relative to size.
You've probably never actually touched anything in your life. The force that keep your atom's together have come close enough to the force that keeps something else's atom's together to make you think you have.

I mean that the good or value you perceive empathy to possess is based in some real good or real value. It is not an arbitrary assignment. Much like what we perceive as solid is based on a real set of properties, even if we don't completely understand or adequately describe the properties.

Isn't everything permeated by an electric field? The field is just close to 0 most places. Is everything a single solid? Is the universe a block?

I don't think your interpretation makes a ton of sense. Any cutoff value that makes an electric field "solid" is going to be totally arbitrary.

In QFT everything everywhere is a field. Empty space is just a region of the field where it's not perturbed much, right?

It's all turtles models fields all the way down.

Why do we all trust our physical senses to point to some objective reality but don't all trust our moral sense to do the same?

One is dramatically more reliable and consistent than the other

GQaggie said:

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Why do we all trust our physical senses to point to some objective reality but don't all trust our moral sense to do the same?

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I don't have any record of our physical senses changing dramatically since the evolution of Homo sapiens. Morality on the other hand…

Have the basic principles changed dramatically, or has our understanding of the principles and how to apply them changed? For all of recorded history has there not been some sense that fairness, justice, and love are good? How we have applied those principles changes, but the principles themselves seem to endure.

In this very thread, there has been a discussion on how our understanding of what constitutes a solid has changed. Were our senses unreliable before that refined understanding or have we learned to better apply our senses and better process the information gained from them?

How so? Our physical senses don't expect anything from us. They don't demand we behave a certain way, so what does consistency even entail? Both require training to accurately be relied upon.

GQaggie said:

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Have the basic principles changed dramatically, or has our understanding of the principles and how to apply them changed? For all of recorded history has there not been some sense that fairness, justice, and love are good? How we have applied those principles changes, but the principles themselves seem to endure.

In this very thread, there has been a discussion on how our understanding of what constitutes a solid has changed. Were our senses unreliable before that refined understanding or have we learned to better apply our senses and better process the information gained from them?

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How people through history would define fairness, justice, and love has changed and is today very different depending on location and religion. We have empathy and we are a communal species, but those are exceedingly broad and basic ideas that can manifest in myriad ways.

I would be interested in some examples of this vast difference if you have them readily available. It seems to me most differences of which I am aware seem to be regarding application rather than the concepts themselves.

Dilettante said:

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Isn't everything permeated by an electric field? The field is just close to 0 most places. Is everything a single solid? Is the universe a block?

I don't think your interpretation makes a ton of sense. Any cutoff value that makes an electric field "solid" is going to be totally arbitrary.

In QFT everything everywhere is a field. Empty space is just a region of the field where it's not perturbed much, right?

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My above post was perhaps oversimplified, but the point wasn't to say that the presence of an electric field makes something a solid, rather it was that the space in a solid is not really empty. That space is filled with stuff that interacts with other solids (electric fields, electron clouds, etc.). That stuff may not be massive as compared to nucleons, but it's these things that give solids the properties we associate with them. The fact that at a microscopic level a solid does not conform with what we might think it is naively, that it is not a collection of densely packed nucleonic balls, does not make it any less solid.