Philosophical speculation / Dialectic Dialogue.
Notion 1
We exist in an objective world that can be known and about which we can make cognitive statements that reveal it as an independent reality whose validity is, therefore, independent from us as observers.
Comment
Although experientially this notion seems proven by the very circumstances that generate it, namely by our day to day manipulative experience and the predictive success of our operation as physical entities, it is an a priori notion because a successful prediction does not prove that the operation through which we make it reflects an objective reality, or constitutes an expression of our cognitive access to this reality. A prediction is a statement of what is the case within a relational matrix. Accordingly, if by some obsevational procedure the phenomenon considered is revealed through a projection onto a relational matrix, any statement of what is the case in that relational matrix will necessarily be observed as a state of the matrix onto which the phenomenon considered can be projected in the act of observation. Therefore, the success of a prediction only proves that a certain mapping or projection operation can be made, but does not reveal the nature of what it is that is mapped or projected. (CS 457)
This page was last updated on July 11, 1996, by Rob Sable.