This ticket would consist of two elements, a definition, and a tenet.
Definition
An observable is a piece of information that an agent can have access to. To humans, for example, this is information that is accessible by our conscious mind: images from our eyes, sound from our ears, and notably, concepts from our mind itself.
One important facet of observables is the differentiation between modalities of thought. The best way I can think of this is through an example: humans are finite beings, so we cannot access infinite observables. When we think of the set of all reals, we are observing the concept of Reals in terms of its properties. We never consider Reals as an observable that enumerates all set constituents. Similarly, we can posit the existence of a train that travels the speed of light, but that is very different than enumerating the details of its implementation.
Tenet
The set of all observables that an individual has accessed is the set of all things ever thought or felt by the individual. This can also be extended to groups of individuals.
For the tenet, I would like to propose that Vulcans should strive to describe the world using only mutually accessed observables. In other words, we should describe the world in terms of information that we have all witnessed.
This might seem like a trivial tenet, I think it is important to establish if we are dealing with ontology. It gives us a starting point for what we collectively accept as truth, and protects our definitions from certain paradoxical scenarios.
One such scenario would be: "Imagine a world that cannot be described in terms of Totality". Such a world may exist, and though, like with the light-speed train, we access the concept as an observable, as long as we cannot collectively conceive the implementation of such a world, we do not consider it as a valid detractor to the idea of Totality. (The current tentative definition of totality being, the set of all things that can be encoded into an infinite bit string via a Total Encoder).
SeverTopan
commented
6 years ago
This ticket would consist of two elements, a definition, and a tenet.
Definition
An observable is a piece of information that an agent can have access to. To humans, for example, this is information that is accessible by our conscious mind: images from our eyes, sound from our ears, and notably, concepts from our mind itself.
One important facet of observables is the differentiation between modalities of thought. The best way I can think of this is through an example: humans are finite beings, so we cannot access infinite observables. When we think of the set of all reals, we are observing the concept of Reals in terms of its properties. We never consider Reals as an observable that enumerates all set constituents. Similarly, we can posit the existence of a train that travels the speed of light, but that is very different than enumerating the details of its implementation.
Tenet
The set of all observables that an individual has accessed is the set of all things ever thought or felt by the individual. This can also be extended to groups of individuals.
For the tenet, I would like to propose that Vulcans should strive to describe the world using only mutually accessed observables. In other words, we should describe the world in terms of information that we have all witnessed.
This might seem like a trivial tenet, I think it is important to establish if we are dealing with ontology. It gives us a starting point for what we collectively accept as truth, and protects our definitions from certain paradoxical scenarios.
One such scenario would be: "Imagine a world that cannot be described in terms of Totality". Such a world may exist, and though, like with the light-speed train, we access the concept as an observable, as long as we cannot collectively conceive the implementation of such a world, we do not consider it as a valid detractor to the idea of Totality. (The current tentative definition of totality being, the set of all things that can be encoded into an infinite bit string via a Total Encoder).