Perceiver-independent phenomena
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Chapter 7 endnote 4, from How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett.
Some context is:
[Molecules, atoms, quarks, Higgs bosons, etc.] are supposed to exist in the natural world whether or not humans are present — that is, they are thought to be perceiver-independent categories. [...] Philosophers call them “ontologically objective.”
Technically speaking, the ability to perceive these particles is not perceiver-independent. As Einstein once famously wrote, "Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.”[1]
Notes on the Notes
- ↑ Einstein, Albert, and Leopold Infeld. 1938. The Evolution of Physics. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, p. 33.