The Mind-Created World
The aim of this essay is to make the case for a type of philosophical idealism, which posits mind as foundational to the nature of existence. Idealism is usually distinguished from physicalism — the view that the physical is fundamental — and the related philosophical naturalism, the view that only natural laws and forces, as depicted in the natural sciences, account for the universe. Physicalism and naturalism are the assumed consensus of modern culture, very much the product of the European Enlightenment with its emphasis on pragmatic science and instrumental reason. Accordingly this essay will go against the grain of the mainstream consensus and even against what many will presume to be common sense. However I hope to present an argument that shows that common sense and this formulation of philosophical idealism are not necessarily in conflict.
Adopting a predominantly perspectival approach, I will concentrate less on arguments about the nature of the constituents of objective reality, and focus instead on understanding the mental processes that shape our judgment of what they comprise. In so doing I will draw on phenomenology as well as perspectives from non-dualist philosophy — an approach that will hopefully be become clear in the subsequent sections.
All in the Mind?
In philosophy it is customary to address objections after making your case, but I will mention two of the most frequent objections to idealism at the outset. First is the criticism that ‘idealism says that the world is all in the mind’ — the implication being that, were there no mind to be aware of an object, then it would cease to exist. Even very eminent philosophers have (mis)understood idealism in this way: that things pass into and and out of existence depending on whether they’re being perceived or not. G.E. Moore, for example, once said that idealism must entail that, when the passengers are all seated on the train, the wheels would go out of existence for their not being perceived.
The second objection is against the notion that the mind, or ‘mind-stuff’, is literally a type of constituent out of which things are made, in the same way that statues are constituted by marble, or yachts of wood. The form of idealism I am advocating doesn’t posit that there is any ‘mind-stuff’ existing as a constituent in that sense. The constitution of material objects is a matter for scientific disciplines (although I’m well aware that the ultimate nature of these constituents remains an open question in theoretical physics).
At this stage I will only note these objections, as to counter them now would be premature, but I hope it will become clear in what follows that these objections are misplaced.
A Thought Experiment
Let’s start with a simple thought-experiment, to help bring the issues into focus.
[i]Picture a tranquil mountain meadow. Butterflies flit back and forth amongst the buttercups and daisies, and off in the distance, a snow-capped mountain peak provides a picturesque backdrop. The melodious clunk of the cow-bells, the chirping of crickets, and the calling of birds provide the soundtrack to the vista, with not a human to be seen.
Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving such a scence from every possible point within it, and also around it. Then also subtract from all these perspectives, any sense of temporal continuity — any sense of memory of the moment just past, and expectation of the one about to come. Having done that, describe the same scene.
“Impossible!” you object. “How can I imagine any such thing?! It is really nothing at all, it is an impossibility, a jumble of stimuli, if anything — this is what you are asking me to imagine! It is completely unintelligible.”[/i]
But that is my point. By this means I am making clear the sense in which perspective is essential for any judgement about what exists — even if what we’re discussing is understood to exist in the absence of an observer, be that an alpine meadow, or the Universe prior to the evolution of h. sapiens. The mind brings an order to any such imaginary scene, even while you attempt to describe it or picture it as it appears to exist independently of the observer.
These are the grounds on which I am appealing to the insights of philosophical idealism. But I am not arguing that it means that ‘the world is all in the mind’. It’s rather that, whatever judgements are made about the world, the mind provides the framework within which such judgements are meaningful. So though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye — the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective. What their existence might be outside of any perspective is meaningless and unintelligible, as a matter of both fact and principle.
Hence there is no need for me to deny that the Universe is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind. But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis. Whatever experience we have or knowledge we possess, it always occurs to a subject — a subject which only ever appears as us, as subject, not to us, as object.
A corollary of this is that ‘existence’ is a compound or complex idea. To think about the existence of a particular thing in polar terms — that it either exists or does not exist — is a simplistic view of what existence entails. This is why the criticism of idealism that ‘particular things must go in and out of existence depending on whether they’re perceived’ is mistaken. It is based on a fallacious idea of what it means for something to exist. The idea that things ‘go out of existence’ when not perceived, is simply their ‘imagined non-existence’. In reality, the supposed ‘unperceived object’ neither exists nor does not exist. Nothing whatever can be said about it.
So How Does Mind ‘Create Reality’?
So this is the sense that I’m arguing for the fundamental role that the mind plays in creating reality.
Let me address an obvious objection. ‘Surely “the world” is what is there all along, what is there anyway, regardless of whether you perceive it or not! Science has shown that h. sapiens only evolved in the last hundred thousand years or so, and we know Planet Earth is billions of years older than that! So how can you say that the mind ‘‘creates the world”’?
As already stated, I am not disputing the scientific account, but attempting to reveal an underlying assumption that gives rise to a distorted view of what this means. What I’m calling attention to is the tendency to take for granted the reality of the world as it appears to us, without taking into account the role the mind plays in its constitution. This oversight imbues the phenomenal world — the world as it appears to us — with a kind of inherent reality that it doesn’t possess. This in turn leads to the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion for truth.
By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brain receives, organises and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves. And although the unified nature of our experience of this ‘world-picture’ seems simple and even self-evident, neuroscience has yet to understand or explain how the disparate elements of experience , memory, expectation and judgement, all come together to form a unified whole — even though this is plainly what we experience.
By investing the objective domain with a mind-independent status, as if it exists independently of any mind, we absolutize it. We designate it as truly existent, irrespective of and outside any knowledge of it. This gives rise to a kind of cognitive disorientation which underlies many current philosophical conundrums. And that is the subject of the remainder of this essay.
Adopting a predominantly perspectival approach, I will concentrate less on arguments about the nature of the constituents of objective reality, and focus instead on understanding the mental processes that shape our judgment of what they comprise. In so doing I will draw on phenomenology as well as perspectives from non-dualist philosophy — an approach that will hopefully be become clear in the subsequent sections.
All in the Mind?
In philosophy it is customary to address objections after making your case, but I will mention two of the most frequent objections to idealism at the outset. First is the criticism that ‘idealism says that the world is all in the mind’ — the implication being that, were there no mind to be aware of an object, then it would cease to exist. Even very eminent philosophers have (mis)understood idealism in this way: that things pass into and and out of existence depending on whether they’re being perceived or not. G.E. Moore, for example, once said that idealism must entail that, when the passengers are all seated on the train, the wheels would go out of existence for their not being perceived.
The second objection is against the notion that the mind, or ‘mind-stuff’, is literally a type of constituent out of which things are made, in the same way that statues are constituted by marble, or yachts of wood. The form of idealism I am advocating doesn’t posit that there is any ‘mind-stuff’ existing as a constituent in that sense. The constitution of material objects is a matter for scientific disciplines (although I’m well aware that the ultimate nature of these constituents remains an open question in theoretical physics).
At this stage I will only note these objections, as to counter them now would be premature, but I hope it will become clear in what follows that these objections are misplaced.
A Thought Experiment
Let’s start with a simple thought-experiment, to help bring the issues into focus.
[i]Picture a tranquil mountain meadow. Butterflies flit back and forth amongst the buttercups and daisies, and off in the distance, a snow-capped mountain peak provides a picturesque backdrop. The melodious clunk of the cow-bells, the chirping of crickets, and the calling of birds provide the soundtrack to the vista, with not a human to be seen.
Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving such a scence from every possible point within it, and also around it. Then also subtract from all these perspectives, any sense of temporal continuity — any sense of memory of the moment just past, and expectation of the one about to come. Having done that, describe the same scene.
“Impossible!” you object. “How can I imagine any such thing?! It is really nothing at all, it is an impossibility, a jumble of stimuli, if anything — this is what you are asking me to imagine! It is completely unintelligible.”[/i]
But that is my point. By this means I am making clear the sense in which perspective is essential for any judgement about what exists — even if what we’re discussing is understood to exist in the absence of an observer, be that an alpine meadow, or the Universe prior to the evolution of h. sapiens. The mind brings an order to any such imaginary scene, even while you attempt to describe it or picture it as it appears to exist independently of the observer.
These are the grounds on which I am appealing to the insights of philosophical idealism. But I am not arguing that it means that ‘the world is all in the mind’. It’s rather that, whatever judgements are made about the world, the mind provides the framework within which such judgements are meaningful. So though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye — the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective. What their existence might be outside of any perspective is meaningless and unintelligible, as a matter of both fact and principle.
Hence there is no need for me to deny that the Universe is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind. But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis. Whatever experience we have or knowledge we possess, it always occurs to a subject — a subject which only ever appears as us, as subject, not to us, as object.
A corollary of this is that ‘existence’ is a compound or complex idea. To think about the existence of a particular thing in polar terms — that it either exists or does not exist — is a simplistic view of what existence entails. This is why the criticism of idealism that ‘particular things must go in and out of existence depending on whether they’re perceived’ is mistaken. It is based on a fallacious idea of what it means for something to exist. The idea that things ‘go out of existence’ when not perceived, is simply their ‘imagined non-existence’. In reality, the supposed ‘unperceived object’ neither exists nor does not exist. Nothing whatever can be said about it.
So How Does Mind ‘Create Reality’?
So this is the sense that I’m arguing for the fundamental role that the mind plays in creating reality.
Let me address an obvious objection. ‘Surely “the world” is what is there all along, what is there anyway, regardless of whether you perceive it or not! Science has shown that h. sapiens only evolved in the last hundred thousand years or so, and we know Planet Earth is billions of years older than that! So how can you say that the mind ‘‘creates the world”’?
As already stated, I am not disputing the scientific account, but attempting to reveal an underlying assumption that gives rise to a distorted view of what this means. What I’m calling attention to is the tendency to take for granted the reality of the world as it appears to us, without taking into account the role the mind plays in its constitution. This oversight imbues the phenomenal world — the world as it appears to us — with a kind of inherent reality that it doesn’t possess. This in turn leads to the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion for truth.
By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brain receives, organises and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves. And although the unified nature of our experience of this ‘world-picture’ seems simple and even self-evident, neuroscience has yet to understand or explain how the disparate elements of experience , memory, expectation and judgement, all come together to form a unified whole — even though this is plainly what we experience.
By investing the objective domain with a mind-independent status, as if it exists independently of any mind, we absolutize it. We designate it as truly existent, irrespective of and outside any knowledge of it. This gives rise to a kind of cognitive disorientation which underlies many current philosophical conundrums. And that is the subject of the remainder of this essay.
Comments (2162)
Of course it is, but the definition of "belief" and the practices used in the discipline of epistemology doesn't depend on any particular theory of that connection.
Quoting javra
Irrelevant to the point I was making about the terminology, and the problems of using any colloquial definition of belief.
Quoting javra
I expect we could agree on a definition of fallibilism, if we could agree on the terms (like belief) that it is based on.
I really don't like to debate semantics, where people argue what a word really means. The objective ought to be to communicate. My reference to a "standard" definition was aimed at trying to avoid potential communication problems. If we use the word "belief" differently, we won't be able to have a meaningful discussion.
Maybe I jumped the gun a bit. Do you take a categorical belief to be absolute? Granting no such thing as infallible beliefs, what would an absolute belief then entail? So far, it seems to me that if a belief is not infallible, then one is aware that the belief might be wrong - and this irrespective of how well justified it might be so far. Which in turn seems to me to necessitate that all fallible beliefs are graded beliefs upon analysis, even when staunchly addressed in terms of yes/no.
In the case of the real cat there would be light reflected from it which enters the eye, etc. You know the story. In any case I have never had such a realistic hallucination, even during my extensive use of hallucinogens. I don't know anyone else who has either. I'm not saying such a thing is impossible, but if it is possible the level of delusion would be extreme.
Quoting javra
How would the objective morality in such a belief system be enforced other than via people believing in it? If it is non-physical how could such a thing exist if not in some universal mind. Goodness is a value and as far as I can see values can exist only in, be held by, minds. You seem to be gesturing at something, but it lacks coherent detail.
Quoting javra
Why is it not a practical rational grounding? If you want a well-functioning society that fosters human flourishing and harmony why would you not want the most significant moral principles to govern? Slavery is a moral failure to be sure. It is pre-rationally normal for humans to care predominately about their own welfare and the welfare of those close to them. I don't believe the abolition of slavery depended on any higher principle. It depended on people having compassion and coming to count those who were previously thought to be of no significance to be of significance after all. We see the same thing happening today (although not enough to be sure) with animal welfare. Physicalism does not seem to be an impediment to such sentiments.
Oppressive dictatorships cannot last. Oppressed people will eventually become fed up and revolt. Humans may not have achieved much in the way of harmoniously living together but that lack of achievement has chiefly occurred in societies where people have believed in a higher good or deity. From a purely rational perspective there is no reason to grant one person more rights or privileges than another. So slavery itself can only be supported by practical reasons, and those reasons are not good ones because they promote disharmony.
The world contains no immaterial things, according to materialism. An 'immaterial thing' is an oxymoronic expression.
The difficulty of devising a naturalistic account of the nature of consciousness is precisely the subject of David Chalmers' 'hard problem of consciousness', the essence of which is that no objective description can truly depict the nature first person experience (ref). There are many active threads on that topic, but suffice to say here, the issue is again one of perspective. Consciousness is not an objective phenomenon, because it is that to which phenomena appear - it is not itself among phenomena. Mind, as such, is never an object in the sense that all of the objects sorrounding you are, including the screen you're reading this from. Husserl's point is precisely that the attempt to 'naturalise' consciousness as an object on the same ontological plane as other objects is erroneous as a matter of principle. (This is why it is essential for Daniel Dennett that it is eliminated, as there is no conceptual space for it in his materialist framework.)
Quoting Relativist
It is very clear, although to provide a detailed account would occupy many hundreds of words. I will default to one of the passages I often cite from a critique of philosophical materialism, Thomas Nagel's 2012 book Mind and Cosmos:
This is a very succinct statement of a very broad issue which is the subject of many volumes of commentary. But suffice to say this provides the background assumed by physicalism, a background in which Descartes' 'res cogitans' is deprecated and naturalistic explanations sought solely in terms of 'res extensia' or extended matter, which is manipulable and measurable in a way that 'mind' could never be. This is why physics is paradigmatic for physicalism. It is this, which Husserl's critique of naturalism has in its sights.
Quoting Relativist
It was at this point last night (in my time zone) that I thought I should chuck it in, on the basis that we're 'talking past' one another. But in the light of day, I will try and compose a response.
In his history of philosophy, Frederick Copleson observes that due to the outstanding achievements and presence of science and technology, that the temper of 20th century philosophy:
Quoting A History of Philosophy, Vol 11, F. Copleston
Although Armstrong would not describe himself as a logical positivist, I still think this description fairly depicts Armstrong's philosophical perspective.
So the point of all this is as follows: both Kantian idealism, and Husserl's phenomenology, are concerned, not with the objects of knowledge, as discovered by natural science, but with the nature of knowing, from a first-person perspective. So it's not as if they have access to some vast repository of information not known to science, but they are occupied with different kinds of issues than are the sciences. However it's true from the rather 'scientistic' perspective of materialist philosophy of mind, those issues may well be invisible to science, hence not considered suitable subjects of investigation (although they are very much on the agenda for philosophers of science such as Thomas Kuhn and Michael Polanyi.)
Quoting Relativist
I wouldn't doubt that, but it also has the effect of interpreting the various materials and sources I'm presenting against that perspective, which is why I think we're 'talking past' one another. However, reviewing that SEP source on Structural Realism, I do notice a paragraph on Kantian ESR which might be congenial to my overall outlook (although I haven't absorbed it yet.)
In any case, the crucial point is the perspectival distinction between idealist and phenonenological stances, and the 'objectivist' stance of Armstrong et al. I hope the foregoing has brought that into a sharper focus.
I'm running out of steam and getting short on time. I still don't get why you defend physicalism against the possibility of non-physicalism when you so clearly expressed that:
Quoting Janus
I've provided this explanation, if not in full then in part: there can be no objective good - and hence no objective morality - within any system of physicalism.
You can, of course, evidence me wrong by pointing out any physicalist system wherein there can be coherently maintained an objective good.
But I'd like to know: why does all of this matter to you?
Firstly I'm not defending physicalism but refuting the claims of its supposed inconsistency.
Quoting javra
You haven't explained why there can be no objective good under physicalism. I gave you examples to show that there can. You also haven't explained how there could be objective good under idealist or antirealist systems without positing a lawgiver apart from appeals to human flourishing and harmony etc which don't depend on any particular metaphysics.
Only the ethical and the aesthetical matter to me and I don't see those as being dependent on any particular metaphysic, and that is why the debate between materialism and idealism doesn't matter to me.
I am merely interested to see if proponents of idealism can show that such values are only or at least better supported by idealism (absent a lawgiver). Apparently that cannot be shown, at least not by you or anyone else I've encountered.
Thanks for trying anyway.
You're welcome.
Do you not consider 2+2=4 a categorical belief? Is it a fallible beliefs? Are you "aware that it might be wrong?"
Regarding beliefs that are clearly not categorical, I agree we have degrees of belief. I'm also fine with a fallibilist saying "I believe X", even though he knows it's at least logically possible he's wrong.
What is our area of disagreement? I think we went down this road because you denied the principle of equivalence:
[I]"I believe X" [/i]is equivalent to "I believe X is true"
I don't follow why fallibilism would make these statements unequivalent. It's just a semantic equivalence, a claim related to the meaning of truth.
I'm fallible, so I acknowledge that my belief X could be false, but that doesn't negate the semantic equivalence. My degree of belief in X is equivalent to my degree of belief that X is true.
My statement was not based on a premise of materialism. I was making a semantic claim about the meaning of "the world" in metaphysics: it is the totality of existence.
You responded to this: Quoting Relativist
...by elaborating on objections to this assertion:
[B] all that can be known can be known by means of science[/b]
You demonstrated that there are truths that science cannot uncover, which is a point I agree with. But it doesn't answer my question: what truths can be discovered outside of science?
Is it solely negative truths, like "physicalism is false"? I don't have a problem with that, but that statement tells us nothing about the way reality actually IS. Can positive facts about the world be discovered outside the parameters of science? If so, then describe the methodology.
You noted that science cannot discover God. I agree 100%. My question is: is God discoverable through some alternative, objective means? What about other aspects of reality that are beyond the reach of science ?
There are domains other than that of objective fact. I will only say that Armstrong's style of philosophy is to assume that science provides the only valid perspective.
So then, do you agree that there are no alternatives to science for discovering objective truths about the world?
What I infer is that you are defending or promoting world-views which do not depend exclusively on objective facts. Am I right?
I'll go back to your first response to this thread:
Quoting Relativist
I will try again to re-state the idea. Another way to explain it is to observe that reality contains both the observer and the observed - the subject who observes, and the object of observation. Reality is the totality of that, the total situation of human existence. And philosophy seeks to find reason and meaning in that context.
The objective sciences by contrast begin with an act of exclusion. They narrow the focus to only and precisely those elements of experience which can be measured and quantified with exactitude. That is the point of the Thomas Nagel passage I quoted here, a 'mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them'. So this means that even if science considers everything on every scale, from the sub-atomic to the cosmological, already there's an implicit perspective, it considers all of those matters in those terms. So you're asking, what other 'terms' are there? To which the answer is, practically the whole of philosophy other than science. Ancient and pre-modern philosophy, Eastern philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology. There are many. But if they are looked at through the perspective of 'what is "objectively true" in what they say', then most of what they say will be missed.
Quoting Relativist
You seem to be tacitly agreeing, since you proposed no alternatives and instead said:
Quoting Wayfarer
I think you're saying that limiting our perspectives (our world views) to objective facts is too limiting; it leads to rejecting some philosophies that can be valuable.
Sure, I'd go along with that. But it's the tip of a large iceberg!
I believe these philosophies and religion can definitely be valuable for the individuals that embrace them. I would not try to talk anyone out of them, even if that were possible. Nevertheless, I do not find them personally valuable. What I find valuable is to be grounded in objective facts. I don't just mean grounded in an epistemological sense, but also grounded in my outlook on life and my relations with others.This has worked well for me - it's a perspective that makes it easier for me to accept whatever happens and to make realistic decisions on how to react. It's not for everyone. Nothing is.
Thanks for an interesting discussion.
To answer your questions: Yes, I consider 2 + 2 = 4 a categorical belief (for the degree of reality I endow it with is extreme). Yes, it is a fallible belief. Yes, I am aware that it might be wrong.
My reasoning for the last two answers:
I cannot find any way of demonstrating that for all time yet to come in what remains of this cosmos no sentient being (one possibly unimaginably more intelligent than any human is, was, or will ever be) will ever find a justifiable alternative to the proposition of "2 + 2 = 4" which, being a justifiable alternative, might in fact be the right interpretation of the proposition - this while I am simultaneously unable to find any infallible justification for this very same proposition. Thus, this proposition is not infallible and could in principle potentially be wrong, if not in full then at least in part.
More importantly to me, I hold the very same reasoning for the affirmation that that me (more properly, that "I") which is aware of this proposition of "2 + 2 = 4" in fact occurs while simultaneously so being aware of said proposition. That said, this affirmation that "I as a first-person point-of-view am while in any way aware of anything whatsoever" is nevertheless the strongest fallible certainty I am currently aware of.
If you or anyone else can evidence the aforementioned reasoning erroneous, more power to you. I'm however hedging my bets that no one can.
Thus, a position of global, else radical or absolute, falliblism - one which duly grants various degrees of certainty, as pertains to both psychological certainty and to epistemic certianty, and which is in no way contingent on the occurrence of doubt. I, for example, do not currently doubt anything which I've just expressed.
How could 2+2=4 be wrong ? Our mathematical knowledge is more certain than any philosophical argument you can bring against it. If a philosophical view requires us to doubt 2+2=4, then I would rather abandon that philosophical view, than allow uncertainty into mathematics.
Why would you create duality between subjective & objective means ? If God does exist, then his being qua being would both be nondelimited prior to manifestation and delimited via manifestation in the mental & physical world (assume both categories are relative to one another).
The trick is to stop looking for God and understand he has not only always been with you but he is identical to your reality. People seem to think God is like a pseudo object which exists apart from the universe, which is just superstitious & baseless. If you want to know God, you just need to think differently of him, or to put it more succinctly, you need to stop thinking of him, as he is beyond concepts and experience as well.
This I believe is the key phrase toward understanding javra's position on this matter. We must consider "2+2=4" to be a sequence of symbols requiring interpretation, to abstract meaning. And, there is always some degree of subjectivity which enters that process of interpretation. So, when two different people produce two different descriptions, (interpretations) of the meaning which they each abstract from the phrase "2+2=4", we can judge one as a better interpretation than the other. And, if we leave the possibility open, that we can always find a better interpretation, then the question of "the right interpretation" remains unanswered.
Langauge and the rules of interpretation in semantics don't make any sense unless you have something to fix them beyond your mental states. So "goodness" , like "rationality" isn't just a value inside your mind , it's meaning and truth conditions are determined by both your mental states and that which is external to it (other minds, universals, particulars, God etc)
This is why if someone comes up to me & claims murder is good because that's how he imagines it inside his head, then I would have no problem explaining to him why he has made a mistake here. That's not how we understand "goodness". If he still doesn't get it, then we will just consider him to be suffering from some mental impairment, just as we would for someone who claims 1+1=3 , despite repeated efforts to correct this mistake.
Quoting Wayfarer
And yet we live in a world where some people, some more fervently than others, believe that a certain 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 (often termed the Trinity) and that it is only due to this state of affairs that the proposition of 2 + 2 = 4 can possibly hold true. Put a philosopher’s or a mathematician’s hat on and one might see a blatant logical contradiction here. At any rate, I take this world where the Trinity is taken to be factual (and hence were a certain 1 + 1 + 1 does equate to 1, rather than to 3) to be one such possible world.
Quoting Sirius
I've already given reasoning for 2 + 2 = 4 not being an infallible proposition. What you're here addressing is not the reasoning but the conclusion and how you'd react to it. But, as to the conclusion, that there is a possibility - irrespective of how minuscule - of X being wrong in no way entails that X is in fact wrong. Furthermore, just because X can be rationally evidenced fallible rather than infallible does not in any way warrant that one then doubts X. What reason is there to doubt X when X exhibits no inconsistencies - this despite X being fallible nevertheless?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, it certainly is pivotal to what my argument for global fallibilism consists of.
But, again, I find no reason to doubt the truth of 2+2=4 in the absence of inconsistencies. And 2+2=4 is certainly consistent.
I understand. Although don't we here then embark into areas of faith, rather then those of belief which can be justified.
Quoting Relativist
Yes, I can agree, hence why I consider my belief that 2+2=4 to be categorical - despite it yet being, technically when philosophically appraised, fallible rather than infallible.
The subjective/objective difference is simply that an objective means is demonstrable - it can be shown to be true to others. If someone believes they've personally experienced a God, that can help justify his belief to himself, but it has no power to persuade anyone else.
Quoting Sirius
I hope you understand that this statement can't possibly persuade anyone that a God exists- and that's because it depends on the premise that a God exists.
[Quote]People seem to think God is like a pseudo object which exists apart from the universe, which is just superstitious & baseless.[/quote]
IOW, you don't consider the God of your belief to exist apart from the universe. OTOH, I see no reason to think that anything like a "God" exists in any objective sense. I'm fine with you embracing your belief. I'm certain I couldn't possibly convince you you're wrong, even if I wanted to (which I don't). I hope you are sufficiently open-minded enough to understand why I don't share your belief.
[Quote] If you want to know God, you just need to think differently of him, or to put it more succinctly, you need to stop thinking of him, as he is beyond concepts and experience as well.[/quote]
I admire your passion. I hope your belief helps you to do good.
There is more to truth than consistency, there is also the matter of correspondence with reality. This is why interpretation is pivotal. To judge whether 2+2=4 is consistent we need a statement to determine 'consistent with what'. The "what" here forms the basis of the supposed reality which we will judge correspondence with.
So for example, in basic arithmetic we might interpret each "2" as signifying two objects, the "+" as signifying an operation of addition, the "=" as signifying equivalence, and "4" as signifying four objects. But more sophisticated mathematicians might interpret "2+2" as signifying an object, and "4" as signifying an object, and "=" as signifying "is the same as". The "reality" which "2+2=4" corresponds with (is consistent with), making it true, is determined by the principles (axioms) which the interpretation is based in.
Thanks for that, and I by this am not in any way disagreeing with your reply.
In the part I've just quoted: I find consistency and correspondence/conformity to reality to be deeply entwined. This in so far as reality, whatever it might in fact be, can only be devoid of logical contradictions (for emphasis, where an ontological logical contradiction is a state of affairs wherein both X and not-X both ontically occur simultaneously and in the exact same respect). For example, if reality is in part tychistic then truths will conform to this partly tychistic reality in consistent ways - thereby making some variant of indeterminism true and the strictly hard determinism which is currently fashionable among many false.
It's a whopper of a metaphysical claim that realty is devoid of logical contradictions - although I so far find that everyone at least implicitly lives by this conviction. But, in granting this explicitly, then for any belief to be true, in its then needing to conform to reality to so be, the belief will then necessarily be devoid of logical contradictions in its justifications (which, after all, are justifications for the belief being conformant to reality, or else that which is real). So if a) reality is consistent (devoid of logical contradictions) and b) truth is conformity to reality then c) any belief which is inconsistent will not be true.
As to the truth of numbers, their relations, and what they represent:
If physicalism, maths can only represent physical entities and their possible physical relations (otherwise it wouldn't be physicalism). If non-physicalism, then the numbers made use by maths could in certain situations represent incorporeal entities, such as individual souls or psyches. In the here very broad umbrella of the latter, one could then obtain the proposition that "one incorporeal psyche added to another incorporeal psyche added to another incorporeal psyche can via assimilation converge into one possibly grander incorporeal psyche" - thereby holding the potential of producing the 1+1+1=1 proposition, which will contradict the 2+2=4 proposition IFF the numbers of both equations are taken to represent the same corporeal and hence physical objects. Otherwise, within at least some non-physicalist worldviews, the question which is so easily ridiculed from physical vantages can emerge: how many individual incorporeal beings, such as angels, can fit onto the tip of a pin? With the answer being indeterminable due to the very incorporeal nature of individual beings addressed - creating a deep equivocation of sorts.
The basic general point to all this tmk being in general agreement with your post
So as to not overly focus on Chistian beliefs, I should maybe add that the non-physicalist understanding of numbers as I’ve just outlined it pervades popular culture at large: from the notion that (non-physical) being is one (as in the statement, "we are all one," or the dictum of "e pluribus unum") to the notion that in a romantic relationship the two can become one. With all such beliefs being disparate from the stance that 1+1 can only equal 2 in all cases.
But none of this is to deny that in physical reality 1+1 can only equal 2 - and, by extension, that 2+2 thereby equals (and can only equal) 4 when it comes to physical entities.
The point I was trying to express, is that reality is what we make it to be, as in the the op, mind created world. So to correspond with reality means to be consistent with the principles we state as being those which describe reality. This puts logic in a sort of awkward place. We might say that reality is such that it is devoid of logical contradictions, but what this really means is that this reality which is devoid of logical contradiction is the product of a desire to maintain the law of non-contradiction. Ontologies have been proposed in which the law of non-contradiction is not necessarily true. This would mean that these principles give us a different reality.
Quoting javra
So this is where things get difficult. Let's say that we assume a reality which allows for logical contradictions. Then, logical contradictions may be consistent with reality. Therefore a true belief may be logically inconsistent. But remember, we create reality by naming the principles which describe it. So if we think it's a better reality, we can insist that contradictions be avoided. Aristotle for instance saw a need to allow for violation of the law of excluded middle to create a reality including potential and possibility, but he insisted on maintaining non-contradiction.
Quoting javra
This is sort of what Platonism does. A numeral represents an object known as a number, so one object plus one object equals one object. However, the objects each have different values, and the value is represented by the numeral, so we do not have 1+1=1.
Quoting javra
Platonism pervades mathematics. We learn in school the difference between a numeral and a number. The numeral "2" signifies an object, which is the number two. Then what is important is the value assigned to the object. So two really does become one, but that one has a distinctly different value from what the other two each have. And in a fundamental way it is consistent with the physical approach in the sense that the values indicated are the same. However, there is a non-physical object which is added in.
I have thought again about your objections since you raised them again recently. I don't believe they actually refute the points made in the original post. As it is a defense of idealism, I'll refer to Schopenhauer and Berkeley.
Schopenhauer would argue that both shape and color belong to the realm of representation (Vorstellung), which is inherently conditioned by the subject. Shape, while less obviously subjective than color, still relies on spatial and causal relations that arise from the mind’s structuring of sensory data. A boulder rolling into a canyon is a phenomenon, an appearance - and, as such, dependent on the forms of perception (space, time, and causality) that the mind imposes on the raw data (which Schopenhauer designates 'will'). When we say the boulder "has dimensions that are such and such," this statement itself relies on a conceptual framework — one that includes notions of measurement, spatial relations, and causality. A boulder, after all, does not possess or conceive of its own dimensions. It is we perceivers who bring to it the ideas of "shape," "size," or "falling into a canyon." As said in the essay, take away all perspective, any awareness of shape, size and position, and what exists? Again, to point to the so-called 'unperceived boulder' is itself a mental construct, relying, as I said, on an implicit perspective.
As for the universe’s existence prior to minds, Schopenhauer would agree that the world exists as Will, but he would deny that the world as we can ever conceive it — as an ordered totality of objects in space and time — could meaningfully exist without a subject. To speak of such a universe is to again to reintroduce the forms of representation. The universe prior to life, in Schopenhauer’s terms, would be an undifferentiated striving will, not the structured cosmos we now perceive.
Berkeley would agree that minds can know real properties but would reject the assumption that these properties exist independently of the perception of them. What you call "realism" — the belief in mind-independent objects — requires positing an unobservable substratum that supports properties like shape. Berkeley would argue that such a substratum is unnecessary and unintelligible; all that we perceive occurs to us as ideas, and these ideas are dependent on perception. Berkeley doesn't deny that objects behave and appear to be material in nature, but emphasises the 'appears to be', and denies that they exist in some sense externally to that.
None of which is to deny the empirical fact that boulders will roll over cracks and into canyons, and even fetch up in places where Samuel Johnson will be able to kick one of them. ;-)
Really good post, but one point I’d add is he did have Platonic forms in there too as “objectified Will”. From how I have interpreted it, the subject is basically the Fourfold PSR, and the forms impress upon the subject. Subject and object, however are two aspects of Will. You might have a different interpretation. Either way, what you write is a good summary of Schop’s position.
Quoting WWR p38
Bolds added.
Points to note - even though Schopenhauer and Kant are categorised as idealist philosophers, therefore 'anti-realist', here Schop. clearly acknowledges the reality of evolutionary development from inorganic to vegetative to sentient etc. He clearly has a realist view in empirical terms. His criticism is aimed at the hidden assumption of empiricism, not at its veracity in its operative domain. That's why I think the term 'anti-realist' needs to be carefully understood. Schopenhauer's approach bridges the empirical and metaphysical without reducing one to the other. His critique of materialism doesn't reject empirical science but reveals its limits: it describes the world of appearances while remaining silent about the thing-in-itself. This distinction ensures that his idealism is not a denial of the empirical world but a profound analysis of its deeper ground.
The point is that Schopenhauer's so-called 'anti-realism' is better understood as a critique of naïve realism—the assumption that the empirical world exists as ontologically independent and self-sufficient. This critique underscores why I stated in the OP that 'existence' is a complex idea. It rests on a conceptual foundation that has been built and refined over centuries, shaped by philosophical reflection and inquiry. In contrast, the 'mind-independent' stance typical of realism assumes the existence of objects to be unconditional and self-evident, often finding itself perplexed by any challenge to this assumption.
You have to admire Schopenhauer's writing here. Clear, but insightful. This eye opening passage is one I have pondered a lot before, as it is one of the hardest concepts to wrap your head around. We tend to think of the world as somehow independent, but yet Schop's notion is "object has always needed a subject" -object does not precede subject. Thus, as you indicated, all collapses to a unified Will that is fundamental to all of it. There's a lot to unpack, but as far as I see the subject-for-object simply is Will. Perhaps I am mistaken, but one way his view is anti-theological (though certainly speculative and not material), is that Will is not, as far as I can tell, some "primary" force, but is simply the unified concept of the principle behind the subject-for-object. In other words, "denying the Will", is not the same as achieving "some fundamental state". Rather, it's the ultimate negation of all states (thus denial of Will not achievement of Will. Will is what one is negating, not "going back to in some fundamental state".
But the bigger philosophical point here is the naive realism that Schop decries. It is simple to fall into the notion that what is perceived is what is the case "out there", without humans. I always use the example of "scale" to make this point. At what scale would a universe be without perspective? Is it the atomic level? Is it the universal-all-at-once level? Is it the sub-atomic level? That is to say everything then seems to both collapse and encompass everything all at once. You can say that it's "relational" in some way, or "processional" in some way, but what this really "means" without a subject or a knower, is hard to imagine. And to assume otherwise, is indeed the "naive" in naive realism, I suppose.
This is why I keep referring to the recent essay and book on the blind spot of science. The blind spot essentially arises from the emphasis on objectivity as the sole criterion for what is real. It is the attempt to discern what truly exists by bracketing out or excluding subjective factors, arising from the division in early modern science of primary and secondary attributes, on the one hand, and mind and matter, on the other. So that looses sight of the role of the mind in the construction (Vorstellung) of what is perceived as 'external reality', along with the conviction that this alone is what is real.
(Personally, my way into Schopenhauer and Kant was via a book I often mention, T R V Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism. It contains detailed comparisons between Kant and N?g?rjuna, the seminal Buddhist philosopher often described as the 'second Buddha'; see reference. I've been chastized on the Buddhist forum for praising this book, as it's nowadays regarded as euro-centric and romanticized, but making the connection between insight meditation (vipassana) and Kant's constructivism opened my eyes. In practice, vipassana cultivates direct awareness of how sensory input, mental formations, and perception interact to create what we experience as 'reality.' But that's not as dramatic as it might seem. As I said in the OP, it requires a perspectival shift, something like a gestalt shift. This intermediate realization—seeing how mind creates world—is echoed in Schopenhauer’s ‘world as representation’ and Kant’s 'epistemological limits'. It's to do with enlightenment, although realizing it doesn't make you an enlightened being. )
I don't understand this because I see no reason why materialism necessarily eliminates the subject. The subject and subjective experience can be considered to be material without losing either, Subjective experience is just as real as anything else, but it is obviously not an object of the senses. Why should that make it any less material or real? That is what I don't see any argument for either coming from you or in general. To me it simply seems like some kind of category error.
You've been telling me you don't understand it, ever since I first posted an OP on it, linked to the Aeon essay in 2019. Maybe you should review the essay and quote some passages and spell out why you think it doesn't make the case that it's claiming to make. Otherwise, I will conclude that the reason you keep saying you don't understand it, is because you don't understand it.
[quote=The Blind Spot]When we look at the objects of scientific knowledge, we don’t tend to see the experiences that underpin them. We do not see how experience makes their presence to us possible. Because we lose sight of the necessity of experience, we erect a false idol of science as something that bestows absolute knowledge of reality, independent of how it shows up and how we interact with it.[/quote]
It's Phenomenology 101.
In other words, I would like you to tell me why you think your attitude to the nature of the subject and subjective experience, to whether it is material or immaterial, is crucial to your understanding of the human existential situation and the mindful living of your life. Does it have something to do with the idea of afterlife, with this existence not being "all there is"?
OK, I've gone back and looked at your response to when I first linked that article. You said you can't see any point to it at the time, whereas I still think it was an important article. It was associated with a conference on the topic at Dartmouth at which the authors and others spoke, and is now published as book by MIT, which I found to be an excellent book. But, hey, maybe we should just agree to disagree on that.
Looking at the question you raise above:
Quoting Janus
Subjective experience is certainly real, but how can it be considered material? I don't understand how you can think that.
If I was to connect this to some modern theories, I guess one can relate back to informational theories. The divide, crudely, is between "inside" (subjective), and "outside" (objective). Scientific-pursuit in regards to consciousness, at its broadest philosophical import, is about how the "objective" can sufficiently become a persistently recursive enough set of events to "become" subjective.
To parse this out though is tricky:
"Recursive" would be doing heavy-lifting here. How does it not fall into the homuncular fallacy trap?
What is this "becoming subjective" as opposed to prior to becoming subjective?
Cells differentiate into specialized organs of sensory input and nervous system that seems to both specialize and become generalized in its processing. If Gerald Edelman is right, the neuro-processes work in a neural darwinistic fashion, not too dissimilar to how antibodies form.
The problem is always the same though. It's what Schopenhauer laid out about the first eye opening. That is to say, these materialist accounts of correlation of neuronal activity with subjective experience, presupposes the very subjective experience, and it's hard to get out of that loop, and hence, the "Hard Problem of Consciousness" is persistent and hard to shake.
:up: To be fair though, I must acknowledge I haven't read the book, only the article.
Quoting Wayfarer
These are just words, just definitions. I could say that subjective experiences are not something different than neural events in the body. even though they may seem to be different. Even in their seeming they are felt as changes in the overall state of the body and the perceived world. In another sense they are material insofar as, being real, they matter, even if they don't seem to matter, no experience is immaterial in the sense of not mattering. And I cannot imagine any other sense in which I would want to say they are immaterial.
From the original essay
The footnote reference is to the problem of the subjective unity of experience, part of the neural binding problem. That problem is how to account for the way in which the brain combines disparate kinds of information, such as size, shape, location and motion into a single unified object. While a lot is known about the various sub-faculties that perform each of the specialised tasks, no faculty can be identified that can account for the unified sense of self. That paper acknowledges that this inability corresponds to Chalmer's 'hard problem' and Levine's 'explanatory gap', meaning that at this time, how the brain does this remains 'a scientific mystery'. This has been interpreted by theistic philosophers of evidence for the soul, although I wouldn't frame it that way, as again it tends towards treating the soul (or mind or self) as an object, which it never is.
I don't know if you recall, but the other week I was wondering if the self might be understood in terms of Terrence Deacon's absentials. I ran that by ChatGPT and got the following response:
[quote=ChatGPT] That’s a fascinating connection! Indeed, Deacon’s concept of *absentials*—things defined by what is absent or by constraints rather than by tangible, present entities—applies beautifully to the Neural Binding Problem and the elusive nature of subjective unity. In Deacon’s view, *absentials* represent phenomena that aren’t located in specific material structures but emerge through relational patterns or constraints, shaping the outcomes without being directly observable.
The sense of subjective unity—our coherent, integrated perception of the world—is a perfect example of this kind of phenomenon. Neuroscience, for all its discoveries, hasn’t pinpointed a single “place” or mechanism where this unity resides because it isn’t a material structure that can be isolated or mapped. Instead, it arises from the intricate coordination of separate processes, without a single, stable neural correlate. In Deacon’s terms, the sense of unity is an *absential*: it’s defined by the coherence that emerges from the absence of a unifying, tangible structure, relying on how different parts of the brain constrain and synchronize each other to produce a seamless experience.
This interpretation enriches the Neural Binding Problem by suggesting that the solution may not lie in identifying a specific “thing” responsible for unity but rather in understanding how the lack of a centralized structure itself creates the conditions for unity. Just as Deacon’s absentials can shape the dynamics of complex systems, the brain’s fragmented but synchronized processing generates the “unity” that we experience subjectively. This approach also reinforces the limits of purely material explanations, as this unity exists in the relationships and constraints between parts rather than in any specific brain region.[/quote]
I have to say, this maps pretty well against both Schopenhauer and the Buddhist 'anatta' (no-self).
.
Since we are embedded within these bodily and neural processes of which our conscious awareness and discursive understanding are only tiny fragments, I see no reason to believe that we should ever be able to achieve an overview which is more than a more or less vague sketch. Just as even the most complex computer models of the weather are still vastly less complex than the actual weather systems.
From this our position of radical uncertainty I see no justification for any conclusions about unity in any sense beyond the acknowledgement that there must be coordination in a system too complex for us to understand except in part and in terms of parts.
What could it mean to say that our subjective experience could be disunified, uncoordinated? What could it even mean to say that of the overall weather system.is not unified, coordinated. These are human, all too human concepts.
That's what Colin McGinn says, 'mysterianism'.
Quoting Janus
Which conflicts with the fundamental dictum of Socratic philosophy, 'know thyself'.
I'm not familiar with McGinn. Our experience is intelligieble to us, just as theirs presumably is for animals. Is that not enough?
Quoting Wayfarer
Our experience is intelligible I to us, so I don't see a conflict with Socrates. For me self-knowledge is about coming to understand the patterns of thought that we have unconsciously fallen into which lead to suffering and learning to let them go as much as possible. That is self-knowledge and even that is rare enough.
I'm not sure how emergence is understood. As I said in a previous post, at what scale does the universe take without a perspective? What are events without perspective? Indirect realism would have it that, everything is in a way "map". But what is it when everything is pure "terrain"?
That's the spirit, and really not that remote from what I want to convey.
Quoting schopenhauer1
That seems like one of the antinomies of reason, doesn’t it? In a practical sense, we can’t ‘think outside thought’. I think that's the same point that Schopenhauer makes with 'time has no beginning but all beginnings are in time'. Events absent any observer aren't simply non-existent, but neither are they existent, as 'an event' has to be delimited in time and space, comprising some elements and excluding others. Of course, from our perspective, we can discern untold events that happened prior to our own individual and species' existence. But that's still from within a perspective.
Even this betrays a sort of biased proto-experiential view of things. As if the event itself is the knower. Not this either.
Probably our differences lie more in the conceptual details—about what can be counted as knowledge and what faith. Other than I've always thought we are not so far apart.
I've found an extract from Husserl's Critique of Naturalism, copied from the Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology. I was sent that as a .pdf a long time ago, early days on the other Forum, and reading this excerpt, I realise that it comprises most of what I know about Husserl, and also most or all of my own 'critique of naturalism'.
[quote=Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, p139] The critique of naturalism
Soon after writing the Logical Investigations, as we have seen, Husserl came to the view that his earlier researches had not completely escaped naturalism. After that Husserl constantly set his face against naturalism, but his most cogent critique is to be found in his 1911 essay, Philosophy as a Rigorous Science. Husserl thinks that all traditional philosophy, including Descartes and Kant, had treated consciousness as something having a completely natural being, a mere part of nature, and a dependent or epiphenomenal part at that. Even Kant had misunderstood transcendental psychology as a psychology. Husserl regards naturalism both as the dominant theoretical outlook of his age and also as deeply embedded in our ordinary assumptions about the world surrounding us. In other words, our pre-theoretical engagement with the world has an inbuilt bias towards naive naturalism. This is fine in our ordinary practices in the world, but when naturalism is elevated into an all-encompassing theoretical outlook, it actually becomes far removed from the natural attitude and in fact grossly distorts it. Husserl’s critique of naturalism is that it is a distorted conception of the fruits of scientific method which in itself is not inextricably wedded to a naturalist construal.
Husserl’s conception of naturalism relates to his understanding of the projects of John Locke, David Hume, and J.S. Mill, as well as nineteenth century positivists, especially Comte and Mach. Naturalism is the view that every phenomenon ultimately is encompassed within, and explained by, the laws of nature; everything real belongs to physical nature or is reducible to it. There are of course many varieties of naturalism, but Husserl’s own account in his 1911 essay more or less correctly summarises the naturalistic outlook:
"Thus the naturalist…sees only nature, and primarily physical nature. Whatever is, is either itself physical, belonging to the unified totality of physical nature, or it is, in fact, psychical, but then merely as a variable dependent on the physical, at best a secondary “parallel accomplishment”. Whatever is belongs to psychophysical nature, which is to say that it is univocally determined by rigid laws."
As naturalism has again become a very central concept primarily in contemporary analytic philosophy, largely due to W.V.O. Quine’s call for a naturalised epistemology, it is worth taking time here to elucidate further Husserl’s conception of naturalism. Indeed, precisely this effort to treat consciousness as part of the natural world is at the basis of many recent studies of consciousness, for example the work of Daniel Dennett or Patricia Churchland. Compare Husserl’s definition with that of David Armstrong for example:
"Naturalism I define as the doctrine that reality consists of nothing but a single all-embracing spatio-temporal system."
In Philosophy as a Rigorous Science, Husserl explicitly identifies and criticises the tendency of all forms of naturalism to seek the naturalisation of consciousness and of all ideas and norms. Naturalism as a theory involves a certain ‘philosophical absolutising’ of the scientific view of the world (Ideas I § 55); “it is a bad theory regarding a good procedure”. Certain characteristic methodological devices of the sciences, chiefly idealisation and objectification, have been misunderstood such that their objects are thought to yield the natural world as it is in itself, for example that nature is treated as a closed system of physical entities obeying laws, and everything else is squeezed out and treated as psychical, possibly even epiphenomenal. Indeed, a new science of psychology, with laws modelled on the mechanical laws of the physical domain, was then brought in to investigate this carved off subdomain, but it was guilty of reifying consciousness and examining it naively. Husserl constantly points out that such a division of the world into physical and psychical makes no sense. For Husserl, naturalism is not just only partial or limited in its explanation of the world, it is in fact self-refuting, because it has collapsed all value and normativity into merely physical or psychical occurrences, precisely the same kind of error made by psychologism when it sought to explain the normativity of logic in terms of actual, occurrent psychological states and the empirical laws governing them. The whole picture is absurd or ‘counter-sensical’ in that it denies the reality of consciousness and yet is based on assuming the existence of consciousness to give rise to the picture in the first place (Ideas I § 55). Or as Husserl says in the 1911 essay: “It is the absurdity of naturalizing something whose essence excludes the kind of being that nature has."
In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense—this would be a subjective idealism, itself a consequence of a certain naturalising tendency whereby consciousness is cause and the world its effect—but rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role. [/quote]
@Relativist - note the reference to D M Armstrong.
Here I'm drawn to a Buddhist perspective (and there are Buddhist references in the original post.) The awareness of the world-creating activities of mind is actually the salient point of vipassana, insight meditation. The Dhammapada begins with a line something like 'our life is the creation of our mind'. Throughout the early Buddhist texts, the point that is repeated over and over is awareness of and insight into the chain of dependent origination which gives rise to conditioned consciousness. In this context, It's not so much a matter of 'getting behind' those patterns, as of seeing through them - which is an arduous discipline.
There is an unequivocal statement in the Suttas 'there is that which is unconditioned, that which is unmade, that which is unfabricated' (ref). But in Buddhism, that is not a matter of faith, like 'faith in God' in the West, but one of insight. It does require faith, in that one has to have faith in it in order to take on such a discipline. But Buddhism is generally critical of dogmatic views (d???i) one way or the other. That is why mindfulness is compared with the Husserlian epoch?, 'bare awareness' of the qualities of consciousness. The connection between Buddhism and phenomenology is quite well documented nowadays. There's a wiki entry on Husserl's readings of Buddhism.
Regrettably the usual reaction is 'oh, you mean religion'. An attitude that I think is very much a product of our specific cultural history and what religion means to us. The answer has to be yes and no - religious in some respects, but not in others, as it has been defined very specifically as to what is included and what isn't, in Western cultural history.
Well, I'm not going to call woo on this. I'm just working through the ideas. I guess my point, at the risk of repetition, is that in a sense, the act of positing transcendence—whether it be metaphysical, epistemic, or existential—may be just another layer of the constructivist project, a narrative that we generate rather than an actual escape from our contingent realities. Yet, there’s a paradox here: the very recognition of our cognitive limitations seems to point to a desire to grasp something beyond them. Does this suggest an innate tension in human thought, or is it simply a reflection of the inherent constraints of our perspectival existence?
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, that's my understanding as well, though I come at it from a much less theorised perspective. It strikes me that nearly every other post here delves into the idea of uncovering the deeper reality behind reality we inhabit. It’s fascinating how often discussions circle back to the notion that humans dwell on the surface of something and that there are ways to dive beneath.
The former. The 'world-knot'. My feeling is that due to the 'instinctive naturalism' that Husserl calls out in the post above, we've not only lost the connection to 'the unconditioned' but we've forgotten that we've forgotten. Heidegger's 'forgetfulness of being'. Phenomenology and existentialism are both concerned with that.
(There's a well-known anecdote about Heidegger, that one day a colleague found him reading D T Suzuki (who at the time was lecturing at Columbia University and was well-known in the academic world.) Heidegger looked somewhat abashed, but said, 'if I understand this man correctly, this is what I have been trying to say in all my writings'. Of course it would be overly simplistic to say that he was in any meaningful way Buddhist or would adopt Buddhism. But I think both sources have a sense of the existential crisis of modernity. )
Like they say, follow the money.
If you look at why in particular someone wants to "grasp something beyond" themselves, the motivations are mundane. People are looking for money, power, health, and when they can't get them, they feel "at the end of their wits". This is a recognition of one's cognitive limitations. But it's all for mundane purposes, not because of some profound yearning for "something more" or "beyond".
It seems to me that full-blown constructivism is not a plausible hypothesis, given that experience shows us unequivocally we and even some animals see the same things in the environment. We see the bees seeing the flowers just as we do, but apparently, they can see colours we cannot.
The element of truth in it is that the way we see things, not what we see, is conditioned by the nature of our sensory setups.
We can only guess at the cause and significance of the common human propensity to think transcendence. What is undeniably true is that altered states of consciousness are possible, both via chemical interventions and certain practices.
Quoting Wayfarer
Note you say "my feeling". This is why I always say it is a matter of affect, of feeling, of faith. We cannot help living by faith. Philosophy itself in its metaphysical dimension is faith through and through. Even aesthetics and ethics cannot be sciences in the sense of "objective science".
Constantly interpreting these questions as an ‘appeal to faith’ doesn’t do justice to them. Husserl was committed to a scientific approach.
This is a fair comment. But I wouldn't argue that humans do not share some similar points of reference to animals. It's just that the meaning of what we see is clearly different and located in cultural and linguistic practices, which animals certainly don't share. Once we step away from bees and flowers and consider how we make sense of our environment and how we derive values and meaning, it's another world entirely.
The fact that we and the animals all share the same world and see the same things at the same times and places shows that what we perceive is not only determined by the mind but is also constrained by the physical nature of the senses and what is "out there".
Constructivism applies to the ways in which we see things but not to what we see. The only way around that for any mind only constructivist thesis would be that all minds are somehow connected. If there are not things which are seen by all (albeit in different ways when it comes to interspecies comparisons) then how else to explain the fact that we will agree on the exact details of what is perceived?
The questions are matters of faith because there is no possibility of logical proof or empirical confirmation regarding the question of whether the world is fundamentally physical or mental. So we choose the view that seems most plausible to us individually, or else it may even come down to what we each want to believe for various reasons.
I don't think constructivism denies that, nor do I in the OP - as I said I acknowledge there are objects unseen by any eye. I think you're still seeing both constructivism and idealism as stating that reality is 'all in the mind'.
Contructivism's core idea is that knowledge is a construction created by the mind, based on experience and prior knowledge, which provides the conceptual framework into which experience is incorporated. Radical constructivism stays neutral about the mind-independent world. It says, "We can't know reality as it is; we only know how we construct it."
It's more concerned with how we learn, think, and know than about making metaphysical claims. It is applied to fields such as education, cognitive science, and systems theory. "Reality is like a map you create as you navigate a territory—you can't claim the map is the territory itself." But the important thing to note is that it is largely epistemological, concerned with knowledge.
Analytical idealism accepts these premisses, but then goes a step further in proposing a metaphysic in which reality is mental in nature.
But as said in the OP, my main focus is not proposing a substantial metaphysics. In some way, my own approach is more aligned with constructivism. But they're both opposed to metaphysical realism. But it doesn’t mean dismissing reality or saying 'reality doesn't exist' —it's that both constructivism and phenomenological idealism recognize the importance of subjective experience as a fundamental structure of experienced reality. And it's just this subjective element which is 'bracketed out' by objectivism. The critique of metaphysical realism (drawing from Kant) is that it fails to notice how the mind actively structures reality through establishing conditions of subjective experience. Realism assumes that the world is 'just so' independent of the observer, yet overlooks how much of what we take as real is mediated by this subjective structuring process.
Which is exactly what the passage about Husserl states:
.
So this is not a 'matter of faith', and I think the reason you keep saying that over and over again is because you're not seeing the point.
(Incidentally the above info about constructivism was gleaned from Constructivist Foundations. Information about analytical idealism can be found on Essentia Foundation.)
That is not the question, though—the question is whether there are is anything independent of the mind, which determines what we see—the things we refer to as "objects"—and in affective interaction with our sensory setups, how we see them.
Quoting Wayfarer
You seem to be conflating knowledge with what we have knowledge of. I guess it depends on what you mean by "knowledge". Knowledge by aquainatance can be equated with bare perception, but discursive knowledge also incorporates judgement regarding what is perceived.
Quoting Wayfarer
The truly radical position would be to admit that we cannot be certain about whether perception tells us anything about how things are in themselves because we have no way of comparing. We cannot be aware of the process of the coming-to-be-of-the-world-for-us. It simply appears, and we cannot "get behind" our perceptual experience to investigate what is really going on. We can only use our perception and prior knowledge to study our organs of perception and build a hopefully ever more coherent picture of how they function. That picture should be consistent and cohere with the rest of our scientific knowledge. It is the total body of coherent and consistent scientific knowledge that lends credibility to hypotheses, but we can never be certain.
Quoting Wayfarer
LOL, it's not that I don't see the point, but that I disagree, and that is the point which you seem to be incapable of seeing. Have you considered the possibility that you may have a scotoma?
Quoting Wayfarer
The problem I see with that, as with any unconsidered and simplistic meme, is that it may lead to a radical relativism and contribute to the post-truth chaos which seems to be growing every day.
Right back at ya! :-) (I mean, from what you say, I can't see what it is you're taking issue with.)
Constructivism (and my position in the OP) does not deny that objects exist independent of perception. The key point is that our knowledge of such objects is mediated by subjective processes—experience and prior knowledge shape how those objects appear to us. This does not negate their independent existence but highlights the active role of the subject in any knowledge of them.
I keep emphasizing that there are two distinct meanings of 'mind-independent': a practical meaning and a metaphysical meaning, the latter corresponding to metaphysical realism.
The practical meaning refers to the fact that many things—trees, mountains, other people—exist independently of your mind or mine in the sense that they do not rely on our individual perceptions to exist. This is uncontroversial and consistent with everyday experience.
Metaphysical realism, however, illegitimately extends this practical sense to claim that the world-at-large exists entirely independently of all mind, as if it is fundamentally separate from the act of perception or any cognitive structuring. This leap goes beyond what can be demonstrated and assumes what it needs to prove, ignoring the role that mind plays in shaping the world we experience. Recognizing this distinction is key to understanding why metaphysical realism is not as secure as it seems.
This distinction between the practical and metaphysical meanings of 'mind-independent' is consistent with Kant's insight that empirical realism is compatible with transcendental idealism. We can acknowledge that objects exist independently of our individual perceptions in the practical, phenomenal sense while also recognizing that this does not mean they exist as they are 'in themselves,' apart from the structuring role of mind.
Quoting Janus
I agree that knowledge and what we know are distinct. However, my argument is about the relationship between the two: what we know is dependent on our cognitive and rational faculties.. Even bare perception, which you equate with knowledge by acquaintance, involves a structuring process, if any object it to be identified - even to know what it is requires that it be identified..Cognition is thus always mediated by sensory and cognitive abilities.
The fact that different subjects see the same objects doesn't vitiate constructivism. Shared experiences arise because we inhabit a shared world and possess similar sensory and cognitive apparatuses, leading to intersubjective agreement. However, this does not prove that the world is 'mind-independent'—only that our minds process shared inputs in similar ways.Furthermore different subjects can see the same objects in competely different ways, depending on what preconceptions or prior knowledge they bring to what they see.
Quoting Janus
If deciding whether reality is 'physical' or 'mental' requires a leap of faith, then realism is in no better position than idealism. Metaphysical realism claims that the world exists independently of the mind, but it cannot justify this beyond an appeal to reason—an appeal that idealism and constructivism also make. The difference is that idealism and constructivism openly recognize the unavoidable role of the mind in structuring experience, making them more consistent with how knowledge actually operates. In doing so, they are forthright about their reliance on reason rather than claiming a privileged metaphysical certainty.
I agree. My adventures with the Art of Dreaming were across the spectrum from elemental lucidity to a strong reality, an awareness, more pronounced and sharp than anything I have ever witnessed in normal everyday experience. Here is where degrees of reality has a possible measure. I's unfortunate that achieving these states is so happenstance. For me it was like a second nature.
One of Stephen King's novels has a brilliant description of the central character awakening in a field and smelling growing onions and freshly overturned earth a mile away.
Exactly! However, I personally find realism the more plausible. Since there is no definitive criterion of plausibility, I admit that it is, in the final analysis, still a matter of faith. I have faith in my own sense of what is the more plausible given what I know about science whereas I consider personal intuitions and experiences of altered states (of which I have enjoyed many) to be devoid of any reliable discursive justifications for ontological or metaphysical claims. In other words, if there is anything that could give grounds for such claims, in my opinion it is science.
That said, of course i don't believe science can ever explain everything about human life and experience. I think that is a separate question altogether. I also don't think the question is of much importance, and I bother myself with it only in the interest of conceptual clarity—it's a personal foible.
Ironic, considering how much time you've devoted to arguing about it.
Still, at least that has the consequence of making me clarify my argument, which is a plus.
The general impression I get from you is that you have decided the ways things are and are only interested in hearing what supports your forgone conclusions. I know you won't agree, but that is my honest view, and I don't really mind what your views are anyway. In the final analysis I just don't think it is of much importance. So, no irony.
Apologies if this is a forced intervention, but you brought up something interesting.
Isn't this the case with most of us? We have a certain view and after having read and thought a lot about something, we choose an option. We will tend to defend that view, unless a very strong reason is given as to why one's view is flawed.
No I understand the responses very well and in fact once thought very much as you do. Now I find the arguments for idealism unconvincing. I'm not really a realist either. In fact, I think the whole dichotomy is wrongheaded.
Quoting Manuel
Sure, and I have changed my views over the years. And several times at that. Previously I did tend towards idealism, now I tend more to realism and materialism. I am open to changing my mind again if I encounter a good argument. I am yet to encounter one. So, in my exchanges with @Wayfarer I have been just honestly explaining why I don't think the arguments for idealism are well-founded. He prefers to think that I don't understand them. Oh well...
Ah. Fair enough. To be clear "idealism" covers a lot of ground, as does "materialism". It's a matter of what one emphasizes, it seems to me.
From this it follows that prior to the advent of mind nothing could have existed. Everything known to science seems to contradict this. But then the idealist will say that lived experience is prior to science, which of course for us it is. But it does not follow that experience is ontologically fundamental tout court, so I see that idealist conclusion as being based on flawed reasoning.
So what do we have to guide us in trying to decide what is ontologically fundamental apart from science? Our imaginations, intuitions, feelings, wishes? Or...?
But as I say I don't think the question even really matters for human life, unless you are religious and believe in the possibility of some kind of salvation/ redemption which must involve belief in a life beyond this one in order to make any sense at all. I believe that is often the unacknowledged premise.
I agree, for the most part. I would even venture to say that experience itself is not ontologically different from matter and energy, but epistemologically different. I don't think we can make metaphysical distinctions. Descartes could, given the state of knowledge back then, but we know more than he could have dreamt.
Yes, I am also a realist in so far as I think science tells us what belongs to the world (mostly physics). But apart from that, I think ordinary objects, so called, trees and apples and river and laptops, are mental constructions. And how much of science is a construction is tricky.
Physics seems to be much more grounded than biology, one could make a case that a different species might have a different biological science, but it's hard to imagine them having extremely different physics.
As to why science works - who knows?
Yes, some versions of idealism do lend themselves for religious/spiritual matters. But it need not be exclusive to one's personal philosophical beliefs, though it often is.
This would be where we differ. I think the fact that we all see the same things and can agree down to the smallest detail as to what we see and that our observations show us that other animals see the same things we do, suggests very strongly that these things are not just mental constructions. I think the most plausible conclusion is that they are mind-independent ontic structures. That said I think the ways things are seen may well differ according to interspecies, and to a lesser extent intraspecies, variations in the designs of sense organs.
Quoting Janus
I have addressed this objection many times, both in this thread and elsewhere. Of course it is true that h.sapiens is a recent arrival in evolutionary and geological terms. That is an established fact and not in dispute. But it is also not the point at issue in this argument. The starkest illustration of the point at issue is the exclamation by Immaneul Kant, in the Transcendental Aesthetic, 'If the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, be removed, the whole constitution and all the relations of objects in space and time, nay space and time themselves, would vanish; and as appearances, they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us.'
So I'm not disputing the empirical facts of science. In the OP, I say
So appealing to objective fact does not constitute an objection to the OP.
Quoting Janus
That is a point made from outside experience. It is viewing humans among other phenomena, as paleontology would do, or as anthropology would do.
Quoting Janus
Yet I am accused of arguing tendentiously on the basis of religious motivation, when it seems clear to me that, as you can't understand the argument, and believe that it contradicts common-sense realism, then the author must have religious pre-conceptions. Which speaks to preconceptions of your own.
Speaking of 'smallest details', there's a long (and not very entertaining) video interview on Essentia Foundation's website at the moment (Essential Foundation being Kastrup's idealist philosophy publishing organisation.) It comprises an interview with three European physicists who have won a prestigious award in physics for experimental demonstrations of the so-called 'Wigner's Friend' argument. The abstract goes:
This is in line with QBism - that observations in quantum physics have an ineluctably subjective element, so that each observation is indeed unique to a particular observer. Of course it is also true that observations tend to converge within a certain range - it's not as if the observation will yield a frog or a tree, so it's not entirely random. But it's also not entirely objectively determined.
[quote=Christian Fuchs, founder of QBism]The very idea of science from the usual point of view is to take out everything to do with human subjectivity and see what remains. QBism says, if you take everything out of quantum theory to do with human subjectivity, then nothing remains.[/quote]
Note the resonance with the Kant quotation.
As I see it there is no evidence or logic to suggest such a thing. Those things would not be perceived to be sure, but it does not follow that they would vanish. You are conflating not being seen with not existing.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, it is a point made from inside experience as all points are. I understand the arguments very well, I just don't happen to agree with them. In fact, I used to make the very same fallacious arguments myself, but I came to understand their fallaciousness. You don't seem to be able to understand that.
Can they? Do dogs see trees? They see something for sure, they don't have the concept "tree", nor do we know how they individuate objects. When it comes to other animals, one could assume some of them don't individuate things at all.
There's no necessary law that states that the way we pick out a blade of grass is the way it must be. One can easily imagine another species or an alien not being able to individuate a blade of grass as one thing, but rather several parts.
That we all agree down to the smallest part on how objects appear to us, simply tells us we are all human beings.
Based on what you quote here, I agree with a lot of it, maybe most.
I was no intending to defend you or attack Janus, it's just that the point he made was interesting to me.
As I said I think most of us have thought hard about our positions, and we'd only be willing to change them given extremely strong arguments and even then, it's not a guarantee.
Yes, I think Kantian (or Neo-Platonic) perspectives are very much headed in the right direction. I only add that we must take into account that Kant literally shaped his Critique around Newtonian natural philosophy, which stated that space and time were absolute.
That's a massive reason why Kant says that they are a priori forms of sensibility. This is very frequently overlooked.
Now we know that there is such a thing as time and space absent us, which are quite different from our intuitive understanding of them.
So, it's tricky, as I see it, but it's an important issue in general.
They don't bump into them, and they lift their legs and pee on them They don't try to climb them although they may use them to stand on the back legs and look up to see what's up there making a sound they are intrigued by. Cats climb them and birds land and perch in them. The dog sees and chases the ball when I throw it. He doesn't attempt to walk through walls, and he climbs the stairs just as I do. bees go to flowers not to piles of dung and flies go to piles of dung, not to flowers. There is untold evidence that animals see the same environment we do, albeit not in exactly the same ways when it comes to smaller details like colour. There might be a universal mind of which we and the other animals are all part that determines all this, but unless that is posited idealism is utterly implausible as far as i can see. I'm open to other views if they are supported by convincing arguments. I am yet to encounter any.
Quoting Manuel
Nothing inside of us could determine the smallest details of what is seen. What is actually out there determines what is seen. Otherwise, you would have to posit that our minds are all somehow connected.
Quoting Manuel
How do we know that and yet do not know that there are structured configurations of energy which appear to us as objects? Wayfarer won't agree with you about the human-independent existence of space and time by the way.
Quoting Wayfarer
How do we know that, by the way?
That is not a valid distinction in my view. It's a difference that makes no difference. Mere wordplay.
They don't bump into something; we conceptualize that something as a tree. Cats "climb" something (as opposed to go up? or latching on?). Yeah, they surely do stand on something. We conceptualize it as a tree - we have that linguistic and alongside that, conceptual capacity to apply the label "tree" to this thing animals react to.
Quoting Janus
We are the same species - so we will have the same concepts.
Just as dogs are their own species. As birds belong to birds.
When neurologists study a brain, they assume that what holds for that single individual's brain, applies to all of us, minus abnormalities.
When vision scientists study how we see, they assume that the person's eye they are studying, applies to all people - again, barring abnormalities.
Quoting Janus
We know that because mathematics, somehow, seems to apply to mind independent reality. What physics studies are the simplest systems in nature, somehow, we are able to develop theories that describe regularities in nature.
That was Einstein's comment about the most surprising thing about science (physics) that it works at all.
If Wayfarer thinks this is problematic or wouldn't agree with me here, then I'd disagree with him here.
I don't deny mind-independence. I only think it becomes overwhelmingly complex above physics.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well Eddington confirmed that space and time were actually one thing, spacetime, experimentally confirmed in the early 20th century.
[quote=Who Really Won the Bergson-Einstein Debate; https://aeon.co/essays/who-really-won-when-bergson-and-einstein-debated-time]Henri Bergson insisted that duration proper cannot be measured. To measure something – such as volume, length, pressure, weight, speed or temperature – we need to stipulate the unit of measurement in terms of a standard. For example, the standard metre was once stipulated to be the length of a particular 100-centimetre-long platinum bar kept in Paris. It is now defined by an atomic clock measuring the length of a path of light travelling in a vacuum over an extremely short time interval. In both cases, the standard metre is a measurement of length that itself has a length. The standard unit exemplifies the property it measures.
In Time and Free Will, Bergson argued that this procedure would not work for duration. For duration to be measured by a clock, the clock itself must have duration. It must exemplify the property it is supposed to measure. To examine the measurements involved in clock time, Bergson considers an oscillating pendulum, moving back and forth. At each moment, the pendulum occupies a different position in space, like the points on a line or the moving hands on a clockface. In the case of a clock, the current state – the current time – is what we call ‘now’. Each successive ‘now’ of the clock contains nothing of the past because each moment, each unit, is separate and distinct. But this is not how we experience time. Instead, we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession. Clocks don’t measure time; we do. This is why Bergson believed that clock time presupposes lived time.[/quote]
The following makes the same point:
I mean, either the universe is 13.7 billion years old, or it is not. That's a factual statement.
If we never arose, there would still be something there. It must be assumed otherwise how could we exist at all? Something had to happen that led to us, which did not depend on us.
In order to come to conceptualize ^tree^ we must first be able to see one. Then we can conceptualize all the others. Of course other animals don't think 'tree'. That is not the point at issue. Their behavior shows us that they see roughly the same structures that we do.
OK. Good.
We see something, right? This something triggers a reaction in our minds such that we call it a "tree". We don't see a tree first and then label it as a tree. We see things which we then interpret as so and so.
Their behaviors suggest they are interacting with something which is "concrete", something that can be touched and not passed through.
What does "structure" cover for you? Does it cover the shape of a thing or it's qualia or what? That's a bit unclear to me.
I really do understand the perplexity here. The issue is, as soon as you say 'something', then you're bringing your mind to bear on the question. In the OP, I'm careful to say that I'm not claiming that, in the absence of an observer, things literally become nothing. It's rather that the mind provides the framework within which the whole concept of 'existence' is meaningful - including the units of time by which it is measured (13.7 billion years).
It is in this context where I reference a quotation from the Buddhist texts (not in support of a religious argument!):
[quote= Kacc?yanagotta Sutta]By and large, Kacc?yana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, “non-existence” with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, “existence” with reference to the world does not occur to one.[/quote]
But the Buddha is not referring to the geological origin of the world. It's a reference to the 'world-making process' which the mind is involuntarily engaged in at each successive moment. The 'origin of the world', in Buddhist terms, is the process which gives rise to that world-making process ('the chain of dependent origination'.) The 'cessation of the world' is the ending of that process, namely, nibbana (in the Pali texts.)
What I'm relating that to, is the insights of cognitive science (ultimately traceable back to Kant) about how 'mind creates world'. It does not create the objective world, but then, what is 'objective' without there being the subject or observer for whom it is an object? It's interesting that in many of the early Buddhist texts, you will encounter the expression 'self and world', as in, 'the self and world arises' or 'the self and world exists'. That is why Buddhism has been phenomenological from the outset. That is also why there is a convergence between Buddhist philosophy, phenomenology, and cognitive science, which we see in books such as The Embodied Mind.
This is why I say at the outset that grasping this point requires a perspectival shift, a gestalt shift.
This, , is Waif's strong doctrine. If you press it's logic, he will deny it, stepping back to some merely transcendental reality.
The world. The actual world. The hard thing to tease out is what belongs to it absent us. That's a hard question. I think the evidence indicates that atoms, protons and so on existed prior to us. So, did planets and several other things.
But I will grant you that qualia did not exist absent a subject. I grant you that we give "meaning" to things. I grant that we individuate objects, and I also grant that we don't reach things in themselves. But I do not follow you in so far as denying objectivity without a subject.
Notice I understand the radicalness of what you are proposing. But I don't think it's true. Not to that extent.
One could be even more radical like Arthur Collier and outright deny that anything exists absent us and be perhaps the only full-blown idealist I know of. And it is very radical. But it's also not convincing.
Radicalness is not an indication of correctness. Not that you claim so, but it's worth pointing out.
That doesn't mean I don't see massive obstacles in making sense of these things. These are hard questions.
I'm not denying it, if you read carefully. I hadn't heard of Collier, but perusing the Wiki entry, he seems a kindred spirit!
Quoting Banno
Cognitive scientists who understand the fundamental role of an observing mind. Notice the cameo by Richard Dawkins muttering incredulously about 'a conspiracy to deny objective reality.'
It's a general idea of form or configuration. Not qualia and shape is kind of abstract whereas structure suggest concreteness and boundedness (however loose). It could be thought of as a localised intensity of energetic bonding in a field that gives rise to chracteristic functions and interactions.
A transcendental reality which us poor sods, lacking the necessary insight, could not hope to understand. :wink:
Are they saying that it is not the case that "reality is real"? Do they deny the reality of neurones? How do they reconcile that with their day job?
Would they agree with you that "'...the whole constitution and all the relations of objects in space and time, nay space and time themselves... cannot exist in themselves, but only in us".
That phrase they use... 'underlying reality".... what's that, then? How does it fit in with your creed?
Hint: has to do with the original post.
What?
It is unfortunate that the title of the OP "The Mind-Created World" gives impression, that you are not perceiving the world as is, but you are perceiving the world with your own added imagination and emotions which could distort the accuracy of your perception.
The world is not mind-created, but it is given as is to the mind. Mind must see the world as is without adding anything to it. Heidegger says, the world presents itself to us. We have no option but be presented with the world, and you must face the world without any added prejudice.
Quoting Janus
As Berkeley keenly demonstrated, materialism is swiftly reduced to idealism. This is due to the fact that matter, or energy, whatever term you choose, signifies only an idea. So Berkeley demonstrated that we can have a completely adequate understanding of the external world without employing the idea of "matter". What is actually the case, is that the idea of "matter" is just a substitute for the idea of "God". Each of these two words signifies the concept of an imperceptible (yes matter is imperceptible as what we perceive is the form) aspect of reality, the existence of which is assumed by us human beings, to account for the temporal continuity of the world. We assume the world to continue its existence independent of human perception, and we posit "matter", or "God", to account for this..
What is important to note though, is that materialism is reducible to a form of idealism, not vise versa. This assigns logical priority to idealism over materialism. Materialism, through the choice of "matter" as the base idea, which supports the reality of an independent world, is a distinct form of idealism from theology which holds the choice of "God" as that base idea.
Quoting Janus
This is a very faulty argument. If we take two people, point them to the horizon in a particular direction, in an active situation, and ask them to make a sentence about what they see, they will undoubtedly make different statements. The fact that we can agree is attributable to the power of suggestion.
"Do you see that tall red thing straight ahead?" "Well, it looks more rusty orange than red to me, but sure, I see it". "See what's going on to the right of that, I call it 'X', do you agree?" "Sure, I'll agree to call it that."
The fact that we agree to use the same words in the same situation is indicative of a desire to facilitate communication, it provides no evidence that we see the same things. Nor does it prove that the names are not applied to mental constructs rather than supposed independent things.
Quoting Janus
This as well, is not true at all. We produce all sorts of conceptualizations of things not yet seen or experienced in any way. This is the basis for Kant's a priori. As a simple, but very powerful example, consider the reality of prediction. Predictions are exactly that, conceptualizations of things not yet experienced, and this capacity in its basic form is commonly known as "imagination". The dual capacity of that faculty, to produce images of things not experienced, as well as images of things experienced through sensation, indicates that this faculty of imagination produces, or creates, the images, and is not dependent on sense experience in its creations.
I took the time to generate a transcript (with some comments).
Not a fact—a mere assumption.Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That people notice different things in a vast or complex environment is no valid objection. If one notices something, ask the other if they also notice the same thing—that would be a proper test. Take two people and ask them to point to tiny marks or blemishes on the surface of a table, for example, and they will point to the same things.
But put them in a physics lab.....
If experience comes from organized matter, then it comes from the brain of certain organisms.
I don't see these terms as polar opposites. I'm a scientific realist and a manifest idealist: I believe the ordinary everyday world of tables and chairs are mind-dependent. I don't think physics is, despite it being formulated through minds, it still exists absent us.
The only way a strict separation is possible is if you assume that matter cannot be mental in any respect, or that mind is above matter, which is not coherent until someone says what matter is, and where it stops.
Quoting Janus
A number of others have already addressed that - we're equipped with the same senses and inhabit a world of shared definitions, so we tend to see things the same way. But not always. People can reach radically different conclusions when presented with the same evidence.
I tried to explain before the distinction between empirical and metaphysical realism, which you dismissed as 'wordplay'. It really isn't.
Sorry I overlooked this. I am not following.
Quoting Janus
So, some microphysical thing?
You are putting words in my mouth. I don't say that at all. Almost everything we know is known by direct observation and science is just an augmenting extension of that.
Quoting Wayfarer
This does not explain the problem. Seeing things in the same way and seeing the same things are not the same. We can see the same things in different ways.
Quoting Manuel
Why not a microphysical thing? Must the physical be different than the metaphysical other than definitionally?
I was not evaluating your comment, I was asking if this structure is what you think is the same for all creatures - as I did not understand your specific description.
I can explain how "matter" is merely a conception. It is something that is assumed to underlie the reality of sensible objects, which accounts for them apparently maintaining their similarity as time passes. In the physics of motion, matter is represented by inertia.
Now, it's your turn to explain how you believe that "matter" signifies something other than an idea.
Quoting Janus
As I said, that is explained by the power of suggestion. I guess you didn't read the rest of my post. That we agree to call what we see in the same situation, by the same name, does not prove that we are seeing the same thing. We readily agree about things like that simply because it facilitates communication.
Quoting Manuel
I believe that when a person develops a good understanding of the concept of "matter" it is inevitable that mind will be understood as above matter. This is because "matter" is assumed as a principle, to represent things which we do not understand, about the way that we perceive the world. So "matter" represents something peculiar and fundamentally unintelligible about our perceptions. And this is very significant, because as fundamentally unintelligible, it does not fit into our conceptions of an independent world. Matter transcends the supposedly independent world, and this evident even in the most vulgar conception of "matter" as that which the world is made of. But it is only that way because the mind makes it that way, simply because the mind needs that principle. So the mind creates the idea of something which transcends the world, matter, but it's just an idea.
Tell me, what does this simple, deceptive phrase do?
What sort of thing is the world as it is?
I've often said before that there is a convergence between cognitive science and idealism (or constructivism) insofar as the former recognises the centrality of the mind in the construction of understanding. So it differs from empiricism in recognising that the mind is not tabula rasa, and reality not something that exists just so, independently of it. But ultimately, the question you're asking is a very deep question indeed. Isn't that the subject matter of the Parmenides, and much of the philosophy that followed it? It's easy to make glib statements about it, but it's really not so easy.
Quoting Janus
But the point is, physics itself, which one would expect to have the most definitive answer to that in the general sense, cannot arrive at a conclusion as to whether there is any fundamental thing which is the same for all observers.
I thought you were asking me to speculate as to what the structures we perceive as objects might be. It seems animals will not conceptualize structures in the ways we do or even conceptualize them at all. Perhaps I don't understand your question.
'Matter' is an idea. If it signifies anything it signifies something that is not an idea.
That's not true. As I explained, "matter" signifies the reason why perceived things maintain similarity, from prior time to posterior time, as time passes. This principle of temporal continuity provides the foundation for the conception of an independent world, as well as being the basis for "inertia" in the physics of motion. As "the reason why", "matter" signifies an idea.
I thought you were saying that all creatures had access to same basic structure. If so, then I was going to reply by saying what you just said "animals will not conceptualize structures in the way we do...".
If so - then I think we are on the same page on this specific topic. Which may be good or maybe it's problematic, I dunno. :cool:
But that is a stipulation that mind is above matter. What does that mean? Why can't mind be a specific configuration of matter? Is there a principle in nature that prevents mind from arising from certain combinations of matter? Not that I know of.
I agree that, in very crucial respects, we don't know what matter is. We only know a very specific configuration of it - the rest are postulates to make sense of the world.
Quoting Wayfarer
Why would that be? We experience matter in an almost infinite variety of forms including our own bodies—why would you say we can have no idea of what we experience?
Quoting Janus
I'm using the word 'idea' in the philosophical sense that anything that we recognise and perceive is 'idea', something we can form a concept of. So if you perceived something but have no idea what it is, then how could you know it was material in nature? In order for to be recognisable at all, it has to have some [i]form[i].
Quoting Manuel
I’ve been reading Hans Jonas and Evan Thompson on the phenomenology of biology. They’re dense and complex, so I wouldn’t claim mastery, but one idea stands out: life and mind might be isometric—that is, wherever there’s life, there’s also something like mind, even if it’s not conscious or sentient in the way we think of it. This is because organisms, by their nature, maintain themselves and distinguish themselves from their surroundings; without this, they’d just be subject to the same physical and chemical forces as everything else. This is evident even in the most rudimentary forms of organic life - they're in some basic sense, intentional, in a way that, crystals, say, cannot be.
Which raises an interesting possibility: could this self-maintenance be the earliest appearance of mind, even if in a rudimentary form? If so, then complex minds in higher organisms wouldn’t just be the product of matter—mind could also be understood as a causal factor. The fact that mind is not something that can be identified on the molecular level is not an argument against it - as everyone knows, identifying the physical correlates of consciousness is, famously, a very hard problem ;-) .
That's fine. I call the stuff that the world is made of "physical stuff" or matter, you can call it "energy" or "idea" if you wish. It could cause terminological issues down the line, but content wise, there's not much of a difference.
Quoting Wayfarer
They could be correlative - maybe.
Yeah, the "hard problem" (which is misleading, imo) is real. Because our understanding is just way too to know how matter could lead to mind - Locke pointed that out many years ago, quite correctly as I see it.
It's something akin to asking yourself does a dog understand itself? Well, not very well. We know more about dogs that they do about themselves, as it were, and we still don't understand completely at all - far from it.
To understand how brain leads to mind would require exponentially more intelligence than we have. I just don't see why I have any reason to deny that experience comes from modified physical (world, immaterial, neutral, whatever you want to call it) stuff.
We say 'the things we perceive are not ideas' because we instinctively think of ourselves as separate from the world. We see the apple or chair and think the 'idea' of it is something that occurs internally in the mind, distinct from the external object itself. This is the outlook of John Locke's representative realism: external objects cause ideas in our minds, and perception is the mental awareness of those ideas.
But Kant and Schopenhauer challenge this. For Kant, the object as perceived is not the thing-in-itself but a phenomenon—what appears is a product of the mind’s structuring activity. The 'idea' is not something separate from the act of perception; the perceived object is itself the idea, or more precisely, a phenomenon shaped by mind.
Schopenhauer takes this further, describing all perceived objects as representations (Vorstellungen), inseparable from the perceiving subject. Thus, the apple or chair is not a separate 'thing' causing an internal idea; it is a perceived idea, always within the phenomenal realm. This dissolves the divide between external objects and internal ideas that representative realism assumes.
Those kinds of themes are greatly expanded and explored in later phenomenology and existentialism.
Quoting Manuel
On the contrary, it's a difference that makes a difference!
Quoting Manuel
Because it's materialism, and I reject materialism.
Because you equate it with scienticism. It does not need to be so equated.
If you reject the scientistic association, then many problems go away. The only remaining issue then, would be if matter came before mental properties, or if mental properties came before material ones.
You simply cannot address the objections I make to your position. You don't even try...you just keep intoning the same mantras and citing the same "authorities". I'm done with responding to you...it's a waste of time.
It's not a stipulation. What I explained is that it is the result of, a conclusion drawn from understanding the concept of matter.
Quoting Manuel
The concept of matter is not compatible with the concept of mind, to allow for this. That is because matter is a principle assumed to account for the apparently deterministic aspects of the world, i.e. temporal continuity, while mind and free will are things requiring exception to that, i.e. temporal discontinuity.
Matter cannot be configured in a way other than what is allowed for by determinist causation. This I believe is the importance of understanding the relation between "matter" and Newton's first law. Newton assigns to matter itself, a fundamental property, which is inertia, and this renders all material bodies as determined. So mind, which has the capacity to choose, cannot be a configuration of matter.
Quoting Wayfarer
What I do is separate "mind" from "soul", in the way described by Aristotle. Soul is the base, so that all the potencies, capacities, or powers of the various life forms (self-nourishment, self-movement, sensation, and even intellection), are properties of the soul. This allows that mind, or intellect, in the human form, as a power of the soul, can come into existence through the process of evolution. But soul itself is prior.
The power to choose, to select from possibilities, which is very evident in human free will, may well be the most basic power of the soul. It appears to be required for all the basic living capacities. In this way, what you call here "the earliest appearance of mind", or the "rudimentary form" of mind, is the capacity to select form possibilities. And when we understand what it means to select, or choose, we see that intention is necessary for this, as that which causes one possibility to be actualized rather than any other. So this puts intention (final cause) as the basic property of the soul, as what is required for that basic power, the capacity to choose.
It seems we are an impasse here for the time being. I propose to park the conversation here and we can pick it up in some other thread, maybe by then we could understand each other better,
But I suspect we agree on something like 70% of the main topics, that is, if you still maintain some agreement with some version of Kant (albeit modified), if not then we may have drifted apart, which is fine.
I'll leave the proposal for you to decide.
Who understands matter? What we have are theories of physics about matter in microphysical states. Once you enter biology, our understanding of matter decreases exponentially - we don't understand how matter could have the properties we experience in everyday life. That's lack of understanding.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Do you mean matter as in physics or matter as in everything that is? Because physics does not show determinism, it at best suggests probabilities, which are very foreign to our debates on free will.
If there is emergence - brute emergence, "magical emergence" - which I believe happens all the time, then there is no problem in mind arising from matter, any more than anything else arising from it.
Newtonian laws are deterministic, and they still play a large role in modern physics, especially when mass (matter) is being dealt with.
I do address them, and you object to my objections. I'm not lecturing you, just making my case. You don't like, fine. You can't say I don't make an effort.
Quoting Manuel
I think it's rather deeper than that, but I'll leave it at that.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I could go along with that. I always find the translation of 'On the Soul' as 'D'Anima' very suggestive of that - an 'animating principle.
I thought we were in agreement. It's not clear to me where you think we are still not in agreement.
Quoting Wayfarer
OK, I'll try one more time. You say the fact that have the same sense organs can explain why we can see the same details down to the smallest visible scale. The example I gave was the surface of a table—let's say it's a wooden table with little knots and patterns of figuration. We will agree on the exact locations of the knots and the patterns, and we can confirm this by pointing to them. Now if there were nothing there determining the positions of those details on what basis could we explain our precise agreement?
Don't say it is because we see things in the same way. As I already pointed out seeing things in the same way and seeing the particular things are not the same. We know we both see the particular things in their precise positions and patterns, and we know we see them roughly the same way in terms of colour, and tone and size, but we have no way of determining whether we see them in precisely the same way in terms of the latter qualities.
Don't give me a lecture about the history of ideas or Kant or Schopenhauer—just try to address tis simple point in your own words.
As I understand, I asked what you meant by structure you told me:
"It's a general idea of form or configuration. Not qualia and shape is kind of abstract whereas structure suggest concreteness and boundedness (however loose). It could be thought of as a localised intensity of energetic bonding in a field that gives rise to chracteristic functions and interactions."
I replied by saying that I did not understand this as stated but guessed you could have meant a "microphysical structure".
Which you replied by asking: "Why not a microphysical thing? Must the physical be different than the metaphysical other than definitionally?"
I said I was not evaluating your claim in any manner, but merely wanted to know if the structure was microphysical. This then brought up a problem to my mind, namely that if we say there is a microphysical structure that exists which is common to all creatures, then there is a tension, which you anticipated by saying:
"I thought you were asking me to speculate as to what the structures we perceive as objects might be.It seems animals will not conceptualize structures in the ways we do or even conceptualize them at all. Perhaps I don't understand your question."
I agreed with this bold part, and I thought this meant we agreed on there being real microphysical things in the world.
But then I got confused when you said:
"OK cool it seems we agree. I think we and the other animals have access to the same basic structures."
Because for reasons you gave previously, animals can't access this microphysical structure.
In short, using Sellar's terminology, I am a realist when it comes to the "scientific image" (with important caveats), but am an idealist when it comes to the manifest image.
I don't know what part of idealism you know think holds true - if any of it. It seems to me you think qualia and other facets of the world are ideal, but others are real.
That's how I see it anyway.
But I don't deny the fact that there are real objects external to us. I will try one more time:
Quoting Wayfarer
So I'm not denying that there are objective facts (and therefore the existence of objects). What I said was
Quoting Wayfarer
And 'absolutizing it' amounts to metaphysical realism:
'Metaphysical realism is the idea that the existence and nature of things in the world are independent of how they are perceived or thought about. It's also known as "external" realism.'
That's what I think you're defending, and I'm criticizing. And that criticism is in line with:
Furthermore I've pointed to the fact that physics itself has not arrived at an unambiguously objective entity at the most fundamental level. The experiments I referred to previously are about that very point.
So please stop telling me I'm not addressing the question or evading the issue. I'm really not. I know it's a contentious issue and a difficult problem - not a simple point! - but I'm not being evasive about it.
Fair enough, we can pick it up some other time. I still think our areas of agreement are far more interesting than those areas we disagree.
Few people here have the respect and are merited by innate ideas after all. :cool:
I didn't mean to say that animals have conceptual access to microphysical structures, but that we know by observing their behavior that animals have perceptual access to the same things we do and if things are real microphysical structures then it follows that animals have perceptual access to microphysical structures, This does not mean that we or the animals have perceptual access to microphysical structures as microphysical structures but we both have access to them as macrophysical appearances.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
OK, if you agree there are external objects that are real independently of human perception and that their characteristics determine what we see and where and when we see it then how is that not consistent with realism?
Realism does not deny that the ways we see things are also determined by our uniquely human sense organs, so that the bee or the bird will see the same flower we do but presumably not in the same way.
Come on, this is standard science of perception. Neither science nor the realist claim that we all see things exactly the same way or that we see things the same way that other animals do. It is uncontroversial that some humans are colourblind, that dogs can only see a couple of colours, that bees can see colours we cannot and so on. I know you will see the same things at the same times and places as I do, but I don't know and can never know whether they appear exactly the same to you as they do to me because different individual's' perceptions cannot be compared with one another for obvious reasons.
I agree than neither we, nor other animals have access to microphysical structures. We have the advantage of "seeing" them through sophisticated experiments, or at least important parts of these structure.
We are stuck on the macrophysical issue. I don't think we have access to the same things. We, through concepts and perception do attribute identity to things - which require linguistic capacity (at least).
I don't think animals attribute too much to objects (not saying that you say they have concepts like we do). I think evidence suggests higher mammals can convey when there is prey, food or when it's mating season and the like.
But I don't see evidence that suggests they see the world in a similar way than we do, it seems to me based on what we know, they have very different experiences of the world - each subject to species-specific brain configuration.
Quoting Janus
But I don't agree and it's not what I said. I said there are external objects, but
Quoting Wayfarer
And that is definitely all out of me for the time being.
As I said before we see cats climbing trees not brick walls, birds perching in trees, not stopping and attempting to perch in midair. We see dogs trying to open doors, we see crows using sticks as tools to retrieve food and getting out of the way of oncoming vehicles. We don't see animals trying to walk through walls or birds flying into trees. There are countless examples. I don't know what else to say other than to ask why you don't think the examples I give suggest that we see the same things animals do.
Quoting Wayfarer
Are you claiming the science of perception does not tell us what I said it does? Are you claiming that the bee does not see the flower we see it collecting nectar from and pollinating. Are you claiming the dog does not see its food bowl where we see it, or does not see the ball we throw for it?
https://www.bing.com/search?q=animals+see+the+same+things+but+not+the+same+ways+we+do+according+to+the+scinece+of+percption&form=ANNTH1&refig=44e31eef9eb549d882fc9a5dd4e18d66&pc=HCTS
Quoting Wayfarer
Nothing I've said is inconsistent with that and nor is science or realism. I know you don't agree "that there is 'mind-independent substratum' behind all of those different meaning-worlds" but you don't know that there isn't and nor do I know that there is. I'm just pointing out that the evidence of our senses and observations of the behavior of other animals suggests there is. The other explanation is that this is all going on in a universal mind we and the animals are all connected to. I don't deny that possibility, but it seems to me by far the least plausible explanation. And it seems you don't want to even posit that, which makes your position seem to be completely lacking in explanatory potential.
And I keep replying that we are attributing walls, trees and brick walls to animals' cognition, WALLS, TREES and BRICK are concepts, not mind-independent things.
The fact that dogs try to come indoors or that cats walk on walls is nothing else than our attempt to make sense of what they do. Dogs push (or pull) something, they don't know it's a door. Cats walk on something; they have no concept of a wall.
The examples you suggest seem to me to be an anthropomorphizing of animal behavior.
I grant that there is something like concreteness or not being able to pass through things. But tress, doors and walls aren't things animals interact with, it's what we in our umwelt, interpret them to be doing.
Hey, that would require knowing the One Mind. And I don't claim to know the One Mind. I'm just tracking the footprints.
Quoting Manuel
Totally :100:
Maybe you would have better luck if you were to say that all animals observe the same reality instead of saying they observe the same "things", since to @Wayfarer and @Manuel that seems to necessarily imply that other animals conceptualize reality in the same way we do (which is clearly not your intended meaning).
Is there any term you would accept as referring to what we observe prior to generating propositional knowledge? Like "pre-conceptual reality", for example?
You may be attributing that, not me. I say they clearly see the things we call walls and trees, I'm not saying they see them as walls or trees.
Quoting Manuel
Right, and I haven't said or even implied any such thing. Dogs do know they can go out when the door is open, and they usually don't attempt to go out when it's closed, so they know that much.
Quoting Wayfarer
You don't know if there is one mind and nor do I. You could favour that as an explanation for why we and some animals clearly see the same things, but it woiuld be an inference to what you considered the best explanation.
If we go further, and posit the capacity to choose as the fundamental property of the soul, therefore final cause as the basic act of the soul, this is very consistent with the way that quantum mechanics understands the micro-scale. However, to conceive of this capacity to choose, requires a peculiar understanding of "the passage of time" common in mysticism, within which the world is understood to be created anew at each moment, as time passes. Accepting the reality that we can choose freely, produces the need for a discontinuity of "the world", between past and future, which breaks the determinist continuity.
This perspective produces the need for a completely different way of understanding the relationship between the small and the large. The small is understood as the "internal", and the large is understood as the "external", the subject has created for itself, a somewhat arbitrary boundary between these two, which you describe as the boundary which the subject has created between itself and "the world" . I believe it is important to understand that there is also a boundary between the subject and the internal. In this case, "subject" indicates the consciousness. The internal is all the nonconscious activity of the soul, producing sensations, desires, emotions, etc.. The "subject", as consciousness has a pair of soul-created boundaries, one to the external, and one to the internal, and this is known as the conscious perspective.
Since the internal is what is responsible for our capacity to choose, and to move freely in the larger expanse, we need to conclude that the activity of "the passage of time", which is really a series of events which constitutes the world being created anew at each moment, is directed from the internal to the external. In speculation I can say, that when the world is created anew at each moment of passing time, it is an extremely rapid internal to external event, an "explosion", like a mini 'big bang' at each point in space, at each moment of passing time.
This interpretation is supported by our observations of "spatial expansion", when a framework of two dimensional time is adopted. Assume that there is a succession of these internal to external "explosions" which constitutes the passing of time. Each explosion is the world being created anew at each moment. And, each one is similar to the last, but not exactly the same, and this constitutes the orderly change we observe in the world. The activity of "the explosions" requires the second dimension of time to understand, the breadth of the present.
The subject has been given, by the soul-created boundaries, a specific place in the explosion, somewhere between the very small and the very large, by means of the somewhat arbitrary boundaries. The boundaries are very precise though, because the position within the explosion must be extremely consistent from one explosion to the next, to produce the appearance of temporal continuity. The identity of a particular thing, object or individual, is its continuity of position between one explosion and the next. Notice the degree to which a living being has freedom to alter its own physical continuity. When we extrapolate from our sense perspective (our precise location on the explosions), to extend our observational capacity over a large duration of time (many many explosions, or "moments"), we see "spatial expansion" as produced by the discrepancy in the position of those boundaries.
Quoting Janus
I don't think you understand what is being claimed. The argument is not that there is "nothing there", but that whatever it is that is there, may not be anything even similar to how it appears to us.
Consider the nature of language for example. Language consists of symbols which do not necessarily appear to be anything at all similar to what they represent, yet they are extremely useful. In fact, by making a simple symbol represent complex information, we increase the efficiency of language. Some biologists like to extend this symbol/information model through all levels of living activity, as semiosis and semiotics. If we extend this type of understanding, we can see that what is created by the mind as a "sense image" is just a symbol, which represents some information gleaned from "external activity". The symbol represents information to be interpreted, it does not actually represent "the thing" which is being sensed. The sense image is a symbol created to represent some complex information, in a simplified way, much the same as "word" represents some complex information in a simplified way.
So, with respect to your criticism, agreement and pointing to the exact same places, does nothing to indicate that what we each see as "an image", is in any meaningful way, "the same". We have simply created a system of communication which allows us to understand each other, by representing complex information with simple symbols. It may be the case that the personal images are as different as the same word in different language. The languages are compatible but by no means the same. And, since the information is extremely complex, and each individual person has a distinct spatial-temporal location as perspective, it is highly improbable that the information represented, is in any reasonable sense, "the same".
They see something. What properties they attribute to these things we do not know.
So, it doesn't make sense to say - even if you admit that they don't see them as wall or trees - that this thing they see is in fact (mind-independently) a wall or a tree. It's not a mind-independent fact for us that walls and trees exist.
Close, but not quite what I am saying. I am saying that each animal species (ants, birds, tigers, whatever) interpret the world the way each species does: ants will interpret the world in a certain way, birds in another manner, tigers the way tigers do, etc.
And of course, bats. Can't forget about them. :)
They interpret the same world in different ways, in other words?
Yes. That's the working assumption.
Yes, the claim should be trivial: reality can be (and is) conceptualized in different ways.
But no to the suggestion that matter can be observed without any conceptualization at all.
So you believe non-human animals are all engaged in conceptualization? Or that they do not observe anything?
They very likely have some primitive concepts. I don't think it makes much sense to postulate a creature having perception absent some minimal amount of conception.
But these are very very dark waters. We are quite in the dark as to the nature of animal concepts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The dog sees the ball as something to chase, the doorway as something to walk through, the wall as something not to walk into, the tree as something to piss against, the car as something to get excited about going in.
So the 'somethings' have roughly the same characteristics for the dog as they do for us. "Wall, 'tree'. 'doorway'. and 'car' are just names, but the things they name certainly seem to be real mind-independent things with certain attributes.
Seems, being the key word.
The OP criticises metaphysical realism defined as follows: 'According to metaphysical realism, the world is as it is independent of how humans or other inquiring agents take it to be. The objects the world contains, together with their properties and the relations they enter into, fix the world’s nature and these objects [together with the properties they have and the relations they enter into] exist independently of our ability to discover they do.' - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
I won't re-state all of the points made in the original post and associated Medium essay. But in respect of animal cognition and the ideas of 'umwelt' and 'lebenswelt', and indeed in phenomenology generally, the key idea is that the world and the observing creature, be that human or animal, are co-arising. The kind of world the creature perceives is inextricably intertwined with its cognitive system, largely determined by evolutionary adaptation. Over and above that, humans are the 'symbolic species' , able to reflect on and analyse themselves, their environment, and their own cognition of it, through meta-cognitive awareness (awareness of awareness) which provides dimensions of understanding generally not available to other species. But for both animals and humans, the world is not an objective given but a relational construct shaped by the interaction between the observer and the observed. This is the basis of the phenomenological critique of realism/naturalism, which assumes the world exists independently of the way it is perceived and that the role of science is only ever to expand and make more comprehensive the knowledge of that already-existing world.
The original post draws considerably on a largely unsung book called Mind and the Cosmic Order, by Charles S. Pinter. Pinter was a mathematics emeritus who published that book at the end of his very long life. The book's sub-title is 'How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why this Insight Transforms Physics'. He lays out his case in great detail, drawing on cognitive science, philosophy and physics.
[quote=Abstract]The book’s argument begins with the British empiricists who raised our awareness of the fact that we have no direct contact with physical reality, but it is the mind that constructs the form and features of objects. It is shown that modern cognitive science brings this insight a step further by suggesting that shape and structure are not internal to objects, but arise in the observer. The author goes yet further by arguing that the meaningful connectedness between things — the hierarchical organization of all we perceive — is the result of the Gestalt nature of perception and thought, and exists only as a property of mind. These insights give the first glimmerings of a new way of seeing the cosmos: not as a mineral wasteland but a place inhabited by creatures. [/quote]
(I say it's an 'unsung', because Pinter's other publications are all in mathematics - some of our mathematical contributors knew of his books in that discipline. But as he's not recognised in cognitive science or philosophy, his last book wasn't reviewed in the usual media, and went largely un-noticed by the profession. Which is a pity, because it's a very insightful book. Details can be found here.)
An interesting point: the word 'world' is derived from an old Dutch word 'werold' meaning 'time of man' (ref). The implication is that 'world' and 'planet' are not synonyms. A world is lived, it is inhabited. In that sense, there can't be 'unseen worlds', even though there may be trillions of unseen planets. For it to be a world, the planet must have inhabitants, beings (see blog post, Schopenhauer: How Time Began with the First Eye Opening.)
I think that is a very strange claim, why are the use of concepts necessary for perception? I would not invoke conceptualization for any reason other than to describe the use of syntactic language, which is an ability only humans and arguably one or two other animals have.
Thank you for such an extensive write-up. My question is, do you not believe there is some component of the world/reality that, even if it is not captured in some particular concept, is still singular and shared across all these "constructed worlds"? And if so, wouldn't that also make you a kind of metaphysical realist?
'Seeming' is the essence of experience. How else could what is real and what is merely imagined be assessed. but by comparing what seems to be real to all, even dogs, with what are the wishful fantasies of a few?
As Peirce said: " "Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts".
I don't see your point. We all evolved from the same source according to evolutionary theory. Most our DNA is the same as the dog's. Human beings and dogs create their mental "worlds" in similar ways. There is nothing here to produce the conclusion that the way the independent reality is, is anything even remotely similar to our perceptions of it.
Consider my example. Millions of people can look toward a pointed at place, and agree that what is pointed at is a "dog". This in no way indicates that the word "dog" is in any way similar to the real thing pointed to. This is simply the nature of "representations". There is no necessity for the representation to be similar to what is represented. Why should we think that sense images are any different? Sense images are "representations".
For example?
Quoting goremand
Growing up, I loved the Time Life books on evolution and biology. In one of them, they showed an experiment in which a bird-like shape was flown above a nest of young geese. When towed in one orientation, with an apparently long neck and short tail, the goslings wouldn't respond to it as it looked goose-like. But turn it around, to it appeared to have a short neck and a long tail, and they'd all duck for cover, as it looked like a goshawk. I think that amounts to a kind of illustration, doesn't it? Goose-gestalt vs goshawk gestalt, in Pinter's terms. An illustration of the idea of a 'meaning-world'.
The names of things is not the issue. The issue is their existence independent of humans or any percipients. This is not to say that their microphysical existence is the same as their macrophysical existence.
Notice the C S Peirce quotation at the top of the Medium version of the original post:
[quote=C S Peirce, Philosophy in Light of the Logic of Relatives.]…to decide what our sentiments ought to be towards things in general without taking any account of human experience of life, would be most foolish’[/quote]
Like you, I believe altered states are a real thing, but unlike you I draw no ontological or metaphysical conclusions about what they are showing us. Fiction or reality? I don't really care because what is of primary importance is the enriching effect on present experience and imagination.
OK. Well, a few pages back you said
Quoting Janus
I will draw upon your expertise in these matters to comment on the following passage from Merleau Ponty which seems close to the point that I'm pressing:
[quote=Phenomenology of Perception, p456]For what exactly is meant by saying that the world existed prior to human consciousnesses? It might be meant that the earth emerged from a primitive nebula where the conditions for life had not been brought together. But each one of these words, just like each equation in physics, presupposes our pre-scientific experience of the world, and this reference to the lived world contributes to constituting the valid signification of the statement. Nothing will ever lead me to understand what a nebula, which could not be seen by anyone, might be. Laplace’s nebula is not behind us, at our origin, but rather out in front of us in the cultural world.[/quote]
.
That is not the issue. I don't think anyone here is questioning the existence of the independent reality. The question is whether that independent reality is as we sense it or not. Once we recognize that sense images are creations of the living system, created as representations, then we can understand that the independent reality need not be anything like the sense images, just like the word "dog", as a representation, is not anywhere similar to what it represents.
Plainly.
When we leave our house in the morning, we take the objects we see around us as simply real, factual things—this tree, neighboring buildings, cars, etc. This attitude or perspective, which is usually unrecognized as a perspective, Edmund Husserl terms the “natural attitude” or the “natural theoretical attitude.”
When Husserl uses the word “natural” to describe this attitude, he doesn’t mean that it is “good” (or bad), he means simply that this way of seeing reflects an “everyday” or “ordinary” way of being-in-the-world. When I see the world within this natural attitude, I am solely aware of what is factually present to me. My surrounding world, viewed naturally, is the familiar world, the domain of my everyday life. Why is this a problem?
From a phenomenological perspective, this naturalizing attitude conceals a profound naïveté. Husserl claimed that “being” can never be collapsed entirely into being in the empirical world: any instance of actual being, he argued, is necessarily encountered upon a horizon that encompasses facticity but is larger than facticity. Indeed, the very sense of facts of consciousness as such, from a phenomenological perspective, depends on a wider horizon of consciousness that usually remains unexamined. Any individual object, Husserl wrote:
“Is not merely an individual object as such, a ‘This here,’ an object never repeatable; as qualified ‘in itself‘ thus and so, it has its own specific character, its stock of essential predictables which must belong to it … if other, secondary, relative determinations can belong to it.”
Hence, any individual object necessarily belongs to multiple “essential species,” or essential structures of consciousness, and “everything belonging to the essence of the individuum another individuum can have too…” [/quote]
This aspect of Husserl influenced Heidegger, even though the latter criticized some aspects of his mentor's philosophy. Husserl emphasized that all instances of being are encountered within a broader horizon of meaning, one that includes but surpasses the empirical. This horizon reflects the structures of consciousness, which condition how any entity can appear as meaningful. For Husserl, facticity (the empirical givenness of things) is always embedded within a context shaped by the transcendental structures of consciousness. (This is exactly what I meant in the OP, where I said that every statement about what exists contains an ineluctably subjective element that is not available to empirical observation.)
Heidegger took this idea further by situating the horizon of meaning in Dasein's existential structure—the way human beings are always already engaged with the world and interpreting it. Heidegger reinterpreted this in existential terms, arguing that Dasein is not just a passive observer but an active participant in the disclosure of Being. Heidegger’s notion of “Being-in-the-world” builds on Husserl’s insight that Being is never encountered in isolation but always within a lived context.
I don't think we will proceed much here. We going to keep going in circles.
Quoting goremand
I think there has to be a minimal intellectual component in terms of memory, otherwise I don't see how a creature could perceive without constantly forgetting.
What could that mean? Taking sight as the primary sense involved in describing things, are you asking something like whether the things that appear to us look the same when they are not being seen?
Quoting Wayfarer
You asked me to comment on the MP passage, I did that and you didn't respond. Do you have a point of issue with my answer. If so, do tell.
Quoting Manuel
I don't see that we.ve been going in circles other than that you have been misinterpreting some of what I have written. Do you disagree with my last post addressed to you? If not, we agree, if so, please explain. Or if you don't want to that's fine.
I am asking in what way might the representation (the visual image) resemble the thing being represented (the independent reality)? And, I am answering, that it is not necessary for there to be any resemblance whatsoever, as indicated by my example of words.
The appearnce could only resemble the thing that appears when it is not appearing if the thing that appears is an appearance when it is not appearing, which is a contradiction. So I think the question is ill-formed, incoherent.
Quoting Janus
Let's minimize human attributions to animals. The dog chases something, walks through something, pisses against something, etc.
What characteristics of something makes us chase it? Is it the roundness, the colour? Surely not, for then we would be chasing globes or round candy. We don't do that. These things are round (to us), but we don't chase them.
What characteristics of something causes us to urinate on it? Dogs urinate on other things as well.
We don't know if a dog experiences a ball as an object which is separate from the environment. It looks that way to us, but that doesn't mean it's something like the dog picking something up in a continuous stream of stuff or things. Maybe some things trigger the dog to go chasing and other peeing.
That doesn't mean there is a specific property that resembles anything we have that causes them to do what they do. They chase things that are thrown. They pee on things that make them mark territory.
That does not mean they chase something because it is like a ball or pee because it is something like a tree. It's a disposition in the dog to act a certain way given certain environmental cues. Maybe motion triggers the running, not the shape, maybe scent triggers the peeing. You can say ah, yes, but the scent is given off by trees, maybe, maybe it's the earth or concrete or anything else.
I think your reply is ill-formed, irrelevant, and unintelligible. First, "the appearance" and "thing that appears" seem to refer to one and the same thing. So it makes no sense to talk about one resembling the other.
All that is irrelevant and a poorly formed reply, because I was talking about a representation and the thing represented, not any "appearance".
The representation is the sense image, which a person has within one's mind. The thing represented is the independent reality. The question was, in what way might we assume that the representation would resemble the thing represented. And the answer was that it need not resemble it in any way. Therefore we ought not assume any resemblance between the sense image and the independent reality.
We know we cannot walk through tress or walls, but we can through doorways. We know we can chase balls but not walls or trees and so on. We can observe that dogs see the same things we do, and additionally there is a consistency there between how we see things and how dogs see things which is demonstrated by their behavior towards those things. I don't see how that can reasonably be denied. That's all I'm saying, and what I'm saying has nothing to do with the names of things.
OK. You said:
Quoting Janus
It is not at all what Merleau Ponty said or meant. It wouldn't even be worth stating, it would just be common sense. And how does that square with:
A commentary on that passage is that:
Do you at least see some convergence between this line of argument, and that of the original post?
If the world is mind-created, why is there so much misery in the world?
Well it's impossible to give you a specific example of pre-conceptual reality, because that itself would involve conceptualization. But I think it is necessary to invoke the idea of a shared reality to, for example, explain how we're having this conversation.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, I don't think it's necessary to invoke the idea of conceptualization in geese in order to explain the behavior you're describing.
Quoting Manuel
Of course animals have intelligence and memory, but how does that necessitate the use of concepts? Memories are just impressions made by particular events, for example an animal doesn't need the general concept of a "child" in order to remember that they have children to feed.
Bingo. You win the lucky door prize. I have no objection to there being a shared reality, in fact, I think consciousness is collective in nature, even though each of us only ever experiences it in the first person.
Quoting frank
Because of ignorance, of not seeing what is real, and being attached to what is unreal. And that goes for me as much as anyone else.
How did you rule out that the world just is a miserable place?
For me, the world is not a miserable place, I quite enjoy it. That some see it as miserable is strong evidence against what Janus says, that we all see the same thing.
Janus' argument is deeply flawed. That a number of people can point to the same place, and agree to call what is at that point, at that time, by the same name, is not proof that we see the same thing. Such a conclusion involves an equivocation in the meaning of "the same thing" which is based in the well known category mistake of confusing the particular with the general.
"We all see the same thing" is asserted by people like Janus, as a general statement. What is really meant by that general statement is "we all see the same things". The problem though, is that this proposition would obviously be false. There is very significant variance in what two different people see when looking at the same 'scape. So the people like Janus, who argue this point, compose the general statement as "we all see the same thing", where "thing" (singular) is a generalization representing a multitude of things (which we do not all see the same of), and is sometimes just called "the world". Then, as supposed proof, or justification of this general principle, they refer to instances where a number of people will point to "the same thing". In this case, "the same thing" refers to a particular. In other words, a multitude of "things" is presented as a "thing" (the world) implying generalization, or inductive reasoning.
So, the category mistake based equivocation is very evident. What is asserted is that "we all see the same thing", where "thing" is a generalization of the multitude of all things, known as "the world". But what is argued as proof of this, is that "we all see the same thing", where "thing" means one particular within the multitude. If we deny the equivocation as constituting an invalid argument, what we are left with is a very faulty generalization, faulty inductive reasoning. Particular instances of a number of people seeing the same particular thing, are used as evidence to support the general principle "we all see the same thing". Clearly, if "the same thing" is argued as a generalization of all particular things, as is the case when "the same thing" means "the world", it is a faulty generalization.
We do not all see the same "world", as each person perceives, is interested in, and apprehends, very different particulars. We are all unique and different in the things which grab our attention and pique our interest. Therefore, perception, and understanding of "the world", is unique, and specific to the individual. This is very evident in threads like this where we do not get any agreement as to what "the world" signifies. And that is also very good evidence that each person's mind creates one's own "world" which I believe, is the argument of the op.
Is this a Buddhist take on it?
Of course, it would make sense for us we are analyzing the world through our human-centric perspective. One cannot help but see dogs chasing balls or peeing on trees, it absolutely makes sense for us to interpret animal actions in a way we can understand. It would be quite impractical (in everyday life) to attempt to "be a bat", to use Nagel's phrase, because we aren't.
The point is not the words, it's the animals experience. My point is not that dogs chase balls, but rather that dogs chase movement. You can throw any object you wish and most of the time the dog will chase it.
Likewise with peeing, we experience it as a dog peeing on a tree. The dog might experience it as marking territory in this place because of particular smell or an ingrained propensity to do this.
Quoting Janus
It can be reasonably denied if you assume, as I believe is correct, that dogs have a different experience of the world. This consistency we see with our interpretation of the dog's behavior does not mean that we are accurately describing what dogs actually do, it does describe how we experience dogs.
I should add, that going through a door and chasing a ball at best shows that concrete stuff (stuff you can't go through) is a real thing - concreteness exists. But this says very, very little about animal experience. That's why we need to do animal science, to try to understand, to the extent we can, why they do what they do.
But isn't that a form of metaphysical realism? And is this "collective consciousness" how you conceptualize reality? If so, what does it signify? Is it like Bernardo Kastrups "Cosmic Mind"?
True. I should have been more careful. I don't know if animals have concepts per se, maybe they have some sort of pre-conceptual awareness.
But they have representations unique to them. The issue I wanted to highlight is that I think it's kind of hard to imagine having perception without some minimal intellectual capacities, because then it seems to me it would be hard to retain the perception.
Examples of animals suffering from abuse and being fearful of humans for a while seem to suggest some degree of association, which goes slightly beyond "mere" perception.
Quoting goremand
Stanford Encyc's description of metaphysical realism: 'According to metaphysical realism, the world is as it is independent of how humans or other inquiring agents take it to be. The objects the world contains, together with their properties and the relations they enter into, fix the world’s nature and these objects [together with the properties they have and the relations they enter into] exist independently of our ability to discover they do.'
My take on collective consciousness more akin to Hegel's 'geist', which describes the way geist (usually translated as mind or spirit) manifests collectively in culture, history, and shared institutions. While consciousness is realised individually, Hegel argues that this individuality is always part of a larger, evolving reality as an expression of geist (indeed the lovely word 'zeitgeist', spirit of the times, is something from Hegel that has filtered through to popular culture.) Unlike metaphysical realism, this view sees reality (or Being) as inseparable from the processes of mind and meaning. And yes, it is convergent in some respect with Kastrup. I've listened to and read quite a bit of Kastrup.
The collective nature of consciousness shows up in the way humans as a species and culture, inhabit similar (although never identical) meaning-worlds. Our senses are overall similarly adapted and we operate in a framework of shared meanings. That is what makes inter-subjective agreement and scientific discourse viable. Hence philosophical idealism is not incompatible with science but it's also not limited to what can be objectively established by science. The SEP entry on idealism says 'the idealist, rather than being anti-realist, is in fact … a realist concerning elements more usually dismissed from reality.' That includes the reality of numbers and universals in my view (although that is not something explored in the original post.)
Quoting frank
It is.
What is the difference between a representation and an appearance according to you?
Quoting Wayfarer
I didn't claim that what I said was an explanation of what MP was saying. What do you think MP means in his comment there about Laplace's nebula? It seems to me only to refer to the phenomenological context, and in that context I agree with it. But the phenomenological context is from a particular perspective, so I don't see it as being discordant with what I said. Where we seem to disagree is that you seem to think we can only meaningfully speak from the "for us" perspective, whereas I think we can bracket that and speak meaningfully from a context that conceptually excludes us.
This shows that what I said is not at odds with MP.
This is just stating the obvious, and you should know I have never disagreed with it.
This is contentious. I don't believe that we carve up the world arbitrarily but that the ways we carve it up are constrained both by the nature of our sense organs and the nature of the world we are sensing. Of course I can't prove that any more than anyone can prove the obverse. No empirical observation can prove either case and neither case is logically self-evident. It comes down to what you think or feel is most plausible.
This I agree with because it presents both the 'for us' and the 'absent us' perspectives.
Quoting Manuel
If I throw a chair I doubt the dog will chase it. I'll try it when I get back home from my holiday and report the result. I have tried throwing sticks too large for the dog to pick up. Or bricks. He will chase them but as soon as he realizes it is too big or hard to pick up in his mouth he loses interest straight away. In any case when you say the dog chases movement it seems you agree that the dog and I both see something moving at the same place and time and in the same direction and the same distance.
Quoting Manuel
I have never denied that the dog has a different experience of the world. I have no doubt he experiences the things I experience differently, but the difference is not all that radical and can be made sense of by considering the differences between my constitution and the dog's constitution. The dog sees his food bowl as 'to-be-eating-from' and his bed as 'to-be-laying-in' and given the way I experience those things in terms of size, shape and hardness the dog's behavior towards those things is consistent.
Well, that's where we differ, and I think also where you differ from phenomnology. I agree we can see the world as if there is nobody in it, for specific purposes, but when that is taken to be a true account of the nature of being, then it goes too far.
Quoting Janus
It's not arbitrary, but it is contingent, both on what there is to see, but also on how we see it.
Representation: an instance of standing for, or corresponding with, something else.
Appearance: a form as perceived.
The difference therefore, is that "representation" implies something else which is being represented, while "appearance" has no such implication.
So when you said "The appearance could only resemble the thing that appears when it is not appearing if the thing that appears is an appearance when it is not appearing...", you have no distinction between two things, like "representation", and "thing represented" does. And this renders your phrase unintelligible. Like I said, there is no distinction between "appearance" and "thing that appears". These refer to one and the same thing, "appearance" is a form as perceived, and "thing that appears" is also the form as perceived. So it makes no sense to talk about whether one resembles the other, they are the same.
I'm not saying it is a true account of the nature of being (whatever that might mean), but rather merely, leaving aside our personal interests, a natural, hopefully unbiased, account of things as they appear to us.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have never disagreed with that.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is often said that our perceptions are representations of that which affects our senses. I would prefer to speak of "presentations". In either case something is either repsented or presented is implied. It is also common to hear that our perceptions consist in what appears to us and that what we perceive is determined by whatever affects our senses.
In either way of speaking the things which affect our senses are not themselves representations or appearances, If we are perceiving we are perceiving something, and the question as to whether the perception resembles what the thing that is perceived is like when it is not being perceived seems to be an incoherent question. I hope that clears it up for you.
"Heidegger argues that scientific objectivity is grounded in a specific metaphysical framework: the Cartesian subject-object dichotomy. This framework presumes that the world is composed of objects existing independently of the observer, available for detached study and measurement. Consequently it overlooks the more fundamental ways in which humans encounter the world as being-in-the-world (Dasein). Scientific objectivity reduces things to mere "present-at-hand" (Vorhandenheit), stripping away their richer modes of existence as they are experienced in the lifeworld.
Heidegger’s overarching concern is that science forgets or obscures the question of Being (Sein). By focusing only on what can be measured or quantified, science neglects the broader ontological context in which things appear as meaningful. This leads to an impoverished understanding of reality, where the richness of Being is replaced by a narrow focus on instrumental utility or efficiency."
I don't believe that science and ordinary observation, of which science is an augmented form, are impoverished understandings of reality—they merely present a different perspective than the "zuhanden" perspective (which itself does not succeed in transcending the subject/object dichotomy in my view. I don't believe any discursive understanding can transcend duality because our language itself is inherently dualistic. No experience at all is possible without the primordial distinction between self and other.
Okay, and do you also agree with this:
Quoting Leontiskos
You cite Schopenhauer and Berkeley. Are you agreeing with them in toto?
The problem with "presentation", as with "appearance", is that this denies us any intelligible relation to the independent reality. In fact, without something represented, the mind might just produce presentations and appearances without any external "thing" at all. So, to recognize the reality of the external world, and that there is some kind of relation between it and what the mind produces, it is common to understand what the mind produces, as a representation. This is what allows that the external world is in fact, real.
Quoting Janus
That what we perceive is "determined by" what affects our senses, is proven to be wrong by hallucinations, delirium, even dreaming. So, despite the fact that it is "common" to hear this, it is common in the sense of vulgar and uneducated. This is the result of a determinist attitude which trickles down from scientism, and the awe which common people have for the great power unleashed by the scientists' application of determinist principles. Scientism inclines people to believe that "determined by" is applicable to living systems.
Notice your choice of words. You say the perception is "determined" by what "affects" our senses. To affect something is to have an effect on it, to influence it. So if the sense organs are "affected" in their function, and their function is intermediary between what is sensed, and the mind which holds the perception, we cannot conclude that the perception is "determined" by what affects the senses. We have a relation of influence (affection) between the thing sensed and the sense organ, and we might assume a similar relation of influence (affection) between the sense organ and the perception in the mind. But this is far from what is required to say that the first "determines" the third.
Quoting Janus
That clears it up, but it shows you misunderstood. The perception is the representation. The thing being perceived, i.e. what is represented, is what is said to have existence regardless of whether it is perceived (independent existence). That is what independent existence signifies, that it exists whether or not it is perceived. Now, the point is that this thing which has independent existence ( has existence regardless of whether it is perceived) does not necessarily have any resemblance whatsoever, to the perception of it, while it is being perceived.
Schopenhauer, more than Berkeley. Where I part company with Berkeley, is his dismissal of universals - his nominalism, in short. I think it leaves many gaps in his philosophy. But whenever I read his dialogues, I'm reminded of how ingenious a philosopher he was.
Schopenhaeur likewise - I'm almost totally on-board with his 'world as Idea', but the major issue I see with his philosophy of will is that, if will is 'irrational and blind', then how come the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences? I think Schopenhauer has blind spots of his own, much of them attributable to his hatred of Christianity. But he's still brilliant in my view - 'the last great philosopher', I'm sometimes inclined to say.
I will add, I've learned a ton of stuff about all manner of subjects since joining this forum, and including Husserl and Heidegger, about whom I knew next to nothing when I joined. I would like to think my overall approach is maybe nearer to a kind of phenonenology than to idealism per se.
I can't imagine why anyone would want to deny animals even a minimal amount of intelligence. I have to stress I don't believe that conceptualization is some amazing special ability. The amazing ability here is syntactic language, conceptualization is merely a part of describing language-use.
Quoting Manuel
The thing is, if you go down this road of "creating associations always involves the use of concepts" I believe you will end up attributing powers of conceptualization to very simple organisms, including machines.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have to agree with you that this is too much baggage, I think the concept of reality/the world is a necessary primitive, but I don't know if it has to be conceptualized in terms of objects, properties, relations etc.
But do you not make a distinction between disagreements about how the world ought to be conceptualized and disagreements about how the world actually is? When people speak of mind-independent objects is believe I understand and agree with their meaning, even if I realize their conceptualization of reality is not the be-all end-all.
Quoting Wayfarer
Kastrup is my go-to example because his is the only version of idealism I believe I've somewhat managed to understand. I certainly don't understand Hegel. One thing I particularly like about Kastrup is his immense commitment to parsimony.
Although I know very little about medieval philosophy, I get the impression that the debate between Realism and Nominalism would be pertinent to the topic of a Mind-Created World vs whatever the alternative might be : a Self-Existent Material World?
Contrary to the definition below, I naively assumed that Realism could be summarized as "what you see is all there is". Which would exclude Universals & Abstractions & Qualia, and Universal Mind, that are knowable only as ideas. Please comment on those alternative worldviews. Thanks. :smile:
Nominalism
The theory that only physical particulars in space and time are real, and that universals are only names or labels for groups of things or events. Nominalists believe that the mind cannot create concepts or images that correspond to universal terms.
Realism
The theory that universals exist in addition to particulars, and that all entities can be categorized as either particulars or universals. Realist philosophies include Platonic realism and the hylomorphic substance theory of Aristotle.
Nominalism and realism were two major theoretical positions in the later Middle Ages, and were particularly important to theological scholars. For example, Thomas Aquinas was a prominent realist philosopher who argued that essence and existence were distinct. William of Ockham was a prominent nominalist philosopher who argued that universals were psychological labels.
___Google AI overview
Ok, so we can guess that what initially gets them going is motion associated by a gesture you make which is related to "play time". Once the reach the object, maybe they try to life it up, maybe they get confused for a moment and then they look at you or ignore the object.
Here's the issue: why don't they pick up the object? Is it because they experience its structure as being too big and then retreat? Or is it an innate predisposition that makes them realize that this thing is too heavy (not related to structure) ?
I don't know. I think we can agree that the best we can do in the human case, which is the case in which we have the most data, is to try to understand a little why people do what they do - and even that is very hard very frequently.
When it comes to other animals, we are effectively guessing. Maybe they don't pick it up because they perceive a structure that's too big, maybe it's an innate response related to heaviness or pain avoidance.
Quoting Janus
Here is where we disagree, and I don't see a remedy. I think the experiences are, in large part, very different. Sometimes there can be overlap - no creature is going to run into a fire or jump from a large distance. But whereas I think you are attributing this to shared structure, I think it's an innate response (not conscious) related to survival.
How much we share is very difficult to ascertain, but I think we could be misleading ourselves if we take ourselves to be reliable narrators of things outside us (the world, including other animals). It was no until we began to doubt our shared experiences, that modern science arose.
Also, one should mention dogs are the creatures which we have most co-existed with out of all animals, making them particularly misleading, imo.
That's interesting to me. I think conceptualization of any kind is quite remarkable, even proto-conceptualization. But language is a unique instance, so far as we know, so it is, in a sense, more "special".
Quoting goremand
It's tricky to know where the cut-off point between explicit consciousness (such as elephants or monkeys) stops and mere reaction kicks in, maybe a fish or an oyster. But I do believe there is such a point.
To talk in this manner about machines, is to play with words, it's not substantive as I see it. So, we agree here.
That is a very perceptive question, and the precise point at issue in another current thread on metaphysical realism and anti-realism (there's a lot of crossover between the two threads). As I'm generally advocating an idealist approach, then I'm in the anti-realist camp, although the term bothers me, because I am still acutely aware of many real things that have to be dealt with on a daily basis. ('Life is like a movie, but with actual pain'.)
My spontaneous response is that I think classical philosophy had the insight that we do not, by default, know what anything actually is. If you go back to Parmenides, his fragmentary prose-poem says outright that most human beings are ensnared in an illusory domain where they entertain opinions about unreal things. And come to think of it, in today's hyper-connected and social-media-dominated world, that really doesn't seem so far-fetched. Wisdom is not being deluded, but then, delusion is ubiquitous. Not necessarily to the point of gross delusion and actual mental illness, but in the middle of the bell curve of normality. So we tend to look to science and objective judgement as the arbiter of what is real and the antidote to delusion, but the problem with that is that science is largely quantitative and arms-length. Actual life is too close to bring such an approach to bear. But the effect of that belief is to form the notion that reality is what already exists, and we gradually expand and enhance our knowledge of it. That is what is generally understood by realism. So in that context, 'mind-independent' means objective, not a matter of opinion, the criterion of what is actually so. I copied some scrapbook lecture notes on Heidegger above which address this point.
'Heidegger argues that scientific objectivity is grounded in a specific metaphysical framework: the Cartesian subject-object dichotomy. This framework presumes that the world is composed of objects existing independently of the observer, available for detached study and measurement. Consequently it overlooks the more fundamental ways in which humans encounter the world as being-in-the-world (Dasein). Scientific objectivity reduces things to mere "present-at-hand" (Vorhandenheit), stripping away their richer modes of existence as they are experienced in the lifeworld.
Heidegger’s overarching concern is that science forgets or obscures the question of Being (Sein). By focusing only on what can be measured or quantified, science neglects the broader ontological context in which things appear as meaningful. This leads to an impoverished understanding of reality, where the richness of Being is replaced by a narrow focus on instrumental utility or efficiency.'
I've only read a little of Heidegger, but that diagosis makes perfect sense to me.
Quoting Gnomon
In Aristotelian philosophy, the mind is united with the forms of particulars by the understanding. That prevents the sense of separateness or 'otherness' that haunts modern culture. That's a big topic.
But is it not most reasonable to think they are responses (whether innate or not) perhaps to survival, or perhaps to enjoying themselves or whatever, to different things in different situations? And when we observe them do not those responses make sense to us in terms of what we see those different things in different contexts to be?
I mean you seem not to want to admit that the dog sees a ball, and yet you say the dog sees me making a gesture or movement. So my dogs see me and I'm an object in the environment. My dogs recognize me—of that there is no doubt. Now they may well not see me in the same way as people do (but then different people may not see me in exactly the same way either).
Also you say that dogs will not jump into a fire or from a high place—so it follows that they perceive fire and high places. They also do not bump into trees or walls (unless they are blind which was the case with my mother's cocker spaniel when I was a kid). They behave differently and consistently towards different things in the environment and that behavior makes sense in terms of how we perceive those objects. I don't know what else to say. If you remain unconvinced then I have nothing further to add.
Of course, there is no doubt, they react to things and are often happy with humans and other dogs, sometimes even with other creatures.
Quoting Janus
You seem to want to say that you know what dogs see. I don't claim to have that level of epistemic access, that is why Nagel wrote and people debate "what it's like to see a bat".
Let me speak in your terms, yes dogs see certain balls they play with. How they see it and most importantly, if it is similar to the way I see it, I cannot say - it's not possible to say because we are not dogs.
I am not denying they see things and play with things. I just think you are claiming to know more than what is possible for us to know. Maybe I am wrong - I freely admit that. Maybe dogs do see balls very similarly to the way we do and maybe dogs see you in a way that other people do. I would be extremely skeptical.
When you say other people don't see you in the exact way - well, I mean - if you mean "exactly the same way" for other people is somewhat akin to a dog also seeing you as other people do, but in a slightly different way, then I don't know what to say here. These seem to be astronomically different.
And again, no bullshit or false modesty or anything, I could be completely wrong. I only say that I just don't find it convincing.
Quoting Janus
They do not jump from high places or don't go into fire as soon as they are born! If that is not innate, I don't know what is. So, they don't do something before they even develop into a mature animal. Clearly, they do many things at the very moment they perceive the world, there is no time for "learning from perception" here, it's at first instance.
And that goes for many animals, turtles racing to the ocean as soon as they hatch, birds reacting to mother giving them worms before they can see, etc, etc.
Now, if dogs see fire and high places like we do, again, I don't know. Maybe.
Sure, again, they don't run into concrete things, no animal does that I know of. I am not saying they don't see a world and react to it. But that it makes sense to you (or me, or any other human being alive) says very little about how the dog actually experiences the world, that's a massive leap into claiming knowledge about a different creature.
Ending on a point of agreement, I hope: they may have some basic "ideas", such as play, prey, anger, protection, the basic things all animals need for survival. In so far as we also have these basic notions, there is some overlap, sure. Clearly food, mating, danger and like basic emotions we also have, beyond that, I don't know how they see and experience the world. I can guess, but that's the best we can do.
The way I see it conceptualization per se is not even an ability or a behavior, it's an abstraction that only makes sense in a particular context. It's like the "ability" to make a move in chess.
Quoting Manuel
I really do not believe there is such a point, and I don't think consciousness is relevant to the issue at all.
Quoting Wayfarer
This doesn't exactly answer my question. What I want to know is if you substantively disagree with the realist worldview or if you merely dislike the way it frames or conceptualizes reality (or maybe, just the fact that it's been privileged with a kind of conceptual hegemony).
To use Kastrup as an example again, I am convinced that he substantively disagrees with mainstream physicalism. He doesn't just look at the same things in a different light, he has a radically different worldview. So are you like him in that respect?
As do I, for reasons I have given in the original post, and defended in numerous subsequent entries.
I'm sure that's true, but it isn't obvious to me from the OP or from what I've read in your other posts. The proposition that "reality is created by the mind" at first seems like an attack on physicalism/realism (whichever term you like), but when I look at your explanation in detail the term "reality" instead seems to refer to "our particular conception of reality", which is amounts to a rather humble claim, not really an attack at all.
Please pardon my intrusion. Yes, is not the type to make arrogant or aggressive attacks on debatable philosophical positions. He's usually more subtly nuanced. And his "humble" approach may seem less impressive than the more arrogant assertions of Scientism.
For example, his stated position in the OP does not deny the physical "reality" (science) that we all sense, but his interpretation also includes some aspects of Idealism (philosophy). I can't speak for Wayfarer, but this thread has been going on for over a year. Yet, some posters still can't reconcile his "proposition", that harks back to the ancient origins of theoretical philosophy, with the Physicalism/Materialism/Realism of modern pragmatic science. Each has it's own purview, but Philosophy specializes in inferred generalizations, not observed details. For philosophers, the "mind-created world" is a Cosmos, not an aggregation of particles. Just keep that distinction in mind.
FWIW, Marc Wittmann Ph.D. --- research fellow at the Institute for Frontier Areas in Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg, Germany --- recently wrote an article in Psychology Today magazine entitled Physicalism Is Dead*1. It's less an attack on Physicalism/Realism than a presentation of alternative views of the Mind/Body relationship. It's not about specific scientific facts, but about the philosophical interpretation of general principles. :smile:
*1. Wittman's key points are :
# The reductionist physicalist position entails that phenomenal consciousness does not exist.
# Scientists increasingly realize that phenomenal consciousness can't be explained by the workings of the brain.
# For idealism, subjectivity undeniably has primacy when it comes to knowledge about ourselves and the world.
# For dual-aspect monism, consciousness and the brain are two different aspects of a same underlying reality.
Note --- Phenomenal Consciousness is the Mind that we experience subjectively, not the Brain that scientists study objectively.
"Yes, phenomenal consciousness is the subjective aspect of experiencing the world. It's the rich, first-person experience of what it's like to be you, including your thoughts, memories, and internal biological processes." ___Google AI overview
Physicalism Is Dead :
Alternative views on the mind-body problem are becoming increasingly popular.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/sense-of-time/202411/physicalism-is-dead
How do you get outside the human conception of reality to see the world as it truly is? That is the probably the question underlying all philosophy. And one aim of the original post was for me to present idealism in a way that isn't understood to mean that the world is all in the mind or the product of the imagination. And it's not an attack on 'realism' per se. It's a criticism of the idea that the criterion for what is real, is what exists independently of the mind, which is a specific (and fallacious) form of realism.
:up: The times certainly are a'changing.
The dog's behavior shows that he sees me and the ball and many other things in the environment. His behavior towards different things I see him reacting in different ways to is consistent with the qualities I perceive in those different things. That's all I'm claiming. I am not claiming that he sees things exactly as I do or that I can eneter his mind such as to know what he sees with certainty.. I am not even claiming that I can enter your mind and know with certainty that you see things exactly as I do. But if we are looking at an object and I see various small and subtle details on that object I can be fairly confident that if I point to them and ask you what small and subtle details you see there that your account will accord pretty much with mine. That suggests that what is there is real independently of us. Unless of course our minds are connected in some way unbeknownst to us and we are somehow sharing in a collective dream.
Quoting Manuel
They wouldn't react that way if they were blind and felt no bodily sensations, though, would they? If not then we can conclude that they feel the heat and sense the height just as do. I don't know if this is universally true, but it is said that dogs already react instinctively to snakes when they are very young, but would you expect them to do that if they could not sense the presence of the snake?
Quoting Manuel
Again, I'm not claiming exhaustive knowledge or certainty about how dogs experience the world, but I think observing them react to things in the environment in ways consistent with the qualities we perceive those things to have, plus the fact we know they have sense organs and bodies not all that different to ours give us reason to believe that they at least see the things in the environment that we see, and that those things exist independently of us and the dogs, whatever the ultimate nature of those existences are. So, I don't see that I'm claiming anything which is not consistent with our experiences. That said of course we cannot be absolutely certain of anything.
I don't think that is the most important question in philosophy by any stretch because the simple answer is "You can't get outside of human conceptions of reality". (There are human conceptions of reality, not just one conception).
Quoting Wayfarer
Of course the criteria (there is not merely one criterion) for what is real do not exist independently of the mind that asks the question—that is true by definition. What is real though most plausibly does exist independently of the mind or at least that part of reality which is dependent on the mind is only a part, the part we can know. The rest is forever out of reach, and I think we have every reason to think that is so.
Yes. It strikes me that much of the argument provided by can also be used to support a robust skepticism of the transcendent. Since we can't access reality, how do we know there is a reality beyond the reality we know? Perhaps it's perspectives all the way down. :wink: English philosopher Hilary Lawson makes similar arguments to Wayfarer, but is led to skepticism rather than mysticism - mysticism being just one more mind created reality and futile project to arrive at Truth.
Well, consider the role of not knowing, of intellectual humility, of ‘all I know is that I know nothing’, of ‘he that knows it, knows it not.’ ‘Accessing reality’ sounds like something you need a swipe card for.
Maybe that's were we've been going wrong. It might even be an app...
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm pretty satisfied not knowing.
Insofar as it is mind-created it is delusory. Mysticism proper is seeing through what the mind creates. There’s a term for that in Buddhism, called ‘prapanca’, meaning ‘conceptual proliferation’, detailed in a text delightfully called the Honeyball Sutta.
I think skepticism is the right position, philosophically speaking. The transcendent can mean nothing to us, philosophically and that's why I say it is not the most important philosophical question. But the fact that we can have a feel for the transcendent is, I think of philosophical, of existential, importance. That feeling just is the mystical. The mystical cannot yield discursive knowledge, it just gives us a kind of special poetry. It can be life-transforming, and that transformation does not consist in knowing anything, but in feeling a very different way. Not everyone responds to that, and ultimately, I don't think it matters.
Yes, I am familiar with the belief and I was involved in these sorts of pursuits many years ago.
Quoting Janus
That's an interesting way of putting it. I guess something similar to Wittgenstein's, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
As for the rest, I can take it or leave it, but generally the latter.
There is nothing arrogant about advancing clear arguments. And I ever said his approach was humble, I said his claim was humble. Meaning: trivial, uncontroversial.
Quoting Gnomon
What a shame. I'd love to read an attack on physicalism, especially of the eliminativist variety. Though I wouldn't expect much from an article that quotes Galen Strawson, the lamest critic I've ever read.
Quoting Wayfarer
In other words, it is a claim that is compatible with some forms of realism.
Maybe, but it is far from demonstrable that you're correct on this. How would we know? (That's rhetorical, not needing a lengthy explanation of metaphysical answers.) view here seems entirely plausible and legitimate. What we simply have here is a disagreement about how the world may be. You both are aware of the same accounts, but your inferences take you to different conclusions. I tend to favour skepticism myself.
Sure. That’s a very broad category. I’m not nihilist.
Which is fine. But why would you expect otherwise? What epistemic access do you have to compare your view to something else's? So of course, you will interpret the world and other creatures' behavior, in a way that makes sense to you.
Quoting Janus
Yeah, it would make sense for them to perceive threats for survival. Otherwise, we wouldn't have dogs, which would be bad.
Quoting Janus
Yeah, I am not denying that the use experimental medication on mice, then they move on to humans.
But we should be cautious in paying to much attention to outer features (eyes, organs), with inner experience.
If the philosophical approach of the OP is "trivial, uncontroversial", then why has it evoked polarized controversial arguments for over a year? Apparently, the relationship of material Reality to mental Mind touches a nerve for some posters on this forum.
The only thing unclear about the OP is that it is not a simplistic Either/Or argument, but as I see it, a sophisticated Both/And position of complementarity*1. Few philosophers would deny that the Real world includes both Matter and Mind. The debate is about how to reconcile that apparent Cartesian duality within a general worldview. Strawson has one solution, and another. What's yours? :smile:
*1. Complementarity is the realization that a single thing, when considered from different perspectives, can appear to have different, or even contradictory, properties. Complementarity alerts us that answering different kinds of questions can require radically different approaches.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mind-expanding-power-of-complementarity/
Quoting goremand
Apparently, you like nice neat Either/Or dichotomies. Did you interpret Strawson's position as an attack on Physicalism? Ironically, he claims to be a proponent of Physicalism*2. But how, then, can he say that "physicalism entails panpsychism"? Maybe his position is complementary*2, which you interpret as "lame". :grin:
*2. Is Galen Strawson a physicalist?
As a real physicalist, then, I hold that the mental/experiential is physical, and I am happy to say, along with many other physicalists, that experience is 'really just neurons firing', at least in the case of biological organisms like ourselves.
https://www.sjsu.edu/people/anand.vaidya/courses/c2/s0/Realistic-Monism---Why-Physicalism-Entails-Panpsychism-Galen-Strawson.pdf
Note --- The subtitle of the linked article is : "Realistic Monism : Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism"
Quoting goremand
Yes. I think Wayfarer's notion of Mind/World is "compatible" with Realism, in the sense that Mind & Matter are complementary, not oppositions : not one to the exclusion of the other. But it's difficult to articulate that subtle inter-relationship in terms of our matter-oriented language. For example, to say that mind is immaterial, could be interpreted to mean that "mind doesn't matter" : i.e. trivial. :nerd:
DEATH EATER : gluttonous gourmand or moderate-idea consumer?
I can observe other creatures' behavior towards things in the environment. It's not a matter of interpretation. I can see that their different behaviors towards different things and I know those behaviors are in accordance with how I understand those things—trees, walls, doorways, balls, fire, high places, and cars and so on.
Anyway I've said all I have to say. Anything else will just be repetition.
Quoting Manuel
It seems you missed the point entirely. The point was that innate or not they would have to perceive those threats, which would mean they would have to have functioning sense organs—sense organs not so different from ours.
Quoting Manuel
I don't even know what this means. If it means you think we should not make inferences from the similarities of other animals' sense organs and bodies to ours to similarities between the nature of other animals' experience and ours, I don't see why not. I think those structural similarities along with the intelligibility of other animals' behavior towards things in the environment give us very good reason to make such inferences. What else could we possibly have to go on?
If it means we should not feel absolutely certainty about the soundness of such inferences I agree, but I see little reason to doubt it. I don't think we should feel absolutely certain about almost anything in any "ultimate" sense. Science itself remains forever defeasible.
Anyway, I'll repeat that I have nothing more to say on this. If we still disagree then I'm fine with that, even if I can't understand why it should be so.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes, I think this is exactly right. Some proponents of different views seem to think it is self-evident that their opponents are being inconsistent or incoherent and hence wrong by default. I don't think that and go only with what seems most plausible to me or else suspend judgment. If anything, I'd say my most basic position is skepticism—I just don't think we know or even can know all that much.
I have a long history of posting critical comments about Daniel Dennett, who is the main representative of eliminative materialism.
Bernardo Kastrup is strident in his criticism of materialism, with titles such as Materialism is Baloney. But he’s not well-regarded on this forum either, the consensus being in threads posted in years past that he’s dismissed as an eccentric or a crank. I don’t in the least agree with that description, but I also mention him only sparingly from time to time.
Yeah. Let's leave it there for the time being. It was still an interesting chat. :up:
I can't speak for other people but I found it quite provocative at first glance, and to his credit @Wayfarer still gives substantial responses to other posters which I'm sure helps keep the thread active.
Quoting Gnomon
I wouldn't call myself call myself an eliminativist, but substantively I'm close enough to resent Strawson calling it "absurd", "great silliness", "dumbest thing ever", etc.
Quoting Gnomon
Yes.
Quoting Gnomon
No, you tend to overinterpret what I write somewhat. I only know Strawson as a critic of eliminativism, and that's the role he plays in the article.
Quoting Gnomon
In the game I think he ate souls or something. I was twelve when I came up with this handle.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree that he essentially was, although he never admitted it himself. But do you believe I can find in your critical comments something more insightful than the willful non-engagement I've found in Strawson, Nagel, Searle, etc.?
Quoting Wayfarer
I like him fine, but to my knowledge he never took eliminative materialism seriously either.
They're all different. We've had debates here about Strawson's panpsychism, which I've never agreed with. I think he tries to rescue materialism by injecting matter with some kind of 'secret sauce'. The same goes for Philip Goff. (Actually, Goff once signed up for this forum, purely to respond to my criticism of one of his articles, which I was chuffed by.) Searle, I've only ever read the Chinese Room argument, but I think it stacks up. As for Thomas Nagel, he's been a pretty vociferous critic of Dennett. But the best overall take-down is The Illusionist, David Bentley Hart, in The New Atlantis, in which he says some of Dennett's arguments are 'so preposterous as to verge on the deranged' (although a close runner-up would be The God Genome by Leon Wieseltier, a review of one of his books).
But this is exactly what I mean, harsh words to cover up the lack up substance in the reply. There is no need to argue anything if you can just insist that your thesis is "obvious" and the other is "absurd", "ridiculous" and "preposterous". Strawson is the master of this approach, utterly shameless in my opinion. At least Chalmers used polite words like "counterintuitive".
Dennett didn't do this situation any favors either by being so willing to play word-games with mental concepts, always saying "I don't doubt X, I just don't think X is what you think it is", as if that's not substantively the same thing.
This is to say every reply or critical review of Dennett's books have been a disappointment to me, and that includes the two you posted, which I read long ago.
I don't know anything about Eliminativism, beyond the Wikipedia article that discusses both sides of the argument. But my first impression is that both Materialism/Eliminativism, and Mentalism/Positivism --- or whatever the opposite theory is called --- are metaphysical conjectures, not scientific facts. So, lacking slam-dunk physical evidence pro or con, the argument could go on forever, as in this thread. Therefore, the contrasting views seem to be based on a personal preference for one kind of world or another : tangible, physical stuff vs imaginary, metaphysical*1 concepts.
The Mental world has been interpreted in terms of Souls & Spirits and Ghosts & Goblins ; but also in terms of Intelligence & Information. On the other hand, the Eliminativist position seems to be lacking any notion of a mechanism by which conceptual Qualia, such as Redness & Love could emerge from perceptual Matter by natural means. Hence, your preference for "clear" Black vs White dichotomies seems doomed to frustration. Unless of course, you simply believe one or the other based on Faith. Is that an "overinterpretation" of your Either/Or position? :smile:
*1. Metaphysical : relating to "the essentially metaphysical question of the nature of the mind"
___ Oxford dictionary
Note --- Is Mind something that can be dissected by scientists with scalpels, or a holistic function of a material brain, that must be inferred by reason?
A preference that can't be justified has no place in a discussion. In this case the justification for eliminativism would be parsimony.
Quoting Gnomon
But of course. Qualia is the very thing to be eliminated, there will be no Love and no Redness. That is not the problem but the solution.
What you're describing (qualia "emerging" from matter) is called emergentism and is an altogether different view.
No experience at all?
How do you justify a preference for parsimony? Does it allow you to summarily eliminate the entities you don't like?
Qualitative Experience can't be dissected by scientists, so simply eliminate it as immaterial. But then, Metaphysics is all about immaterial ideas, so eliminate Philosophy : yes/no? :smile:
Because it can lack firmness and consistency when applied to complex ideas or phenomena, Occam's razor is more commonly seen as a guiding heuristic than as a principle of absolute truth. ___Wikipedia
Quoting goremand
Perhaps the most parsimonious way to eliminate Qualia is suicide. :joke:
But unless one is enlightened, one cannot talk about these things with any kind of integrity, nor demand respect from others as if one in fact knew what one is talking about.
What so often happens in discussions of transcendental and mystical topics is that people admit to being unenlightened, but then they still tell others how to become enlightened, and then they take umbrage at other people not being impressed or convinced.
It's not that those others are too materialistic, or have too much of the proverbial dust in their eyes. Their negative reaction to unenlightened people teaching about enlightenment is perfectly normal and justified: it's only normal not to want to take lessons from someone who admits to not having realized them.
(Notice how it is a rule for Theravada monks not to teach people other than in a few specific situations.)
This is what a realist says, yes.
My reference to Buddhism was in respect of a glossary term in Buddhist lexicon which was relevant to the question. I’m not ‘offering teachings’ or putting myself up as enlightened. This is a philosophy forum, and this thread a discussion of a philosophical topic, if it makes you uncomfortable then perhaps you shouldn’t involve yourself.
Duh. Oh, please. I'm trying to explain to you why you often get the negative reactions you do and how come there is so much bad blood between you and some others.
Despite what some Westerners like to believe, Buddhism is not a philosophy and is not intended to be discussed at philosophy forums, in the manner of Western secular academia.
What you're experiencing is a case of grasping the snake of the Dhamma at the wrong end, at the tail, and thus getting bitten. But you don't seem to understand that, and instead blame your opponents.
Even positing no qualitative experience seems wrongheaded, let alone positing no experience at all. Don't some experiences feel good and others bad? It seems superfluous to say that we experience a quality of experiences over and above the experiences. I think 'qualia' in its subjective sense as opposed to its 'sense data' sense is a kind of reification, and maybe the latter is too.
We don't perceive red quales we perceive red things. Just different ways of talking I guess, but one seems less parsimonious. Is there any fact of the matter I wonder? It seems redundant to say we experience the quality of beer, for example, rather than just saying we drink the beer. Sure, the beer has a taste, but that is not separate from its fizziness and its coldness, and they are all just a part of drinking it.
Right, we all (hopefully) say what seems most reasonable to us personally. No one knows for sure so we are stuck with what seems most plausible. Of course that varies depending on one's starting presuppositions.
Quoting baker
I tend to agree with this, although I would say not only "unless" but "even if". I don't know what it means to be enlightened, or even if there really is such a state, but I'm quite sure it does not mean discursively knowing the answer to all kinds of philosophical questions.
If you believe being enlightened is a real thing, what leads you to believe it, presuming you are not yourself enlightened?
Says you, who just this minute has pasted an entire paragraph from the Pali texts into another thread.
I don’t see any ‘bad blood’. Hostile reactions are only to be expected when people’s instinctive sense of reality is called into question. I know mine is a minority position but that in itself gives me no concern.
Yes, that's what I mean. That's why it's not redundant. My experience of it is something extra. Something on top of just drinking it.
I haven't seen any hostile reactions. I've seen some impatient and frustrated ones.
Quoting Patterner
You can think of it like that, but really your experience of it is nothing over and above your drinking of it, except as an (unnecessary) idea.
Sure we enjoy drinking the beer or whatever, sometimes more sometimes less consciously. Drinking the beer may initiate feelings in the body that we can be more or less aware of. I don't see any reason to think machines have such experiences. The redundant feature is that these feelings are reified as a kind of entity we call qualia, which are over and above the drinking of the beer or whatever.
Everyone has a preference for parsimony, until it's their turn to put something on the chopping block.
Quoting Gnomon
I'm starting to suspect you're not taking me entirely seriously.
Quoting Janus
I always thought that was the whole point, if qualia does not refer to something with its own ontology above and beyond the physical process of an experience there's really no use to the word at all.
, I'm not sure I understand what you think is redundant. I don't mean that in a smartass way. I mean I'm not sure what you're saying.
I guess what they are saying is that ideas are redundant in a material world. Only the senses of vision, hearing, touch & smell are important for Materialists. Even a blind mindless mole can find a worm without imagining it.
What you experience subjectively in the Cartesian Theatre is immaterial, hence not useful (i.e. redundant). What they are implying is that you are mistaking your abstract mental feeling for a concrete material object. But I'm sure that's not how you feel about it. What is a Philosophy Forum for, it not for sharing subjective Ideas & Feelings encapsulated in artificial words? Do they have a mechanism for sharing Sense Data over the internet?
Since they view Qualia as non-existent, or even superfluous, I assume they don't have any use for the redness or the sweetness of a rose, as long as they can see & smell it. Those qualitative words (and their associated ideas) in our common languages are redundant in a physics lab. All they need is the data. So, when you insist that the rose smells sweet, it's as-if you are reifying an idea. But, really all you are doing is experiencing the sensation.
The bottom line here is that you are speaking a different language (Empirical vs Experiential) from the Materialists. But apparently your attempts at translation have fallen on deaf ears. :wink:
"Yes, "qualia" is a philosophical idea that refers to the subjective, qualitative aspects of conscious experience"
"Reifying an idea is the act of treating an abstract concept as if it were a concrete thing".
___Google AI overview
After I wrote the post above, I read this statement in a National Geographic magazine article about Artificial Intelligence. Under the title : Do we have to accept that machines are fallible?, it says "That's a big issue facing AI right now --- these evolving algorithms can hallucinate, a term for what happens when a learning model produces a statement that sounds plausible but has been made up. This is because generative AI applications . . . work functionally as a prediction program".
Most definitions of AI "hallucinations" describe it as "false" data. But if you think of it as "anticipation", it could be useful information for entities that encounter rapid change, as in modern human cultures. The human brain seems to have adapted to deal with complex social networks, in which the ability to anticipate behaviors, or to read other minds would be beneficial.
I suspect that is critical of a crucial function of General Intelligence : that it goes beyond the facts, the raw data, to infer something that is not-yet-real ; maybe even ideal. An imaginary inference exists only as an immaterial idea. Even though it is embodied in a machine or brain, the idea (prediction ; conjecture) is not meaningful or useful except for another predictive intelligence. For a digital computer, not-yet-real data is erroneous information. For AI and human Intelligence, that data may be useful for anticipating future or possible situations. Yes, human brains are fallible, but they are also surprisingly adaptable to evolving realities. :smile:
I haven't spoken with ChatGPT in more than a year. But back then, it was making mistakes. I pointed out factual errors occasionally, and it apologized, saying I was correct. It never gave me an answer as to how it made such an obvious error. It has all the information instantly available, but gives the wrong answer?
Quoting Patterner
An ontology is something we posit. If something is real in the physical sense it has effects on and relations with other physical things. What effects do you think our (purported) experience of qualia has over and above the effects of the neuronal and bodily processes which seem almost unquestionably to give rise to it?
I'm not saying that our feelings and creative imagination have no value but that there seems no substantive reason to believe they are not real, physical, neuronal, endocrinal and bodily processes. That from a linguistically mediated "perspective" (which is really just another neuronal process) it doesn't seem that way would seem to be just a quirk of language.
I don't deny that for us the most important things are the emotions and the creative imagination. They enrich life. I see no reason to think of them in some unknowable sense as "non-physical" as if that would somehow impart greater value to them. I think it is only a concern with something transcendent which is imagined to come after this life that leads people to be concerned about a purported disvalue inherent in the thinking that takes things to be just material/ physical. If you don't have that need for the transcendent then what difference does it make if you think things are all physical or functions of the physical?
All that said, I don't think it really makes any difference if people want to have faith in something transcendent if that is what they need and as long as that thinking doesn't negatively impact significant issues in this life on account of them being thought to be of lesser importance.
Ultimately, it's a personal matter and I don't think it really has much place in useful philosophical discussion because it just comes down to personal preference. And yet it seems to be one of the issues that fire people up the most. Could be something to do with the religious conditioning of our thinking which I think we are all subject to even when our upbringings are secular. It still permeates the culture, and it would be interesting to see how things differ if and when religion completely loses its hold. I don't think that day is too far away, but I probably won't see it in my lifetime.
The bottom line for me is that the belief that the world is created by the mind is religiously motivated in a mostly unacknowledged way.
Ditto. It seems to confabulate.
I could say something to you right now which would raise your blood pressue and affect your adrenal glands. And in so doing, nothing physical would have passed between us.
That's just not true. If you are talking about what you write on the computer, then I would be looking at shapes (letters, words and sentences) on a screen which means the light from the screen enters my eyes and stimulates rods and cones, causing nerve impulses which travel to the brain and cause neuronal activity which in turn may or may not raise my blood pressure and affect my adrenal glands.
Quoting Patterner
Well, just for a lark, I asked ChatGPT about whether it is possible to detect the physical correlates of emotional states, such as anxiety, and whether it might be possible to devise an AI system which could derive such results all by itself, both of which questions it answered in the affirmative. (You can review the interaction here.)
You've made two responses in a single post, the top seems to be your original work and the bottom is entirely chatGPT. I believe this is against the spirit of the prohibition while satisfying its letter.
Anyway - the point is made, I'll remove the text and refer to the link.
I'm afraid I still disagree. Intentional activities, interpretations and affects can all be understood to be neuronal processes. Of course we don't interpret things in terms of neuronal processes, that would be to commit a category error, but it doesn't follow that interpreting is not a neuronal process. Same for impatience and frustration. You say they are not physical states, but I believe they are neuronal, endocrinally mediated states. although I would use 'process' instead of 'state'.
I believe it is reasonable to think that meaning is understood because of activation of pre-established neuronal networks in the brain. An example would be learning a language. Learning a language sets up neural networks, which are activated when reading or hearing someone speak the learned language. If one has not learned a language at all no understanding is possible.
Well, as you never tire of telling me, people tend to believe what suits them. And just because something can be described as 'neurological' doesn't mean that it's wholly physical, unless you're into neural reductionism, which you may well be.
I have no emotional investment in believing what I believe. It is simply what I have come to think most plausible. And for the record I say that people generally believe what they think is most plausible. That said, some people are more affected by what they want to believe than others are—I think there is little reason to doubt that.
Quoting JanusI thought I was following you, even if disagreeing, until this paragraph. What impact does that thinking have over and above the effects of the neuronal and bodily processes which seem almost unquestionably to give rise to it? If that's all there is, then how [I]can[/I] it have any impact? I see you responding to Wayfarer, saying his (his?) ability to say something to you which would raise your blood pressue and affect your adrenal glands amounts to physical interactions. What if he does, indeed, raise your BP, affect your adrenal glands, and whatever other things. In that state, you might, say, react violently when someone you love does or says something you don't like a few minutes later? Is it not just the physical interactions taking place, having nothing to do with your experience of the sum of all those interactions? What does "as long as" mean in this context?
Right, and furthermore, as you also often say, it doesn’t matter anyway.
I don't question the idea that we experience things.
In response to your question about people being emotionally affected by things that are said to them or by things they believe; I don't deny any of that—I just think it is all physical processes. So, I'm not understanding your puzzlement. I'm not totally wedded to believing that it is all physical processes, that just seems to me the more plausible option. I don't believe there is any determinable fact of the matter about all this.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't see the point of this comment. Is it meant to be some kind of criticism? When I say it doesn't matter what I believe I mean that I cannot help being convinced by what I am convinced by, and I also believe that is the case with all of us. We don't choose to find most plausible what we do find most plausible, we just find it most plausible. Although maybe some people are more motivated by what they want to be true than by concerns about plausibility—I don't deny that..
Different people may be more or less free of confirmation bias, but it doesn't follow that they have any choice in the matter of whether or not they are affected by it. People don't always understand their own motivations. I don't deny the possibility that I don't understand my own motivations. I am always willing to change my mind, which I have done a few times in the years since I've been participating in philosophy forums, as well as prior to that, ever since I began thinking about these things and reading philosophy. I wonder if you have ever changed your mind. I've seen no evidence of it.
Do you believe that all materialists have forgotten themselves just because Schopenhauer said so?
Quoting JanusAren't you saying the equivalent of, "I don't think comets make any difference, as long as they don't crash into us and negatively impact significant issues"? If we are just the sum of uncountable physical events, then no feelings or beliefs that result from that sum make us any more able to not negatively impact anything than a comet is. Some of us will end up with the feelings and beliefs that don't negatively impact things. But those that end up with the negatively impacting feelings and beliefs are just comets caught in the gravity well. No?
What is 'physical event'? There's not much use saying that it's neural or neurological, because there's no reason to believe that neuroscience ought to be necessarily physicalist. Some well-known neuroscientists, including Wilder Penfield and John Eccles, have published books against it. One of the canonical books on the subject,The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Hacker and Bennett, comes out strongly against materialist philosophy of mind (and Bennett was a neuroscientist, Hacker being a philosopher). Besides, in what sense is the brain a physical organ? It's an object of study for neuroscience, but the brain in situ is embedded in an organism, in an environment, in a culture. What does it mean to say that it's physical? That it falls at the same rate as other objects if you drop it? Other than that, it simply means commitment to materialism as a philosophy or metaphysic.
'Physical events', then, ought to be considered as those events that can be described in terms of physics and arguably chemistry. That's what materialists are committed to defending. But
[quote=David Chalmers, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness; https://consc.net/papers/facing.html]The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.[/quote]
It's not even clear what Janus is arguing about. For instance:
Quoting Janus
Here, it is acknowledged that machines don't have 'such' experiences, although really a machine doesn't have any experiences, and nowadays we have machines that are smart enough to tell you that (as I've already demonstrated).
But then:
Quoting Janus
So, here, 'real' is said to be physical, neuronal, endicronal. We can take it that all of those are metabolic processes. But again, that is no answer to Chalmer's challenge - he would not deny that feelings have physical correlates or give rise to metabolic processes, as I've already acknowledged. But that as they occur within or to subjects as qualities of experience, then no objective description of metabolic processes can capture their first-person nature. And that is indeed a 'substantive' reason.
Quoting Patterner
:up:
I'll add that the reason that this argument can even be entertained, is because being - the being that you are, and I am - is never an object of consciousness. You can never find it in the natural world, nor in the discoveries of the natural sciences, because it is that which discovers, it is the subject of experience, not an object of analysis. It can be debated only because we ourselves are beings. But if asked to prove or show what being is, then we cannot, for those very reasons.
I have the feeling, from what small amounts of Heidegger I've read, that this is something he would concur with, as he wrote extensively on the 'forgetting of being', and I think this is what he was talking about.
I think it is mighty presumptuous of you to think that people have "forgotten themselves" just because they think the physicalist account is the most plausible. Seems to me that attitude refects nothing other than your own prejudices.
Quoting Patterner
No, I'm not saying anything like your 'comet' analogy.
What we believe will be determinitive of what we do, broadly speaking. I just don't conceive of our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and desires as being non-physical or immaterial (in either sense). In fact it is on account of their physicality that they can be causally efficacious. Otherwise we would be looking at dualism which comes with the interaction problem.
Never! :yikes:
A better analogy might be flight as the product of a spinning wheel. Again, both are physical. But flight is a process, as is consciousness. But, as I've quoted before, Brian Greene states the problem nicely in [I]Until the End of Time[/I]:[Quote=Greene] And within that mathematical description, affirmed by decades of data from particle colliders and powerful telescopes, there is nothing that even hints at the inner experiences those particles somehow generate. How can a collection of mindless, thoughtless, emotionless particles come together and yield inner sensations of color or sound, of elation or wonder, of confusion or surprise? Particles can have mass, electric charge, and a handful of other similar features (nuclear charges, which are more exotic versions of electric charge), but all these qualities seem completely disconnected from anything remotely like subjective experience. How then does a whirl of particles inside a head—which is all that a brain is—create impressions, sensations, and feelings?[/quote]While consciousness is the subjective experience of physical things and events, there is no hint of the physical about it. Let's say very intellectually and technologically advanced beings from another galaxy, who are made of very a different mixture of elements than we are made of, found one of us, and could study us completely at any level, even down to watching every individual particle in us. What is there about the many physical structures and processes that would would suggest to them that we are conscious? Why would they think we are more than robots? Consciousness is surely the subjective experience of physical things. But the physical things don't hint at the subjective experience. Something is happening in addition to the physical things.
I don't think it's a matter of demonstrating that it's not a product of physical events. I think it's a matter of demonstrating it is. Everyone I've read who believes physicalism is the answer says we just need to wait until the physicalist answer is figured out. But that's not evidence that physicalism holds the answer. Neither is physicalism's amazing successes in many physical pursuits. Neither is the fact that we've only found physical things with our physical sciences.
Yep, I get it. I'm not sure we have coherent explanation of the material or the immaterial, whatever that could be. I believe both are held up by a scaffolding of biases. I don't have enough expertise to commit any particular account of subjective experince and recognize that the experts don't really know yet either. Can I do a Chomsky and be a Mysterian? I find it enjoyably ironic that it might be the case that we lack cognitive ability to determine why we have cognitive abilities.
All of Greene's books, of which I've read The Fabric of the Universe, consist of paper and ink. Is that all they are? How does the meaning they convey arise from the combination of ink and paper?
The 'all it is', is physicalist reductionism (i.e. 'it's nothing but....') Even worse, Greene, a physicist, knows that it's not even strictly correct to describe atoms as 'particles'. They are particles in some contexts, and waves in others. In others again, they're described as the excitations of fields, and the nature of fields is far from obvious.
Indeed that’s the current model. Will we ever finish arriving at tentative theories? Theories that to some extent peg out a version of reality and allow us to make predictions, until the next one comes along?
This frame probably has special appeal to those who are idealists or religiously inclined.
Quoting Patterner
Well, some might go as far as to call that a clue. But for me the idea that everything is waves when understood from a particular perspective seems a fun notion. When will waves end up being something even more elusive?
It sounds like what you're looking for is a poetry circle. The point of a philosophy forum is solving philosophical problems through cooperative effort and communication. This can only happen given a basis of shared understanding, which in turn means your "subjective ideas" only matter insofar as you can justify them to other people.
Quoting Tom StormI imagine so. But also to people like me.
The meaning arises as a brain (containing neural networks trained to recognize the written language the book is written in) detects patterns in the writing which are associated by that brain with the meaning that arises.
What alternative explanation would you propose? Or even better, how could you falsify my explanation?
I bolded and bolded/underlined the category errors. On one end you have a physical process, on the other hand another thing going on, more associated with mental process (meaning). The explanatory gap between the two, is generally the (hard) question at hand.
The observer being assumed is the slippery homuncular fallacy.
What said is true, but what you interpreted is not what he meant. The "shapes" on a computer screen are indeed physical, but it's their meta-physical*1 meaning (forms) that might affect you : first intellectually, and then emotionally, after the threat to your belief system registers in the brain, and causes a series of physical responses to combat the metaphysical threat. Wayfarer is not going to attack you physically, by sending bullets over the internet. Instead, he could affect you metaphysically, by causing you to believe that you have been psychically injured (offended).
Of course, Wayfarer is much too genteel to resort to such underhanded tactics. Ironically, non-physical verbal attacks on odious beliefs are often used by the Physicalist trolls on this forum to counter-attack those who have offended their mentally-constructed non-ideal worldview. :smile:
*1. By "meta-physical" I don't mean the study of reality, but merely "non-physical" in the sense of "mental" Ideality*2. Ideas instead of Objects. Forms instead of Shapes.
*2. Ideality :
[i]In Plato’s theory of Forms*3, he argues that non-physical forms (or ideas) represent the most accurate or perfect reality. Those Forms are not physical things, but merely definitions or recipes of possible things. What we call Reality consists of a few actualized potentials drawn from a realm of infinite possibilities.
# Materialists deny the existence of such immaterial ideals, but recent developments in Quantum theory have forced them to accept the concept of “virtual” particles in a mathematical “field”, that are not real, but only potential, until their unreal state is collapsed into reality by a measurement or observation. To measure is to extract meaning into a mind. [Measure, from L. Mensura, to know; from mens-, mind]
# Some modern idealists find that scenario to be intriguingly similar to Plato’s notion that ideal Forms can be realized, i.e. meaning extracted, by knowing minds. For the purposes of this blog, “Ideality” refers to an infinite pool of potential (equivalent to a quantum field), of which physical Reality is a small part.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
Note --- Quantum Fields are accepted by scientists as accurate depictions of reality (reified), even though they are immaterial mathematical constructs, and cannot be detected by human senses or instruments, but only known by philosophical inference. They seem to be a scientific version of Plato's Forms, or what I call Ideality.
*3. Theory of Forms :
a theory widely credited to the Classical Greek philosopher Plato. The theory suggests that the physical world is not as real or true as Forms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms
Note --- Materialism is a belief system that rejects this theory of an immaterial Potential Source (or Field), from which our sensory perceptions of physical Shapes are constructed into the conception that we call Reality. Plato inferred that the intellectual Meaning (definition) of those Shapes is ultimately more important than their physical instantiation. This idealized notion may apply only to sentient creatures capable of inferring abstract meanings from concrete objects. For philosophers, the Potential Source of Forms is also merely an imaginary Idea, not a sensable thing. It's the meaning that matters, not the substance.
Quoting GnomonHeh. I hadn't thought of that. :up:
Some people --- writers, artists, designers --- will get more riled-up if someone steals their Intellectual Property*1 than some tangible physical property. Again, it's the meaning that matters to them. But lawyers have to be very creative to convince a jury, using materialistic language, that something of value has indeed been stolen. How do you think the (hypothetical ; intangible) creator of a Mind Created World would feel about h/er creatures denying the value of h/er most important creation : the human intellect? :joke:
*1. Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. It's a reflection of someone's creativity and can be found in many things, including: computer games, films, cars, and miracle drugs. ___Google AI overview
Intellectual property rights are the rights given to persons over the creations of their minds.
https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/intel1_e.htm
Correct. To physically affect someone would be to give them a drug or injure them, as you say. But if you say something that annoys them - I do this a lot! - then the causation is on the level of meaning. 'Why did he say that?' 'How could he think that?' These are active on the level of meaning, but which may have physical consequences. It's an example of top-down causation. (I often think about the placebo effect in this context, another example of top-down causation, as according to physicalism, it really ought not to happen.)
Quoting wonderer1
'Arises' from what, exactly? What is the nature of the causal relationship? If meaning arises purely from physical causation, as described by physical and chemical laws, how to account for the gap between these deterministic processes and the open-ended, adaptive nature of life? Even rudimentary organisms exhibit an agency and intentionality absent in inorganic matter—the ability to heal, reproduce, evolve, and maintain homeostasis. From the moment life begins, biological systems exhibit a kind of semiotic agency that transcends the deterministic causal nexus of physics and chemistry. Life doesn't defy physical laws, but requires principles that can't be reduced to that level of explanation. Recognition of this is one of the drivers behind the emergence of biosemiotics, and of the connection between information and biology, none of which is strictly physicalist, although it falls within the ambit of an evolving naturalism. That's the sense in which biology is evolving beyond physicalism, as physics did with the advent of quantum mechanics. And all the same questions apply to the relatonship of neurobiology and semantics.
refs: From Physical Causes to Organisms of Meaning, Steve Talbott
What is Information?, Marcello Barbieri
I am affected physically by what is said (sound) or what I read (light) and this causes changes in the body and the brain, and those changes are my interpretation of the meaning of what I have heard or seen.
You might not agree with this picture of what is happening, but nothing is missing, except of course complete understanding, which shouldn't be a surprise since we don't completely understand anything.
If it is not the meaning of the words that affects you in a certain way, could random words affect you in that same way?
It seems reasonable to think that when we learn a language we learn not only words but the logic (grammar) which determines how words may be grouped together in sentences. If, having learnt a language we have established neural networks that embody that learning then the words, or better sentences and passages, activate these networks and result in the apprehension of their meaning—an interpretation.
Now of course I'm not absolutely certain that is how that works but it seems most consistent with the findings of neuroscience. What else do we have to go on? Do you think our vague intuitions that meaning cannot be physical are reliable sources of understanding and knowledge?
Let's say the semantic and the neurological are not separate at all. We don't understand how they go together, so our first pre-critical thought is that meaning cannot be an attribute of physical (neuronal) processes. Perhaps we just don't understand the physical well enough. What's the alternative? Posit the existence of another realm?
A pretty poor post, I have to say. Just because something can be attributed to neurobiology, doesn't necessarily mean it can be understood solely through a physicalist lens. As you kind of admit, the problem is that to question the physicalist account is to open the door to - well, what, exactly? That's why I mention Thomas Nagel's essay, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. Fear of religion drives a lot of this conversation, whether that's acknowledged or not. As if the door has to be slammed shut on anything that's not 'scientific' or 'neurobiological' or else.... :yikes:
Take the time to read that Steve Talbott essay. It's philosophically solid and doesn't appeal to anything supernatural. But, as I also said, even biosemiotics, which I learned about from Apokrisis, is not physicalist in the reductionist sense (although some of what Apokrisis writes is also driven by that fear). But as soon as you start considering intentionality, sign recognition, and semiotics, then none of that is really physicalist in my view.
Arises from interactions within the brain which contains the neural networks trained to process written language, in response to the outputs of those neural networks signaling recognition of linguistic elements in the writing.
[Note 'arises' is the word you chose, and I ran with. Not a word I injected into the discussion.]
The nature of the causal relationship is physical.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's an impressive load of red herrings you have there, but how about sticking to this
original question?
Quoting Wayfarer
Or did you not actually want people to give serious consideration to the matter?
I agree. What may be missing from the picture you see is the Interpretation or Understanding of its meaning. Your dog may see the same symbols on the computer screen, but they won't have the same "affect"*1 that they do on you. The effect is physical, but the affect is metaphysical (mental). Your dog may be emotionally affected by images of other dogs on the screen, but words in the English language will have no affect, because they are abstractions of intellectual ideas, not concrete objects.
Your use of the word "affect" may reveal the "missing" element that distinguishes mental ideas or feelings from physical effects. For example, the letters on your computer screen have a physical effect (Percepts ; changes in Rhodopsin chemical) on the rods & cones in your eyes. But only the meaning of those abstract symbols --- how it relates to you personally --- can affect your mood or feelings or Concepts*2. The science of Semiology is focused on the meanings of signs --- how they are interpreted --- not just their physical shapes. The word "rose" refers to a flower ; but unless that textual symbol elicits a mental image in the mind, its meaning will be missing. :smile:
*1. Affect :
[i]a. to put on a false appearance of (something) : to pretend to feel, have, or do (something) : feign affect indifference affect surprise.
b. Affect can be used as a noun in one particular situation: when referring to a display of emotion.[/i]
*2. Physics refers to the things we perceive with the eye of the body. Meta-physics refers to the things we conceive with the eye of the mind.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME
Meaning in a brain emerges from systematic Holistic interactions, not linear Reductive operations. A more Holistic term for "arise" would be "emerge"*1. Your description sounds mechanical, but it doesn't answer Chalmers' Hard Question : how does a mechanical process convert physical inputs into mental outputs? In philosophy, to equate mental with physical is a category error. :smile:
*1. Emergent properties are qualities of a system that are not present in its parts, and are a result of holism. Holism is the idea that the properties of a system are greater than the sum of its parts, and that the system as a whole determines how its parts behave.
___ Google AI overview
Note --- Ideas, feelings, concepts are not properties of Matter, but of Mind. By what means do they arise? What are the mechanical steps between Matter and Mind? Mind is a meta-physical function of Brain, not a physical organ or neuron.
Brandolini's law:
Philpapers Survey
So you say.
Along with the majority of philosophers of mind.
Quoting wonderer1
What about this causal relationship is physical? How is it explainable in physical or molecular terms? How do physical interactions cause or give rise to semiotic processes? Those are the precise questions that the quotes you referred to as ‘red herrings’ are seeking to address.
:rofl: Nice try, but I'm not biting. Desperation breeds denigration it seems.
Quoting Wayfarer
And I haven't anywhere said that it definitely can or that it definitely cannot. One thing I know is that the way perceptual experience might seem to us cannot be explained in terms of a mechanical model of physicality. @Apokrisis always said it can be understood in terms of a semiotic model of physicality, if I read him right. I don't have the background to properly assess the soundness of Apo's posts, and I freely admit that.
Quoting Wayfarer
If you wish to question the neurological account, which is a physicalist account insofar as it looks for explanations in terms of neural patterns and activity, then you need to come up with a compelling alternative.
That is what you have constantly failed to do. Instead, you say proponents of physicalism are suffering from fear of religion. Your view is so skewed that you cannot see the possibility that other find religious explanations simply uncompelling.,
Your anachronistic mechanistic model of physicalism is merely the pet strawman you love to keep knocking down. I know all the kinds of arguments you marshal—for years I used to deploy them myself against physicalism. Eventually I came to see that those arguments are merely reactive, not constructive. They don't proceed from a desire to know the truth, but from a need to destroy what threatens to undermine what you wish to be the case.
It really is a staggering irony that you want to dismiss physicalist's arguments by attempting to denigrate them as being psychologically motivated by a fear of something which you obviously desperately need, and need to justify, and they don't—namely religion. Your arguments are motivated by a fear of letting go of religion. I have an open mind, which you obviously do not.
I'm saying the neurological account is not necessarily physicalist. It's a leap from saying that there are neurological processes involved, to materialist philosophy of mind.
Quoting Janus
Because you often express it. You said it in the post I responded to - 'what are we to do, believe there is "another realm?"
Quoting Janus
So get this clear - you believe that to question physicalism requires positing of another realm? You said it: do you believe it?
It deals with the brain, which is physical and uses physical methods to study it.
Quoting Wayfarer
So what? I have no fear of other realms. I love imagining them, but I don't count such creative imaginings as anything more than fiction. What's wrong with fiction? Nothing in my book.
However, if we are to be justified in thinking that such imaginings are anything more than fictions then we need some substantive evidence or compelling reason for thinking so. That is just what you apparently cannot provide.
Being personally convinced of something does not constitute any good reason for others to believe what you do. You apparently find that hard to understand. It actually seems to be a kind of narcissism, when it blinds you to the fact that others can disagree with you while understanding your position. I don't see you understanding that. It's a shame.
I learned a lot from Apokrisis, including the whole field of biosemiotics, which I've read quite a bit about by now. But I also learned that he tended to dismiss the idealistic philosophy of C S Peirce on the grounds of him being 'a man of his times' and obviously not able to benefit from later scientific discoveries. After many earnest and open discussions with Apokrisis, I believe he too expresses a certain fear of religion. It means that if you question the naturalist account with its physicalist underpinnings, then you're opening the door to ideas associated with religion or philosophical idealism, which no self-respecting scientist should admit.
Quoting Janus
[quote=Richard Lewontin, Review of Carl Sagan 'Candle in the Dark']Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [/quote]
Quoting Janus
I dispute that the brain is physical. The human brain, in context, is the most complex natural phenomenon known to science, with more neural connections than stars in the sky.
Quoting Janus
See the original post.
There is a leap from any empirical account to any metaphysical claim. We really ought to suspend judgement in the absence of any firm metaphysical ground at all. If we wish to make a leap it ought to be what is considered to be the inference to the best explanation. Of course for whatever reasons we are not all going to agree what is the best inference. I'm merely telling you that if I am pressed to say which I think is the best inference, then I'll choose physicalism, but I'm not wedded to it. My natural inclination is to suspend judgement and in my day to day life that is just what I do, because the issue is of little or no importance—little relevance to how I live my life.
Quoting Wayfarer
Physicalism is the claim that the fundamental nature of everything is energy. Physics understands matter and energy to be one and the same. What is the other alternative to the realm of the physical? I would say it is the realm of the mind. But we know nothing of mind beyond our own introspective intuitions about our own minds. Of the physical we know a whole world which, being investigated, has yielded a vast body of coherent and consistent scientific knowledge.
Science tells us the universe existed long before humans. I see no reason to doubt that. If that is so, then mind cannot be fundamental unless something like panpsychism is true, or there is a god or universal mind that keeps what appears to us as the [physical world in place. I just don't find those explanations rationally compelling, although I am attracted to them in an imaginative way.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yeah, I've read some of Salthe and some of Deacon and some of Hoffmeyer and others over the last ten years or so since first encountering Apo. But I don't count myself as an expert. I can understand the arguments, but I don't have the background to assess their veracity. so I maintain an open mind. I don't recall any of them questioning naturalism or physicalism. If you can cite some passages from those writers or others that do then I'll certainly consider them.
What is the alternative to physicalism to explain the fact that we share a world with each other and the animals other than the old "universal mind" model? Nothing else works, even Kastrup admits that. I am not completely close-minded to the possibility of that, but I honestly do see it to be of much less plausibility than naturalism. I'd actually rather believe in the universal mind model, but unfortunately, I just don't find it compelling enough.
To me the Lewontin passage is tendentious babble—nothing substantive to be found there.
Quoting Wayfarer
The criterion of what is physical is that its activities have measurable effects. The brain ticks that box. I get that our experience doesn't intuitively seem to be physical. Intuitive understanding is not always a good guide to the nature of things,
Quoting Janus
Quoting Wayfarer
I read it before, and I just looked at it again, I know all those arguments like the proverbial back of my hand. They are trivial truisms—they simply say that without the mind, without percipients, there would be no world appearing. How could I take issue with such a tautology, other than to point out its vacuity.
If you think that because no world would appear to humans if humans didn't exist that it follows that human consciousness is fundamental to reality, I can only wonder what has happened to your critical thinking skills. Maybe they have become buried beneath your confirmation bias.
I like that. It reminds me of an injunction sometimes attributed to Mark Twain and other times to George Carlin (roughly paraphrased): " Never argue with a fool because they will bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience".
Speaking of BS. Your interpretation of my post was based on a Category Error. I was talking about Philosophy, not Science ; Meta-physics, not Physics.
The Category Error I referred to is not Descartes' notion of two different "substances"*1, but the relationship of a physical system and it's metaphysical function. A mathematical "function" is the output X that is dependent on the numerical values in the equation. None of those math values is physical, nor is the function. The function of your automobile is transportation, which is a concept, not a physical object. The function of your computer is Information Processing, not just displaying letters on a screen.
The function of a brain is control of "thought, memory, emotion, touch, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, hunger and every process that regulates our body". All of those are immaterial Functions, not material Organs. And a Process is a logical step by step procedure, not a substantial object. Yet, each function is typically associated with an organ : as Brain is associated with Thought, Emotion, Memory, etc. None of which is a substantial, tangible, massive material object. What is the mass of an Idea? To Associate : "connect (someone or something) with something else in one's mind."
In Aristotelian terms, the categories I refer to are "Substance" and "Essence or Form"*2. In this case, the Substance is matter (neural tissue of brain), and the Essence is the meaning or referent (rose), but the Form is the symbolic Idea (roseness), a Qualia that colors both Essence and Substance. The material Substance is tangible, but immaterial/intellectual Form & Essence are only inferrable & intelligible by reasoning minds. Are you familiar with those subtle philosophical distinctions? :smile:
*1. Cartesian Mind/Body distinction :
This means the “clear and distinct” ideas of mind and body, as mutually exclusive natures, must be false in order for mind-body causal interaction to occur. Hence, Descartes has not adequately established that mind and body are two really distinct substances.
https://iep.utm.edu/descartes-mind-body-distinction-dualism/
*2. Theory of Forms :
[i]Essence is what makes a thing that particular thing. In other words, essence is what makes “that chair.”
Substance is what makes a thing a general thing.
Form is what makes the idea of a thing, without which the thing would not be intelligible. In other words, form is what makes “that idea of a/that chair.[/i]
https://o-g-rose-writing.medium.com/essence-substance-and-form-81c2b707c0d8
We can measure things about physical processes. Like how far something moves, and how long it took to move that distance. We can measure how things change speed and direction when moving. We can measure the speed of light.
We can measure how much energy something uses to move, or grow. We can calculate what percentages of particles are moving at what speed, given the temperature of a cylinder of air. We can measure events that take place in a millionth of a second. We can tell the age of things by how much of a radioactive isotopes it contains.
All of these things can be seen to be the result of the physical properties of the particles that make up everything.
Not a word of any of that applies to consciousness. It has no physical aspect, despite the fact that the examples of it we are aware of exist within a physical medium. And everything we know of the properties of particles "seem completely disconnected from anything remotely like subjective experience."
That's a little more substantial than "vague intuitions."
Some of us suggest the possibility that our physical sciences cannot answer every question about reality.
Or think of energy itself—it can only be measured in terms of its effects. If it cannot be directly observed and measured, will you say it is non-physical?
Quoting Patterner
I agree if by science you mean physics. I think there are many questions about for example human and animal behavior that cannot be answered by physics. Different paradigms. But questions about animal behavior can be answered by ethology and questions about human behavior can be answered by anthropology, sociology and psychology and even chemistry. Do you think of those as sciences?
Just as a matter of interest do you care whether consciousness is physical or not? Personally, I'd rather it wasn't physical because then there might be some hope that this life is not all we get. I've made my peace with the idea that this life is most probably all we get, but whatever the case is, I don't think it matters what I think about it. What will be will be.
Beyond those kinds of concerns do you think the answer to whether consciousness is physical or not could matter for any other reason?
He’s :100: right.
Quoting Janus
You say it doesn’t matter, but you sure as hell love arguing about it. The question @Patterner is asking is a perfectly valid one - how can we be affected by the meaning of words when meaning, itself, is not physical. That is the central question of Terrence Deacon’s book Incomplete Nature, which you mention. He certainly doesn’t question naturalism but extends it to account for what he describes as ‘absentials’—things that have no material existence but have causal roles in all sentient life. It’s an intriguing argument, though not one I’ve fully mastered.
Quoting Patterner
Are such properties inherent in objects or are they the products of historically formed ways of organizing our relation to the world? Heidegger has argued that we never just see a hammer with its properties and attributes. We understand what a hammer is primordially in what we use it for and how we use it, and in terms of the larger associated context of relevance. The hammer as a static thing with properties is derived from our prior association with it as something we use for a purpose.
Husserl showed how the empirical notion of object that you’re describing emerged in the era of modern sciences with Galileo. The Egyptians and Greeks first developed the concept of a pure ideal geometric form (perfect triangle, circle, square, etc) as the modification of actual interactions with real , imperfect shapes in nature. Armed with such pure mathematical idealizations as the straight line and perfect circle, it occurred to Galileo that the messy empirical world could be approach using these ideal geometries as a model. Now everything we observe in the actual world could be treated as an approximation of a geometrically describable body.
The notions of scientific accuracy and calculative measurement were made possible by thinking of actual things as imperfect versions of pure genetic bodies. The point Im making is that the physicalism you’re describing (self-identical things with mathematically describable properties and attributes) is not a product of the world as it supposedly is in itself. It is a human invention that depends on ignoring the contribution of subjective practical use and relevance to our perception of the world.
Once we recognize this it is no longer necessary to posit a distinction between an outer world of mathematically measurable things and an inner world of subjective consciousness. And the subject here is not to be understood according to traditional idealism and an internal realm The subject is just as much produced though pragmatic interaction in an environment as the objects of the world it interacts with.
Quoting Janus Neural activity is electrical and chemical signals moving along the neurons. That is consciousness? Photon hits retina, rhodopsin changes shape, concentration of ions changes, signal is sent along optic nerve, (skipping a thousand other steps), signal arrives in specific area of the brain. That is a description of my subjective experience of red? That, presumably added to other signals hitting the brain, is a description of my brain's awareness of itself?
Quoting JanusEnergy is particles in motion. We know which particles move in which medium. We can measure how fast they move. It's all physical.
Quoting JanusIt all reduces to physics. We can't follow every particle of air. But we know what they are all doing statistically, and can think of the total in terms of the laws of thermodynamics. But the laws of thermodynamics do not exist exactly as they are for any reason other than the way particles Interact.
The same is true of the way oxygen works in our cells. Electron shells, electron sharing, etc. Everything reduces to physics.
I have not heard an explanation for how consciousness reduces to physics.
Quoting JanusIt's ironic that you think consciousness is entirely physical, but would like it to be otherwise in the hopes of an afterlife, while I think consciousness has a non-physical component, but don't want an afterlife. But, of course, you're right. What will be will be.
Quoting JanusYou ask this in a philosophy forum?? :grin: Knowledge for knowledge's sake is reason enough for most anything, imo. But the true nature of our Selves, and the explanation for how various chunks of matter can subjectively experience, be aware that they are subjectively experiencing, and be aware that they are aware that they are subjectively experiencing?? That's freakin' fascinating beyond anything else!
Everything. Words are patterns of physical vibrations propagating through the air, or physical text. Neural networks in your brain which recognize words and their semantic associations are physical. The semantic elements in your stream of thought are physically detectable.
Quoting Wayfarer
There is an enormous amount of science to study to reach a complete account at the molecular level. Can you be more specific about what it is that you don't understand?
Quoting Wayfarer
Reading Peter Tse's Criterial Causation might provide a clue. Before reading Tse, I used an analogy of locks and keys, where in the scenario of reading written language, letters, words, phrases, etc. play the roles of keys, and neural nets trained in written language recognition play the role of locks. Of course I don't expect that to make any sense to anyone so unwilling to consider physicalism charitably as yourself.
Quoting wonderer1
Does Tse discuss complex dynamical systems approaches
to free will and causation? I’m thinking of Alicia Juarrero’s Dynamics in Action:Intentional Behavior as a Complex System.
I'm not familiar with Alicia Juarrero’s perspective, but what I've gathered from looking at the Amazon page for her book sounds generally compatible with Tse's thinking. FWIW, I searched my Kindle copy of Tse's book for any citation of Alicia Juarrero, and didn't find any. I'm planning to borrow a copy of Juarrero’s book, so perhaps I can let you know more later.
I too, prefer the label "Physicalism" (cause) to "Materialism" (effect) as the ultimate Reality. Matter is merely the clay that Energy shapes into the things that we perceive with the eye and conceive with the mind. Descartes imagined the material aspects of reality as one realm, and the mental aspects as a separate realm. But I view the world holistically, as one reality with several different departments. {see Triad illustration below}
FWIW, my personal worldview equates Energy (causation) with Mind (knowledge of forms), in order to explain how mental functions*1 could emerge from eons of material evolution. So, I agree that Energy (EnFormAction)*2 is the fundamental "nature" of everything. But, for human philosophers, Meaning is more important than Matter. My thesis and blog go into scientific details to support the conclusion that everything is EnFormAction. :smile:
*1. Mental Functions :
The most important cognitive functions are attention, orientation, memory, gnosis, executive functions, praxis, language, social cognition and visuospatial skills.
https://neuronup.us/areas-of-intervention/cognitive-functions/
Note --- "Gnosis" is the Greek word for the ability to know, to conceptualize what we sense. We know by informing the physical brain into a cognitive mind.
*2. Energy :
[i]Scientists define “energy” as the ability to do work, but don't know what energy is. They assume it's an eternal causative force that existed prior to the Big Bang, along with mathematical laws. Energy is a positive or negative relationship between things, and physical Laws are limitations on the push & pull of those forces.
So, all they know is what Energy does, which is to transform material objects in various ways. Energy itself is amorphous & immaterial. So if you reduce Causation to its essence of information, it seems more akin to mind than matter & energy. Energy is Causation, and Form is Meaning. Together I call them : EnFormAction : the power to give meaningful/knowable form to malleable matter.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
*3. The fundamental triad of energy/matter/information :
This essay is based on the thesis that information is as fundamental as matter and energy in the fabric of reality,
https://www.researchgate.net/
Note --- The image below is just some scientist's illustration of how he conceives the interrelationships of Energy & Matter & Mind. Don't take it too literally. ResearchGate is a social network site for scientists and researchers. I may not agree with all of their publications. I have my own illustrations on my website.
That is the question. It's not how we intuitively think of consciousness of course. Hence the conundrum. We know what consciousness feels like. But that is a different question than what it actually is. Probably cannot ever be definitively answered.
Quoting Patterner
We cannot see particles, we can only measure their effects. We don't even really know excatly what electrons are. Are they what constitutes fields or are they merely excitations of a field? How will we find out?
Quoting Patterner
If consciousness is neural activity, then it reduces to physics or at least chemistry. How can we ever be sure about that? It doesn't seem possible, because there is no way to observe consciousness being reducible to physics. So we are left with inference. Much of science is like this. You no coubt know the well worn Humean point about causation itself being impossible to directly observe.
Quoting Patterner
I don't want an afterlife. I just want as much of life as I can get. I also think one measure of a good life is being able to die well. Clinging to anything is not a good idea. I don't cling to the idea of consciousness being physical, it just seems the most likely to me. Somone earlier mentioned Peirce's "matter is effete mind". He nonetheless believed that the universe existed prior to humans. He was basically a kind of panpsychist. I don't think that position is incompatible with thinking that consciousness is a physical phenomenon.
Quoting Patterner
Philosophy is defined as love of wisdom. Is it wise to simply accumulate knowledge for its own sake? That almost sounds like accumulating money for its own sake. What is the point of knowledge you cannot use?
The original claim was:
Quoting Wayfarer
The point I am making is not that ink and paper aren't essential to the physical nature of the book but that semantic content exists on a different level from its physical form. Words may be encoded as sounds or written letters in various languages, yet the same information can be encoded in entirely different symbolic systems—whether in different languages, Braille, or even Morse code—and still retain its meaning. This demonstrates that semantic content is independent of the specific physical medium in which it is expressed.
A book 'contains meaning' only insofar as it is read and understood by a subject capable of interpreting its content. Furthermore, different readers may interpret the same information in diverse ways, highlighting the subjective and contextual nature of meaning-making. The meaning is not an inherent property of the physical text itself but arises through the interaction between the symbolic representation and the mind of the reader.
So language has a physical aspect, but it can't be accounted for by physical principles alone.
The reason I introduced biosemiotics to the conversation is because a similar principle is operative at every level of organic life. Biosemiotics depicts the operations of cellular life as language-like rather than machine-like. I mentioned it, because it too challenges physicalism on a fundamental level.
[quote=Marcello Barbieri, What is Information?]The idea that life evolved naturally on the primitive Earth suggests that the first cells came into being by spontaneous chemical reactions, and this is equivalent to saying that there is no fundamental divide between life and matter. This is the chemical paradigm, a view that is very popular today and that is often considered in agreement with the Darwinian paradigm[/quote]
That in essence is the materialist view. However the author goes on to say:
That is consistent with Norbert Weiner's oft-quoted aphorism, 'Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.'
Quoting wonderer1
Physicalism is a proper methodological principle but philosophical materialism is a different matter.
At issue is the claim that a brain is 'nothing but' atoms, or that life can be understood in solely physical or chemical terms, or that living beings are 'simply' organisations of the elements of the periodic table and no different in kind from inorganic matter. There are other levels of meaning and organisation - not a mysterious 'something else' as any kind of vital spirit or secret sauce, but higher level organisational principles that appear throughout organic life that are not reducible to physics. That is the point of From Physical Causation to Organisms of Meaning. But I don't expect that to make sense to anyone so unwilling to consider challenges to philosophical materialism as yourself.
Quoting wonderer1
[url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/opinion/sunday/do-you-believe-in-god-or-is-that-a-software-glitch.html?unlocked_article_code=1.g04.xgxn.TY5RJDI5v3XG&smid=url-share]Do you believe in God, or is that a software glitch?
Of course. Different neural networks will interact with books in different ways. Why would you expect it to be otherwise? Even different LLMs produce their own unique and unpredictable thoughts, and they are not even conscious in the way we naively think of ourselves as being conscious.
The thing is, your 'point' is a mystification of what is a relatively simple and clear physical picture.
There is no need for a 'different level' for semantic content to exist on. Semantic content is attributed to linguistic media (letters, Braille, Morse code, etc.) by neural nets which have been trained to attribute semantic content to such media. Such attribution of semantic content to linguistic media is a function of the physical state of systems capable of doing such decoding.
Quoting Wayfarer
Right. This is completely consistent with the straightforward physical picture outlined above.
Quoting Wayfarer
And yet you rely on LLMs. :roll:
If you actually understand that language has an aspect that can't be accounted for by physical principles, I'd expect you could come up with a way of falsifying any physicalist account of language. That would be a serious philosophical achievement. Go for it!
It is not. It is well-accepted science which your physicalist blinders won't allow you to ackowledge.
Quoting wonderer1
Neural networks which are created by humans to fulfil their requirements according to specifications. There are no such systems existing spontaneously as a consequence of physical causation.
Quoting wonderer1
I use them as a reference source and I see no incongruity in so doing. I'm not a Luddite.
Quoting wonderer1
What do you mean by physicalism? What are you arguing for? I've presented a couple of sources that call the physicalist view into account, you won't even acknowledge them, so what's the point of continuing?
I will circle back to this earler comment, because I think it underlies a lot of what is being said. Objectivity was crucial to the emergence of early modern science, which distinguished it from the intuition-based, introspective theorizing of the medieval and ancient world. So it is not coincidental that the first uses of the word 'objectivity' began to appear in the early 1600s. This emerged alongside Galileo's new physics, and his conceptual division between the primary and secondary qualities of objects?-?the primary being figure (or shape), size, position, motion, and quantity, while the secondary included color, taste, aroma, and sound. Descartes further entrenched this model with the separation of mind (res cogitans) and body (res extensa), set against the backdrop of a universe devoid of teleology (action for a purpose). Right knowledge becomes the mathematically precise description of data in space-time.
In effect this divides the world into separate realms. There's the physical domain - objective, quantifiable, tractable to empirical analysis - and the subjective domain - the inner world, personal and private, the domain of values. We respect the right of individual conscience and the importance of values but they're not real in the same sense as objective facts. You yourself say this frequently. So you're saying there's the scientific view, maybe it's not perfect, but it's all we have, but to question that is to 'posit the existence of another realm'. And that's because the Cartesian division is implicit in 'the grammar of our worldview'. That's how it has been set up for us. We see the external, material, real world, and the private, ineffable, knowing subject as separated realms.
See these episodes of John Vervaeke, 'Awakening from the Meaning Crisis' for a detailed analysis.
Ep 20 - Galileo and the Death of the Cosmos
21 - Martin Luther and Descartes
22 - Descartes vs Hobbes
I will conclude for now by making the observation that nothing is 'purely' or 'only' physical. That has been made abundantly clear by physics. It is not an appeal to 'quantum woo', as I've studied the issue closely, from a philosophical perspective. It is beyond dispute that at the most fundamental level, we can no longer conceive of reality in terms of particulate matter, of energetic particles obeying deteministic laws. Determinism went out the window with the uncertainty principle, and it's not going to be revived. Particles are now understood to be excitations of field states. And what field states are is far from obvious.
But nothing about that statement vitiates or calls into question science. I'm in awe of science, technology, computers (where I've made a living for the last two decades as a technical writer) and medicine. It's constantly evolving and endlessly fascinating. What I reject is the leftover view that the world and everything in it can be understood on the basis of physical principles and physical causation.
The reason physics is paradigmatic in modern thought, is because it encapsulates the very idea of scientific certainty and precision. In creating the Cartesian vision, physics excludes whatever can't be described and predicted by the mathematical laws of bodies and forces. But it has to be recalled that all of this rests on three fundamental steps: idealisation (i.e. the 'ideal bodies' 'ideal planes' etc), abstraction (i.e. abstracting away all of those attributes that can't be predicted according to physical principles) and objectification. Because of the immense prestige and success of physical science over the last two centuries, this is extended to serve a paradigm for life and everything it entails. But it cannot be that.
[quote=Thomas Nagel, The Core of Mind and Cosmos; https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-cosmos/]The scientific revolution of the 17th century, which has given rise to such extraordinary progress in the understanding of nature, depended on a crucial limiting step at the start: It depended on subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental – consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose. The physical sciences as they have developed since then describe, with the aid of mathematics, the elements of which the material universe is composed, and the laws governing their behavior in space and time.
We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.
However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.
So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory.[/quote]
From this I have formed the view that as soon as life appears then you have the appearance of something which is not reducible to physics or chemistry. Because it is the beginning of the appearance of perspective, and, as argued at the outset, without perspective nothing can be said to exist (see How Time Began with the First Eye Opening.)
And with that, bye for now. :party:
Quoting Janus
I think this is sensible. I personally can't rule out idealism, but I have no good reason as yet to accept it as true. But who here actually has any expertise in this matter? Are we just unsophisticated yokels sounding off about ideas we find most appealing emotionally?
Quoting Wayfarer
It's a case well put. But how do we rule out a different approach and model all together? Does it have to be physicalism versus idealsim? Is dualistic thinking all we have to resolve our biggest quesions? I'd be interested to hear more from a rigorous, post-modern perspective assessing the foundational axioms or presuppositions that may be propping up our confusions. And if the world is entirely mind created and contingent, how do we know anything for certain about either metaphysical position?
Yes, absolutely, knowledge for its own sake. Do you use every bit of knowledge you attain? Do you even try to? Of course not. It's impossible. Have you ever read about something you were not planning to use? I would imagine so. Probably most of the things any of us learn about the topics here. How many of use make a living with such knowledge?
Learning is one of the defining characteristics of our species. The drive to learn is another. We [I]can[/I] learn. It's inconceivable that we not bother. All of us not attempt to learn anything that doesn't have a practical purpose?
What's the point of gazing out over the world from the top of a mountain, or the Grand Canyon, or watching an aurora borealis? What's the point of listening to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos or Beethoven's string quartets? What's the point of reading Dune or The Malazan Book of the Fallen? What's the point of Monet, Michaelangelo, or Escher? What's the point of learning?
It's all joy.
As to the question of the nature of consciousness—we have the scientific studies on one hand and the naive "folk" understanding on the other. As to which to rely on, I will choose the former because I don't think intuition is an especially reliable guide to understanding the nature of things. But that's just me—others will make up their own minds, hopefully being as free from confirmation bias as possible.
Just when I thought I was out......
I explained above the 'Cartesian divide' and the source of the mind-matter division. Ever since, Western philosophy has vacillated between materialism (the objective is real, everything arises from matter) and idealism (the subject and mind alone is real). You're right in saying that is a dualism, but there are many layers of meaning. Bernardo Kastrup points out that materialism - that the basic constituents of reality are material in nature - and idealism - that reality is experiential in nature - are incommensurable types of explanations. It's not a contest between different kinds of constituents, but a completely different perspective. Idealism, in the way that I intend it, and I think in the sense in which it is meaningful, is not about what 'things are made of'. It is about the nature of reality as experienced. It's not positing 'mind' as a kind of building block or constituent in the way that materialism did with atoms. It is pointing out that whatever is real, is meaningful only insofar as it is meaningful for a subject. Materialism attempts to arrive at certainty with reference to an ostensibly mind-independent physical reality. Idealism as I understand it points out that this is an oxymoronic conception, as whatever is known of matter, is known by the mind through perception of objects. So the idea of a mind-independent object is self-contradictory.
But it's very important not to make an object out of 'spirit' or 'mind'. Nishijima-roshi puts it like this:
[quote=Three Philosophies, One Reality;https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/Nishijima-s-Study-3-Philos-1-Reality.pdf]The Universe is, according to philosophers who base their beliefs on idealism, a place of the spirit. Other philosophers whose beliefs are based on a materialistic view, say that the Universe is composed of the matter we see in front of our eyes. Buddhist philosophy takes a view which is neither idealistic nor materialistic; Buddhists do not believe that the Universe is composed of only matter. They believe that there is something else other than matter. But there is a difficulty here; if we use a concept like spirit to describe that something else other than matter, people are prone to interpret Buddhism as some form of spiritualistic religion and think that Buddhists must therefore believe in the actual existence of spirit. So it becomes very important to understand the Buddhist view of the concept spirit.
I am careful to refer to spirit as a concept here because in fact Buddhism does not believe in the actual existence of spirit. So what is this something else other than matter which exists in this Universe? If we think that there is a something which actually exists other than matter, our understanding will not be correct; nothing (physical) exists outside of matter. Buddhists believe in the existence of the Universe. Some people explain the Universe as a universe based on matter. But there also exists something which we call value or meaning. A Universe consisting only of matter leaves no room for value or meaning in civilizations and cultures. Matter alone has no value. We can say that the Universe is constructed with matter, but we must also say that matter works for some purpose.
So in our understanding of the Universe we should recognize the existence of something other than matter. We can call that something spirit, but if we do we should remember that in Buddhism, the word "spirit" is a figurative expression for value or meaning. We do not say that spirit exists in reality; we use the concept only figuratively.[/quote]
Compare:
[quote=Wittgenstiein]The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value.
If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.[/quote]
//
Quoting Patterner
Quite so. 'Man desires to know', said Aristotle. Philosophy is the pursuit of an understanding that is worth having for its own sake.
Yes. I can see this. And I like this more sophisticated framing of the idea.
Quoting Three Philosophies, One Reality
Cool. Noted.
Fuck, there's a lot to remember is this caper...
Have a restful break.
Quoting Wayfarer
Kant correctly recognized that taking a strictly materialist stance depends on an idealism, since the very notion of a mind-independent object covertly smuggles in all the subjective apparatus needed to have an object appear before a subject. So realism and idealism are not opposites but versions of the same subject -based thinking. With regard to a Buddhist claim that there is something ‘else’ besides matter, I can’t see this as anything other than a reformulation of a dualist idealism.
if you want to get beyond the realism-idealism, fact-value split, you have to be able to see value WITHIN matter , not separate from it and alongside it. Chalmers tries to pull the former trick by starting from spirit and matter as separate entities and then mixing them together like ingredients of a pie (panpsychism). To arrive at a thinking which transcends the traditional ideal-realism binary, you have to turn to phenomenological and poststructuralist perspectives.
Quoting JoshsNo matter how anyone views these matters, people were measuring and altering stone and wood to make buildings and bridges long before Galileo.
Quoting JoshsI've read this a few times. I'll keep trying. I just don't see how this changes the fact that physical things are measurable in various ways, but consciousness is not. In what physical terms can we discuss consciousness? What is its speed? How much does it weigh? What are it's physical dimensions? Does it have mass or charge? We can say an awful lot about the physical world with our physical sciences, but our physical sciences can't say anything about consciousness.
For the purposes of my philosophical thesis, I make a distinction between "physical" (the study of nature as a system) and "material" (the study of matter as an object). So, measurements of "neural activity"*1 are observing the material effects of energy exchanges, not invisible Energy*2 per se. Therefore, "if it cannot be directly observed and measured" I would say that the "activity" is immaterial, not non-physical. Hence, "neural activity" is a process-of-change in a material substrate, not a material object itself.
That distinction is based on current scientific evidence that Energy is causal*3, not material ; the agent of change, not the substance being changed*4. When a sculptor (the causal agent) molds clay into a statue, his inputs are both intentional and energetic, and the output is a new material shape. :smile:
*1. Neural activity is the electrical and chemical signals that occur in neurons, the brain's primary cells, and is vital for brain function. ___Google AI overview
Note --- Signals (semiology) are communications between minds, not the material substrate that is used to make the signals sensable. For example, Indian smoke signals are the meaning, not the smoke.
*2. Yes, energy is invisible; you cannot see it directly because it is not a physical object, but rather a concept describing the ability to do work, and its presence is only observed through its effects like movement, heat, or light. ___Google AI overview
*3. Yes, in the context of physics, energy is considered causal, meaning that the transfer of energy between objects is generally seen as the mechanism behind a cause-and-effect relationship; where the "cause" is the application of energy, and the "effect" is the resulting change in the system due to that energy transfer. ___Google AI overview
*4. Energy is potential for form-change in Matter. The Matter/Energy Equivalence of E=MC^2 is a mathematical relationship, knowable by logical inference, not an object knowable by physical senses. Reference : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence
AGENT AND EFFECT
Quoting Patterner
You can only measure dimensions and weight of something which is presumed to remain qualitatively the same over the course of the quantitative measuring and weighing. Any calculation of differences in degree presupposes no difference in kind during the process. Otherwise one is dealing with a new thing and has to start over again. The world doesn’t consist of objects with attributes and properties which remain qualitatively the same from one moment to the next. We invented the concept of object as a qualitatively self-same thing so that we could then proceed to perform calculative measurements. Obviously, this works out well for us, but it doesn’t mean that ‘physical’ objects exist out there in the world rather than in the abstractions that we perform on the continually changing data we actually experience in our interactions with the world.
Right, but it is obvious that value and meaning are felt, in their various ways, by sentient beings. No one can sensibly deny that fact. We might be deterministic organisms, but we will never feel ourselves to be so, and it what we feel about ourselves and our lives that counts when it comes to quality of life.
Also we don't know and can never know the truth about whether or not we are deterministic beings, so the question is of little importance except perhaps in the moral domain. In that connection itt can be argued that the libertarian model of free will leads to unnecessary and unwarranted feelings of guilt and pride and blame and a desire for revenge against those who transgress moral codes
Quoting Patterner
I'm not dismissive of them. I've read both years ago. I just don't find their arguments as compelling as I once did. Wayfarer wonders why I spend time arguing about things I say "don't matter". What I'm arguing against is the idea that the truth of idealism is obvious and that physicalism is inconsistent or incoherent. Such facile attempts to dismiss opponent's views and the lack of ability to recognize that others can be totally familiar with the same arguments as you are and yet disagree about what they demonstrate is what I argue against. And what often goes together with that attitude: the assumption that if the other disagrees then the other must not really understand the arguments, is also what I continually argue against.
Quoting Gnomon
I wouldn't use that terminology, but I don't disagree with what I take to be the thrust of what you are saying.
I think you may mis-interpret 's arguments. He doesn't say that "physicalism is inconsistent" as a scientific approach. But that it is incomplete as a philosophical approach. For example in his quotation from "— Three Philosophies, One Reality", the point seems to be that the "something else", traditionally called "Spirit", is our mental evaluation of material reality : an Idea or mental model or mode of thought, or Reality as conceived by a Mind. This is the same observation that the Quantum Physics pioneers found strange-but-undeniable in their attempts to study the foundations of material reality*1*2*3. The "something else" or "missing element" in pre-quantum physics was the observing Mind : the "mental evaluation". :nerd:
*1. "What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning".
___ Werner Heisenberg
*2. “Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.” ___ Erwin Schrödinger
*3. Dear Schrödinger, You are the only contemporary physicist, besides Laue, who sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality—if only one is honest. Most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality—reality as something independent of what is experimentally established. ___ A. Einstein
Quoting Janus
What terminology would you use in place of "immaterial" or "non-physical" on a philosophy forum? Spiritual or Mental or Ideal or???? I've been looking for a less-prejudicial term for years.
How would you phrase the "thrust" of what I'm saying, regarding The Mind-Created World? :smile:
Non-reductive and/ or non-eliminative physicalism are not incomplete, any more than any metaphysical hypothesis is incomplete. The Churchlands argue consistently and extensively for eliminative physicalism, and they are professional philosophers, so it cannot be ruled out as a philosophical approach either. The reality is that we don't and can't know what the case is when it comes to metaphysics,
It's no different than referring to commonsense realism as "naive realism". I think naive realism is the default pre-critical attitude which we all have to the world. At the same time, I think naive idealism ( in the sense of anti-physicalism) is the default pre-critical attitude we all have towards the nature of mind and consciousness. Probably people are pre-critically naive dualists in that they hold to naive realism about the world and naive idealism about the mind. It is only once critical thought is brought to bear on that unexamined dualism that the "interaction problem" gives us pause.
Quoting Patterner
This is only so as long as you hold to the naive understanding of consciousness. Once you admit, even though consciousness does not intuitively seem to be a physical phenomenon, the possibility that it might nonetheless really be nothing more than that, then you open your mind to possibilities other than what simply seems intuitively obvious.
All that said, the real problem is that we have no way of testing any metaphysical hypothesis, whether that be physicalism or idealism or whatever. We have no way of determining whether any of our hypotheses have any real bearing on the ultimate nature of reality, or even whether the very idea of questioning the ultimate nature of reality is coherent given that a determinable answer seems to be impossible in principle.
So, perhaps we are reduced to just trying to address what is the most useful or interesting way to talk about things. How do you imagine we might go about finding out whether consciousness is non-physical or not? Do you believe there is some fact of the matter we might one day discover?
Quoting Patterner
Sure there has. You just have to read phenomenology.
Here's a problem:
Consciousness is a natural thing. Anything in the universe is natural. The problem is the belief that there cannot be any aspect of the universe that is not in the purview of our physical sciences. As Nagel says in [I]Mind and Cosmos[/I]:
How have we concluded that we have so great a grasp of things that we can rule out any possibility that something exists outside of that understanding? The last sentence should be:
"If this account would not entail these facts, then consciousness must be an additional, non-physical property of the world."
Not being willing to consider that possibility means never attempting non-physicalist methods. So, if the answer is outside such methods, it will never be found.
In any event-Quoting JoshsI don't see any suggestions of physical characteristics of consciousness in your quote. I'm not suggesting there is a spacial element. Consciousness is not an object. But we can discuss physical properties of other processes, and see how they come about due to the physical properties of particles. Electron shells explain redox reactions, which are a vital part of metabolism. What can we say about consciousness?
If we don't see such a thing, it could be we simply haven't seen it [I]yet[/I]. Which is the same thing I often hear from physicalists, on TPF and elsewhere.
I agree that consciousness is a natural process, but understanding this natural process can give us a new way to understand the concept of the natural that bypasses the limitations of traditional physicalism. For instance, recent scientific models of consciousness see it as a synthetic organizing process which is not strictly in the head , but consists of exchanges and reciprocal activities that move between the brain, the body and an environment , which is itself co-defined by the patterns of interaction between it and the organism. Understanding consciousness in this naturalistic way allows us to see how intersubjectively formed concepts developed in a social community on the basis of real discursive and material interactions in a human-built environment have led to theories about the nature of the world such as physicalism, the idea that there are such things as properties of the world independent of our conceptual interactions with that world, and we have direct, unmeditated access to such properties. Such a theory has been quite useful for technological progress, but it is a woefully inadequate theory when it comes to explaining the organization of living systems, consciousness and human cognition and affectivity.
There are competing approaches to naturalism, and the underlying assumptions guiding what we now call the physical sciences don’t remain static. I assume that within a generation or two physics, which has already in the past 125 years substantially altered its concepts of the physical, will come closer to where the biological and embodied cognitive sciences have arrived on this issue.
I was not familiar with those terms. But based on the definitions below*1, I assume that and I would generally agree with such inclusive concepts. However, there might still be some variation in how the role of Mind is conceived*2. Specifically, A> the notion that a human mind creates its own mental world (a worldview), or B> the more extreme possibility that our temporary cosmos (The World) was actually created from scratch by a pre-cosmic Mind. The latter idea could be food for further argumentation. Although, as you said, "we can't know what is the case"*3, as philosophers, not scientists, our job is to speculate & conjecture & rationalize about what might be the case. What if Mind, not Matter, is the explanation for everything in the world? :smile:
*1. [i]Non-eliminative physicalism is a metaphysical view that all things are physical, but some aspects of the mental are not reducible to physical states. . . .
Non-eliminative physicalism is a way to preserve physicalism while still acknowledging that mental phenomena can't be reduced to physical phenomena by scientific laws.[/i] ___ Google AI overview
Note --- That all material objects (things) are physical is not controversial. But some eliminative-materialists (is that an actual position?) might disagree with the "not-reducible" part. I suppose, because non-reducible Mind could knock all-powerful Matter off the metaphysical throne as the creator of our world.
*2. Metaphysical materialism is a philosophical view that all mental, emotional, conscious, and philosophical states are a result of the physical or material world. This means that everything can be explained by looking at matter, or "the real world". ___ Google AI overview
*3. In philosophy, "the case" refers to a specific, detailed scenario or situation presented as a thought experiment to explore a particular philosophical concept or problem, often designed to elicit a judgment or reaction from the reader about the situation, thereby illuminating the underlying philosophical issue at hand; essentially, it's a hypothetical example used to analyze a philosophical idea. ___ Google AI overview
Note --- "The Case" is a hypothesis, not a verified fact. We can Believe, but not Know for sure, what is the absolute case. But when has that ever stopped philosophers from deducing from the available evidence what seems to be the all-inclusive Case/Truth?
Quoting Joshs
Nathan Widder offers an interesting account of overcoming the gap between physical things and consciousness. He considers Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche.
“While mechanism correctly locates knowledge in quantity, through its uncritical assumption
of unity (the atom), it reduces quality directly to quantity and establishes an absolute division
between knowledge (what can be ‘objectively’ quantified) and value (the ‘subjective’
interpretation or assessment of this ‘objective’ reality). Units enable counting and calculation,
but they also abstract away constitutive relations. Thus on a concrete level where no unities
or things pre-exist their relations, quantity cannot be a number but only a relation. As
Deleuze declares: ‘Quantity itself is therefore inseparable from difference in quantity’. This
difference in quantity is intensive, an ordinal relation of more or less. Nietzsche calls it an
‘order of rank’, which is also an order of power, of strength and weakness. As an intensive
difference, it cannot be measured along a fixed numerical scale that could reduce difference
between forces to equality: as Deleuze maintains, ‘to dream of two equal forces…is coarse
and approximate dream, a statistical dream in which the living is submerged but which
chemistry dispels’. Difference in quantity thereby designates a fundamental heterogeneity
within force relations. However, although the world of forces is one of differences in quantity that are only later organized into unities, Nietzsche maintains that this quantitative difference is never
experienced as such, but instead is felt in terms of quality. ‘Our “knowing” limits itself to establishing quantities; but we cannot help feeling these differences in quantity as qualities…we sense bigness and smallness in relation to the conditions of our existence…with regard to making possible our existence we sense even relations between magnitudes as qualities’” (Widder, ‘From duration to eternal return’)
This quote means that our values are inseparable from our qualitative evaluations of relations of forces. On the other hand, relations of forces and their evaluations are embedded within our procedures of quantitative measurements. While qualities remain heterogeneous to quantities, they are not merely subjective interpretations of an objectively independent reality. They compose an integral part of the perspective plane of the will to power.
In 's post above, he quotes from a talk on Buddhism :
"So in our understanding of the Universe we should recognize the existence of something other than matter. We can call that something spirit, but if we do we should remember that in Buddhism, the word "spirit" is a figurative expression for value or meaning. We do not say that spirit exists in reality; we use the concept only figuratively". — Three Philosophies, One Reality
Traditionally, in most world cultures, their philosophies & religions used terms like "spirit" to distinguish the material world from our mental models of it. Some of those models involve Ghosts as reified dead people, but for moderns the "spirit" is obviously a production of the observing mind (apparition or hallucination), not an actual person. That's why I try to avoid a term that is offensive to some on this forum, who have a low opinion of religion in particular, or philosophy in general. For example, I use "Self" in place of "Soul". But what substance is a Self made of?
The notion of walking spirits is based on the ancient philosophical concept of the Mind or Consciousness or Soul of a person, as something meta-physical (non-physical or mental) that can be known only by inference or imagination or sixth sense, not by physical senses. Therefore, the "something other" we call Spirit is our mental evaluation of material reality, in which Mind matters and Intellect makes sense. Reality as conceived by a Mind, not as perceived by the visual organ. :smile:
Note --- Even those who believe that there is life beyond the grave, are aware that this second life is immaterial or semi-material. That's why ghosts are portrayed as wispy or translucent. And they have even invented a semi-material substance, ectoplasm, to serve as a semi-scientific term for something that is real but not material. Would "Ideal" be a more philosophical term for that neither-fish-nor-fowl meaning? Do you have a better idea of term for a conceptual object?
I agree. But why should anything about physical properties and the laws of physics suggest subjective experience? They are different areas of investigation. I don't believe physics or neuroscience will ever be able to explain how the physical gives rise to experience, because experience cannot be rigorously observed together with observing neural processes. We cannot observe neural processes in vivo, we can only measure their effects via fMRI and EEG technologies etc.
To me the lack of explainability of experience in physical terms is not a central criterion in deciding whether experience and consciousness of that experience is just a manifestation of physical processes . QM shows us physical phenomena which are not explainable in terms of our macro physical concepts, and it just isn't the right tool for explaining something like consciousness beyond underpinning neuroscientific investigations of the physical properties and functions of the brain.
The real question is as to what else consciousness could be if not physical. You can say it's mental, but then does not the mental as far as we know supervene on the physical? We can imagine the logical possibility that the mental is somehow completely independent, but that is just a logical possibility we seem to have no evidence to believe in. And that logical possibility seems vacuous unless mind is posited as another substance, and then we have dualism.
If we posit one (neutral) substance that manifests both physical and mental attributes that might make more sense. But to assert that mind is ubiquitously inherent in or alongside matter from the beginning doesn't eliminate the problem of imagining what that mind looks like. It could not be anything like the intuitive introspectively derived notion we have of our own minds. The problem I've always had with panpsychism (such as Strawson postulates) is that I can get no idea of what it looks like.
Leaving aside the possibility that such a mind is an omniscient, omnipotent God who will judge us and accordingly determine the nature of our life after this one, what difference do you think it would make to how we live our lives?
Agree. I've often said that idealism really doesn't change anything. There is nothing I do now that would change.
That said, for others there seem to be at least two reasons for change. For some folk, this idea appeals to their vanity. 1) They want to know more about this 'secret' ontology and be special in some way. 2) They believe that a judgement is coming, as you say - [quote="Janus;953617" that such a mind is an omniscient, omnipotent God who will judge us[/quote]. Then people might fall over themselves in a vain attempt to anticipate how they might be judged.
I find it interesting that some secular philosophers, like AC Grayling, have left behind the word physicalism these days and use the term naturalism. Any thoughts on this word? The problem for me is that how do we draw a distinction between a natural and a supernatural world if physicalism isn't a distinguishing factor? If idealism is true than this is part of naturalism?
But critical idealism will recognise that in a way that metaphysical realism, like most here, would not. Acknowledging the unavoidably subjective nature of knowledge is in direct contradiction to metaphysical realism. And also Bernardo Kastrup questions that idealism and materialism are opposites at all. Idealism is not positing 'mental stuff' as a constituent of reality, in the way that materialism does. Materialism attempts to explain the primary datum of experience (consciousness) in terms of inferred, abstract constructs (matter). This makes materialism dependent on a speculative leap that is ungrounded in direct experience.
Quoting Joshs
Idealism is perfectly compatible with realism, but not scientific or philosophical materialism. But I agree that Husserl and Heidegger performed a valuable service by returning to the 'things themselves' and the actualities of embodied existence which is not found in Kant.
Quoting Gnomon
I should say something more about that. Gudo Nishijima was a S?t? Zen master, who died about 12 years ago. He was not a monk, he had a career in the banking industry in Tokyo. He elaborated a philosophical system based on the teaching of Dogen who was the founder of S?t? Zen. His 'three philosophies and one reality' can be summarised as follows - human understanding unfolds through a dialectical process involving stages.
Idealism: This stage corresponds to subjective and theoretical thinking. It represents abstract ideas and the way humans interpret reality through their minds. However, idealism alone leads to suffering due to the inability to reconcile these ideas with the material world.
Materialism: This is the objective view focusing on the material, external world. It considers reality purely in terms of physical phenomena and disregards subjective experience. This perspective, while useful, obscures something fundamental to human existence.
Realism (Synthesis): This phase integrates the subjective (idealistic) and objective (materialistic) views, forming a more balanced and practical understanding. It emphasizes the role of action and experience as a way to unify these perspectives.
Reality Itself: The ultimate stage transcends philosophical frameworks. It is the direct experience of reality through practice, particularly Zazen (sitting meditation). Dogen highlights that reality cannot be fully captured in words or intellectual concepts; it must be lived and experienced.
All this is laid out in his book To Meet the Real Dragon.
[I]If you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make?[/I]
Excellent saying.
Of course, it applies to quite a few topics around here. But here we all are. :grin:
Deleuze grapples with the issue of the relation between an implicit creative dimension of sense and an explicitly logical, extensive field of actuality by proposing to think the two aspects together in a transcendental-empirical synthesis.The transcendental dimension is represented by an anonymous, pre personal field of reciprocally interacting differences from which emerge singularities and intensities. These structures are actualized on the empirical dimension as wholes and parts, qualities and extensities. Deleuzian intensities are external to actualized extensity and quality as their generative cause and impetus of transformation. Intensities affirm the paradoxical, the heterogeneous, the singular, the incompossible, the Eternal Return of the different, the indeterminate, the non-sensical, the roll of the dice within sense, the object=x as difference in general, the virtual event of sense as intensity, the verb underlying the sleight of hand of the axiomatic , converging, referential functions of actualizing predication. Deleuze(1987) aligns his intensive-extensive duality with Bergson's distinction between duration and the empirical multiplicity of magnitude.
In Deleuze’s distinction between the unseparated implicit multiplicity of the transcendental field and explicit logical patterns, the latter are generated within the former but are heterogeneous to it and outside of it. Logic and extension by degree are developments and explications (secondary degradations) of the implicit (Virtual). The illusion is confusing the implicit and the explicit , the intrinsic and the extrinsic. For Deleuze, the implicit intensities (Eternal Return) generate the logical , conceptual, theoretical, lawful principles for empirical domains, and then are held steady in the background, beyond the reach of the conceptual and logical patterns, which cancel them by freezing and isolating them.
Idealism or Deism would make no material difference in your life. But it might make a philosophical difference. What difference does your participation in a philosophical forum make in how you live your life? Personally, I have no ambition to change the world, just myself . . . . to change my mind, and the meaning of my life. :smile:
Karl Marx
Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it",
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theses_on_Feuerbach
Difference is understood to be constitutive of both meaning and identity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_(philosophy)
How to make a distinction between natural and supernatural—it seems to come down to the idea that over and above the natural visible world is an invisible spiritual world. I have long wondered whether the latter is imagined on account of dreams. The standard story seems to be that the invisible world of the supernatural (gods, demons, spirits and other immaterial entities) is imagined as an explanation for what would have seemed to the early humans to be invisible forces, and that idea seems reasonably plausible too.
If the supernatural is an invisible world, then it seems to follow that it can be accessed (although modern thinking would say peopled) only by the imagination. Being imagined as an invisible world would seem to lead to the idea of immateriality as well. So I think you are right. The association between a natural visible world and physicalism, and the association between a supernatural invisible world and ant-physicalism both seem natural.
Should we follow our intuitions, our natural imaginative inclinations in deciding what is a valid and/ or plausible ontology? Or should we apply critical thought and the correctives of logical and empirical knowledge to our pre-critical inclinations? That is the question, and the further question is ' does it matter?'.
When people take their own ideas, what seems self-evident to them, too seriously it seems that culture wars are looming. For some on both sides this is can become a moral crusade. To my way of thinking that is definitely a negative—it is social consequences that matter, and divisive thinking is that last thing needed toady IMO.
Quoting Janus
Indeed, binary or dualistic thinking like this is certainly responsible for many unnecessarily conflicts.
I have often thought that one of the reasons people are attracted to superphysical ideas is their aesthetic appeal. It perhaps seems more harmonious to imagine that there is a transcendent realm, something grander and more meaningful beyond the physical world. I have noticed how often advocates of the transcendent describe the physicalist position as an ugly worldview - stunted, disenchanted, devoid of mystery, limiting.
I think this is right. The aesthetic appeal is important. I'm reminded of the sublime aesthetics of the great cathedrals and Christian rituals.
I don't view the physical world as ugly, disenchanted or devoid of mystery, though. I think it is beautiful and enchanting in its diversity and complexity of form, and full of mystery. And when you think about it the beauty of the cathedrals and rituals are themselves physical beauty. It's a beauty that seems to point beyond itself. to be sure, but I think all beauty does that, insofar as we don't really know why or how it is that things can be beautiful. I wonder some animals experience beauty. The ritual nest-making and extraordinary plumage of some birds seems to suggest that they do.
Nice saying! I think we are all here on account of the magnitude (apart from the sciences, and even there) of human ignorance. Hopefully we are all here to learn and change our ideas when we encounter ideas that explore deeper and make more sense than what we might presently believe.
Quoting Gnomon
To me the only different participating in a philosophical forum could make would be to sharpen and clarify my ideas and also lead me to be more open to alternatives to my own thinking. I have changed my mind on metaphysical matters several times since first participating on philosophy forums, when I have encountered ideas that seem to go deeper and be more plausible.
Indeed, although I don’t much like cathedrals. They are striking rather than beautiful. I think ideas can also seem ugly or beautiful. For instance, the idea of a world where there is nothing after death, where limitations are imposed by natural laws, and where there is no transformative reconciliation with the ground of being, may feel ugly to some people - much the way a painting by Francis Bacon might unsettle or alarm some.
I'm just repeating myself...
Whereas I think it is an open question, subject to constant revision as our conception of nature is constantly changing. There are strong lines of argument that rationality itself is not subject to naturalistic explanations.
As to the natural vs. the supernatural/transcendental:
If nature consists of that which is visible and measurable in quantifiable ways, then is the mind and, more specifically, that which we address as I-ness which is aware of its own mind and its many aspects (thoughts, ideas, intentions, emotions, etc.) not natural? For the latter is neither visible nor measurable in quantifiable ways. Hence notions such as that of the transcendental ego.
As to the difference between physicalism and non-physicalism:
I so far find that far more important than any sense of the esthetic is materialism’s/physicalism’s seeming entailment of nihilism—in so far as this stance is that wherein no intrinsic meaning occurs in anything whatsoever.
While I don’t find non-physicalism to be univocal in what is upheld as an alternative to physicalism, physicalism does in all its variants entail nothingness in the sense of non-being upon mortal death, as well as before the commencement of life. Such that all life thereby culminates in this very nothingness. (Can there be any variant of physicalism that doesn’t directly necessitate this?)
How, then, can physicalism be understood to allow for the possibility of a meaningful cosmos, hence a meaningful existence, and, by extension, of a meaningful life (be it in general or in particular)?
And this for many is indeed a differentiation that makes for quite a substantial difference—one’s individual aesthetic appreciations aside.
Which is an idea I personally find quite lovely. To me this is meaningful. We have one life, make it work.
Quoting javra
Meaning is a human term which is the product any number of contexts and we area sense making creatures - we can't help ourselves.
Deleuze changes his strong emphasis on Eternal Return and the privilege of the virtual.
“Nietzsche’s aphorisms shatter the linear unity of knowledge, only to invoke the cyclic unity of the eternal return. This is much as to say that the fascicular system does not really break with dualism, with complementarity between subject and object…unity is thwarted in the object, while a new type of unity triumphs in the subject”. (‘A thousand plateaus’, pg.6)
To avoid a strong opposition between virtual and actual modes of difference, Deleuze moves toward the phenomena of consolidation. While focusing on describing singular assemblages, he offers a much more elaborated approach to a complex mode of interdependence between the actual and the virtual. Now, he designates the phenomena of becoming a line of flight. At the same time, the actualized individuation and the tendency to organization are expressed through the concepts of the molecular and molar lines. Together, they compose an ‘open whole,’ which is indeed a paradoxical concept. However, the emergence of something qualitatively new cannot be explained exclusively by the means of logical, dialectical or semiotic transition. This obstacle makes any totality simultaneously impossible and necessary, a place of an irretrievable fullness. Deleuze theorizes reality in terms of eventuality and discontinuity. He follows the principle that the nature of elements does not predetermine them to enter one type of arrangement rather than another. Therefore, totality, an open whole, should be conceptualized afresh, depending on a considered problematic field. There is not the same transcendental-empirical synthesis, that Deleuze applies again and again. This vision sets in motion the productivity of the creative construction of Deleuzian philosophy.
OK, sure. For what it’s worth, personally, I too for my own reasons find the notion of nothingness after this life more appealing than any other (nice and interesting to be here, but enough with the metaphorical headaches after one entire lifetime of them has gone by). All the same, whether there is or isn’t something for us after our death to this world is not something derivable from—or even necessarily in tune with—our affinities, or else that which we emotively find most comforting. Rather irrational to assume that it is.
The issue I here responded to was of a difference that makes a difference between physicalism and non-physicalism. Nothing of your statements dispels the apparent reality that physicalism entails nihilism whereas non-physicalism does not. And to most people out there, this logical difference between the two is both sharp and substantial ... as well as bearing some weight on the issue of how one ought to best live one's life.
I find some cathedrals (for example Chartres) beautiful and many others merely impressive. St Peters I found to be a mixture of beauty and impressiveness (due to the sheer scale) .Perhaps when it comes to the natural world it's the vision of dissolution and death that disturbs some people.
Quoting javra
I think you are talking about theism because even if the world were simply non-physical and/ or held in some universal mind, that does not on its own lend it an overarching meaning. You need to add a God that cares for us, has a purpose for us, and the promise of a better life to come and personal immortality to give that overarching universal meaning.
Also I don't agree that physicalism leads to nihilism. Ironically I think it is religion that leads to nihilism by positing one meaning for all and thus nihilating the creative possibility that people have to find their own meanings by which to direct their lives.
Quoting javra
Energy itself is not measurable except by gauging its effects. If you accept the idea that consciousness is not anything over and above neural activity, then its effects are measurable. The transcendental ego is arguably merely an idea. Even if it were more than merely an idea we could have no way to tell.
As with most versions of Buddhism for example, I strongly disagree.
Quoting Janus
Playing footloose with what the term "nihilism" signifies. For my part, I've already specified what I intended it to mean in this context. Basically, that of existential nihilism: the interpretation of life being inherently pointless.
Quoting Janus
A can of worms that, so I'll leave it be.
Quoting Janus
We can have no way of discerning the difference between a) the self/ego which knows (aka the transcendental ego) and b) the self/ego which is known by (a) (aka the empirical ego)? And this even in principle?
In virtue of what logic do you affirm this truth? And this contra to what Kant, James, and Husserl affirmed as a known.
When people for example say "I am tall (at least relative to ants or some such)" we know ourselves to be tall but also know that we as the consciousness/awareness or else mind which so knows cannot of itself hold the property of tallness. Whereas "my body is tall (therefore I am tall)" can be cogent, "my awareness/mind is tall (therefore I am tall)" can't. Or is this something we could have no way to know about as well.
So you think Buddhism gives life meaning? In virtue of what? Rebirth? Karma? Even if those, what guarantors their universality? Merely learning to let go of attachments cannot be an overarching meaning to life itself, since there are very good personal reasons for attempting to do this.
Quoting javra
Pointless according to who? Is not the idea that life is basically pointless not merely a subjective opinion? What about such things as enjoyment, interest, creativity and even survival? Is there no point to any of those just because life is thought to be a merely physical phenomenon? And even if life were basically mind (whatever that could mean) rather than basically matter or energy, how would that fact alone give it more point? These are the same questions I already asked that you did not even attempt to answer.
Quoting javra
Why? Because you cannot come up with a response?
Quoting javra
Of course we can and do make conceptual distinctions between empirical and transcendental notions of the self or ego. My question was as to how we could possibly know that the transcendental ego is anything more than an idea.
Quoting javra
I don't see how that argument, which merely gives an example of a category error, show us anything. It would be a category error to say that my farts are tall, or my breath is tall, or my digestion is tall. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.
Quoting JanusI don't imagine the mental is completely independent of the physical. I don't think we can remove mass or charge from particles, and I don't think we can remove proto-consciousness from them, either.
Mind you, my thoughts on all this are just speculation. I don't think physical properties can account for consciousness, so there must be something else at work. I've tried to work out this idea. But it's not even a theory, since I can't imagine how it could be tested. And, no, it really doesn't matter. Again, if you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make. But the search for understanding is fascinating. At least imo.
Quoting javraEverything in the universe is natural. If there is anything in the universe that is non-physical, invisible, and unmeasurable in quantifiable ways, it is still natural.
No, it says that the inability to explain something in terms of physics does not entail that the thing to be explained is non-physical.
Quoting Patterner
Mass and charge are detectable in particles. Proto-consciousness in particles is purely speculative ,and in fact we don't really have any idea what it could look like.
Quoting Patterner
You don't think consciousness could evolve in a merely physical world? You don't believe it could just on account of the fact that it seems to be inexplicable? Have you considered the possibility that it is not mind and matter itself which are incompatible, but just our conceptions of mind and matter which seem incompatible,
As you acknowledge there is no way to test the idea that they are not compatible anyway. Even if you could somehow confirm that mind could not possibly have evolved from physical matter, what difference would that knowledge make to your life as lived?
In virtue of Buddhism being a soteriological school of thought.
Quoting Janus
If life sooner or later necessarily result in nothingness, what is its point in its occurrence to begin with? Its not an issue of opinion but of logic. Something with a point has a purpose. (Unless we play footloose with terms again). The point of life is ... ?
Quoting Janus
1) I stated that non-physicalism does not entail nihilism. Not that it necessarily results in purpose. and 2) Try not to bullshit so much, please. You asked me no such questions. As is blatantly evidenced here:
Quoting Janus
Quoting Janus
No. Because it is a can of worms. Why do you respond this way? Other than to insult.
The notion of energy stems from Aristotle. Energy/work without purpose/telos as concept is thoroughly modern, utterly physicalist/materialist, and it need not be. But then to you energy would then be one of those transcendental issues that wouldn't be natural. And so forth.
Quoting Janus
You never posed a friggin question. You affirmed a truth, and this as though it were incontrovertible. As per the quote above.
As to how do I know that I as a transcendental ego am more that a mere idea: I am a subject of awareness that can hold awareness of, for example, ideas - farts as another example - thereby making my being as subject of awareness more than an idea.
Very much agree.
So the meaning of life lies in an afterlife or in nirvana (is it eternal life or extinction?).
Quoting javra
Why are you so ready to feel insulted. The aim is to question and challnege not to insult. Are you not comfortable with your ideas being questioned and challenged?
Quoting javra
I'm not concerning myself with ancient conceptions of energy. Energy is what does work, work that might be either purposeful or purposeless. In science we have the four fundamental forces (energies). I see energy as entirely immanent; in fact, I can make no sense of the idea of transcendental energy.
Quoting javra
I did not affirm a truth, I posed the question as to how we could ever know that the transcendental ego is more than merely an idea. When I said that it merely an idea, I meant that it cannot be anything more than an idea for us because there is no imaginable way to test whether it is more than an idea. There is no need to get angry or offended. we are just here discussing ideas, so what's the problem?
I don't understand your answer above. It just sounds stipulative rather than being any kind of means to knowledge.
Quoting JanusYou believe it [I]could[/I] just on account of the fact that it seems to be inexplicable?
Quoting JanusI have considered the possibility. Can you give me any specific thoughts along these lines?
Quoting JanusThat is correct.
Quoting JanusI was taking about proto-consciousness when I said it's not a theory because it's not testable.
Quoting JanusI just said:
"[I]And, no, it really doesn't matter. Again, if you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make. But the search for understanding is fascinating. At least imo.[/I]"
I think it's the most fascinating topic of all. As I recently said, I don't need a reason to delve into the subject any note than I need a reason to listen to Bach, read Dune, or look at the view from the top of a mountain.
But there's also this. Two quotes from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Hope you know who Data and Dr. Crusher are.
1) Data made a daughter, named Lal.
2) Data and Dr. Crusher:
Or, as Jung said:
Quoting javra
And as to:
Quoting Janus
Simply because your question directly insinuates that my reply was pompous charlatanry - thereby taking a serious jab at my character. And in this, I stand by my right to feel insulted. Only human, don't you know. There a difference between being thick-skinned and being thick.
I haven't claimed there is an overall point to life. In fact quite the opposite—it is up to each of us to decide what the point of our lives is. Or else simply live your life, enjoy it and follow your interests and passions; I suppose that would be a point in itself.
Quoting javra
You are projecting—my question insinuated nothing, I was simply trying to get a clear answer from you. Anyway, if you are going to take exchanges of ideas on a philosophy forum personally, then I think it's best to stop.
OK. I have no more questions for you.
:rofl:
Quoting Janus
And "I am projecting", this because you say so.
Gaslighters are as gaslighters do. (This statement doesn't insinuate anything. :chin: )
Yea, you gave me a good laugh.
Quoting Janus
If you say so.
No, you are projecting because you are imputing motivations to what I said which were not there. It seems obvious you cannot carry on challenging conversations without becoming offended. That's why I said it's best to stop. I have no desire to hurt your feelings.
You have a way of psychoanalyzing - and it's often as erroneous as hell to boot. But that your are imputing motivations which are not there is, well, it can't be projecting.
Quoting Janus
How nifty of you. Don't worry about my feelings though so much as about the substance of what is said. This without assuming such psycho-babbles as that I'm posturing in my answers because I'm unable to come up with a response. Or that my feelings have been hurt by you.
Just in case we run across each other again.
You believe it could just on account of the fact that it seems to be inexplicable? My point being, it supports my position more than yours. What supports your position?
I have considered the possibility. Can you give me any specific thoughts along these lines?
My position is that, considering the current state of science, as far as I am familiar with it, it seems most plausible that mind evolved in a physical world. I don't imagine that mind came from anywhere else, and the panpsychist idea seems unintelligible.
Naively, we think about things in intuitive ways. Hence animism was common to early forager societies. Likewise it is natural for us to naively think that the mind and body are different. After all, one observes the other. And I don't deny they are different. I see mind as a function of the body. It is obviously not an object of the senses as the body is. As I said earlier energy is not an object of the senses either and nor is causation.
So I believe the mind is, despite how it might seem, a physical process or function, and I don't believe that because the way the mind seems to us intuitively is not explicable in terms of physics. On the contrary I think it is more likely that the way the mind seems to us is a kind of illusion.
I have said it doesn't matter anyway, but the reason I engage in this discussion is that I think the fact it doesn't matter does itself matter. If we are attached to the idea of the mind being this way or that it will cloud our judgement because confirmation bias will have taken hold.
I believe it only matters to those who think physicalism destroys any hope of there being more to our beings than just this life. I don't see anything wrong with believing that provided it is acknowledged to be an article of faith. When people start imagining that it is an objective truth, then fundamentalist thinking looms, and I think that is most dangerous to societal well-being.
I also object to the idea that physicalism is self-evidently false, because that conclusion is always based on a strawman model of physicalism. I don't say that idealism is self-evidently false just that it seems to me to be the more plausible of the options. I don't object to others thinking idealism is the more plausible, and I'm happy to leave it at that—agree to disagree, even though I think that conclusion is most likely wrong.
Quoting JanusI've always had trouble understanding this position. The way the mind seems to itself... The mind is an illusion being fooled by itself. Illusions fool the viewer. The audience. But, in this case, that upon which everything else is built, the viewer and the illusion are the same thing.
I agree about Idealism. I don't understand why minds wouldn't exist as their true selves in their true realm/setting, but concoct a setting nothing like it in which to exist, where they cannot act or interact according to their nature.
-----
1. This grounds the connection between physical causation and logical necessity.
2. "The very idea of science from the usual point of view is to take out everything to do with human subjectivity and see what remains. QBism says, if you take everything out of quantum theory to do with human subjectivity, then nothing remains" ~ Christian Fuchs
3. Hence, 'mind-created world'.
Since I have no formal training in philosophical language and methods, some of Schopenhauer's argument against Materialism is lost on me. For example, the notion of "givenness", begs the question "by whom?". Are the ideas he calls "given" merely his personal preferences and assumptions, or Axioms generally accepted by experts in the field, or divine revelations?
Since unresolved debates between Materialism and Idealism are common on this forum, it might help to clarify our language, and the ideas that each side takes for granted. Will you take the time to summarize his argument in your own words? That might help me to resolve my own ambiguity about the obvious material/physical nature of nature, and the less obvious meta-physical essence of philosophical argumentation about Reality. Thanks. :smile:
Excerpts from the Schopenhauer quote :
[i]# "Thus materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly."
# "materialism seeks to explain what is immediately given, the idea"
# "To the assertion that thought is a modification of matter we may always, with equal right, oppose the contrary assertion that all matter is merely the modification of the knowing subject, as its idea."[/i]
What he's saying, is that the 'idea' of the object, which is its appearance to us in consciousness, is 'immediately given'. That applies to every characteristic of the object - how it feels, how heavy it is, etc, all of which are ideas. The key phrase is 'it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and active in time'. He's *not* saying that we have the idea of the object on one hand, and the actual object on the other - everything that appears to us, appears as 'idea'. Whereas materialism attempts to explain this unitary experience with reference to something else altogether, namely, 'matter', as a theoretical construct existing apart from or outside the experience of the object, and which is somehow more fundamental than the experience itself.
I recall you've read Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order - the resonances with that book ought to be clear. For example:
[quote=Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why this Insight Transforms Physics (p. 6). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition. ]In fact, what we regard as the physical world is “physical” to us precisely in the sense that it acts in opposition to our will and constrains our actions. The aspect of the universe that resists our push and demands muscular effort on our part is what we consider to be “physical”. On the other hand, since sensation and thought don’t require overcoming any physical resistance, we consider them to be outside of material reality. It is shown in the final chapter ('Mind, Life and Universe') that this is an illusory dichotomy, and any complete account of the universe must allow for the existence of a nonmaterial component which accounts for its unity and complexity.[/quote]
That 'nonmaterial component' is not, however, external to the mind itself, but the activity of consciousness which integrates sensory and intellectual data into a meaningful whole - Kant's 'transcendental unity of apperception'. (Ref. Pinter doesn't mention Schopenhauer but there are numerous references to Kant.)
So, Schopenhauer is agreeing with Kant, that we can "not" know the true reality (ding an sich), and must make-do (improvise) with an imitation simulation : a virtual reality (immaterial experience)? But stubborn Materialists insist on getting true, authentic Reality, even if they have to take it on theory/faith? In that case, is natural Matter their substitute for belief in a super-natural Ideal realm?
I guess what Schopenhauer means by "given" is the knowledge (appearance) presented to us, effortlessly, by our understanding (interpreting) minds. Most of us take that mental experience for granted as real-enough (given), even though lacking in stuff with material properties. Yet some think it's the brain that does the "hard work" of bringing the exterior world inside the interior experience.
However, the "hard question" remains : by what physical process does a brain construct a worldview? What are the physical/material stages/steps between object and subject? I suppose the easy answer is to just take the experience as a "gift", given by the brain. But hard-to-please Materialists grudgingly accept the gift as an artificial substitute for the real object. Their policy is, "accept no substitutes" for the true ding. Hence, they rudely look a gift-horse in the mouth, to determine its true reality. :smile: :wink:
Note --- Quantum physicists constructed theoretical models of matter in empty space, that serve as place-holders for the ding an sich. Their theory of fields requires some "thing" to occupy each point in space, and to jump around (fluctuate) as they absorb virtual photons. Are such Fields real or ideal? Is that kind of matter True or Apparent?
A "virtual particle" is a temporary, theoretical particle that arises from the quantum field theory concept of "empty space" not being truly empty, . . . . ___ Google AI overview
Buddha's "Self"
His extraordinary insight was that appearances, properly understood as impermanent, interdependent, and unsatisfying, are also devoid of the ontological underpinnings we are used to ascribing to everything in our world. All of it, without exception, is utterly devoid of self.
https://tricycle.org/magazine/appearance-and-reality/
Note --- Is "self" the Buddhist version of matter or stuff or ding an sich?
Unknown
Quoting Gnomon
As I've said earlier in the thread, the process was one of elimination: first posit 'the world' as comprising extended matter and non-extended mind; then show that there is no feasible way for the latter to affect the former; then declare that latter non-existent, leaving only the former. That's the predicament leftover from the 'Cartesian division'. It's still very much active in the grammar of the Western worldview.
Quote from the link to : The Neural Binding Problem :
" In Science, something is called “a problem” when there is no plausible model for its substrate. So we have the mind–body problem (Chalmers 1996), but not the color problem, although there is a great deal of ongoing color research."
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3538094/#Sec3
how does the brain create consciousness
[i]"The brain creates consciousness through a complex interplay of billions of neurons, and there are multiple theories about how this happens"
"The creation of consciousness is one of the greatest remaining mysteries in science and philosophy"[/i]
___Google AI overview
Note --- "Multiple Theories", but none with a step-by-step process from Sensation to Meaning.
Have you noticed that I am not discussing Buddhism in the manner of Western secular academia?
You don't say. I have to take breaks from this forum, as I feel downright metaphorically bespattered with blood.
What a spiritual take on the matter!
While many people say such things, I doubt many people mean them. It seems to me that people are far more sure of themselves, far more certain than you make allowance for.
Why the "even if"? Why couldn't one talk about enlightenment with integrity even if one is enlightened?
I am aware of the standard definitions of enlightenment. Whether what those definitions say is "real" or not I can't say, given that according to those definitions, one would need to be enlightened oneself in order to recognize another enlightened being.
But I certainly acknowledge a strange pull that I feel towards these topics and a desire to reflect on them.
Quoting JoshuMaybe you are already enlightened, and didn't know it. :grin:
According to Early Buddhism, such is impossible, because an enlightened person knows they are enlightened, they have no doubt or confusion about it. Everyone who is enlightened knows they are enlightened.
I'm just kidding around. If you put on a robe and eat rice, you might be enlightened. :halo:
It is irrelevant that past scientific theories have been shown to be wrong, or at least not as adequate as some later theory. That fact does not guarantee that any present theories will be proven wrong. Also, that is all we have to work with.
I haven't said consciousness doesn't seem to be a physical process per se. From a neuroscientific perspective it does seem to be a physical process. From the naive intuitive point of view, it may seem not to be physical to some. From my perspective it seems neither determinably physical (in the sense that it is not a physical object, but an activity) nor non-physical. It certainly doesn't seem otherworldly to me and this world definitely seems physical through and through.
Quoting Patterner
You continue to misinterpret what I'm saying. I haven't said the mind is an illusion, I've said that what it may seem to us may be an illusion.
Quoting baker
It doesn't matter whether people acknowledge that what they believe about matters which are not either logically or empirically determinable, is determined by what they think most plausible, which in turn is determined by which starting assumptions they are making.
It is also possible that in some, perhaps many, cases people believe what they want to believe.
I haven't failed to make allowance for people feeling certain at all. But there is a clear distinction between being certain (which is only possible in cases where what is believed is empirically or logically verifiable) and feeling certain, which is possible in all kinds of cases, including self-delusion.
Quoting JanusAs it's in this world, it's obviously not otherworldly.
Quoting JanusSince there is no physical explanation for consciousness, it's possible consciousness is not physical through and through.
Quoting JanusThe physical is certainly an essential ingredient.
Thanks for the conversation.
But if you're done, perhaps others will give their ideas. A thread dedicated to any physicalist explanation would be great. Of course, every thread begun to explore any particular approach to the issue soon turns into a debate. I wonder if there's any chance mods would enforce rules for such a thread.
Although I might be the only person who thinks such a thread might be valuable.
I think it's probably a knot which cannot be untied. Taking sight as an example, we see things just as animals do. But we are reflexively self-aware that we see things. So we conceive of ourselves as "having experience". Do non-symbolic animals have this reflexive self-awareness or is it just an artefact of language?
The idea of things going on "in the dark" may be an incoherent idea. Do things go on in the dark for animals if they cannot be self-reflectively aware? Are we really self-reflectively aware or are we just playing with language? How can we answer these questions? If there is a way to answer them, what could that be but science?
So maybe there is really no subjective experience at all and it is all just an artefact of language—a kind of confabulation or fiction. Or if there is some spiritual, non-material, non-physical element in play and our intuitions tell us that (which has seemed to be the case historically) then maybe those intuitions are right, but we have no way of demonstrating that and must just have faith in them and stop trying to prove or disprove it. In other words, just accept our feelings and intuitions and enjoy their enrichment without trying to come to any ontological conclusions because to do so is an impossible project.
We don't and can't know why we are here or where we are headed, or even whether there is any reason we are here, or whether we are headed anywhere at all, but there's no harm in exercising our imaginations and enjoying the ride while it lasts. Anyway, that's pretty much where I'm at for what it's worth—I like to think about these questions but I'm content with uncertainty, with the thought that these questions cannot be definitively answered.
I was going to ask you about your response to the decomposition problem, but, in re-reading the OP, it doesn't sound like your view is a form of ontological idealism....
I would say epistemic idealism is any metaphysical theory which posits primacy to the mind insofar as how we understand reality; whereas ontological idealism is any metaphysical theory which posits primacy to the mind in reality (over matter).
Classical ontological idealism arguably started with good 'ole Berkeley and is still prominent in the literature today (such as with Kastrup). Although I am not as familiar with the lineage of epistemic idealism, I would imagine it starts with Kant.
Your view seems to be a form of transcendental idealism, which is about how we understand reality fundamentally through mental ideas (and cognitive pre-structures) and thusly is a form of epistemic idealism---not ontological idealism.
Re-reading your OP, I think this is supporting by your claims like:
Although I think one could go the objective idealist's route and just say that all is in mind, but there is an objective reality because there is one universal mind maintaining the ideas of reality (e.g., God); your response to basic objections to idealism seems to be to go the transcendental idealist route; viz., to admit that there is a mind-independent world but that we can say nothing meaningful about it independently of the modes by which we cognize it.
A position, like Kant's, that admits of reality being fundamentally mind-independent (ontologically), is not a form of true idealism; that is, ontological idealism. Classically, by my understanding, 'idealism' is a short-hand for 'ontological idealism' which posits, like Berkeley, that reality is fundamentally mind-stuff: not physical-stuff.
Why is this important? Well, because I was going to ask you about the most difficult problem for idealism (IMHO)--the decomposition problem--but you don't seem to believe that reality is fundamentally mind-stuff; so that isn't a problem for you like it would be for a classical idealist.
The decomposition problem is how a universal mind, which is the fundamental entity ontologically, can "decompose" into separate, subjective, and personnal minds which we are. Sometimes it is denoted as how a Mind (with a capital 'M') 'decomposes' into a mind (with a lowercase 'm'). It seems like, for an idealist, the Mind which fundamentally exists for the world to be objective is toto genere different than the minds which inhabit it; and there's not clear explanation (that I have heard) of how a mind like ours would arise out of mental stuff happening in 'the Mind'.
Scientific theories, or any knowledge, or even any concepts about either experience or topics like "being" and ontology cannot tell us about "stuff" or what "stuff" is independent of limited perspectives that we don't usually identify with the "stuff" we are talking about - apart from experiences. Obviously we have direct aquaintance with experience; regardless of limitions of our concepts about experience, it is hard to deny that we experience. But I would argue concepts of experience play a similar role in naturalistic scientific knowledge as any other scientific concept as does concepts of "being". And ultimately there is no self-sustaining foundation for these things independent of enactive roles within perspective.
What actually is experience metaphysically? There is no criteria for what is and what is not an experience. There is no criteria to give that question the meaning that we want it to either - what does "metaphysical" mean? Just another concept we use, and (albeit) within experience too. But again, any coherent metaphysical generalization of our direct aquaintance is impossible.
To say the world is made of experience in the same way as houses are made of bricks also doesn't avoid the hard combination problem. The strong emergence involved in stacking layers of experience on top of each other.
Talk of any fundamental metaphysics is on some deeper level a enactive game as any other knowledge - it will always be found lacking in the sense that when we talk about fundamental metaphysics we are wanting something deeper than say the mathematical descriptions that make science superficially effective. Obviously no strict dividing line between science and metaphysics (or philosophy of science I guess) though. Best we can do is have concepts that make things coherent. Does saying the world is made of experience make things coherent for me? No, because experience is something deeply tied to my personal perspective which I may share with others in virtue of being organisms.
What I can say is my experience is some coarse-grained structure in the world undergirded by finer structures.
I have been thinking all scientific paradigms are united by notions of causality.
Steven Frank:
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=5393718917133646068&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=16974184348648837789&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1
We cannot access anything else but causal relations between "things" on different scales.
If I make the assumption of equating my aquaintance with experience as ontology (whatever this means), then it suggests reality should be conceptualized as scale-free.
Reality is just causal structures all the way down (and this is akin to scientific statement with all the limitations of our physical theories that cannot tell us what the physical is - theories of reality cannot tell us the nature of reality intrinsically):
e.g.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33286288/
We cannot arbitrarily make more fundamental some causal structures over others even if they arise from coarse-graining over others. We can only at most make the distinction that finer-grained structures carry more information about reality. Insofar as causality is like communication, that is how we may relate it to minds - information and statistical physics are two sides of the same coin. There is a weak emergence aspect of information in the sense of scaffolding causal structures on top of each other. But also a strong emergence aspect in information when we look at how structures can detect or distinguish other causal structures in a "brute" way - almost like with our own phenomenal experiences.
I cannot tell you anything else about reality other than causal structures existing that can in some sense be construed as communicating information - what does "causal structure" mean? Again there is no non-circular foundation to this concept. Maybe we can talk about cause in terms of non-redundant temporal structure? These concepts bottom out in spatio-temporal structure.
But this talk about causal structure is not distinct from how when you dissect physics, what is fundamental is things like energy and work - which are just ways of quantifying how things change, or their propensity to do so - i.e. causality.
Is there a "bottom" to reality? What would that actually mean. Don't know. Maybe cannot know.
On the otherhand, does it make sense to say experience is what it is like to be some kind of causal structures in reality? Maybe. Could we then go on to say that all structures are just experience? Maybe. But the vacuousness of this makes it almost like a personal choice.
My personal choice is not to because it brings so many other connotations that complicate the naturalistic picture of reality, sometimes not making as much sense to me. If experience is another way of just talking about information (personal to, accessible to me) then the most fundamental notion in all this is something like causality. Reality is not made of blobs of "stuff" arranged or stacked, but causal structures instead. Maybe reality should be seen in terms of blobs of "stuff". But we cannot talk about intrinsic "stuff" in a way that does justice to the word "intrinsic". We can talk about causal structure, information...
... Insofar that causal structures relate things that are sensible to us... we don't need to think about it in terms of cause as some "intrinsic" things... things too may be talked about or given meaning in terms of relations to other things.... relations all the way down another way of saying causes all the way down? Or perhaps structure.
A kind of structuralism. I have generally pushed back from Ontic structural realism in the past. I think my thoughts are closest to Otavio Bueno's empirical structuralism I think he calls it. (Or perhaps structural empiricism). Imo ontic structuralism is kind of empty or trivial -
[perhaps anti-realism too insofar that I think questions of realism may be subject to similar indeterminacy as scientific theories themselves - debates about theories being right or wrong, how right or wrong (or which bits) and in what sense right and wrong mean (e.g. Newtonian physics could be right or true in the sense of describing some of our data approximately, it could be wrong if you take it as the general principles of the universe).
Can we justify theories being correct in contexts of pluralism and empirical adequacy? Is there even a discrete dividing line between theories insofar that you can deconstruct, change them, throw bits out, retain others. Theories can be right (or useful) in some ways, wrong in others, often idealized. The significance may depend on perspective - as said before once, scientific anti-realists and realists often accept the same facts about science in terms of underdeterminism and losses with theory change.]
- while we only access structure through enactive perspectives. I guess it in some ways boils down to what you think "right" means. If you have a loose or indeterminate standard for what "correct" or "true" means then theories may seem more "real" compared to someone in which "true" requires stronger standards.
But ultimately, many theories are idealized and go on to be rejected - its always an open question how long things will be rejected or accepted for. At the end of the day, the story I use about scientific theories is an enactive one, truth too. So there is a strange loop aspect - debating about whether theories are true when you have already decided that uses of truth is nothing more than an enactive process in a real world of structure. One could try and clear this up with a simpler picture of separating subjective from objective, real from non-real - but a clearer picture comes at the cost of greater idealization. And here we see there is an element of personal preference in selecting meta-theoretical views where you trade off clarity and precision or complexity and accuracy in the context of model selection. But I think regardless of meta-theoretic views of what "truth" or "correctness" means I always endorse notions of knowledge fundamentally in terms of enaction, idealization and agnosticism of future acceptance (to various degrees of subjective certainty depending on what we are talking about - and even then, graded certainty has an arbitrary relation to acceptance or rejection in the sense that someone may have higher standards of certainty to which they accept something compared to others - belief and justification always have some kins of normative aspect in general: i.e. its not strictly about whether something is true or false but whether I ought to believe it and why. Induction may not be the best argument in general, deflating enactivism better so).
Good analysis Bob.
As for the decomposition problem, Kastrup does address that through his theory of 'dissociated alters'. He proposes that reality comprises a universal consciousness ('mind at large'.) This universal mind is analogous to a field of subjectivity, from which all individual experiences arise by dissociation.
Dissociation: Individual conscious beings, like humans, are seen as dissociated "alters" of the universal mind. Just as alters in dissociative identity theory are partitioned segments of a single psyche, the individual consciousness is a localized expression of the universal mind, dissociated from its broader unity.
This is very similar to the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, which Kastrup has acknowledged in dialogues with Swami Sarvapriyananda, the head teacher of the Vedanta Society of New York. And a similar idea is expressed by Albert Einstein, of all people.
[quote=Albert Einstein, Letter of Condolence]A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.[/quote]
But I would add the caveat that the whole concept of 'mind at large' is problematical if it is conceived as something objectively existent in a way analogous to matter or energy. (I wrote an (unpublished) Medium essay on that topic which can be reviewed here.)
Quoting Apustimelogist
If you read the OP carefully, you will note that I discuss that problem in paragraph four. I emphatically do not posit any conception of 'mind stuff' or 'spiritual substance' which i regard as an oxymoronic conception, to wit:
Quoting Apustimelogist
Quoting Wayfarer
All due respect, you're viewing the issue in the wrong register. As I say at the outset, the approach is perspectival, it is not an essay about what 'things are made of.' That is a job for physics and chemistry. But the nature of our own first-person experience is real on a different level and the question of its nature has to be approached in a different way. That's what I mean by 'perspectival'. I know from reading your post here and elsewhere, you view the issue through a certain perspective, and that challenging one's assumed perspectives is difficult. But the philosophical perspective the OP advocating is of a different kind or order.
Aha I wasn't responding to the OP - I was just puttung down thoughts. I think most people probably don't disagree with the OP at its core, but some people emphasize the points more than others.
The form of idealism you advocate doesn't seem to posit anything at all, which leaves it looking totally vacuous.
I am aware of Kastrup's view, but his solution seems utterly implausible to me. According to his logic, people conceiving a baby is somehow an instance of the Universal Mind disassociating from itself thereby creating an alter.
I was curious what your take is on it, but, again, you don't have this problem (I don't think).
But how does that work? How is sex an external representation of a mind disassociating with itself?
From that comment, I think you have an incorrect picture of what Kastrup means by 'dissociated alter'. From a glossary entry on Bernardo Kastrup's terminology:
This plainly bears comparision with the Plotinus' philosophy of 'the One' as well as with Advaita Vedanta. For a detailed account, see The Universe in Consciousness.
Unfortunately, I don't see what part of my analysis is incorrect. Kastrup believes that a dissociated alter is akin to an alter in a person with a multi-personality disorder, and that each of us are external representations (i.e., images) of a dissociated alter of that one consciousness. It thusly follows that when a new consciousness is created, such as in childbirth, that this creation is an external representation of whatever processes produced the One to disassociate into another alter---no?
Given that cosmic consciousness is likely to be viewed as wildly implausible by many people, what in particular about this aspect of it is particularly implausible? It jibes with the ancient tropes of the descent of the soul.
For our discussion, I am just focusing on one: the implausibility of the sex being an external representation of the disassociation of a mind. Don't those seem unrelated? How would that make any sense?
If we think of it akin to personality disorder, which Kastrup does quite often, then we would expect trauma to cause a disassociation (i.e., an alter) or at least something significantly violent or powerful; but, because we know sex produces life, Kastrup must hold with consistency that sex somehow is the act that forces the Mind to disassociate from itself. Sex, simpliciter, is not violent; it is not traumatic; it is not particular powerful; etc. What I would expect if Kastrup were right, is that something powerful about the Mind's psychology would 'traumatize' it into splitting into multiple minds (alters). The problem is that Kastrup admits the analogy cannot be stretched this far (as I am doing) because the universal consciousness is a basic, primitive consciousness for Kastrup (so it doesn't have the psychology that a person with a personality disorder would have). However, it still produces a meaningful question: "why would we expect sex to produce alters of a universal Mind?".
Of course it is true that the psychiatric disorder is often the product of trauma or mental illness, but I think that is not essential to Kastrup's point. He introduces it as an analogy to explain how a 'universal consciousness' can come to appear as instances of individual consciousness. Kastrup posits that cosmic dissociation occurs at the level of living organisms rather than that of elementary particles. He references metabolic processes and empirical findings to support this view, emphasizing that organisms’ boundaries are physically and phenomenally distinct from those of inorganic matter. Reproduction, whether sexual or asexual, involves the establishment of new boundaries that separate one organism (or alter) from another. In Kastrup's framework, this 'boundary formation' is the physical manifestation of dissociation within the universal consciousness. The boundaries of living organisms are unique and distinct compared to inanimate matter, as they encapsulate metabolic and phenomenological processes. So, as said above, while I quite understand why you might think the entire idea is implausible, I don't really see why sexual reproduction in particular poses a challenge to it.
If all the mental abilities I have that a mouse doesn't were taken from me, making me the equivalent of a mouse, mouse-me would surely not remember what it's like to be human-me. Mouse-I wouldn't have the capacity for the thoughts and memories, or any conception, of human-me.
But when my human capacities were restored, would I have any recollection of what it was like to be the mouse? Even a vague impression? Surely more than what I would have if I had been a rock.
Quoting JanusI don't understand how this works. If we program computers to play with language in this way, if ChatGPT does it, would it falsely believe it is self-reflectively aware? It seems like pretending to be conscious.
Does it just mean that the animal feels something then?
Quoting Patterner
ChatGPT doesn't play with language in the sense I mean. It is programmed to sample vast amounts of relevant language and predict the most appropriate sentences to any question as I understand it. It doesn't claim to be self-reflective either.
Quoting JanusI don't know enough about ChatGPT to know if it's a good example of the idea that's only half-baked in my head. I'm wondering what you mean by "playing with language". How does that come about? Can we program a computer to do that? If so, does that mean it's self-reflectively aware? Even if it doesn't claim to be? If it needs to claim to be, but doesn't, what is it about us that makes us claim to be, despite the fact that we aren't? What extra programming would we have to give the computer?
We will just have to agree to disagree then :wink: .
Quoting JanusI believe that's what Nagel means. I think "There's something it's likes to be a bat" means "There's something it feels like to be a bat." But not a physical feeling. At least not only physical feelings. Do you have a feeling of your own existence aside from your physical body? Yes, we feel when our skin is torn. But we have a feeling about pain. We feel different ways about different people. We feel a certain way about one genre of music, but differently about another. We have feelings about specific pieces of music. I have very strong feelings about various instrumental works be Bach, Beethoven, and others. The last half of [I]Layla[/I], by Derek and the a Dominoes is a good example. We feel certain ways about political issues and moral issues. We feel love and hate. Many different feelings and types of feelings. And it all combines into what it's like to be me.
Animals don't have feelings about political issues. I doubt they have moral concepts. What about music; food; being chased, or hugged, by a human? Which animals is there something it is like to be? Which are self-reflectively aware?
I think the obvious but un-stated point in David Chalmer's famous paper, Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness, is about the nature of being. Consider the central paragraph:
'Something it is like to be...' is actually an awkward way of referring to 'being' as such. We are, and bats are, 'sentient beings' (although in addition h.sapiens are rational sentient beings), and what makes us (and them) sentient is that we are subjects of experience. When the term 'beings' is used for bats and humans, this is what it means. And the reason that 'the nature of being' is such an intractable scientific problem is that it's not something we are ever outside of or apart from, and thus it can't be satisfactorily captured or described in objective terms.
I don't think it has anything to do with those conditions. It's just different interpretations is all.
I didn't mean those conditions specifically. I just used them as things that are sometimes very different from one person to another. You and I are not always simply interpreting things differently.
We have much in common physiologically speaking. I seems to me that the greatest divergence consists in the ways we each interpret the general nature of experience.
Hmm, interesting observation possibly.
I think it's a vague way of approaching the issue, and I think it has to be. Part of what Nagel was saying is that we can't understand what it's like to be a bat. We're too different to even pretend we can imagine being a bat.
But we can still consider whether there's anything it's like. As opposed to what it's like to be a rock. There's nothing it's like to be a rock. Who thinks a bat's subjective experience is as absent as a rock's?
If you cannot do that, then we are very different.
It's not vague. As David Chalmers says, 'It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience.' And subjects of experience are generally referred to as 'beings', while minerals are not. Chalmers goes on to sketch what would be required for a satisfactory theory of consciousness, but in my view he doesn't wrestle with the question of ipseity, the nature of subjective awareness as such. That is more a topic of consideration in Evan Thompson's Mind in Life. But the question of the nature of being is the subject of philosophy.
Again, thanks for your comments on the OP. Here I would like to clarify the key points where my claim goes further than a cautiously realist reading would allow.
The main divergence lies in what we take for granted about the independence of the world “as it is”—that is, the world assumed to exist apart from all modes of disclosure, experience, or intelligibility. While nobody would disagree that the mind plays a role in cognition—supplying the conceptual framework, perceptual integration, and interpretive acts by which we know—they would nevertheless retain an innate conviction that there exists, in the background, a world that is fully real and determinate independently of mind. This is what I see as the import of metaphysical realism and that is what I am seeking to challenge.
My position is closer to what might be called a phenomenological form of idealism: it asserts that there is no reality outside of some perspective, not in a merely epistemological sense (i.e., that we only know from a point of view), but in a deeper sense—namely, that the very structure of the world, as intelligible and coherent, is constituted in and through the relation to mind. Not an individual mind, of course, but the noetic act—the perceiving, structuring, and meaning-bestowing – that makes any world appear in the first place. (Relevant to note that the etymology of 'world' is from the old Dutch 'werold' meaning 'time of man'.)
To make this clearer, consider the example you cite of Neptune’s pre-discovery existence. The realist insists: “It existed all along—we simply didn’t know it.” But the claim I'm advancing would point out that what “it” was prior to its discovery is not just unknown, but indeterminate. The very notion of “an object that exists but is wholly outside any possible disclosure” is, I suggest, an imaginative construction. It is an extrapolation or projection. The fact that it might be accurate doesn't undercut that.
I'm not arguing for solipsism or Berkeley's idealism. I’m not saying “nothing exists unless I think it.” Rather, I’m arguing that the world as a coherent totality is incomprehensible outside the structures of consciousness. It’s not that the mind projects onto a blank slate, nor that it merely filters a pre-existing reality, but rather that reality as it shows up at all is a co-arising: dependent on the mutual implication of mind and world. (This is the aspect that is specifically phenomenological.)
This is why, when I write that “what we know of its existence is bound by and to the mind,” I do not mean this as a mere limitation of our faculties, but as a disclosure of something fundamental: that intelligibility is not something we add to a blank canvas but something that arises with, and through, the encounter of mind-and-world.
The critique that “the world exists anyway” misses this crucial nuance. Of course, something is there. But to designate it as “the world,” or even as “something,” already presupposes the categories of thought—form, object, existence, and so on. The realist mistake, in my view, is to treat these categories as transparent labels for things that are "there anyway", failing to recognise the way the mind categorises and situates them, without which they would be unintelligible.
Regarding “form”: Aristotle posits forms as intrinsic to particulars, but in a way that already implies a kind of noetic participation—form is what renders a thing intelligible, it is how we know what it *is*. I agree with that, but add a post-Kantian refinement: the intelligible world is not merely a cross-section or partial view of some greater reality—it is the only world we encounter. To speak of things as intelligible independently of any mind is, I believe, to risk incoherence. Intelligibility is not something that can be separated off from consciousness and remain intact. As our empirical knowledge of the universe expands, it becomes incorporated into the intelligible body of knowledge that consitutes science.
So in sum: my position is not that mind is just one actor among others in an otherwise mind-independent world. It is that there is no world at all without mind—not as a subjective opinion, but as the condition for appearance, for disclosure, and for anything we might meaningfully call real.
And finally, the reason this matters is so we do not lose sight of the subject—the observer—for whom all of this is meaningful in the first place. The scientific, objective view is essentially from the outside: in that picture, we appear as one species among countless others, clinging to a pale blue dot, infinitesimal against the vast panorama that scientific cosmology has revealed. But it is to us that this panorama is real and meaningful. So far as we know, we are the only beings capable of grasping the astounding vistas disclosed by science. Let’s not forget our role in that.
Can you explain what you take that to mean, if you are implying something beyond "A world that does not depend for it's existence on any or all minds"?
Quoting Wayfarer
It couldn't have been "indeterminate" if by that you mean indeterminable, because otherwise it could not have been discovered. If "indeterminate" it you means something more that "undetermined' or "indeterminable", then please explain what that additional meaning is.
Quoting Wayfarer
How can the scientific view be "from the outside"? Perhaps you meant "of the outside". Surely all human views of the external world are, by definition "from the inside" (if you want to speak at all in terms of "outside" and "inside"). It's more accurate to say that all views of the world, including human ones, are views of what lies outside the skin of the viewer.
That we are, as far as we know the "only beings capable of grasping the astounding vistas disclosed by science" is a simple truism. I'm puzzled as to what you think the import of these trivial factoids, acknowledged by anyone who thinks about it for a minute, are.
You have noticed that I am cautious. That’s true (most of the time). So, with due caution, that looks like something I can accept. Apart from deleting the word “fully” in “fully real and determinate”. I don’t know what that commits me to and suspect it may be a bit rhetorical.
Quoting Wayfarer
I’m clear that intelligibility is something that is constituted (“created”?) in the interaction between mind and world. However, our understanding of the world tells us that it has not changed in any radical way since we appeared and that many of the processes now going on must have been going on long before any sentient or intelligent creatures appeared. So is it not reasonable to infer that the world would have been intelligible if there had been anyone around to understand it? (Note that this is a counter-factual, not a blunt assertion.)
Coherence I’m less sure about. But I do understand that “order” is not really a mind-independent phenomenon. For this reason. If I have a pile of books, there will be an order in which they happen to be piled up. But there will be nothing special about that. There are many arrangements of them that can be called an order, and some that we would call disordered. But – how should I put it - nothing in the nature of the books has any special intellectual privilege in this.
I don't really understand what the "noetic act", just on its own like that, means. I have to reduce it to a large number of such acts done by almost everyone from time to time. So, for me, if there are no sentient or intelligent creatures about, there will be no noetic acts to create intelligibility.
Quoting Wayfarer
I love etymology and the history of words (and concepts). It is important in its way, and sometimes is relevant to philosophical understanding. But words change their meanings over time. So the relevance of etymology is always in need of demonstration. I’m afraid that, in this case, I don’t think that the etymology is particularly helpful.
Quoting Wayfarer
There is indeed something very odd about the concept of "an object that exists but is wholly outside any possible disclosure".
I’m hesitant about the word “possible” there. One does expect that any unknown unknowns can become known under the right conditions, except for some facts at quantum scale, which are a special case. The thing is, I wouldn’t want to make the existence of unknown unknowns conditional on their potential to be discovered. That would be verificationism and, as Wittgenstein says, truth-conditions are important, but they are not everything.
However, I have no problem with saying that anything that we might say about them is an extrapolation or projection, or, sometimes a purely imaginative construction. Extrapolations are not necessarily irrational, and the borderline between rational extrapolation and imaginative construction is very hard to discern. Perhaps only the outcome will tell us which is which.
Quoting Wayfarer
I’m all for co-arising of “reality as it shows up at all”. Reality is a different matter. Much of reality has not shown up yet. Yet it is true that we expect our ways of understanding the world as we know it to apply to the bits of the world that we do not yet understand or even know about. If perchance our current ways of understanding the world turn out not to yield what we expect, we work out new ways of understanding – in the process, we are prepared to abandon what seemed to be important parts of our existing understandings, extract whatever we can from the data and work out new ways of understanding it. So what it would take for us to acknowledge that we do not, and cannot ever, understand some new phenomenon, I cannot imagine. (I’m thinking of quantum physics and relativity, of course. But the Galileo/Newton revolution was, in its way, very dramatic indeed – it’s just that we’ve got used to it.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, what we know is “bound” to the mind. How else could it be known? But one of the things we know is that there is much that we don’t know; it is reasonable to think that what we don’t know is not “bound” to the mind.
Quoting Wayfarer
If something is there, it must be part of the “world”. It certainly will be when we find out what it is. On the other hand, “form, object, existence and so on” are certainly not transparent labels (any more than “world” is, especially since recent developments in physics). Anyone who looks carefully can see that. (Philosophers don’t always look very carefully – they are too often in a hurry to get to some huge vista or other.)
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, form is what makes something intelligible. On the other hand, I think that Aristotle calls the form “what it is to be” something (a.k.a. essence) and believes that whatever it is is mind-independent and yet is required if things are to be intelligible.
I mostly agree with the rest of the paragraph.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well, yes. We can’t meaningfully call anything real if we don’t exist. That does not justify saying that there is “no world at all without mind”.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree that the subject, the observer (and, sometimes, intervener) should not be lost sight of and that the vistas disclosed by science are astounding. You’ll think that I’m a bit of a heathen, but I’m just not convinced that scientific knowledge – and still less, physics - is the whole of knowledge or that science has a monopoly of astounding vistas.
Yes, it is reasonable: but the point is, there was not! What I'm arguing against is the idea that our picture of the world, as we imagine it to be without any observer, still relies on perspective, on there being a viewpoint, which is implicit in the picture of the early universe before life evolved. It is an empirical fact that there is and was the universe before h.sapiens evolved and outside the conception of any human being. But empirical fact still relies on an implicit perspective, which we have tended to absolutize in such a way that we believe it to be 'the way things truly are'.
As this is such a central point, I'll elaborate it at length. There's a post on the philosophy blog Partially Examined LIfe, about this issue, seen through the perspective of Schopenhauer. The introduction says:
So this is the problem you've identified. Schopenhauer's analysis is that:
(Here Schopenhauer demonstrates a grasp of evolution, which is interesting in its own right as he published World as Will and Idea decades before Darwin published Origin of Species. But German 'naturphilosophie' anticipated the general idea through Goethe and Lamarck.)
He goes on:
This is where the claim becomes radical - but it's also the argument in the OP. The argument is, that '‘existence’ is a compound or complex idea.' Whatever we think of as 'existing' is already embedded in a complex of supporting ideas, concepts, practices, and so on. This is so, for anything we can know or identify as an existent.
You may recall the role of antinomies in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. The antinomies show how reason, when it tries to grasp the totality of the world beyond possible experience, runs into contradictions. Each antinomy has a thesis and an antithesis that are both logically valid but mutually exclusive. Kant uses them to demonstrate the limits of pure reason and to argue that certain metaphysical questions (like whether the world has a beginning in time) cannot be answered by reason alone.
So:
The counterfactual—“the world would have been intelligible if there had been anyone there to understand it”—is indeed reasonable in everyday thought. But it conceals an important ambiguity. It implies that intelligibility is somehow already in the world, lying in wait for a knower, like treasure waiting to be found. What Schopenhauer shows is that intelligibility is not merely discovered; it is co-constituted by the subject. That is why our picture of the pre-human universe still bears the marks of perspective—it is our rendering of what “must have been,” shaped by our cognitive categories, spatiotemporal intuitions, and causal frameworks. It is intelligible because it is already a reconstruction—ours.
Schopenhauer’s inversion—“the world only begins with the first eye that opens”—is not a denial of evolution or cosmology but a metaphysical clarification: that the world-as-known, the world as idea, is dependent on consciousness, even while consciousness is, in turn, causally embedded in that world. This reciprocity, this antinomy, reflects the limits of our faculty of reason when it tries to grasp the world in itself.
So yes, we may speak of a pre-human world, and science can rightly describe its conditions. But this remains, necessarily, a retrospective construction. The error is to mistake this picture for something that exists independently of any condition for its appearance—as if meaning and form could simply hover, unperceived, in the void. That, I believe, is the illusion of realism, and why the universe and the mind are truly 'co-arising'.
Must the world be understood in order to be intelligible (able to be understood)? As an analogy, must something be seen in order to be counted as visible?
Quoting flannel jesus
First you have to determine which group is having the easier and which the harder time defending their positions. What're the criteria? Which ones do you think are which, and why?
In answer to the second question, the short answer is no. In order to count something as visible it is only necessary to demonstrate that it is capable of being seen. However the best, and arguably only conclusive way to demonstrate that something is capable of being seen is to see it.
On the assumption that "intelligible" means "capable of being understood", is the analogy a good one? Showing that one understands something is a good way of showing that it is capable of being understood; that's a parallel with "visible". But there is also a difference. Seeing something can be completed - one can reach a point at which one has actuallly seen whatever it is. But understanding is (usually) incomplete - there is almost always further that one could go. Usually, we settle for an understanding that is adequate for the context and do not worry about whether our understanding is complete.
So the answer is (as it usually is with analogies) the parallel is partial. Yet it is somewhat strange that we also use "see" to describe understanding as well as vision. So perhaps there is more to be said.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. This is very like the argument that Berkeley calls his Master Argument, because he says he will rely on that argument in favour of his idealism above all the others. There's no easy way to crack it. Suppose I protested to you that I do not imagine the dinosaurs without any observer. On the contrary, I imagine myself there as an observer. Does that help?
I'm not quite sure that I know what you mean by "absolutize". But I admit that retrospectively applying knowledge about how things are now to times before there were any sentient beings is a risk. What I'm doing is supposing that the absence of perceivers did not make a significant difference to the way things were. There's no evidence to the contrary (saving quantum physics and relativity), so is it not a reasonable inference?
What do you mean by "the whole world exists only in and for knowledge"? I certainly don't think that's true of the insensate world; it's not even true of people.
The world is not entirely idea. It has all sorts of other things in it.
Quoting Wayfarer
You seem to be claiming that the moon, for example, is "embedded in a complex of ideas, concepts and practices". That's true, in a way. But clearly false in another way. The ideas, concepts and practices that you are talking about are the ideas, concepts and practices of human beings about the moon. The moon, in fact, is an element, not a participant, in those activities; human beings are participants. But neither human beings nor moons are only or merely embedded in complexes of ideas, concepts and practices.
One could say that idealists (the eye) mistake the reflection of the moon in a lake for the actual thing. They need to look up, or perhaps out. That is what the eye is designed to do.
Where are the embodied minds (a.k.a. people) in all this? Do our bodies only exist as an idea?
Idealism is all very well, and I don't think that an old-fashioned argument in refutation is available. It's a way of seeing things. The problem with it is that it ignores the message that ideas and concepts and practices quietly and persistently send - that there exists a world beyond them. Ideas are ideas of something that is usually not an idea. Ditto concepts. Our practices involve things that are not ideas.
OK, so you acknowledge that, in a way, with your talk of a kernel (which I'm taking as equivalent to Kant's noumena), you accept there is something that escapes ideas etc. But for you (and Kant) the excess escapes our knowledge. For me, it only means that there is always more to discover.
Quoting Wayfarer
I accept that there are boundaries to our knowledge. But these boundaries, like boundaries everywhere are also opportunities to go further. Our knowledge is never complete, finished. Every answer we find generates more questions. We push at the boundaries of what we know and expand what we understand. From time to time, we find that simple expansion is not enough. We find phenomena that do not fit our ideas and concepts - and this is where the unknown and unthought reveals itself. But we don't stop there. We develop new, more comprehensive, ideas that enable us to understand the new anomalies and puzzles, or at least to extract from the data as much understanding as we can. Then, the boundary moves on.
Quoting Wayfarer
The picture is one thing, the universe is another. Isn’t that obvious? There are some issues there, but that is something of a starting-point for sorting this out.
“Co-arising” could do with some cashing out, I think. There is a common sense account which says that the universe/world existed long before humans, so it seems absolutely clear that the universe arose first, and produced human beings later, so it seems absolutely clear that the mind arose later. But there is interaction between the two. What’s wrong with that?
True, meaning and form do not hover, unperceived, in the void. I’m not sure that I know exactly what you mean by “form”, but I’m clear that meaning arises from the interaction between universe and mind, but does not exist independently of the mind. If “form” means “how we think of things”, then, of course, it only arises when there are people to think.
I'm far from satisfied with this, but it will have to do for now.
That's relatively simple — it means taking the reality of the world to be as it appears, or as it is presented to us, without recognizing the interpretive framework involved in that presentation. This is what is generally intended by realism. Scientific realism, in particular, tends to treat the world as an object of scientific analysis — as if it is simply given. That is what Edmund Husserl called 'the natural attitude' (explanation here.)
Quoting Ludwig V
It’s not necessarily something we do consciously. Of course, we can imagine or re-create the world in which they lived. But more crucially, it takes an observer—someone with the interpretive framework and expertise—to locate the fossils, determine their significance, and reconstruct the story. The observer isn’t just a passive witness but an active participant in making that world intelligible. (Mind you, the amazing video reproductions we have nowadays, also really help make the subject come alive.)
Quoting Ludwig V
They’re not my words—I’m quoting Schopenhauer. But it’s important to clarify: he doesn’t mean idea in the everyday sense of “I have an idea.” Rather, he’s using idea (or Vorstellung) in the philosophical sense of representation. Everything you see when you look around—the tree, the computer, the room, the world as you experience it—is already synthesized through your cognition. It’s all representation, not in the sense of illusion, but in the sense that it is always grasped as idea, for the subject.
Quoting Ludwig V
The aim of this whole exercise is to point out that it is not! That is the picture given by 'representative realism' - there is the actual world, which exists independently of any mind; and here, a representation of the world, a picture of the world, that is in my mind. But that picture is also in your mind - it is a mental construction. What is happening is your magnificent hominid brain is constantly synthesising this world-picture, Schopenhauer's vorstellung, 'representation' - which both you and your world-picture are 'inside'.
That’s what co-arising means: there is no world without a subject—but equally, no subject without a world. As phrased in The Blind Spot (from Maurice Merleau-Ponty) “The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject who is nothing but a project of the world; and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world that it itself projects.”
I do understand how difficult this point is, and I genuinely appreciate the seriousness and patience with which you’re engaging it—by now, most people would have thrown up their hands and walked away. But I still hold to the fundamentals of the argument. If there’s a shortcoming, it lies in my own inability to explain it more clearly.
Well, if a difficult philosophical point is not worth spending time on, what is?
I could not persist unless you were prepared to persist with me - so I also appreciate your patience. Fact is, I have got a bit fed up with walking away from insoluble disagreements. It keeps everything at a shallow level.
That said, there will be a pause before I actually respond to this. The wheels have to be kept on what we like to call real life.
An afterthought. If christening the baby changes the baby herself, who did we christen, the baby before the act, or the baby after the act? The parents will be very interested in the answer.
I'm not very well-versed in Phenomenology. But it points to a key difference in worldviews upon which many of the contentious posts on this forum pivot : Realism vs Idealism. The notion that our world is actually an idea in the Mind of God (world mind), may be unintelligible, not just to secular scientists, but also to many spiritual religionists. It just goes against our intuition of Self vs Other.
Which, I suppose is the point of the Buddha's "non-dual unstructured awareness". Personally, I can accept it intellectually, but not experientially. However, the Matrix and Tron movies gave me some imagery by which to imagine a local mind within an encompassing non-local Mind. :cool:
Substance metaphysics and phenomenology represent distinct, yet sometimes intertwined, philosophical approaches. Substance metaphysics, particularly in the Aristotelian tradition, focuses on identifying and defining the fundamental, underlying realities (substances) that exist independently and support properties. Phenomenology, on the other hand, prioritizes the study of conscious experience and how things appear to us, often questioning the possibility or necessity of grasping underlying substances.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=substance+metaphysics+vs+phenomenology+
In philosophical idealism, the "mind of God" refers to the idea that the ultimate reality is fundamentally mental or spiritual, and that God's mind is the source and sustainer of all existence. This concept is central to many forms of idealism, particularly subjective idealism and objective idealism, where the perceived world is seen as existing within the mind of God or as a manifestation of divine consciousness.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=idealism+mind+of+god
I've read a bit, and I think I understand some basic points. There's a mixture of ideas in your post, but I'll start by saying realism v idealism is precisely the dichotomy that phenomenology seeks to avoid.
The passage your Google search surfaced puts it like this:
Quoting Gnomon
But it hardly conveys the real gist of the phenomenological method. The starting point for phenomenology was Franz Brentano's studies of intentionality and 'about-ness'.
[quote=Wiki]Brentano defined intentionality as the main characteristic of mental phenomena, by which they could be distinguished from physical phenomena. Every mental phenomenon, every psychological act has content, is directed at an object (the intentional object). Every belief, desire etc. has an object that they are about: the believed, the desired. ... The property of being intentional, of having an intentional object, was the key feature to distinguish psychological phenomena and physical phenomena.[/quote]
Edmund Husserl, generally regarded as founder of phenomenology, attended Brentano's lectures, and elaborated on these ideas. His works are dense and formal. (Most of what I know comes from his last book, published posthumously, The Crisis of the European Sciences, and the Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, ed. Dermot Moran, and Phenomenology, an Introduction, Dan Zahavi, among others.)
Phenomenology re-introduced the 'primacy of awareness' and attempted to break out of the subject-object divide that had haunted Western philosophy since Descartes (on whom Husserl wrote extensively.) Situatedness, context and intentionality are all fundamental principles in phenomenology.
A relevant passage from the Routledge Introduction:
Which is exactly what the original post is about.
Quoting Gnomon
That is only true of certain strains or schools - Bishop Berkeley's being one, but then, he was a Bishop. The approach in the Mind Created World is epistemological rather than ontological - about the nature of knowing rather than about what the world is made from or of. I said 'The constitution of material objects is a matter for scientific disciplines (although I’m well aware that the ultimate nature of these constituents remains an open question in theoretical physics).' Also notice the word 'spiritual' does not appear in it.
Right, so we know that the cosmos was visible prior to the advent of percipients, otherwise there never would have been any percipients.
Quoting Ludwig V
I'd say there is always more to be seen in the seeing of anything, more and finer detail and also different ways of seeing as per the different ways, for example, different species see things.
When the OP says "a world that is fully real and determinate independently of mind", what could 'determinate' mean in a world containing no perceivers? How could something be determined when there is no one there to determine it? Percipients do determine their objects. If they could not do that they could not survive. It seems to follow that things were determinable , just as they were visible and understandable, but obviously not seen, understood or determinate, prior to the advent of percipients.
One of the key functions of transcendental critique is to resist the tendency to absolutize appearances (which is what becomes 'scientism'.) Scientific knowledge gives us real and powerful insights into nature — but those insights are always shaped by judgement, concept, and perspective. When we forget this, we turn empirical knowledge into a kind of metaphysical absolute: what begins as methodological naturalism silently morphs into metaphysical naturalism, the belief that only science can show us what is.
The OP is not metaphysics in the dogmatic or speculative sense. What I’m doing — in line with Kantian principles — is laying bare the assumptions that science itself rests on. What does it mean for something to be “observable”? What is the status of space and time? These aren’t speculative metaphysical questions — they are conditions of possibility for scientific knowledge itself. Ignore them, and you don’t avoid metaphysics — you fall into it unwittingly. 'No metaphysics' ends up becoming a particularly poor metaphysics.
I think your Epistemological approach is more appropriate for a philosophy forum, than the Empirical methods that some advocate. Besides, the Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Physics seemed to open the door to Epistemological discussions. But injecting Philosophy into Physics often raises objections of Mysticism and Woo-woo. So, we typically avoid using the fraught term "spiritual" when referring to Mental, as opposed to Material, essences & causes. Does Phenomenology successfully bridge over the spooky abyss of Spiritualism? :smile:
Husserl was never overtly 'spiritual' (whatever that means) but some say his emphasis on the transcendental aspects of phenomenology became somewhat too idealist later in life. Many of his successors, specifically Heidegger (with whom he had a somewhat fraught relationship) were much less sympathetic to that dimension of Husserl's thought, and more concerned with being-in-the-world.
One of the online articles I've found informative is The Phenomenological Reduction (IEP).
The urge to devour and assimilate what is not oneself.
Don't feel bad.
That's an interesting take. Instead of oneself being a small part of the Universe, the Universe must instead be seen as being a small part of oneself.
It must also be a need to have everyone agree with oneself, given that the rejoinder to any disagreement is always predictably "if you don't agree then you must not have understood" coupled with some attempt to cast aspersions on the others' level of education. It's a sorry spectacle...
Quoting Jamal
No, he really ought to feel bad.
But you clearly don't understand. Your arguments don't display a proper grasp of the issues. I've tried for years to explain ideas to you, to be met first with incomprehension, then with invective, and then with insults. So I generally ignore your remarks, a practice I will now resume.
Jack adopted this form of life. To be fair, when a kitten he was hit by a car or bike and lost for a few weeks, only to be found emaciated and wounded. He was eating the maggots on his legs.
After that he ate everything.
Returning to his goatish essence.
This reminds me there's an ongoing discussion on woke that’s been a curious read, but it’s easy to forget how much the concept operates across all fields and orientations; as orthodoxy, as sets of axiomatic principles, often justified by universalising principles like equality, solidarity or reason, and sometimes by something closer to faith.
I'm not including you in this, although sometimes you do seem a little dogmatic for my taste. But then I'm reminded that you have a strong countercultural leaning, which I dig.
I think there’s room on this site for a different kind of discussion, where perhaps a third person helps facilitate a conversation between two members who don’t agree and seem to be talking past each other. I often wonder, with you and @Janus (and I probably align a bit more with him), whether a productive shift could happen with the right kind of facilitation.
What I think I see is that conversations on the forum often get stuck around 1) the justification of axioms, 2) accusations of misunderstanding or bad faith, 3) acrimony. It’s as if we’re hard-wired for conflict over difference. The worst offenders seem to call others liars and sophists when they are challenged by difference.
My interest on this site is probably trying to understand positions I don’t necessarily agree with, it's hard to do because one often ends up trying to defend one's own views on something along the way. The price we often pay for conversation.
Curious. I'm in a discussion about the present nadir of quality threads. In desperation I even contributed to the Shoutbox.
As far as being dogmatic is concerned, please be so kind as to indicate where you think this shows up in the OP.
Of course not every thread and every contributor is an opportunity for learning, but overall and for a public forum, I think thephilosophyforum.com has a good reputation.
These are good points Tom. I think people often forget that what they are presenting is merely one perspective. If they react defensively it seems to indicate that they have so much invested in their particular hobbyhorse that critique feels threatening. Hence the accusations of misunderstanding and lack of education.
The irony with the situation between Wayfarer and myself is that I am very familiar with all the arguments he presents, I used to present such arguments myself (and he knows this but does not want to admit it), but I have come to think there is very good reason to question the soundness of the presumptions upon which those arguments are based. He seems to take my critiques as personal attacks, when all I'm doing is expressing genuine objections.
Never said they were. I'm pointing to something I've noticed about the ones that are.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm not going to spend valuable time seeking out examples. And I said "a little", besides, I'm not saying it's your modus operandi. It's just my take on the way you sometimes talk, for instance, about Dennett, physicalism, and people who don't buy into idealism. You seem to put them down, almost Bentley Hart style. It's clear you believe idealism is true and that materialism is demonstrably false. Having said that, I greatly value your contributions and read almost everything you post as I consider you the most clear and scrupulous proponent of idealism and higher consciousness studies here.
Yes, it often happens amongst members here. Sometimes watching is like a slow motion car crash.
There's no doubt in my mind that @Wayfarer is driven fundamentally by an agenda, but I'm in two minds about whether that's a bad thing. On the one hand, it leads one to avoid proper engagement with any philosophy that cannot be weaponized; on the other hand, a completely neutral approach to philosophy is really boring.
Yeah, it didn't look like you were attacking him. I just took the opportunity to say something about agenda-driven philosophy, cos it's interesting.
And...far be it from me to defend @Wayfarer
Well, I want to get this straight. You've heard them many times, but I say you don't understand them. Take this latest exchange - it began with:
Quoting Janus
This is a misrepresentation. The reason you say this is 'repetitive' is because you (and many others) misrepresent what is being said over and over again, to which I try and respond. In this case, I copied a couple of paragraphs from the original post, and then added commentary to the effect that it is not being argued that there was no universe prior to observers. So we get to:
Quoting Janus
I say: “We can't say what existence means apart from mind.”
And you interpret as:
“Nothing existed before minds.”
The question I’m raising is not whether the universe existed, but what it means to say so. That is: what conditions make such a claim intelligible at all? When you say “the cosmos was visible prior to the advent of percipients,” you're smuggling in a category — visibility — that only has meaning within the context of experience. That’s the point I keep returning to.
You dismiss this as a “confusion with a truism” — that “only minds can know.” But this isn't about knowledge in the empirical or factual sense. It's about the conditions for meaningful discourse — the structure that allows us to form concepts like “universe,” “visibility,” or “existence” in the first place. I’m not making a deductive claim about what did or didn’t exist. I’m making a transcendental claim about what makes it possible to talk about existence at all.
To be clear: I’m not arguing that the universe didn’t exist before percipients. I’m arguing that the very concept of the universe — including any claims about its being — is bound to the framework of cognition. That’s not speculative metaphysics. It’s critical philosophy — and it was precisely this confusion that Kant sought to untangle.
The “actual existence” which you say must have pre-existed observers is exactly what’s at issue. I’m not denying the reality of the universe prior to observation — I’m saying that what it is, apart from any possible mode of perception, conception, or representation, is not something that science can tell us, because science already presupposes intelligibility, structure, and observation. That is Kant's 'in itself' - to which I add, it neither exists nor doesn't exist. Nothing can be said about it.
Of course we can reconstruct the early universe. I’m not contesting any of that. But all such reconstructions take place within the space of reason and inference — they’re appearances, structured by theory, observation, and mathematical representation. That’s not a flaw — it’s the condition of knowledge. But it does mean that the thing-in-itself — the “actual existence” prior to appearance — remains transcendent with respect to what science can access.
That’s the critical point: science gives us knowledge of appearances, not of reality unconditioned by perspective. When we forget this distinction, we turn methodological naturalism into a metaphysical doctrine — and mistake the limits of our mode of knowing for the limits of what is.
So — this is not “an unfortunate deductive error.” It’s a position foundational to a great deal of contemporary philosophy, especially in European traditions, though less so in the Anglo-American analytic stream.
There’s an online journal, Constructivist Foundations, which is an international, peer-reviewed e-journal dedicated to the study of constructivist and enactive approaches across philosophy, cognitive science, second-order cybernetics, neurophenomenology, and non-dualizing thought. I don’t have the academic credentials to make the cut in a journal of that kind, but I’d suggest that the core argument of Mind-Created World would be regarded as fairly stock-in-trade in that context — not a mistake, but a well-recognized philosophical position.
So I'd appreciate it if you might acknowledge that I'm not 'repeating the same mistake ad nauseum', as I don't think I am.
I don't have an agenda - I have an interest in recovering what I think is the meaning of philosophy proper, which is not at all obvious, and very difficult to discern. I say that philosophical and scientific materialism is parasitic upon philosophy proper. But the times, they are a'changin.
Well yes, and it's part of postmodernism too. Our frameworks, and reality are a contingent product.
Quoting Wayfarer
How woudl you say this isn't an agenda, or at the very least a project?
So, you agree there was a universe prior to observers. What then are we disagreeing about?
Quoting Wayfarer
It's obvious what it means to say there was a universe prior to observers...it means, if true, that there was a universe prior to observers.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's a lame point though, and nothing is being "smuggled in" because it is simply a truism that everything we say only has meaning within the context of human experience and the judgements we make on the basis of experience. Since it obviously applies to everything there is no point bringing it up. As to visibility, we know what it means for something to be visible, and the idea doesn't depend on it being seen. Similarly we know what it means for something to exist, and it doesn't depend on the existence of humans.
Quoting Wayfarer
The fact that we exist and possess language makes it possible to talk about existence and anything else. As to "meaningful discourse", what makes sense to each of us may differ depending on our preconceptions and assumptions. You speak as though there is a fact of the matter regarding what it could be meaningful to say, but that is simply not true.
You are entitled to say that the idea of existence independent of human experience makes no sense to you, but you cannot justifiably pontificate about what should or should not make sense to others. It is that kind of dogmatic assumption that leads you to think that anyone who disagrees with your stipulations must not understand.
Quoting Wayfarer
The irony is it seems that it is you that wants to restrict "what is" to what humans can know. I allow that all the things we experience have their own existence and had their own existence before there were any humans.
Quoting Wayfarer
Perhaps...I tend to doubt that, but in any case so what?...that there are others who might think as you do doesn't mean much. There are others who think all kinds of things, and the majority of intelligent well-educated people seem to be metaphysical realists. I'm not going to find appeals to authority convincing.
Quoting Wayfarer
The very idea of "philosophy proper" is dogmatic. There is no fact of the matter...it cannot be anything more than your opinion.
.
A neat point. I'm not sure how convincing it would be for a true idealist. I think you might find that they might argue that since the cosmos was not seen (and could not be seen) before percipients appeared, there is no proof that it was visible. We won't be impressed, of course.
Quoting Janus
Oh, I don't mean to suggest that seeing is not more complicated than it might seem. One difficulty is that the borderline between seeing and understanding is, let me say, a bit moot. Arguable, you will have some description for what you see, which implies some level of understanding. If I see a smudge on the horizon on Monday, and it turns out on Tuesday, when the ship arrives in port that it is a Russian oil tanker, did I see the tanker on Monday, (but did not see that it was a Russian oil tanker) or did I see a smudge on Monday, which turned out to be a Russian oil tanker on Tuesday. I think seeing is achieved on contact, so to speak, whereas understanding is never complete.
That sets a simple context. Different ways of seeing are another complication. So, I'll just agree that there is not a sharp line between seeing and understanding, which does not mean that there is not a distinction to be made.
Quoting Janus
I could pick at the wording. But I broadly agree. The issue arises in "Percipients do determine their objects". "Determine" and "determinate" are more complicated than they seem. An idealist would take "determine" in that sentence in the sense that a law-maker determines the law. A realist would take it in the sense that a scientist determines the level of pollution in a river.
I think that may be common ground. The issue may be what the implications are. I think we have also agreed that our knowledge of how the world was before evolution kicked in, or percipients or homo sapiens appeared is a matter of extrapolating or projecting what we know (present tense). I've suggested the format of these exercises is a counter-factual conditional. If there had been observers, this is what they would have observed. (Berkeley accepts counterfactuals as compatible with his idealism, so I am not presenting it in the way of refutation.)
Quoting Wayfarer
This is where the distinction between Cambridge changes or relations and non-Cambridge changes or relations kicks in. For me, the "mental aspect" of reality is a Cambridge relation, that is, that the world before percipients and observers was constituted by objects and their relations.
There's an additional divergence between us. You have denied that the mental acts required to establish our perspective on reality need to be carried out by any particular people. I get the impression that the "noetic act" needs to exist, but its existence is independent of actual people. I just don't get that.
Quoting Wayfarer
I can just about get my head around "conditions of the possibility of knowledge". I've never had a firm grip on what metaphysics is supposed to be. My philosophical education was most remiss about that.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's all fine, until we get to the "it neither exists nor doesn't exist". It is true that nothing can be said about "unknown unknown", except that nothing can be said - or known - about them. Very little, but not nothing, can be said about "known unknowns". I would say, however, that we know that both exist.
In real life, we discover both kinds as we go along. The existence of these is one of the things that tells me that there is more to the world than what we think about it. But it's not a category - it's a process. We incorporate them into what we already know, and we know that it is very likely that we will come across more as we go on.
Quoting Wayfarer
Now, here's another point of divergence. In the 17th century, scientists foreswore the hidden realities of the (Aristotelian) scholastics. The function of science was to understand the realities that we actually experience - except those things that we experience that were not amenable to mathematical treatment - but that was treated as a marginal note. So science was about reality as it appears to us - so about appearances. This got confused by philosophers with their idea of appearances as curious phenomena that hid reality from us. So you remark about "knowledge of appearances" is ambiguous. For science, there is no distinction between appearance and reality. The idea that there are two distinct categories of - I'll call it existence - appearance and reality, is a philosophical invention. In reality, appearances are real and reality is what appears to us. So, the distinction between appearances and reality unconditioned by perspective is a chimera.
Yes, of course appearances are not reality because they are misleading. Truth is, sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't. Philosophy wants to forget the former, but we ought to remember it. This is important to us and to our discussion, because it is the misleading appearances that enable us to identify the limits of our mode of knowing.
Yes, according to modern cosmology, the physical universe existed for about 10 billion years without any animation or "cognition" : just malleable matter & causal energy gradually evolving & experimenting with new forms of being ; ways of existing. So, you could say that the universe was not awake or aware until the last 4 billion years : the fourth trimester. Could that pre-conscious era be described metaphorically as Gestation : the period between Conception and Birth?
The book I'm currently reading is entitled, The Sapient Cosmos, by James Glattfelder. It's published by Essentia Books, which produces "scholarly work relevant to metaphysical idealism". The author was trained as a physicist, and practiced as a mathematician. But he now goes beyond the pragmatic limits of both professions, to explore the world philosophically ; which is to say "meta-physically". He refers to his methodology as "Empirical Metaphysics". What he finds most interesting is the emergence of Meaning in a material world.
Greek "Cosmos" simply means orderly or organized, but it also seems to imply some Teleological Purpose. The Latin root of "Sapient" means, not just cognitive, but also "wise". At this 1/3 point of the book, I'm not sure if the appellation is intended to apply to the physical universe or to the Organizer, whose purpose is being implemented in material & mental forms. As far as I can tell, the author is simply presenting "brute facts", if you can call philosophical deductions factual. And he is not presenting "institutional facts" under the auspices of Science or Religion. Yet, the question remains : did cosmic Mind exist before the emergence of embodied personal Minds? Or, as some postulate, did our accidental (fortuitous) collective human minds merge into a Cosmic Mind?
Personally, I am not inclined to worship a sentient world, or the implicit Inventor of a "mind-created world", nor to join a social group centered on a relationship with a Cosmos that doesn't communicate or correspond with me. I'm just exploring the wider world to satisfy my own philosophical curiosity. Am I missing some deeper meaning here? :smile:
The point of the Galilean method was that it was defined in terms of primary and secondary attributes of matter, instead of Aristotelian (meta)physics and its 'natural tendencies'. As well as being inextricably connected with the geocentric cosmology. This is all history, of course.
Galileo's primary qualities, also endorsed by Locke, were those attributes of matter such as mass, force, velocity, inertia and so on - which were amenable to mathematical measurement and representation. That was the essence of the 'new physics' that represented a complete break from the earlier model.
For Galileo, how things appeared, on the other hand - color, taste, scent, and so on - were assigned to the mind of the individual. So here was a dualism of a completely different kind to what you're suggesting - between the measurable attributes of bodies, understood as objectively real, the same for all observers, as opposed to how they appeared, which was assigned to the individual mind, and so 'subjectivised'. This is the genesis of the 'Cartesian division' which has been subject to much commentary. Thomas Nagel put it like this:
[quote=Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36]The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. [/quote]
Quoting Ludwig V
I understand that. I was introduced to Kant via an unorthodox route, through a 1950's book called The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, T.R.V. Murti. It has extensive comparisons with the European idealists and the 'Middle Way' (Madhyamaka) philosophy of a semi-legendary figure called N?g?rjuna (memorialised as 'the second Buddha', living in around the first century C.E. although dates are unknown.) Murti's book as fallen out of favour for being overly eurocentric (Murti having been Oxford-trained.) But it was one of those books which for me was a profound part of my spiritual and philosophical formation. It enabled me to see the link between meditative awareness and Kantian idealism.
Buddhism has always been aware of the way the mind creates (or constructs) our world. That is why there has been extensive consultation between contemporary Buddhist scholarship, psychologists, and neuroscience (see The Mind-Life Institute). But Buddhism doesn't rely on scientific apparatus to attain its insights - it relies on highly-trained awareness to discern these insights about the constructive activities of the mind – although, that said, neuroscientists have devoted resources to exploring the effects of meditation on the mind:
Mingyur Rinpoche participating in experimental analysis of meditation
An AI-generated description of the parallels between Kant and Buddhist philosophy:
I know there's a lot to take on there - both Kant and N?g?rjuna's texts have engendered huge volumes of commentary - but the key takeway is that both analyse the role of cognition in the construction of experience.
From the reactions to this OP, I'm realizing that it's a very difficult argument to present clearly. Broadly speaking, it's a transcendental argument—that is, it begins not with claims about what exists, but with an analysis of experience and cognition, and then asks: what must be the case for such experience to be possible? (This is why it is epistemological rather than ontological.)
One of the key implications is that we are not passive observers of a pre-given world, but active participants in the constitution of the world as we know and live it. To grasp this, we have to reflect on the role our own minds play in shaping the structures of experience—our world of lived meanings. This is precisely where phenomenology enters the picture, since it offers a disciplined way of examining experience from within, rather than assuming it as something merely external or objective. Hence the requirement for a changed perspective, not simply the acquisition of some propositional knowledge.
But that's a larger discussion. I've said enough for now.
Quoting Gnomon
Where does the measure 'years' originate, if not through the human experience of the time taken for the Earth to rotate the Sun?
It could. The question would be what impact would that have on how one thought about that process. I'm very suspicious of the idea that we, or the universe, are progressing anywhere - though I know full well that things are always in the process of change. Everything changes, except change itself.
Quoting Gnomon
I can't think of a Cosmic Mind except as a huge version of the collective mind that seems to emerge in crowds.
Quoting Gnomon
I feel much the same - especially about worshipping anything. You may be missing a deeper meaning, but at least you are not pursuing chimeras.
Quoting Wayfarer
My main point is to push back against the view that what we call science reveals reality, and replace it with the view that it is based on a "construction" of reality which is not, philosophically at least, any different from any other. (That's not quite right.) The historical changes were the result of a changed methodology - everything revolves around that; that was the hinge, if you like.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by the dualism of a completely different kind; all I was trying to do was to puncture a balloon - or undermine a claim to special status. I'm in pursuit of a more nuanced approach to reality vs appearance.
That's well expressed. This conception seems much less exceptional when it is spoken of as a conception and by implication one possibility among others. But then, no-one, I think, could say that it was not worth developing, even if there were downsides. On yet the other hand, it has morphed several times since then and seems in the process of morphing again.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. I have a lot of time for the diagnosis that Buddhism proposes. But I get stuck on the idealism. I think there is a problem about the idea that the mind "constructs" the world; it's somewhat better when it is our world or the lived world. But that leaves the world simpliciter in the shadows, which seems wrong, somehow. I realize we can't simply say that the mind reveals the world, but I don't think it is really meaningful to say that the mind constructs the world, either. It's obviously not mean literally.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, it certainly is difficult. I think I have a sort of understanding what "transcendental" means or might mean. But I don't really understand the form of this analysis, except in a confused and intuitive way.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, I take that. I don't say I altogether understand it, but there are things about it that make some sense. But how does this fit with Buddhism and meditation?
Quoting Wayfarer
There are lots of fascinating complications, starting with the obvious point that a year on Mars or Venus is different, and a year on the moon is different again and differently conceptualized; then one wonders how long a year would be on the sun. However, I take your point, in a way. Yet I also find myself reflecting that there must be something real - not constructed, but recognized - about the Earth's orbiting the sun, no matter how we conceptualize it.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm afraid I'm prone to afterthoughts. Our problem can be thought of as a kind of antinomy. Our language seems to me to point beyond itself, over and over again. Which seems to be impossible.
We learnt from Wittgenstein's discussion of ostensive definition that pointing is not self-explanatory; it has to be interpreted, and that requires a framework (Wittgenstein says that we need to know "where the word is stationed in the language"). What if it were the case that the existence of a mind-independent world to which we have some sort of access must be the case for our language (and perception, not to mention action) to be possible? Would it be possible for phenomenology that has "bracketed" the external world to recognize that?
Obviously, the human mind is doing the measuring in terms of locally conventional increments. But the point is that the physical universe existed long before metaphysical minds. So, logically, the mechanisms of Physics must have had the Potential (the "right stuff") for mental functions all along. Apparently, it just took Time to evolve mental mechanisms (thinking organisms) from the raw materials of Matter & Energy, wondrously produced by the explosion of a long long long ago Black Hole Singularity. Something from What-thing?
Yet, where did that un-actualized pre-bang Potential come from? Is that unknowable Source of Probability (creative power) temporal or eternal? Is it Mathematical (statistical) or Mental (ideal) or Spiritual (G*D)? How and why did the evolving universe of mostly simple hydrogen atoms assemble simple holons (parts) into complex wholes that can self-reflect, and can imagine countless balls of radiant energy (stars) as a living & thinking Cosmos?
Some scientists are now exploring the notion that the Cosmos is a computer*1, processing Information (raw data) into complex Forms with novel functions, such as Thinking & Feeling. But who or what is the Programmer that set-up the system to pursue a Teleology leading to observant & reflective Minds? How do those mindful brains create an ideal mental world within the real physical world? :smile:
PS___ Which came first Mind or Potential?
*1. The idea that the universe is a computer is a fascinating and complex concept explored in digital physics and simulation theory. It suggests that the universe operates based on fundamental principles of computation, where physical laws and processes can be understood as algorithms and information processing. While not universally accepted, this idea has gained traction, particularly with the development of quantum computing and the exploration of the universe's computational capacity.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=universe+is+a+computer
The point I'm pressing is the distinction between the empirical facts of science, which I'm not disputing in the least, and the grounding of these facts in the philosophical and scientific framework through which we understand them. That argument is that our knowledge of the physical universe (world, object) is not knowledge of the universe as it is in itself but of how it appears to us.
Western culture has a preoccupation with finding the primary ground or fundamental state, being or thing, but nowadays conceived as first in series of material and efficient causes. I'm not pursuing an understanding of a first cause in that sense (whether scientific or theistic).
That’s why I’ve referred to Kant, and to Husserl’s critique of the “natural attitude.” What I’m exploring isn’t an alternative physical theory — it’s a philosophical inquiry into the possibility of meaning, including the meaning of physical theories. And also an argument against the sense that science sees the world as it truly is outside any perspective.
Quoting Ludwig V
Precisely! A couple of pages back I quoted a long passage from Schopenhauer which says exactly that (this post).
Quoting Ludwig V
Because a major point of mindfulness is to understand how the mind creates your world. This is a snippet from an essay on 'emptiness' in Buddhist meditation. It means, among other things, empty of presuppositions or inferred meanings.
Ultimately in the Buddhist analysis the cause of suffering is clinging or holding to possessions, sensations, ideologies - attachment, generally speaking. This is an incessant mental activity. Notice also the similarity to the phenomenological epoch? or suspension of judgement.
Quoting Ludwig V
As am I! The main point being that in the early modern scientific worldview, the division of subject and object was fundamental but also concealed. Kant and later, phenomenology, seeks to make explicit this division and to re-instate the role of the subject in the construction of knowledge.
Quoting Ludwig V
There is a school of Mah?y?na Buddhism (the form of Buddhism common to Tibet and East Asia, distinct from the Theravada schools of southern Asia) called Yog?c?ra or Vijñ?nav?da. This is usually translated as 'mind-only Buddhism'. It is by no means universally accepted in Buddhism (and not at all by Theravada Buddhism). But it is philosophically rich and many comparisions have been made between it, and Berkeleyian and Kantian idealism. You can find the Wikipedia entry here.
According to the concept "universe", there was a universe prior to observers. But many aspects of that concept indicate to us that it is a misrepresentation of reality. It's really a false premise. So it doesn't mean a whole lot, that the implication of that false premise, is that there was a universe prior to observers.
Quoting Janus
This is highly doubtful. "To exist" is very clearly a concept structured around human experience. If you think otherwise, I'd be interested to see a good explanation of "existence" which wasn't based in human experience. And a simple definition which begs the question would not qualify as a good explanation.
Obviously. Consequently, we are inescapably part of the universe that we observe and interact with. There is an understanding of this that says that our waking up was actually the universe waking up. I think that's over-doing it a bit, but it is better than the idea we are alien visitors. Yes, we are thrown into it. But that doesn't mean we don't belong. If we were not adapted to survive and thrive in this universe, we would have disappeared long ago.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm not sure why you say it was concealed. Surely everybody knew about it, and everyone (except, possibly, for a few marginal eccentrics) accepted it. On the other hand, it's true that the 17th and 18th centuries were not terribly conscious of the process that goes on to enable us to perceive and reason, so the turn of the 19th century in focusing more on the subject was indeed needed.
That does sound like a phenomenological project, though the motivation is not theoretical in the sense that phenomenology is. The cessation of desire and the pursuit of truth are not the same.
But the language here confuses me. The first sentence is ambiguous. Experience can even be understood as common sense experience of shoes and ships and sealing-wax. The second sense introduces raw data. I don't believe we ever experience raw data; the uninterpreted experience is a mirage. Interpreting the last sentence takes us on a long, familiar journey without a destination.
An excellent example of distracting questions is the question of idealism, which is presented front and centre in the previous quotation. Now, I can make sense of this as a variant on "kicking away the ladder" exemplified in the Tractatus. But it seems a side-issue beside the real project of abandoning attachments, such as possessions and ideologies; I can't see why that requires accepting idealism even temporarily.
Quoting Wayfarer
I get quite confused about whether the aim is to end mental activity or give up one's attachment to it and in it. Both of these are hard to distinguish from ceasing to live. As to the epoche, it is clearly a cousin or something. You see, presented with this relationship, my first thought is to clarify the differences, and there are plenty of those.
You probably want to say "Shut up and meditate". I think I may be unusually attached to realism because I was brought up to believe that the material, physical universe is an illusion. I woke up as I grew up, but it was an important process in my teen-age life. Most people, I think, are allowed to grow up as naive realists, so their reaction to idealism may well be different.
... and here's my afterthought. I can understand "emptiness" as meaning something like the idea that things and events do not, in some sense, have the significance or importance or weight that common sense attributes to them. That would enable one to abandon desire. (That would be a parallel to the stance that Western scientists and phenomenologists attempt.) But the difficulty with that is that it makes compassion hard to understand.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't see how the idea that there was a universe prior to observers is a misrepresentation of reality.
What I said is that the concept "universe" is a misrepresentation of reality. There is much evidence to support this claim, things like spatial expansion, and dark matter, demonstrate that what we think of as "the universe" is not an acceptable representation.
Under that representation, there was necessarily "a universe" prior to observers, and so that is a valid conclusion. However, "universe" is clearly a false concept, in the sense of correspondence, so the conclusion ought to be dismissed as unsound.
The expansion of space and dark matter are indeed among the many issues that seem likely to change what we know about the universe. But there is not, so far as I know, any actual reason to think that the universe only began when observers evolved. At present, the evidence says that it began long before that happened, so I'lI stick with that conclusion until some actual evidence against it turns up. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
It's not a matter of changing what we know about the universe, it's a matter of "the universe" being a false conception. There is no such thing. For analogy, consider ancient people who saw the sun, moon, and planets orbiting the earth. What you say here, is like if someone back then said "indeed, retrogrades are among the many issues that seem likely to change what we know about the way that these bodies orbit the earth". Do you see how this is the wrong attitude? It is not the case that we "need to change what we know about the universe". The whole conception needs to be changed from the bottom up, like a Kuhnian paradigm shift, but even more radical.
Personally, I have a very parochial view of the world. Except for four years in the navy, my body, with its sensory organs, has seldom experienced the wider world beyond my location, within a radius of a few miles, on the North American continent. Since I live in a small city, I seldom see any stars, except for Venus. So, my "knowledge of the physical universe" is not "as it is in itself", but as reported by humans who have made it their business to explore parts of the universe beyond my ken.
Presumably, those reports --- from scientists, philosophers, explorers --- describe the universe "as it appears" to them. From those varied accounts, I have stitched together a worldview of my own. But, it's still a patchwork, and not knowledge of the world "as it is". And Kant concluded that Ultimate Reality (noumenon) is fundamentally unknowable to humans. He seems to be implying that philosophers are just ordinary humans, who have made it their business to guess (speculate) about non-phenomenal noumena.
And yet, mystics, shamen, prophets, psychonauts, etc, have claimed to see beyond the limits of human senses, with introspection, or extra-sensory perception, or drugs that dull the left brain (rational mind). Should I take their reports as descriptions of what the world is really truly like --- or as it "appears to them"? :wink:
In a sense, I already think that there is no such thing as the universe. The "universe" overlaps with "the world" and "the cosmos" and does not mean anything concrete except "everything that exists". That doesn't make much sense to me. But people will keep using it and continually protesting to deaf ears is boring to me and others. So I go along with it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm clearly not as excited as you are about these things. But I don't understand what is going on, except that there is a lot of controversy which I do not understand and cannot understand, I'm told, unless I have at least two degrees in physics. Forgive me if I am more laid back about it than you are.
But you are missing my point. Take your analogy. Suppose someone had said to us just before Copernicus published that everything that we think we know about the sun, moon and stars is wrong. No reaction. Compare someone saying to us in 1690, after Newton's Principia was published, that everything had changed. I would pay attention. Same here. Give me answers that I can get my head around in language that I speak, then I'll pay attention.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, I don't see what is wrong with my attitude. You aren't telling me anything. You are promising that you will be telling me something at some point in the future. Back in the day, a Kuhnian paradigm shift was the most radical change possible, and the scientific revolution was precisely a change in the whole conception of the universe and the place of human beings in it. So I understand it will be quite something. I'm waiting. In the mean time, life goes on.
It’s more a question of intellectual humility - no matter how much we know there’s still a sense in which we lack insight into how things really are. Human knowledge is necessarily incomplete, in that sense.
Quoting Ludwig V
I've given up on meditation. I attempted to practice it for many decades, having a disciplined routine of getting up an sitting in a customary 'zazen' position for anything up to 45 minutes (which was often excruciating, but then that's part of it.) About five years ago, the practice just fell away, and besides, I was never a disciplined yogi. My lifestyle remains pretty 'bougie' (a word I picked up from my adult son). I've tried to return to it a few times, but I can no longer assume the customary posture, and just sitting on a chair seems lacking. Due to books like 'The Miracle of Mindfulness', it's presented as a panacea, the end to all woes. But if you read the original text of mindfulness meditation, the Satipatthana Sutta, you will see that in context it is a very exacting discipline, conducted as part of a regimen of discipline and lifestyle (in which mindfulness, sati, is one leg of a tripod, the others being morality, sila, and wisdom, panna.)
All that said, something remains. My initial discovery of meditation involved a confluence of reading and practice which really did trigger some epiphanies. I used to see visiting teachers some of whom really did precipate awakening experiences. I was enrolled in comparative religion and studying what I understood as the enlightenment vision, and I really do believe that this is real. (Believing that is not necessarily the same as believing in God.) I have always had the sense of having, in some very distant past, an understanding which was the most important thing in life, the only thing that really needed to be understood. I came to understand this as an intimation of what Vedanta calls self-realisation although I make no claim to have realised a higher state. More like a glimpse or what Plato calls an anamnesis, an un-forgetting of something vital once known.
Quoting Ludwig V
Excellent insight and completely true. That is why Mayahana Buddhism stresses that emptiness (??nyat?) and compassion (metta-karuna) are like the two wings of a bird - the bird needs both to take flight.
Scientific objectivity started, in Medieval thought, as a form of philosophical detachment, but it diverges from it, due to the emphasis on the 'primacy of the measurable', which we've already discussed. That is the subject of one of my Medium essays Objectivity and Detachment.
Here's the difference between you and I then. You won't go anywhere unless someone, who has already been there, points the way to you, (and gives you answers that you can get your head around). I'll find my own new direction without anyone showing me the way, simply because I apprehend the conventional as wrong. Someone has to be first or no one will ever go. It will not be you.
If you take a bit of time to consider the true nature of time, you'll come to realize that current conceptions of "the universe" have it all wrong.
Quoting Ludwig V
You are not paying attention. I'm not promising to provide for you something new, in the future. I am telling you that what others are providing for you today, and in the past, is wrong. That's it, that's all, no promise concerning the future. I expected that you are capable of crafting your own future. But now you demonstrate that you'll only go where someone else has already been, and this casts doubt on that expectation.
Quoting Ludwig V
I see, you like to wait and let life go on. You are not prepared to take the bull by the horns are you?
It depends on the bull.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
OK. Enlighten me.
So have I. I'm not sure why. I certainly lacked the total commitment that seems to be expected in the literature. There's a hint (which I think that those who write about it would reject) that one needs to abandon everything else to do it properly, but I thought that the point was to do everything else properly. I read quite a lot about Zen, which I discovered through Alan Watts and Thich Nhat Hanh. The value of that was that it gave me a counter-weight to the idea that it is essential to get one's ideas sorted out before anything else, i.e. philosophy. (It is obviously needed. Otherwise, one has to face the question how to live while working out how one should live?)
Quoting Wayfarer
I've never studied comparative religion systematically, so I try not to pontificate about it. My founding texts were Aldous Huxley "The Perennial Philosophy" and William James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience". I know enough to know that there are varieties of the enlightenment vision. It seems at least possible that there is a core experience, which can be interpreted differently in different intellectual contexts. (Yet one its features is the down-grading of the intellect.) Whether the "core" experience itself is the same in all contexts or not seems unclear to me. A common element is that it is self-certifying. I'm extremely sceptical about that. For me, validation of the experience comes back to ordinary life and its effects on that.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. I suspect that the suggestion that one can just simply sit and wait for something to happen is unhelpful. Something probably will, in the end, but there is no telling what it will amount to. There needs to be a mind-training as well, and that implies a community around one. I've never found that. Things might have been different if I had.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't think that "detachment" is univocal, although we often speak as if it were. The detachment of a judge in court is different from the detachment of a scientist or philosopher, is different from that of a Buddhist (or a Hindu) sitting in meditation and so on.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't see any way of breaking out of the dilemma between idealism and realism, so I think we ought not to treat that distinction for granted, but articulate it more carefully so that the antimony doesn't arise. I'll try to articulate more later.
Quoting Wayfarer
Afterquestion. What does "bougie" mean?
Quoting Ludwig V
Quoting Ludwig V
bourgeois
It means to be inclined toward luxury
Thanks.
I'm sorry I annoyed you so much. There's little I can do about, except to refuse to engage in order to avoid escalating your annoyance.
I just came across a quote in the book I'm currently reading, after the author discussed Aldous Huxley's notion : "that our entire perception of reality is a hallucination". That's a strange way to think about the "reality" philosophers have striven to understand rationally for 3000 years. He then quotes neuroscientist David Eagleman :
". . . . what we call normal perception does not really differ from hallucinations, except that the latter are not anchored by external input. . . . . . Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it."
That's a big exception for rational thinkers. But does the notion that humans "actively construct" their worldview resonate at all with your concept of a Mind-Created World? :smile:
No apology required, I wasn't annoyed at all. How did you get that idea? I was just alluding to lesson #1 in reply to the request you made:
Quoting Ludwig V
First lesson in learning about the true nature of time, do not accept determinist, fatalist bullshit like 'wait and see', 'que sera sera'. You can cause real change.
Some secular scientists describe the universe as simply wandering, with no apparent direction or goal. Yet, Theologians tend to take for granted that the world has a goal : A> to produce worshipers that will stroke the imperial ego of the supreme Lord on his heavenly throne ; and/or B> to save those faithful servants from the wrathful destruction of his own imperial Garden of Eden (obviously, Noah's Flood didn't finish the job). Although I was indoctrinated, as a child, with various versions of those options, as an adult, those self-defeating plans don't make any sense to me . . . . except as a capitulation to the win-lose Game of Thrones against a demonic anti-god, with humans as expendable pawns.
However, my own 21st century worldview, acknowledges the Progress that has been made in space-time since the Big Bang : from a dot-like Singularity --- doorway to infinity? --- beginning with nothing-but World-creating Energy & Natural Cosmic Laws to a near-infinite-yet-still-expanding universe full of countless blazing stars, and at least one blue planet of thinking & feeling & philosophizing meat entities. I had come to that conclusion long before I discovered that a 20th century genius had beaten me to it : A.N. Whitehead's Process and Reality*1. :smile:
*1. Evolutionary Process and Cosmic Reality :
Process Metaphysics vs Substance Physics
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page43.html
Quoting Ludwig V
My own notion of G*D*2 in a participatory universe is similar to the concept of Group Mind, except that it must also account for a First Cause of some kind to program the Singularity with enough Energy & guiding Laws to produce an evolving sphere of Actualizing Potential. That's where the Mind & Matter potential of Information Theory comes in. :nerd:
*2. G*D :
[i]An ambiguous spelling of the common name for a supernatural deity. The Enformationism thesis is based upon an unprovable axiom that our world is an idea in the mind of G*D. This eternal deity is not imagined in a physical human body, but in a meta-physical mathematical form, equivalent to LOGOS. Other names : ALL, BEING, Creator, Enformer, MIND, Nature, Reason, Source, Programmer. The eternal Whole of which all temporal things are a part is not to be feared or worshiped, but appreciated like Nature.
# I refer to the logically necessary and philosophically essential First & Final Cause as G*D, rather than merely "X" the Unknown, partly out of respect. That’s because the ancients were not stupid, to infer purposeful agencies, but merely shooting in the dark. We now understand the "How" of Nature much better, but not the "Why". That inscrutable agent of Entention is what I mean by G*D.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html
Of course! That's what the whole thread is about. (Maybe I should have called it 'Mind-Constructed World'). It's about how cognitive science validates philosophical idealism. The realisation that what we think is the external world, is constructed, ("synthesised" to use Kant's terminology) by the magnificent hominid forebrain. It's not an hallucination or an illusion, but it does not possess the inherent reality that we accord to it. It arises as a result of the interaction between mind and world.
One of the videos I refer to in the references is Is Reality Real? featuring neuroscientist Beau Lotto (who looks like a Californian surfer), Donald Hoffman (whom we've discussed) Alva Noe, and others. (Richard Dawkins makes a cameo, talking nervously about some 'plot against objectivity'.) I discussed this video with various contributors who couldn't see the point (i.e. 'What do you think it means...?' It means what the OP is about! :grimace: )
All our science is consistent in indicating that there was a universe, galaxies, star systems, planets and on Earth many organisms, plants, creatures long before there were humans. I see no reason to doubt the veracity of that conclusion.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
"To exist' is a human concept, as are all other concepts. There is nothing about that concept that necessitates it being confined to the human. Given that we all and some animals manifestly perceive the same environments and things in those environments there is no reason to consider that the concept applies only to what humans have experienced. You seem to be conflating two different things?that 'existence' can be understood to be a linguistically generated concept and the range of the application of that concept.
.
Consistency doesn't imply truth. We can make very consistent fictions. And even when the story is consistent with empirical sensations, truth is not necessitated. "There is a ghost in the other room" is consistent with something going bump in the night.
Quoting Janus
Well then, give me an explanation of what it means to exist, which is not based in human experience, or simply begging the question.
Quoting Janus
Sorry, I don't understand what you are accusing me of.
My point is very clear. Human beings have experience. Whether or not other animals have similar experience is irrelevant. Human beings have produced a concept "existence", which is based on their experiences. Any attempt to explain accurately what "existence" means will necessarily reference human experience. That is why I said it is highly doubtful that what it means for something to exist does not depend on human existence. It's very clear to me, and it ought to be for you as well, that "existence" refers to the specific way that we perceive our environment, and nothing else. "Existence" is defined by experience.
I haven't said it is necessarily true that a Universe of things existed prior to humans existing. I've said that all the available evidence points to its having existed. You seem to be conflating logical necessity with empirical evidence.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
To exist is to be real, actual as opposed to imaginary. There are two logical possibilities?either the Universe existed prior to humans or it didn't. Neither is logically provable, since both are logical possibilities. We are left with what the evidence points to?which is that the Universe did exist prior
to humans.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That is not, in my experience, how 'existence' is generally understood, and it is certainly not how I understand it?it is merely your own idiosyncratic, tendentiously stipulated meaning. There is no reason why others should share your prejudices. If you want to live in your own little echo chamber that's up to you.
Well sure, but my point is that the thing referred to here as "it" is a fiction. Therefore all that evidence does nothing for you. It's like pointing to a whole lot of bumps in the night, and telling me that all the evidence points to there being a ghost in the other room. And you can go right ahead and dismiss any logical arguments which go against what you've concluded through the "available evidence", because you prefer evidence over logical necessity.
What I dispute is the concept of "the universe", I think it's a fiction, like the ghost in the other room. Of course the narrative which supports "the universe" is going to make it look like all the evidence points to the truth of "the universe". And if you neatly ignore all the logical arguments against "the universe", insisting that empirical evidence is more important then logical necessity, you'll be restricted to believing in your fictitious story because all the available evidence points that way.
Quoting Janus
This definition is based in human experience. You define "exist" as what is not imaginary. So you base the definition in imagination, and say whatever is not imagination, exists. But that's self-refuting, because your definition is itself imaginary, you are imagining something which is not imaginary, i.e. exists, but by that very definition, it cannot exist. So what you say "exists" cannot exist, by your own definition, because you are just imagining something which is not imaginary. The proposed not-imaginary thing is nothing other than something imagined. This gets you nowhere fast.
Quoting Janus
You haven't paid attention to what I've said. What I dispute is the truth of "the universe". So your two logical possibilities are irrelevant. It's like saying either you've stopped beating your wife or you haven't. Well, obviously we have to validated the initial proposition first. I readily agree, that under the conception of "the universe", it existed prior to humans. What I disagree with is the truth of "the universe".
So, what we need to determine is whether that conception is an adequate representation of reality. And, I've argued that it clearly is not. There is much evidence like spatial expansion, and dark matter, to indicate that "the universe" is a failure as a concept.
This is why the subject of the thread is very helpful. It can help us to understand that all these concepts like "existence", and "universe", are just constructs derived from our experience. They may be completely misleading in relation to the way reality actually is.
Quoting Janus
Well, I am waiting for someone to explain how "existence" could be understood in any other way. I've provided no "idiosyncratic, tendentiously stipulated meaning" so that charge is false. I've just challenged anyone to provide a description or definition which isn't based in human experience, or simply begging the question, because i strongly believe that is impossible. Your proposal above obviously fails miserably. It provides no basis for any sort of understanding whatsoever, of what "existence" means, only self-contradiction, which is incoherency. So it narrowly avoids begging the question, but only by being incoherent.
'Universe' just means 'the sum of what exists', so it refers to everything that exists, and is thus not a fiction at all.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is very confused. What are the "logical arguments against the universe" exactly? Do you perhaps mean that there is no universe apart from the collection of all existing things inclduing spacetime? If so, I haven't denied that.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is just playing with words sophistically. Of course the definition is based in human experience, everything we say is, so your "point" is without a point. The definition of 'existence' is not based in imagination, it is the counterpoint. 'To exist, to be real', only gets its meaning in distinction from 'to be imaginary, to be unreal', just as 'to be imaginary, to be unreal' only gets its meaning from 'to exist, to be real'.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What are you disputing? It's far from clear. Are you claiming that nothing existed prior to humans?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
On what basis do you claim that spatial expansion and dark matter indicate that the idea of a universe is a "failed concept". What do you mean by "failed concept"? Did spatial expansion and dark matter exist prior to humans according to you?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, it can obviously be said that every concept is derived from experience, in which case noting that is pointless. All our concepts "may be completely misleading in relation to the way reality actually is", but then what could that mean? "Concept', 'misleading', 'in relation to' 'the way reality actually is' are all concepts which we might equally claim to be somehow in error. But then what could that "being in error' even mean and where would that leave us?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yet you have failed to give any argument for why we should agree with you. What's your argument? So far you are just looking like a blowhard.
That looks very naive to me. If reality includes more than just what exists, then this part of reality is not part of the universe. How would we establish a relationship between the universe, and that part of reality which does not exist?
For example, you seem to imply a separation between what exists and what is fiction. The fictional cannot be part of the universe, by your definition, but we still must afford it some kind of reality which i assume would be somehow outside the universe. What kind of reality does the fictional have, when it is outside the universe?
Quoting Janus
As I said, I am disputing the concept of "the universe". By that concept, it is correct and coherent to say that the universe existed before there was human life. However, I believe that concept is faulty, and does not provide an accurate representation of reality. Therefore the conclusion that the universe existed before there was human life is unsound, because it is derived from a false premise, that "the universe" provides an accurate representation of reality.
Quoting Janus
There is much evidence that reality extends beyond what is known as "the universe". If "the universe" is intended to refer to all that is, then the evidence indicates that it is a failed concept.
Quoting Janus
It means that we must go beyond experience if we desire to understand the nature of reality. Since many people believe that truth is limited to what can be known from experience (empiricism), but others do not believe this, then it is very important, and not pointless to note this distinction.
So, if you insist that "every concept is derived from experience", then we need to look beyond conceptualization to understand why those people do not believe in empiricism. The reality though, is that not everyone believes that all concepts are derived from experience. Therefore, the fact that "it can obviously be said" that every concept is derived from experience is what is pointless, because people can say whatever they want.
Quoting Janus
Yes, I'm blowing very hard, just like the wind. Be careful, the wind can be dangerous. But I'm still waiting for a definition of "existence" which would prove that I am wrong. Unless you can provide me with one, I think that's a good argument for why you should agree with me.
:rofl: You seem more like a sailor whose ship is stuck motionless on a windless sea. You have a set of oars which would give you enough purchase to get you moving, but you don't realize it and instead stand in front of the sails futilely blowing at them.
At least I recognize that there is a problem, and I'm acting toward resolution. That's a lot better than you, doing nothing, thinking that everything's fine. Eventually I'll find the way out, through my trial and error, while you'd be still sitting there thinking everything's fine, until your dying day.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You contradict yourself. You say definitions are based in human experience and then go on to say we must go beyond experience, while saying that something beyond human experience cannot exist. This is hopelessly confused.
By what faculty other than experience could we know anything (apart from what is logically necessary) ?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Find your way out of what? Do you mean life? If so, you'll find your way out of that on your dying day. Far better to worry about how to live in the meantime.
Clearly then, you misunderstand me.
Quoting Janus
Experience is not a faculty. And, we are born with knowledge, it's known as intuition. This is why you can't understand me, and you think that I contradict myself, you have presuppositions which make no sense. Those nonsense presumptions make it impossible for you to understand some things, rendering some statements in the appearance of contradiction.
My claim in the OP is that cognitive science validates at least some important aspects of idealist philosophy - that what we perceive as the external world is, in an important sense, mind-dependent, because what we know of it is constantly being assimilated and interpreted by the mind.
And that therefore empiricist philosophy errs when it seeks a so-called 'mind-independent object', as sense objects are, by their very nature, only detectable by the senses (or instruments) and cannot be mind-independent in that way.
Being aware of the way ‘mind constructs world’ is more a matter of self-knowledge and self-awareness - something with which phenomenology and Eastern philosophy (and indeed Greek philosophy) is much more familiar with than science or much of modern philosophy.
Each of the five senses are perceptual faculties, as well as interoception and proprioception. All together they constitute the faculty of experience, not of particular experiences, but of being able to experience.
So-called intellectual intuition does not give us reliable knowledge, it consists mostly of imagination applied to ideas derived from experience.
You are still just blowing hard, and getting nowhere.
[quote=God 4.0 - in the Nature of Higher Consciousness and the Experience called God, Robert Ornstein, Sally M. Ornstein;https://amzn.asia/d/9OsYwB6]The book explores how our "everyday" mind works as a device for selecting just a few parts of the outside reality that are important for our survival. We don't experience the world as it is, but as a virtual reality – a small, limited system that evolved to keep us safe and ensure our survival. This system, though essential for getting us safely across a busy street, is insufficient for understanding and solving the challenges of the modern world. But we are also endowed with a quiescent "second network" of cognition that, when activated, can dissolve or break through the barriers of ordinary consciousness. We all experience this activation to some degree, when we suddenly see a solution to a problem or have an intuitive or creative insight – when we connect to a larger whole beyond the self. By combining ancient teachings with modern science, we have a new psychology of spiritual experience – the knowledge to explore how this second network can be developed and stabilized. ...they emphasize the need to reflect on and explicate, both individually and collectively, the functional value of virtues such as generosity, humility and gratitude, and of service. These attitudes and activities shift brain function away from the self and toward an expanded consciousness – an experience of the world's greater interconnectedness and unity and an understanding of one's place in it.[/quote]
Which seems thoroughly compatible with the ideas expressed by the O.P.
We can say that because things have their own existences independent of our perceptions, their own existences will not be the just the same as our perceptions and judgements. But you are wont to say that they don't even have their own existences, which makes your position look extremely confused.
You alternate between saying that it's obvious, and that it's absurd. Wrong on both counts, but then I've noticed your inveterate tendency to regard your own educational limits as binding on the rest of the community here.
Exactly what have I said is both obvious and absurd? Try engaging with others' responses for a change?you might come to understand what they are actually saying.
Thats like taking a picture of something and calling it a "camera-dependent object". I don't know why you keep phrasing it as if the object is dependent on your mind when you should be talking about what you see or perceive. It just makes it much clearer for everyone else to talk about it in that way.
I would say that sure all our perceptions are in the context of the structure of a brain which, in the context of the whole universe of intelligent things, can be very diverse with different levels of capabilities. At the same time, I would say that they are all picking out or extracting information about structure that exists out in the world independently of us. Different brains, different perceptual apparatus give us different purviews, different informational bottlenecks, and affect our ability to extract this information effectively.
Obviously a lot of the time we are wrong about a lot of things; but, I think my point is that there is no kind of mysterious intrinsic barrier between perception and some way the world really is. All of the information we could want, that there is to know about the world, is available to any information processing system that can interact with the rest of the universe in the right way. Unfortunately, we are just naturally extremely limited, even wuth technology. I don't think the notion of some kind of serene, "objective", platonic, God's eye picture is required to have real information about the world. Information is effective; Can I predict what happens next? There is nothing more than that. And if I can't do that, its not due to some mysterious noumeno-phenomenal barrier, but because I don't have all the information I need or there is stuff I haven't seen.
I simply express what I think, make the criticisms that I think need to be made. You could try actually engaging the counterpoints and critiques for a change. You might actually learn something. Or if you can successfully refute my objections I will concede as much.
I don't see you engaging with anyone on these forums who disagrees with you.
I see you are offering much the same kind of critique as I have. Let's see how @Wayfarer responds.
You're still missing the point of the critique, which isn’t about denying that there is some kind of reality independent of our particular perceptions (no one here is advocating solipsism), but about the structure of knowledge itself—specifically, that so-called “sense objects” are only ever known as appearances within a framework of consciousness.
The analogy you offered—of calling the photographed object “camera-dependent”—actually illustrates my point rather well, if unintentionally. A photograph is an image produced by the optical and mechanical structure of a camera. No one confuses the photo with the object, but neither is the photo the object “as it is in itself.” It’s the object's appearance as mediated by the particular structure of the apparatus. Likewise, our perception is not of the thing in itself, but of its appearance as structured by our perceptual and cognitive apparatus. A dog won't recognise a photo of itself because it can't smell it.
What you describe as “information about the world” presumes precisely what is at issue: that the world is available to us as it is, rather than as it appears under our particular modes of access. This is the very presupposition that transcendental arguments (like Kant’s, and many idealist successors) call into question. The point is not to deny that there is something that gives rise to experience, but to insist that what we experience is never “raw” reality but always reality as structured by mind.
Your appeal to prediction and effective interaction—“if it works, it's real”—simply substitutes pragmatism for ontology. That's fine if your goal is engineering, which is where I think your actual interests lie. But it's not a rebuttal to the philosophical question: what is the nature of the reality we claim to know? You’ve asserted that “there’s no mysterious barrier between perception and the world”—but that’s not an argument; it's a declaration of faith in the transparency of perception, which is precisely what’s being contested!
As I said, you have presuppositions which make no sense. How do you propose that the senses are united into a single faculty called "experience", or "being able to experience"? Your proposal, that we have a single faculty known as "being able to experience" is nonsense.
Your position entails that we cannot know anything at all about reality "in itself" and I agree with that as far as it goes.. So, we are left with what we know of reality as it appears. We don't know with certainty what appearances tell us outside the context of appearances and I've never claimed otherwise. We simply deal with what seems most plausible.
We certainly do have the faculty of being able to experience.
Pictures taken by the camera.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, but so what. If I want to know more about the object, I take more pictures, I use other tools to investigate.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well you have to explain why the world would not appear to us "as is". When I see a tree, is there not something about the shape of that tree which veridically represents how it is? What would you mean about how the shape of the tree appears to us that is different than how it really is which isn't trivial? Sure, I can't see everything about the tree, I don't know everything. But in what way is the stuff I do see not capturing some enduring structure in reality that is consistent? If different modes of access just means that some perspective can access information that others do not, and vice versa, then to me that is just different organisms capturing actual structures in the world that happen to be distinct. A snake might be able to sense heat or infra-red light, or whatever it is, in a way that I cannot. I might be able to hear in a way that a snake cannot. Nonetheless, we are both picking out information regarding events in the world.
Quoting Wayfarer
Its not necessarily just that as if it were purely pragmatics, but the fact that there is nothing more to knowing about stuff than the observable interactions that they have with us, or in principle could have with us. The idea that there is something out therr that in principle cannot interact with anything or make its presence known is nonsensical, grounds for reasonable disbelief and perhaps not even intelligible. Reality as it really is must be effective, must have consequences. All understanding really does reduce to 'what happens next?' in some sense because thats how brains work, thats how state-of-the-art artificial intelligence works.
Quoting Wayfarer
In what way should I be skeptical?
This passage chimes with me, I have found that there are thresholds or veils in the mind, which blind us to what, what possibilities, are beyond. That it requires a creative means of circumventing, or dissolving these barriers to progress to a broader perspective and recognition of other architecture and possibilities.
I can illustrate this by a description of formal philosophy. It has a rigorous and refined structure which has been developed over a long period. Into which the aspirant is introduced, trained, tested. Taught how to use the architecture, to develop their own architecture, do a PHD. This leaves the aspirant who masters this knowledge a master of critical and analytical thought. But it also results in them finding that in ordinary life these ideas go over the head of their friends and family and in a way they are isolated and have to find other masters of the same art to converse with about these matters.
Now there is another formal architecture of mind out there running parallel to this using a different system. But with different bases, presuppositions, techniques. Which is based more around lifestyle, self realisation, and deconstruction of conditioning. Followed by a rebuilding of mind and being assembled around a spiritual, mystical, or religious architecture. Rigorously developed over millennia, which similarly leaves the student a master of this approach to life and similarly isolated amongst their friends and family.
I would suggest that this is the root of all this sparring and it is incumbent on us to bridge this divide in some way. To circumvent this veil so that we can converse in a more meaningful way.
Reminds me of that word, “proof”.
I gave up at:
Quoting Apustimelogist
Here's the problem. You describe the unity of the five senses as the faculty of experience, defined as "being able to experience". And, you attribute knowledge to this faculty. But the ability for something does not necessitate its actual existence. Therefore your descriptive terms "the faculty of experience" cannot account for, or describe, the actual existence of experience, nor can it account for the actual existence of knowledge.
So you propose an "ability to experience", which supports the ability to sense, but all this amounts to is a meaningless, nonsensical, interaction problem. By your terms, human beings have the capacity to experience. That in no way accounts for the reality of actual experience. I, as a human being have 'the capacity' to do a whole lot of different things, but having 'the capacity' does not account for why I do some and not others. Therefore your proposition makes no sense as a proposal to account for the existence of knowledge. Knowledge is active in the world. It blows very hard, regardless of whether it gets anywhere or not.
Quoting Janus
The question was " By what faculty other than experience could we know anything (apart from what is logically necessary) ?". "Intuition" answers that question. It's "reliability" is relative, and context dependent, so your dismissal is just an attempt to avoid the reality that it answers your question, regardless of whether answering your question gets us anywhere or not.
You are simply leading our discussion in a meaningless, nonsensical direction, so that my replies to your questions can be met with "just blowing hard, and getting nowhere".
If you want to get somewhere, then let's go!
Quit limiting the discussion to the ability to do something, and address actually doing something, if you want to get somewhere. Obviously though, you don't want to get anywhere, because that would require breaking free from your nonsensical presuppositions, which produce an interaction problem.
_____________________
Quoting Wayfarer
I would have put some of the detail slightly differently, but broadly I agree with that. It seems to me incontestable.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
But could you explain to me what you mean, exactly, by the bolded phrases?
Quoting Apustimelogist
I realize that's standard way of putting it and I would love to agree with you. But the problem is that a representation implies an original. So to know that a given representation represents the original, we have to examine the original and compare it to the representation. Which we cannot do.
Quoting Apustimelogist
Do you really want me to trot out the bent stick, mirages and Macbeth's dagger, or perhaps quantum mechanics and relativity?
Quoting Apustimelogist
I agree that "what happens next?" is important. Whether that's the whole story is another question. Could you explain what you mean by "reduce to" and "in some sense"?
Quoting Punshhh
I had never put things together in that way. Fascinating. You could be right that there must be common ground. At least they agree in rejecting common sense. But it isn't obvious to me that the two approaches are compatible. Have you found that it is?
Certainly—I'll try to explain.
The idea is that a photograph presents the appearance of an object as mediated by the camera’s optical and technical structure. It’s not the object itself, but an image of the object—structured by the mechanics and limitations of the device. In this conversation, the photograph was being used as a metaphor for perception itself. Just as a photograph is a camera-dependent image, so our perception of the world is mind-dependent, shaped by the structure of our perceptual and cognitive apparatus.
This is one of the central themes in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. He distinguishes between the appearance of things—how they present themselves to us—and the thing in itself (das Ding an sich), which is how things are independently of how they appear. Now, this idea has been the subject of extensive debate, and there are many interpretations. But one sympathetic reading is to see the “thing in itself” as a philosophical placeholder: it marks the limit of our possible knowledge. It also preserves a sense of mystery that no amount of empirical or conceptual inquiry can dissolve—the mystery of what reality is in itself, outside of its appearance to us. In this way, Kant's philosophy continues the classical distinction between appearance (what seems) and reality (what is).
If you look again at the original post, this ties in with the quote from Charles Pinter’s Mind and the Cosmic Order, where he describes how the gestalts or objects we perceive are not merely “given” but are assembled through the interplay between sense data and cognitive interpretation. The kind of world we experience depends on the kinds of senses we have—and, in our case, also on the concepts and structures we use to interpret them. This doesn’t mean the world is illusory. But it also doesn’t mean it exists independently of the properties and meanings our minds contribute to it. That’s what I meant by saying it lacks the "inherent reality we accord to it." The reality we perceive is not free-standing in the way objectivist realism assumes; it is co-constituted by the perceiving mind.
Here’s another way to put it: try to imagine the Universe as it would be if there were no living beings anywhere in it. You can’t—not really. Whatever you imagine is still ordered by a perspective. What you’re visualizing is a Universe as if there were no observers—but the very act of visualizing already imposes a kind of structure, a standpoint. That unknowable, perspective-less universe is what I refer to as the “in itself.” And as mind evolves within that background, the Universe begins to ‘take form’—not merely physically, but in terms of meaning, appearance, and coherence. There's a sense in which we are the universe coming to know itself (an idea which is by no means original to me.)
Well, we don't necessarily need representation in that kind of way. All that we do is predict what happens next. All that we have to be able to do is know how to navigate. If something unexpected happens, the structure of my navigational "map" was wrong. Clearly, the shape of trees represents part of our navigational maps that is quite consistent and enduring. I don't understand in what sense this could not be veridical. It becomes very apparent usually when that fails. I don't need to know everything about trees or everything at exact precision. But I have a pretty good understanding of tree shape, leaf shape that seens consistent.
Quoting Ludwig V
I've already said we can be wrong, but when we are wrong, its usually intelligible why we are wrong in terms of not having the right information. In principle one can understand ehy information processing in the brain produces illusions regarding things in the world we understand well physically. My view of quantum mechanics is realistic. I don't think relativity really has the same problems as the alleged difficulties in quantum theory.
Quoting Ludwig V
I believe it is because thats all that neurons do, thats all that state-of-the-art A.I does. Obviously what I am saying must be some kind of simplification but I think it fundamentally characterizes intelligence, to make distinctions and recognize things.
Quoting Wayfarer
To me, this muddles the idea of "world" a bit. As you say, a world without perceivers, a world of noumena, is a kind of "placeholder world," granted as necessary but by definition unknowable in itself. The world we experience -- let's call it our world -- is not illusory, but nor is it the world of noumena. But when you say, "[the world] doesn't exist independently of the properties and meanings our minds contribute to it," you're talking about our world. The noumenal world does exist independently. So, if I may:
"This doesn’t mean that our world is illusory. But it doesn’t exist independently of the properties and meanings our minds contribute to it; that sort of world, the noumenal world, does have such an independent existence."
I only bother with this because otherwise is tempting to read the position as saying that there is no independent reality, which I don't think is what you mean. "What reality is in itself" may be a mystery, as you say, but it is not an empty phrase. We can't jump from the inevitable fact that our world is co-constituted, to the conclusion that our world is all there is. But you know this.
But 'exist' is precisely the wrong word! 'To exist' is to be apart, to be separated, to be this as distinct from that. Which is why I say in the original post that the in-itself neither exists nor does not exist (if existence is the wrong description, then non-existence is the negation of something which doesn't apply.) So to think of 'the noumenal' or the 'in-itself' is already to designate it as an intentional object, a 'this here' or 'that there'. Hence the 'way of negation', neti neti or wu wei.
It's against my religion to dispute about how to use the term "exist". :wink: I'll just point out that if the world neither exists nor does not exist, then to say "our perception of the world is mind-dependent" is a bit of a puzzler. How can I perceive something that transcends the category of existence? It's hard enough to perceive things that don't exist! Unless -- as I was trying to suggest -- "the world" and "the in-itself" are not the same. This was the distinction I was drawing between "our world" and "the world of noumena."
If there are things in themselves (noumena) which appear to us as phenomena, then we do perceive things in themselves, but we do not perceive them as things in themselves (and this is so by mere definition). It there are noumena then by any ordinary definition of 'existence' they can be said to exist.
@Wayfarer wants to insist that his own idiosyncratic definition of 'existence' is the correct one, which is absurd given that the meanings of terms are determined by (predominant) use.
If possession is nine-tenths of the law, then defining existence is nine-tenths of philosophy.
You’re right that if the world “neither exists nor does not exist” in the ordinary sense, it can’t be perceived as an object in the way phenomena are. That’s the point: the “in-itself” isn’t something to be retreived from beyond appearances. As an old Buddhist adage puts it, the “end of the cosmos” isn’t reached by travelling somewhere, but is found “within this fathom-long body, with its perception and intellect,” where the arising and ceasing of the cosmos can be known. World and perceiver arise together in the same field of lived experience — which is exactly what “co-arising” means in phenomenology and enactivism.
But I also believe this is broadly compatible with the phenomenal-noumenal distinction. The problems arise when we try to 'peek behind the curtain' to see what the in-itself really is. That is what the 'way of negation' that is found in various forms of apophatic practice is intended to ameliorate.
This is not really the case. In most instances the goal is to create what happens next, i.e. we want to shape the future, not predict it. The ability to predict is just a means to that further end.
Quoting J
This is exactly the wrong attitude. By giving the name "world" to the noumenal, you imply that what exists independently is in some way similar to our conception of "the world".
There is no need to assume that what exists independently is in anyway at all, similar to how we represent it. For example, the word "world" is in no way similar to the concept we have of the world, yet in some way, that word signifies that concept. Likewise, our conception of the world might be in no way similar to the independent reality, yet it could still in some way signify it. There is no reason to believe that the signifier is in any way similar to the thing represented by it. This means that if the concept "world" represents an independent reality, there is no reason to believe that the independent reality is similar to that concept which signifies it.
Quoting Janus
Hmm, seems like the same accusation was leveled against me. That indicates that the person making the accusation is really the one with the idiosyncratic definition.
Let's grant for the sake of argument that (intellectual) intuition sometimes might give us an accurate picture of the nature of reality ("reality" here meaning something more than mere empirical reality, that is not merely things as they appear to us, but rather some "deeper" truth metaphysically speaking). How do we tell when a particular intuition has given us such knowledge?
I won't respond to the rest of your post as it seems like either sophistical nonsense or inaccurate speculations about my motives.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, you and Wayfarer share an idiosyncratic definition, and surprise, surprise! you are both idealists. As I said, if we want to say 'there are noumena' that amounts to saying 'noumena exist' under any ordinary understanding of what the term 'exist' means. We would be saying that noumena are not merely imaginary entities, but are real.
We would be saying that noumena are not merely mind-dependent or perception dependent entities (phenomena) but are mind-independently real entities. Saying, as Wayfarer does, that they neither exist nor do not exist may have some evocative or poetic point, but in a discursive context, it is just nonsense, because in its contradiction it tells us nothing.
Good, agreed. That there is a distinction is all I insist on.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We can be more precise, terminologically, if that suits you. I have no stake in what's called a "world" and what isn't. Again -- what I care about is the difference, not what terms we use for it. I don't think attitude has much to do with it. We can call the "noumenal world" the in-itself, and "our world" . . . well, whatever you'd like, that you believe would be less misleading. No arguments here.
This can be framed in terms of prediction, inference, model construction. It is called active inference, a corollary of the free energy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energy_principle
So there is no conflict imo. At the same time, all these things like desire still work via neurons that are effectively prediction machines.
It's not a matter of intuition giving us an accurate picture of reality. That's not what I have been arguing. I have been arguing that the picture given by empiricism, the supposed "empirical reality", is incorrect, false and misleading. When we can point out inconsistencies, problems, failures, in the "empirical reality", as I do repeated throughout this forum, then intuition provides us with the conclusion that there is a deeper metaphysical truth which is not provided by the "empirical reality".
So, as I mentioned earlier, the nature of time can be taken as an example, or even the primary specific or "particular intuition". The empirical model is based solely on the past. Only the past has been sensed or experienced in any way. From this, we project toward the future, and conclude that we can predict the future, and this capacity to predict validates the determinist perspective. However, the intuitive perspective knows that we have a freedom of choice to select from possibilities, and this negates the determinist perspective. Unless we deny the intuitive knowledge, that we have the capacity to choose, the difference between these two perspectives indicates that the relationship between the past and the future is not the way that the supposed "empirical reality" supposes that it is.
Quoting Janus
Idealism is the predominant metaphysics in western society. Surprise, surprise!
Quoting Apustimelogist
Did I discuss this with you before, or was that with someone else who referenced the same woefully inadequate model?
That seems to be factually incorrect at least when it comes to philosophers: https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I haven't seen any argument for that conclusion. Can you briefly state what " inconsistencies, problems, failures" are to be found with empiricism? Be concise, no hand-waving.
No clue what you're taking about
In common speech existence is defined as “the fact or state of living or having objective reality.” Generally speaking, “exists” and “real” are taken as synonymous.
In philosophy, however, the meaning of 'existence' varies within different frameworks:
C. S. Peirce also distinguishes reality from existence. Existence is actuality in the here-and-now, the mode of being of things that act and react in time — what he called brute facts (Secondness).
Reality is broader: it is “the mode of being of that which is as it is, independent of what any actual person or persons may think it to be” (Logic of Mathematics). This includes mathematical truths, laws of nature, and possibilities — things that are real but not existent in the same way as physical objects (hence the distinction!) Peirce also held to a form of scholastic realism accepting that universals are real (which is not to say they're existent!)
So in Peirce’s framework:
That last point raises the sense in which possibilities are real: a possibility is of something that does not exist, but might. The "realm of possibility" is real, but none of its members yet exist. "Real" here means “having a determinate nature independent of what anyone thinks”; exist means “having actualised presence here-and-now.” Possibilities are real in virtue of what they could become, but until actualised they have no existence.
The reflexive, everyday attitude is that what exists is “out there somewhere.” Empiricism conditions us to expect that what exists can be found in nature, grounded in natural processes, and potentially discoverable by science — a disposition that obscures nuanced philosophical distinctions.
I have no complaint about all this. But you have a worrying tendency to slip from "our perception of the world is mind-dependent" to "the world is mind-dependent".
I take the point about the metaphor. In fact, I think that the the fact that we have technologies of representing the world as we see it is a huge influence on how we think about it. But not necessarily a helpful influence...
If it is a metaphor, it follows that the photograph is not the same as our perception of the world. So we should chart the differences, so that we do not get misled by it.
The most important difference, I think, is that the camera does not perceive what it photographs. You might well say that it records the appearance of what it photographs, but that depends on how we interpret the picture. That's something the camera cannot do. The bone of contention escapes the metaphor.
But it does seem to me that the metaphor gives us grounds for saying that appearances are an objective reality. If they were not, the camera could not record them.
Quoting Wayfarer
OK. Let's think about this.
The sun rises in the morning, moves across the sky through the day, and then sinks below the horizon. The sun appears in the morning and disappears in the evening. What happens between the evening and the following morning is hidden from us. This is appearance as disclosure or revelation - as presence (or absence). But this is different, because it is the same object that appears and disappears. (You know how we know that!)
We might complain that the sun, despite appearances, doesn't move. The illusion that it moves is created by the movement (spinning) of the earth. Now we have the distinction between appearance and reality, and it is created by our misinterpretation of what we see. But there is nothing hidden here.
When we collect mushrooms, we have to be very careful. A mushroom can appear to be tasty and nutritious, but be exactly the opposite. A quicksand can appear to be solid ground, but give way as soon as we step on it. People pretend to be (and appear to be) what they are not. These are the appearances the best fit Kant's model. Here, appearance (and not misinterpretation) does hide reality.
Yet perhaps Kant is justified in developing a philosophical, technical, use of "appearance" and classify all appearances together and all realities together. I think not, because appearance and reality are intertwined. There is no binary opposition here. "Appearances" and "realities" are not two different (groups of) objects.
Quoting Wayfarer
Marking the limit of our knowledge would be something I could understand. There are indeed unknown unknowns - and, notice, they are presumably what they are independently of anything that we say or do. But I resist the idea that the boundary is fixed. We find that calculating what happens at a molecular level in the macro world is too complex to be a realistic project. So we resort to statistical or probabilistic laws. They work pretty well for us. When we encounter the astonishing phenomena at sub-atomic level, we do not walk away - we wring from the phenomena what conclusions we can.
You rightly emphasize perspective, point of view, as inescapable in all that we know, and, if I've understood you, say that a view of things without any perspective is impossible. I agree. We can characterize a view from a perspective as an appearance, so this becomes an interpretation of what Kant is doing.
So here's Kant trying to make sense of the idea of a view of things outside any perspective. So now I ask, is a view without perspective possible, or not?
If it is possible to say anything that was true of all possible perspectives, that might do as saying something about how things are in themselves, I suppose. (I gather that is one of the strategies that Einstein adopts in the theory of relativity.)
As for the sense of mystery, that could well be one of the motivations. Idealism as denial of the reality of the common sense world, has a very long history, going all the way back to Plato. I am sure that there is something going on here that ordinary philosophical discussion does not touch.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is a version of Berkeley's argument, which he is very enthusiastic about. It is a good one. But if you rule out the possibility of an unknowable, perspective-less universe, what does it mean to refer to it? Is saying of something that it is unknowable true independently of all perspective? I think not. What was unknown can become known - perhaps is already known as soon as we say it is not known.
Quoting Wayfarer
Perhaps I should be taking Peirce (and Meinong) more seriously. "Modes of being" such as "things that are real but not existent in the same way as physical objects" is right up my street. There's much about this approach that I like very much.
I mentioned what I called the "primary" example:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Apustimelogist
I conclude that it was someone other than you then.
I’m very careful about the wording:
Quoting Wayfarer
Epistemological, not ontological.
More to come…
We have a number of candidate construals, including what you're calling "common speech." (Also Quine's "To be is to be the value of a bound variable."). Is there a way of determining which is correct?
I think not. An understanding of how to construe "existence" can be more or less helpful, more or less perspicuous to a given framework, more or less flexible as it may apply to different cases, but beyond that . . . we have yet to discover the Philosophical Dictionary in the Sky that can answer such questions.
I agree that, for instance, there are good reasons for sometimes distinguishing "exist" and "real," such the numbers example. But I'm sure you wouldn't maintain that it is true that numbers are real but not existent. We can go so far as to say that drawing such a distinction illuminates something interesting and important about numbers. But that something -- the distinction itself -- does not depend on our use of "real" and "existent" to describe it. Arguably, two invented technical terms would do even better.
I thought so. Now I'm very worried. We'll see.
Quoting Wayfarer
OK. I'm not sure what difference it makes, but maybe...
For what its worth, the dictionaries seem to cite that "real" as a definition of "existent". But it seems pretty clear that "real" in most of its uses does not mean exists and "non-existent" is not an antonym for "unreal", not is "unreal" a synonym for existent. What the dictionaries seem to miss is that the meaning of both "real" and "exists" depends on the context - on what is being said to be real or exist.
Nevertheless, it is hard to believe there are many cases in which one would want to say that something real didn't exist, even though it is quite normal to accept that something unreal does exist - under a different description. A toy car is not a real car, but it is a real toy. A painting may not be a real Titian, but it is a real forgery. &c. One needs to bear in mind several close relations like actual, authentic, genuine, and so on.
It is pretty clear that are used in different ways in many contexts. So I'm afraid that I don't understand what you mean by "But that something -- the distinction itself -- does not depend on our use of "real" and "existent" to describe it."
In practice, take the number example: Would you agree that there is an important ontological difference of some sort between a number and a rock (or the class "rock" too, perhaps, but let's not overcomplicate it)? Does it really matter whether we say, "Rocks are real, numbers exist," or "Numbers are real, rocks exist"? What is actually being claimed here? As far as I can tell, the purpose of such formulations is to highlight a distinction. And the distinction often seems to have something to do with what is basic, essential, grounding, etc. But which term is supposed to be "more basic", and why? How would we find out? Might it not be better to formulate the distinction precisely, say exactly what properties an item must have in order to belong to one or the other or both categories, and leave it at that? How does the choice of "real" vs. "existent" add anything, other than a muddle stretching back thousands of years?
In his own somewhat unsatisfactory way, I think this is what Quine was trying for by equating existence with what can be quantified over.
Well, I'm not opposed in principle to specialized or technical terms. I guess that since you think that there is a distinction out there, in reality, so to speak, you would want the new terms to capture it. But we would need to describe it accurately to do that.
I think it is only difficult for philosophers because they don't seem able to accept that the meaning of the terms depends on their context of use. They expect them to have a univocal meaning. ("Good" is another example, by the way.) If they could accept that, the problems would be, I think, much easier.
However, there is something fundamental about the idea of a concept being instantiated or a reference succeeding. Perhaps that's what we should look at.
Quoting J
Actually, I oscillate between thinking that they have different modes of existence and thinking that they are different kinds (categories) of object. Either way would do, I think.
Quoting J
Well, I thought that idea, together with the idea of domains of discourse, that would define what a formula quantified over, (numbers, rocks, sensations &c.), would work pretty well. I know that some people have gone off it now, but I'm not clear why.
Yes. I'm not implying that this is some easy task that philosophers have inexplicably shirked!
Quoting Ludwig V
It certainly is. I'm not sure how much "univocal" covers, but the problem is partially that these terms are thought of as natural kinds, somehow.
Quoting Ludwig V
Quoting Ludwig V
Yeah, I think it's one of the most useful frameworks available. As long as we promise not to claim it's the right way to define "existence"! What quantification gives us is an ordinary, unglamorous way to capture a great deal of the structure of thought. This effort, I believe, is roughly the same project as trying to understand what exists.
OK. This deserves to be taken seriously.
It occurred to me, while I was thinking about all this, that we have under our hands an example of an attempt to coin technical terms for the purposes of philosophy. Heidegger, Dasein present-to-hand, ready-to-hand &c. Sartre has similar concepts, but was channeling Heidegger; the differences may be important. Both have a certain currency amongst philosophers, but I don't think they have penetrated ordinary language (yet). I don't find them particularly exciting, though.
I'll need to think about this overnight.
Quoting Punshhh Sorry I previously missed this response of yours. I'm not getting what you are getting at.
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes, the various meanings and associations of 'real', 'existing' are context dependent. We can say that numbers are real in that they have properties that no one can sensibly deny. We can say that they don't exist, however, because no one has ever seen a number.
On the other hand it could be said that number exists as perceptible quantity. We can see the difference between two oranges and eight oranges, for example. What I object to is the idea that is, at least implicitly, in the OP that there is some absolute "higher" distinction between the terms that only the "illuminated ones" can fathom. Such claims are nothing more than dogma.
Well, that's right, technical terms are kind of a drag to use, especially when they don't originate in English. The Continental stream you point to is one example, but so is the analytic-phil tradition, actually. Or maybe I should back that up and say: The minute you place logic at the forefront of philosophical inquiry, you're going to get what amounts to technical, non-English terminology for a homely concept like "existence."
I frankly don't think my proposal to abandon terms like "existence" or "reality" will work, because thus far we don't have a ship to jump to. Unless you're in the Heideggerean tradition and are willing to adopt that very difficult vocabulary, or you want to do more with the Anglophone logical apparatus. (I've often said that Theodore Sider is really good on this.) For our purposes on TPF, I'd just like to see less contention about "the right definition" for a Large philosophical term, and more attention to the conceptual structure the term is meant to describe or fit into.
I'll be interested in your overnight thoughts!
Certainly. The thrust of the essay isn't that there's not an objective reality, but that reality is not only objective, it has an ineliminable subjective aspect. This is not solipsistic, because as we are subjects of similar kinds, we will experience the objective attributes of reality in similar ways.
Quoting Ludwig V
Agree. To think of the appearance and the in itself as a set of two non-equal things is a mistake. I take the gist of Kant's argument is that we don't see what things really are, what they are in their inmost nature, but as they appear to us.
'Epistemological' is the nature of knowing, 'ontological' is on the nature of what exists. I make it clear at the top of the OP that the primary concern is epistemological.
Regards Berkeley, I have an essay on him which I might publish here at some point.
Quoting J
On the contrary, it is a fundamental distinction which is almost entirely forgotten or submerged in current culture. Universals, numbers, and the like, are real relationships that can only be grasped by the rational mind. They are the essential elements of reason. Numbers don’t exist as do objects of perception; there is no object called ‘seven’. You might point at the numeral, but that is a symbol. A number is real as an act of counting or as an estimation of quantity. In either case, it is something that can only be known to a rational mind. Hence the interminable debate about Platonism in philosophy of mathematics. Speaking of which:
[quote=Indispensability Arguments in the Philosophy of Mathematics;https://iep.utm.edu/indimath/]Standard readings of mathematical claims entail the existence of mathematical objects. But our best epistemic theories seem to deny that knowledge of mathematical objects is possible.
Mathematical objects are...unlike ordinary physical objects such as trees and cars. We learn about ordinary objects, at least in part, by using our senses. It is not obvious that we learn about mathematical objects this way. Indeed, it is difficult to see how we could use our senses to learn about mathematical objects. We do not see integers, or hold sets. Even geometric figures are not the kinds of things that we can sense. Consider any point in space; call it P. P is only a point, too small for us to see, or otherwise sense. Now imagine a precise fixed distance away from P, say an inch and a half. The collection of all points that are exactly an inch and a half away from P is a sphere. The points on the sphere are, like P, too small to sense. We have no sense experience of the geometric sphere. If we tried to approximate the sphere with a physical object, say by holding up a ball with a three-inch diameter, some points on the edge of the ball would be slightly further than an inch and a half away from P, and some would be slightly closer. The sphere is a mathematically precise object. The ball is rough around the edges. In order to mark the differences between ordinary objects and mathematical objects, we often call mathematical objects “abstract objects.” ...
... Some philosophers, called rationalists, claim that we have a special, non-sensory capacity for understanding mathematical truths, a rational insight arising from pure thought. But, the rationalist’s claims appear incompatible with an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies. [/quote]
Bolds added. The point is, if our 'best epistemic theories' can't acknowledge the fundamental role of rational insight in the grasping of numbers, then how good are they? :brow: It's a consequence of what Jacques Maritain describes as the cultural impact of empiricism (but then, he was Aristotelian Thomist, so not obliged to bow to naturalism.)
We're constantly relying on mental constructs, whenever we use language. They are the constitutuents of the lived world, the lebensweld, which is the actual world, as distinct from the abstract domain of theoretical physics.
Well, aren't you special.
Philosophers make up a very small percentage of the population. So your proposed facts are irrelevant.
Too true. But, perhaps, for our purposes, we could use the natural language translation.
Quoting J
It's not a realistic project, I agree. But it gives me something to hold on to when the water gets choppy and I fear drowning in all the different views.
Quoting Wayfarer
If you just mean that we can know what things are like, I can see the point. I can even accept that there are distortions in the way that we discover and think about reality. But the question is whether those distortions affect reality. I think that they do not - saving exceptional cases.
Quoting Wayfarer
OK. I'm not unsympathetic, but I think that Kant misrepresents knowledge, because he doesn't recognize the process that generates it. My version would emphasize the dynamism of our knowledge. Our knowledge is always partial, always finding new questions. But we work on those questions and work out answers, which generate more questions. Complete and final knowledge seems like the terminus of that process, but it will never be actually reached. I would suggest that it is a "regulative ideal", but I really am not sure what complete final knowledge would be.
Quoting Wayfarer
I take the point. It may be my problem, rather than yours. But there is a catch. If knowledge is true, then surely, there is a connection with ontology, isn't there?
Quoting Wayfarer
I find him fascinating. It's a beautifully constructed argument, with all the right definitions in place. But he keeps taking back what he seems to have said - in the most elegant way and without ever admitting it. His patronizing remark that it is fine for people to go on thinking and speaking in the old way, but he prefers to think and speak with the learned. But the learned, in his day, were mostly the schoolmen, whose ideas he has been consistently rubbishing for page after page. And so on.
Quoting Indispensability Arguments in the Philosophy of Mathematics
This is odd way of putting the problem. There's no doubt that we are capable of rational thought, at least some of the time. So it can't be incompatible with "an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies." I think that this dilemma is at least partly resolved by the fact that we now have reasoning machines.
Here's a possible way to approach the problem: Is "real" more like a name, or more like a description?
Compare "donkey". We point to an individual and say, "This is a donkey," by which we mean that the word "donkey" names, but does not as a name further define or describe, that individual. If someone asked us, "But what does 'donkey' mean? By virtue of what property can we determine that the individual is a donkey?" we would explain how to do this. And if we were further asked, "But why 'donkey'? Why call it that?" we would be a bit puzzled, and reply that there is no particular reason.
I'm suggesting that "real" is more like "donkey". (The analogy isn't perfect, but bear with me.) We examine "conceptual space" and discover that, let's say, "Universals, numbers, and the like, are . . . relationships that can only be grasped by the rational mind." (Notice that for the time being I omitted your word "real".) If this is true, then we've learned something important about a category of being which we encounter.
My challenge is, What is added to our knowledge by describing this category as "real"? Is there any non-circular, non-question-begging way of teasing out more information from "real"? Moreover, what is lost by using "real" can be considerable -- we lose clarity and context, because of the enormously diverse history of that word's usage. We are pulled almost irresistibly into trying to justify our use of "real" to describe the ontological category we've discovered.
Suppose instead -- and this part is fantastical, I know -- we said that universals, numbers, and the like, are Shmonkeys. We can also point out, "In many cultures and traditions, Shmonkeys are equated with what is real, but it is unclear just what that means, apart from being a Shmonkey." And we can go on to give names to other elements of ontology -- perhaps including names for ways of existing. (Quantification!) We'd end up, ideally, with a clear and organized metaphysic that can still speak about grounding, structure, and epistemology, thus covering what most of us want from terms like "real" and "exist," but without the contentious, ambiguous baggage.
To anticipate your response, what this picture leaves out is the idea of "a fundamental distinction which is almost entirely forgotten." I think you're wanting to say that there used to be a correct way of talking about what is real, about what exists, but we no longer remember how to do this. Part of me is sympathetic with this, but not the philosophical part. I think our talk of Shmonkeys can be just as correct, and can reveal the same important properties that (some uses of) "real" is supposed to do, including, as it may be, a fundamental grounding function.
But can’t you see that this seemingly straightforward statement already assumes the very point in dispute? You’re picturing “reality” as something fully formed, existing apart from and unaffected by any observer, and then treating our perceptions as merely imperfect copies of it. That is precisely the realist model under debate. The whole issue is whether such a reality—one entirely independent of observation—is anything more than a theoretical construct. We have [s]no direct access to it, only to[/s] direct knowledge of it, only to the appearances mediated through our perceptual and cognitive faculties. To claim that reality “is there anyway” is to slip in, unnoticed, the conclusion you are trying to prove.
Quoting Ludwig V
:roll: The entire point of the Critique of Pure Reason is about the processes that generate knowledge.
Quoting Ludwig V
Surely, but what we believe exists is very much conditioned by what we think we know.From the OP: Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting J
What is real, the quest to understand it, whether we can understand the real or not, are surely central questions of philosophy.
Quoting J
You’re aware that scholastic realism was a very different animal from modern scientific realism. Scientific realism, as it’s commonly understood, is rooted in an exclusively objective and empirical framework that sidelines or brackets the subjective elements of judgement, reasoning, and conceptual insight. Scholastic realism, by contrast, affirmed the reality of universals—forms or structures apprehended by the intellect—and saw them as essential to the very architecture of reason.
From the modern empirical-naturalist perspective, this older view is almost unintelligible. Universals are, at best, treated as convenient abstractions from sensory data, not as ontologically basic realities. That is why scientific realism, operating on a one-dimensional ontology of “what exists,” is predisposed to misconstrue or dismiss the reality of universals.
Hence you get statements like this, in a popular essay on the topic of What is Math?:
The Smithsonian passage is a textbook illustration of this mindset. Brown’s suggestion that we grasp mathematical truths “with the mind’s eye” is, to me, utterly unproblematic—indeed, it’s the most natural way to explain how mathematics works. We have the nous! Yet the objections read almost like expressions of alarm. The worry is not really about mathematics, though; it’s about the metaphysical implications. If we admit that certain truths are accessible through intellectual intuition—outside the mediation of the senses—then we reopen the door not only to a Platonic account of mathematics, but potentially to ethical, metaphysical, or even theological knowledge. That is precisely what modern naturalism, with its post-Enlightenment suspicion of anything “outside space and time,” has worked so hard to keep shut.
Richard Weaver saw the origins of this historical break with clarity:
[quote=Ideas have Consequences, Richard Weaver]Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture...[/quote]
OK.
This is an important moment - when the arguments run out or when there is no fact of the matter that will settle the dispute. Let's suppose that we have here two different ways of thinking about - interpretations of - the world, which are self-consistent and incompatible. Yet we seem able to communicate, so there must be some common ground. This is why Wittgenstein writes in that maddeningly elusive way. I'm not Wittgenstein and it would be absurd to try to imitate him. All I can do is try to present an account of my ideas that you can recognize as, in some sense, possible. The same applies to you. Mutual understanding would be success, I think. Agreement would be a pleasant surprise.
Quoting Wayfarer
Isn't “reality” something that is what it is, ... existing apart from and unaffected by any observer" an important, if not fundamental assumption of science? How is science possible without observation and experiment that do not affect the data?
Your picture of my picture is not quite accurate. Some, but not all, of "reality" exists apart from and unaffected by any observer. (I shall go on to talk of reality without qualification. It simplifies some explanations) It's not necessarily fully formed, whatever that means. Our perceptions are not copies of it. There's a great risk of reification here. Perceiving is an activity, not an entity. Thermostats are a contol system. They respond to events and control machinery. There is no need for any images. (What would an image of temperature or pressure be like?) Our senses are part of a complex system and provide information to enable us to function. Images would just get in the way.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well, there is the awkward fact that reality was there long before we were. I've accepted (perhaps not very clearly) that reality is, let us say, observation-apt and was observation-apt before there were any observers. On the other hand, some would insist that the only reason that reality is observation-apt is that our senses have evolved to take advantage of certain facts about reality in order to provide us with information about it; that idea is the result of our observations and theoretical constructs. I don't think you really reject them.
Theoretical constructs can be true, can't they? I'm not sure you really accept that. I get very puzzled whether you are saying that we don't know (epistemology) whether the earth goes round the sun or vice versa or not. There is the additional interesting question whether you accept that the earth goes round the sun or not. But perhaps that would be ontology.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think there's a slip somewhere there. I had the impression that you did not think that "direct knowledge" was any more possible than "direct access". Indeed, I rather think that they stand or fall together. I thought we had agreed on this. I also thought that your distinction between epistemology and ontology meant that you accepted that reality existed - the problem is about our knowledge of it.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm sorry. My remark was badly written. I knew it at the time, but couldn't think of a clearer way to explain. If I think of a better way to explain it, I'll come back to it. But it may be just a muddle.
Truly excellent question! I agree that science depends on the working assumption of a reality that is what it is, independent of us. That’s the stance of objectivity, and it’s indispensable for observation, experiment, and prediction. But that stance is methodological, not metaphysical. It’s a way of working, not a complete account of what reality is.
The point I’m making — and which I explore further in a follow-up essay, Objectivity and Detachment — is that the “independent objects” of empiricism cannot be truly mind-independent, because they’re objects. An object is always an object-for-a-subject, constituted within a perceptual and conceptual framework. Our sensory and intellectual systems have a fundamental role in defining what counts as an object at all.
Phenomenologists like Husserl showed that even the most rigorous scientific observation is grounded in the lifeworld — the background of shared experience that makes such observation possible in the first place. This doesn’t mean reality depends on your or my whims; it means that what we call “objective reality” is already structured through the conditions of human knowing. Without recognising this, science risks mistaking its methodological abstraction for the whole of reality.
So yes, objectivity is crucial. But it is not the final word — it’s one mode of disclosure, and it rests on a deeper, irreducible involvement of the subject in the constitution of the world - a world in which we ourselves are no longer an accident.
Quoting Ludwig V
I do address that in the OP:
The point isn’t to deny that the Earth existed before humans — of course it did. The point is that when we talk about “the Earth 4 billion years ago,” we are still talking within the framework of human spatio-temporal intuition and conceptual categories. As Kant put it, “time is the form of our intuition” — we cannot picture a pre-human past except as a temporal sequence ordered in the way our minds structure it. The scientific account is entirely valid within that framework, but it doesn’t erase the fact that the framework itself is ours.
Quoting Ludwig V
In this case, my entry was badly written and I edited it a few minutes after I wrote it.
Quoting Ludwig V
Caution needed here, though. Again there's a sense in the back of that of the 'there anyway' reality, which will supposedly carry on regardless. But that too is a mental construct, vorstellung, in Schopenhauer's terms.
When you emphasise the sovereignty of “what is,” I agree there’s an important sense in which the real can be seen in a completely detached way. But there are two very different ideals of vision here. Scientific objectivity brackets out the subjective to measure and describe the world in quantifiable terms, the same for all who measure them. The sage’s detachment, by contrast, transcends the personal without excluding the subject — it is a unitive vision that includes the qualitative and existential dimensions of reality, not only the measurable ones. It’s the difference between the physicist’s analysis of light and the lived experience of “seeing the light.”
[quote=Meister Eckhart, On Detachment;https://www.theculturium.com/meister-eckhart-on-detachment/]Now you may ask what this detachment is that is so noble in itself. You should know that true detachment is nothing else but a mind that stands unmoved by all accidents of joy or sorrow, honour, shame or disgrace, as a mountain of lead stands unmoved by a breath of wind. …
You should know that the outer man can be active while the inner man is completely free of this activity and unmoved … Here is an analogy: a door swings open and shuts on its hinge. I would compare the outer woodwork of the door to the outer man and the hinge to the inner man. When the door opens and shuts, the boards move back and forth but the hinge stays in the same place and is never moved thereby. It is the same in this case if you understand it rightly.[/quote]
Again, thank you very much for such perceptive and probing questions, I value them. :pray:
I don't think it is the case that science depends on the "assumption of a reality that is what it is, independent of us". I believe that idea is a misunderstanding of the true "objective" nature of science. Experimentation involves human action, and what we are looking for with this activity, is a reaction from our environment. So the experiment, being derived from hypothesis, is directed by the hypothesis.
This implies that any assumptions about a reality which is independent of us, are hypotheses dependent. In many cases, of scientific experimentation, the implied assumption is actually the opposite of that. This is clearly evident with the use of relativity theory in the creation of hypotheses. Relativity theory is based in the assumption that if there is a reality about what is, independent of us, this reality is irrelevant to our modeling of observed activities. In other words, the premise of relativity theory is that we can produce an adequate understanding of activities without assuming "a reality that is what it is, independent of us".
So, our attitude toward "a reality that is what it is, independent of us", need not be one of affirmation or negation, when we engage in scientific experimentation. And, I would say that this attitude, be it relativistic or non-relativistic, greatly influences the type of experiments which we design. Notice in the paragraphs above, the experiment is directed by the hypothesis, and the hypothesis is directed by the underlying assumptions or attitude.
Quoting Wayfarer
According to what I wrote above, "reality" to a large degree does depend on the whims of individuals. That is the whims of the scientists devising the experiments. Of course these whims are shaped by the social environment, and the ideology which informs the scientific community. Notice the modern trend, which is greatly influenced by the relativistic perspective, is toward metaphysics like model-dependent realism, and many-worlds. These are ontologies which deny "a reality that is what it is, independent of us", or perhaps could be described in the contradictory way of, 'the reality that is what it is independent of us is that there is no reality which is what it is independent of us'.
Actually, there's a surprising amount of consensus about the "categories" of being, amongst those philosophers who have ventured into this territory. Meinong, Peirce, Popper all come up with three categories - the physical, the abstract, the mental. There are variations, but there's a lot of overlap and the surrounding framework differs. But the overlap is significant.
One reservation I have is that this arrangement can be characterized in different ways. It can be characterized as "categories of being" or "modes of existence" or as "categories of objects" or categories of language. It may be that this is less important than the approach.
Quoting J
I've been thinking about this a lot. The same word is used, so there is a great temptation to give a general characterization of all the uses. There may not be one, in which case we simply designate the word as ambiguous. "Bank" as in river and "bank" as in financial institution and "bank" as in "you can bank on that" is a stock example. However, in the case of real, I wondered whether we could say that "real" is the concept that enables us to distinguish between misleading and true appearances.
I have busy days (again) tomorrow and Tuesday. So I doubt if I will reappear here before Wednesday.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's right, and the philosophical structure that results from this is intricate and, for me, often persuasive. My beef, if I have one, is with terminology. I'm looking for ways to talk about these things that promote mutual insight rather than disagreement over what words to use. The scientific realist and the scholastic realist disagree -- but about what, exactly? Is there a way to frame their disagreement without each insisting on one view about how to use the word "real"?
I'm trying to be careful, and not say ". . . about what is real." I'm arguing that there isn't a fact of the matter here; all we have is more or less useful ways of using the word. That doesn't cede any ground to either camp. Clearly there's something important that the scientific realist is pointing to, by drawing the line where they do. Equally clearly, that's the case for the scholastic realist as well. What can we do to encourage conversation about what might lie on either side of that line, without having to call the line "the boundary of reality" or some such?
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes. Again, the wrangle over how to name the elements of the arrangement -- what counts is the approach, the arrangement itself.
Quoting Ludwig V
That's a good way to use "real." And if we adopted it, notice what would follow: A disagreement about whether an appearance is misleading or true would be settled, if it can be settled at all, on the merits. We would not be looking in the Great Dictionary under "real" and saying, Ahah, this appearance over here is real, because it's true. Rather, we'd examine the conceptual territory of "misleading" and "true," make what determination we can, and then, having decided that "real" is a good word to use for the true appearances, we use it. If someone doesn't like that use of the word, no big deal: What we want to be talking about is misleading and true appearances, not "reality."
Yes, yes, our concept of reality is our concept - who else's would it be? In the same way, our concepts of a unicorn or a swan are our concepts. Whether such creatures exist is another matter. More accurately, our concepts are not arbitrary, but the result of a negotiation with Reality, with how the world is. Actually, it's not really a negotiation because the world doesn't do give-and-take. It's more a question of trying a suite of concepts on to see if they fit with what we want.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is one of the moments that I think we may agree about at least some of this. The catch comes in when I want to say that framework is what reveals the world to us. You seem to have difficulty with that.
Quoting Meister Eckhart, On Detachment
We talked about this. I do think that the door/hinge analogy is more helpful.
Quoting J
I'm not at all clear what you mean by scholastic realism. Can you explain, please?
I'm more familiar with idealism vs realism, but I'm pushing at the same door. At the very least, even if actual agreement can't be reached, mutual understanding would be deepened.
Quoting Ludwig V
I can live more easily with any of these than with Being or Existence or Objects or Language.
Quoting J
Absolutely.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That's perfectly true. But what makes the system work is that the experimental results are not directed by the hypothesis - it wouldn't be an experiment if they were. So what are they directed by? Reality or Nature or the World - take your pick. That's what I was trying to say. I'm sorry if I was not clear.
I was picking up @Wayfarer's term -
Quoting Wayfarer
I thought it might be something like that. "the reality of universals" is the litmus test for platonism.
But it really is a debate about the nature of reality—and also about the corresponding change in consciousness that follows from how we draw that line. Universals are fundamental to how the mind 'constructs' reality. Thoughts are real—but not because they are “brain activity” (as perhaps 90% of the participants here would have it). They belong to a different order - one that due to these historical changes, is no longer recognized.
Historically, nominalism shifted the sense of what is real from universals to particulars, from ideas to objects, and thence the presumption that the sensable world is real independently of the mind. Whereas, as we've seen, the perception of material objects is necessarily contingent on sense-perception (per Kant). But principles such as those of geometry, maths, and logic which are constantly deployed to fathom the so-called mind-independent world are themselves things that can only be grasped by a mind. The result is, as Bob Dylan put it, 'there's too much confusion' ('All Along the Watchtower').
The empiricist tendency is to think about ideas as if they were objects, but that is to confuse what is intelligible with what is perceptible. And if the question is asked, in what sense are they physical? the answer will be that as they’re grasped by the mind ? the mind is the brain ? the brain is physical ? therefore ideas must also be (or supervene on the) physical. But the claim “mind is brain” is itself conceptual. It relies on the conceptual architecture of science.
Everything is ass-about and upside down.
Quoting Ludwig V
One of the books I read just as I began posting on forums was The Theological Origins of Modernity, Michael Allen Gillespie. 'Gillespie turns the conventional reading of the Enlightenment (as reason overcoming religion) on its head by explaining how the humanism of Petrarch, the free-will debate between Luther and Erasmus, the scientific forays of Francis Bacon, the epistemological debate between Descarte and Hobbes, were all motivated by an underlying wrestling with the questions posed by nominalism, which, according to Gillespie, dismantled the rational God / universe of medieval scholasticism and introduced (by way of the Franciscans) a fideistic God-of-pure-will, out of a concern that anything less than that would undermine divine omnipotence'.
Nothing I've seen since has caused me to doubt his account. Not that it's the final word but it set the direction for my subsequent research.
It all depends on your perspective. For the physicalist the claim "mind is brain" is physical, as reasoning is a physical process. Concepts themselves (as conceived) are hypostatized physical processes for the physicalist.
The problem for you is that you think there is a "slam dunk" way of debunking physicalism. There is no slam dunk way of debunking physicalism or any other metaphysical view because everything depends on what assumptions you begin with.
With metaphysics the best you can hope for is consistency and plausibility, you are not going to get any proof.
I'm very sceptical about that. But I don't know enough to argue the point properly. Nominalism was clearly part of what was going on, but something as complex as the Renaissance/Reformation must have involved many interacting factors. The idea that a single part of the movement caused everything seems highly implausible to me. I also suspect that our problem was not really a problem for pre-Enlightenment philosophy. The explanation I'm looking for is how the problem originated. I don't recall Aristotle worrying about our problem. Plato's philosophy is more complex, but still doesn't align with our debates, IMO. Yet, there were important ideas in the older philosophy. It should not be dismissed wholesale.
Quoting Wayfarer
It sounds like a very good read and might fill in some of the many blanks in my historical understanding. Yet - No spark setting off an explosion. Many factors combining in a storm.
I'm really interested in the information that there was a real (!) theological concern behind to the development of fideism. I had the impression that it was simply a resort of the faithful under the assault from the Enlightenment. Thanks for that.
Quoting Janus
I would go further and suggest that there are no "slam-dunk" arguments anywhere in philosophy. If there were, they would demolish ideas without understand them properly, and in metaphysics all ideas deserve a proper understanding .There is something in all of them that deserves our respect and attention.
However, your argument proves too much. It is always the case that conclusions depend on what assumptions are made at the start. But that applies to good arguments as much as to bad ones.
I do agree that there is no fact of the matter that will determine the truth or falsity of any metaphysical view. But that doesn't necessarily mean that all views are equal. I think of them as alternative ways of looking at, thinking about the world and our lives in it. What I don't yet know is how to evaluate them. Yet, I can't help having views about some of them.
It's not a single issue, though. Of course there are many interacting factors involved but the decline of Aristotelian realism really was a momentous shift in culture. That's what Gillespie's book is about, as well as an earlier book called Ideas have Consequences, Richard Weaver. (He was an English professor who's book became an unexpected hit in the post-war period. )
Quoting Ludwig V
That's what is motivating this study: the decline of Platonic or Aristotelian realism. Lloyd Gerson's most recent book addresses a similar area: Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy. 'Gerson contends that Platonism identifies philosophy with a distinct subject matter, namely, the intelligible world. and seeks to show that the Naturalist rejection of Platonism entails the elimination of a distinct subject matter for philosophy.' And the 'intelligible world' is precisely the domain of universals and Platonic realism, generally.
Quoting Ludwig V
The other thread I've posted 'Idealism in Context' talks about this very point. It is that modern philosophical idealism beginning with Berkeley, began with the decline of the 'participatory realism' of scholastic philosophy.
How is this relevant to the original post? It is because I see 'ideas' in the Platonic or Aristotelian sense as essential to the structure of reasoned inference - they’re formal structures in consciousness . 'As Aristotelians and Thomists use the term, intellect is that faculty by which we grasp abstract concepts (like the concepts man and mortal), put them together into judgments (like the judgment that all men are mortal), and reason logically from one judgment to another (as when we reason from all men are mortal and Socrates is a man to the conclusion that Socrates is mortal). It is to be distinguished from imagination, the faculty by which we form mental images and from sensation, the faculty by which we perceive the goings on in the external material world and the internal world of the body. That intellectual activity -- thought in the strictest sense of the term -- is irreducible to sensation and imagination is a thesis that unites Platonists, Aristotelians, and rationalists of either the ancient Parmenidean sort or the modern Cartesian sort' ~ Ed Feser. So not surprisingly, the advocates for scholastic realism are mainly Catholic, as they're mainly Thomist.
This exchange gives us a good view of the issue, I think. (And thanks for hosting the discussion, and being so willing to hear how it strikes others.)
My position is that there can't be a debate that "really is" about the nature of reality, because "reality" and "real," when used in this kind of philosophical context, don't have definitions or references that can be clearly agreed upon, outside of some specific tradition. Your position is (and of course correct me if this is wrong) that we do know what "reality" refers to, or at least we know what we mean when we use it in this context. This knowledge is tradition-independent. Thus, a philosopher can be right or wrong about what is real, and can be shown to be so.
I'm further saying that we can still talk about all the topics we want to talk about -- structure, grounding, primacy, causality, knowledge -- without insisting first on agreement about what is real, or how to use the terms "real" and "reality."
As a next step, I think that it's appropriate for me to ask you how you're using "reality" when you say that we can have a debate about the nature of reality. Is it something close to @Ludwig V's suggestion?: "'real' is the concept that enables us to distinguish between misleading and true appearances." Perhaps even more importantly, can you tell us why you believe that your use is correct?
That's right, it is just one thread within the whole tapestry. The attempt to characterize nominalism as 'where we went wrong' is a tendentious, "just-so" story. There are many points in history, right back to the advent of agriculture and land ownership where it could be said we "went the wrong way". The polemic between nominalism and realism of universals is a minor philosophical issue which is of concern only to (some) of the intellectual elites. There are also more nuanced views which avoid this very polemic.
Quoting Ludwig V
Right, I'm obviously not going to disagree (except that you are "going further") since I said as much myself in the very passage you are responding to.
Quoting Ludwig V
It is strange that you seem to think you are disagreeing with me somehow, when I have already said pretty much what you are saying here. Recall that earlier I said it comes down to what seems most plausible. Of course I agree that there are good arguments and bad arguments, and assuming that we are referring to consistent (with their premises) arguments, then evaluation must comes down to plausibility. It is a little like aesthetics?we all know there are good and bad artworks, but a precise and determinable measure of aesthetic value , just as a precise and determinable measure of plausibility, is not possible.
Let’s go back to the starting point. The world we see, with objects arrayed in space and time, is constructed by the brain on the basis of sensory inputs received by our cognitive apparatus in light of existing knowledge and conceptions (‘synthesised’ in Kantian terminology). This is something which has been validated by subsequent cognitive science (per the example of Charles Pinter ‘Mind and the Cosmic Order’) . It does not mean that the world is ‘all in the mind’, a figment, or an illusion in a simplistic sense. It means that cognition has an ineliminably subjective aspect or ground, which has generally been ignored or ‘bracketed out’ by science. (This ‘ignoring’ is subject of the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ and ‘the blind spot of science’ arguments.) Awareness of the subjective ground of experience is the starting point in phenomenology.
Hence the argument of the OP that this validates some insights of idealism. It also challenges what Husserl describes as ‘the natural attitude’. According to Husserl, this is our everyday, unreflective stance toward the world in which we simply accept the existence of objects and facts around us without questioning or examining the underlying structures of consciousness that make such experience possible.????????????????
Becoming aware of these processes is meta-cognitive insight - to be critically, self-reflectively aware of cognition. Awareness of the way that the mind constructs its world, on the basis of its dispositions, faculties, and so on, is, as I see it, fundamental to philosophy proper, as implied in the maxim ‘know yourself’.
The second part of this thread began with the argument about the ‘history of ideas’ and the decline of classical metaphysics. I’m of the view that the Greek philosophers were critically self-aware in the sense described above, but of course this wasn’t (and couldn’t be) expressed in the modern idiom. It was expressed in terms appropriate to that (now very distant) cultural milieu. The tradition of classical metaphysics arose out of the meta-cognitive insights of the founders of that tradition (subject of a book not mentioned in the OP, ‘Thinking Being: Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition’, Eric Perl).
These metacognitive insights in one form or another were conveyed or preserved in Aristotelian philosophy and also in the other elements of Greek philosophy which were absorbed by subsequent culture and are part of our ‘cultural grammar’. So it was with the ascendancy of nominalism and the subsequent ascendancy of empirical philosophy, that these foundational philosophical insights were lost or submerged. They have been preserved to some extent by modern Thomists - mainly Catholic, (although I’m not Catholic and am not making these arguments as a covert appeal to Catholicism). It is more that I see in Aristotelian-Thomism a strain of the [I]philosophia perennis. [/i]
Quoting J
I believe there’s validity in the concept of the philosophical ascent - that there are degrees of understanding, lower and higher, and that these have been traversed and described by philosophers and sages (and not only in the West.) I think it is reflected in the Allegory of the Cave and the Divided Line of the Republic. In that allegory, the vision of the Sun as an allegory of the ascent from the cave symbolizes the noetic apprehension of ‘the real’. The hoi polloi, representing those uneducated in philosophy, are prisoners in the cave, entranced by shadows.
All of this has to be interpreted, of course, which is the role of hermenuetics. But that's the general drift of the second part of the argument. Idealism in Context is another facet of that.
The fact that 'real' and 'reality' don't have 'agreed upon definitions' is actually symptomatic of the cultural problem which the OP is attempting, in its own way, to address.
You mean the "problem" that we don't all think the same, that we can have different viewpoints?
You would have us all return to living "under the aegis of tutelage"?
How conservative, how dogmatic, of you.
Consider the phrase "my truth". You cannot discuss with someone who claims this phrase. They are not open to discussions of what is real. They are hung up (almost literally) on their sense of self-hood, to the point that other considerations beyond "what I think right now" are not relevant.
Those of us who reject this are now in a different world it seems. That's a massive problem that faces anyone from any walk of life, if instantiated in their interactions with the world. The charge of this being conservative is unsubstantiated and possibly self-serving, me thnks.
So, what do the theists mean when they say that God or Heaven is real? Mostly when we say something is real, we mean empirically real, that is that it is part of the shared environment of things, processes and events.
When it comes to metaphysics, if one wants to occupy a position, "my truth" is all that can be had. I've said elsewhere that the only criterion for veracity of metaphysical claims is plausibility. Good luck trying to get everyone to agree on what's plausible.
Wayfarer specifically has metaphysics in mind (although he might also have in mind the different ethics that might be thought to accompany different metaphysics), and if we all agreed on what "is real" meant in that context, then I can't see how we would not all be agreeing not merely on the meaning of the term but also as to what is real.
In the past in the West let's say for argument's sake everyone believed in God (or at least paid lip service to the belief out of fear). Can you imagine any context other than an authoritarian one, where everyone would agree (about abstruse as opposed to merely everyday matters?
I am speaking outside an area in which I feel any confidence. My own feeling is that some were doing something close to "critical" philosophy - misleading because it suggest people like Descartes and Hume weren't "critical".
But the little I understand was not, for example Aristotle asking what is a house? That was posed as a serious question as to what kind of things are houses in the mind-independent world. He argued that it was a combination of matter and form.
Today, a house is just overwhelmingly complicated to define in anything remotely like metaphysics. We have trouble with atoms, never mind houses. So you'd say that Aristotle was critically self aware like say, Kant or Hume?
I agree. But there's no easy solution. It's part of living in a pluralistic culture with innummerable perspectives, views, opinions and cultural backgrounds. But we can at least discuss it. It is natural, in the secular world, to regard science as the arbiter of fact, but when it comes to values and the search for meaning, it isn't so clear cut.
It is true that exponents of the 'perennial philosophy', which I referred to, are often conservative to the point of being reactionary. One of the better books on the intellectual clique of that name is called Against the Modern World (Mark Sedgewick.) I'm not 'against the modern world' but I understand the rationale. While the modern world has brought untold benefits and improvements to the human condition it also has its shadow side. The technological culture which has provided so much can also destroy us. This is exemplified daily in the many crises of addiction, alienation, loneliness, and depression which plague modern culture.
I was discussing with my learned friend Chuck the fact that there's an inherent tension between Platonic or traditionalist philosophy and liberal political philosophy. This is why Karl Popper called Plato an enemy of the open society. Liberal thought, especially in its modern egalitarian form, places a premium on equal dignity, autonomy, and the right to participate in discourse. This tends to deprecate any perceived intellectual hierarchies because if truth is dependent on purportedly superior insight, then those without it may be depicted as less capable or qualified. There’s also a cultural wariness about allowing claims of “higher truth” to serve as justifications for social or political domination - echoes of aristocracy, theocracy, or authoritarianism. We see that demonstrated egregiously in some Islamic theocracies. But then, there are populist autocracies appearing in the West.
In contrast, much of the pre-modern and classical tradition—from Plato’s “knowledge of the Forms” to Aristotle’s sophia—assumes that there are degrees of cognitive and moral refinement. They see philosophy as a transformative discipline: you don’t just have an opinion, you become the sort of person who can apprehend deeper truths. The idea of a “higher” truth here isn’t about exclusion but about cultivation—requiring moral and intellectual virtues to access. (One definitive recent text on this is The Degrees of Knowledge, Jacques Maritain, a French Catholic thomistic philospoher, and one on the left of the political spectrum.)
Accordingly in a liberal setting, saying that an understandingor insight can be qualitatively better can sound like an assault on equality. But in the older model, it’s almost definitional that philosophy involves progression from superficial opinion (doxa) to deeper knowledge (epist?m?), with not everyone at the same place on that path at the same time.
Liberalism’s strength is inclusiveness and the prevention of abuses of authority. But Its blind spot can be a reluctance to acknowledge that some perspectives are not just different, but genuinely more coherent, integrated, or profound.
I don't think that's quite true, anymore. I will resile, though, as I have given ample reason to take that seriously ("my truth").
Quoting Janus
When I've asked, they mean what you go on to posit: it is an empirically real place one's soul ascends to after death (or, God, similar pseudo-physical terms get used). Not all, but that's the most common response I get.
Quoting Janus
I posit that thre is still going to be a 'pregnant middle'. Think of a balloon - pinch opposite sides, and stretch. The top and bottom tapers are those who hold views outside of what most consider reasonable, rational or indeed 'real'. That middle section (pregnant middle) is most people. I agree that getting everyone to agree is a fools errand. That doesn't mean that we can't at the very least, sort out which sense we mean to use the word in, and then discuss, based on that, whether we are making reasonable assertions. I do, also, agree, it's going to end up with "Yes, that's plausible" or not. This is a problem.
Quoting Janus
I presume the following was to indicate you want to ask about abstract, esoteric matters rather than "is gasoline running my car". I can. I can imagine a society in which there are less variant views generally. This is simply a temporal issue. in 2000 B.C it was probably quite easy, without force, to instantiate certain abstract beliefs in others, if you had a streak to do so. By that, I mean you are energized, articulate and willing to engage, no that you want to force yourself on others.
Quoting Wayfarer
This seems empirically wrong. As I see, and seems to be playing out, Liberal thought in it's modern, egalitarian form places a premium on equal outcomes and any disparity in outcome is automatically considered a result of unequal opportunity (this seems the 'woke' take though, so perhaps you're purposefully trying to shunt that off for discussion purposes. If so, that's good. Sorry I've wasted time).
Quoting Wayfarer
Definitely. Epistemic injustice is real, despite my extreme discomfort in ever applying it to a situation's description.
Quoting Wayfarer
You've hit the nail here. I think the problem is that there are dumber, and smarter people. Those dumber people who might actually be precluded from employing the mental techniques required for this type of refinement are going to argue that they aren't dumber, and it's you (whoever, whatever) who has prevented their achieving success. This is patent nonsense, but goes to the issues i'm speaking about I guess: If they think "real" means what they interpret their Lot as, then we can't argue with them. There's no refinement to be had.
Quoting Wayfarer
I see you covered that already. :sweat:
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. I think further, though, it lends itself to not just not acknowledging this, but actively resisting any type of discussion which might describe, in rational terms, why it is true.
The idea that punctuality is racist, as an example. Fucking - no - arrive on time. Bigotry of low expectations seems the order of the day, for this particular mode of activity.
I’ve noticed that.
Quoting Manuel
The Platonic tradition was itself critical — the Dialogues show Plato testing every proposition from multiple angles, leaving many questions unresolved. They’re not a compendium of answers so much as of questions. In that sense, philosophy has always been “critical” — not just of others’ views, but reflexively aware of its own assumptions.
By the late Middle Ages, however, much of Aristotelian philosophy had ossified into scholastic dogma. In the first philosophy of science lecture I ever attended (Alan Chalmers’ What is this Thing Called Science?), the lecturer recounted a story of monks debating how many teeth a horse has. They consulted Aristotle’s works, found no answer, and threw up their hands — ridiculing the one monk who suggested checking an actual horse. Anecdotal perhaps, but also quite likely true.
The Enlightenment’s philosophes rebelled against that mindset. (Remember the famous trial?) Their motivation was to look at nature with fresh eyes, stripped of inherited authority. That turn is the beginning of modern science as we know it — but in rejecting the scholastic framework wholesale, something else was lost: the kind of critical self-awareness about the act of knowing itself that we see in Greek sources.
That question re-emerges in the 19th and 20th centuries. Franz Brentano’s doctoral work on Aristotle’s On the Several Senses of Being seeded his concept of intentionality, which in turn became foundational for Husserl. Heidegger, who lectured extensively on Aristotle, re-engaged the question of Being from a different angle. And Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences can be seen not as a nostalgic return to pre-modern metaphysics, but as a re-interpretation of those ancient questions in light of modern science, and as a critique of the unexamined “naturalism” that has become the default. That’s also why it’s central to the OP
How so? I mean Descartes was responded to the reigniting of Pyrrhonian skepticism, trying to find an objective foundation for knowledge, but Descartes was always clear that our ideas were constructions of sense data, not objects themselves.
Hume took Pyrrhonian skepticism to its limits. Both were very much critically self aware about the act of knowing.
Unless you have something more specific in mind, which you probably have, as I've said, it's not an area in which I have a lot of confidence yet.
Quoting Wayfarer
He is very tricky though. I mean you can read him as being critical, but you can also read him as not being critical, because by being critical philosophy lost touch with being, or something like that.
I've also struck theists who think that way. But it's not really defesnible since 'emprical' refers to the shared world of phenomena.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, esoteric matters. I did say I think there is general agreement about the nature of the perceived world. I even think there is general agreement when it comes to the "serious" moral issues like murder, rape, theft, assault, exploitation and so on. Admittedly some of the "agreement" may be lip service only.
That there would have been a greater degree of agreement in authoritarian and theocratic societies is no surprise I would say.
Quoting AmadeusD
I can't agree with you here. Of course there are smarter and dumber people, but if we allow that philosophers in general are among the smartest people, the great degree of disagreement among them when it comes to metaphysics at least shows that what people believe is more driven by emotion and upbringing than by intelligence.
Expertise is far easier to determine in science, technological pursuits, trades and crafts, and even in the arts technical expertise, if not aesthetic quality, is relatively easy to determine.
As to agreement about the meaning of 'real' I haven't seen a good definition emerge from the context of idealist and anti-realist metaphysics. For example when Platonists say universals and numbers are real, they cannot explain what they mean, because the usual understanding of what is real involves physical existence somewhere and/or the ability to act on other things. So when asked as to where the numbers and universals are to be found if somewhere other than in human thought, no answer is forthcoming.
This is a critical point so often overlooked,
It's not a matter of 'locating' them. That depiction is only because of the inability to conceive of anything not located in time and space. The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences and the abilities that it provides to discover facts which otherwise could never be known, indicate that numbers are more than just 'products of thought'. They provide a kind of leverage (that also being something discovered by a mathematician, namely, Archimedes). Which lead to many amazing inventions such as computers, and the like, which all would have been inconceivable a generation or two ago (as previously discussed.)
Quoting Manuel
Among other things. But Descartes was taught to me as 'the first modern philosopher', and the point was stressed about his efforts to free himself from the scholastic authorities and Aristotelian dogma. Hence the whole exercise of locking himself away and forgetting all that he had been taught so as to arrive at his apodictic insight cogito ergo sum.
Quoting Tom Storm
Something often stressed by Fooloso4.
In any case, in the context, I am trying to make the argument for philosophical insight as a means to a higher truth, which is often depicted as 'an appeal to dogma', for the reasons I've tried to explain above.
What follows is an excellent summary of the epistemological story, and how it has changed over time. You really do have the gift of concision. And . . . not once did you use the terms "real" or "reality"! Was this deliberate? I rather hope not, because it demonstrates, better than any persuasion on my part, that those terms really aren't necessary in order to say what we want to say, philosophically.
Quoting Wayfarer
I know you do. I was asking why -- and specifically, how we could determine whether the concept is valid or not.
Again, how can we examine this idea? If you say, "What is real can be apprehended noetically," and I say, "What is real is strictly physical" (which I would not!), what are we disputing about? Are we disagreeing about how to use the word "real"? How does that sort of disagreement get resolved, philosophically? Or are we disagreeing about a fact of the matter, not just the terminology? In that case, don't we need to investigate and analyze the characteristics of (in this case) noetic apprehension and physical sensations, in order to learn how they differ, and whether one might indeed be more basic, or reliable, or grounded, etc.? Having done this, what additional work do we want the word "real" to do?
Quoting Wayfarer
This is a very interesting point. The implication, I think, is that "real" could have a definition, in philosophy, that is just as solidly based as, say, "elephant". Indeed, such a definition was in place for the Classical philosophers, and its disappearance is a cultural problem. That makes sense, if we did indeed have a piece of knowledge that has been lost.
I wonder whether there's a way to describe what happened, culturally, that doesn't require this set-up. Another account might be something like: "The Greeks and Scholastics had a view of what constituted the 'real' or 'reality,' and this view was widely accepted, leading to a relatively unambiguous use of the term. But then challenges began to be posed to this view, with the result that, today, there are competing understandings of how to use and interpret 'real'."
On that account, what happened was not a "problem." Rather, it was found that the Classical view of reality could be questioned, and that rich philosophical questions and viewpoints resulted from this questioning. At a minimum, philosophers found themselves forced to do analysis, to discover what these competing versions of "reality" actually entailed. It could even be the case that this movement away from the agreed-upon definition of reality was an improvement, a benefit, freeing us from a frankly incorrect or inadequate understanding -- not so different from what happened in the physical sciences.
I don't exactly think this account is correct, because I think there are ways of knowing that are outside the scope of philosophy. I'm continuing to urge us, as philosophers, to think twice about "dying on the hill" of what is real and what isn't.
Quoting Janus
This is important. "Real" is perfectly clear and useful in most contexts, because we know how to use it.
This is where I think the problem lies. They will say "I have direct knowledge of this, as do other Christians" (or whatever sect). You and I would largely reject this, but we also do not know their phenomenal experiences. Maybe they have... (this is unserious, but hopefully illustrates).
Quoting Janus
Yeah. Even then, I think there are some good reasons to reject this position (meaning, it seems more people are serious about it). There are, on many reliable accounts, billions who do not find rape, murder, child abuse etc.. objectionable, when posited by a religious doctrine (or, rather, required by it). I suggest this is probably more prevalent than most in the West want to accept (and here we also need take into account the types within the West who perhaps feel these ways. We have enough abusers around for whom the Law is not a deterrent it seems).
Quoting Janus
If this is just a claim to an average, I think it's empirically true. I do not think your next claim follows. Among the 'smartest' people, you're likely to get more disagreement as each can bring more nuance and see different things in the same sets of data (or, different relations). I don't think this has much to do with feeling, though I am not suggesting we can avoid feelings when deciding on theories, for instance. But assessing theories is the job of the minds which can move beyond feelings into "whether or not the feelings are reasonable" type of assessments. Plenty of people appear to be incapable of this. But we may simply have different expectations here. I'm unsure there's an answer.
Quoting Janus
Huh. I've had several give me what I think is a satisfactory answer. Something like:
"real" in relation to Universals obtains in their examples. The same as "red" which is obviously real, "three" can exist in the same way: In three things. Red exists in red things. I don't see a problem?
Quoting J
I think this is an assumption based on a curse of knowledge type thing. What is 'real' is hotly debated socially (if you have a diverse social group, anyway). That's my experience, and my experience in the online world too. I think more and more people think "metaphysically" when assessing 'the real' these days. Not very good fundamental education anymore.
Clearly I need to improve my social group! :wink: It's been a long time since I've been part of a debate about "what is reality" that didn't involve green leafy substances. But I take your point. The usefulness of "real" waxes and wanes, but the idea that something is real if it's genuine and not real if it's a fake is robust. This idea will work fine in a lot of situations, and children learn it quickly.
I think that's true, but uses of genuine and fake are various. I know you've taken my point, I just want to be clear that these concepts are not as cut-and-dried as they may seem to all.
Thank you. I have been a tech writer but I don't know if that career has any mileage left in it. Also I realised the other day (somewhat gloomily) that I've probably well and truly done my 10,000 hours on philosophy forums. I'm closing in on 25k posts on this one. I think I'll change my avatar to Sisyphus.
Quoting J
Real is authentic, not fake, the real deal. Reality is distinguished from delusion, illusion or duplicity.
Following on from the point about the Enlightenment rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics. When the scientific revolution and Enlightenment thinkers pushed back against the Church’s intellectual monopoly, they weren’t just rejecting theology — they were also rejecting the philosophical apparatus that had been co-opted to support it. Historically, that included most of what was best about the broader Platonic tradition, which provided much of the philosophical framework of Christian theology,
In the polemics of the time, “metaphysics” became associated with religious dogma. The fact that Aristotle’s physics was outdated made it easier to dismiss his metaphysics as likewise obsolete.
Naturalism then positioned itself as a clean break — methodologically bracketing or excluding anything that smelled of theology, which meant also sidelining large swathes of classical philosophy.
The Enlightenment liberated science from theological oversight — but at the cost of severing the link between natural philosophy and questions of meaning, purpose, and being. This is the origin of the meme of life as a kind of cosmic fluke.
Much of the critical self-awareness discussed earlier— the Greek insights about the conditions of knowledge — was lost in the rush to rush a purely empirical and mechanical worldview.
All these factors are still evident in almost every discussion on this forum.
I don't see that this is a problem. If you weren't suggesting so, sorry. It seems so..
There is an influential school of thought or philosophical undercurrent, that natural science has done away with the Biblical creation myth and with it, any idea of purposefulness or inherent meaning in the Cosmos (subject of another thread On Purpose.)
If we cannot coherently conceive of something being real without it existing somewhere at some time or everywhere at all times then that tells against your position.
If you want to say that the effectiveness of mathematics in science tells us anything about more than just how the world appears to us, then you are supporting the idea of a mind-independent reality. It seems obvious that number is immanent in the nature of things?once you have difference, diversity, structure then you have number. Time and space are quantifiable. But if you don't believe that difference, diversity, structure are mind-independently real or that time and space are mind-independently real?are you then
going to say that number is?
Quoting AmadeusD
Right, but religious experiences (which I of course would not deny that people do have) are not shareable, because they are "inner" experiences, not experiences of an "outer" "external" shared world. People may also experience hallucinations, and they are not considered to be empirically verifiable?if they were they would not be classed as hallucinations.
Quoting AmadeusD
I think most people are against rape, murder, child abuse etc., when it comes to their own communities, to those they consider to be of their own kind. The word 'kindness' holds this implicit notion of kinship. People find it possible to accept violence against others if the others are understood to be enemies. But even then, look at the general disapproval of "war crimes'. The ideal would be if all people considered all others to be of their kind?humankind unbounded by religious bigotry and cultural antipathies. I don't deny that there are sociopaths, those lacking in normal human empathy, who don't have a problem with violent crimes.
Quoting AmadeusD
I agree with you that it doesn't always predominately involve feeling (in the sense of wishing that things are some particular way) but I think in may cases it does, especially among the religious-minded. And remember I also said it can involve the hold that upbringing may have (although I guess that too might be counted as a kind of feeling?of for example attachment). Beyond that of course there will still be disagreement based on what different people find plausible when it comes to those matters the truth of which cannot be empirically determined (notably metaphysics and ontology).
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, but as I have said in this thread and many times elsewhere, I think number is found everywhere, which would mean it exists in the empirical world. Those who advocate for the reality of universals and number in some transcendental sense are the ones I had in mind?they are the ones who cannot say in what sense number could be real and yet not exist. (of course numbers considered as discrete entities, as opposed to number, are not encountered in the empirical world (except as numerals and of course they don't count because they are not themselves numbers, but are symbols of numbers).
Quoting J
:up: Yes, and the interesting point seems to be that to agree on the meaning of 'real' would be to agree on what is real. The difficulty I have with those who posit the reality of transcendent things is that they are unable to say what "real" could mean in that connection.
Empirical objects do have the appearance of being mind-independent — they confront us in space and time as separate objects — but that appearance is conditioned by (dependent on) the structures of perception and cognition. They are never given except as appearances to a subject. That is the main point of the mind-created world argument, as it pertains to 'the world' as the sum of sense-able particulars.
Mathematical truths are of a different order: they are independent of any individual mind in the sense that they’re the same for all who can reason — but they are only accessible to mind, not to the sensory perception (hence the subject of dianoia in Platonist terms, so of a 'higher' order than sensory perception.)
Quoting Janus
As for time and space, they’re not mind-independent containers but, as Kant said, “forms of intuition” — the necessary preconditions of any experience. They are objectively real for the subject, in the sense that all appearances to us must be ordered in temporal sequence and spatial perspective. But that’s not the same as saying they exist as things-in-themselves apart from all possible subjects.
My point is not that the world is “all in the mind,” but that the only world we can speak of or investigate is the world as it appears through the conditions of human knowing — and that this doesn’t deny, but rather presupposes, that there is a reality in itself, although it lies beyond our possible experience.
That is uncontroversial?of course appearances are mind-dependent, or body-dependent?however you want to frame it. It simply doesn't follow that what appears to us as objects in space and time are themselves mind-dependent ?you just don't seem to be able to understand that. They might be mind-dependent in themselves or they might not, and that is the question we cannot answer with any certainty.
Quoting Wayfarer
Again that is completely uncontroversial? if objects appear of course they appear to subjects (subjects being defined as percipients). Do the things which appear to us have their own existence independently of appearing to us? For me the answer would be "most likely they do". Of course I don't know for sure, but that seems to be the most plausible answer given everything we know about the world as it appears to be. If you don't think that is the most plausible answer, that's fine?you are entitled to that view, but don't pretend that there is a provable truth of the matter.
Quoting Wayfarer
Mathematical truths can be understood as possible logical entailments of the basic rules of number, and number can be understood to exist everywhere in the empirical world. It is a bit like chess?once the very simple rules of chess are established the possible series of combinations of the pieces are virtually infinite. We could say that there are a far greater number of those possible sequences of moves that have never occurred than those which have occurred. Do they exist out there somewhere? Or think of the simple iterative function which generates the Mandelbrot Set.
You've lost me once you start speaking of "higher order" because there can be no explanation of what it might be. We can have a feeling or sense of a higher order, but that is a different matter?it cannot be coherently subjected to analysis and discourse.
Quoting Wayfarer
That time and space exist only for minds is itself not demonstrable, just as is the case with "things". That Kant said it is so does not make it true. I'm sorry but Kant is not my guru, I prefer to think for myself. That said I have read him and about him quite extensively so I'm well familiar with all the arguments. I know just where and why I part company with Kant.
I agree with Schopenhauer's critique? that there cannot be things in themselves if space and time exist only in relation to perception. Of course I don't accept that space and time exist only in relation to perception, because I find the idea that a completely unstructured undifferentiated "world in itself" could give rise to an unimaginably complex perceived world completely implausible? implausible as do I also find Schopenhauer's "solution" of a blind will. (And yes, I have fairly comprehensively read, and read about, Schopenhauer's philosophy? certainly enough to be well familiar with its central ideas. So I do understand his ideas, but I just don't agree with them).
I think you believe the world is an idea in some mind, not your mind or my mind, but some universal mind, probably not the mind of the Abrahamic God. If that is not what you believe then I confess I don't know what you are arguing.
I have to say, I'm not so sure. Billions in communities outside the West see, for instance. Honour killings as a requirement, morally. All but the victim will agree. Just an example, but its these things I'm speaking out (while trying not to target religious thinking). This may ultimately not be all that important, though.
Quoting Janus
I agree. But even within communities who see each other as 'kin', horrifically violent actions take place with support of the law, and one's family, all the time. The femicides in China/Japan, the constant and unbearable mutilation, rape and murder of women in both Muslim and Hindu societies, the belief among certain sects of immigrants that these notions should be important to the West among other things tell me we could probably count more people OK with rape and murder than not, on a principle level. We would, obviously, disagree with them - but there are billions, as I understand. The death penalty for apostacy or atheism in seven countries seems to speak to this also... I do hope I am just a little over-alert to this, but I fear I am actually under playing it. We in the West tend to assume people share our moral outlooks, when that's probably one of the biggest areas of global disagreement and disharmony. We cannot co-exist with countries that deny women education, for instance, and still be 'moral' by our own lights.
Quoting Janus
Unfortunately, I think a quote from Sam Harris bears repeating: There are good, and there are bad people. Good people do good things. Bad people do bad things. But to get a good person to do bad things, you need religion. Ah fuck, now I'm just bashing religion. Perhaps I shouldn't be so reticent. It is poison.
Quoting Janus
We see it among that which can be, though. I'm unsure its particularly reasonable to presume everyone accepts "empirical evidence" as actual evidence. Those of us who understand what you're saying will do, but plenty (perhaps most) do not. They are skeptical of 'evidence' unless it agrees with their feelings. You and I would want to jettison this, and assess it against the claim, rather htan our feelings. I suggest this is far more common, and far more obvious than you are allowing here.
Quoting Janus
Nothing to quibble with here. I guess I just don't understand why the response I get isn't satisfactory. I don't know that anyone claims numbers exist outside examples of number. Or that colours exist outside examples of color (though, perhaps Banno would).
That said, you may be interested in one of my profs work
I'm not moved by it, but if you're wanting to maintain some form of purpose or fundamental meaning to existence/the universe, he's good some good ideas. I just don't see why we would be pushing for it, if we can't see it already.
Why do you say that?
I can very easily conceive of something being real without existing somewhere at some time, or everywhere at all times. However, if explained to you, you dismiss such writing with phrases like "that passage reads like nonsense".
Do you recognize that this may indicate that you are in some way mentally handicapped? Or is this an attitudinal problem, a refusal to put in the effort required to understand such conceptions? Are you by any chance determinist, thinking that effort is not required to understand, believing that either the universe will make you understand, or not understand, as fate would have it?
Possibility for example, doesn't exist anywhere, at any time.
Ok, you're right that "honour lkillings" are an exception. I guess if people are understood to have seriously transgressed in a context of very strict dogma, then they may become "othered" so that killing them then is seen as a duty.
But in such cases it would not be seen as murder, but as execution. It is also interesting to note that honour killing sometimes happens to women who have been raped?as though it must have been their fault and they are now forever defiled.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes such things of course do occur, but they are generally motivated by dogmatic religious views which effectively dehumanize the victim.
Quoting AmadeusD
I see no harm in individuals holding religious views of all kinds, provided they admit to themselves that they do not conflate faith with knowledge, that they understand that their faith is for themselves and should never be inflicted on others. So, it is institutionalized religion that is the problem, not the religious impulse perse, as I see it.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yeah, I agree that many, I don't know about most, people are motivated by confirmation bias rather than the attempt to establish what is true or most reasonable to think. Some people just cannot accpet the idea that life may not be as they wish it to be.
Quoting AmadeusD
I think there are those who think numbers and universals are real independently of the particulars that instantiate them, well certainly if you can take them at their word they do. I cannot speak for @Banno but I suspect he would say that it depends on how you define colour. If you define it as a subjective experience then it would only exist as such. But if you allow that different wavelengths of light reflected from things are colours then they would be thought to exist independently of percipients.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, because I know my command of the English language is such that I would be able to understand any coherent explanation. It doesn't follow though that I would necessarily agree with it. Are you one of those who think that you are so right that if anyone disagrees with what you write, they must therefore not understand it?
This response to this thread stands:
Quoting Banno
We'll continue to use "colour" as we long have, regardless of peculiar and idiosyncratic stipulations of those on Philosophy forums.
Who here thinks honour killings are... honourable?
I certainly don't?there can be no reasonable justification for them?they are despicable, as are genital mutilation and foot-binding.
I am not sure these are 'exceptions'. I rather think the Western, Enlightened model is the exception. That may lead to digression, so I'll just note that disagreement.
Quoting Janus
This is a particularly pernicious thing which only recently changed, even in the West. Marital rape was legal until like the 90s.
Quoting Janus
I agree, but that is considered a morally astute and respectable way of dealing with such things. *sigh*.
Quoting Janus
This seems to me, a personal impulse and not institutional thing - the most wild of our religion offenders tend to have broken with orthodoxy and instead look to the scripts themselves. The 'old testament' types, that is (or, the Wahabis). Another issue is that the increasing, and somewhat aggressive attitude of religious immigrants is that the society into which they go should accommodate their beliefs - this, to me, being a matter of taking advantage of religious freedom (or misunderstanding it, i guess).
Quoting Janus
I think they are used in both ways, but the answer to "What is red" is never a frequency. Largely because that's an unsupportable answer... Describing an experience is fine, but that's not something that 'red' can be, in this context. It is the weird stipulations of philosophy that has us calling a bundle of seemingly un-causally-related facts about perception, the world and our bodies "red" (notice, I need not enter into the discussion about perception for this oddity to become clear).
100% repulsive, both in reasoning and action. Utterly barbaric.
So what's all this about?
The discussion stemmed from talk of what is 'real'. Some hold these views (possibly, most). We cannot ignore it. I find your response above emotionally satisfying, but essentially unhelpful and lazy. It happens and we should grapple with it (I think, obvs lol - do what you wish). I think this came directly from the idea that some religious will argue that Heaven is empirically real. The argument would run similar to that round hte fact that I have never seen x but rely on reports of it. I should do the same with their reports of Heaven. I rejected that this is a good way to determine real, but that it is clearly showing us that there is no universal acceptance of how to categorise things as real or unreal.
I am out of time, but I just want to address this; the frequencies are in the science of optics referred to as being of different colours?the colours of refracted light we can see plus colours we cannot see, but some other animals can, and certain instruments can detect?ultraviolet and infrared.
We then have 'light' as a descriptor of varying intensity and other things (speed, concentration etc..). We then, third, name the experience 'red' (in certain contexts). These are tenuous relationships to the word red.
I also understand that in optics, frequencies are not considered colors. They are considered causes of colors. They are considered a physical property of light which our brain interprets to be color x. Other animals may have totally different phenomenal experiences of the same wavelength (it seems we know they do).
"The Role of Human Perception
It's important to remember that color is a psychological and physiological phenomenon, not a fundamental physical property of light itself. Light waves have frequencies and wavelengths, but they don't have color until they are processed by the human eye and brain. Our eyes contain specialized cells called cones that are sensitive to different ranges of frequencies. When a mix of frequencies enters our eyes, our brain interprets the signals from these cones to create the perception of a particular color. This is why mixing different colored lights (additive mixing) or pigments (subtractive mixing) produces different results."
This can go awry, showing that color is a phenomenal experience. Calling frequencies colors is mere convenience for the lay-person.
Sure, but they are wrong. So what's "unhelpful and lazy" might be allowing them to go ahead unopposed, or allowing their wrong ideas to decide what we do.
Not following your argument, but then I did miss a bit.
Quoting AmadeusD
Notice that we - you and I - do not share a perceptual system? We have one each.
What is it that we do share?
Edit: Sorry mate, I hit submit by accident way before I was ready. Not trying to be sneaky or anything.
Quoting Banno
According to you (and me, to be clear). And we've been there. In any case my point is that ignoring them is how you get invaded by barbarians. So, i agree with what you've said at the top there (but subjectively), but I don't think waving it away as 'wrong' is going to help anyone. I find it lazy and somewhat irresponsible. If its so reprehensible, we should probably be aware and even possibly activated by its globally significant presence and more particularly the small incremental attempts to move these sorts of thinking into Western societes in the name of inclusion or religious tolerance.
Ill reply to the below comment on it's own to avoid the ridiculousness of chronologically out of place discussion.
So we both report that some thing is red, despite having different perceptual systems.
We share a 'direct of best fit' type of organ-based perception. We are aware that others can have aberrant structure or detail within this system. So those people don't share the same system, and they don't see what we report to be Red.
We don't always report the same thing, either.
Yes, as did I. The structure of your occipital lobe is very different to mine.
Leave it.
'Different world under every hat'
indian proverb.
I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about "real" at the moment. So I hope you won't mind if I suggest that statement needs to be modified. I agree that there is no established way of categorising Heaven as real or not. But there is pretty much universal acceptance about how to categorise some other things as real. Unicorns, for example, forged paintings, dramatic performances. There is no single way of categorizing things as real or not. It depends on what kind of thing you are talking about. The same applies to questions of existence (which is what the issue of Heaven comes to). Numbers don't exist in the same way that tables and chairs do.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well, yes, that works for many, perhaps most, contexts, as I was discussing with @Janus and @AmadeusD, above. But would you import it into a consideration of numbers, for instance? It seems like a bad fit. My contention is that, the more we enter metaphysics and epistemology, the less useful "real" is. I believe it's a placeholder or term of convenience for various other characteristics that can be more precisely stated. And to make matters worse, those other characteristics vary from tradition to tradition, while "real" remains constant, as if it could cover all of them.
But, as we've said, my view depends on there not being a story in which "real" did have a correct usage, which it lost. This is a specifically philosophical objection. Other uses of "real" observe different constraints.
Quoting Janus
And the question is, in what direction does the justification go? Do we discover a knowledge or nous of a certain sort of thing, and say, "This is real", based on what "real" means? Or do we have a term, "real", which we then attempt to match with certain sorts of things in order to discover what it does or could mean?
Would that be because metaphysics is generally considered archaic by modern philosophy?
I've posted an excerpt from Bertrand Russell on universals in the Idealism in Context thread which can be reviewed here:
[hide="Reveal"][quote=Bertrand Russell, The World of Uhiversals] ]Consider such a proposition as 'Edinburgh is north of London'. Here we have a relation between two places, and it seems plain that the relation subsists independently of our knowledge of it. When we come to know that Edinburgh is north of London, we come to know something which has to do only with Edinburgh and London: we do not cause the truth of the proposition by coming to know it, on the contrary we merely apprehend a fact which was there before we knew it. The part of the earth's surface where Edinburgh stands would be north of the part where London stands, even if there were no human being to know about north and south, and even if there were no minds at all in the universe. ... But this fact involves the relation 'north of', which is a universal; and it would be impossible for the whole fact to involve nothing mental if the relation 'north of', which is a constituent part of the fact, did involve anything mental. Hence we must admit that the relation, like the terms it relates, is not dependent upon thought, but belongs to the independent world which thought apprehends but does not create.
This conclusion, however, is met by the difficulty that the relation 'north of' does not seem to exist in the same sense in which Edinburgh and London exist. If we ask 'Where and when does this relation ["north of"] exist?' the answer must be 'Nowhere and nowhen'. There is no place or time where we can find the relation 'north of'. It does not exist in Edinburgh any more than in London, for it relates the two and is neutral as between them. Nor can we say that it exists at any particular time. Now everything that can be apprehended by the senses or by introspection exists at some particular time. Hence the relation 'north of' is radically different from such things. It is neither in space nor in time, neither material nor mental; yet it is something [real].
It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'. ...In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea', which we noted at the same time, also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts.[/quote]
Russell makes a simple but important point about universals: things like the relation “north of” or the quality “whiteness” are real, but they’re not located in space or time, and they’re not just mental events.
Here’s the gist of his argument in four steps:
[1] Independence from mind – The truth of “Edinburgh is north of London” doesn’t depend on anyone thinking it; it would hold in a mindless universe.
[2] Non-spatiotemporal status – ‘North of’ isn’t in either city, and it’s not in space or time like physical objects are.
[3] Act vs. object of thought – Thinking of whiteness is a mental act in time; whiteness itself is not the act but the object of that act.
[4] Universality preserved – If whiteness were just a thought, it would be particularized (your thought now, my thought then), and couldn’t be the same across different thinkers and times.[/quote][/hide]
I'll go back to the original contention: that numbers (and other abstracta) are real but not existent in the sense explained by Russell. Empiricism attempts to ground mind-independence in the empirical domain - situated in space and time, instrumentally detectable and measurable. But the reality of such objects are still necessarily contingent upon the act of measurment and the theories against which they're interpreted.
And furthermore, the ability to even conduct such observations itself depends on the grasp of intelligible relations which is itself a noetic or intellectual act. Whereas empiricism, with its equation of “mind-independent” with “detectable by instruments,” then treats the faculties which enable these abilities as if they are derivative from the processes they're investigating. And this, against the background of the methodological bracketing of the knowing subject and the structures of understanding. We end up with worldview that literally uses universals constantly (in mathematics, definitions, logical inferences) while denying their ontological standing.
So if we don't use that construal, which one should we use? The schema you're laying out makes sense, and can clearly be useful in dividing up the conceptual territory, but would you want to argue that it's the correct use of "real" in metaphysics? That's what I'm questioning. I don't think metaphysics is the least bit archaic -- it's one of the most exciting areas of contemporary philosophy -- but I'm suggesting that we now have better terminology than an endless wrangle about what counts as "real."
And BTW, I think (most) universals are every bit as mind-independent as you do. But there we are: "mind-independent" is a property or characteristic we can get our teeth into. Adding ". . . and real" seems unnecessary.
At first I thought you were suggesting that we might have a noetic intuition as to what's real and then define 'real' according to that intuition. then I wondered whether you were using nous in the modern sense of know-how.
Then I noticed that you were not suggesting defining "real' in terms of the nousy intution, but saying the nousy intuition might be thought to be real or not based on the meaning of 'real'.
Your second idea seems to make more sense, anyway. We can cite examples and say whether they qualify as real or not. It would really just be using examples to illustrate how the term is commonly used in various contexts. We might discover that some examples qualify as real in one context and not in another.
I think the takeaway is that we cannot hope to get a "one-size-fits-all" definition of 'real', or 'existent'. It seems the best we can do is hone in on a somewhat fuzzy sense of the term and hopefully sharpen that sense up a bit.
Quoting J
And in turn that begs the question as to what we might mean by "mind-independent'?a term that seems to be much more slippery than 'real'.
Sorry my remark about metaphysics was prompted by many of the comments made here about it, but you're right, it is a field that has made a comeback in current philosophy.
Consider this graphic from John Wheeler’s essay Law without Law:
The caption reads ‘what we consider to be ‘reality’, symbolised by the letter R in the diagram, consists of an elaborate paper maché construction of imagination and theory fitted between a few iron posts of observation’.
The “R” of reality is not given, but built from the accumulated record of acts of observation — each a scrap in the paper-mâché construction of the world.
My point about universals is that they are fundamental constituents of this ‘R’. I think Wheeler’s simile of ‘paper maché’ is a little misleading, as the tenets of physical theory are rather more ‘solid’ than this suggests. But regardless the elements of the theory are real in a different sense to its objects. They comprise theories and mathematical expressions of observed regularities.
And it is now a field very different from "traditional" metaphysics.
Your replies are indicating that you do not understand what I write. They are not indicating that you do not agree with me. You say things like "that passage reads like nonsense", and "Gobbledygook".
The obvious conclusion is that either you are incapable of understanding me, or unwilling to try. Either way, to me, it appears as if you have an intellectual disability. I apologize for saying "mentally handicapped". Google tells me that this is outdated and offensive, and that I should use "intellectual disability" instead.
Do you recognize that replies like that would indicate to me that there is some sort of intellectual disability on your part?
Or, is it really the case, that you just disagree with me, but you are incapable of supporting what you believe, against my arguments, so you simply dismiss my arguments as impossible for you to understand, feigning intellectual disability as an escape?
Thanks for taking the time to parse my rather terse "which direction" question! I could try to say it again, better, but your takeaway is pretty much where I was going with it. We can either adopt a definition of "real" and go on to discover things that fit our definition, or we can take a look at what I've called the "conceptual landscape," see how the various denizens relate, and then decide that "real" would be a good term to use for one of the denizens, based on how it's been used in some respectable tradition. But either way, it's a pragmatic effort, in the best sense. As you say, we aren't likely to come up with a "one-size-fits-all" definition. But it may well be the case that something like @Wayfarer's schema, for instance, can do excellent philosophical work for us, without requiring us to pin "real" down to some fact of the matter or some correct usage.
Works for me. What would be interesting, then, would be to investigate the ways in which the elements of the theory are different from its objects. If I understand Wheeler's conception, that can be done without further talk about "real."
Quoting Janus
Yes, it's slippery, but it lends itself more easily to some kind of investigation than "real" does. I simply don't know how I could tell if a philosophical object is real or not. Depends what you mean! Whereas with "mind-independent," the ground is a bit firmer. If I claim that universals and abstracta have no existence apart from minds, I'm saying they lack the property of mind-independence. If I further claim that my thought of "If p, then q" is dependent on my thinking it, whereas the proposition "If p, then q" is not, that's another way of talking about mind-independence.
You may feel there's not much difference in clarity between "mind-independent" and "real," and I agree it's not a huge categorical difference; I just find myself knowing a little better what I'm thinking about, when I think about what "mind-independence" means. This could be because "real" has so many contexts and usages, whereas "mind-independence" is rather technical, and not as widely connotative.
Yes. I keep getting myself into arguments that leave me wondering what definition of independence is in play. A lot of people seem to think that anything in one's mind must be mind-dependent. I think that only things that are created and maintained in existence by the mind are mind-dependent. That makes for quite a short list.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sorry. What, exactly, is their ontological standing? Are we talking platonism here?
The fact that the theoretical constructs are an essential constituent of what is considered real, while they're not themselves existent in the way that the objects of the theory are.
In your description of how the term, "real" can be compared to the term, "mind-independence", I am reminded of your attention given to Rödl awhile back. He argues for abandoning the ground being sought by either lexicon:
Yes, this conception seems to be trivial and have no interesting consequences most of the time which is why I think Wayfarer's crusade is largely vacuous and pointless. If something that we perceive clearly has a consistent mapping to something in the outside world, maintains a certain invariance (or perhaps covariance), then thats something that is genuine information about somrthing that exists independently of our minds.
Whereas from my perspective that is a fair description of your responses to it, but let’s not get involved in mudslinging.
Quoting Ludwig V
That would be the mainstream understanding. The point of philosophical analysis is to see through it.
I don't think Its mudslinging because I have made responses to your perspective befote where I have basically said that. I don't think there is any meaningful, actionable content to this mysterious noumenal-phenomrnal divide.
No. That would be taking for granted that we are given the means to compare "our" necessity with what is not "ours"; Which was the original complaint of Kant against Hume. Rödl is arguing that Hegel's argument nips that stuff off out at the root. The 'idealism" is not an explanation.
There are many other responses to Hegel. I am just trying to focus upon what is called out in Rödl's language.
There are broad differences between interpreters of text in the language of "idealists".
Sorry, it was a bad choice of words on my part, I was irritated. To say it more philosophically: I read your responses to this OP as specious because I don’t think they demonstrate any grasp of the point being made. It is one thing to rebut an argument by showing faults with it, but not seeing the point of an argument is not a rebuttal, and nothing you’ve said indicates that you see the point of the argument.
The work is difficult. At the same time, it is painfully simple. It relies upon very few arguments. repeated ad infinitum.
I don't read it as a replacement for other advocates.
Hegel is well known for being an advocate for this or that. Rödl is doing something different.
I think not seeing the point is a rebuttal. If something doesn' have any interesting consequences then I don't see a reason to uphold it.
Is this on the right track?
I read Rödl to not saying we could know the limits of "logical" principles. If we cannot know their limits as the basis of "experience", we cannot know their absence as a verification of fact.
Yes. Again, I have issues with those particular terms but that's irrelevant to the point you're making, which I think is extremely important.
Quoting Paine
I'd like to hear more on this. (Did I edit your 1st sentence correctly?) I'm not sure I understand the part about "we cannot know their absence as a verification of fact."
I conclude that your position is somewhere in platonist territory, and that you think that nominalism amounts to denying their existence. I don't agree with either conjunct. In my book, there is no doubt that universals exist. The argument is about their mode of existence or (what comes to the same thing) what kind of object they are.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't get that. I thought you believed that our concepts and perceptions were all constructs.
Quoting Wayfarer
No. The point of philosophy is to weigh up mainstream and fringe opinions and decide which are satisfactory and which are not.
Yes, that is what I meant.
As for what can be taken as verification, this passage from Žižek helps me see different ways to read Hegel that bears on what may be referred to as "mind-independence:
Quoting Slavoj Žižek, Less Than Zero, chapter 5
I understand Rödl to be standing with Gérard Lebrun's reading of Hegel here. The question of the "real" is not a place in a schema. The limit of the "natural" is not pointing to its supersession.
I still don't think you'll get a particularly clear criteria unless its contextually baked in. I think conceptually, its really hard to say one way or the other on any example.
I cannot say I am surprised at how quickly you got off the boat. A shame, because it is quite obviously a silly line of thinking.
I offer this far more simple excerpt from the Nishijima-roshi, a S?t? Zen priest who died in 2012, in respect of the real and the existent:
[quote=Gudo Nishijima-roshi, 'Three Philosophies and One Reality'] The Universe is, according to philosophers who base their beliefs on idealism, a place of the spirit. Other philosophers whose beliefs are based on a materialistic view, say that the Universe is composed of the matter we see in front of our eyes. Buddhist philosophy takes a view which is neither idealistic nor materialistic; Buddhists do not believe that the Universe is composed of only matter. They believe that there is something else other than matter. But there is a difficulty here; if we use a concept like spirit to describe that something else other than matter, people are prone to interpret Buddhism as some form of spiritualistic religion and think that Buddhists must therefore believe in the actual existence of spirit.
So it becomes very important to understand the Buddhist view of the concept spirit. I am careful to refer to spirit as a concept here because in fact Buddhism does not believe in the actual existence of spirit. So what is this something else other than matter which exists in this Universe? If we think that there is a something which actually exists other than matter, our understanding will not be correct; nothing physical exists outside of matter.
Buddhists believe in the existence of the Universe. Some people explain the Universe as a universe based on matter. But there also exists something which we call value or meaning. A Universe consisting only of matter leaves no room for value or meaning in civilizations and cultures. Matter alone has no value. We can say that the Universe is constructed with matter, but we must also say that matter works for some purpose.
So in our understanding of the Universe we should recognize the existence of something other than matter. We can call that something spirit, but if we do we should remember that in Buddhism, the word spirit is a figurative expression for value or meaning. We do not say that spirit exists in reality; we use the concept only figuratively.[/quote]
Compare with Terrence Deacon’s absential:
Also Wittgenstein's aphorism:
The decline of Platonist realism is well-established intellectual history. The constellations of attitudes which Lloyd Gerson designates 'Ur-Platonism' (the broader Platonist movement including but not limited to the Dialogues of Plato) is realist about universals (see Edward Feser Join the Ur-Platonist Alliance). But to say that, is to invite the question, 'if they're real, where do they exist?' The usual response is to say that they're the products of the human mind, and so of the h.sapiens brain, conditioned as it is by adaptive necessity and so on. This is the 'naturalised epistemology' route. The neo-traditionalist approach is that the ability to perceive universals and abstract relations is the hallmark of the rational intellect which differentiates humans as 'the rational animal'. It doesn't take issue with the facts of natural science, but differs with respect to the interpretation of meaning.
Quoting Ludwig V
One of the central questions of philosophy is what, if anything, exists sui generis—independent of construction—and what relation our mental constructs bear to it.
By presenting the readings concerning different ways to understand idealism in Kant and Hegel, I was not trying to challenge your views regarding the role of materialism in present and past cultures. I am suggesting that what concerns Rödl does not support either side of what you have framed as the choices available to us.
I will try to answer your question in the next few days. I have work to do.
On the other hand, we have exchanged words for many years now regarding how to understand what has been written about such things. Shall I write as if none of that ever happened?
Your question about choices is a fair response to my challenge. I will think about it.
I get that an old thread may not be the best place to respond. Maybe J's thread on Rödl would be better.
Okay. I will try to show up there with something.
I see no difference between the two terms. Anyway either way I'm not offended, so no need for apology. I found your saying that rather amusing.
I can understand your words easily enough, but they seem irrelevant and thus pointless, so I think our starting assumptions are probably so far apart that the effort required for me to unpack what you might be getting at seems to be not worth it.
Cheers J, it seems we agree about the "takeaway".
Quoting J
The problem I see is that it's not clear what we mean by "mind" and even less clear what we might mean by "mind-independence". For example Wayfarer says that because it is us thinking about the time before we existed that the time before we existed must be mind-dependent. On that stipulation everything we think about must be mind-dependent, as opposed to merely the way we think about it. He'll say that physicalism is incoherent because it is a concept we invented, and concepts are not physical, therefore physicalism cannot be true. I think that is tendentious nonsense.
Quoting J
Pretty much all I see in Wayfarer's posts is the attempt to explain (away) modern philosophical positions and dispositions in psychological terms?the rise of science has caused us to become blind to something important in traditional "proper" philosophy, modernity has lost its way, "blind spot in science", physicalism could not possibly be a coherent position, blah.
I don't find any of that remotely convincing, worth taking seriously or even interesting, so you must be seeing something there I don't.
Quoting J
That's fair enough?we probably all carry different sets of associations with these terms?which of course is part of the problem with the attempt to mint clear and precise definitions. One thing I think is not needful of precise definitions in order to be clear to me?if I say I can think about a mind-independent reality, say whatever existed before there were any percipients and someone says "but you're not really thinking about a mind-independent reality, because you're using your mind to think about it", and then i point out the conflation in such an argument between what is being thought about and the act of thinking about it, and that falls on deaf ears, then my respect for the one making that argument falls, because I start to smell an unpleasant odor of confirmation bias at work.
Quoting Ludwig V
Right, and the words you used show the ambiguity that is traded on "anything in one's mind must be mind-dependent"; on one construal this is true by definition of course anything in one's mind must be mind-dependent, but if you say 'the objects I have in mind are not necessarily mind-dependent, even though the thoughts I have about them are" that, for me, clears up any confusion.
This mis-states my view. I am not saying that “because we think about a time before we existed, therefore that time must be mind -dependent.” That would indeed be a trivial claim. What I have argued is that the concept of “a time before we existed” is only ever available as a thought. The point isn’t that the past did not exist independently, but that whatever we say about it is mediated by concepts. That is very different to how it's been paraphrased above.
Furthermore, a concept is not a physical thing — you can’t weigh it, touch it, or locate it in space. Yet concepts are indispensable to how we make sense of the world, including what is meant by 'physical' (which, incidentally, is something that is constantly being reviewed.) This doesn’t mean concepts are “unreal”; it means they belong to a different order of reality than the physical objects that they are describing. If physicalism ignores that, then it risks undermining its own claim to be coherent, since the doctrine itself is articulated in concepts. The 'standard model' of the atom is itself a mathematical construct, and whether there is any ultimately-existing point-particle which is material in nature is, shall we say, a contested question.
Quoting Janus
This is the subject of the book The Blind Spot of Science, by Adam Frank, Marcello Gleiser, and Evan Thompson.
What the book says that science is blind to, is the role of the subject, or more broadly, subjectivity, in the way that it construes knowledge. A précis of some of the elements laid out in the introduction:
1. The Bifurcation of Nature
Claim: The world is divided into “real” external objects (light waves, particles, forces) and mere subjective appearances (color, warmth, taste, etc.).
Blind spot: This division sidelines lived experience as illusory, even though it’s through experience that science arises in the first place. (This phrase is associated with Whitehead.)
2. Reductionism
Claim: The smallest entities (elementary particles) are most fundamental, and everything else can be explained by reducing it to them.
Blind spot: This kind of reductionism assumes that wholes are nothing but their parts, ignoring emergent structures and relationships that can’t be captured at the micro-level.
3. Objectivism
Claim: Science offers a “God’s-eye view,” revealing reality exactly as it is, independent of human perspective.
Blind spot: In practice, science is always done from within human contexts, perspectives, and methods—so the God’s-eye stance denies its own conditions of possibility.
4. Physicalism
Claim: Everything that exists is physical, and the list of physical facts exhausts all facts (chemical, biological, psychological, social).
Blind spot: Treating this metaphysical thesis as self-evident erases the distinctiveness of meaning, mind, and culture, which don’t straightforwardly reduce to physics.
5. Reification of Mathematical Entities
Claim: Mathematics is the true language of nature, and mathematical structures are the universe’s real architecture.
Blind spot: Elevating abstract models as if they are reality risks forgetting that they are human constructions grounded in lived experience.
6. Experience as Epiphenomenal
Claim: Consciousness is just a “user illusion,” like a desktop interface—useful but not fundamental.
Blind spot: Reducing experience to an illusion undermines the fact that experience is the very condition by which anything—including science—appears at all.
For those who don't think it is 'blah', details can be found here.
As I read it the first underlined sentence in your response says essentially the same thing as the quoted sentence from me above it. Perhaps you could point out an essential difference between the two. The second underlined sentence in your response is also a trivial claim? of course it is true that if discourse is always conceptual, then anything we say is "mediated by concepts".
If you agree that a world, a universe, of things existed prior to the advent of humanity, then we have nothing to argue. I must say, though, that it puzzles me that you continue to think we are disagreeing about something despite the number of times we have gone over this.
I know about the 'blind spot' book and the prior article, the latter of which I read. I thought it was a pointless argument. because most of the natural sciences have no way of including the subject in their investigations. It is certainly true that what the various sciences investigate are the ways that different phenomena appear to us, and how they appear to function.
The question about whether or not science tells us anything about the "world as it in itself" is strictly undecidable. We can makes inferences about whether science does tell us anything about the in itself, but we cannot be sure.
For example, it seems highly implausible that a totally undifferentiated in itself could give rise to a perceived world of unimaginable differentiation?so we might find it plausible to think that differentiation is a real feature of the in itself, even though, since we can, by mere definition, only observe things as they appear, we obviously cannot certainly demonstrate such an inference to be true. That view also makes more sense of the fossil record, and astronomical observations.
The truth doesn't matter to me, because it has no real impact on how I live my life. I can understand that for those who long for there to be more than merely this life, the idea that what exists independently of humans is a world of physical existents lacks any appeal. It doesn't matter to me what you think, what motivates me to respond is that you always seem to be pushing the idea that there is a certainly determinable truth of the matter, rather than it being instead a matter of what seems most plausible. I see a kind of dogmatism in that view, and I am not a fan of dogmatic thinking.
:up:
I very highly agree with this, as a 3p. You both seem to accept that things existed before human minds. That's enough.
Of course I don't deny tout court that there are determinable truths, it is a denial that there is any certainly determinable truth of the matter as to whether our science and our experience in general gives us any knowledge of the in itself. Do you agree that it can only be assessed in terms of what seems most plausible or not. If not, why not?
:cool:
Quoting Wayfarer
And here is the nub of the conflation you continually make. It is not the existence of such realities that relies on an implicit perspective, but our thinking of such an existence. If you disagree with this what seems to me most obvious point, then please explain your disagreement.
You said you don’t care abut the truth, makes no difference to your life, and it doesn’t matter to you what I think. You’re verging on trolling and I’d appreciate it if you desisted.
For you, everything is either a matter for science, or a matter of subjective opinion. But when this is reflected back at you, you complain about it, even though it’s your frequently stated view.
All I ask is for coherent arguments and coherent responses to the questions I am posing in good faith, which is something which you seem to lack.
You try to distort everything I say in order to wriggle out of answering straightforward questions.
You don't really believe I'm a troll, that's just another deflective tactic, or if you do believe that then you are an idiot with no insight. The fact of the matter is that you apparently just don't have any answers.
You said:
Quoting Janus
Done here.
It's all about context, which is something you apparently don't understand, or choose to ignore when it suits you tactically.
I believe you know perfectly well I was referring there to the truth regarding that particular issue (the nature of the in itself). And you know perfectly well that what I meant is that the question has no certain answer, and that it therefore has no real bearing on how I live my life. Talk about lacking charitability and good faith!
Quoting Wayfarer
Right, you're "done here " without actually having done anything.: roll:
You can of course say that space, time, and causality existed before humans, but “before” is itself only meaningful within the framework of space, time, and causality. The transcendental point isn’t that time and space “began with us,” but that these forms belong to the structure of experience itself, not to the world as it is apart from any observer. They are conditions of appearance, not attributes of whatever reality might be outside all appearance.
So when you say “of course discourse is mediated by concepts,” you take me to be making a trivial claim about how language operates. But the transcendental point is deeper: the very possibility of there being objects in space and time at all is conditioned by the structures of sensibility and understanding. That’s not just mediation, it’s the constitution of the world as we actually experience it. Even the “view from nowhere,” which purports to describe the world as it would be without an observer, still relies on perspective—for scale and for temporal order.
Quoting Janus
You’re conflating the empirical and the transcendental again. The point isn’t that, because we only ever observe appearances, we can’t be certain about what lies behind them. I'm not talking about what lies behind them. That’s an empirical framing or speculation. The transcendental point is that “differentiation” itself is already one of the conditions under which anything can appear to us in the first place. So the claim is logical, not empirical: it’s about the structure of experience, not about what we can or can’t infer about the in-itself.
Quoting Janus
So, you thought it pointless. Is that an argument? The fact that you 'can't see the point' of that book says nothing about its content. I think it's an important book, about philosophy of science, cultural history, nature of mind, and much else besides. It’s also very much in the vein of this OP although their presentation is vastly more comprehensive (but then it was written by three professors.)
I know you have said we've discussed this time and again, but then you keep asking the same questions again and again. The mind-created world is not saying that there was not a time before h.sapiens, which is what you keep thinking that I'm saying. When I clear that up, you then say 'well what are we arguing about, again?' This has happened a number of times in this thread, I've said all that need be said. So if it is a demand for yet another explanation I'm afraid there won't be any more forthcoming.
An excerpt from Schopenhauer WWI which lays out the case with clarity:
[hide][quote=World as Will and Idea]We cannot understand how… one state could ever experience a chemical change, if there did not exist a second state to affect it. Thus the same difficulty appears in chemistry which Epicurus met with in mechanics. For he had to show how the first atom departed from the original direction of its motion. Indeed this contradiction, which… can neither be escaped nor solved, might quite properly be set up as a chemical antinomy…
…We see ever more clearly that what is chemical can never be referred to what is mechanical, nor what is organic to what is chemical or electrical. Those who in our own day are entering anew on this old, misleading path, will soon slink back silent and ashamed, as all their predecessors have done before them… Materialism… even at its birth, has death in its heart, because it ignores the subject and the forms of knowledge, which are presupposed, just as much in the case of the crudest matter, from which it desires to start, as in that of the organism, at which it desires to arrive. For, “no object without a subject,” is the principle which renders all materialism for ever impossible. Suns and planets without an eye that sees them, and an understanding that knows them, may indeed be spoken of in words, but for the idea, these words are absolutely meaningless.
On the other hand, the law of causality and the treatment and investigation of nature which is based upon it, lead us necessarily to the conclusion that, in time, each more highly organised state of matter has succeeded a cruder state: so that the lower animals existed before men, fishes before land animals, plants before fishes, and the unorganised before all that is organised; that, consequently, the original mass had to pass through a long series of changes before the first eye could be opened. And yet, the existence of this whole world remains ever dependent upon the first eye that opened, even if it were that of an insect. For such an eye is a necessary condition of the possibility of knowledge, and the whole world exists only in and for knowledge, and without it is not even thinkable. The world is entirely idea, and as such demands the knowing subject as the supporter of its existence. This long course of time itself, filled with innumerable changes, through which matter rose from form to form till at last the first percipient creature appeared,—this whole time itself is only thinkable in the identity of a consciousness whose succession of ideas, whose form of knowing it is, and apart from which, it loses all meaning and is nothing at all.
Thus we see, on the one hand, the existence of the whole world necessarily dependent upon the first conscious being, however undeveloped it may be; on the other hand, this conscious being just as necessarily entirely dependent upon a long chain of causes and effects which have preceded it, and in which it itself appears as a small link. These two contradictory points of view, to each of which we are led with the same necessity, we might again call an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge… The necessary contradiction which at last presents itself to us here, finds its solution in the fact that, to use Kant’s phraseology, time, space, and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself, but only to its phenomena, of which they are the form; which in my language means this: The objective world, the world as idea, is not the only side of the world, but merely its outward side; and it has an entirely different side—the side of its inmost nature—its kernel—the thing-in-itself… But the world as idea… only appears with the opening of the first eye. Without this medium of knowledge it cannot be, and therefore it was not before it. But without that eye, that is to say, outside of knowledge, there was also no before, no time. Thus time has no beginning, but all beginning is in time.
Since, however, it is the most universal form of the knowable, in which all phenomena are united together through causality, time, with its infinity of past and future, is present in the beginning of knowledge. The phenomenon which fills the first present must at once be known as causally bound up with and dependent upon a sequence of phenomena which stretches infinitely into the past, and this past itself is just as truly conditioned by this first present, as conversely the present is by the past. Accordingly the past out of which the first present arises, is, like it, dependent upon the knowing subject, without which it is nothing.[/quote] [/hide]
That's how it was meant, amusement. However, we must be careful with our use of such, because making fun of another is a form of amusement which is mean, and I don't mean to be mean.
Quoting Janus
OK, so you express the second option, rather than an intellectual disability, you have an attitudinal problem which discourages you from making the effort to understand.
Let me remind you of the issue, just so that you can see for yourself, that it is not a matter of what I say being irrelevant, but a matter of your attitude. You had refused to accept the importance of intuitional knowledge, claiming that only observation experience could provide reliable knowledge, i.e. empirical knowledge.
Quoting Janus
The problem with your attitude, exposed here, is that any knowledge we are born with must be intuitive. And, a certain basic knowledge is required even to support the human being's observational capacity. Note, that to observe is to take notice of, and this requires that your attention be directed by your intention, at the thing to be observed.
The basic foundational knowledge, which a person is born with, provides the substance, through this form of direction, upon which all observational (empirical) knowledge is constructed. Therefore it is impossible that the observational knowledge is more reliable than the intuitive knowledge, because the intuitive knowledge is what supports the observational knowledge. Your attitude demonstrates that you would believe that a logical conclusion is more reliable than the premises which it is drawn from.
I'll leave that to you and @Wayfarer, but my 2 cents is that Wayfarer is saying something a bit different. Your general point, however, is that "mind" and "mind-independence" are not terms with universal consensus, and that's quite true.
Quoting Janus
On this particular topic, what I find interesting is his use of "real" and "existent" to refer, respectively, to universals and physical stuff. I'm way oversimplying, but his idea is that we could therefore speak about numbers as being real, while not "existent" in the same way that a squirrel is. As you know, I'm not fond of those particular terms, but it shouldn't blind us to the distinction W wants to make, which I believe is a valuable one. There is a metaphysical or ontological difference between a number and a squirrel, and I understand why some philosophical traditions would want to characterize it as W does. But rather than bickering about the labels, let's say more about the details of that difference, the respective properties of numbers and squirrels, etc.
If it is real, does that mean it is all loaded in at once, in one big containment; and if it is fake, does that mean it's load is efficient, such as by having local systems load in and far away systems not loaded in?
Some people believe it's just Earth that's loaded in. That would be a very fake view. I'm more for the idea that other planets and stars exist, but only as signals until you reach their locale and they load in fully.
I have no more time today, so I'll have to leave it there for now.
[quote=Kant CPR, A42/B59]We have therefore wanted to say that all our intuition is nothing but the representation of appearance; that the things that we intuit are not in themselves what we intuit them to be, nor are their relations so constituted in themselves as they appear to us; and that if we remove our own subject or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, then all the constitution, all relations of objects in space and time, indeed space and time themselves would disappear, and as appearances they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us. What may be the case with objects in themselves and abstracted from all this receptivity of our sensibility remains entirely unknown to us. We are acquainted with nothing except our way of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us, and which therefore does not necessarily pertain to every being, though to be sure it pertains to every human being.[/quote]
Kant’s point is that the world we know is not reality as it exists in itself, but as it is constituted through the forms of intuition* and the categories of understanding. Space and time, along with all empirical relations, are not independent features of things but conditions of appearance, inseparable from the way our sensibility is structured. If the human subject—or even the subjective constitution of the senses in general—were removed, the whole edifice of appearances would vanish. Yet this does not imply a solipsistic dream-world: the structures through which the phenomenal world is constituted are the same for every human being, which is why the world of appearances is shared, lawful, and communicable. This pertains to every human being, although not necessarily to other kinds of beings.
Different kinds of beings—animals with other sensory endowments, artificial intelligences with architectures unlike our own, or even extraterrestrial intelligences—would inhabit worlds structured in ways not reducible to ours (recall Wittgenstein’s remark: “If a lion could speak, we would not understand him”). Their phenomenal worlds would not be the same as the human world, though they would be no less real for them. Kant’s formulation thus anticipates the idea of a plurality of possible “mind-created worlds,” each bound to the conditions of cognition proper to a type of subject. What we call the world is, then, always the world as it manifests for beings like us—never the unconditioned reality in itself.
--------------
* Kant defines intuition at the very outset of the Critique of Pure Reason: “In whatever way and through whatever means a cognition may relate to objects, that through which it relates immediately to them, and at which all thought as a means is directed as an end, is intuition” (CPR, A19/B33). Intuition, for Kant, is the immediate givenness of objects to the mind, as distinct from concepts, which mediate and organize what is given.
I think that our concept of "the universe" is a useful fiction.
I understand that is what Kant and Schopenhauer contend, but the salient question is as to whether they are also more than that. Kant says space and time are "the pure forms of intuition"?I don't know about "pure" but following Kant's usage of 'intuition' we can say that perception comes in spatiotemporal form. Reflecting on experience in a phenomenological way we can say that all perceptions are spatiotemporal, even that all perceptions must be spatiotemporal.
If you then go on to say that there is no space and time absent perception an argument is required, and that is just what is not to be found. It doesn't follow deductively that if space and time are forms of intuition they therefore cannot exist outside of that context. It also doesn't follow inductively, because all our science tells us there must have been space and time prior to humans or even percipients in general.
Quoting Wayfarer
And here it is again?a claim without an argument to support it. It's true that those forms "belong to the structure of experience" but it certainly doesn't follow deductively or inductively that that is all they are. So, just what is the actual argument?
Kant allows things in themselves, which Schopenhauer takes him to task for, because it is inconsistent with his claim that space and time are only forms of intuition and have no other existence, and you can't have things without differentiation, space and time. Schopenhauer then posits that there can only be a 'thing in itself', and that this is a consequence of Kant's own contentions.
But an amorphous 'thing in itself', undifferentiated (as it must be absent space and time) seems to be a highly implausible candidate for being able to give rise to the almost infinitely complex world we find ourselves in.
Quoting Wayfarer
And here is the same unargued framing again. I don't accept that the world, that nature, is bifurcated into "empirical" and "transcendental"; that framing merely assumes what is to be demonstrated.
I don't deny that differentiation is one of the conditions under which anything can appear to us in the first place. I agree with that. You then say it is a logical claim not an empirical one?I would say it is neither, that it is a phenomenological claim based on reflection on the nature of experience. In any case, to say it again, that is not the point at issue?the point at issue is whether it follows logically from the accepted fact that differentiation is required for perception to occur, that there is no differentiation absent perception. And that claim simply does not follow logically. That there must be differentiation for perception to occur rather suggests, to me at least, that it is plausible to think that differentiation is in the nature of the pre-conceptual, pre-cognitive, world. Of course I acknowledge that that conclusion is also not strictly logically necessitated. It is an inductive or abductive claim, and we all know none of those are certain. Nothing in science is absolutely certain.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have already said at length why I think it is pointless. I think it is pointless because the natural sciences cannot deal with the subject. How would you include the subject in the disciplines of chemistry, geology, astronomy, paleontology and so on? Only the human sciences and ethology can bring in the idea of the subject, and the latter only the non-human subject.
Quoting Wayfarer
None of that is at issue?I have never denied that human experience is different from (most) animal experience. I say "most" because the experience of some kinds of animal seems to be much closer to human experience than that of others.
I always thought that Wittgenstein quote to be somewhat silly. If a lion could speak the same language as we do, then we should be able to understand it. If the lion could speak, but is speaking "lionese" then of course we could not understand it, just as we don't understand any other unfamiliar language. We could learn lionese if the lion could learn our language and then translation may be possible. "It takes two to tango".
While is true that the perceptual experience of different animals is very different form ours on account of the different nature of the sensory organs, observation shows us that animals inhabit the same world we do. This is shown by the consistency of their behavior. Lions prey on gazelle, wildebeest; animals small enough for them to effectively bring down. We don't see them trying to bring elephants or rhinoceros. So they must be able to assess the size of animals in ways that make perfect sense to us. They have to eat, mate, sleep, defecate and they play and show affection to one another in ways similar to how we do. So they are not all that far apart from us.
Finally, there isn't much point quoting Kant, since I am well familiar with his philosophy, and since I've already said many times that I don't agree him on some central points. Are you wanting to appeal to authority by quoting him (and others)?
I want to hear an actual argument for why space, time, differentiation, form, matter and all the rest cannot exist beyond the context of perception. And I should note, I acknowledge that if there is space, time, differentiation, things in general outside the context of perception, we should not expect them to be just as we experience and understand them. That would be naive realism, and I'm not arguing for that. I have in mind something along the lines of Ontic Structural Realism.
The appeal to “all our science” actually illustrates my point. Science already presupposes space, time, and causality, because its subject matter is empirical appearances. That’s why science can’t speak to whether those forms belong to the thing-in-itself — it only ever investigates within them.
Quoting Janus
There is indeed an argument. The kind of argument at issue isn’t inductive or deductive but what Kant calls transcendental. We begin with the undeniable fact that we have coherent experience of objects ordered in space and time and governed by causal laws. The question then becomes: what must be true for such experience to be possible at all? Kant’s answer is that space and time must be a priori forms of intuition — conditions of possibility for experience, not attributes of things-in-themselves. Without them, there could be no experience of a world in the first place. And this is based on analysis of the nature of experience and reason - not of the observations of the natural sciences.
This is why it’s an error to object that “all our science tells us there was space and time before humans.” Of course science presupposes space and time, because its subject matter is appearances; but that doesn’t show that space and time belong to or are caused by the in-itself. It only shows that empirical science is silent on the very question transcendental philosophy is raising. Which is as it should be! Natural science assumes nature as the object of its analyses. It is not engaged in this kind of analysis.
Similarly, to say that the “thing-in-itself” must somehow give rise to the complex world is to misapply the category of causality beyond its scope. Causality, like space and time, is one of the forms of appearance — it structures phenomena but has no application beyond that. Kant was adamant on this point: the in-itself is not a hidden causal agent behind appearances, but simply a limiting concept marking the boundary of experience. Schopenhauer departs from Kant when he identifies the noumenon with Will, but he does so knowing this goes beyond Kant’s strict prohibition (which is a separate issue.)
Quoting Janus
The whole point of The Blind Spot is not to complain that chemistry or astronomy fail to include the subject, but to highlight what happens when the methods of natural science are misapplied to questions of philosophy. Natural science quite properly takes its object to be nature understood as appearances, measurable, predictable and law-governed. The problem arises when that methodological 'bracketing of the subject' is turned into a claim about reality as a whole, as though subjectivity were a negligible illusion.
That’s why I see the book as supporting my OP. On the one hand, you appeal to “all our science shows us that…” but at the same time dismiss the very critique that The Blind Spot points out — namely, that science cannot, by its own terms, adjudicate questions about the conditions of appearance or the role of the subject.
Quoting Janus
You want an empirical argument, and there isn't one.
Quoting Wayfarer
How can anything be deduced about the in itself from "the nature of experience and reason"? I cannot see how anything could come from such a phenomenological analysis other than insights into the nature of experience. As I see it this is the weakness in Kant's system?on the one hand it concludes that nothing at all can be said about the in itself, and he proceeds to make claims about it, for example that it could not be spatiotemporal, differentiated and so on.
You still haven't outlined any actual argument to that effect. You say the argument is not inductive or deductive (or I imagine abductive) and that it is "transcendental". Merely labelling it tells me nothing, I want to see the argument laid in whatever terms are appropriate.
That said, all arguments are either deductive or inductive. Deductive arguments are based on premises which themselves are not demonstrated within the arguments themselves. Inductive arguments are inferences to the best explanation?but there province is the empirical, so that won't do according to your own standards. Is the argument merely stipulative?
Quoting Wayfarer
As I said, I simply want any kind of argument clearly laid out that demonstrates that space, time, differentiation etc. must be confined to the world as cognized. I'm still waiting.
Quoting Wayfarer
The existence of anything we can imagine presupposes space and time, and you are right that doesn't demonstrate that space and time exist beyond perceptual experience, or that they are caused by the in-itself. But it also doesn't demonstrate that they cannot belong to or be caused by the in itself.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't think it a matter of the methods being misapplied to questions of philosophy, so much as the knowledge given by science being applied to questions of philosophy. Science has given us a very different picture of the nature of the world as it is experienced than the medieval or the ancients had. We simply don't know how different the philosophies of the greats of antiquity and medieval times would have been if they had been around today.
It all depends on what you mean by "philosophy". Science may not be of much use to phenomenology, for example, although that said the phenomenology of a modern individual will not be the same as that of a medieval or ancient. Gadamer argues that we can only approach an understanding of those times via the texts we have access to hermeneutically.
When it comes to metaphysical speculation, I can't see how we have any better, or even other, guide than science. Science doesn't prove anything metaphysical (or even empirical for that matter) but for met at least, when it comes to questions which are undecidable, because no logical or definitive empirical purchase can be gained on them, science remains the source of knowledge that informs decisions about what is most plausible. As I've said many times, though, what seems most plausible will vary from pone individual ot another, and there is no definitive criteria for what is most plausible.
The direct analysis of knowledge and experience is precisely the subject matter of philosophy. Kant is not making positive claims about what the in-itself is; he is showing what cannot be said of it without misusing our own concepts. To say “space and time are forms of intuition” is not to ascribe a property to the world in itself, but to mark a limit: we only ever encounter things in those forms, so they cannot be applied beyond them. If you read that as a claim about what the in-itself is like, you’re projecting your own belief in a reality “behind” appearances back onto Kant.
Quoting Janus
Transcendental arguments are about the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience. That’s why they don’t fit the ordinary deductive/inductive scheme: they’re not stipulations, and they’re not empirical hypotheses. They’re analyses that show why we cannot so much as conceive experience without already presupposing the framework of space and time. To then ask if those forms “belong to the in-itself” is to misapply them beyond their scope. Deduction (a priori) and induction (a posteriori) are both central to Kant, but transcendental arguments are a different mode of analysis: they begin from the fact of experience and ask what must be presupposed a priori for it to be possible. For that reason, they don’t fit neatly into the deductive/inductive scheme so much as transcend it.
Quoting Janus
If you want an argument framed in the empirical or inductive terms you're demanding, then you’ll need to keep waiting.
Quoting Janus
You have something in mind when you say that.
I disagree. If Kant is saying that space and time or differentiation could not exist in the in itself then he is making a positive statement about it. To be sure he is defining the limits of certain knowledge?we cannot be certain that space and time and differentiation exist in the in itself, but nor can we be certain that they do not. There is no such thing as any definitive "misuse of concepts". That is purely stipulative. There are no "concept police"?we each decide for ourselves what makes most sense to us. It is just here that I see dogma creeping in?in notions of "philosophy proper" and "misusing concepts" and "cannot be applied beyond them".
If someone doesn't buy the empirical/ transcendental bifurcation of nature (a bifurcation which is certainly not a given) then they will obviously have a different take on what can sensibly be said than someone who does buy that bifurcation. When it comes to philosophy it's a pluralistic world, and all the more so in modernity than ever before. Perhaps you deplore that...in any case I celebrate it.
As I see it, the problems we, as a species, face are not philosophical so much as they are practical. Materialism in the consumerist, not the philosophical, sense is one of the main problems. It's apparent that loss of religion is not much of a contributing factor.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, as I said all I want is any actual reasoned argument that isn't mere stipulation.
Quoting Wayfarer
So what? I can acknowledge that what I have in mind may have no bearing on the nature of nature?the nature of reality in any absolute sense is something about which we can only speculate. I don't accept stipulative limits on what I may or not speculate about, or what I may or may not find most plausible.
It's a way of thinking about things, about how we can imagine they might be, but I find other ways of thinking more convincing. What I'm arguing against is the notion that the distinction is somehow necessarily true, as opposed to being merely a possible way of thinking about things.
So, I'm fine with others holding to the distinction and organizing their thoughts accordingly, but it's not for me.
I agree. And we have the question: "from whence these structures?" You cannot make an appeal to natural selection, or human biology, or physics, because these all only relate to the phenomenal.
I think the culprit here is the deflated notions of causality Kant is working with, particularly Hume's influence on him. On such a view, causes are indeed mere phenomenal constant conjunction. But in the broader sense of causality, to say that the noumena have no cause is to say they occur for no reason at all, and are in a sense not intelligible or actual.
The appeal to transcendental argument doesn't decide things here because the arguments for the prior actuality of what is in the senses and received by the intellect is of the same basic type, and its only real assumption is that the world is intelligible and not arbitrary (and thus appearances cannot be arbitrarily related to what they are "appearances of" without ceasing to be appearances of anything, and merely being sui generis actualities that occur of themselves, a violation of the premise of intelligibility and the idea that things don't spontaneously move themselves from potency to act "for no reason"). I'd argue that Kant actually oscillates between accepting these premises to make some points and then denying them for others.
You can see this tension throughout the First Critique, where Kant seems compelled to write things like:
This comes a few sections after denying that causality applies here. And he is here speaking about what he knows about the "unknowable." In the Transcendental Aesthetic he is acutely aware that appearances must be appearances of something, but I am not so sure he secures that his are.
Nevertheless, Kant's starting point and problems are still very popular in modern empirical philosophy, so he at least functions as a solid diagnostician for where certain assumptions lead.
According to Kant's assertions. But from the initial response by his peers there has been the question of if he actually leaves himself any grounds for claiming this, or if his system implies the opposite. Kant's letters show he was acutely aware of a "subjective idealism problem."
I don’t see what belief has got to do with this, surely if something is cogent, it’s not a question of belief.
It wouldn’t be a unique situation, as a human is a colony of cellular organisms. And a beehive, a termites, or ants is a colony of colonies of cells. Each cell, while being alive, has no idea (pretending that a thinking being was able to experience the life of a cell) that it is part of a larger being, or how that would work. Likewise a human would have no idea of the larger colony (that they are a part of) as an entity, including through all knowledge discovered in our world.
I suspect you're reacting to a sense of a ‘God-shaped hole’ - an expectation that the noumenal ought to be, in fact, the numinous (which despite the apparent verbal similarity is an entirely different concept.)
As far as subjectivism is concerned, Kant was indeed concerned to avoid the charge of “subjective idealism,” but that’s why the Critique insists that the forms of sensibility and categories of understanding are not personal idiosyncrasies but universal structures of human cognition. They’re what make possible a shared, lawful, and communicable world in the first place. He says that objectivity itself arises from these common faculties. So while later critics argued about how secure this deduction was, Kant’s own position was clear — the phenomenal world is not appearing within a self-enclosing solipsism, but is the necessary correlate of common cognitive structures
Of course Kant was wrong about that. We all have unique brains and it is the regularities to the world and language use that allow our idiosyncratic brains to be (somewhat) on the same page.
Differentiation need not be spatial nor temporal. We have differentiation of meaning, intention and value. This is the basis of "order", "hierarchy", a differentiation of value. Spatiotemporal differentiation is dependent on, and derived, from this more basic form of differentiation based on value.
Quoting Janus
If the one is required for the other, and the other is not required for the former, then we can conclude that the one is prior to the other. In this case, since differentiation is required for perception, and perception is not required for differentiation (as explained above, differentiation may be based purely in order), we can conclude that differentiation is prior to perception.
Quoting Janus
Above is an argument as to why the act of differentiation exists beyond the context of perception. It is prior to perception. This act of differentiation is intentional.
Quoting Janus
Differentiation is necessarily an intentional act. It involves selection. Understanding what "differentiation" means is all that is required to demonstrate that it is confined to "the world as cognized". Differentiation is an intentional act carried out by cognition. Furthermore, differentiation in its basic form (order) as explained above, is necessarily prior to spatial or temporal differentiation. Therefore cognition is prior to spatiotemporal differentiation, and perception in general.
Quoting Janus
We can be certain that these things, space, time, differentiation, do not exist "in the in itself". This certainty is supported by an understanding of what it means to differentiate, and subsequent form, "differentiation". To differentiate is an intentional act. Any attempt to portray it as something other than this ought to be immediately arrested. I am a self-declared member of the "concept police", and I hereby give you warning that you are in serious violation of the 'dogma of philosophy proper'. Without stipulation, dogma, any field of study loses all dignity. Without stipulations as to how words will be used, logic is impossible, and discussion rapidly degenerates into nonsense.
If you refuse to uphold a proper definition of "differentiation", as an act which requires selection, just so that you may equivocate, then you make philosophical discourse impossible.
But that's precisely what critics say he is doing, and I think they have a point. If an appearance is not caused by what it is an appearance of, if it bears absolutely no intelligible relationship (even a hidden one) to what it is an appearance of, then in virtue of what is it appearance an "of" anything? Even if Kant isn't strictly speaking denying any intelligible relationship between noumenal reality and appearances (a point of contention) that this relationship is wholly unknowable would itself imply that Kant has absolutely no grounds for claiming that appearances are appearances of anything prior to them (particularly since he seems to deny that appearances are posterior to noumena in any coherent way). In virtue of what then does he claim positively know that appearances are appearances and not realities themselves? To simply say, "well to be appearances, they must be appearances of something," is simply begging the question here. What is the evidence that supports that they are appearances?
This is precisely Hegel's charge in the Logic, that Kant is a dogmatist who has dogmatically presupposed that phenomena are "appearances of" noumena. On Hegel's analysis, when Kant dismisses the whole of past metaphysics as "twaddle" he appears to be a very charred pot pointing out that a kettle is black.
But this is also problematic in that Kant does appeal to the noumena for many things. He hides free will in there for instance. But if this freedom has never, will never, and can never relate to experience as cause, it's completely meaningless. Indeed, I find it questionable to posit an existence at all and then to claim that, strictly speaking, it bears no clear relationship to anything that is conceivable. Which of course, Kant doesn't do. Instead, he oscillates on this (I am pretty sure that "cause" in the prior passage is "grund," or "ground"). A more charitable reading is that he is engaged in something like apophatic theology, but this doesn't hold up. Apophatic theology works because the transcendent isn't absent from what it transcends. The super rational is not arational. But Kant has denied himself the understanding by which apophatic theology is anything more than simple contradiction.
Ok, and how does he support that this is true for all minds? "Kant says it is thus," is not a particularly convincing rejoinder to the accusation of solipsism. Kant, by his own admission, knows absolutely nothing about other people in-themselves. Any appeal to shared biology or culture is an appeal to the phenomenal to explain a noumenal connection by which discrete phenomenal perspectives are the same. You said earlier that other species might have different minds. But I don't think Kant can say this. "Other species," and "species," or even "individuals" which can have different minds, all exist only in the phenomenal world, or at the very least are only ever known as phenomenal, which says nothing about the noumenal. Indeed, as critics have often pointed out, Kant has no grounds for supposing noumena, plural (the application of quantity and measure) in the first place. Of course he says, "but thus it is so,' but the criticism is that his epistemology has cut away any warrant for claiming that other minds exist or must be the same as his mind. He can only know the appearances of other minds (or apparent other minds). Other mind's experiences are private, and so the fact that they are "phenomenal" does nothing to resolve this problem. All that can be known is that other minds appear to exist and that they appear to work similarly to ours. But when the solipsist says, "it does not appear so to me," what counter argument is left open?
The other difficulty is the idea of "knowledge of things-in-themseleves," as a sort of epistemic standard in the first place. Pace Kant, this is not what past metaphysicians thought they had. The category is itself modern. To hold that sort of knowledge up as a standard is to say something like: "things are most fully known when known without any mind," which is analogous to "what things truly look like is how they appear when seen without any eyes." This has to presuppose that we deny the premise: "the same is for thinking as for being" or that truth is the adequacy of thought to being (or else, there is being that is not truly being). I think the charge here would be that the "things-in-themseleves," are just an inappropriate reification of being, and that even if they were coherent, they would be, by definition, epistemically irrelevant.
Of course, some readings of Kant resolve these issues. I've even seen Kant read as Shankara or Nagarjuna. But these seem like a stretch to me. Doctrines like emptiness would suggest that the things-in-themselves are simply a sort of error (but of course, readings of Kant do dispense with noumena, I just don't think he does).
In support of your observation, Kant went as far as rejecting Descartes' grounds for confirming his own "thinking" as an experience.
Quoting CPR, Kant, B421
Isn’t that utterly simple? Going back to the original post: the contention is, simply, that “the world” (object, thing) is not simply given but is constructed by the mind/brain. That’s what the brain does! In humans, the brain is an enormously complex organ which absorbs a very large proportion of the organism's metabolic energy. What’s it doing with all that power? Why, it’s creating a world! A very different world to that of cheetahs, otters, butterflies and divas, but a world nonetheless
This is Kant’s basic point - not that Kant has the last word on all the implications, not that Kant is correct in every detail. But his ‘Copernican revolution in philosophy’ is the factor which was a fundamental turning point in modern philosophy. It was arguably the origin of all such later developments as phenomenology and constructivism, and why Kant has been (rightly) designated the ‘godfather of cognitive science’. Hence also the amount of content devoted to cognitive science in the original post and the implied convergence of Pinter's 'gestalts' with the 'ideas' of classical philosophy.
In respect of the in-itself, Emrys Westacott puts it like this:
[quote=The Continuing Relevance of Immanuel Kant; https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/11/the-continuing-relevance-of-immanuel-kant.html] Kant's introduced the concept of the “thing in itself” to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of it and unstructured by our cognitive constitution. The concept was harshly criticized in his own time and has been lambasted by generations of critics since. A standard objection to the notion is that Kant has no business positing it given his insistence that we can only know what lies within the limits of possible experience. But a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the “thing in itself” as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. Through both of these functions it serves to keep us humble.[/quote]
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But he knows how we appear! And we appear to have uniform abilities and faculties across populations, although of course with outliers and exceptional cases and those with anomalous skills. This charge of solipsism is often levelled at the kind of phenomenological idealism I'm advocating - but the response is, we are members of the same species language, and culture. Cultural worlds are vastly different, its inhabitants see things in completely different ways to what we regard as 'normal'. Again this is because we as a species and a cultural type construe the world in characteristic ways.
(When I did a unit in cognitive science, there were many examples of culturally-determined behaviours in response to situations. One I recall was an individual from a forest tribe in Africa, who was taken to a mountain lookout by an anthropologist, from where there was a vista of sweeping plains dotted with herd animals. The forest-dweller seemed to be looking at the view, but after a short time, he squatted and started drawing his fingers through the dirt in front of him. The translator explained that he was trying to 'touch the insects' - the insects being the distant herd animals. As this individual had lived his whole life in a forest, his sensory horizon could not encompass the idea of a 'distant view'.)
There's an enormous range of analogous data from anthropology, ethnology etc. The inhabitants of other cultures live in very different worlds to our own. Of course, it's all the same planet, but a world is more than a planet. It’s the structured field of meaning and perception we share through our faculties, language and culture - and that’s exactly what Kant was intuiting. That, I contend, is also the source of the later phenomenological concepts of 'lebenswelt' and 'umwelt' (also mentioned in the original post.)
And don’t forget that Kant, typical of academics of his day, also lectured in geography, anthropology, pedagogy, logic, physics, and mathematics — as well as philosophy.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Which is the point I'm driving at in Idealism in Context. That is about the decline of the 'participatory ontology' that characterised scholastic realism via the absorption of Aristotle's hylomorphism.
Thomist critics like Maritain would say that Kant misses the “intuition of being” — a direct grasp of existence itself that grounds metaphysics. Without that, they argue, Kant seals us off from reality - something other critics also point out. There’s force in that critique. But even granting it, Kant’s basic insight remains: the world of experience is constituted through the mind’s forms and categories, not simply received as a mirror of things-in-themselves.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I've mentioned before I first read Kant via T R V Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (c 1955). This book is nowadays criticized by more current Buddhologists as being overly Euro-centric and too influenced by European idealism, but his comparison of Kant and N?g?rjuna really connected a lot of dots for me. Apropos of which:
Descartes mistake is to treat the cogito as if it delivered a determinate object — a existent entity. But Kant’s point in B421 is that this is a category mistake. The “I think” is the condition of experience of objects; it cannot itself be grasped as an object under the categories. That’s why Kant says the 'I' is not an appearance, not a noumenon, and not a substance — it’s simply the formal unity of apperception, which we can never convert into a determinate object without confusion. But Kant is also justly circumspect about the real nature of the self.
As N?g?rjuna has been mentioned, there's a short verse in the early Buddhist texts in which the Buddha is asked whether the self exists by 'the wanderer Vachagotta' (this character representing the type of seeker who asks philosophical or metaphysical questions.) Asked 'does the self exist?' and 'does the self not exist?', the Buddha declines to answer both questions, instead maintaining a 'noble silence'. Asked later by his attendant, Ananda, why he didn't answer, he replies that both answers would be misleading - saying 'yes' would 'side with the eternalists', those ascetics who maintain there is a permanently existing self, and 'no' would only confuse the questioner, as he would wonder where his self had gone (ref.) This is one of the origins of madhyamaka ('middle way') philosophy of later Buddhism, which designates the two views of 'existing' or 'not existing' as the errors of eternalism and nihilism, respectively. (Most commentators agree that contemporary culture tends towards the latter.)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Do we know of any meaning, intention and value outside the context of this spatiotemporal existence?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No argument from me about that conclusion.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Now you are contradicting what you said earlier. Differentiation just refers to the existence of more than one thing. So "selection" on our part is not logically required for there to be more than one thing.
Quoting Punshhh
Religion and spirituality are not really discursive endeavors. Is there a good reason not to put religion and spirituality aside when doing philosophy?
Quoting Punshhh
Cogent means clearly (and thus clearly expressible) and convincing, so I asked whether you had a clearly expressible and convincing reason to believe in a demiurge. Are you suggesting you have experienced the demiurge? When we experience (perceive) an ordinary object, we know what we have experienced because it is most times there, and we can go back and check, and we check with others if we are in doubt, and confirm (or disconfirm) that they also perceive the same object there.
That gives us cogent reason to believe in such objects, but I don't think the same applies with a demiurge. If we have what we think to be such an experience, what it is an experience of remains a matter of interpretation, and I think that should give us pause. If we feel an unshakeable conviction regarding what it was an experience of, it will be enough to non-rationally convince us, but it will not be enough to non-rationally convince others unless they have a will to believe as we do.
Quoting Wayfarer
As usual you go too far?you forget the role of the body and the world. "Co-constituted" would be a better term. Even if our minds were all exactly the same, which as @Wonderer correctly points out, they are not, that alone cannot explain the commonality of experience, even between us and the animals. This is a point you have repeatedly glossed over.
Well, Kant was a committed Lutheran who puzzled in the Critique of Judgement how Spinoza could carry on without the belief in the continuance of his personal soul.
Descartes reformulated the reasoning of Augustine in his pitch of the experience of himself. I agree that the "self" is a sticky wicket in Kant's model. But I think his concern was decidedly not Buddhist in it's character.
Strictly speaking, Kant is saying that the "I" cannot be experienced as "real" the way other things in life can be. That follows a way of thinking about reason itself such as performed by Anselm, Pascal, and Kierkegaard, etcetera.
Or if you prefer, Wittgenstein speaks of solipsism as manifest but not expressible. But then he stopped doing that later, realizing what he was not saying.
The instances make me wary of comparing one set of ideas against another.
The way I put it is that the 'I' or self cannot be said to exist in the same sense that the objects of cognition exist. There being an observer (a subject of experience) is the condition of existence of objects of cognition. Hence the 'transcendental unity of apperception' in Kant, or the transcendental ego of Husserl, or Schopenhauer's 'no object without a subject'.
But that is not Kant's complaint against Descartes. The limits of intuition do not inform us as to what is possible or not. There is no phrase in Kant that says:
Quoting Wayfarer
It might be better to say that the 'I think' is 'the condition of the possibility of experienceable objects'. And that conforms with the passage you quoted earlier:
Quoting CPR, Kant, B421
Here Kant warns against mistaking the unity of apperception itself (a formal, transcendental condition) for an intuition of a subject (as if the self were some object among objects). The “unity of thinking” grounds the possibility of objects as given in experience, but is not itself an object of intuition.
I concede the way that I put it (i.e. that there being a subject or observer...) is not strictly correct if that is taken to imply that 'the observer' is an existing thing.
Which permits the thinking about the soul excluded in your previous argument.
The basic idea is that the self or soul is unknowable. We ourselves are, in reality, the in-itself. That, I understand to be the wedge that Hegel used to build his dialectic (although I don't want to venture too far in that direction as my knowledge of Hegel and the other later idealists is cursory.)
Probably stepping in it a bit, but this seems clearly wrong to me. If differentiation is literally just things existing aside from one another (at all), then our perception does logically require selection into categories of those things. Otherwise, we would not perceive any differentiation. We select for object types, within the confines of a priori time and space. That seems pretty uninteresting or controversial if you take the premises on (I get that you may not, I'm just saying within the framework, this does seem required).
If I can address this topic, I will try it in the Rödl thread. It is a difficult conversation when you make certain claims and then disqualify yourself from opining upon them.
In the longer version of the original post (linked from it), there are references to a book called Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles Pinter, an essay in the philosophy of cognitive science. He starts by saying:
Many will insist that those shapes, features and appearances were there all along - but that is not really the point. Certainly what we cognise was there all along, but it is not until they are re-cognized that they become meaningful to us (and for other animals likewise - Pinter by no means confines this to humans).
So, the Gerson argument? There is only the possibility of a made world against whatever one might propose?
That is what I take as the meaning of the 'in-itself'.
Yes, I told you, "order" itself. It is value not restricted by spatiotemporal context. It provides the foundation for mathematics upon which spatial temporal concepts are constructed.
Quoting Janus
For some reason, you have a tendency of stating things backward. You reverse the order of logic, presenting illogical statements. Here you say that the existence of more than one thing is required for differentiation. In reality though, the act of differentiation is an act that divides, thereby producing more than one thing. So you have the logical order reversed, to produce the illogical statement you make. In reality, for there to be more than one thing requires an act of differentiation, and this is an act of selection, the act which divides according to selected principles. Without this, your proposed "more than one thing" is an unintelligible infinity of divisions already made. An infinity already accomplished is illogical.
Quoting Janus
Selection on someone's part is required for there to be more than one thing. Someone has to choose by what principle one part is to be separated from another part, making more than one thing. How else could there be more than one thing, without assuming the infinity of divisions mentioned above?
Does your approach amount to:
I propose that there is/was a strong countervailing movement against this idea;
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This too.
The idea of the person.
As far as I know mathematics exists only in the spatiotemporal world. There can be no order without things to be ordered.
It seems reasonable to think that, for example, the visual field is already differentiated for infants n terms of areas of different tones and colours, before they learn to recognize anything as anything. Also they would be aware of different sounds, smells, tastes and tactile "feels" and bodily sensations. Otherwise how could anything stand out for them in the first place?
Quoting AmadeusD
I think this is arse-about. If there were not already more than one thing no selection could ever occur.
That's true and entirely uninteresting and changes nothing about what Meta and I have said. You're right - there could be no differentiation. But if there were no differentiation, we(acknowledging the absurdity of 'we' in this context) wouldn't know different. So it's irrelevant.
I'm not quite understanding the import of the first bit directed at me. I understand, and I think I agree. But as above, that doesn't change anything being noted here.
Remember, our perceptions of, and the actual world are not the same. In the world of a perceiving being, the outside, un-perceivable world means nothing at all.
Not that I think the question and the answer to it matter that much, at least not to those who just accept that we live in a material world consisting of many, many things which don't depend on us for their existence.
That view would obviously be more bleak, and hence more significant, to those who wish there to be more than just this life.
If the universe has been around for billions of years, that's a whole different discussion, it being there 'prior to' perception doesn't suggest it's been there for more than a minute nor that if it has been around for a minute, it's fake.
The big bang may be only an essence; a resource for our minds to create the universe. In that regard, it never happened, it's just the simulation of the result of such an event.
Sorry, I meant, is there a good reason not to believe in a demiurge. I’m happy to keep religion and spirituality to one side.
Yes, I see now. I was interpreting the word belief in its religious context. Now I see that you were using it in the sense of ‘holding an opinion, or idea’.
I do have such an explanation, but whether it would be [I]convincing [/I], is unlikely. Because I became convinced by the idea myself, I doubt I could have been convinced of it by being told it. Or that I could necessarily convince someone else. As it is more of a lived experience, a journey.
Yes, although it would have more likely have been a higher being(indicating there was a demiurge) But this is besides the point now, as we are putting spirituality to one side.
Agreed.
Agreed, this is what I was getting at with ‘convincing’
I’ll put my idea again, in a simple form.
What we have is the coming together of two things spirit(not in the spiritual sense) and matter( a field of spatial temporal potentiality). This results in the diverse forms we find. But where ever we look, the two are wedded, that one can’t be teased from the other. Because what we see is neither(spirit, or matter) but the fruit of that union. Resulting in three things and a world that is neither spirit, or matter.
That conclusion is drawn from the unstated premise that "things" by your usage exist only in a spatiotemporal world. However, we are talking about immaterial "things", which are not spatiotemporal, meaning, value, and intention.
In classical metaphysics there is a very strong logical argument, the cosmological argument, which demonstrates that there must be something immaterial which is prior in time to all material existence, as active cause of the first material thing. This implies that we ought to conclude that your unstated premise is false. Therefore your argument is unsound.
And of course, those who practise mathematics demonstrate every day, that things being ordered need not be spatiotemporal things. So you really ought to reject your own argument.
Quoting Janus
Likewise, we have every reason to believe that there is an immaterial world prior to the material world.
First, denying this would require either that material things came into existence from absolutely nothing, or that they have existed forever. Both of these possibilities are contrary to empirical evidence. Material things do not come into being from nothing, nor do they exist forever.
Second, the nature of time indicates to us that actual material existence comes into being at the present time, now, while the future consists only of possibilities for material existence. This implies that the possibility for any material thing must precede, in time, the actual existence of that thing. Since the possibility for a thing is not necessarily a material thing in itself, we must conclude that there has always been something immaterial prior to any material thing, as the possibility for material things, in general.
Quoting Janus
The philosophical mind however, wants to know the nature of these things which don't depend on us. To simply assume, and accept, that the nature of these things is adequately described by the concept "matter", therefore we live in a "material world", is not good philosophy.
I am not sure if it works to simply claim that appearances are of something, and that this relation is wholly simple and cannot be further explicated. It seems like simply rejecting phenomenalism by fiat. But from whence this unimpeachable knowledge? It would appear to be an absolutely simple and unimpeachable knowledge of things-in-themseleves at least in their relation to "everything we experience." Yet no mechanism can explain such knowledge because "causes" etc. are said not to apply
Certainly, Kant was very influential here, and he is often invoked in these sorts of contexts, but I think this the ascription to Kant of the title "godfather of cognitive science" actually runs quite counter to Kant's own philosophy. To use the empirical sciences—phenomena—to say things about the noumenal nature of things is simply off-limits. Kant certainly might serve as an indirect inspiration for those who try to explain the contours of appearances in terms of cognitive science, neuroscience, natural selection, physics, information theory, etc., but in the end all these efforts fall afoul of Kant's epistemology. They are, in reality, far closer to the earlier forms of thinking on this subject that Kant dismisses as "twaddle" because they are not properly "critical."
For, it was hardly a novel thought that the properties of the mind and of man's senses/body affect how the world appears. "Everything is received in the manner of the receiver," wasn't an obscure insight, but a sort of core dictum, and there was a vast literature on the "way of knowing proper to man as a physical being, and a particular sort of physical being, as against 'angelic knowledge'" that one could trace as far back as Plato, and certainly to De Anima. Kant's novelty lies more in absolutizing this doctrine such that the Peripatetic Axiom that: "nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses" (i.e., received by the body through the environment) becomes radically altered, as does the parallel axiom that "what is known best to us (concrete particulars) is not what is known best in itself (intelligible principles)." These aren't exactly negated, but they are very much changed.
The Copernician Revolution then is more about epistemology becoming "first philosophy" then the introduction of the idea that the mind shapes experience and the act of knowing. Hence, contemporary introductions on metaphysics (e.g. Routledge's) have to specify that they are focused on "traditional" or "not post-Kantian" metaphysics, because they don't put epistemic concerns first. You see this all the time in contemporary metaphysics where the conditions for being known (by man)—or later, "spoken of"—are considered to be synonymous with the conditions for existing at all. Many arguments from underdetermination rest on this assumption.
On this point, I think Pryzwarra has a good answer in Analogia Entis. He says that first philosophy must always deal with both the metaontic and the metanoetic, because some sense of being is required to say anything about anything, and yet how we know anything is always an question with great priority. Hence, first philosophy involves a sort of instability, a passing back and forth between being and knowing (mirroring creaturely instability where essence is not existence). It's like Plotinus says, thinking and being are two sides of the same coin, but only unified in the One. Their bifurcation in creatures causes heartburn, the need to overcome duality (non-dualism; Kant, by contrast, seems to absolutize dualism). Nonetheless, the metaontic has to have a sort of priority, because an "act of knowing" still presupposes something about "act," and existence, being. I think one can see this in how Kant is forced to still appeal to terms such as grund (ground, cause) and wirklichkeit (actuality) even in places where he wants to deny their applicability.
Yet then what of throwing free will into the noumenal realm? At any rate, I think this might lead towards the parallel charge of Kant as leading towards skepticism, that his world bottoms out in nothing. I suppose there is a greater similarity to Nag?rjuna here. Personally, of the bit I know, I find Huayan Buddhism and later Mahayana to be more compelling on this point, with the idea of luminous awareness as the flip side of emptiness, since it appears to be more in line with the idea that the contingent and finite must "boil over" (Eckhart) from the "infinite."
Sure, and that works in many philosophies. I think Kant specifically may have barred himself from making such appeals though. The "cause/origin" of appearances is what they are appearances of. So phenomenal experience "comes from" something we can know nothing about. To appeal to culture and biology, phenomena, as an explanation of what produces that which can receive appearances would be off-limits.
Yes, but they generally also attack the deflated notion of causality he inherits, which is partly what results in the "bridge" being cut off. But without the bridge, consciousness appears to be one way and not any other "for no reason at all." After all, it cannot have "causes" if causes are imposed by the mind. But then the question remains: "from whence these categories?" Appeals to physics, natural selection, or even the seemingly basic structures of information theory and semiotics are off-limits.
And then I think the bolded would just be rejected as a strawman of much prior philosophy. No knowledge of "things-in-themseleves" is assumed because the category itself is rejected. The only "thing-in-itself" analog would be God, whose essence is unknowable. This is an area of some agreement the , but as noted before, apophatic methods work here with God because the transcendent is not absent from what it transcends, whereas Kant allows himself no such purchase.
Here, I think Berkeley's instincts are generally better, even if he hasn't been received as well, or Fichte.
But isn’t it you who is here saying things about the noumenal or thing-in-itself? If there’s a fault in the expression Ding an sich, it lies in the “Ding”: as soon as we call it a “thing,” it’s already objectified, named, made into some thing—even if we then say it’s unknowable. We’re simultaneously thinking it and not thinking it.
So there is no “noumenal nature” as if it were an object awaiting description. To treat it that way risks projecting it as the first link in a causal chain—an “uncaused cause” - which is where Kant says it becomes dogmatic metaphysics.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Agree! I see Kant as continuous with many aspects of the previous tradition. He adopted Aristotle’s categories almost unchanged, and his habilitation thesis was on Plato’s Ideas, although that was before his “critical period.” But meanwhile, there had been the scientific revolution, and the abandonment of the geocentric universe with its crystal spheres. Kant is continuous with the older tradition, but he is also responding to a radically altered intellectual landscape in a way that his immediate predecessors were not.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
N?g?rjuna likewise is accused by his Brahmin critics of nihilism (as was the Buddha). But no-thing-ness—the Buddhist emptiness—is not nothing, not a nihilistic void as it is sometimes called. That idea of “The Void” evokes all kinds of existential terrors (or at least uneasiness, which I can hear you expressing!). It was a common rendering among 18th-century translators of Buddhism, and later echoed by Nietzsche and other European philosophers (Nietzsche called Buddhism “the cry of an exhausted civilization”).
In the OP, I footnoted a passage from the Kacc?yanagotta Sutta which goes to the heart of this apparent impasse:
[quote=Kacc?yanagotta Sutta]By and large, Kacc?yana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "non-existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one.[/quote]
The import for the “mind-created world” argument is that the world (object, thing) outside perception neither exists nor does not exist. To say “nothing can be said about it” is not to claim “it is something that does not exist.” Rather, it neither exists nor doesn’t exist; in fact, there is no “it.”
In broader philosophical terms, to speak of “the unconditioned,” “absolute,” or “unborn” is to gesture towards what is not any specific thing at all and is beyond the scope of discursive thought. This is not unlike what we find in Neoplatonism: the One of Plotinus cannot be an object of thought, or an object at all, since it transcends the distinction of self and world. The famous expression of the One as “beyond Being” means, in my interpretation, beyond the polarity of existence and non-existence—beyond anything of which something determinate can be said.
And you can see how this leads back to Kant and the limits of discursive reason: the Ding an sich is not a hidden object, but a marker of the boundary of thought itself, reminding us that whatever lies “beyond” cannot be spoken of in terms of existence or non-existence. And as language relies on those very distinctions to gain traction in the world of experience, it is in that sense beyond speech.
Unfortunately that is not a sensible, or even meaningful, thing to say?better just to remain silent. If philosophy is about anything it is certainly not about talking nonsense.
‘Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.’
[However]
Philosophers in the Mahayana traditions hold some things to be ineffable; but they also explain why they are ineffable… Now, you can’t explain why something is ineffable without talking about it. That’s a plain contradiction: talking of the ineffable.
Embarrassing as this predicament might appear, N?g?rjuna is far from being the only one stuck in it. The great lodestar of the German Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant, said that there are things one cannot experience (noumena), and that we cannot talk about such things. He also explained why this is so: our concepts apply only to things we can experience. Clearly, he is in the same fix as Nagarjuna. So are two of the greatest 20th-century Western philosophers. Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed that many things can be shown but not said, and wrote a whole book (the Tractatus), explaining what and why. Martin Heidegger made himself famous by asking what Being is, and then spent much of the rest of his life explaining why you can’t even ask this question.[/quote]
But we were always going to hit this wall once straying into Buddhism. In Buddhism this whole world of appearances is nothing but maya. So how can these appearances, or a being enthralled by them, know, or account for the noumena when they themselves are part of the illusion?
It was this realisation that led the Buddha to sit under the bodhi tree.
It’s a bit too radical for me, I don’t usually go further east than Hinduism. Although I do generally consider the phenomenal world we know to be an artificial construct.
Status quo for Janus, the standard reply.
When the discussion extends beyond the tight boundaries of Janus' preconceived conceptual enclosure, Janus recoils and strikes. Nonsense! There's something outside those boundaries Janus, or else you wouldn't need to be making those judgements. And dismissing that external world as meaningless and unintelligible, does nothing to propagate understanding.
You are assuming this world is an illusion. How could you know that when everything you could possibly know comes form your experience in this world? Something can only be said to be illusory compared to something else that is real, but we have nothing real to compare it a purportedly illusory world to. If this whole world is an illusion then your very existence is itself an illusion, yet to say that makes no sense because your existence is all you have known.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Explain to me then what it could mean to say that something is, and yet that it neither exists nor does not exist?
Quoting Beyond True and False, Graham Priest
And yet Kant talks about the noumena that we cannot experience, cannot know?he says that there are things in themselves that appear to us as things, he says that they cannot exist in space and time, cause anything, or be differentiated or structured in any way. So, he contradicts himself by applying the concepts he says can only be applied to things we can experience by applying them to things he says we cannot experience.
He doesn't really know that we don't experience things in themselves, in fact he says that they are what appear to us as the things of experience, so in that sense we do experience them. It comes down to different ways of taking about it. It is of course simply true by definition that they do not appear to us as they are in themselves, because we can only know them as they appear to us. We also must acknowledge that we do not know everything about them, and could not know that we knew everything about them even if we did. Ignorance is a great part of the human condition.
Our concepts, what we say about things are not the things themselves. Our language is inherently dualistic?whereas we have no reason to think that nature itself is dualistic. The map (our conceptual models) is not the territory. Some things can only be shown, not said. Much is shown in literature which is not explicitly said. Much is shown by body language which is not said. A great part of our everyday experience cannot be captured adequately in discursive words and is better shown by poetic allusion. "A picture is worth a thousand words" and so on. All this is true, but none of it gives us license to speak pretentious nonsense in a discursive context.
Are you familiar with the concept of "potential"? In Aristotelian philosophy "potential" names a category which is required to describe becoming, change. This is what forms the category for those aspects of reality which are neither being nor not being, but may or may not be. Potential is very real, yet it cannot be said to exist nor not exist. Therefore it "is" in the sense of real, yet it neither exists nor does not exist.
Matter is in this category. This is because particular things exist as forms, determinate this and that, but they each have the potential to be something else. That potential is attributed to the thing's matter. But the matter itself cannot be a determinate this or that, or this would negate its definition as potential.
The other thing that comes to mind is the idea of the quantum foam, but in that context the term "virtual" not 'potential' is used. And the virtual particles are said to wink in and out of existence. which would mean that they exist then don't exist, not that they neither exist nor don't exist.
Actually M?y? is Hindu terminology. The Buddhist term is sa?s?ra, ‘cyclical existence’. It’s idea of the illusory nature of experience is more that we wrongly attribute significance to things we’re attached to - not that the world is illusory per se, but we evaluate it wrongly.
We are often happy to talk of the 'infinite' yet struggle with the obvious problem of relating to the concept in an experiential sense. Sometimes it pays to speak in order to better present silence beyond the white noise that can never be experience -- when tinnitus dies away we assume the experience of silence exists.
Added to that I think that if you are speaking about something it is a contradiction to say it doesn't exist. You might say unicorns don't exist, but they do exist as imaginary creatures. Fictional characters exist as fictional characters and so on. To say there is a thing-in-itself and then to say it doesn't exist is a contradiction. We can say it doesn't exist in the same sense as our perceptions of objects do, but to say it neither exists nor doesn't exist is just a conceptually empty self-contradictory statement. What could it mean?
I’m not claiming that the thing-in-itself is some ghostly half-real entity. My point is that existence and non-existence are categories that only make sense within experience, within a perspective. When you try to apply them outside that framework—i.e., to the 'unperceived in itself'—they lose their meaning. Saying 'it neither exists nor does not exist' is shorthand for saying: the category of existence simply doesn’t apply there. That’s not a contradiction but a recognition of a boundary or limit to knowledge.
Kant’s remark in the Transcendental Aesthetic that if we “take away the thinking subject the whole world of appearances would vanish” is often misconstrued. It doesn’t mean the world literally ceases to be, but that the world as knowable is always ordered through the framework of an observer. The realist assumption—that the world would be just the same even if there were no observer—forgets this constituting role of the mind - which is precisely the point of the 'blind spot of science', which regards the world it studies as if it were simply there in itself, while forgetting that the very concepts of objectivity and existence already presuppose the standpoint of an observer.
These are different things though. Kant frames Noumena as something only talked about in the negative sense (meaning we cannot comprehend any 'aboutness'). For unicorns we can visual an 'aboutness' (menaing we have a sensory frame of reference for such a creature).
When talking about ontological epistemic conditions it can serve a useful function to delineate between the unknownable and the ... well ... 'that which is not to be spoken of'. I think this is an area where mysticism shines, with talk of Tao/Dao and other similar concepts in other branches of human exploration.
Anything that can reflect on the framework that is a human being is all there is. What is ineffable can still have a semblance of existence and so the concept of Noumena or Tao/Dao is presented as a roughshod adumbration of our human limitations (through which we can only say is everything).
Yes, but it doesn't follow that they cannot make sense pertaining to things which are inferred to exist outside of experience.
Quoting Wayfarer
If the world doesn't cease to be then it exists, in virtue of the meanings of the terms. Of course the world as known (not as knowable) is always known by a knower?again true by definition. As to the purported "realist assumption" that the world would be just the same if there were no percitpinets, well that's obviously wrong since without percipients there would be no perceptions, and perceptions and the judgements, if any, that grow out of them, are a part of the world. Apart from percptions and judgements, the world would be the same without any observer.
You are presenting a strawman of science?it deals with the world as perceived by us, no reasonable scientists would deny that. A naive realist might think of the eyes as passive "windows" that simply allow us to look out on a world of objects which exists in exactly the same form as our perceptions of them. That is obviously wrong, you don't have to think hard to realize that.
On the other hand there seems to be good reason to think that the way we perceive things is a real reflection of the way the world acts upon us, just as the different ways the world appears to animals is a real reflection of the ways in which the world acts upon them. It seems reasonable to think that objects have mass and shape, for example, independently of our perceptions of them.
Colour is another story, although it seems reasonable to think that the reflection of different wavelengths and intensities of light from different surfaces strictly determines, along with the visual organs of particular animals, what and how colours appear to them. I don't see that we have any good reason to deny those things even if they cannot be known with certainty.
Quoting I like sushi
And yet he talks about them in a positive sense, saying that noumena cannot exist in space and time, while being unable to offer an argument for that, other than that we know space and time only via our experience of phenomena. It just doesn't follow from the fact that we know space and time only via experience that there is no space and time outside that context. It is true to say that there is no space and time as experienced outside experience but that is just a tautology and as such tells us precisely nothing.
I don't know what to make of the rest of your post.
It’s not a strawman at all. The Blind Spot of Science article in Aeon (and the later book by Frank, Gleiser, and Thompson) addresses mainstream science, the assumptions of physicalism and objectivism, which you will also argue in favour of in other contexts. The point is not that individual scientists are naïve realists who think the eyes are passive “windows,” but that the methodological outlook of modern science brackets the constituting role of the subject, and then forgets that it has done so. Of course that attitude is contested, but it remains the default for many. So declaring that many scientists hold to scientific realism is hardly a 'straw man' :rofl: .
Quoting Janus
Precisely the point at issue! What world are you referring to? The moment you speak of “the world apart from perceptions and judgments,” you are already invoking the categories of thought and perception through which such a world is conceived. You have a world in mind, so to speak. To say it “would be the same” is to assume what is in question—namely, that the predicates of sameness, objectivity, and existence can meaningfully apply outside the framework of an observer. That’s exactly the blind spot. To which your response is invariably: 'what "blind spot"? I don't see any "blind spot"!'
Know independently, yes.
I was referring to the spiritual teachings.
As to my own [I]beliefs[/I] (I don’t hold beliefs, rather I seek wisdom), part of my predisposition on these issues is formed by spiritual teachings. Although, I pare it down to the bare minimum, so have very little in what could be described as beliefs. I am working on the hypothesis that physical material and the physical world is a concrete representation of noumena which is so dense and rigid that an entire cosmology of powerful forces is required to sustain it. Rather like if you imagine a delicate melody rendered in concrete blocks that can only be heard by physically banging them together.
As to the details of how, or why, or what, I withhold judgement.
He is talking about Noumena negatively because we have no sense of other-than space and time. That is the point. He cannot even 'point to' noumena only flit around it as a kind of negative limitation on human 'sensibility' (which is all we have).
Edit: 'it' is not an it! Language can make something seem to be that is not possible.
I would add that I believe strongly that anything we can say is possible to be brought into existence as a 'semblanc'e of such ideas. Like a Backwards Purple Banana Hoop or any other string of nonsense.
:up:
The natural sciences don't so much bracket the subject as it is the case that the subject is not within their purview. Science is not a human being so it doesn't "forget" anything. Scientific realism is the idea that science gives us real information about, and understanding of, the world. That cannot be proven to be so, of course, as nothing in science is proven, but it is far from an implausible, let alone an incoherent idea. The strawman is that the natural sciences forget the subject, when the reality is that the subject is irrelevant to them.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't hold to a two worlds conception of nature. There is only one world. As I said before I don't accept the bifurcation of nature into phenomena and noumena.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't question that the predicates you mention can meaningfully apply to what is independent from human perception?to me questioning that is a nonsense. It's not a blind spot, I understand your argument, and I simply disagree with it. I think it is you who has the blind spot in that you apparently cannot imagine that it is impossible that someone might interpret the situation differently than you and being consistent with that different interpretation disagree with you. Apparently you are too mired in your own dogma, your own sense of absolute rightness, to be able to understand that.
I think all language is inherently dualistic and nature, including our perceptual experience, is not. So, in that sense we can say that our language and hence our ideas and models are always more or less inadequate to reality.
Quoting Punshhh
You must believe that it is possible to attain wisdom and that some spiritual teaching or teachings can help you with that.
Okay.
Scientific realism, as you describe it, is not incoherent—it’s indispensable within its proper scope. What’s incoherent is to extend it into a metaphysical claim: that the world is the way science describes it independently of the perspective through which such descriptions become possible. That is the leap from method to ontology, and that is exactly what the “blind spot of science” critique is about.
Quoting Janus
But you’ve just restated the issue in another guise. To say the predicates of sameness, objectivity, and existence “can meaningfully apply” to what is independent of perception is exactly the move that the blind spot critique is drawing attention to. Of course it feels like nonsense to you to question that—because you’re presupposing the very standpoint I’m asking us to examine!
The point is not that your position is inconsistent. It’s perfectly consistent within the realist frame. The point is that this frame cannot account for its own conditions of possibility—namely, the constituting role of the subject. That is what Kant meant when he said that if you remove the subject, the world of appearances vanishes. It doesn’t mean reality is “just in the mind,” but that our very talk of “existence” and “objectivity” already presupposes the subject’s framework.
So when you say you “understand the argument and disagree,” that is precisely what the blind spot looks like from inside it. I don’t think it’s dogmatic to point out the conditions that make any interpretation possible. You and I can only disagree because there is already a subjectivity through which concepts like “existence,” “sameness,” and “objectivity” have meaning. That’s not my dogma; it’s the very ground on which both of us are standing when we argue.
This is not necessarily the case. That is simply how we represent what is named as "potential", as something built into the actual. This is because our knowledge is strictly formal, it consists of forms. And so any understanding of the potential of the world, must be approached through the actuality of the world. For all we know, the so-called "noumenal" could be the potential. Notice that Kant speaks of "the possibility" of sense appearance, and names space and time this way, placing them into the larger category of potential.
Furthermore, we notice, observe and experience sensation at the present in time, now. However, the potential for whatever happens at the present must be prior to it, therefore this can never be sensed, nor experienced in any way. So we cannot accurately understand the potential of a thing as being built into the actuality of that thing, because it is necessarily prior to the thing, temporally. Now we tend to represent the potential for one thing, as the actuality of another thing, in a the way of determinist causation.
But this cannot provide an accurate understanding either, for two principal reasons. First, it produces an infinite regress of "actual things" one being the potential for the next. That would mean that everything in the world is determined, but determined from nothing, no start, infinite regress. The second reason is more complicated, and requires an understanding of how we relate to "potential" in our active experience. Whenever there is potential (understood here as possibility), there is always a multitude of possible outcomes. That is the nature of potential. It implies that an active form of selection is required to produce the outcome which actualizes. If we say that this is an actual "thing" in the sense described above, we deny the reality of selection, and move back to the determinist infinite regress of things, described above. Therefore the active form of selection cannot be the actuality of a thing.
This is why Aristotle proposed two principal senses of "act" . The one sense is the "actuality" of the thing, as what the thing is, its form. The other sense is "activity". The two are fundamentally incompatible, as the thing's form is understood as static being, what the thing is, while activity is understood as the active cause of change.
Quoting Janus
OK, this is a good starting premise. Now, you see that the potential for a thing is necessarily prior in time to the thing's actual existence. Do you understand the two reasons I provided above, as to why "potential" must be a distinct category, and cannot be adequately understood as "built into the actuality of the thing"? Even if we qualify "the thing" as a collection of all things, such that potential is passed from one thing to another as energy, we do not get the premises required to adequately understand "potential". We get lost in an infinite regress. Further, if you believe in the reality of potential, you must also believe in what this implies, the need for an act of selection any time one possibility is actualized rather than another. The act of selection cannot be attributed to "an actual thing", or else the reality of selection is negated.
This is a gross misunderstanding if you are referring to Kant. There is no bifurcation at all.
I would like to offer, for your consideration, the idea, the interpretation, that Kant isn’t talking about noumena at all. He is talking about the faculty of understanding, and its proclivity for exceeding its warrant, such warrants having already been specified in preceding sections of his critical theory. It may be nothing more than an extreme example of common knowledge, that humans are wont to imagine all sorts of weird stuff, he merely explaining the fundamental causal process in play when we do that.
Especially considering the title of the section in which the subject is brought to bear: “Of the Ground of the Division of all Objects…..” (A236/B295) One should grasp that the objects being divided according to a certain ground, does not presuppose those objects, but only the relation of conceptions in general contained in a ground, which makes a division predicated on such relation, possible.
Remember? “…I can think what I please, provided only that I do not contradict myself…”, which is precisely what understanding is doing, when empirical conceptions of possible objects arise from it alone, the empirical representation of which, from intuition, is entirely lacking.
Ever notice Kant never defines what a noumenon is, but only the advent of it as a conception, and the consequences thereof?
In the text is found the categorical, re: apodeitically certain, judgement “…. Thus the criterion of the possibility of a conception (not of its object) is the definition of it, in which the unity of the the truth of all that may be immediately deduced from it, and finally, the completeness of what has been thus deduced, constitute the requisites for the reproduction of the whole conception.…” (B115)
So are we not forced to admit, insofar as Kant offers no definition of what a noumenon is, offers no descriptions of what a noumenon would be like, but authorizes (B115) its validity as a mere possible, non-contradictory, conception, there can be no talk of noumena as such, but only the conception itself, represented by that word, which is actually nothing other than talk of the modus operandi of the faculty of understanding in opposition to its own rules?
The conception is a possible thought, therefore is not self-contradictory. (I can think what I please…)
The effort to represent the thought without the required sensuous intuition necessary of all empirical objects, is. (….and with this I contradicted myself)
The talk is not of noumena; it is of the foibles of pure understanding of which noumena is merely an instance, and from which the ground of the division resides in understanding being limited to cognition of phenomena at the expense of noumena.
Think about it, if you like. Or not.
I am on a path of seeking guidance in this from something like an inner being, or soul, or whatever you want to call it, within my being. Independent of rational thought, although there is a a process of intuition and contemplation involved, but secondary in importance.
As such beliefs are relegated to a thinking mind, or commentary on the periphery after the fact. An insight might take the form of an encounter with an insect, or the play of light, or noticing of a weird juxtaposition, or series of random events in the world which for a moment have a meaning. The meaning is not necessarily intellectualised, or contemplated. The idea is to ease the path of the development whatever way seems appropriate.
Au contraire my friend. Is this not a belief system in and of itself? "Momentary (or perhaps rather conditional) utilitarianism"? Sure this might be watered down or reduced to mere "common sense" and "logic" itself. But it remains a system, whether ingrained to all intelligent, thinking beings or naturally adopted by such out of necessity, it remains a system in its own right and of its own merit.
‘ I don’t hold beliefs other than what beliefs are necessary to live a life.’
So here is my belief system. Also beliefs are intellectually defined and held positions, or loyalties. I am relegating such things to the chitta chatta of my mind while continuing to go about living my life.
That much should have been unmistakable. For that I apologize. You must understand, I rarely have the gall to interject myself into such established arguments (60 pages and counting!) unless, shall we say, the wine glass has been broken out. :smile:
That said, however. That said. This sentence of yours is interesting. One might consider such a sentence to be superfluous considering, surely, there are people alive, perhaps even living quite well, who don't hold the beliefs you do. Are there not? It's just interesting, is all. Not to deviate, but only an interesting short thought experiment in the context that it relates to the overarching theme of the discussion, of course.
So, I suppose, not to nitpick, but for debate for debate sake, one might ask, what are these beliefs "necessary to live a life" you hold, specifically and in detail? Are you certain all people living life hold them as well? Could they not have different interpretations that fundamentally change the idea of such concepts from your own? :chin:
Quoting Punshhh
Loyalty, eh. Heh. Sorry. such terms distract me due to the complex history of my own life experience. I might say, for some, loyalty exists only in the form of distraction from willfully and intentionally placed fear, often from the same person who claims to relieve such. Ah, no matter. Ignore that. For now.
Quoting Punshhh
Aren't we all, more or less? :grin:
This is a 'yogic pun', of course. In Eastern philosophy 'citta' is variously translated as 'mind', 'heart', or 'being'. According to the classical texts of yoga, the citta (mind-stream) is continuously disturbed or polluted by sense-impressions, cravings, longings, memories of past traumas and so on, which manifest as 'vritti', thought-forms or disturbances. The yogic aspirant aims for the stilling of these vritti, hence the long and arduous periods of 'dhyana' (meditation) and entering states of inner stillness (samadhi). A higher state of samadhi is called 'nirvikalpa', where 'nir-' means ' negation of' and 'vikalpa' are 'discriminative ideas'. So, the negation of thought-forms and inner stillness. Very far from my normal busy mind.
I think this is a very important point. "Noumena" for Kant is analogous to "matter" for Aristotle. They are strictly conceptual, not referring to any independent thing as people are inclined to believe. But "matter" is more like the limit of conception, the closest we can come to contradiction without crossing that boundary. Then many people assume these concepts to be a description of some independent feature of reality. But they are not descriptions at all, just concepts which somehow represent what cannot be described.
Quoting Outlander
Surely you understand that each individual is a unique person in a unique position. The majority of the beliefs which are necessary for me to live my life are probably not even similar to the beliefs necessary for you to live your life. That's how varied life actually is, because we adapt ourselves to our environment, which itself is extremely varied.
That is a stretch too far. We can -- and do -- measure matter. For Noumena there is nothing to say anything about. The very idea of noumena (negative only) is an adumbration of a null concept.
It is fully understandable why people repeatedly misconstrue what Kant meant as it is fairly obvious and fairly obtuse at the same time.
No worries, I enjoy what you write.
I was using the phrase to say that I hold as few beliefs as I can get away with. I would rather do away with the word completely, but I accept it is used a lot, with various meanings. So I try to keep it to precise definitions where it is used. Janus was asking about my beliefs, which is why I wrote that post and explained how I arrive at intellectual and other positions without having beliefs about them.
I seem to have lived a charmed life and often realise that others have had more complex and, or traumatic, conflicted lives. I realise how fortunate I am in this regard and yet still have all the usual emotional, anxiety, confidence hang ups that most people have. Even after many years of defusing and attending to them.
I know a person who always has something to worry about, sometimes he does actuality have a problem, even though often I can see that he caused it himself. Made a rod for his own back, so to speak. Now he has retired and shouldn’t have a care in the world. But is still just as worried, seems to have the weight of the world on his shoulders at times. But it is all of his own making and it doesn’t matter what you say to him, he never reaches the point where it is sorted out and he can just sit back and enjoy life.
Pun is in my name (;-)
A20/B34 (in the Transcendental Aesthetic): Kant says that in appearances there is “that which corresponds to sensation (the matter)” and “that which allows the manifold of appearance to be ordered in certain relations (the form).”
Here he is explicit: sensation provides the matter of appearances, while space and time are the form in which that matter is ordered.
This is Kant’s way of transposing the Aristotelian hyl?–morph? distinction into the transcendental register: not about substances in the world, but about the conditions under which appearances are given to us. Konstantin Pollok has even described Kant’s position as “transcendental hylomorphism,” where the form/matter schema of Aristotelian philosophy is reworked at the transcendental level (ref).
Perhaps; you’re more qualified to say than I. If I were to guess, though, I’d probably go with “substance” in Kant relates to “matter” in Aristotle.
If it is true in Aristotle matter acquires form to become particular substance, and because it is true in Kant matter acquires form to become particular phenomena, then original to both is matter, which leaves Kantian noumena, as it relates to matter, out in the cold…...right where it’s supposed to be.
But I don’t know how Aristotle treats matter at its inception, so….
————-
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If only those many people would just study the damn book. One does not have to accept what he’s saying, but should comprehend the point he’s making, the major premise in the “ground of the division of all objects”.
There is a large variety of things which we measure, and each has a name. There is also a variety of different types of measurements. I've never heard anyone claim to be measuring matter. What type of measurement do you think that would be?
Quoting Wayfarer
I wouldn't say that this is explicit. "Form" and "matter" are terms you apply in your interpretation. Aristotelian terms do not correlate very well to Kantian terms, because Kant did not stay true to the Aristotelian structure. Aristotle was explicit in defining "form" with actuality, and "matter" with potential. But Kant blurs the boundary of separation with concepts like "forms of sensibility". Notice that "sensibility" is a potential, so his structure has 'forms of potential'. In this way Kant allows potential (matter perhaps) into the mind, as the a priori intuitions. But Kant is proposing a new way of dealing with the age old active-passive intellect dilemma. The need for "noumena" demonstrates that Kant's proposal, though novel, is not conclusive.
Looking at your statement now, you say "space and time are the form". And, yes, they are the "form", by Kant's words, but they are the form of sensibility, which makes this supposed "form" a potential, inconsistent with Aristotle. And, as potential, these forms of sensibility, space and time, do not possess the principle of activity which is required to order matter. So Kant's proposed system lacks this required principle of activity.
Notice it is "that which corresponds to sensation" which you give the name "matter" to, but in the Aristotelian hylomorphism, it is the form of the particular, not the matter, which is supposed to correspond. Because the form is received in abstraction, it is necessary that there is something passive, potential, within the intellect. That is the passive intellect, which gave the scholastics all the problems, because they wanted the intellect to be purely actual, an independent form, to support absolute knowledge, the afterlife etc.. The passive aspect for Kant is the a priori intuitions, space and time.
Quoting Mww
I'd agree with this. The difference between Kant and Aristotle then, seems to be that "particular phenomena", for Kant is occurring within the mind, whereas Aristotle has instances of "particular substance" independent from the mind, things with an identity. The reality of the "particular substance" is supported by the concept of matter for Aristotle. Since Kant places the potential, which Aristotle assigned to matter, into the mind, as the conditions for the possibility of phenomena, there is no need for the concept of matter. The a priori intuitions take the place of matter. Therefore that entire Aristotelian world view, this assumption about 'the external', that it consists of particular instances of substance, things with an Aristotelian identity by the law of identity, supported by "matter", is thrown aside, to be replaced with "noumena".
Quoting Mww
Philosophy, metaphysics and ontology especially, is extremely complex and difficult. A great philosopher is very difficult to understand, requiring much study, and usually subject to an array of different interpretations. However, what generally happens is that a very simple interpretation starts to develop, which clings to specific terms, and since it is simple and easy to understand it rapidly gains in popularity, becoming the conventional understanding of that philosophy. Of course "simple" is the converse of "complex" so the conventional understanding is never very adequate, or properly representative.
A good example is Plato, and Platonism. The simple, conventional interpretation, known as Platonism, holds that Plato promoted the philosophy of independent ideas like mathematical objects, derived from Pythagorean idealism. However, a thorough reading of Plato will reveal that he actually rejected this Pythagorean idealism, and provided refutation of it in his later writings. But even in those ancient days there was divisiveness as to what principles constituted "Platonism". Aristotle, whom many argue was a true Platonist continued with the refutation of Pythagorean idealism, while the Neo-Platonists, who maintained the "Platonist" name, persisted in promoting Pythagorean idealism.
Kilograms. That is how we do physics.
Telegram from the future. He will reply something along the lines of "weight is not mass, neither is size, necessarily". And likely how mass is merely a phenomenon of gravity or some business like that.
How do you measure a 6 inch solid stone and a 6' empty box? There are dimensions and weight. And the two computed together do offer more or less the mass of such, but there's no reliable measurement because it wouldn't mean anything effectual or useful but for physical beings in a physical world of elements that only care about size and weight.
It's like stepping off into the void into a world where everything is different. It's just not something many people do because, by all observable information, would be a waste of time.
For example, antimatter is a thing that exists, mostly in space. It basically defies all definition of matter, while at the same time technically obeying all the rules, just, per se, it's own special version of said rules.
Still, antimatter is a thing that exists so it's not "nothing" as in lack of something, per se, therefore, in some usages of the word, is still matter that cannot be measured by traditional means.
Is this to say, in Aristotle things come with identity?
Identity being what a thing is, in Kant, identity is assigned to things, not for what it is, but for as what it is to be known. The so-called, and mistakenly labeled “Copernican Revolution”, although he would probably cringe at hearing it called out as such.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Absolutely. Hopefully, in such case, there’s a common ground, an unarguable starting point, from which the divergences can be reconciled.
————-
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Good synopsis. Thanks for that.
Sure, i see a lot of things weighed in kilograms, but never matter. As I said, I've never heard of anyone trying to measure something called matter. I've seen people measuring and weighing all sorts of different things, but I've never heard of someone measuring something they call matter. Tell me where you think you might find matter being weighed in kilograms. I know a number of physicists, and never heard them talk about weighing matter.
Quoting Mww
That's right one of the things Aristotle is famous for, is the law of identity, "a thing is the same as itself". This law puts the identity of a thing within the thing itself, rather than something which we say about the thing. Hegel was very critical of that law.
Quoting Mww
This is how "identity" is commonly understood today, as what we assign to a thing in knowing it. But Plato showed how sophists abused this principle, because it annihilates the separation between what we say about things, and how things truly are. Truth gets dissolved into justification when we have no principles which stipulate that there is such a thing as the way something really is. So when a thing's identity is simply what we say about the thing, then as long as it is accepted conventionally (justified), then it is the truth, because there is no such thing as an independent "the way that the thing is".
That is why Aristotle insisted on the law of identity, which tells us that even though we don't necessarily know the way that a thing really is independently of us, there is such a thing. It sort of puts truth out of our grasp, but recognizes that there is such a thing. The ontological ramification is that this divides the assumed independent reality into a multiplicity of particular things, each with its own identity. Then those who hold "the One" as first principle would need to support this proposed unity. Kant's use of "noumena" and "noumenon", indicates that he supports this multiplicity of things. However, his principles sort of disallow us from even having that knowledge, of whether the assumed independent reality is simply one, or a multiplicity.
What happened with Whitehead, and process philosophy in general, is that when the supposed independent reality is understood to consist of process (consistent with "energy" as the basic foundation), then principles are required to explain and understand divisions and separations, individuation in general, because it\s all one big process. Then it becomes very difficult for process philosophy to explain why we perceive separations, and divisions which constitute individual things. However, substance philosophy really does not have any advantage in this matter, because they still have no principle to account for why we perceive individual things. Substance philosophy just takes the existence of individuals for granted, by the law of identity. But until we question this, what we take for granted, we won't figure out why we perceive individuals. Maybe, since things are supposed to have a 'centre of gravity', it has something to do with gravity, whatever that is.
This is a gross, unargued bare assertion. Do an internet search on 'two worlds theory vs two aspects theory in Kant scholarship'. You might learn something.
Quoting Mww
It is a tautology that we cannot know things in themselves if 'thing in itself' is defined as what we cannot know, which is the same as to say that all we can cognize are phenomena, and the idea of noumena represents the 'ultimate or true nature of things', which we cannot perceive, but can only speculate about.
So, no one in their right mind would claim that we can know what is defined as that which we cannot know. The thing is though that we can speculate, makes inferences, about the nature of things in themselves or noumena from what we know of phenomena.
So, Kant says that things in themselves cannot exist in space and time. It is true, again by definition, that things in themselves cannot exist in our perceptual space and time, if things in themselves are defined as whatever lies beyond the possibility of human cognition. On the other hand, we can think and speak in a different register and say that things in themselves (things which have their own mind-independent existence) just are what appear to us as phenomena. Interpreted the situation thus we can be said to know things in themselves but only as they appear to us, not as they are in themselves.
Then we are not struggling with an explicitly dualist view, because the things that appears to us are the same things that have their own existence apart from our perceptions of them, it is just that all we can know of them are their perceptible qualities.
Then we can speculate that things in themselves may exist in their own space and time, which cannot be proven but which seems most plausible since an undifferentiated thing in itself that purportedly gives rise to our experience of a spatiotemporal world seems far less plausible than things which have their own existence as different from all other things. For a start "giving rise" implies causation or at least "providing the conditions". How could something completely undifferentiated cause to exist, or provide the conditions for, anything differentiated. To me that idea makes no sense at all.
When it comes down to speculating about noumena or things in themselves there can be no discernible fact of the matter which could confirm or disconfirm any conjectures, so it comes down to what each of us might find to be the most useful and/or plausible way of thinking and talking about them.
My beef is with the dogmatic "thought police" prescriptions about what we can and cannot coherently think and talk about. For me it makes no sense to say "of course things have their own existence independent of any mind in the empirical sense, but not in the transcendental sense'. I see this prescription as dogmatic because there can be no strictly determinable transcendental sense.
If Kant is not positing that there is something which gives rise to phenomena then his position is no different than Phenomenalism.
Quoting Punshhh
Without some criteria to determine what belongs in that category I could say that anything I believe is necessary to live a life. Strictly speaking, to live a life all I need to believe are things relating to the "necessities' of life, and spiritual growth is not one of them, certainly not for most people. Of course you can say it is necessary for you?but perhaps that is just because you have come to think it is necessary for you, that is you have come to believe it.
You say you have discovered things and/ or adapted things as a practice, but you wouldn't waste your time if you didn't believe in the truth of those discoveries, or the efficacy of those practices.
Belief is not that hard to define?anything you are committed to holding as being true is a belief.
Quoting Janus
Maybe you simply mispoke and meant 'phenomena and things-in-themselves'? If so no big deal :)
I am asserting that there are people who misunderstand the difference between 'things-in-themselves' and 'noumena'. I am also asserting -- having read Kant quite thoroughly -- that it makes no sense to talk of a 'bifurcation of nature' between 'phenomena and noumena'. That is very much a gross misunderstanding, but a very common one.
What is the difference between noumena and things in themselves according to you?
Quoting I like sushi
A bare assertion is not sufficient. Why does it make no sense to talk of a bifurcation of nature between phenomena and noumena? You say to think that is a common misunderstanding?do you mean among the population of amateur philosophers or do you mean among Kant scholars. Are you a Kant scholar?
If a 'two worlds' reading of Kant in regards to things as experienced and things in themselves is a coherent and consistent interpretation of Kant's philosophy, then as far as I can that would entail a bifurcation of nature.
I don't care so much about the fine points of Kantian terminology, I am more interested in the substance of his arguments. If a world of things in themselves gives rise to a world of things as they appear to us, then that would seem to posit two very different worlds?one we cannot have access to at all, and one we do access. If the world we inhabit (the empirical world) is an "idea" or "representation" as Schopenhauer reckons is the logical conclusion of Kant's system even though Kant may not have explicitly said so, and the world we have no access to is the objectively real world in itself, then which is the real world and which the ideal. I always thought Kant had this backwards, and I have also read a considerable amount of, and about, Kant.
If we want to say that the world of appearances just is nature (for us at least) then we do find a bifurcation even in the 'two aspect' interpretation, or so it seems to me. I say this because, unless we opt for sheer phenomenalism or Hegelian absolute idealism, we are positing that nature is for us divided into what we have access to and what we don't, and this is still a kind of dualism for all intents and purposes.
Phenomena is everything grounded in our sensibility.
Noumena is not Phenomena.
Things-in-themselves are the intuitively inpenetrable 'whereness' of Phenomena. Scare quotes to denote how it makes little sense to talk of something meaningless to space and time.
I think that is as simple as I can express Kant's view.
The subtle difference in meaning between things-in-themselves is the approach. Noumena is conceptually useful as a limitation whereas things-in-themselves helps to appreciate the aboutness of phenomena as our means of knowing the nature of existence.
A lot of this makes more sense form a phenomenological perspective (which is how I originally approached academic philosophy). Consciousness is 'of something' (the intentional), so if you follow that line of thinking further down the track you presume a grounding function.
If you have literally no interest in phenomenology then I can see how none of the above would serve any purpose nor inspire you to look further. I draw the line at people like Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida myself. If you draw it at Kant so be it. It would be a pretty boring world if we all looked at things in the same way :)
Quoting Janus
Someone may perhaps say the same as to your position and say for all intents and purposes it is just a kind of solipsism. I would not say this -- or what you say above -- are at all charitable in terms of interpretation.
If you refuse to believe he meant noumena as a negative concept, and that things-in-themselves was used as a means of distinguishing the subtle difference between 'unknown,' unknownable' and 'nothing' that is your choice I guess.
It is absolutely skirting on the fringes of useful language and is only likley to serve you if you hold a certain view. Much like those who study Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze and Foucault are happy to frolic in their obtuse verbosity I am not. Regardless, I find them of negative interest and can take something away from reading them.
But why taint the rest of one’s interests with it. It ties one to a rigidity of thought and confines one to a hierarchy of sorts of what is true, or not true. One is then tied to these conclusions and loyalties.
In the practice I describe, such rigidity is stifling. In order to develop a sensitivity to nature and a wisdom regarding reality. It is important to free the mind(not just the intellectual parts), from this and become receptive to more subtle activity in one’s life and surroundings. Yes there is thinking, analysis and the development of philosophies, ideologies, after the fact. But this is as I say secondary and only provides a helpful feedback where appropriate to the sense of communion I describe.
To insist that belief plays a role in this is to imply a role played by the ego and thinking processes and their conclusions. But, it is primary to remove this aspect of being from the practice prior to and in order to carry it out.
It is an act of being, akin to the act of being, with presence, practiced all the time by our cousins, the plants and animals. Who don’t have the intellectual mind, to confuse the issue.
It is not necessary to live a life, so does not come under the purview of necessary beliefs. It is an interest, a leisure, pursuit, an interest.
There is a guiding process going on, but it is intuitive, not rational. Is there a necessity for intuitive activity in the mind to require beliefs? In order to carry out its intuiting?
Agreed; no struggle.
Quoting Janus
Agreed, given the conditions which make that speculation plausible. It just isn’t a Kantian speculation and to which I only object because I think it is being made to look like it. In this particular speculation, while Kant also cannot prove things-in-themselves may exist in their own space and time, he only has to prove they cannot, in order for his entire metaphysical thesis with respect to human knowledge, to have an empirical limit. And he does exactly that, by proving….transcendentally….that space and time belong to the cognizing subject himself, which makes the existence of things in them, impossible.
————-
Quoting Janus
Agreed, in principle, for the transcendental sense has nothing whatsoever to do with the empirical domain of things, that belonging to understanding alone as reference to causality. It follows it is just as true things have their own existence independent of any mind in a transcendental sense, as it does in an empirical sense. All of which is quite beside the point, insofar as all which concerns us as knowing subjects, is any of that which is entirely dependent on the mind.
—————-
Quoting Janus
Dunno about all that, but it’s moot anyway, for he most certainly does posit something which gives rise to….makes possible the representation of…..phenomena. The whole 700-odd page critical treatise begins with it.
—————-
Quoting Mww
I recognize nothing that hints you have considered, so I shall assume you’re not so inclined. Or you have and kept it to yourself. Which is fine; just thought you’d be interested.
The problem, is that science demonstrates to us, that at the very small scale, quantum particles, and at the very large scale, spatial expansion, our intuitions of space and time are highly inadequate for understanding the presumed things in themselves. So we ought to think of these intuitions, space and time, as useful and purposeful, and highly evolved, but most likely not representative of the supposed things in themselves, because they didn't evolve for that purpose. Then to "speculate that things in themselves may exist in their own space and time" is really misguided speculation, because the way that these supposed things in themselves actual exist is probably not at all similar to how we understand them, through the intuitions of space and time. Intuition is known to mislead.
But the distinction isn’t a matter of “thought-police prescriptions.” It’s a matter of recognizing limits. The “transcendental sense” isn’t an extra layer of metaphysical speculation—it’s the recognition that our very categories of existence, objectivity, and independence only make sense within the framework of possible experience.
When you say “of course things exist independently of any mind,” you’re already employing the categories of existence and independence. The transcendental point is simply: those categories have meaning only in relation to a subject. It’s not dogma, but an analysis of how thought works.
So you’re right that there’s no empirical way to confirm or disconfirm claims about noumena—that’s precisely why Kant warns against treating them as if they were positive objects. The “transcendental sense” is not something determinable in the way empirical claims are; it’s the limit-condition that makes empirical determination possible at all.
You keep calling it “dogma,” but it seems to me the real issue is that you’re not willing to admit that our knowledge has limits. The transcendental distinction isn’t a prescription about what we’re allowed to think so much a recognition that our categories of thought don’t reach beyond the conditions of possible experience.
And I suspect the reason you push back so strongly is that you have an instinctive aversion to the very word transcendental—for you it smacks of “God talk,” which is why you keep insisting it must be dogmatic. But that’s really just your pre-existing conception of the question, not what’s actually at stake.
Besides, calling Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason “dogmatic” is wildly unjust. Dogma is the very last thing Kant wanted to propagate. His whole project was precisely the opposite: to dismantle dogmatism by showing that speculative claims about the world-in-itself go beyond what reason can justify. What you keep dismissing as “dogma” is in fact Kant’s attempt to set clear limits, so that reason doesn’t mistake its own constructions for knowledge of things as they are in themselves.
I don't see myself as one of the thought police on this forum. That honour goes to all of those who squeal every time the word 'transcendent' is so much as mentioned.
Quoting I like sushi
Phenomenology intentionally brackets the question of the existence of an external world, and concerns itself with understanding the nature of human experience. Phenomenology can tell us nothing about metaphysics, as it is not in the business of speculation. As Husserl declared: "to the things themselves"( the "things" here being 'things as we experience them'. It is the accumulation of scientific knowledge that places us in a better position to make plausible metaphysical inferences to the best explanation.
When Kant says we cannot know noumena or how things exist in themselves as opposed to how they exist for us, he is basing that on a consideration of only what we can via reflection on perceptual experience, establish that we can have direct cognitive access to. And yet he acknowledges, in order to escape Berkelyan idealism or Humean phenomenalism, that in order for there to be appearances there must be "something" that appears. It is the nature of that "something" which concerned traditional speculative metaphysics, which relied on the idea that intellectual intuition as to the nature of things is possible. Kant debunked this idea, and yet still wished to say what could not be the case with things in themselves or noumena.
If we have no cognitive access to that "something" are we nonetheless able to coherently speculate as to the nature of its existence? Of course we are. But what will be the best guide to such speculation? Intuition? Imagination? Common sense? Everyday experience? Science? I would say common sense, everyday experience and science are the best guides as to what metaphysical speculations are most plausible. It remains, though, that metaphysical questions are not strictly decidable, since any proposed thesis is neither logically provable or empirically demonstrable.
Quoting Mww
I wasn't attempting to make it look like a Kantian speculation. On the other hand, I think there are inconsistencies in Kant. "Things in themselves" is the idea that there is more than just one thing that appears to us as the stupendous diversity of phenomena. Schopenhauer took him to task on this very point ( not saying I agree with Schopenhauer's "solution"). The point is that we cannot make sense of a single something appearing to us as a diversity of commonly perceived phenomena.
You say that Kant "proves" that things-in-themselves cannot exist in space and time, when all he can prove if anything is that they don't exist (and that proof by mere definition) in our perceptual space and time.
Quoting Mww
I agree that as knowing subjects that is all that concerns us. But we can also know what seems most plausible to us when it comes to questions concerning speculative matters which are strictly both logically and empirically undecidable, since such speculating and weighing of what seems most plausible is also entirely a function of the mind. I say "function of the mind" rather than "entirely dependent on the mind", because the latter formulation may mislead into forgetting of experience.
See above.
Quoting Mww
Quoting Mww
I did not have the time to address that at the time. I say that speculative conceptions of the kind of bare bones in-themselves nature of the objects that appear to us as phenomena is not at all contradictory. That is just an interpretation-dependent stipulative judgement that I don't accept. It's all about what can make sense to talk about. Juts as I can sensibly talk about the things I perceive having an existence of their own, I can sensibly speculate about what the idea of such things seems to logically entail. "Things" implies differentiation and form, and differentiation implies space and time. If we are going to talk about things at all, then we should be consistent with what logic is implicit in thinking in terms of things. Of course thinking about things is based on concepts formed on account of the actual cognition of things. Then if we posit things beyond cognition we are in speculative territory. But if all such speculation is incoherent, or worse, contradictory, then forget about things in themselves altogether and go with absolute idealism or phenomenalism.
:up:
Quoting Wayfarer
Whose limits, and justified by appealing to what exactly?
Quoting Wayfarer
No, it's a simple truism being unsupportedly amplified into a purported stricture. You simply have no warrant to pontificate on what may or may not have meaning to others. It's dogma, pure and simple, but I can't make you see that, you have to come to that realization yourself.
You even agree that it makes sense to say that things existed prior to humans. Then you go on to say it makes sense in an empirical context, but not in a transcendental context. I don't accept that bifurcation. "transcendental sense" is an artificial construct, which is neither logically nor empirically supported. So what is it supported by? If you say phenomenology I won't agree, because the whole remit of phenomenology consists in reflection the nature of experience. Science consists in investigation and analysis of the nature of the phenomena we experience. Phenomenology='What is the nature of experience ' and science= 'what is the nature of the things we experience'.
Quoting Wayfarer
We need not talk about them at all except that it seems obvious, even to Kant, that if there are appearances there must be something that appears. What is the nature of that something about which we only know how it appears? It's not directly subject to investigation. But if there is something that appears we know how it appears.
And we know that the idea of something completely amorphous appearing as a world of diversity seems mighty implausible, actually makes no sense at all. If we want to speculate then I say that's the place to start. But I acknowledge we cannot say much, even about what seems most plausible. I also acknowledge that it doesn't really matter, it changes nothing about how we live our lives.
Quoting Wayfarer
If you think that it shows you don't read my posts closely. Of course I admit that our knowledge has limits, but I'm not a fan of pre-determining those limits. Of course we can talk about limits in tautologous way?once we conceive of objects as being "appearances for us" and "things in themselves" it is true by mere definition that if we define 'in itself' as what lies beyond 'how it appears' then we cannot have cognitive access to the in itself. But it doesn't follow logically that speculative talk about what it might be is meaningless.
Quoting Wayfarer
Here we go again with the psychological explanations! I don't so much object to the word 'transcendental' because we can only really reflect on what we experience and on what we can imagine. "The idea of transcendence just indicates that we must recognize that we don't know everything, and that we are bound to think that there must be something beyond what we experience and imagine. We inevitably imagine a transcendental world or aspect of the world that exists somehow apart from and independently of our world of cognitively apprehended objects.
The natural attitude, based on the fact of everyday experience that we all experience the same objects at the same times and places, is that those objects exist independently of our perception of them. That's really it. We don't know what that independent exist is like, we don't even know that there really is an independent existence. But phenomenalism explains nothing, so we are bound to think of an independent existence in some form or other.
Anything we think about it is more or less underdetermined. What thoughts are more determined and what less is the salient question. As Kant says, and @Mww quoted recently: "we can think whatever we like provided we don't contradict ourselves'. The thought that there is a god in whose mind all the objects we encounter exist is not logically contradictory, and nor is the idea of a mind-independent spatiotemporal world of real existents. Choose your poison. I know which I find the more plausible. But to repeat?it doesn't really matter, what matters is how well we live the lives we know we have.
Quoting Wayfarer
Of course you wouldn't see yourself as one of the thought-police. I have no argument with the idea of the transcendental per se. It's the way that some use it to push their dogma, and try to impose what I see as bullshit limits on what others can or should think that spurs me to respond.
Ours — the limits of human cognition. And justified by what? By the recognition that our categories of thought (existence, objectivity, causality, etc.) are the very means by which the world is knowable to us. To apply them beyond possible experience - to imagine a world as it would be outside any cognition of it - is to use them outside the domain in which they have sense. That’s the force of the transcendental distinction: not a ban on thinking, but a clarification of what kind of thinking makes sense.
What has never entered your mind is not anything, obviously. And when it has entered your mind, it has done so via the senses, and has been interpreted by your intellect. What is outside that, neither exists nor does not exist. It is not yet anything, but that doesn't mean it's nothing. This is not dogma.
Quoting Janus
It is not a 'bifurcation'. That term is usually associated with A N Whitehead and is a different matter. In fact, the division is between the world as known to us, and what you think it must be, beyond that.
Quoting Janus
I’m not laying down a stricture about what others may or may not think. I’m pointing out that when we use concepts like “existence” or “independence,” we are already relying on the framework of experience that gives those concepts their sense. That isn’t dogma — it’s analysis. To ignore that is not to be “freer” in one’s thinking, but simply to overlook the conditions that make thought coherent in the first place.
Quoting Janus
I don’t disagree except I’d stress that the “natural attitude” you invoke is exactly what phenomenology and Kantian critique are meant to interrogate. Yes, we all tacitly assume that the objects we encounter exist “anyway” and independently of perception. But to take that assumption as foundational is precisely to overlook the constitutive role played by the observer.
You’re right that phenomenalism explains nothing; but the transcendental approach is not phenomenalism. It’s not saying “objects are only in the mind,” but that our very idea of an “independent existence” is already framed by the categories through which we think. That’s why Kant speaks of “the transcendental” not as another realm to imagine, but as the condition that makes imagining and experience possible at all.
So I’d put it like this: you’re right that “it doesn’t really matter” whether we speculate about God or noumena. But it does matter whether we recognize the limits of our categories, because that recognition is the difference between naïve realism (taking the natural attitude as ultimate) and critical philosophy (understanding it as a conditioned and contingent reaiity).
Quoting Janus
Do you see the difference? Don't you think it's very significant? This is the subject of this quote, which I've posted quite a few times already, about Husserl's criticism of naturalism, from the Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology:
Why do you think Husserl says that conscious acta cannot be properly understood from with the natural outlook? Do you agree? Do you think it's significant?
Quoting Janus
But it is likely to be dogmatic.
This is why in mysticism the intellect, like the ego is held on a leash and is only of secondary importance (while acknowledging that they are necessary in the cogitation of experience).
The primary means is in seeking to develop the whole being. So that rather than to work out truths, one walks into/upon truths, as if to walk into a room, or through a door.
This is what I see as the greatest difference between Kant and Plato. Unlike Kant, Plato allows that the human intellect can have direct access to what Kant calls noumena, the independent intelligible objects. By Platonic principles, human beings can receive ideas through means other than the senses. This is where "the good" plays its role, and Plato\s "good" is absent from Kant. The good is what is intended, or desired, and as such it does not yet have material existence, and cannot be sensed. Therefore the source of these ideas is not sensation.
The nature of "the good" is not well understood because it avoids the grasp of knowledge, by Plato's description. as prior to knowledge. It illuminates intelligible objects like the sun illuminates sensible objects. Notice that we do not consider ideas to be knowledge until they are justified by empirical principles. So human intention and desire will create all sorts of fanciful ideas which cannot be justified, and will never be knowledge.
We can understand Kant's a priori intuitions of space and time as a replacement for Plato's "the good". Both perspectives realize that it is necessary to assume a principle, or some principles, which are prior to empirical sensation, which enable the mind's capacity to produce ideas and knowledge. For Plato this is the good, for Kant it is the a priori intuitions. We can see how Kant's imposition of space and time limits the scope of knowledge to the sensible world, while the more general, "the good", allows the potential for knowledge to extend beyond the limitations of empirical justification.
Our space and time is not perceptual, meaning our senses do not perceive them, for that would be the same as space and time being appearances. Our space and time is intuitive, hence in us as a condition of our intelligence, where the things that exist can never be found, whether or not such things affect the senses.
It follows that Kant’s proof of the non-existence of things-in-themselves in space and time is predicated on the tenets of his theory, which states, insofar as they are strictly transcendental human constructs, space and time cannot be the conditions for existence of things, but only the conditions for the possibility of representing things that exist.
————-
Quoting Janus
Neither do I. I don’t accept it because it is contradictory, the judgement being diametrically opposed to the method under discussion prescribes.
Quoting Janus
True enough, but isn’t the logic already implicit when the thought is of things? But I see what you mean…to think this is to use this logic, to think that is to use that logic, as long as the conceptions contained in this and that, or at least the origins of them, are sufficiently different from each other….
Quoting Janus
“….To think an object and to cognize an object are by no means the same thing….”
….just like that.
If that’s what you think, so be it.
Quoting Wayfarer
The limits of human cognition does not define or determine the limits of what exists.
Quoting Wayfarer
You can talk about the situation that way, but there are of course alternatives ways of framing it. So I would say it is something before it "enters the mind" otherwise there would be nothing there to be perceived.
Quoting Wayfarer
'Bifurcation' is a synonym for 'division'. The bifurcation is yours?between the empirical and the transcendental. If all we know is the empirical world, and everything that has evolved out of that experience, and attempting to understand that experience?maths, geometry, science, music, poetry, literature?then we can say nothing about the transcendental other than that it is an idea of the possibility of something beyond.
You bare the one saying what the transcendental must be like?that it cannot exist in space and time, be differentiated and so on. I am saying that the transcendental is just an idea of the possibility of something beyond the empirical world. It's an idea that's been around for a very long time, and for which there can be, on your very own argument, no evidence. You say all we know, all our concepts, mathematics, geometry, science, music, poetry, literature and so on find their sense in the empirical world, so we cannot coherently speak about anything beyond that. because we have no cognition beyond that to give sense to whatever we say.
You admit that we can coherently say, within the empirical context that the world existed prior to humans. I say that is right, and that is where we stop our saying, and don't pretend that there is another context in which it makes no sense to say that. There is your bifurcation. By the way I didn't have Whitehead's "bifurcation of nature" (although I studied Whitehead's ideas quite extensively quite a few years ago) specifically in mind. He was more concerned with bypassing the division of nature into primary and secondary qualities, and of course that is a related issue, but let's not go down that rabbit hole.
Quoting Wayfarer
The terms "existence" and 'independence" are common coin that get used in various contexts. To repeat, you say yourself that we can perfectly sensibly talk about the existence of the world prior to humans with the caveat that it makes sense only within the empirical context. I say there is no other context?so it looks like we are actually agreeing. I say there is no other context in which we can say anything at all, because we don't know any other context
I wouldn’t know. I would guess “scholarly consensus” for Kantian discourse is an oxymoron.
But the whole point of the essay is what we know of what exists. When I say the world “relies on an implicit perspective,” I mean the world-as-known. To speak of what lies entirely outside that perspective is already speculative. Better to call it “purported” or “imagined” existence.
Quoting Janus
To call it “something” already applies a category it doesn’t yet have. That’s why I said: it is not some-thing. But I'm also not saying it is simply non-existent. This is what you keep insisting is 'nonsensical', but when the context is understood, it is really quite straightforward: it is neither a “thing” nor “nothing,” but precisely what lies beyond the scope of those categories.
Quoting Janus
There is no division between the empirical and the world as it is in itself. The world known by empiricism is simply the universe as it appears to us. To speak of “the world in itself” is not to posit a separate domain, but to point to the condition that makes the empirical world possible in the first place.
The point being that a lot of modern thought tends to forget that empirical knowledge is contingent in this way, which is to accord science an authority it doesn't really have.
I was editing as you were responding apparently. Anyway I'm sayin that we can sensibly say that the things we perceive have their own existence independently of us, period. You say we cannot sensibly say that except within the empirical context. Then I respond that everything we say is from within the empirical context. So, what are we disagreeing about?
Quoting Wayfarer
You are again confusing what we say with the things we are talking about. The things we talk about only "have categories" insofar as they are talked about?it doesn't follow that they are such that they cannot be thought to be fit or not to be included whatever category we are thinking of. You are thinking in simplistic terms here. You say it lies beyond the scope of the categories?if we haven't perceived it yet, it may or it may not. Say there is a cat behind a tree?you haven't seen it yet, but you imagine it is a dog. Then you go around behind the tree and find it is a cat. If you had thought it was a cat, then it would have fitted that category before you perceived it, but it didn't fit that category because you mistakenly thought it was a cat.
Quoting Wayfarer
The world known by us is simply the world?there is no other world for us. We know the world, but we do not know it completely, obviously. There is always more to learn. There could not be more to learn if there was not more there, presently unknown, to be experienced and to be learned about via that experience. We think there might be things we could never know about the things we know?we can't know for sure, but one thing we do know is that even if we reached the end of knowledge, if we knew everything it is possible to know, we could have no way of knowing that we had reached that point.
The objection:
Quoting Questioner
The response
Quoting Wayfarer
It's this taken-for-grantedness that is the main target.
I disagree, but i get the joke ;)
That's one way of describing the situation. On the other hand I can say I perceive the space between objects, albeit usually more or less filled up with other objects. I do perceive space but I don't perceive empty space.
Quoting Mww
So, to refer to things-in-themselves as "strictly transcendental human constructs" is again a particular way of framing, not an expression of any determinable fact of the matter. If things are human-independent existents that have mass, form and size then space and time would be the condition for their existence, just as they are the conditions, not just for our cognition, but for our very existence. In our material existence we are not different than other things.
Quoting Mww
Of course I cannot disagree with that. Since it is true by definition. On the other hand, some might say that for God to think an object and to cognize an object are one and the same.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't understand why you keep repeating this when I have long acknowledged that the world as perceived is (you might even say by very definition) mediated by the nature of bodily organs and processes. Science can study this and even model what the world might look like to different animals given the different ways the perceptual organs of individual kinds of animals are constituted.
Quoting AmadeusD
The issue is as to whether it is more plausible to think that we carve nature "at the joints", so to speak or arbitrarily. If it were arbitrary we would not all perceive the same things. Our bodies with their perceptual organs, or minds if you prefer to frame it that way, cannot be the sole determinants of how we differentiate nature or we would not all see the same things. So differentiation is down to real patterns and regularities that are independent of us in nature or some kind of collective or universal mind. Choose your poison.
I don't think so. We don't perceive space between objects, we perceive separation. And knowledge tells us that there is another, invisible object, air, which exists in the medium. And we actually sense that air, feeling the wind and the smells. We don't ever perceive, or apprehend space except as a concept.
So, you say that you perceive space, but not empty space. Imagine the space which you believe that the air occupies, or that some other object occupies. How do you think you are perceiving this space, rather than simply assuming it as a fundamental concept?
Basically you're saying that it's subjective, a matter of opinion. 'It's OK if you see it that way, but I see it a different way'. It's not 'determinable' because it can't be validated empirically. Whatever is not determinable by science is a matter of personal preference.
Quoting Janus
I keep repeating it, because you keep misrepresenting it. You say 'Science can study this and even model what the world might look like to different animals'. But you're still positing a real world beyond what appears, as if that is the criterion of realness, when it is the very point at issue. That's why I posted this:
[quote=Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology]In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense—this would be a subjective idealism, itself a consequence of a certain naturalising tendency whereby consciousness is cause and the world its effect—but rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role.[/quote]
Quoting AmadeusD
I do agree, but I also think there is a danger in the word 'create' - even though I used it in the OP. I think 'construct' might actually have been a better choice, and besides, there is a school of thought 'radical constructivism' which is very similar in outlook to what I'm arguing for (info). But it is a semantic distinction.
The truth concerning what is neither empirically nor logically demonstrable is not strictly decidable and so is a matter of what each of us finds most plausible or in other words a matter of opinion...call it what you like. And of course a dogmatist won't want to accept that.
This is going nowhere so I'm going to leave you to it.
Got it...Cheers.
The separation of objects just is the space between them.
But there is not space between objects, only more objects, that's why you said you do not perceive empty space.
Suppose one object here, and another object over there. implying a separation between them. You perceive other objects in between, perhaps the movement of air. By what principle do you replace the objects you perceive between the two objects, with the concept "space", and then claim to perceive this "space".
This is the same issue I had with I like Sushi, only that was with the concept "matter" rather than the concept "space". I like Sushi claimed that we measure, and weigh matter, but we do not. We weigh particular things not matter. Matter is purely conceptual, as is space. The two being very good examples of universals. Now, you and I are going through the same thing with the concept "space". You claim to perceive space, but you don't, you have a concept of space which you apply when you perceive that things are distinct from one another. Application of concepts is not the same as perception.
I'm saying that the argument in the OP is a logical argument. If arguments can only be decided by empirical means, then we're back at verificationism or positivism. You will also need to justify why you think the argument is dogmatic.
We derived our idea of existence from our cognitive experience, therefore nothing can exist apart from its being cognized.
The conclusion does not follow logically from the premise, so it is not a deductively valid argument.
What you are offering is a certain perspective on the situation?a certain way of framing it. There are other ways of thinking about it. There is no determinable truth of the matter; so really comes down what seems most plausible as to what you will believe. In other words it is a matter of opinion, or preference, or taste or whatever you want to call it.
If you think otherwise then explain how you think your view could be established to be correct.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We perceive the extendedness of objects; that is what space is. It is not an empty container. If you think we cannot perceive space as an empty container, well of course that is true, but irrelevant.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, whatever cannot be determined by observation or logic is a matter of opinion. You tell me how it might otherwise be determined.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, I'm positing a real world beyond what appears, because I think all the evidence points to that. You are positing that there is not a real world beyond what appears because (apparently) you think all the evidence indicates that to be the case. Neither of us can demonstrate that we are right, so it is a matter of opinion. That's plain to see, but you apparently cannot accept that.
BTW, I'd rather just discuss this with you?there is little point quoting entries about Husserl or other philosophers I am well enough familiar with to know that I disagree with them and why. Invoking authority figures just doesn't cut it for me.
That’s a very simplified gloss, and not my argument. I’m not claiming that “nothing exists apart from cognition.” I’m saying that any concept of existence only makes sense within the conditions of possible experience. (I'm not bound by Kant's argument, but I am trying to stay in his lane, so to speak.)
The point about the Husserl quote was that:
That is much nearer what I mean. You're saying, there must be a reality outside any consciousness of it.
Quoting Janus
But that’s precisely the point: your criterion itself — “only what can be determined by observation or logic counts” — is not itself established by observation or logic. It’s a philosophical commitment, not a scientific observation. And that is what I mean by “dogmatism”: a framework that denies legitimacy to what it cannot assimilate, while never acknowledging that its own framework is not supported by its arguments.
Quoting Janus
But this “real world” you posit beyond appearances is itself nothing but conjecture. You say “all the evidence points to it,” but by definition the evidence only ever belongs to the realm of appearances. To project what the “real world” is behind appearances is less defensible than what you’re criticizing, because it claims the authority of evidence precisely where no evidence can reach. And I'm not positing that there is no reality beyond what we can experience: what I said was that 'what its existence might be outside of any perspective is meaningless and unintelligible.'
[hide="Reveal"]Again, staying in Kant's lane:
A30/B45:
“What may be the case with objects in themselves, and separated from all this receptivity of our sensibility, remains entirely unknown to us. We know nothing but our mode of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us, and which, therefore, does not necessarily pertain to every being, though it must pertain to every human being.”
A45/B63:
“We have therefore wanted to say that all our intuition is nothing but the representation of appearance; that the things that we intuit are not in themselves what we intuit them to be, nor are their relations so constituted in themselves as they appear to us; and that if we take away the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, then not only the nature and relations of objects in space and time disappear, but even space and time themselves vanish, and cannot as appearances exist in themselves.”
A251/B306:
“If we take away the thinking subject, the whole corporeal world must vanish, as this world is nothing but appearance in the sensibility of ourselves as subject, and a manner or species of representation. But if we leave aside our kind of sensibility, and even our thinking in general, then the corporeal world, together with the extension and the relation of appearances in space and time, yes even space and time themselves, vanish. Yet the thing in itself, which lies at the basis of these appearances, is not therefore annihilated, for we cannot know it as it is in itself, but only as it appears to us.”[/hide]
It does if that is all there is we ever have access to. If something exists beyond space and time it is not a 'something'. Get it?
Kant talks about our 'intuitions' being space and time.
I can see why someone would suggest a Two Worlds scenario but this is stretching what Kant is stating too far. The Noumenal World -- so to speak -- is not a World. If we have some as yet unknown facaulty that allows for some other intuition (other than space and time) then, and only then, is talk of another World open to sensibility. That said, it woudl still be a natural and necessarily integrated part of space and time.
So noumena is in itself a phenomena referred to in reference to human existence (the only existence we know of being space and time).
A fuller appreciation of phenomenology can help frame what Kant was talking about because by taking up a phenomenological approach forces us to look at the certain limitations of cognition we are bound by. For instance, we cannot conceive of a polygon with no sides, a colour with no pigment, nor a sound with no pitch. Something similar is held in what Kant means when using the term 'noumena' and is famously framed by saying "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind."
Quoting Wayfarer
I would argue there is no intrinsic difference between saying one or the other. No one can speak of something outside of space and time if there is faculty of cognition possessed by humans that operates in a completely distinct sense to the faculties we possess.
A shape with no edges is not a shape at all. If there can exist something 'shape-like' beyond sapce and time it does not 'exist' in any sense we can frame and if not soley separate we can appreciate it. This is the difference between being open to discovery by us and not existing, but 'not existing' is a concept that we appreciate not that we do not.
So there may be a sqircle somewhere, but because we can’t frame it, we can’t say it exists. Because to say it exists we would have to define (definitively) it. But we can’t define it, so we can’t say it exists, or that it doesn’t exist?
But surely we can talk about the neumenon and conclude that it exists? But we can’t define it, because it has no shape, colour, dimension(as we know them). This is not to say it doesn’t have attributes like this, but that we don’t know what they are.
Also, if we do attempt to define them, we will only be using attributes that we know about from the phenomenal world and by definition neumena are outside of the phenomenal world. So we would be describing things in the phenomenal world and attributing them to something outside that world. Which we can’t do.
So we can say it exists, provided we don’t define it (because that would miss the mark). Because without it, the phenomenal world wouldn’t exist and the phenomenal world exists.
Seems straightforward enough to me, I don’t know what all the fuss is about.
Surely we have just defined a necessary being?
No. Because:
Quoting I like sushi
We understand what exists for us is all that can exist for us. We cannot know what we cannot frame within the bounds of our cognitive capacities (time and space) unless we have some other 'intuition' that is yet to be articulated.
When we 'talk about noumena' we are not talking about noumena as our faculties are framed in space and time and the concept of noumena is not -- hence it serves as a means of understanding what we can understand and how we frame the term 'exist'. Nothing is the absence of something, noumena is not even that, no words can capture it as it is not an 'it' and only represented as a limitation of our cognitive capacities. Any sense of 'beyond' is mere word play.
Quoting Punshhh
We CANNOT. Therefore it is less than nothing. Nothing we can say about noumena is noumena. It is Negative only. Literally everything we can ever conceive of in existence -- abstract or otherwise -- is phenomenal. Noumena is not phenomena. This is not to say just because we lack a sense, it is to say we have no grounds for talking about non-constituent part of existence because that is nonsensical. Understanding that it is nonsensical is the establishment of noumena as a negative limiting term for what exists and what does not with res[ect to space and time.
Quoting Punshhh
Everything we can talk about and speculate about exists. The point is we have no right to say 'exists' when if any such capacities to recognise such is absent.
Hopefully you get the idea that no matter how long I go on EVERYTHING I can say is noumena negatively ONLY and can NEVER be positively captured.
I think it is a good place to begin when trying to understand the kind of problems that arise in human experience including how we articulate what consciousness is and how it relates to the physical world as well as our metaphysical concepts about the world -- which are necessarily connected in some fashion.
Quoting Punshhh
It is so straight forward it bends around everything!
Necessary being? I do not see how. We are not talking about any such thing, although Kant certainly doe scover such ground in his work and states we cannot say anything about any such noumena (see above).
The closest other thing I can think of that covers this kind of concept is probably Dao/Tao (the 'way'). More poetic than Kant but far less precise. If either works for you then that is probably enough.
So, you're saying that something might exist apart from cognition, but that it makes no sense to say that? In any case the concept of existence outside of cognition makes sense to me. You can say it makes no sense to you, but that is all you are entitled to say. There is no determinable fact of the matter that that can be used to ascertain what makes sense and what doesn't as a universal rule.
Quoting Wayfarer
No I'm not; I'm saying it seems most plausible to me that there is a reality outside any consciousness of it.
Quoting Wayfarer
It is established by observing that no other way of determining truth is to be found. If there is another way, then tell us what that way is, and how it works.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't believe that's true. It is an undeniable aspect of experience that people see the same things at the same time and place down to the smallest detail. It's easy to test. That is what is to be explained and I think the inference to a world of mind-independent existence is the best explanation. You don't have to think that?but since it cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by observation or logic it becomes a matter of what each person finds most plausible. That's the way I see it.
Anything we say about things which cannot be decided by observation or logic is a matter of conjecture?I've never denied that.
"Not determinable” in what sense? If you mean not determinable by science, then of course — but that doesn’t reduce it to mere opinion. If you mean not determinable in principle, then I disagree: there is a fact of the matter about whether categories like “existence” or “mind-independence” are meaningful outside the bounds of cognition. That’s the point of the argument: It’s not about my opinion versus yours. Your implication always seems to be: can't be 'determined scientifically' therefore it's a matter of opinion.
Quoting Janus
As said a number of times already, 'there is no need for me to deny that the Universe is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind.'
Quoting Janus
At the macroscopic level it’s easy to say “we all see the same thing.” But at the quantum scale - which is the smallest detail you can expect - it’s not so clear cut. In the double-slit experiment, whether you get an interference pattern or not depends on whether an observation is made. And the 'Wigner’s friend' experiments show that two observers can have inconsistent but equally valid accounts of the same event. So the claim that everyone just “sees the same thing in the same way” doesn’t hold once you look deeper. On that level, which is the most fundamental level, it's the nature of the physical that is 'not determinable'. So you can't appeal to it.
Furthermore, the fact that “we all see the same thing” is not some metaphysical given — it’s because we are all members of the same species, with the same sensory and cognitive apparatus, and also because we inhabit a shared culture that trains us to interpret the world in broadly the same ways. That’s why we can agree that “this is a table” or “that’s red.” But how a bat, or an octopus, or a machine intelligence “perceives the world” is another matter entirely — and one we simply cannot know from the inside. So even the claim that “we all see the same thing” is already species- and culture-bound.
But, appreciate the questions.
I think that's one of the best examples of a straw man that I've ever seen.
Quoting Janus
The extendedness of objects is just another concept which you've swapped for "space". You started off by saying "I perceive the space between objects", and when I informed you that you do not actually perceive whatever it is that separates objects making them distinct, you changed your proposed meaning of "space", to define it as "the extendedness" of objects.
But the "extendedness" of objects is purely conceptual, just like "space" is. You do not perceive extendedness. To "extend" is to increase something. So to conclude that something has been extended, "stretched out spatially" requires an application of logic. It is not a perception but a logical conclusion.
You are still not distinguishing between perceiving, and applying concepts. I suggest, that once you recognize that this distinction is impossible to make at the foundational level, you'll understand the need for a priori concepts. The application of concepts is inherent within even the most basic acts of perception. This implies that conception is prior to perception, therefore conception is not dependent on perception. That is why Kant proposed the a priori, as intuitional 'concepts'.
Quoting Janus
You keep saying things like this, but it is so clearly false. In fact, the argument that different people never see the same thing is far more sound then the argument that people see the same things. To begin with, if you point to an area and ask people to describe what is there, they will never use the exact same words. And even if we point to a location, and agree on the words to be used in reference to that location, this does not imply that the people see the same thing. It only means that they are agreeable. Therefore in reality, it is an undeniable aspect of human beings, that they are agreeable, and you falsely present this as "It is an undeniable aspect of experience that people see the same things".
YES, I HEAR YOU, I UNDERSTAND. I’ll have take your word for that for now, until I’ve read more about it.
Agreed, I have been doing the same from a different school for decades along with using it in my practice.
A little less wordy though, the gist is the same.
So presumably there are a number of philosophers around who don’t like the idea?
Hmmm. Sure, I suppose you could say that. Take a dinner table place setting: the space between the dinner fork and the salad fork seemingly filled by the perception of the table they both rest on.
I’ve got a pretty decent telescope, and when I look here, and look there, the space between is full of stuff I don’t perceive without it.
Still, in both of these, the space between is actually space in general; the table isn’t in the space between the forks, and with respect to the ‘scope, the other objects seemingly between here and there could very well be in front or behind and not between them at all.
Quoting Janus
If you agree all perceptions have a sensation belonging to them…..what sensation does one receive from the perception of space? What is it about your perception which distinguishes the space you perceive from empty space you do not?
—————-
Quoting Janus
Yeah…the bane of speculative theoretics in general, the fact of impossible physical verification. Nevertheless, it’s hard to argue with proper logic.
Quoting Janus
While it may be true, at least for a human or human-like being, that in order for there to even be a thing at all, mass, form and size are the conditions by which it is so. But it still needs to be known the necessary conditions for mass, form and size of a thing, and even more importantly, the necessary conditions by which differences in mass, form and size of different things are related.
All of which reduces to the inevitable conclusion, that the necessary conditions the relations of mass, form and size have nothing whatsoever to say about the existence of the thing to which they belong. Space and time, then, are merely the necessary conditions for the possibility of a thing for which mass, form and size are determinable, the existence of which is given regardless of whatever mass, form or size it may be determined to have.
A reminder that space and time are pure intuitions belonging to sensibility, while existence is a pure conception belonging to understanding. That the representations of one are conjoined with the representations of the other for any human experience reflecting perception of real things, does not make one dependent on, nor the condition for, the other.
The problem here is, of course, I have argued why the conclusion of your opinion represented by the quoted comment cannot hold, but I have nothing by which to judge whether my argument is relevant to the construction of your opinion. In other words, I have no idea what qualifies the truth value, the logical ground or presuppositions, of what you say, which means I may have engaged myself in a dialectical non-starter.
Perish the thought!!!
————-
Quoting Janus
There’s one major difference: my material existence can never be in-itself, insofar as it is apodeitically necessary that my body be an appearance for me, whereas that condition is merely contingent for any other material existence.
But I get the point: the material of my existence is no different from the material of any other existence. What do you intend to be gleaned from such analytical truths?
What do you mean by "meaningful outside the bounds of cognition"? Let's say for the sake of argument nothing for human discourse is outside the bounds of cognition, are you saying categories like 'existence' and 'mind-independence' can only apply to the objects we perceive?
If so, then it seems obvious that they don't only apply to the objects we perceive when they are being perceived. In my view all our experience, both ordinary everyday observations and science, informs us that there are human-independent things in the Universe now and that
there were before humans existed.
Quoting Wayfarer
It follows then that it must be real independently of all minds unless you posit a hidden collective mind. Is that what you believe?
Quoting Wayfarer
Regarding any individual experiment, all observers see the same result, though. The fact that the behavior of microphysical particles seems counter-intuitive, even paradoxical, shouldn't surprise us given that we have evolved in a macroworld, and our expectations as to the behavior of entities has been conditioned by our experiences of macro-objects.
There is also no clear consensus among the physics community as to the implications of those observed weird results. In any case why deny what science tells us, and then appeal to it when it suits you?
I don't believe you have any real doubt that the everyday objects we encounter constantly have their own existence, which does not rely on our perceiving them. As Peirce said: "Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts".
Quoting Mww
Right, I haven't claimed there are any truly empty spaces. But then when it comes to spaces that look empty that just speaks to the fact that there are things there we cannot see with the naked eye. It's kind of irrelevant anyway, because all I'm saying is that we can perceive extension, distance, and that counts in my view as perceiving space. You are free to frame it differently.
Quoting Mww
The sensation is one of extension, or distance as a said above. I'm not sure what you are driving at here.
Quoting Mww
I don't know what you mean?the necessary conditions for the perception of mass, form and size are that they are there to be perceived. The overall form of an object is not dependent on perspective, although of course how it looks from any angle will be if it is not a sphere. Size is relative, and if one object is larger than another, that would not seem to be dependent on perspective either. Same with mass.
Quoting Mww
Clarity?
No. It's that when you imagine or conjecture a universe with no humans in it, that conjecture still requires an implicit perspective. To conjecture a universe, or an object, without already bringing to bear the framework of space and time would be impossible - you would be imagining nothing. All of your statements about the 'already existing objects' and 'previously existing universe' rely on that implied perspective which you're bringing to bear on it, without noticing that you're doing it.
Quoting Janus
But they don't. The claim that “we all see the same thing” doesn’t hold once you move beyond the classical scale. Wigner’s Friend (1961), a thought-experiment, implied how two observers could end up with irreconcilable results — one sees a definite measurement, the other only a superposition. And in 2019, Massimiliano Proietti and colleagues ran this with six entangled photons. The result: Wigner’s “reality” and the friend’s “reality” coexisted but could not be reconciled. That suggests there may be no single set of “objective facts” that all observers must agree on — which is precisely the point at issue here. Also Does Physical Reality Objectively Exist? Ethan Siegel (Medium, may require registration):
For relativity:
[quote=Ethan Siegel]Space and time might be real, but they’re not objectively real; only real relative to each individual observer or measurer.[/quote]
For quantum physics:
[quote=Ethan Siegel]To the best that we can tell, the real outcomes that arise in the Universe cannot be divorced from who is measuring them, and how.[/quote]
Quoting Janus
Ethan Siegel, for instance, is a well-known popular science communicator and writer. Mostly he just writes on straight-ahead physics, but that essay above is him looking at the philosophical question concerning whether physical reality objectively exists. And he suggests that both relativity theory and quantum theory suggest not.
So - I'm not disputing science. I'm questioning scientific realism, which is philosophical attitude, not a scientific theory. Or if you like, a meta-scientific theory.
Quoting Janus
From the OP: 'It is empirically true that the Universe [and 'the object'] exists independently of any particular mind. But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis.' Which is Kant's 'Copernican Revolution in Philosophy'.
This requires an exercise in looking at your spectacles, instead of simply through them.
PS - also I would never want to be accused of science denialism. I accept wholeheartedly the science of climate change, and the science of vaccination, things which are only denied by cranks and weirdos (and the current US administration.)
All my statements are expressions of my perspective?so what, that's trivially true. Of course I'm aware of it. I also acknowledge that my perspective is not the reality?you know, "the map (or model) is not the territory".
Quoting Wayfarer
If the existence of the Universe is independent of any particular mind, whether human or animal, how does it not follow that it is independent of all individual minds? Of course there is a perspective involved in saying that the Universe is or is not independent of minds, but it doesn't follow that it is impossible that the universe be either independent or dependent on minds?we just don't know and may only speculate about it.
I'm not going to try to address any purported implications of quantum mechanical experiments and results because I don't have the expertise, and I don't believe you do either. It is arguable that even the experts understand only the math, not what metaphysical implications might be suggested by QM. Wasn't it Feynman who said: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics"?
Quoting Wayfarer
You can't look at your spectacles without looking through them.
Quoting Wayfarer
I didn't address this as thoroughly as I meant to. The claim is that truth is determinable only by observation or logic, and otherwise we can have only beliefs about what is true. A radical skeptic would say that we cannot be certain of the truth even of what is observed or logically self-evident. Can you give me an example of any truth which is determinable in any way other than by observation or logic, and also explain just how that truth can be determined?
Right - that's what you're doing. You fall back on the 'it can't be determined, therefore a matter of opinion.'
Quoting Janus
I think the logic of the original post is quite sound. Every time you take issue with it, you do so on the basis of an innaccurate paraphrase of it, before reverting to the argument that 'it can't be known, it can't be determined'.
Quoting Janus
Very convenient. Remember that it was you that said:
Quoting Janus
Quoting Janus
It doesn't require knowledge of mathematical physics to show that the sources I mentioned call this into question: it is not the case that 'people see the same things at the same time and place' and that 'all observers see the same result'. So if you're going to appeal to the facts, how about making sure you understand them first.
This is becoming very repetitive, you keep making the same objections, and I'm giving the same responses. If you honestly can't see the point of the OP, maybe find another one to comment on.
It looks to me like you are out of answers. You claim that there are ways, other than by observation or logic, to determine truth, but when pressed by questions such as this:
Quoting Janus
You don't even attempt to back up your claim.
Surely I am free to raise objections to any OP, or am I allowed, according to you, to comment only on those I agree with?
Don't say this to me. I firmly believe that an independent reality would be completely different from, and not at all similar, to the representations we have of it as the sense perception of objects. In direct contrast to what you say, I have no real doubt that the supposed independent reality would be in no way similar to the everyday objects we encounter in our perceptions.
For analogy, consider that a word, numeral, or any symbol, may be completely different from, and similar in no way to whatever it represents. Sense perceptions are representations. And in general, representations, like the symbols of language, are produced and maintained trough principles of use and efficiency, not by principles of similarity.
Isn’t that exactly what the OP was about? The point of the transcendental argument is that there are truths not determined by observation or logic, but by clarifying the conditions that make either possible. That’s why I began the thread in the first place. Your two-years-worth of criticism don't illustrate any grasp of that.
Quoting Janus
I say the OP stands on its own two feet. You can continue to say whatever you like, but unless you can come up with an actual criticism, I will feel no obligation to respond.
How I feel is not observable, but the truth of it exist only within myself and cannot be observed, even by me, because I am having the feelings. Direct experience is also a source of truth. It is clear that this is not logical or empirical (in the sense meant by "observation" anyway. Probably is empirical in some other sense).
Quoting Wayfarer
How do we determine the conditions that make either possible if not by observation and logic? We can reflect on our experience, that is we can do phenomenology, in order to try to determine the essential characteristics of all experiences. Such reflections are not directly testable observations, so there may be disagreement about their findings, but I think that given good will substantial agreement can be reached.
That all perceptions of objects must be spatiotemporal and that embodiment is spatiotemporal are two uncontroversial examples of such phenomenological reflection of the character of experience. I would count phenomenological investigations as a species of observation, and of course logic plays its part in all our judgements.
Other more controversial results such as that consciousness is non-physical because it doesn't seem to us to be depend on the framing. What exactly is meant by "non-ohysical"? Does it mean "not an object of the senses" or "not a function of, and completely independent of, any physical substrate".
Do you have anything to add to that?
Quoting Wayfarer
I have asked questions and posed counterpoints which you have no even attempted to address. Here are two:
Quoting Wayfarer
You say that you are not saying that nothing can exist apart from its being cognized, and yet that is what saying that any concept of existence only makes sense within the conditions of possible experience amounts to. If we accept a framing that says we cannot possibly experience things-in-themselves, then it follows that things that cannot possibly be experienced cannot exist. This must follow because if they can exist, then it cannot be incoherent to say that they can exist.
Of course I don't accept that framing because I don't accept the notion of "things-in-themselves" I think there are just things that we perceive, and that there is no logical contradiction in saying that those things might (or might not) exist independently of being perceived, and that there may be some things about them that we cannot perceive, given the limitations of our perceptual organs.
Quoting Janus
On reading your response below which apparently occurred while I was editing and adding to my post, I see that you have agreed that phenomenology may be thought of as a species of observation, so I guess we are in agreement there unless you have any further examples of ways of determining truth.
You're missing the point. We do this, and gain secure inferences which are not part of the logical or empirical assessments at hand. I don't quite see other examples among philosophers than with Kant, and if you reject his positions then you wont accept this argument anyway, as he's put it better than anyone before or since.
The fact (in concept) is when we make "truth" evident in situation A, we often are committed to accepting "truth" in some realm we have not assessed.
If A then B, but we've only assessed A. and A obtains. We haven't assessed B at all. If you see a transitive holding weight, that's fine. I don't.
So when I say that “existence” or “objectivity” only have sense within experience, I’m not appealing to a particular empirical observation, but to precisely this kind of reflection. And that’s where the transcendental analysis differs from science: it’s not discovering new objects but clarifying the preconditions of there being any objects-for-us at all.
On the “non-physical” question, my point would be that the very category of “the physical” is itself mind-dependent in some basic way. That’s not to deny that there are physical objects — of course there are. But “the physical” as such is already a construct of our observational and conceptual framework: spatiotemporal, measurable, extended, resists our will. To point this out is not to dispute reality, but to draw attention to the inescapable role of the observer in what counts as physical in the first place. As I said in the extended version of the OP:
Quoting The Mind Created World
But, overall, very good questions.
:up: I think we've reached some consensus, so I'm happy to leave it there if you are.
This seems to be hte method of truth-finding, in any case?
I'm not sure what you are saying, and I can't think of an example of what I think you might be saying. Can you give an example for clarification.
Please don't take this personally, but the reason I often don't respond to your posts is that it seems as though your interpretation of what I've said that you're disagreeing with seems to me so far from what I intended that I find it difficult to get enough purchase on what you are saying to respond.
The example to give, which I think is more closely a description of the above, is Kant's noumena.
They are logically required for the system to get moving (and it seems, for us to have any interaction with anything). Consider:
P1 = I can see an apple(1), and I know (through other's observations) that my system of perception works in x way to produce the images I use to 'observe' anything (2).
P2 = due to my knowledge in (2), i can confirm that there is something beyond my scope to observe which must be there to cause (1) to obtain.
C = now that I know (1) and because of (2) B obtains, I have assured knowledge of B, without ever having assessed its possibility. It is inherent in the knowing of (1) and (2), but is not the same thing as either of them.
As best I can tell, this, but across fields we could theoretical observe, is how "truth" functions, particularly in science.
I'd like to be Sam, but I won't insist.
I guess strictly speaking, even if what that "something beyond" is is just a world of physical existents, it can be said that they are noumenal to us. On the other hand we perceive objects, so the objects are not unknown to us even though there may be things about them we don't or even cannot, know. For example it seems we could never be certain about the ultimate or most basic constitution of physical things.
In that case it would not be a case of there being noumenal things, but noumenal aspects of things. If things are ideas in the mind of God, we might know all about the things because God makes everything about them to be discoverable, and there is nothing unknowable left over about them at all. But we still
wouldn't know that that was the case.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm happy enough with being Ralph.
No.
No, again.
Bye
There you go.
It is meaningless to say "noumena are not nothing, they are less than nothing". That's just philosobabble.
No.
Yes, this [I]crisis/initiation[/I] is foundational in Eastern religions and spirituality. It’s promising to see that philosophers are making it over this hurdle too.
Let’s see how many other hurdles they have jumped.
So you say, but as I observed yesterday:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
My disagreement is with things you repeat over and over, which are false. Since these are repeated statements of yours, it's highly unlikely that I interpret them incorrectly. What is actually the case, is that you really don't know what you are saying, and this is why my interpretations are not consistent with what you intend. You intend to express your beliefs, but your statements betray the falsity of them. You do not intend to express false beliefs, so the interpretation of what you say is unintelligible to you.
It appears like after I point out to you the meaning of what you stated, and the falsity of it, you decide that it is not what you wanted to say. Then, since you cannot determine in your own mind what you actually wanted to say with those words, other than what you did say, and my interpretation which demonstrates the falsity of what you said is the only interpretation of those words which makes sense, you simply dismiss my reply as unintelligible to you.
In other word, since I demonstrate to you, that the fundamental principles you repeatedly insist on, are very clearly false, instead of addressing the meaning of those words which express those principles you strongly believe in, to understand why your fundamental beliefs are false, you insist that the conventional interpretation of those words which express those strong beliefs, is nonsense
I would use the word orientation in that it is a question of perspective, or direction. A viewpoint, or gaze which then sees something already known, or commonly seen in a different light.
A development within the self, or being, in which, (by analogy), a lens is cleared (a veil lifted), or brought into clearer focus. Allowing more light through (illuminating further), or a broader, or deeper perspective.
I think this is well-worded. The noumena aren't necessarily esoteric, just as if they are in a room we can't access, so its not as 'mysterious' as one might think. But we can at least securely infer that they are there, or we'd not perceive anything.
No, I’m not suggesting that. The commonalities between German idealism and Eastern philosophy were a matter of convergent development. Schopenhuaer always insisted that he developed his main ideas and published the first edition of WWI before encountering the Upani?ad, but he did say that he felt the common ground he found with them was due to a universal wisdom. That’s an idea I’m not averse to. (See Schopenhauer and Buddhism, Peter Abelson.) Kant never mentioned Eastern religions at all so far as I know, but there have been extensive comparisons of the Critique of Pure Reason and Buddhist Madhyamaka (‘Middle Way’) philosophy.
Quoting Janus
Right! Kant’s philosophy despite its enormous complexity and prolixity is really an acknowledgement of our limitations. He does manage to retain that Socratic sense of ‘knowing nothing’. Having that sense of not having it all worked out is a virtue. Better to know we don’t know, than to think we know something we don’t.
I thought this comment referred to a conversation we were having in the other 'idealism' thread. I'm not so sure what it refers to in this thread.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, that's why I referred earlier to "bifurcation". If the things that appear have their own existence in some way (whether actual physical existents or ideas in a universal mind) they are nonetheless what lies behind our experience of phenomena. And about their nature as unperceived things we can only infer, which means that that nature is, in Kantian terms, ideal or noumenal for us.
That said, I have my own preference for thinking that they are actual, not ideal, existents?the 'god hypothesis' I don't find so compelling.
The idea of an "ultimate nature" seems to have troubled humanity from ancient times, and not only in the West.
Quoting Wayfarer
I can't argue with that, although in practice I think we generally all do cleave to one preferred hypothesis or another. That said I've always been attracted to the kind of suspension of judgement of the Pyrrhonian Skeptics? ataraxia has its definite attractions.
By "actual" do you merely mean they as a matter of fact exist?
The fact of the dualism of thought and language aside, if I think of phenomena as being the very same things as noumena, just thought about in different ways according to a natural distinction that arises in a dualistically oriented mind, then I am undercutting any substantive "bifurcation".
If I propose that the things are ideas, then I must imagine an unseen, unknowable entity?a "mind at large" to quote Kastrup, and that seems to bring in the inevitable ontological dualism involved in thinking there is a transcendent realm or reality over and above the one we know.
And I wonder whether that isn't a "figment" generated by the dualistic nature of language?a reification or hypostatization. As I like to say "choose your poison" and it seems that people usually do, especially on philosophy forums.
In good company - I agree, tentatively.
Very much agree with the material/ideal distinction, I would even go so far as to say that the issue is merely terminological, not substantive, unless it is reframed.
Sure, ideas vs what these ideas are about (objects) is a problem.
Quoting Janus
The topic of things-in-themselves is just brutal. When I go down the rabbit hole, it's just total blindness.
But I think we can simplify a little, either things exist independently of us (in a manner we cannot at all conceive) or they can't.
If they cannot exist independently of us, then I can't make sense of reality. Granted both ideas are problematic, just that one is more coherent than the other to me.
Might I suggest that this is another consequence of the Cartesian divide between mind and body?
Again, the definition of phenomena - the definition, not my idea of what it means - is 'what appears'. Nowadays there is a lazy tendency to describe everything and anything in terms of 'phenomena' but it's a misuse of the term. The 'phenomenal domain' is what appears to us through the senses and instruments. Mathematical theorems, however, are not phenomenal.
Quoting Janus
I address this in another Medium essay, Is there Mind at Large? This essay interogates Kastrup's expression and compares it with Berkeleyian idealism. But then it draws on Yog?c?ra Buddhism, the school colloquially known as 'mind-only', to argue that it is not necessary to posit any kind of super-mind or cosmic mind.
Although I also concede that if Kastrup simply means 'some mind' or 'mind in general', then I am in complete agreement with him. Why? I think the reification trap is associated with the tendency towards objectification, to try and consider anything real in terms of it being an object or an other. This is where Heidegger's criticism of onto-theology rings true.
Quoting Manuel
There's a lot of confusion caused by the question 'what is the "in itself"' - as if it is a mysterious thing, or a mysterious realm. Then the natural tendency is to try and work out what it is. As I've quoted a number of times already, "a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the “thing in itself” as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. Through both of these functions it serves to keep us humble."
Although I have also learned that Hegel replaced ding an sich with simply 'ansich' - the in itself. I am not the least perturbed by that idea, it is simply 'the world' (or object) as it is in itself. But to even designate it 'thing' is already to sow the seed of contradiction.
Yes, that's one interpretation of it, called the "deflationary" one by Allais. And sure, that could well be what Kant meant. That's not how I read it, but that's marginal.
The point is not Kant - it was formulated before him. More richly, in my opinion, by Plotinus, as "the One". And also, Neo-Platonists (Cudworth, More, Burthogge, etc.)
The question is if things - objects - have a nature independent of our (a way of being or existence). I think they do, but if they do, the way they exist must be completely incomprehensible to us.
I understand some will think this even if true is pointless, but it obsesses me.
Quoting Manuel
I think that by asking about "things", "objects", you've already assumed more than what is granted by the premise of "the in itself", or "the One". You've already assumed a multitude of distinct things. In effect, you've succumbed to the influence of sensation.
They're different formulations of the same issue. The way objects are (in themselves), absent the way they affect our sensation and intellectual capacities goes way beyond sensation, necessarily.
Now, you may think the premise does not follow the conclusion, but I don't see how I'm succumbing to the influence of sensation if things-in-themselves are intellectual posits.
The question is, why do you assume that absent the effects of sensation, there are "objects", plural. Division into distinct objects is a part of sense perception.
It was a joke, about people looking at the same thing from different perspectives.
From point 6.1;
From point 6.2;
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-transcendental-idealism/
From this it looks like Kant saw noumena as intellectual concepts, referring to something entirely inaccessible to us, which is inferred. Being intellectual they are entirely abstract and an invention of the human thinking mind. So we cannot say anything about what they are, or aren’t. But they are inferred because if we experience appearances, then they must be appearances of something. Something which is inaccessible to us, because if they were accessible to us, they would be appearances.
He is also saying that transcendental objects, our conception of appearances, cannot be separated from the appearances. So in a sense we are tied to the acceptance of appearances during the experiencing of them.
A double whammy, not only can’t we say anything about noumena, but we are confined within a world of appearances, so can’t say anything about anything else (apart from appearances), either.
I don't think the conclusions you make here are logical. First, if "they are entirely abstract and an invention of the human thinking mind", then we cannot conclude that "we cannot say anything about what they are, or aren’t". The proper conclusion is that we can say whatever we want about what they are or aren't. Next, we cannot initially make any conclusions about how they are related to our experience of appearances.
We might consider that our construction of mathematic concepts is an attempt by us to represent noumena as intellectual concepts (traditionally understood as independent Forms). Notice that the pure mathematician is free to use whatever axioms one wills. This is the act of saying whatever we want about the noumenon. At this point of production we cannot make any necessary statement about any relations between this proposed representation, and our experience of appearances. Then, after practise, experimentation, application of theory, we can start to make some conclusions about such a relationship. In this way, the field of practice, application, and the world of phenomenal appearances in general, always stands as medium between our representations of the noumenon and the noumenon itself.
The important point being that we cannot judge our representations of the noumenon by means of a comparison to the real noumenon, because of the inescapable brute fact that the world of phenomenal appearances forms an unsurpassable boundary between the two.
It baffles me to no end, that the trivially obvious fact that there are no things as such between the ears, making representation of things a necessary predisposition of human intelligence, doesn’t thereby automatically make things-in-themselves a perfectly comprehensible explanatory device.
All those goofy lookin’ creatures in the depths of our own oceans? Must we say their existence is predicated on whether or not humans development the equipment by which their reality is given, or, do we merely grant they were already there beforehand?
And that ain’t even the fun part. If we insist things we haven’t experienced don’t exist unless we do, it follows necessarily, e.g., that the very equipment used to discover those creatures, would never be developed, insofar as that equipment has never yet been an experience for us.
To reconcile the absurdity, it is clear on the one hand humanity is not itself sufficient natural causality and the possible existence of things is affirmed by inference a priori without the experience thereof, and on the other, there must be an apodeitically certain duality in the manner of a real thing’s existence. And yet, somehow or another, that affirmation which any rational intellect surely grants, is refused the representation “thing-in-itself” by some of them.
The thing-in-itself is a thing, says so right there in the name. A thing in this manner or a thing in that manner, as the duality of its nature requires, insofar as a thing is an experience for us at one time or it is not at another, can have whatever name sufficient to distinguish one from the other, which is all and only what the “thing-in-itself” conception was ever intended to do.
On placeholders:
Hasn’t anyone noticed that there can be a whole boatload of spaces and times of any thing, but one and only one space and time of any one thing-in-itself?
Correct, individuation is something people do, hence why Schopenhauer speaks of the "thing-in-itsef", or Plotinus on the One.
It's tricky. Perhaps monism exists as a single substance, but its instantiation will be plural in some sense. This goes way back to the problem of the one and the many.
Kant disagrees about there being nothing to say about either. He distinguishes our ignorance from a skepticism that would presume more than it can display. Here is Kant's argument with Hume on the matter:
Quoting CPR, A758 B786
The above quote also supports 's observations concerning the role of boundaries in rational activities.
I’m new to Kant, so haven’t yet got a handle on his style.
I will try to approach the passage by comparing Kant's objections to Hume with Kant's arguments against Descartes and Berkeley:
Quoting CPR, B274
Immediately following the above text is the Theorem to support it. It is a set of paragraphs that are not included in the first (or A) edition. I read this addition as an attempt to clarify language used throughout the work. One can see how the terms are carefully developed through their use.
Kant's beef with Hume is not the skepticism the latter employed regarding the narratives produced by "reason". Kant agrees that much cannot be proved. But the limits are part of a larger understanding of experience. As quoted before:
Quoting CPR, A758 B786
A gloss on first the section Paine quotes ( A758 B786)
1. Ignorance as motive, not paralysis
Kant begins by distinguishing types of ignorance. Some ignorance is contingent (we simply don’t know some facts yet), which motivates empirical or dogmatic investigation. But there is also necessary ignorance — ignorance grounded in the very conditions of our knowing — which is revealed only by critique. That’s the crucial distinction between simply bumping up against the limits of what we happen not to know, and recognizing the boundaries of possible cognition itself.
He stresses: ignorance known critically becomes a kind of knowledge — a “science” — whereas ignorance known only empirically is merely a vague awareness that there’s more out there than we presently grasp.
2. The sphere vs. plane metaphor
The extended image is helpful. If reason’s domain were like a flat surface with an indefinite horizon, we could never tell how far our knowing might reach — ignorance would always be open-ended. But if reason is like a sphere, then from any part of its curvature we can (at least in principle) work out the total extent and boundary.
The analogy is drawn from mathematics: by knowing the curvature of a degree of arc, you can infer the whole globe. Likewise, by analyzing the structure of synthetic a priori judgments, Kant claims we can infer the scope of reason itself — where it has jurisdiction and where it does not.
This is why his project is not mere “censorship” (Hume’s skeptical rejection of claims beyond experience), but critique: not simply banning speculative metaphysics, but charting the precise boundaries of possible cognition.
3. Hume as halfway point
Kant explicitly positions Hume as a “geographer of reason” who erred by thinking that because causality could not be justified a priori, therefore no metaphysical principle could extend beyond experience. That’s skepticism as a resting place — useful for sobering us up from dogmatism, but not a permanent home. Kant’s third step is to give positive grounds for why certain a priori principles (e.g. causality as a category) apply within experience but not beyond it.
This is Kant’s classic “Copernican” move: reason is not authorized to legislate beyond the field of possible experience, but within that field, it has real and demonstrable authority.
4. The architecture of the Critique
You can see Kant here making explicit the shape of the CPR as a whole. It’s not merely destructive of metaphysics, nor is it skeptical in Hume’s vein. Instead, it seeks to establish metaphysics as a science by:
Thus the “sphere of reason” is bounded, but not indeterminate.
5. Resonances
A further reflection: - Kant addresses the limitations, not the limits, of knowledge. There may be no limit to the discovery of further empirical facts, but there are limitations inherent to reason itself, regardless of the accumulation of facts.
@Janus - this is typical of how Kant says there is a 'determinable fact of the matter'. It relies on sophisticated arguments to be sure, but that is what he is claiming.
Oh man. In the A/B 700’s. You’re diggin’ waaaaayyy down deep in the weeds. Not many get that far, and of those, fewer stay for the rewards. One finding things-in-themselves hard to get past is going to seriously flounder with the “transcendental concept of reason is none other than the concept of the totality of conditions for any conditioned”. Took me more than a little while, I must say.
I’ve always been struck by the compositional structure of the critique: first is what happens for knowledge: perceive a thing, yaddayaddayadda, know a thing. Most just stop there. But fully half the book, roughly pg 297 through ~ pg 700, depending on the translator, tells all about the proverbial man behind the curtain, that by which it all works together, from the background, and what happens when attention is not properly paid.
Anyway….good stuff. ‘Preciate it.
Hey…these damn gadgets are almost too modern for me.
I read your essay, and I thought it was well-constructed and clearly expressed. However I remain unconvinced about the idea of a collective or universal mind being explanatorily unnecessary for an idealist thesis concerning the nature of the world and its relationship with human and animal experience.
You cite as an alternative the ?laya-Vijñ?na or storehouse consciousness of Yog?c?ra Buddhism, an idea I am fairly well acquainted with from my studies of Eastern philosophies and religions. I always thought of it as a kind of collective karmic storehouse, and it is explicitly doctrinally classed as a form of consciousness. So I'm not seeing how it is not an idea of collective consciousness or mind.
If the thought is that our individual minds are separate then what is posited, in the absence of also positing a collective mind that connects and/or coordinates them, is that, as far as minds go, it is only individual minds that exist. I don't see a "reification trap' in the sense of a 'tendency towards objectification' because neither individual minds nor collective minds are being posited as objects of the senses. I see mind as an activity of the body/brain, not as an object of the senses. It's maybe not the best analogy, but digestion is also an activity of the body, not an object of the senses.
Regarding the ?laya-Vijñ?na there is also a Theosophical idea designated the "Akashic Records", which I think bears some resemblance to the Buddhist idea. It seems that idealist thinkers have long recognized the explanatory need for some kind of collective consciousness as a substitute for the independent actuality of physical existents.
Do you have anything to say about my contention that the idea of storehouse consciousness is an idea of a collective consciousness or mind?
As I say, a very deep topic, I could easily be mistaken about many aspects. It is not accepted by all Buddhist schools, because it said by some Buddhists to be too close to the idea of an 'underlying self or soul'. Madhyamaka philosophers say that ?laya-vijñ?na risks reifying consciousness into a hidden essence or foundational mind. From their standpoint, this contradicts the radical emptiness (??nyat?) of dharmas.
Early Buddhist schools (e.g. Therav?da and some Sarv?stiv?dins) didn’t have this concept, and when later confronted with it, some commentators saw it as smuggling in an underlying self.
Even within Yog?c?ra, the idea had to be very carefully explained: the storehouse consciousness is not a permanent self or universal mind, but a provisional way of accounting for karmic continuity and the latent “seeds” (b?ja) that ripen into experience.
But the whole subject is one which hinges on the sense in which such a faculty can be said to exist. Perhaps we could say that it exists as potential - but then in what sense do such potential states exist? They are by definition not yet manifest so not existent. But also not beyond the realm of possibility.
Calling the alaya a collective mind does tend to reify it as some ethereal kind of medium or intelligence, which is really a non-Buddhist view. I remember the well-known W Y Evans-Wentz translation many of us has in the 60's and 70's The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation by Knowing the One Mind. Regrettably, that translation is not at all accurate, and there is no 'one mind' concept in Tibetan Buddhism. Evans - Wentz absorbed those ideas from theosophy which also had many spurious interpretations of Buddhism.
Bernardo Kastrup in the other hand sometimes dialogues with Swami Priyananda, and says that his ‘analytical idealism’ is broadly compatible with Vedanta. And I think his ‘mind at large’ reflects that. So my essay reflects a Buddhist critique.
[quote=Nishijima Roshi] Buddhists believe in the Universe. The Universe is, according to philosophers who base their beliefs on!idealism, a place of the spirit. Other philosophers whose beliefs are based on a materialistic view, say that the Universe is composed of the matter we see in front of our eyes.
Buddhist philosophy takes a view which is neither idealistic nor materialistic; Buddhists do not believe that the Universe is composed of only matter. They believe that there is something else other than matter. But there is a difficulty here; if we use a concept like spirit to describe that something else other than matter, people are prone to interpret Buddhism as some form of spiritualistic religion and think that Buddhists must therefore believe in the actual existence of spirit. So it becomes very important to understand the Buddhist view of the concept ‘spirit.’
I am careful to refer to spirit as a concept here because in fact Buddhism does not believe in the actual existence of spirit. So what is this ‘something else’ other than matter which exists in this Universe?
If we think that there is a something which actually exists other than matter, our understanding will not be correct; nothing physical exists outside of matter.
Some people explain the Universe as a universe
based on matter. But there also exists something which we call value or meaning. A Universe consisting only of matter leaves no room for value or meaning in civilizations and cultures. Matter alone has no value. We can say that the Universe is constructed with matter, but we must also say that matter works for some purpose.
So in our understanding of the Universe we should recognize the existence of something other than
matter. We can call that something spirit, but if we do we should remember that in Buddhism, the word ‘spirit’ is a figurative expression for value or meaning. We do not say that spirit exists in reality; we use the concept only figuratively.[/quote]
Who did? Kant? Sure. There's no reason to deny that physical objects cause perception of physical objects. I think probably the distinction you want to make is far too close to a non-transcendental idealism for me.
As best I can tell, all Kant was trying to show was that the noumenal world is made up of objects which our bodies interpret through various sense organs and processes. That seems correct, on his explication of the human understanding.
Why do you posit (well, this is a negative inference, but still) that physical objects could not be noumenal? This suggests that everything we perceive is non-physical, other than in perception. To me, that is clearly and almost risibly a non-starter (with respect... It just seems ludicrous to me).
We wre talkign about what Kant said. I am sticking to what he said, and the mass concensus, not using weird or outdated interpretations.
Flat out wrong.
Kant, or Janus? I am addressing Kant's positions, not Janus'. If you disagree with my take, take me to task :)
The consensus is that Kant intended a "physical object" and "limiting factor" aspects to the noumenal. They couldn't do the former latter without hte former holding.
I have also checked my interpretation with the modern evaluation of what he meant. Have you?
Kant is something of a cornerstone in philosophical history so it makes sense to point out mistakes when they occur -- especially when repeated by more than one person.
Quoting AmadeusD
This misses the mark because he does not talk of a noumenal world in any physical sense. Anything physical is phenomenonal, not merely known through out limited 'senses' as he uses the terms 'intuitions' and 'sensibility'.
You seem to be confusing the 'noumena' with 'transcendental objects'. That is my guess.
In my opinion, in order to understand the other of consciousness, one must understand how consciousness is constituted at the most fundamental level. And consciousness is constituted at the most fundamental level as present and immediate time. Thanks to Husserl's analyses, we understand that consciousness is constituted at this level by diferences in protensions and retentions. This implies that there is always a non-present side with which consciousness is continuously in contact. This non-present is precisely the form of the world, as something not given in consciousness. In this sense, the existence of the world can be maintained as something distinct with which consciousness relates. But even more, it is consciousness itself that is constituted by the non-present, so it can be said that consciousness is constituted by the very nature of the world as non-present. To deny the world, we must deny the existence of the non-present. But that non-present is fundamental to consciousness and its functioning.
The world is like a note on the refrigerator. It is always pointing to the non-present. The dark side of the moon becomes a paradigmatic example of how experience works: we see it on one side, but within us there is always the hint of a non-present. This non-present is the dark side of the moon, which, if we see it, we stop seeing the other side, and the hint persists. Even to sustain the unity of the object, the hint of the non-present and the non-conscious is necessary. Its non-presence also guarantees its consistency and ultimately its existence. This is the world created by non-consciousness. Perhaps the moon does not have a dark side, but this "perhaps" is persistent and accompanies everything we call experience. It is the perhaps of what is not consciousness.
There are ways around this*, you know how gravity works at a distance, but absent the theory of relativity, there is no known physical mechanism by which the force is exerted. Relativity accounts for it, but is little more than a descriptive, rather hypothetical explanation, a mathematical mapping of the relation between bodies, forces and energy. Perhaps there is the equivalent between minds**. Also there is the idea, which dovetails to an extent with idealism, of all beings/organisms, or more pertinently living entities, as one entity, branched, or budded off into separate organisms in the realm of manifestation/objectification. With the root unseen, or known by us rather like the root of gravity being unseen, or known.
* although I don’t see the need for such aversion to the idea of some connection, or lineage, or [I]mind[/I] between beings. I can understand the aversion found amongst Western philosophers and Buddhist scholars. But for me, I see, a kind of apologetics, or fig leaf being used when such ideas come to the surface.
** I use mind in a broader sense than the thinking, or computational intelligence, often referred to. Rather the animating living aspect of being, which incorporates the whole electrical cohesion of the body.
‘I tick therefore I am’ :lol:
I said as much here on pg 59. He doesn’t talk about a noumenal world at all.
The chapter on noumena is relatively short, in which is found that noumena are merely the proverbial red-headed stepchild of a wayward human understanding.
After two books consisting of four chapters consisting of eight sections, ~200 pages, telling us all about how the faculty of thought/judgement/cognition works properly, and prior to moving on to the faculty of reason itself, he concludes with a scant 20-page exposè warning, by example, of understanding’s attempts to function beyond its warrant, perfectly demonstrating the major limitive premise, “….I can think whatever I please, provided only that I do not contradict myself….”
To say he talks about that for which even a representation is impossible to conceive, is so far beyond mistaken as to be deemed…..speaking of which…..ignorant.
This is a very fine example of the faulty deterministic perspective derived from the overextension of Newton's law.
In reality, the activities of the living being are caused by the being itself, not some external forces. Perception is an activity of living beings. Therefore, we have a very strong reason to "deny that physical objects cause perception of physical objects".
That is why your interpretation of Kant is like Sushi says, "flat out wrong". Kant proposes that the a priori intuitions of space and time are put to work by the human being, like tools in its production of the phenomenon you call "perception of physical objects", rather than perception being caused by what you call "physical objects".
Protension is the way that we relate to the future, and retention is the way that we relate to the past. As being at the present, we recognize a significant, even substantial difference between the two, past and future. Deterministic principles serve to dissolve this difference.
Whitehead, in his process philosophy, uses the concepts of "prehension" and "concrescence" to explain how a being at the present can experience the flow of time.
Quoting JuanZu
The non-present, which is "the form of the world", must necessarily be divided into two, to accomodate an adequate understanding of it. This is due to that substantial difference between past and future, and the result is that some form of dualism is necessary in order to derive an appropriate conception of "the world". Again, deterministic principles serve to dissolve this requirement.
Quoting JuanZu
We can understand that within the conscious being, the two distinct substances of past and future, are united into one, as retention and protension, and this constitutes conscious being at the present. This implies that being at the present, consciousness, "is constituted at the most fundamental level", as a combination of these two distinct things, past and future.
Your observation regarding the structure of CPR is interesting. I best not put my trowel away.
What still surprises me about the later sections is where he dismisses the either/or quality that has often been ascribed to him by later thinkers. The attempt to form the last words on an issue is yet not to have the last word. Otherwise, there would only be the silence Cratylus was said to have fallen into.
Are you referring to principles, that in which resides always and only absolute certainty?
Agreed on last words, generally. Thing is, Kant sets a high bar for himself, then claims to have attained to it. Anyone is free to agree whether he did, thereby tacitly giving him the last word, or not, denying the last word and setting the stage for saying something else.
Exactly. But the flow of time implies that the relation with the past and the future is not discontinuous. That is why our present is constantly related to non-presents and non-consciousnesses in the flow of time.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Here you lost me. Can you explain this?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
They cannot be two consciousnesses as two substances. Because we have to guarantee the unity of experience, for example that the past is a past of mine just as the future is a future of mine. In this sense we are body, where non-presents and non-consciousnesses constitute us. This body is the world that constitutes us.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is not a dualism it is simply two dimensions that relate to the present. But the important thing is that they are constitutive and non-present. In that sense consciousness is constituted by that which is not it. We do not perceive these dimensions in themselves unlike the present. There is something that is not conscious that constitutes consciousness. I call it the form of the world because we normally understand the world as something beyond consciousness and distinct from experience. There is an analogy with the non-present and the non-conscious.
I will have to think about it in those terms. I don't want to get too far over my skis.
In the passages I quoted, the view of Descartes and Berkeley as being childish both involve the personal being taken as a fundamental ground that is not only unproven but misses elements of experience. Kant claims his more mature approach looks for a set of conditions for the experience of the 'I think' that it is not self-evident but requires more understanding. How we visualize the boundaries seems connected to this kind of unknown. I will try to express this better in other posts.
Your point about Kant having the last word in many places if left unchallenged is well taken.
I appreciate this translation. I cut my teeth with the Norman Kemp Smith translation fifty years ago. It was like being sent to a different planet.
We have both read much of what the other has not. That is a peculiar feature of this space.
So, we could all benefit from what troubled you while reading this text.
I don't think we can make this conclusion. The flow of time itself appears to be continuous, as a continuous activity, but consider what is happening. Future time becomes past time. August 29 will change from being in the future to being in past. In the meantime, it must traverse the present. What I propose is that the present acts more like a division between past and future, than as a union of the two. Therefore the relation between past and future is discontinuous.
Quoting JuanZu
The difference between the deterministic world view, and the free will world view, is that the deterministic perspective assumes a continuity of existence, from past, through the present, to the future. This is what is supposed to be a necessary continuity, stated by Newton's first law. Things will continue to be, in the future, as they have been, in the past, unless forced to change. Any change is caused by another thing continuing to be as it has been, so that any change is already laid out, determined. That support a block type universe.
The free will perspective allows that as time passes, there is real possibility for change, which is not a continuity of the past. This violates Newton's first law. But in order to allow, in principle, for the possibility of this 'real change', we must break the assumed continuity of existence, past through present, into future. We must allow that at any moment of passing time, Newton's first law, the determinist premise, may be violated. This means that the idea of a thing having equal existence on the future and past side of present, would have to be dismissed as wrong. What this implies is that an object's existence is recreated at each moment of passing time. This is the only principle which will allow that a freely willed act can interfere in the continuity of existence, i.e. the continuity of existence is false. Of course, this is not difficult to accept, for those who believe that objects are a creation of the mind, anyway. The mind can only create the object as time passes.
Quoting JuanZu
Why do we need to guarantee such a unity? From the free will perspective this proposed unity makes no sense. Experience is entirely past. We have no experience of the future. We think of the future in terms of possibilities, but it is irrational for me to think that all possibilities will come to pass, and be a part of my experience. Only those possibilities which are actualized will be experienced. Therefore we cannot say that the future and past are united in experience. Only the past has been experienced, and future possibilities always remain outside of experience.
Quoting JuanZu
I agree with this, except there is one big problem. The problem is that we understand the non-present to consist of two parts which are radically different, the past and the future. We know that with respect to the future there is real possibility in relation to what we will do, and what will come to pass. And, we also know that with respect to the past there is an actuality as to what we have done, and what has come to pass. So, if we accept this as a reality, that the past consists of actuality, and the future consists of possibility, dualism is unavoidable.
You call this "something that is not conscious that constitutes consciousness", "the form of the world", and I am pointing out to you, that the form of the world consists of two very different aspects. And because there are two very different aspects which constitute the form of the world, we need a dualism to understand the world.
It’s not that I find Kant troubling so much as that reading him is very hard work. But I find if I go through it methodically I can understand the arguments. I also want to understand it well enough to understand the criticisms by his successors.
Are you familiar with the book Incomplete Nature by Terrence Deacon, a biological anthropologist. He develops the idea of absentials, which are ‘constitutive absences’ - a purpose not yet achieved, such as a seed aiming to become a plant, or the absence of a specific structure, like the cylinder in an engine that channels force, which gives it causal power. or the axle hole which allows the wheel to spin.
Deacon's Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emeged from Matter was published around 12 years ago. Very hard book to descibe in few words. Have a look at the info about it. particularly this interview. He stays within the bounds of scientific naturalism, but is critical of mainstream materialist explanations of living beings. He introduces concepts including 'absentials' and 'ententionality'. Worth knowing about.
Thanks for info. Might be a useful read in the future :)
Terrence Deacon's concept of "absentials" from *Incomplete Nature* refers to higher-order phenomena that are defined by what is absent, constrained, or negated rather than by what is materially present. These are real causal powers that emerge from organized absences or constraints.
Here are some key illustrative examples:
**Biological Examples:**
- **A hole in a membrane** - The hole itself is an absence of material, but it has real causal power (allowing specific molecules to pass through while constraining others)
- **Enzyme active sites** - The precisely shaped "empty" space in an enzyme that constrains which molecules can bind and react
- **Ecological niches** - Defined not by what's there, but by the absence of certain competitors, predators, or resources, creating opportunities for specific organisms
**Physical Examples:**
- **Soap bubbles** - The bubble's spherical form is maintained by the constraint of surface tension minimizing area, not by any positive structural material
- **Whirlpools or hurricanes** - Stable patterns maintained by constraints on fluid flow, with no fixed material components
- **Crystalline structures** - The regular lattice emerges from constraints on how atoms can be arranged, creating "forbidden" positions
**Information/Meaning Examples:**
- **Phonemes in language** - The sound /p/ is defined by the absence of vocal cord vibration that distinguishes it from /b/
- **Musical rhythm** - Defined as much by the silences and what doesn't happen as by the notes played
- **DNA's informational content** - Meaning emerges from constraints on which base pairs can form, not just from the bases themselves
**Thermodynamic Examples:**
- **Temperature gradients** - The difference (absence of equilibrium) drives heat engines and biological processes
- **Chemical potential** - The "tendency" for reactions based on what's energetically prohibited vs. allowed
These absentials demonstrate how constraint, absence, and negation can be causally efficacious - they do real work in the world by organizing and channeling material processes, even though they're not material things themselves.
At a glance the above notes you provided remind me of Gleick's book 'Chaos'.
Busy on other projects atm, but sounds super intriguing. I never suffer from lack of distractions! :D
From my point of view, the division between past, present, and future is like a painting where three colors are differentiated without there being a clear division. There is a difference between past and future, but the difference is not clear. The discontinuous view of time requires punctuality in which each moment stops, and we would see how everything stops at each moment. But experience shows us the opposite
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I understand what you mean, thank you for the clarification.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I speak of guaranteeing the unity of experience simply because I am talking about consciousness and how time passes through it. In this sense, the time of consciousness is analogous to that of the world, but it is not strictly that of the world; it is only a point where a little time flows, so to speak. A small number of events compared to the vastness of all events in the universe.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
For me, the past and the future do not belong to being, so I cannot say that they are substances and therefore I cannot say that there is any dualism. Ousia is precisely present, and this can be found in Aristotle's physics. And when I speak of non-presents, I am speaking of something that is neither ousia nor substance. As I see it, we must opt for a category other than being and substance. Something other than substantialism. Derrida calls them traces, as things that are not present, but never totally absent, since we come into contact with them and they constitute us. According to this, we are made up of traces of the past and the future.
I’ve read the passages you mentioned, he’s explaining how in considering time and causation we can conclude that things have an existence in themselves (in it’s self).
I’ve also had a look at noumenon, I can’t unfortunately copy and paste the text from this pdf. So I will have to paraphrase, the passage I’m thinking of is to be found in B311, page 350, in the text.
It basically explains that noumenon are all things thought about, or which could potentially be thought about, but which are not brought into thought by sensible intuition( thinking about things we experience through the senses), which have an empirical basis. As such they are thought about through insensible intuition, (our imagination) or thought divorced from empirical understanding. That by definition they cannot be thought about, because any thought we do have is conditioned by our sensible intuition. So they are an absence of thought. They cannot be thought in any way. They form a boundary of sensible thought. They are not invented arbitrarily, but are connected with the limit of sensible intuition. Yet without being able to posit anything positive outside the domain of the latter.
They are a limit, or boundary, beyond which we cannot pass. But enable us (hypothetically) to see the the boundary of thought and understanding.
From the text;
The way I see it is as a boundary like a line, or plane in three dimensional space. On one side is the world of appearances, the empirical world we know. While on the other side is an absolutely undefined realm, which is not nothing, because it is defined by being on the other side of the boundary, (which certainly exists), because it is defined by the world of the senses. But we can’t project, or say anything about it, it is blank.
However this is not to say there isn’t anything there, there might be. There might be more there than on the side of the senses. But we have absolutely no way of seeing, or knowing that. We are entirely limited to the world of senses and appearances.
For windows, highlight, simultaneously control/c, control/p;
For Mac, highlight, simultaneously command/c, command/p.
I had the same frustration with the Cambridge download.
This is similar to the idea that knowledge progresses through a determination of what is impossible. In a world of possibility, the impossible constitutes necessity. A multitude of impossibilities may be shaped or formed as constraints, which leave a designed "hole" allowing for only a specific type of possibility.
With modern computational capacity, to collect and classify statistics, the focus has moved away from impossibility, to deal with possibility directly under the concept of probability. However, probability does not obtain the same degree of certainty as the necessity of impossibility.
Quoting JuanZu
Using your colour analogy, my perspective is that past and future are distinct colours, like yellow and blue for example, and the present is a mixing, or overlapping of the two, green. Like yours, there is no clear division apparent to the observer at the present. However, unlike yours, I assume that there is actually a clear division which can be discovered through analysis of the elements at the present, to reveal which are blue and which are yellow. The issue being that intuition tells us that the past is of a completely different type from the future. Therefore the mixing must only be apparent, a deficiency of the observation tools, and there is a true distinction which lies underneath, waiting to be revealed. The mixing of black elements and white elements produces the appearance of a grey area.
Quoting JuanZu
When the categories are properly created, actual and possible, the difference is very clear, like black and white.
Quoting JuanZu
This is the critical point. The Platonic tradition in philosophy holds the basic principle, 'the senses deceive us'. This is the "deficiency of the observational tools" I refer to above. Experience shows us a continuity of activity, and we do not see that everything stops at each moment, but that does not necessarily mean that this is the reality of the situation. We know that a progression of still frames can produce the appearance of continuous activity. The binary on/off of "everything stops at each moment" could be a fundamental vibration of reality.
Quoting JuanZu
I think you should pay close attention to how you conceptualize "the world", and "the universe", especially in relation to the subject of the op. There are two ontologically distinct ways of conceiving "the world". In one way, "the world" is a large external unity, sometimes called "the universe", of which each person is a part of. In the other way, "the world" is a mind-created concept, held by the subject. Of course both are described as "distinct ways of conceiving" therefore the only one which could be true is the latter.
From this perspective, "the time of consciousness" is not "analogous to that of the world", it is that of the world. Any conception of an independent "time of the world", is just an extension of, or projection from "the time of consciousness".
So when you say "it is not strictly that of the world", there is untruth to this because "that of the world" is really just an extension of the time of consciousness. We can assume that there is a distinct 'time of the world', independent from the one we conceive of as an extension of the time of consciousness, but in doing this we must be prepared to accept that it may be completely different from our current conception of time, due to the deficiencies of our observational tools.
Quoting JuanZu
This is why we have to look very closely at "the present", our personal being at the present, and things like that, to question which propositions about the nature of the present are logically consistent with our own conscious being.
Consider the difference between your representation, of three distinct colours, and my representation of two distinct colours producing the appearance of a third, through mixing. The problem with yours is that it produces the need for two distinct boundaries, one between present and past, and one between present and future. This is what is required to isolate the present as distinct, and the only true "substance". That, I see as an unnecessary complication, actually producing three distinct substances. You class the two, future and past together, as other than being. But this is incorrect, because the difference between future and past disallows them from being classed together. The problem with mine is that it produces the need for skepticism and doubt concerning our "experience of the present". There is an appearance that the present is distinct, and separate from the past and future, as the substance of being, but that appearance is misleading. Which do you think i more logically consistent with your own conscious being, yours or mine?
Brain fart. I’ve never used a Mac, and like you I use an iPad these days, so can’t explain why I said Mac.
Anyway….. command/c, command/p.
Here is the whole paragraph of your citation:
Quoting CPR B310
The boundary helps us understand what our intuitions do not give us. But Kant puts the kibosh on any attempt to relate the two domains in a wider view. The beginning of the very next paragraph is:
Quoting CPR, B311
I recommend finishing the whole paragraph for yourself as paragraphs are the basic unit in this writing.
To approach the difference between inner and outer, more attention needs to be spent on earlier paragraphs concerning intuition and experience. I will try to point to what stands out for me in the coming days. I have to get back to my chores.
I guess I would agree with the Madhyamika philosophers. Because on the other hand without such a reification, it becomes merely an idea, and thus seems to lose all explanatory power.
I always comes back to this basic problem?experience shows us that we all see the same things at the same times and places is unquestionable that we live in a shared world. On the other hand there is no evidence that our minds are connected in any way such as to be able to explain that shared experience. The default assumption is that things we encounter are real existents that don't depend for their existence on our encountering them. So that model explain why we would experience a shared world. The idealist alternative would be to assume a hidden collective mind or consciousness, or a universal mind of which we are all manifestations, and that could be the Abrahamic God, Brahma, or some creator deity.
I don't see gravity as a good analogy because its effects are measurable. I believe that the idea of independently existing things makes sense?others see problems with it, but it seems those problems stem form assumptions that I don't share.
The idea of a shared or collective mind is not logically contradictory, so it makes sense in that sense, but I think the idea is extremely underdetermined by our everyday experience.
Quoting Paine
That's an interesting passage from Kant?I don't remember encountering it before. It seems to undercut any move towards dualism.
Some say that synthetic a priori knowledge is possible and that it has nothing to do with sense experience, but they seem to forget that Kant's categories were discovered by him by reflecting on perceptual experience and abstracting its general and necessary characteristics.
That's where you're being dogmatic. As has been pointed out, physics itself has cast this into doubt, to which you then say you don't have the expertise to judge that. But it can be explained in English, even if the subject itself relies on mathematics. You can't just brush that off, as if it has no significance, when it's central to philosophy in the 21st century.
The second point is, that I've also repeated a number of times, we share a common set of cognitve, cultural and linguistic practices, which converge on what you describe as a shared world. I say it's a shared experience of the world, which is almost, but not quite, the same thing! The world as it perceived by very different kinds of beings, would be a very different world.
The things we encounter don't depend on us for their existence, but what their existence is for us does. So again you need to get clear what I mean by independent of mind. I say right at the outset there are many things we ourselves will never encounter or know, but that doesn't vitiate the argument, that all we know of existence is dependent on our cognitive and intellectual faculties.
Again what I'm arguing against is the idea of a kind of ultimate objectivtiy, that the real world is what exists independently of any observation or knowledge on our part. I'm arguing that all knowledge has an inelminably - can't be eliminated - pole or aspect. Contrary to what you say, this is not 'trivial', it's something that many objectively-oriented philosophers and scientists don't accept,
What you are gleaning from physics is just one interpretation?the one you resonate with?there is no solid consensus that your interpretation is the correct one. Also you are not an expert in that field, by any means, which gives you even less warrant to cite it.
The commonalities of our sensory organs and cognitve, cultural and linguistic practices cannot on their own explain the fact that we all see the same things at the same times and places. At most it can only explain what might tend to stand out for us, or the general form our perceptions take?for example in regard to the part of the electromagnetic spectrum we can detect, or the limitations on the acoustic frequencies we can detect?as well as the names we give to the things we encounter, and the we have conceptions of them, such as their purpose, place in human life and so on.
Even if it could explain how it is that humans see the same world, it cannot explain the fact that our observations show that our dogs see the same things we do, for example. I live on a fifteen acre property and there are many wallabies. When I walk the dogs I will often catch sight of a wallaby, and the dogs will also, and if I don't restrain them they will be off chasing it. Now the wallaby may look different to dogs than it does to us on account of the fact, among others, that when it comes to colours, they can apparently only see in blue and yellow, but it is undeniable that they see what I call "the wallaby".
I have asked you to explain how "a common set of cognitve, cultural and linguistic practices" could determine our seeing precisely the same things. Say, for example you and I have in front of us a white A4 sheet of paper covered with "hundreds and thousands" (I'm sure you are familiar with those little coloured sweet grains). I take a very sharp pencil and point precisely to just one of the hundreds of grains, and ask you what colour it is. You will agree with me as to whether it is yellow, blue, green or red, undoubtedly. Can you explain how your "common set of cognitve, cultural and linguistic practices" can account for that agreement?
And what. specifically, about the original post goes against that?
Quoting Janus
It goes directly against your contention that every observer sees the same thing when the observations show they don’t. If it were really objective there would be no need for interpretation.
Don't worry about the original post or QM, just answer the straightforward question above if you can. What is at issue is the explanatory power of your idealist thesis absent the inclusion of 'mind at large', collective mind, universal mind, God.
I just can't believe you don't see the problem.
Quoting Wayfarer
Are you saying that the fact that there are different conceptual interpretations of the experimental results goes against my claim that every observer sees the same thing? Well, it doesn't? just as it is possible that people can pass different judgements about anything that is seen doesn't entail that what has been seen is different.
It is not that different things are observed, but that the class that what has been observed should be placed in, or the explanation for what is observed, may differ from person to person. Judgements about what is observed are interpretive and of course may differ?what is observed is not a matter of interpretation.
As to that I meant that when the 'two slit experiment' is carried out every observer sees the inference pattern, and when they pass light through one slit every observer sees the accumulation of points on the photographic plate.
What I’m saying is that the frameworks through which we recognize “yellow, blue, green, red” are already the product of shared cognitive, biological, and cultural conditions. That explains the convergence without appealing to a “mind at large.” Agreement on basic perceptual categories doesn’t refute idealism — it actually illustrates it: what we call “the same world” is constituted through intersubjective structures of cognition. That’s the whole point of transcendental idealism: not denying reality, but clarifying that the way it shows up for us is inseparable from the conditions of human experience.
You keep coming back to the idea that I’m saying “the world is all in your mind.” But I’ve disclaimed that right from the start. My point is not solipsism. The point is that the only sense in which we can talk about “the world” is through the cognitive and experiential structures that make it appear for us at all. That doesn’t deny that there is a shared reality — on the contrary, it explains how we come to agree on things like colors in the first place: because we share common forms of sensibility, cognition, and culture.
Quoting Janus
You’re the one who said that if science digs down far enough, different observers will converge on the same underlying reality. But quantum physics has shown that this is not straightforward. The uncertainty principle already tells us that knowledge of subatomic particles is inherently approximate, not exact. And in some cases, like the experiment described here A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality. It doesn’t take a degree in maths to follow it: two observers obtain different and conflicting observations, both of which are accurate. But there are other examples from quantum physics, such as Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment.
And it’s not a matter of my choosing or preferring one interpretation over another. If it were truly objective, there’d be no question of interpretation.
But what is it that you call "the wallaby"? Is it the colour? No, because then the dogs wouldn't be seeing the wallaby. Is it the shape? Why would you think that the dogs see the same shape as you if they do not see the same colours? Colours outline the shape. What exactly is it that you are seeing, which you think the dogs are also seeing, which makes you conclude that they see the same thing as you? That you insist it is "undeniable" that they are seeing the very same thing, which inclines you to say "wallaby", is simply ridiculous.
In reality, you are just seeing something and assuming, or concluding that there is a thing there called a wallaby. But the dogs are neither assuming nor concluding a thing called a wallaby, so why would you conclude that they are seeing a thing called a wallaby? They are seeing something, and perhaps they are even assuming something about what they see, but they are not assuming "a wallaby". So what makes you think that they are seeing "the wallaby"?
You are merely forcing your own subjective conclusion onto the other (dogs in this case). Without even discussing it with the dogs, you simply conclude that because you see what makes you think "wallaby", and the dogs are seeing something, then the dogs must also see the very same thing which makes you think "wallaby". But this is so obviously illogical, not having the premises required for that conclusion.
You even admit that what you are calling "the wallaby" "may look different to the dogs". So, unless you can say what you see which inclines you to designate "the wallaby", and show how the dogs are also seeing the very same, so that they would also be inclined to designate "wallaby" in the same way that you do, your claim is completely unsupported. It's just an arbitrary assertion, perhaps designed to support a very likely ill-conceived ontology.
The first is correct, the second is the contradiction of it, which makes it false. That there is a thing observed is not a matter of interpretation, corrects the contradiction.
You’re correct….or, I agree….that you and the dog see the same thing, whatever it may be. Of the two, only you represent the thing seen with a particular concept, but you would readily admit that you haven’t a clue what the dog’s doing with his perception, but you can be sure he isn’t representing it to himself with the same conceptual reference as you.
————-
Wouldn’t you agree it’s possible for a human and some other kind of intelligence to have a common perception? Which is just to say some thing is given by which their respective senses are affected, which in turn is just to say, albeit with fewer technicalities, they see the same thing, isn’t it?
There is the dualism between the appearances and the objects generated through thinking. But this is nothing like the "hylomorphism" presented by Aristotle and others. The contemporary use of "mind-independence" as a criterion of objectivity is for Kant a misunderstanding of the soul caused by the limits of our experiences of the "I think":
Quoting CPR A360
This should be read in the context of it being but one element of the chapter: "The paralogisms of pure reason" beginning at A341/B399.
Then you would do well to actually do this; not make blanket statements not even (until after this passage) supported by even your own take on something.
Quoting I like sushi
I think you're wrong, because that is precisely what Kant does. He simply tells us we cannot assert any content to the conceptual objects logically required for the system to work. This is a distinction that it seems you're missing entirely, when thinking about 'physical'. Kant, you're quite right, never discusses noumena as physical objects. In this sense, they present a boundary case for human reasoning.
However, he is also quite clear that these objects are, in fact, required, despite holding for us absolutely no content or quality, for the system to make any sense. Noumena must be physical objects. That is what the system requires. Kant is just extremely careful not to say something he cannot support - therefore, these objects are beyond our ability to conceive. And that's fine.
If you want to hold that we perceive physical objects without there actually being any objects to cause our perception to be involved in anything whatsoever, I can't understand how you aren't a full-on idealist hoping to one day become a disembodied mind. I can't get on with even the beginnings of such a clearly wrong-headed way of approaching phenomena. My response above clarifies that I don't even disagree with what you're saying, as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far enough. Below...
Your second paragraph is missing a crucial, unavoidable and clearly required aspect. That is the objects which engage our perception. Otherwise, we are perceiving nothing. That's clear. So, If the arguments are going to continue along these lines feel free to assume a W and leave me out of it. Have bene over this several times with several people and it is, to me, obviously and somewhat incredibly, wrong.
Please assemble a collection of citations that support this interpretation.
The difference between the action of gravity on our experience and the action of a universal mind, for example, may be that one appears in the external world of appearances where we measure things and the other doesn’t. The latter might have an action in us, which we can’t measure, or isolate as a property.
Anyway, I was using it to illustrate that there are things/forces in our world which literally affect every movement we make about which we have little understanding.
Quite, but as I say, it’s presence in our lives might just be inobvious, or orthogonal to our preoccupations.
Referring back to Kant, he is pointing out the limits of our understanding of the world we find ourselves in by delineation the noumenon. Also in Eastern philosophies, such concepts are used the the contemplation of our nature and the realisation of worlds, or realms accessed via meditation, or revelation.
I have an affinity with these concepts as I am concerned with realising our limitations and developing ways to view our limitations in the context of our lives (living a life), for example.
In pointing out that feature, I am admitting a certain portion of interpretation when I emphasize a particular set of sentences above others. So, I am trying to be fair to alternative readings.
I've been alerted to a book on Kant called Kant's Theory of Normativity, Konstantin Pollok. He refers to Kant's transcendental hylomorphism, by which he means that Kant transposes Aristotle's form and matter relation to the register of cognition itself (where form is supplied by the a priori structures of sensibility and understanding, and matter by the manifold of intuition). This is foreshadowed in the opening section of the Transcendental Aesthetic, where he writes:
[quote=B34-A20]I call that in the appearance which corresponds to sensation its matter, but that which allows the manifold of appearance to be intuited as ordered in certain relationsa I call the form of appearance. Since that within which the sensations can alone be ordered and placed in a certain form cannot itself be in turn sensation, the matter of all appearance is only given to us a posteriori, but its form must all lie ready for it in the mind a priori, and can therefore be considered separately from all sensation.[/quote]
This is not to suggest a direct equivalence with Aristotelian hylomorphism, but rather a genealogical similarity: Kant is reworking the old form–matter distinction in a new, transcendental key, shifting it from the register of being (ontology) to the register of knowing (episteme).
Incidentally for those interesting reading Kant, the site Early Modern Texts has a useful resource here https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/authors/kant. The translator, Bennett, translates the texts into a more modern idiom with explanatory content. It's more an addition to the Cambridge/Guyer translation, rather than a substitute for it, but also has very useful detailed tables of contents which help with forming a mental map of the materials.
You are still missing the point. Due to the general structural and functional characteristics of the human eye most of us see the same range of colours. Humans don't see ultraviolet or infra-red. Dogs apparently only see in tones of blue and yellow. That has nothing to do with cultural conditioning. How we categorize and names the more than a million distinct colours we can detect is a function of both cultural conditioning and the similarities between the different hues and tones.
That we agree when I point to one particular coloured particle out of hundreds as to which colour it is is not at all a function of cultural conditioning. I point at a green one say, and that you also see me pointing at a green one shows that there must be something independent of both of us that explains that, provided we accept that our perceptual organs and minds are in no hidden way connected. This is my final attempt to explain it to you?if you still don't get it, then that's pretty incredible but just too bad.
Quoting Mww
It is not merely that there is a thing observed, but that the fact that there is a particular kind of thing observed is also not a matter of subjective interpretation. We both see the dog there and we both class the thing as being a dog, so what you seem to be thinking of as the interpretation only relates to the classing, and the classing is not a subjective interpretation, but a shared practice of naming. If there was a cat or any other other object there neither of us would see a dog.
The dog and I both see something we call a wallaby. I know he sees an animal there and not a runaway trail bike, because if he catches what he sees, he may start to eat it. So, then I know he sees, just as I do, something suitable to be eaten.
I confess I don't understand what you or the quoted passage from Kant is attempting to convey. Can you explain?
Quoting Punshhh
I agree, and for me this means that gravity is a definite part of our experience whereas a universal mind is not?the latter is purely speculative.
Quoting Punshhh
I have no argument with that?we each have affinities for different ideas.
But I'm not denying that there is an external world. What I'm denying is that knowledge of that world is purely objective, that we can see it as it is or as it would be absent any observer. The entailment being that when we imagine or depict the Universe with no human observer in it, that depiction is still dependent on the perspective which only the mind can bring. But that we forget that, or suppress it, or bracket it out, such that we believe that our bare cognition of the world reveals it as it truly is, in itself.
There's no point in trying to 'explain' something to me in respect of something I haven't claimed in the first place:
Quoting Mind-Created World
The I have no idea what we have been disagreeing about, because it is true by mere definition that we cannot see the world as it would be absent any observer.
I had thought you took issue with the idea that we can speculate about what existed prior to humans, which just consists in imagining what we would have seen had we been there. The other point is that I don't accept the idea that things cannot exist outside of any perspective, and I'm pretty sure you disagree with that.
My point all along has been that there is no use in arguing about that because there can be no way of determining the truth regarding that. Of course take issue with any dogmatic assertions about it given that no one could know for certain.
So, I am not dogmatically asserting that things definitely existed prior to any percipients, or definitely exist absent any perception of them, but I do think that is the most plausible conclusion, most consistent and coherent with human experience and understanding of the world.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't know what conundrums you are referring to. I see more potential for conundrums in denying that things can exist absent percipients.
What might that be. That within which. Hmmmm…..
Usually known by the name of the ordering and placing in a certain form, rather than the name of that within which it occurs. Sorta like, only reason people know Joe the plumber is from his plumbing. And the term for the result of all that ordering and placing in a certain form, is as well-known as George Herman Ruth’s nickname.
Be careful, anyway. There’s two of them. Or one of them with the proverbial split personality. Everydayman himself …..all else being given…..admits he’s got one, and readily acknowledges he even uses it. But how it’s doing what it does when he uses it he cannot tell you. One of the anti-Kantian gripes…..he can’t tell you how either (A78), but incorporates it as a what that plays its part, not in one, oh HELL no, but BOTH!!!!! (Yikes) aspects of the very system transcendental philosophy prescribes, re: sensibility, where all that ordering and placing of empirical stuff, happens, and logic, where all the ordering and placing of rational stuff happens.
But still, it’s his philosophy, he invented it. Take it or leave it, right?
Way past the register of being (A247) for sure, but maybe not quite the register of knowing.
Who’s we? You and the dog? It’s only you and the dog perceiving this thing, right then, right there, and that is one damn special dog telling you he sees what he calls a wallaby. Nahhhhh, there’s no one else there, so it’s you and the dog seeing what you call a wallaby.
You got the right idea, kinda, but your wording needs rewording. My opinion, of course. Maybe I’m missing the point here, dunno. Cuz the wording’s so….confusing.
You make it sound like my wording is generally obscure, but I think if it be compared with Kant's or even your own, I doubt it could be judged to be any more obscure, and if anything would probably be judged to be less obscure.
Anyway it's rare on these forums that anyone complains that they cannot understand what I've been saying.
I don't know if you're missing the point?which was just that the dog and I both see a wallaby, and judging by the dogs behavior towards it, he sees it as something to be eaten. I don't see wallabies as to be eaten but as to be preserved, but I have hit and killed one with my car ( on the road, not on the property I dwell on), which I subsequently ate (not my car, the wallaby, just in case I've been obscure again).
Ok, I’m done with this.
Quoting Janus
HA!!! Good one.
Name one.
Anything that appears presumably exists somehow independently of appearing. You contradict yourself when you say that you don't deny the existence of the external world, and then claim that anything that exists must be subject to a perspective. That is to conflate perception of something with its actual existence.
If you want to get away from bare phenomenalism? the idea that all that exists are perceptions ?then you must allow that there is something, not generated by the percipient, that appears, whether it is actual existents or ideas in God's mind. Either way when it is not appearing it cannot be subject to any perspective unless in the "God's mind' scenario, God is held to have a perspective.
Your anthropomorphism lacks credulity.
On one way of reading this: that 'existence' is only ever intelligible to us under the conditions of immediate experience, what you are saying is, firstly, a dogmatic statement, since you are only entitled to say what is intelligible to you.
Secondly saying that the idea of existence is unintelligible under said conditions just is to deny that anything can exist that is not presently subject to a perspective, or that it cannot be said to exist outside of that perspective.
It's true that we cannot think the existence of something, in the sense of thinking what the existence is like, without applying a perspective to it, that is to say we cannot imagine what a totally perspective-less existence could be like.
But that is not to say that we cannot coherently imagine that things can and do exist absent any perspective?that they can and do exist completely independently of us and our imaginings. It's all about nuance.
Another possible reading is more sensible: you could be saying that we cannot say that anything exists or has existed which in principle we could not possibly experience or perceive. If that is all you are saying then I don't think I disagree, although I might need to think some more on that. Dark matter and energy come to mind, although admittedly their existence is speculative, even if supported by the physics.
No. I would say that a perception is unique to the being that perceives it. This is due to a multitude of factors, unique spatial temporal perspective, unique features of the perceiving body, etc.. So I believe it is impossible that two beings could have a common perception.
Quoting AmadeusD
Why do you assume that there is an object which engagers a person's perception. Like I said, the perception is a creation of the perceiver. Therefore the perceiver creates the object.
Quoting AmadeusD
This is an unjustified conclusion. A person can be wrong in what they believe they are perceiving, and this does not produce the conclusion that they are perceiving nothing. So, a person can wrongly believe that they are perceiving objects, when in fact they are not perceiving objects, and this does not produce the conclusion that they are producing nothing. They might simply be perceiving something other than objects, and falsely believe that what is perceived is objects.
Quoting AmadeusD
As explained above, what appears to be clear to you is completely illogical.
Quoting AmadeusD
it's incredibly wrong to you, because you have an illogical thinking process.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is exactly the crucial thing to understand about Kant. He brings the potential of matter (by Aristotle's principles) right into the conscious mind as "the a priori structures of sensibility". Accordingly, since "matter" refers to the unintelligible aspect of reality, Kant makes the unintelligibility of reality a feature of the mind rather than a feature of the independent reality. A deficiency of the mind is the cause of the unintelligibility of the mind. Simply put, it is the minds dependence on the senses. This is distinctly different from the Neo-Platonic perspective which assigned perfection to the mind, as immaterial anmd independent, making the reason for unintelligibility something separate from the mind, matter. In a sense, for Kant, mind is already corrupted by the presence of matter, as the a priori intuitions.
At the base level, there's nothing wrong with eating roadkill.
If you think noumena is physical though you are completely and utterly wrong. This is not really a matter of opinion. It might be annoying to hear this, but there is nothing wrong with being wrong.
If you are still convinced your view is right then the onus is very much on you to reference and explain why, using his actual words; as the scholarly concensus on this is pretty much stacked completely against you. Note: When I say 'scholarly' I mean reputable scholarly work not amateur interpretations (which are rife with misrepresentation of Kant, due to his multifacted approach).
So what?
I can’t (Kant) see a disagreement between us, it’s more a difference of emphasis. That looking through different ends of the telescope thing again. You emphasise the importance of proof and the empirical. Me pretty much the opposite, the emphasis on what can’t be proved, or focussing on what can’t be quantified in the empirical. Although we both are concerned with sticking to the truth and not wondering down blind alleys.
Tread carefully, dog is God read backwards. What if dog’s read backwards?
Anubis anyone.
The title of the thread is* (in a nutshell), to tease out a blindness in the view that, supported by science etc. the physical world**is what exists and anything else is mere speculation. A view which is held by the majority of the population. That the overwhelming truth of this orthodoxy cannot in all seriousness be challenged, and that this (orthodoxy) results in a blinkered view.
*apologies Wayfarer, if I have misrepresented the tittle.
**I am simplifying the various physicalist perspectives into one phrase here.
I imagine you meant each perception is unique to the being that perceives. Yours implies a perception is perceived. Nobody perceives a perception.
But I didn’t ask about the perception as much as its causal necessity.
So you don’t agree that a thing given by which dissimilar being’s senses are affected, is the same as the effect a given thing has on dissimilar beings perceiving it.
Ever notice, e.g., forest fires, where all sorts of critters are all running away from the same thing;
Creatures as dissimilar as whales and terns each treat bait balls as the same one thing;
You claim to see a horse’s head, I claim to see a lion’s head, but we are only perceiving a cloud.
Judgement of a perception is unique; perception itself, that by which various and possibly dissimilar sensibilities, are effected, is not.
————-
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don’t read A20/B34 that way, which is where he first installs matter as such into the system.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It doesn’t; it refers to the undetermined aspect of reality. The undetermined is not necessarily the unintelligible.
What I am saying is that the idea that there is "a thing" which is perceived is a faulty idea. So, I'm saying that all these supposed "things", forest fires, balls, and clouds, could be better understood if we simply accept that the perception of them as things is mistaken and misleading. It doesn't matter that all types of critters act as if they are perceiving things, because they all evolved in a similar way, and that was in a way which conditioned them to act as if they are perceiving things, just like us. The claim that we all perceive the same "things" is just as effective to argue that we all make the same mistake, as it is to argue that it must be the truth, because it is common.
So here's an example. We describe the way that electromagnetic energy interacts with 'things', as the photoelectric effect. Because we understand electrons and atoms as things existing in spacetime, this forces us to conceive of electromagnetism as things, photons, in order that we can understand this interaction. However, much evidence indicates to us that electromagnetism actually exists in the form of waves, rather than as things called photons. Further, there is also much evidence which indicates that the interaction between the supposed 'things', photons and electrons, would be better understood, if we represent these things as waves in a substance, rather than as things in spacetime. Therefore the evidence indicates that we are moving in the wrong direction, toward misunderstanding rather than toward understanding, by representing the wave activity of electromagnetism as things, photons, instead of representing the supposed physical things as wave disturbances, to establish the required compatibility to understand interaction.
As an analogy, consider how we understand hearing. We know that when a supposed thing makes a noise, we don't sense the noise as physical particles of noise being emitted from the thing making the noise, and being received by the ear. We understand it as a wave activity of molecules. But then we must understand that the supposed thing emitting the noise, and the supposed thing receiving the noise, are not actually things at all, but a collection of particles, molecules. The idea that there is a thing which emits the noise, and a thing which receives the noise is very misleading because it does not allow the proper understanding, which requires that the supposed 'things' must be understood as really the activity of something else. The true understanding is that the supposed 'thing' is not a thing at all, but some other activity of something else, which appears to us as if it were a thing.
That's the key to understanding how the conception of 'things' is misleading. The supposed 'thing' is really a bunch of underlying activity, and insisting that it is actually a physical thing debilitates our capacity to understand the reality of it. That is the point of process philosophy in general. Modeling reality as consisting of things which are perceived by us is not an accurate representation, and very misleading to anyone who wants a true understanding.
I see that Pollock supports my statement that mind-independence is not a critical criterion for objectivity in Kant.
Pollock quotes the second edition preface:
Quoting CPR B16
Pollock's Introduction ends with:
Quoting Pollock, Theory of Normativity
Tell that to my thumb, after getting whacked by a mis-directed hammer.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Doesn’t have to be an accurate representation; it is only necessary such representation not contradict either Mother Nature, at the same level, and not contradict antecedent experience on any level. Being flawed intelligences on the one hand, in that we get stuff wrong once in awhile, and being as we possess a purely speculative idea of our own intelligence on the other, it is forgivable that we may not have, nor is there sufficient reason to expect to ever have, a true understanding. And we may not even know true understanding, if it happens.
Your reasoning is exemplary; it just exceeds the criteria for empirical knowledge of things on a common everyday scale. I mean….when was the last time you approached the SOL in anything with which you were consciously engaged? We’ve all perceived the alignment of susceptible particles into the shape of a field, but none of us have perceived the field of which the particles assume the shape.
I guess I should say I’ve never perceived; perhaps others have, dunno.
Some commenters you could look at:
Henry Allison: Takes the dual-aspect argument on and imo compellingly.
P.F Strawson makes similar comments in Bounds of Sense
Lucy Alais doesn't commit, but is heading in this direction, from what I've read (but that could turn out to be embarrassingly unhelpful)
Schulting seems to presuppose the noumena as physical
the SEP on Qualified Phenomenalism seems to also support this, or at least run over why its reasonable.
Essentially, one of the 'limits' Kant seems to implicitly assume, and then explain, is that we must make this assumption about there being physical objects, even when we have literally no other reason to think so than appearances. They are required to ground the purpose of the entire Critique.
This could be wrong, but It seems to be entirely reasonable and a respectable, if not more compelling interpretation than one which says we must jettison the concept of the physical (required, if we reject Noumena as such - or at least, we are given no way to retain it).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
These are two different things. I'm unsure how best to to get this across, but you cannot have a shadow without a physical object physically blocking light, even if we can never access that object. This how noumena must work for perception to do anything which gives us a physical impression. It seems a bit "edgy" to argue otherwise, to me.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This doesn't make much sense. A person is not perceiving if they are imagining, which seems to be what you're talking about. If you mean to make a delineation between perception-led impressions and imagination or ideas, then sure, that's highly relevant and complicates things. But it does not give me a counterexample to what I've said, that I can see.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. Sorry.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, no. Sorry. This seems a fairly standard response from people who like to argue about Kant and have rather precious interpretations. That;s not to denigrate you, or it. It is to say that I have come across this many times, and I am hearing nothing new.
Quoting I like sushi
1. Correct.
2. Not actually possible. If Kant is so complex, and I can find several notable and respectable writers who take the position I'm putting forward, you can't make this claim. Its exactly the same as I'm objecting to above. It is a standard response which is not actually capable of being made on the writings Kant left. The interpretive process gets us here, fairly squarely.
Quoting I like sushi
It seems you maybe have a twisted idea of what is going on in the work, and how people interpret it. I shall stick to reading those interpretations, thinking, and making reasonable inferences. Because this is simply not true. It is true, a consensus exists that the noumena act as a limting factor in human understanding. I've not argued this. There is a second aspect, though more fundamental to the system. I've been over this. It seems, from this, that you and others are not even understanding what's being said in my comments.
The fact is, if noumena do not represent, in an abstract phrasing, actual physical objects the system falls apart. That much is sound. I couldn't care less for quibbling over the fact there are two possible interpretations, and you think one is "flat out wrong" in the face of all I've said, and cited. I just can't take that all too seriously, though I appreciate the efforts everyone is making. You are simply not saying things that make my position incoherent, wrong on the words of Kant, or somehow way outside the reasonable interpretation window.
I'm going to agree with in this regard. I don't think there is a phrase that translates as 'physical object' in the COPR. Kant is clear that noumena cannot be equated with physical objects. Physicality, for him, already belongs to the phenomenal realm (governed by space, time, and causality). Noumenon functions as a boundary concept (as you say), marking the limit of experience (or: hypothetically as an object of intellectual intuition). To say “noumena must be physical objects” is to import a post-Kantian usage of “physical” that he explicitly brackets out. The better way to put it is: noumena are required for the system, but precisely as non-physical and unknowable.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Fascinating line of thought. It reminded me of Heidegger's essay on the topic What is a Thing? where he says that our very notion of 'thing’ is not given once and for all but always interpreted in accordance with the domain of discourse in which it is understood.
(Incidentally, a line from the introductory paragraph of that essay: “If one takes everyday representation as the sole standard of all things, then philosophy is always something deranged.” Something which participants in this thread would be well advised to contemplate.)
Quoting Punshhh
It's not a blindness but a sensible intellectual humility. All we know is this world. We can have no way of knowing if there is more. I think your assertion that most of the population think this world is all there is unsupported by the data: It is estimated that more than 85 percent of the global population identifies with a religious group.
I'd say those who want to believe in something that cannot be known to be true are the ones wearing blinkers. They see only through their own confirmation bias. I have no problem with people believing whatever they like provided they can be honest that it is all about faith, not knowledge. Apparently to admit that would undermine their beliefs, though. People's priorities are pretty sad considering the state the world is in.
[quote=Heidegger]If one takes everyday representation as the sole standard of all things, then philosophy is always something deranged.[/quote]
Like the OP, right?
At the time of injury, I would never be thinking about ontology. What's your point here?
Quoting Mww
Speak for yourself. Some of us are interested in truth. That's what I believe philosophy is all about. And for truth accurate representation is necessary, lack of contradiction doesn't fulfil the the criteria for truth. That we don't have truth is forgivable, as you say, but that doesn't mean we ought not seek it.
Quoting Mww
I think i said already, that a key point in Plato's philosophy is the failings, or deficiencies of sensation as a guide toward truth. To find truth we must exceed empirical knowledge. The "common everyday scale" is the life of the cave dweller. Truth is about escaping that common everyday perspective.
Quoting AmadeusD
This argument is based on a specific assumption about what "a shadow" is. If that assumption is wrong, then the argument is unsound. I believe the assumption is wrong, therefore I believe your argument is unsound. I'm unsure how to best get this across to you.
Quoting AmadeusD
My argument is that a person may misjudge what one is perceiving, and this does not imply that the person perceives nothing. That was to counter your claim that if a person is not perceiving objects one is perceiving nothing. It may be the case that the person judges oneself to be perceiving objects, but is not perceiving objects, yet still is perceiving.
Quoting Wayfarer
It all relates to the distinction I make between past and future. "Things", as physical objects, are a product of sense knowledge, empirical evidence. However, despite the fact that people claim that sensation occurs at the present, all sensation is always in the past from the perspective of the sensing subject. This means that "things", or "physical objects" refers only to the past. And when we realize that the future consists of possibilities rather than things, or physical objects, this forces us to totally reconceptualize what exactly exists at the present, or more precisely, what is actually happening at the present.
I believe that. But Heidegger is quite difficult. Good luck!
Quite, and it’s a good way of thinking about it, in order to free ourselves of hard materialism, or something. But it’s more complicated than that and we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that what we are involved in, in our little lives in this world we find ourselves in, is reality (for us) and that there is a purpose and process going on with and between the things.
As for the “activity of something else”, presumably we are talking of distant, or large objects, acting as poles. As in electrical, or magnetic poles?
Show me in the text where Kant says noumena is physical. You cannot. End of story.
I imagine out of all of these SEP might hint at such. I doubt very much any other states noumena is physical. you are jus trawling for secondary commentaries for evidence instead of presenting primary source quotes ... which makes me wonder if you have actually read COPR? Many people pose as if they have when it fact they simply did a course on it and were spoon fed information via a secondary source. Perfectly understandable as not everyone has the tiem or inclination to sift through such a dense volume.
You think the Kant's description of the unknowability of the in itself is a religious dogma, because you don't understand it. You think he's projecting an unknowable something. Meanwhile, 'the world', which you so confidently proclaim our knowledge of, is itself not the knowable, familiar and determinate realm which you so casually believe it to be. So you categorise this kind of argument, and that of the original post, as being kind of religious, which is why you think them dogmatic. It's just completely transparent, and it's the opposite of intellectual humility.
Ohfercrissakes. Obviously, my point is your thumb will be just as wounded by a mis-directed “faulty idea” as mine is by a hammer.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Wonderful. Be sure and let me know when, or if, you happen upon an accurate representation. That to which you compare the one you have, to another you don’t, from which the necessarily deficient quality of yours is determinable….well, good luck with that, I say.
Now, you might say the comparison is always just between your own representations, a succession predicated on changes in experience, which, ironically enough, is precisely what every cave-dweller since Day One, has done. But there is never in the manifold of successive changes in your own representations the implication of the unconditioned, that from which no further change is possible and from which the only logical notion of an accurate representation, is given.
Which leaves you with….(sigh)…..only those that don’t contradict each other, and from which it is clear the form of truth, that in a cognition which conforms to is object, already manifests an accurate representation, and justifies logic as the necessary criteria for the form any truth must exhibit.
————-
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Given as established the [i]conditio sine qua non[/i ] form of truth, that in a cognition which conforms to its object, and the impossibility of exceeding empirical knowledge with respect to experience of the objects contained in those cognitions, which is always that to which the form of truth relates, it follows there is no universal criteria for the fact of truth available to the human being.
There may be considered sufficient reason to exceed empirical knowledge insofar as the empirical knowledge we have does not afford us truth as such. But considering sufficient reason for an impossibility, is incomprehensible.
Yes, i think it's very complicated, and the trend for us is to simplify. We even have evolved in a way which has us sensing a very small bit of reality. So it is intuitive for us, as built into the fabric of our very existence, to simplify things. Consider for example, that our eyes are only sensitive to a small portion of the electromagnetic wavelengths, one octave so to speak. We've simply evolved in a way to focus on a very small, but very relevant part of reality.
The simplification helps to keep us focused directly on what is important and purposeful to our little corner of being, but it misleads us into thinking that this is representative of "the universe" as a whole. Ontologies like monism are an extension of this misleading trend toward oversimplification.
Quoting Punshhh
Not necessarily distant or large. If for example, we understand electromagnetism as waves, then there must be substance which the waves are active in (common called aether). That is simply the nature of a wave, it is the activity of the particles of an underlying substance. In our trend to simplify things, it seems like we overlook this need for an underlying substance which is active as waves, in our representations of electromagnetism. But then we end up with a wave function, or something like that, which accounts for the energy of the waves in their capacity to interact with assumed particles of matter, without providing any real representation of the waves.
The issue of poles is a further problem which I don't think can even be approached without a true representation of the waves. To look for the poles without first representing the waves would be like looking for a cause without first knowing the effect which you are looking for the cause of.
Sorry Mww, but I still don't get it. Whether or not a person understands how one received a wound, or even what it means to be wounded, is irrelevant to the feeling of being wounded. It seems like you are trying to say that fi one doesn't know how they got wounded, then they cannot feel the wound. If that is your point, then it's not valid.
Quoting Mww
Thank you, as you seem to understand, we need as much luck as we can possibly get, with this endeavour.
Quoting Mww
You seem to be saying that the process would go on forever, infinitely. I disagree, I think there would be an end to it. Whether the end comes in a good way or a bad way is another question, but I think the good way would be better than the bad way.
Quoting Mww
You are completely neglecting the reality of possibilities, and our inclination to judge some possible outcomes as better than others. It is not contradiction, or lack of it, which forms the basis, or grounding of our judgements, it is better and worse, good and bad, which provides that base. And these have a view toward the future, rather than the view toward the past which empirical representation has. Therefore real truth is grounded in the principles by which we judge goodness, as the basic form of all judgement.
Quoting Mww
Do you recognize two very distinct meanings of "object"? One is a physical thing, an object of sensation, empirical knowledge. The other is a goal, or end, the good. Since the physical object of empirical knowledge is demonstrably a faulty concept, produced by the deceptive nature of the senses, then we must consider that the true "object" is the goal or end, the good. Therefore "the form of truth" relates to the good, as the true object, the goal for the future, and not to the false "object" which is the object of empirical knowledge. The "object", as the goal, or end, the good, cannot be known by empirical knowledge, and this is why we must exceed empirical knowledge for real truth, to understand the real object, as the good. That is the principle of the is/ought divide.
Quoting Mww
Do you classify knowing the good as impossible?
I looked through what I could find of Henry Allison's writings, and he promotes a view of 'transcendental idealism' over against the view of 'transcendental realism' that he attributes to P.F. Strawson. I cannot copy and paste from the preview but here a link to Allison's book: Kant's Transcendental Idealism.
The Preface orients the distinction in the context of the CPR. Chapter 1 introduces sharp critics of transcendental idealism on page 4 and introduces P.F. Strawson as the champion of those views on page 5. The two thinkers are diametrically opposed in this debate concerning 'things-in-themselves.'
In the Cambridge edition of CPR, Strawson is cited in an editors' footnote for the following text:
Quoting CPR A36/B53
The editors' footnote #20 says (in part):
Strawson appears to hold the criteria of mind-independence as the last word on objectivity. Allison defends Kant's argument that the subjective condition is integral with the real.
Do you realise that you have just said that we know nothing, in particular. Well apart from what we have evolved to deal with.
I would go further and state that we cannot say anything positive, or negative about anything other than our world (except through revelation), welcome to the ranks of mysticism.
Regarding the poles, I would refer one to the myth of Ishvara (there are differing interpretations within Hinduism). I liken it to a divine being, spinning the world from her fingertips.
Or the first verse of the bible;
In both cases the deity whispers, blows, or spins the vibrations, or waves of form and diversity onto/into a ground, a field of potentially.
I won't get into the technicalities here - they don't fascinate me, with some exceptions of course. But I think looking at Lucy Allais' Manifest Reality is very comprehensive for Kant. She also analyzes people like Allison and Peter Strawson, many others.
Do you know of a portion of Allais that suggests I have mischaracterized the debate between Allison and Strawson?
I have been checking out secondary sources as they are appealed to by interlocutors. But I also have been trying to respond to them in the context of specific interpretations of the primary text such as those put forward by AmadeusD and Wayfarer.
What a ridiculous statement?I never claimed it was a religious dogma.. The in itself is unknowable by mere definition/ stipulation?the in itself is also just another human idea. We see things as they appear to us, and we have a natural tendency to want to know of those things what the fundamental nature or existence independent of their appearances to us is, and we recognize that it is impossible to know that?we might even say that since it is impossible the very idea is irrelevant or even a nonsense.
It is also true that we can speculate about what seems to be the possible alternatives, and we can consider whether it seems more plausible to think that our cognition of things gives us some knowledge of them or not.
It is also a ridiculously presumptuous and petulant statement?as usual you claim that anyone who has a different take than you must therefore not understand.
Quoting Wayfarer
Human knowledge of this world as it appears to be is vast and comprehensive. Can you cite even one piece of knowledge which is not of, about, or dependent upon this world of human experience?
I don't expect you to answer of course, because you apparently don't think it necessary to answer questions that present difficulties your dogma cannot handle.
Your own words:
Quoting Janus
Here, you are directly equating the argument in the original post with religious dogma - and now, you're denying you said it. Just as you constantly appeal to positivism, and then deny you're doing so. Doesn't warrant any further response.
There is nothing in the quoted passage there about Kant's description of the unknowability of the in itself being religious dogma. I haven't even used the words "religious dogma" there at all. What I have implied is that claiming what is accepted on faith is knowledge is to be asserting some religious dogma.
Quoting Janus
Meanwhile, as expected, you make no attempt to address my refutation of your ridiculous and obviously false claim that we don't know much of and about the world. You make a lot of claims, but when they are challenged you deflect and hide behind strawmen.
You know, it's not a matter of "I'm right and you're wrong", but of "I think this" and "Oh, I disagree with that because..." You seem to think that your perspective is unimpeachably correct and that the reason people disagree is because they are mired in a kind of modernist forgetting of truths know to the ancients. Such a claim is unsupported, hopelessly underdetermined, that's why I don't share that view. You cannot even be confident that you really understand what the ancients thought, since you don't read ancient languages and you rely on translators, who each have their own take on ancient thought.
So, I don't say you are so much wrong as you are spinning a story that suits your wishes as to how the world should be. You are basically a dogmatic proselytizer.
I think you did fine. The bit I understand of what you put forth makes sense.
But Kantian scholarship isn't something I'm an expert in; I suggested Allais because she covers almost all of them.
So, no interpretative issue arises that I can see here.
This really depends on how you would define "know". Unlike some epistemologists, I don't think that truth is a requirement for "knowledge". Plato, in The Theaetetus, demonstrated that we cannot actually ensure truth, so a determination of truth is not necessary for us to call some information "knowledge". So I'm not saying that we know nothing, I'm saying that truth isn't really part of our knowledge.
Quoting Punshhh
I tend to enjoy your mystic perspective.
Yes, and there are different kinds of knowledge. Something that interests me is knowledge acquired through the witnessing of events. This doesn’t require learning, or understanding, just observation, or presence. I can remember and visualise clearly, in memory, events that happened 30 years ago. In which I witnessed something unexplainable, something which defies credulity and which has broad ranging implications for how I think about the world and reality. And yet at the time, it was just something I noticed, experienced, for a split second. Something that happened so quickly and was over before I could react. I could have just carried on, walked past and not given it another thought. But my enquiring mind and curiosity latched onto it instantly and it is still with me now as though it happened yesterday.
This experience is logged in me along with many others like a film archive, of curious observation’s and form an important part of my knowledge.