The Mind-Created World

I still don't get it.

You seem to be saying that the process would go on forever

Do you recognize two very distinct meanings of "object"?

Since the physical object of empirical knowledge is demonstrably a faulty concept, produced by the deceptive nature of the senses…

Do you classify knowing the good as impossible?

Something that interests me is knowledge acquired through the witnessing of events.

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.

Yeah, my fault, being facetious. I’m just having trouble understanding how anyone could feel physical pain from a “faulty idea”. You said objects were, or might be, just faulty ideas, a hammer, being an object represented by that conception, would fit the bill.

In the search for accurate representation, if not for the LNC, what other way is there to judge the relation between the object we perceive and the object we think? If logic doesn’t end the search, insofar all relations are determinable by it, it stands to reason the search for a relation wouldn’t end. But it always does, either in the affirmation or negation thereof, so the logic would seem to be working.

There’s that faulty idea thing again.

Furthermore, empirical knowledge is not of a physical object, but the representation of it, and the senses have nothing to do with representations, being merely the occasion for the possibility of them.

Yes. The good isn’t something to know; it is something to feel. That by which one feels anything is reducible to an aesthetic judgement, that by which he knows something is reducible to a discursive judgement. The formal ground of the one is pure practical reason, of the other is pure theoretical reason.

Last but not least, that by which one merely comprehends the possibility of knowledge, is pure speculative reason, upon which is constructed the transcendental philosophy of German Enlightenment idealism.

I find it very interesting how different people will remember the very same event in completely different ways. So you might say, something incredulous happened, but someone else in the same area might just notice a mundane occurrence.

However, sciences like chemistry and physics, prove to us that reality is actually completely different from this conception/perception representation.

Activity is not at all as we represent it, as picking up objects called a hammer and nails, and hitting one object with another. That's a vastly oversimplified representation of what is actually going on, and really a faulty representation.

The LNC does not apply to the good of intention.

This is why goods are often said to be subjective….

Even the same person will sometimes have conflicting goals.

Science demonstrates very clearly, that the conceptual structure based in objects of substance, physical objects, moving and interacting in space, is insufficient, and cannot adequately represent the reality of activity.

we need to start all over, from the bottom up, with something more reasonable as the foundation.

Please accept this as reality, instead of referring to mundane experiences in an attempt to make fun of the reality of the situation.

The category of "speculative reason" is completely unnecessary, created and referred to, as a distraction.

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?

Except that the reality demonstrated by the sciences is only demonstrable from the very same system of conception/perception representation, as the common Everydayman reality not the least concerned with the scientific version at all.

Activity is exactly as we represent it to ourselves, give appearances in compliance with our particular physiology alone. The fact it is a vastly oversimplified representation doesn’t make it false; it merely makes it incomplete, and that merely from perspective, iff given by a deeper scale of investigation. The point being, the completion of the representation, determined from such deeper scale, wouldn’t be a necessary addendum to our experience, insofar as knowing e.g., the distinct molecular composition of different kinds of forks, does nothing whatsoever for disturbing the already established activity of getting food to the mouth using one. Contingent with respect to future experience, certainly, for deeper-scale investigations make things like penicillin possible. Such is science, not as opposed but in juxtaposition, to metaphysics.

Of course. On the one hand, good things for me are not necessarily good things for you, hence each good of a thing is a subjective judgement. On the other hand, any of my judgements regarding what is good, insofar as they all arise in me alone, can hardly be termed subjective, in that there is nothing to which they relate except my own determinability. The good in such case, reverts to relative degrees of a necessarily presupposed good, rather than different forms of good itself. Such condition is the same for both of us, granting the commonality of our respective human inclinations and intellectual attitudes.

Insufficient….for what?

If the past and future are constituents of the present, then the present is not something pure, but something that does not participate in ousia or substance.

Your position fails, i think, when it demands precision, since you are seeking to differentiate between past, present and future by treating them as substances.

You know, when a method fails in its capacity to reach the desired end, it demonstrates its own faultiness.

A tree produces a seed in order to produce another tree. If you just look at the seed and say "oh that's not a tree, obviously it failed let's destroy this tree" one quickly notices an error in judgement. Belief systems call this arrogance or pride. Society calls this impatience and prudence. Science calls this just being wrong. Remember that.

I don't see the relevance. If the seed fails in producing a tree it demonstrates its own faultiness.

Thanks for that description.

This isn't elementary school.

For example; I have come to realise that extremely inprobable events and coincidences happen all the time.

Secondly; for this event to happen, there was a collective action between all the people involved. So in a sense the crowd, including myself and the small chap, were acting as one cohesive organism. Which might suggest that we act as one organism more often than we might expect.

Thirdly; there was some kind of calling, need, requirement for the two of us to see each other and have our interaction***. I have had numerous encounters with people which involved exchanging of glances, as intense, or meaningful as this, indeed even more so. So have come to view such interactions as a window to the soul, or something like that.

Fourthly; and this point involves another encounter at the same event, aswell. The realisation that brief meetings between particular people can have a meaning, or significance, way beyond what we might expect. And that some kind of group communion is going on within populations.

Possibility extends through such a vast array of features of a vast array of activities, far beyond the capacity of the most imaginative minds.

This "coincidence" acts to "amplify possibility". When the whole, as a group, does something unexpected, the effect of amplified possibility is realized. We observe this, "the effects of amplified possibility" every time a being makes an act which we designate as freely chosen.

This implies that within the "non-conscious relation between all the different parts", there is some form of what you call "group communion", which is some form of recognition of the underlying meaning or significance, and this acts to cause the amplification of possibility which is required for the individuals to act together as a whole, in a way which is non-deterministic.

For such a being, the experience of such an unusual event is very rare, perhaps once in the lifetime, or only for 1 in 10 people in their lifetime. What I’m saying, is that infact it happens more than we know, even regularly, but we either don’t see it, couldn’t appreciate the relevance, are conditioned to screen it out etc. essentially we are blind to it, except in certain very narrow circumstances determined by our life, heritage and conditioning.
For the mystic, or seer, this is fertile ground for exploration and contemplation.

For example; I have come to realise that extremely inprobable events and coincidences happen all the time.

So basically, you come to an accommodation with yourself, once this is established and settled, with no conflict, or any issues.

So this, I think would be the most difficult part, the initial accommodation. That is where the logical trick I requested would be required. Maybe Wayfarer's example of the scarab beetle is such a trick. The trick is not really logical, but something which goes beyond logic, something which demonstrates the vast field of meaning which is not enveloped by logic

One reaches an accommodation with one’s self, such that there is no question, or possibility of a breaking of the bond, or trust between you.

The task is to unify this in a way that is true to yourself.

It seems that the inner me has some tendencies which the outer me has difficulty accommodating for, social anxiety for example. The outer me therefore, has created a bunch of defence mechanisms to fend off what the inner me is telling it. The outer me has set up ways to effectively block the influence of the inner me, because the outer me wants something different from what the inner me can provide for.

I had something similar with intense shyness from a young age. But it didn’t develop into something problematic and through considerable effort during my formative years I was able to overcome it.

There is a sense that our weaknesses are actually our strengths, because we have unique experience and ability to live with these. So being able to see this as a strength rather than a failing helps one to face it, work through it and live with it. Even use it to our advantage. Also we have the opportunity to shape our lifestyles to make it easier to live without these issues normally arising. The thing with following a mystical life, it is entirely personal and doesn’t require, necessarily, dealing with the outside world, and you can shape your lifestyle to suit.

Secondly and this is quite a neat trick, (this is the simplified version). You basically offer yourself up freely to any entity who is gooder than yourself. This necessarily requires one to be sufficiently good yourself that you would happily give yourself up someone equally, or more good than yourself. Once this level of goodness and conviction is reached, you can do a deal with yourself. You will offer access to yourself on the condition that your alter ego becomes at least as good as yourself. With the selling point being that, such a deal would enable progress and greater access. And of course your alter ego would naturally offer access to itself for yourself, because the result would only be gooder, or at least the same level of good. Then both party’s can become gooder and gooder in a partnership of mutual benefit.
I realise that this might be a non starter, but it works well for me. Although I do have a back up association with the deity Kali*, via an association and practice with a Guru and Ashram offering devotional worship to the goddess Kali**.

Many of the objections to Kant, as they played out in his lifetime and afterwards, concern his treatment of the "object" as a product of what we do.

I admit the entire argument. Time is certainly something real/
namely the real form of inner intuition. It therefore has subjective real-
ity in regard to inner experience, i.e., I really have the representation of
time and of my determinations in it. It is therefore to be regarded re-
ally not as object but as the way of representing myself as object But
if I or another being could intuit myself without this condition of sen-
sibility, then these very determinations, which we now represent to our-
selves as alterations, would yield us a cognition in which the represen-
tation of time and thus also of alteration would not occur at all. Its
empirical reality therefore remains as a condition of all our experiences.

The passage you quote puts it in a nutshell; All instances of "objectivity" are also moments in consciousness.

Is your question about "object" such that you remove yourself as a peer capable of reviewing the text?

I just want to know what “object” gives me that object doesn’t. What do the marks give to object that object doesn’t already have?

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.

While I wouldn’t ever advocate the consumption of illegal substances I have no doubt that this particular class of substances do indeed open the doors of perception (insights which are of course impossible to communicate or even really remember on a conscious level).

As for the paranormal, I’m an open-minded sceptic.

But the most significant aspect was the awakening to the indescribable beauty of life itself, plants and trees seeming to possess a kind of luminous aliveness and perfection, and the sense that this sense of heightened awareness was reality itself.

that fall from grace is blamed on the serpent of Science, the "most cunning of all beasts". The snake-eyes of objectivity have given us wise apes mastery over the garden of nature, which we have raped & pillaged to gratify our own material desires.

Glattfelder seems to believe that humanity was better-off before science penetrated the "mystical veil" of reality

physicists almost unanimously ignore the philosophical implications of their work. As such, most scientists have unknowingly adopted an implicit metaphysical belief, rendering the universe inherently random and meaningless, implying a sense of cosmic nihilism.

Me too! Glattfelder has a favorite term to describe the ambiguities & uncertainties of paranormal phenomena : Postmodern*1

Well, Aristotle puts a lot of emphasis on the being in front of you is what actually exists. We have different ideas about how that is possible, but the first thing is the encounter with such beings.

So, that is germane to the issue at hand.

(See Dan Brown’s new book,
‘The Secret of Secrets’
For a similar investigation)

I began reading Dan Brown's new novel.

But their (ancestral) life is vivid in the expression of character and disposition of particular individuals. That view does not mesh well with the vision of souls being their own thing but also conscripted to the "material" world.

Hope you read that poetry above, it is really very good. I understand a lot more about Alfred North Whitehead just having read it.

I began reading Dan Brown's new novel. — Gnomon
Wow! You're on the ball; it only came out about a week ago. Has much about consciousness coming in from the outside.

Let us start from the evolutionary side. It is now empirically clear that Darwinian evolutionary theory contained a very great error in its identification of the unit of survival under natural selection. The unit which was believed to be crucial and around which the theory was set up was either the breeding individual or the family line or the subspecies or some similar homogeneous set of conspecifics. Now I suggest that the last hundred years have demonstrated empirically that if an organism or aggregate of organisms sets to work with a focus on its own survival and thinks that is the way to select its adaptive moves, its "progress" ends up with a destroyed environment. If the organism ends up destroying its environment, it has in fact destroyed itself. And we may very easily see this process carried to its ultimate reductio ad absurdum in the next twenty years. The unit of survival is not the breeding organism, or the family line, or the society.

The old unit has already been partly corrected by the population geneticists. They have insisted that the evolutionary unit is, in fact, not homogeneous. A wild population of any species consists always of individuals whose genetic constitution varies widely. In other words, potentiality and readiness for change is already built into the survival unit. The heterogeneity of the wild population is already one-half of that trial-and-error system which is necessary for dealing with environment.

The artificially homogenized populations of man's domestic animals and plants are scarcely fit for survival.

And today a further correction of the unit is necessary. The flexible environment must also be included along with the flexible organism because, as I have already said, the organism which destroys its environment destroys itself. The unit of survival is a flexible organism-in-its-environment.

The unit of survival is a flexible organism-in-its-environment.

I submit that it is incompatible with the Gerson view of Platonism.

If you say, the world is created by your mind, I feel your world is likely to be very much in illusion. A perceived world sounds more accurate.

The mind-created world, as I understand the OP, has no external cause and is a monism where everything that exists has mental properties.

I acnowledge that the word 'created' might be a poor choice of words in the context.

In Plotinus, the soul animates matter as far as it can. The source is a power that can only go so far because matter is never completely mastered by form. The origin of that soul is from before our birth. Plotinus has also said he has visited that realm through contemplation.

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.

Yes. They are perceiving something. Things are objects. That fact we can't know what/which (and similar questions) doesn't change that part of the position. (and, as above, Kant knows this too).

but if "objects" doesn't fulfill the criteria for what the person is actually perceiving,

What are the criteria?

I'm just not very good at this. Wondering about any specifics.

The fact remains, Kant's system *does not work* unless there is an assumption that something causes our sensations.

It therefore has subjective real-
ity in regard to inner experience, i.e., I really have the representation of
time and of my determinations in it. It is therefore to be regarded re-
ally not as object but as the way of representing myself as object But
if I or another being could intuit myself without this condition of sen-
sibility, then these very determinations, which we now represent to our-
selves as alterations, would yield us a cognition in which the represen-
tation of time and thus also of alteration would not occur at all. Its
empirical reality therefore remains as a condition of all our experiences.

Perhaps I'm not grasping this, but if someone is perceiving "something" then that is "objects" broadly (and in the way i suggest it be used here - I'm not suggesting there are (or that we could know that there are) actual, physical objects beyond the senses). These could simply be that which is required as an assumption for hte perception to obtain. I content roughly that

The "physical objects" we experience in our sensations and judgements are representations made possible through combinations of our intuitions of space and time.

What are the criteria?

If these representations are false, it may be the case that the person is not actually perceiving objects, despite believing oneself to be perceiving objects.

but if "objects" doesn't fulfill the criteria for what the person is actually perceiving,
— Metaphysician Undercover

What are the criteria?
— Patterner

I would say that the single most important criterion for "object" is temporal extension.

That error comes up a lot in Aristotle. Perhaps you could point out where that happens with Kant.

Can you give an example of something a person is actually perceiving that fits not have temporal extension?

Can you give an example of something a person is actually perceiving that does [I](edited to correct stupid autocorrect)[/I] not have temporal extension?
— Patterner

Any activity I suppose. At each moment it is new and different, therefore there is no temporal extension of any specific thing.

Perhaps. But is it likely that someone who thinks they are perceiving an object is actually viewing an activity?

?Gnomon
In Western metaphysics, ‘creation’ has a specific status, reserved for the Creator (‘creature’ meaning ‘created being’). It is of course used more broadly nowadays, for all manner of creative work, but it still retains some overtones, in the philosophical context. But I’m not going to retroactively update it. Besides, ‘mind-constructed world’ just doesn’t have a ring to it.

Deciding what is a mistake in Kant is more difficult. We don't have the object of representation in hand to compare with another supposed object in the unexperienced bush.

But later, he's saying we must pre-suppose them (despite, not being able to know them).

Deciding what is a mistake in Kant is more difficult. We don't have the object of representation in hand to compare with another supposed object in the unexperienced bush.

Instead of insisting that there must be real independent objects, because we perceive objects, as Amadeus seemed to be doing, we ought to accept the possibility of mistake.

Perhaps I'm not grasping this, but if someone is perceiving "something" then that is "objects" broadly (and in the way i suggest it be used here - I'm not suggesting there are (or that we could know that there are) actual, physical objects beyond the senses). These could simply be that which is required as an assumption for hte perception to obtain. I content roughly that.

It's hard to disagree with that. But if we accept that possibility, should we not, by the same token, accept the possibility that there is no mistake. We could then ask which of those possibilities is actually the case. Or even question the framing of the question.

"Difficult" is a very mild description for this situation. It suggests that you think that "representation" is not really an inappropriate concept to apply here. But you also (seem to) accept that there is no real evidence for such an object "in the unexperienced bush". So I'm rather puzzled what to make of this.

The synthetic unity of con-
sciousness is therefore an objective condition of all cognition, not
merely something I myself need in order to cognize an object but
rather something under which every intuition must stand [b]in order to
become an object for me[/b], since in any other way, and without this
synthesis, the manifold would not be united in one consciousness.

The pure concepts of the understanding are free from this limitation
and extend to objects of intuition in general, whether the latter be sim-
ilar to our own or not, as long as it is sensible and not intellectual. But
this further extension of concepts beyond our sensible intuition does
not get us anywhere. For they are then merely empty concepts of ob-
jects, through which we cannot even judge whether the latter are pos-
sible or not - mere forms of thought without objective reality - since
we have available no intuition to which the synthetic unity of apper-
ception, which they alone contain, could be applied, and that could thus
determine an object. Our sensible and empirical intuition alone can
provide them with sense and significance.

Thus if one assumes an object of a non-sensible intuition as given,
one can certainly represent it through all of the predicates that already
lie in the presupposition that [b]nothing belonging to sensible intuition
pertains to it[/b]: thus it is not extended, or in space, that its duration is
not a time, that no alteration (sequence of determinations in time) is to
be encountered in it, etc. But it is not yet a genuine cognition if I merely
indicate what the intuition of the object' is not, without being able to
say what is then contained in it; for then I have not represented the pos-
sibility of an object for my pure concept of the understanding at all,
since I cannot give any intuition that would correspond to it, but could
only say that ours is not valid for it. But what is most important here is
that not even a single category could be applied to such a thing, e.g., the
concept of a substance, i.e., that of something that could exist as a sub
ject but never as a mere predicate; for I would not even know whether
there could be anything that corresponded to this determination of
thought if empirical intuition did not give me the case for its applica-
tion. But more of this in the sequel.

In the transcendental synthesis of the manifold of representations in
general, on the contrary, hence in the synthetic original unity of apper-
ception, I am conscious of myself not as I appear to myself, nor as I am
in myself, but only that I am. This representation is a thinking, not
an intuiting. Now since for the cognition of ourselves, in addition to
the action of thinking that brings the manifold of every possible intu-
ition to the unity of apperception, a determinate sort of intuition,
through which this manifold is given, is also required, my own existence
is not indeed appearance (let alone mere illusion), but the determina-
tion of my existence* can only occur in correspondence with the form
of inner sense, according to the particular way in which the manifold
that I combine is given in inner intuition, and I therefore have [b]no cog-
nition[/b] of myself as I am, but only as I appear to myself. The con-
sciousness of oneself is therefore far from being a cognition of oneself,
regardless of all the categories that constitute the thinking of an [b]object
in general[/b] through combination of the manifold in an apperception.

the different types of mistakes which are possible.

Suppose that we consider words as an example of a representation.

I figure a representation happens when what is given through sensible intuition becomes an object one can have knowledge about:

Hence let us once try whether we do not
get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the ob-
jects must conform to our cognition, which would agree better with the
requested possibility of an a priori cognition of them, which is to estab
lish something about objects before they are given to us. This would
be just like the first thoughts of Copernicus, who, when he did not
make good progress in the explanation of the celestial motions if he as-
sumed that the entire celestial host revolves around the observer, tried
to see if he might not have greater success if he made the observer re
volve and left the stars at rest. Now in metaphysics we can try in a sim-
ilar way regarding the intuition of objects. If intuition has to conform
to the constitution of the objects, then I do not see how we can know
anything of them a priori; but if the object (as an object of the senses)
conforms to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, then I can very
well represent this possibility to myself. Yet because I cannot stop with
these intuitions, if they are to become cognitions, but must refer them
as representations to something as their object and determine this object
through them, I can assume either that the concepts through which
I bring about this determination also conform to the objects, and then
I am once again in the same difficulty about how I could know anything
about them a priori, or else I assume that the objects, or what is the same
thing, the experience in which alone they can be cognized (as given ob-
jects) conforms to those concepts, in which case I immediately see an
easier way out of the difficulty, since experience itself is a kind of cog-
nition requiring the understanding, whose rule I have to presuppose in
myself before any object is given to me, hence a priori, which rule is ex-
pressed in concepts a priori, to which all objects of experience must
therefore necessarily conform, and with which they must agree. As for
objects insofar as they are thought merely through reason, and neces-
sarily at that, but that (at least as reason thinks them) cannot be given
in experience at all - the attempt to think them (for they must be capa-
ble of being thought) will provide a splendid touchstone of what we as-
sume as the altered method of our way of thinking, namely that we can
cognize of things a priori only what we ourselves have put into them.*

That's quite a tall order. But still, if they can all be determined as mistakes, it follows that there must be a truth of the matter, beyond appearances.

So now I need to know what kind of relationship you think there is between the representation and what it is a representation of.

I don't think so. First, i didn't say anything about how mistake would be determined, only that we ought to believe it is possible. Then, when we look at the primary feature of determining mistakes, mistake is commonly a matter of not producing the desired result. This doesn't imply truth or lack of truth.

I think there is a relationship of mastery, like a tool masters the circumstances it is applied to, to produce the desired end. The representation (symbol) is a tool, the living being uses it, and this tool assists the being in survival, as well as making use of its environment toward its ends, and perhaps some other things, dependent on intention.

Kant's terminology is intimidating. I think the way Kant speaks in the Preface to the Second Edition is a good outline to his intentions and what he means by experience, intuition, and cognition:

The proof that is demanded must therefore establish that we have experience and not merely imagination of outer things, which cannot be accomplished unless one can prove that even our inner experience, undoubted by Descartes, is possible only under the presupposition of outer experience.

If intuition has to conform
to the constitution of the objects, then I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori

I always thought it was the user who mastered the circumstances by using the tool.

But isn't there a case for describing the tool as adjusted to or fitting in with the relevant circumstances. A carpenter's saw is good for cutting wood. For metal, you need a hacksaw. Hammers for nails (appropriate in some circumstances). Screwdrivers or spanners in others. Certainly, the enterprise is to adjust circumstances in certain ways; but one needs to recognize what can be changed and what can't.

The need for the a priori is to explain why we are built that way. The need becomes necessary by the "altered method of our way of thinking." Otherwise:

If intuition has to conform
to the constitution of the objects, then I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori
— CPR, Bxvi

The analogy with Copernicus is to demonstrate how mutually exclusive the two standpoints are.

In the sequel therefore we will understand by a priori cognitions not those that occur independently of this or that experience, but rather those that occur absolutely independently of all experience. Opposed to them are empirical cognitions, or those that are possible only a posteriori, i.e., through experience. Among a priori cognitions, however, those are called pure with which nothing empirical is intermixed. Thus, e.g., the proposition "Every alteration has its cause" is an a priori proposition, only not pure, since alteration is a concept that can be drawn only from experience.

Experience is prior in time to knowledge but the possibility for experience is prior as a condition.

In the sequel therefore we will understand by a priori cognitions not those that occur independently of this or that experience, but rather those that occur absolutely independently of all experience.

That our judgement is, to some extent, a result of our nature established before our particular experiences is not, by itself, an observation given through experience. Kant calls that part thinking about what occurs "independent of all experience."

You are putting a lot of theories in my mouth. I am not trying to defend what Kant said but clarify what I heard he was saying. Neither was I trying to defend what Aristotle said.

I am guessing that Kant introducing a new standpoint is neither here nor there from your standpoint.

The analogy with Copernicus is to demonstrate how mutually exclusive the two standpoints are.

How some of us went from this location to reading "things-in-themselves" as "mind independent" is a long and winding road through perilous terrain.

We don't know anything of objects or phenomena in general a priori—in terms of what commonalities we can know about all objects without actually consulting particular objects in real time, we must reflect on their general characteristics as perceived. That is we must reflect on prior experience of phenomena in order to see what they all have in common.

Experience is prior in time to knowledge but the possibility for experience is prior as a condition.

In the Preface, objects of experience are either made present to us through an intuition that has to "conform to the constitution of the objects" or by means of our processes of reason.

Bxvii:I am once again in the same difficulty about how I could know anything about them (sc. objects) a priori, or else I assume that the objects, or what is the same thing, the experience in which alone they can be cognized (as given objects) conforms to those concepts, in which case I immediately see an easier way out of the difficulty, since experience itself is a kind of cognition requiring the understanding, whose rule I have to presuppose in myself before any object is given to me, hence a
priori, which rule is expressed in concepts a priori, to which all objects of experience must therefore necessarily conform, and with which they must agree.

Perhaps, but I think it is the tool, as the means to the end, which actually overcomes the circumstances. It is more proper to say that the means is what brings success rather than the will. If it was just the will, you could will yourself to success. Instead, success is highly dependent on the tool employed.

"Mistakes in producing or choosing the symbol to be used as a representation". That would be a mistake of trying to use the wrong tool. We were talking about the different types of mistakes which are possible, and whether each type could be recognized.

I don't know whether a complete catalogue of possible mistakes is possible. Perhaps it is.

And that's just the nature of what a mistake is, something which eludes judgement.

Idealism (I mean material idealism) is the theory that declares the existence of objects in space outside us to be either merely doubtful and indemonstrable, or else false and impossible; the former is the problematic idealism of Descartes, who declares only one empirical assertion (assertio), namely I am, to be indubitable; the latter is thedogmatic idealism of Berkeley, who declares space, together with all the things to which it is attached as an inseparable condition, to be something that is impossible in itself, and who therefore also declares things in space to be merely imaginary. Dogmatic idealism is unavoidable if
one regards space as a property that is to pertain to the things in themselves; for then it, along with everything for which it serves as a condition, is a non-entity.

The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me

I, represented through inner sense in time, and objects in space outside me, are indeed specifically a wholly distinct appearances, but they are not thereby thought of as different things. The transcendental object that grounds both outer appearances and inner intuition is neither matter nor a thinking being in itself, but rather an unknown ground of those appearances that supply us with our empirical concepts of the former as well as the latter.

If, therefore, as the present critique obviously requires of us, we remain true to the rule established earlier not to press our questions beyond that with which possible experience and its object can supply us, then it will not occur to us to seek information about what the objects of our senses may be in themselves, i.e., apart from any relation to the senses. But if a psychologist takes appearances for things in themselves, then as a materialist he may take up matter into his doctrine, or as a spiritualist he may take up merely thinking beings (namely, according to the form of our inner sense) as the single and sole thing existing in itself, or as a dualist he may take up both; yet through misunderstanding he will always be confined to sophistical reasonings about the way in which that which is no thing in itself, but only the appearance of a thing in general, might exist in itself.

"Required as an assumption" implies that the assumption is a necessary aspect. That is why the sensation is commonly called a representation. It is assumed to represent something.

If these representations are false

You describe these objects as "actual, physical objects beyond the senses".

I'm not suggesting there are (or that we could know that there are) actual, physical objects beyond the senses)

When you say that actual physical objects are an assumption or presupposition, you seem to leave open the possibility that that assumption is wrong - or at least that a different assumption or pre-supposition may also result in a not incoherent alternative conceptual structure.

On the one hand, we know that they exist. On the other hand, we know, and can know, nothing whatever about them.

You describe these objects as "actual, physical objects beyond the senses".

Berkeley is, in fact, mentioned by name at the beginning of the Refutation of Idealism:

One question is how far outside of myself have I gotten if it is my intuition of space and time that allows for the possibility for the experience.

Berkeley, who declares space, together with all the things to which it is attached as an inseparable condition, to be something that is impossible in itself, and who therefore also declares things in space to be merely imaginary. Dogmatic idealism is unavoidable if
one regards space as a property that is to pertain to the things in themselves; for then it, along with everything for which it serves as a condition, is a non-entity.

The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me

I, represented through inner sense in time, and objects in space outside me, are indeed specifically a wholly distinct appearances, but they are not thereby thought of as different things. The transcendental object that grounds both outer appearances and inner intuition is neither matter nor a thinking being in itself, but rather an unknown ground of those appearances that supply us with our empirical concepts of the former as well as the latter.

If, therefore, as the present critique obviously requires of us, we remain true to the rule established earlier not to press our questions beyond that with which possible experience and its object can supply us, then it will not occur to us to seek information about what the objects of our senses may be in themselves, i.e., apart from any relation to the senses.

But if a psychologist takes appearances for things in themselves, then as a materialist he may take up matter into his doctrine, or as a spiritualist he may take up merely thinking beings (namely, according to the form of our inner sense) as the single and sole thing existing in itself, or as a dualist he may take up both; yet through misunderstanding he will always be confined to sophistical reasonings about the way in which that which is no thing in itself, but only the appearance of a thing in general, might exist in itself.

The dictum of all genuine idealists from the Eleatic school to Bishop Berkeley, is contained in this formula: "All cognition through the senses and experience is nothing but sheer illusion, and only, in the ideas of the pure understanding and reason there is truth."

The principle that throughout dominates and determines my Idealism, is on the contrary: "All cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer
illusion, and only in experience is there truth."

But this is directly contrary to idealism proper. How came I then to use this expression for quite an opposite purpose, and how came my reviewer to see it everywhere?

The solution of this difficulty rests on something that could have been very easily understood from the general bearing of the work, if the reader had only desired to do so. Space and time, together with all that they contain, are not things nor qualities in themselves, but belong merely to the appearances of the latter: up to this point I am one in confession with the above idealists. But these, and amongst them more particularly Berkeley, regarded space as a mere empirical presentation that, like the phenomenon it contains, is only known to us by means of experience or perception, together with its determinations. I, on the contrary, prove in the first place, that space (and also time, which Berkeley did not consider) and all its determinations a priori, can be known by us, because, no less than time, it inheres in our sensibility as a pure form before all perception or experience and makes all intuition of the same, and therefore all its phenomena, possible. It follows from this, that as truth rests on universal and necessary laws as its criteria, experience, according to Berkeley, can have no criteria of truth, because its phenomena (according to him) have nothing a priori at their foundation; whence it follows, that they are nothing but sheer illusion; whereas with us, space and time (in conjunction with the pure conceptions of the understanding) prescribe their law to all possible experience a priori, and at the same time afford the certain criterion for distinguishing truth from illusion therein.

Thinking about this, it seems that Kant's (and Berkeley's) conception of space seems to be that it is something that exists as a vessel or a medium in which objects have their existence. I don't see that. The existence of objects in space and space itself are not two separate discoveries. Each depends on the other, conceptually speaking.

In the sequel therefore we will understand by a priori cognitions not those that occur independently of this or that experience, but rather those that occur absolutely independently of all experience. Opposed to them are empirical cognitions, or those that are possible only a posteriori, i.e., through experience. Among a priori cognitions, however, those are called pure with which nothing empirical is intermixed. Thus, e.g., the proposition "Every alteration has its cause" is an a priori proposition, only not pure, since alteration is a concept that can be drawn only from experience.

ibid.:whereas with us, space and time (in conjunction with the pure conceptions of the understanding) prescribe their law to all possible experience a priori, and at the same time afford the certain criterion for distinguishing truth from illusion therein

….painting a specific appearance.

It seems I've been headed off. But I still need to ask how appearances can be appearances of things-in-themselves and things-in-themselves be completely unknown.

The transcendental object that grounds both outer appearances and inner intuition is neither matter nor a thinking being in itself, but rather an unknown ground of those appearances that supply us with our empirical concepts of the former as well as the latter.

The principle that throughout dominates and determines my Idealism, is on the contrary: "All cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer
illusion, and only in experience is there truth."

I, represented through inner sense in time, and objects in space outside me, are indeed specifically a wholly distinct appearances

I meant to say that taking intuition of space and time as a process of my perception raises the question of how "objective" it is. That ties into Kant's beef with Berkeley who treats space as an experienced phenomenon. Kant argues that it is, rather, an a priori condition for sensibility:

The principle that throughout dominates and determines my Idealism, is on the contrary: "All cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth."

Space and time, together with all that they contain, are not things nor qualities in themselves, but belong merely to the appearances of the latter: up to this point I am one in confession with the above idealists. But these, and amongst them more particularly Berkeley, regarded space as a mere empirical presentation that, like the phenomenon it contains, is only known to us by means of experience or perception, together with its determinations. I, on the contrary, prove in the first place, that space (and also time, which Berkeley did not consider) and all its determinations a priori, can be known by us, because, no less than time, it inheres in our sensibility as a pure form before all perception or experience and makes all intuition of the same, and therefore all its phenomena, possible. It follows from this, that as truth rests on universal and necessary laws as its criteria, experience, according to Berkeley, can have no criteria of truth, because its phenomena (according to him) have nothing a priori at their foundation; whence it follows, that they are nothing but sheer illusion; whereas with us, space and time (in conjunction with the pure conceptions of the understanding) prescribe their law to all possible experience a priori, and at the same time afford the certain criterion for distinguishing truth from illusion therein.

I, too, am learning from this discussion.

I will try to respond to some other of your comments but need to get back to painting a specific appearance.

The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me

tacitly supports Descartes’ sum while not being quite so supportive of the “problematic” idealism explicit in the cogito ergo… part

Space and time are big issues in philosophy, and I'm not an expert. But I do agree that we do not experience space as a phenomenon. I wouldn't say that it is a condition for sensibility, but rather a principle of interpretation of the phenomena.
I'm afraid, though, that I simply have no grasp of what he means by saying that it is an intuition. Is it something like a brute fact?

All the thinkers Kant responded to had different ways of framing what is intuition, phenomena, ideas, logic, and categories. They were arguing within a set of parameters. The problems we have looking in from outside is that we cannot share that set without problems of translation.

The two-aspects reading attempts to interpret Kant’s transcendental idealism in a way that enables it to be defended against at least some of these objections. On this view, transcendental idealism does not distinguish between two classes of objects but rather between two different aspects of one and the same class of objects. For this reason it is also called the one-world interpretation, since it holds that there is only one world in Kant’s ontology, and that at least some objects in that world have two different aspects: one aspect that appears to us, and another aspect that does not appear to us. That is, appearances are aspects of the same objects that also exist in themselves. So, on this reading, appearances are not mental representations, and transcendental idealism is not a form of phenomenalism.

A42/B59–60:What may be the case with objects in themselves and abstracted from all this receptivity of our sensibility remains entirely unknown to us.

ibid:In some sense, human beings experience only appearances, not things in themselves.

Understanding is, generally speaking, the faculty of cognitions. These consist in the determinate relation of given representations to an object." An object, however, is that in the concept of which the manifold of a given intuition is united. Now, however, all unification of representations requires unity of consciousness in the synthesis of them. Consequently the unity of consciousness is that which alone constitutes the relation of representations to an object, thus their objective validity, and consequently is that which makes them into cognitions and on which even the possibility of the understanding rests.

The first pure cognition of the understanding, therefore, on which the whole of the rest of its use is grounded, and that is at the same time also entirely independent from all conditions of sensible intuition, is the principle of the original synthetic unity of apperception. Thus the mere form of outer sensible intuition, space, is not yet cognition at all; it only gives the manifold of intuition a priori for a possible cognition. But in order to cognize something in space, e.g., a line, I must draw it, and thus synthetically bring about a determinate combination of the given manifold, so that the unity of this action is at the same time the unity of consciousness (in the concept of a line) and thereby is an object (a determinate space) first cognized. The synthetic unity of consciousness is therefore an objective condition of all cognition, not merely something I myself need in order to cognize an object but rather something under which every intuition must stand in order to become an object for me, since in any other way, and without this synthesis, the manifold would not be united in one consciousness.

All that is perceived must exist, but it does not follow that only the perceived exists. Because it is absurd to claim only the perceived exists, insofar as subsequent discoveries become impossible, we are entitled to ask….for that thing eventually perceived, in what state was that thing before it was perceived?

On other words, the Critique does teach the twofold aspect, but not of the object. It is the two-fold aspect of the human intellectual system as laid out in transcendental philosophy. It is by means of that system that an object is treated as an appearance in accordance with sensibility on the one hand, or, an object is treated as a ding an sich on the other, in accordance with pure speculative reason.

We cannot think any object except through categories; we cannot cognize any object that is thought except through intuitions that correspond to those concepts. Now all our intuitions are sensible, and this cognition, so far as its object is given, is empirical. Empirical cognition,
however, is experience. Consequently no a priori cognition is possible for us except solely of objects of possible experience.* But this cognition, which is limited merely to objects of experience, is not on that account all borrowed from experience; rather, with regard to the pure intuitions as well as the pure concepts of the understanding, there are elements of cognition that are to be encountered in us a priori. Now there are only two ways in which a necessary agreement of experience with the concepts of its objects can be thought: either the experience makes these concepts possible or these concepts make the experience possible. The first is not the case with the categories (nor with pure sensible intuition; for they are a priori concepts, hence independent of experience (the assertion of an empirical origin would be a sort of generatio aequivoca [spontaneously generated]. Consequently only the second way remains (as it were a system of the epigenesis48 of pure reason): namely that the categories contain the grounds of the possibility of all experience in general from the side of the understanding. But more about how they make experience possible, and which principles of its possibility they yield in their application to appearances, will be taught in the following chapter on the transcendental use of the power of judgment.

From the footnote at the asterisk:

* So that one may not prematurely take issue with the worrisome and disadvantageous consequences of this proposition, I will only mention that the categories are not restricted in thinking by the conditions of our sensible intuition, but have an unbounded field, and only the cognition of objects that we think, the determination of the object, requires intuition; in the absence of the latter, the thought of the object can still have its true and useful consequences for the use of the subject's reason, which, however, cannot be expounded here, for it is not always directed to the determination of the object, thus to cognition, but rather also to that of the subject and its willing.

Hence let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition, which would agree better with the requested possibility of an a priori cognition of them, which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us.

His (sc. Aristotle's) primary investigation of mind occurs in two chapters of De Anima, both of which are richly suggestive, but neither of which admits of easy or uncontroversial exposition. In De Anima iii 4 and 5, Aristotle approaches the nature of thinking by once again deploying a hylomorphic analysis, given in terms of form reception. Just as perception involves the reception of a sensible form by a suitably qualified sensory faculty, so thinking involves the reception of an intelligible form by a suitably qualified intellectual faculty (De Anima iii 4, 429a13–18). According to this model, thinking consists in a mind’s becoming enformed by some object of thought, so that actual thinking occurs whenever some suitably prepared mind is “made like” its object by being affected by it.

In other words, the Critique does teach the twofold aspect, but not of the object. It is the two-fold aspect of the human intellectual system as laid out in transcendental philosophy. It is by means of that system that an object is treated as an appearance in accordance with sensibility on the one hand, or, an object is treated as a ding an sich on the other, in accordance with pure speculative reason.

We can also ask what manner of existence they could have for other percipients or absent any percipients at all

….the conditions described at B132 to B138 are observed….

….what determines whether a given object is treated in accordance with sensibility or in accordance with pure speculative reason.

That’s what I get out of it, anyway. Loosely speaking.

Put the question this way, what determines whether a given object is treated in accordance with sensibility or in accordance with pure speculative reason

Now there are only two ways in which a necessary agreement of experience with the concepts of its objects can be thought: either the experience makes these concepts possible or these concepts make the experience possible.

The conditions of sensible intuition, which bring with them their own distinctions, he [Leibniz] did not regard as original; for sensibility was only a confused kind of representation for him, and not a special source of representations; for him appearance was the representation of the thing in itself, although distinguished from cognition through the understanding in its logical form, since with its customary lack of analysis the former draws a certain mixture of subsidiary representations into the concept of the thing, from which the understanding knows how to abstract. In a word, intellectualized the appearances, just as Locke totally sensitivized the concepts of understanding in accordance with his system of noogony (if I am permitted this expression), i.e., interpreted them as nothing but empirical or abstracted concepts of reflection. Instead of seeking two entirely different sources of representation in the understanding and the sensibility, which could judge about things with objective validity only in conjunction, each of these great men holds on only to one of them, which in his opinion is immediately related to things in themselves, while the other does nothing but confuse or order the representations of the first.

ibid B344:The concept of the noumenon is therefore not the concept of an object, but rather the problem, unavoidably connected with the limitation of our sensibility, of whether there may not be objects entirely exempt from the intuition of our sensibility, a question that can only be given the indeterminate answer that since sensible intuition does not pertain to all things without distinction room remains for more and other objects; they cannot therefore be absolutely denied, but in the absence of a determinate concept (for which no category is serviceable) they also cannot be asserted as objects for our understanding.

I will pursue my Buddha nature by not commenting on the SEP article.

The receptivity of perception in Aristotle can be seen as a parallel to that of the intuition of sensibility.
Yes. But there's a vast difference in the "mechanism". Aristotle's mind is, so far as I can see, almost entirely passive. Quite unlike Kant's - I guess that's his great contribution.

Paine;1016969:But where Kant directly rebukes Aristotle is over his use of logic at A268/B324.

On this is grounded the logical topics of Aristotle, which schoolteachers and orators could use in order to hunt up certain titles of thinking to find that which best fits their current matter and rationalize or garrulously chatter about it with an appearance of thoroughness

The principle that throughout dominates and determines my Idealism, is on the contrary: "All cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth.

Instead of seeking two entirely different sources of representation in the understanding and the sensibility, which could judge about things with objective validity only in conjunction, each of these great men holds on only to one of them, which in his opinion is immediately related to things in themselves, while the other does nothing but confuse or order the representations of the first.

I'm bit preoccupied with his concept of the a priori.

Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1028a34, translated by CDC Reevey:Now things are said to be primary in many ways. Nonetheless, substance is primary in all of them—in account, in knowledge, and in time. For of the various things that are predicated none is separable, but only this. And in account too it is primary, since in the account of each thing its account is necessarily present as a component.

What is primary is what is sought throughout Aristotle.

Kant's terms can be said to move across the background of their Aristotelian versions.

I need to get more chores off the honey do list first.

Kant's terms can be said to move across the background of their Aristotelian versions.
— Paine
I didn't know that. It isn't a surprise, though.

I am surprised by your lack of surprise. The shared use of terms by the two authors is clearly evident in comparisons of their texts. That includes the term 'experience', that invokes what is called empria by Aristotle which led to the word "empirical."

It is off topic to this OP, but I often wonder about self-identified schools of thought and the range of vocabulary shared amongst different views represented through them. I won't try to talk about that in this thread.

"mind" is not what it seems to itself

Consider this article a précis of 'the world-creates/embodies minds' ...

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/newsplus/new-way-to-map-the-unique-brain-organization-of-individuals/

It is interesting that "mind" can seem to itself to be something that it is not. Unlike a sphere drawn on paper which does not seem to itself to be a 3-D sphere, or a map which does not seem to itself to be the actual terrain.

Do the minds of other other organisms "create" the world as well? Is there a human world, and also a cat world and bunny world, and on and on?

isn't talk of our "creating" the world just hyperbole or metaphor?

I think you're overfond of using words implying that intent is present (e.g. "create" "enact") without any reason to do so.

So, each of us cause the world to exist?

I suppose it would be more accurate to say that each of us causes a world to exist, though, as each of us has a mind, each mind therefore causing its own world.

I don't think anyone claims we physically cause the world to exist, building it as bees build a hive and birds build a nest, but perhaps I'm wrong,
as Wayfarer seems to think we (I don't distinguish between myself and my mind) construct the world, or each of us causes a world of our own.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I've been under the impression that the characteristics or capacities of our minds under discussion are those that operate or obtain regardless of any intent on our part to use them.

Sometimes I look for something, or try to hear what someone is saying, and in those cases I may be said to intend to see or hear though I think it would sound odd, but I hear and see things without intending to do so merely by being alive. I can't help but do so.

I interact with the rest of the world and experience it merely by being a living human being, but I don't think it's correct to say that I intend to do that when I don't. Similarly, I don't think it's correct to say that I create something merely by being alive.

For the record, I don't assume there's a world "external" to me. I'm part of the world, like everything else. I'm not sure what you mean by an "internal world." It wouldn't be surprising if you assume there's one though. It seems you think worlds abound. You have a rococo conception of reality, or realities.

But regardless, I think you define and use "intend" and other words in ways I think are so beyond ordinary use I don't think further discussion would benefit either of us.

I think ambiguity and misconceptions arise when ordinary language is misused in philosophy, myself.

That is a fundamental point of enactivism, 'a theory of cognition that emphasizes the dynamic interaction between an organism and its environment, positing that cognition arises from the organism's actions, not just from internal brain processes.

Although I will grant that 'create' carries connotations that are perhaps a bit too strong. 'Mind constructed world' would be nearer the real intent, but it doesn't have the same ring to it.

So when you say that you can see and hear things without intending to, this is a self-deceptive illusion you create for yourself, by restricting "intention" to a conscious act of willing, and not allowing that there is intention, purpose, behind all your subconscious acts as well.

But I think when we claim each of us create or construct the world, and cats and bunnies do so as well, the world tends to multiply.

To properly study philosophy, it is of the utmost importance that we do not adhere to "ordinary use" for our definitions. Ordinary use is so full of ambiguity that attempts to apply logic would be fruitless.

It's just more evidence that your world is not the same as my world. Therefore it's more proof that "the world" is actually a false conception. No matter how much the belief that there is just one world, is a shared belief, it's contrary to reality, as demonstrated by what you wrote here.

I don't see how ordinary language could be misused, because the nature of "ordinary language" is that there are no regulations to distinguish between use and misuse.

Philosophers strive to exclude such misuse, and that's what separates philosophical use of language from ordinary use of language.

The strange magic of evolutionary theory is that it creates a sense of purpose, of intent, that does not depend on any conscious activity.

The World as Will and Representation, 538:
Nature can attain her end only by implanting in the individual a certain delusion, and by virtue of this, that which is merely in truth a good thing for the species seems to him to be a good thing for himself, so that he serves the species, whereas he is under the delusion that he is serving himself.

This expands the "sense of [unconscious] purpose, of intent" into the moral sphere as well, as so many contemporary exponents of evolutionary explanations do.

The strange magic of evolutionary theory is that it creates a sense of purpose, of intent, that does not depend on any conscious activity. Whether, and how far, that coincides with un- or sub-conscious activity, I couldn't say.

But I don't think that it makes philosophical sense to say that an unconscious purpose is just like a conscious purpose, but unconscious. It needs a bit more explaining than that.

I don't think it is necessarily wrong to develop variant uses of ordinary concepts for philosophical purposes. But it would be a mistake to think that philosophy can just sail off on its own, losing contact with the ordinary world and ordinary language. Ordinary language, because it is the first language we learn, is the inescapable bedrock of everything else.

Why can't our individual worlds all share in the public world?

That doesn't mean there are no rules. It just means that the rules can be misused and misinterpreted. Some of these misinterpretations become new, or extended, uses. Others are ignored or suppressed because they are not accepted (taken up) by the ultimate arbiters of correct and incorrect - the community of users.

But we need to link back to ordinary language (or experience) or world, or philosophy becomes a pointless exercise.

Life's quite bleak from the evolutionary point of view.

"the rules" implies principles which people are obliged to follow.

Or, if it's merely a matter of "Either follow them or face the consequences," then this applies equally well to ordinary language, which exacts stern consequences for the non-followers.

Why can't our individual worlds all share in the public world?

Heraclitus:There is but one world common for those who are awake, but when men are asleep, each turns away into a world of his own

In the case of the signs, I was imagining dying in a crash because of not following the speed rules.

. In the case of language, someone who didn't follow the rules of their language would likely be ostracized or oppressed -- at least it they did it a lot.

Anyway, the severity of the consequences isn't the point. Rather, it's that there is no automatic enforcement of these rules.

Compare, for instance, using a passport. There are rules and you have to follow them or else you can't use a passport. No one is ever in a position of being told, "Fine, don't present a valid passport, you'll be sorry." They're simply prohibited from playing the passport game.

whereas growing is a type of intentional activity which is far more general.

the idea that we can't help doing what our biology (or unconscious, if you prefer) insists on.

I believe that philosophy forms the bedrock usage, and ordinary language sails off, losing contact with the philosophical roots.

However, we do have very good reason to accept the minds of others, as well as the medium between us, which separates my mind from your mind.

We couldn't call these signs "the rules", because "the rules" implies principles which people are obliged to follow.

Or, if it's merely a matter of "Either follow them or face the consequences," then this applies equally well to ordinary language, which exacts stern consequences for the non-followers.

If I say "Julius Caesar is a prime number", the penalty is that I haven't said anything.

We can't help eating and drinking in a sense, but there is a huge super-structure of activity at the conscious level.

Or, as I suggested to Metaphysician Undercover, if you continue to say such things you may well be institutionalized.

The evolutionary thesis isn't usually applied to the stuff that's biologically obligatory, like breathing or digesting.

Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were making what I regard as polemical points, in opposition to the rationalizing tendency of the philosophy that was current. I find it difficult to think they really believed it, about themselves.

"intentional" in some sense, I suppose. I would prefer "purposive". It's a process of developing a functional mechanism and the process is set up by DNA (roughly) and includes control mechanisms. But it's very different from purposive activities at a conscious, everyday level. Our growth processes are not controlled by the conscious being that is being created. That would be impossible.

I don't see how that's possible. We don't learn philosophy on its own. We have to learn ordinary language first.

If there is a medium that separates us, it also, at the same time, unites us. It's just a change in perspective. London and Edinburgh are separated by a bit more than 300 miles. At the same time, they are joined by those miles.

But it is useful to think of language as a set of rules - grammar.

Or, as I suggested to Metaphysician Undercover, if you continue to say such things you may well be institutionalized.

There really is no "stern consequences" for common misuse of language.

To me, they look stern. Not to you. That's OK. We're both just speculating.

You propose a type of purposiveness which is not set toward any goal or aim. It's just a "functional mechanism", a "control mechanism", which does what it does, without any further goal, or aim.

How is that reasonable in any sense, to drive such a wedge and produce a dualism of purposiveness within an individual being? This is why I say that this proposed division of purposiveness would leave one type as unintelligible. Unless one is understood as an extension, or subtype of the other, then the one is left as aimless and unintelligible.

But in philosophy when we want to understand the true nature of something, what is conventional for other purposes might mislead the philosopher. That is what I think is happening here. This idea, which is useful for some other purposes, is misleading you in your philosophy.

What is learned is "ordinary language", what is taught is principled speaking (philosophy).

Therefore ordinary language is based in a foundation of philosophy as the guiding principles, what you call rules, even though the learner may refuse the rules.

I explained to you the principles of separation. You are claiming that the principles of separation also serve as unification. That is what I insisted, is unjustified. Obviously, "300 miles" refers to a spatial separation between two distinct and separate places. Please explain how you conceive of "300 miles" as a union between these two.

There's a misunderstanding here. Our digestion has the function of extracting nutrients from food and disposing of the waste. That is the goal or aim of the system, isn't it? Our balance organ controls our actions so that we don't fall over. That is it's goal or aim.

Yes I am suggesting exactly that. Evolutionary purposes are an extension of the paradigm of conscious purpose. I hate to complicate things even more, but I am also suggesting that the purposes of our physiology are not evolutionary, but are about establishing and maintain our bodies. That's also an extension of conscious purposes. This in the context of unconscious purposes, which was raised earlier.

conventions...might mislead the philosopher" tells me that sometimes it doesn't. So it makes a good starting-point.
I don't see that I'm being misled by the idea of language games.

So what is learned is not what is taught? I think, however, that you are forgetting that many people, perhaps most people, do not learn language by being taught. They learn it from interacting with their environment. Actually teaching language is a different kind of exercise.

How on earth did people get on before philosophy was invented?

Not quite. "300 miles" is a distance which can be regarded as a measure of the space that separates them, or a measure of the space that unites them - they are both in the same state, though not in the same country. Separation and unity are two sides of the same coin.

How comforting it must be to think the world is only a mental construct, and how blithe you must feel when you hear of those who claim to suffer in it!

I've been away for a time.

By way of explaining how we differ, I wonder if you can elaborate on how you think the capacities of our mind you've referred to in our past exchanges came to be if not through our interaction with the rest of the world?

Daniele Oriti’s pursuit of a theory of quantum gravity has led him to the startling conclusion that the laws of nature don’t exist independently of us – a perspective shift that could yield fresh breakthroughs.

Thomas Lewton: What do people get wrong about the nature of reality?

Daniele Oriti: At the risk of seeming provocative, most scientists – and anybody who hasn’t really thought about the issue – maintain a position that philosophers call “naive realism”. This is the idea that there is a world out there that is entirely independent from us, not just in its existence but also in its properties: independent from the minds apprehending it, or from our theories about it. It’s made of things that are similarly independently defined, with intrinsic properties, which follow patterns that are also independent of us – even if we may not know about them.

I have been guilty of that position too. As a physics student, you want to understand the world. You build models, you revise them and you think that you are getting closer to the actual story. That’s the picture, and it’s very naive.

Why is that kind of thinking so naive?

First of all, it is naive on conceptual, philosophical grounds. But I would also say that modern science, particularly quantum mechanics, blurs this picture. One of the main lessons of quantum mechanics is that the distinction between us and the world isn’t really there, not sharply anyway. It tells us the properties of a particle are encoded in a probabilistic entity we call a 'wave function', which tells us the likelihood of it appearing here or there, for instance – but that the particle cannot be attributed definite properties until it is observed. It’s screaming at us that observers really matter.

....I’m still inclined to think that physical laws are really epistemic in nature, so something that exists primarily in our minds.

That’s because, from a philosophical standpoint, what we identify as a “law of nature” always has some component of our models of the world, selected because of some epistemic virtue we favour. The further claim that the law is somehow “out there” seems gratuitous to me. And, as I’ve already said, I think quantum mechanics challenges the idea of a separation between the “world” and “us”.

For me, all we are, all we do, all we know, is derived from our interactivity with the rest of the world. I suspect there's a lot we don't know about the universe, though, and that interaction may include aspects of which we're not yet aware.

I think the point he's making, if I understand it, is an error because he treats the "observer" as separate from the "observed."

That was behind his legendary remark 'does the moon continue to exist when nobody is looking?' I think the rhetorical import was 'Of course it does!"

The error I mean is to treat the "observer" as in a separate world from the "observed."

I may be making myself misunderstood. The error I mean is to treat the "observer" as in a separate world from the "observed." They're not one and the same, though.

I don't see a problem here.

The problem, I think, comes when we ask which of these points of view (if any) reflect how the world really is. Is there any way to make the case that some points of view are ontologically privileged? -- that is, that they describe the world more accurately than their competitors?

The irony enters when those, who generally take science to have only epistemic or epistemological, and not ontological, significance, then seek to use the results of quantum physics to support ontological claims, such as that consciousness really does, as opposed to merely seems to we observers to, collapse the wave function, and that consciousness or mind is thus ontologically fundamental.

They are all about truth, but not about the same truth.

The irony enters when those, who generally take science to have only epistemic or epistemological, and not ontological, significance, nonetheless seek to use the results of quantum physics to support ontological claims

The irony enters when those, who generally take science to have only epistemic or epistemological, and not ontological, significance, nonetheless seek to use the results of quantum physics to support ontological claims, such as that consciousness really does, as opposed to merely seems to we observers to, collapse the wave function, and that consciousness or mind is thus ontologically fundamental.

It is true, for instance, that several stars, when grouped together, make a constellation. But that is so because of something we humans do. It is not actually a feature of the natural world (using a common sense of what is natural).

Second, how far can this be pushed? See Ted Sider's ideas about "objective structure." His "grue" and "bleen" people divide up the visual world in a bizarre way, yet everything they say about it is true. Sider argues, and I agree, that nonetheless they are missing something important about how the world really is.

'Ontological Realism' - Theodore Sider: The point of metaphysics is to discern the fundamental structure of the world. That requires choosing fundamental notions with which to describe the world. No one can avoid this choice. Other things being equal, it’s good to choose a set of fundamental notions that make previously unanswerable questions evaporate. There’s no denying that this is a point in favor of ontological deflationism. But no one other than a positivist can make all the hard questions evaporate. If nothing else, the choice of what notions are fundamental remains. There’s no detour around the entirety of fundamental metaphysics.

On Bitbol’s reading, quantum theory supports neither position. .... What it destabilises is the very framework in which “mind” and “matter” appear as separable ontological kinds in the first place.

Because both dualism and materialism tacitly treat consciousness as something—a thing among other things—while also presuming that physical systems exist independently of observation, the observer problem then appears as a paradox. The realist question becomes: what are these objects really in themselves, prior to or apart from any observation?

. . . an actual feature of the world. ("natural" just makes additional complexity).

My first stab at identifying what is missing is that this notion of truth is very thin. It is neither use nor ornament. It consequently doesn't have a future in our everyday language.

I'm a bit doubtful whether "how the world really is" is a useful or usable criterion for what we are trying to talk about.

'Ontological Realism' - Theodore Sider:the choice of what notions are fundamental remains. There’s no detour around the entirety of fundamental metaphysics.

What it destabilises is the very framework in which “mind” and “matter” appear as separable ontological kinds in the first place.

That's a new one to me.

Interesting point. In general, I think scientific realism had better include some truths about the role of consciousness -- it would be drastically incomplete otherwise. But what are these truths? Stay tuned .

I’ve been studying Michel Bitbol on philosophy of science, and he sees many of these disputes as arising from a shared presupposition: treating mind and matter as if they were two substances, one of which must be ontologically fundamental. In that sense, dualists and physicalists often share two assumptions—first, that consciousness is either a thing or a property of a thing; and second, that physical systems exist in their own right, independently of how they appear to us.

On Bitbol’s reading, quantum theory supports neither position. It doesn’t establish the ontological primacy of consciousness conceived as a substance—but it also undermines the idea of self-subsisting physical “things” with inherent identity and persistence. What it destabilises is the very framework in which “mind” and “matter” appear as separable ontological kinds in the first place.

I don't agree that it undermines the idea of self-existing things, meaning things that exist in the absence of percipients.

The dependence on what is observed upon the choice of experimental arrangement made Einstein unhappy. It conflicts with the view that the universe exists "out there", independent of all acts on observation. In contrast Bohr stressed that we confront here an inescapable new feature of nature, to be welcomed because of the understanding it givs us. Bohr found himself forced to introduce the word “phenomenon”. In today's words Bohr’s point – and the central point of quantum theory – can be put into a single, simple sentence. "No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered (observed ) phenomenon”.

That precise point is written all over the history of quantum mechanics. The customary dodge is 'well, there are different interpretations' - but notice this also subjectivises the facts of the matter, makes it a matter of different opinions. If you don't see it, you need to do more reading on it. The fields of quantum physics are in no way 'building blocks', which is a lame attempt to apply a metaphor appropriate to atomism to a completely different conceptual matrix.

I'm not sure what you mean by "scientific realism", but the study of consciousness seems to be irrelevant to most of the hard sciences

But if our goal is to give a complete account of what there is, then to leave consciousness out would be laughable. This tells me that we're still in early days of forming such an account. You say that we have cognitive science and psychology to deal with consciousness, and in a way we do, but neither field provides a grounding theory of what consciousness is, or why it occurs. Like the hard sciences, consciousness is accepted as a given (or, for some, deflated or reduced or denied).

So, one of the most extraordinary and omnipresent facts about the world -- that many of its denizens have an "inside," a subjectivity -- still awaits a unified theory. I know many on TPF doubt that science can provide this. I'm agnostic; let's wait and see.

The problem with trying to model consciousness itself is that it is the thing doing the modeling, and we cannot "get outside of it", so we seem to be stuck with making inferences about what it might be from studying the brain being the best we can do, or going with what our intuitions "from inside" tell us about its nature.

I don't find it plausible that how they present to us is determined by consciousness, but I think it is more reasonable to think that it is determined by the physical constitutions of our sensory organs, nervous system and brain, as well as by the actual structures of the things themselves.

The problem with trying to model consciousness itself is that it is the thing doing the modeling, and we cannot "get outside of it", so we seem to be stuck with making inferences about what it might be from studying the brain being the best we can do, or going with what our intuitions "from inside" tell us about its nature.

The verb “to be” is something that science doesn’t really know how to deal with. What has happened is that scientists have often ignored it and tried to pretend that it doesn’t exist. They’ve sort of defined it away, and that’s actually fine for some problems—doing that has actually allowed science to make a whole lot of progress. For instance, if you’re just talking about balls on a pool table, fine: you can totally get the Observer out of it. But there is a whole class of problems that are at the very root of some of our deepest questions, like the nature of consciousness, the nature of time, and the nature of the universe as a whole, where doing that (taking the Observer out) limits you in terms of explanations, and it’s really bound us up in a lot of ways. And it has really important consequences, both for science, our ability to explain things, but also for the culture that emerges out of science.

In order to remove the Observer you have to treat the world as dead, you know? One of the things that for me is really important is to move away from like words like “the Observer” and focus on experience. Because part of the problem with experience is that it’s so close to us that we don’t even see it. And it’s only in contemplative practice that you really have to deal with it. …

Physicists are in love with the idea of objective reality. I like to say that we physicists have a mania for ontology. We want to know what the furniture of the world is, independent of us. And I think that idea really needs to be re-examined, because when you think about objective reality, what are you doing? You’re just imagining yourself looking at the world without actually being there, because it’s impossible to actually imagine a perspectiveless perspective. So all you’ve done is you’ve just substituted God’s perspective, as if you were floating over some planet, disembodied, looking down on it. And, so, what is that? This thing we’re calling objective reality is kind of a meaningless concept because the only way we encounter the world is through our perspective. Having perspectives, having experience: that’s really where we should begin.

I see two initial problems, firstly the problem of how a mind can talk about itself with itself and not be convinced that it’s impossible to do it impartially, or that it’s an insurmountable stumbling block.

It makes intuitive sense to me, but it is (at this stage at least) obviously not a falsifiable theory of the human mind, and even if it were it still wouldn't answer the deepest questions about the relationship between the mind and the brain.

The point of falsifiability is not that it's the gold standard for all true theories

But conversely, that doesn't mean that rationalist philosophy of mind can't be true, because it is not empirically falsifiable.

Physicists are in love with the idea of objective reality. I like to say that we physicists have a mania for ontology. We want to know what the furniture of the world is, independent of us.

But people can talk about their minds?we do it all the time. But we do so from the perspective of how things seem to us. And how all things in that context seem to me may not be how they seem to you?even though there will likely be commonalities due to the fact that we are both human.

But why isn't this just as much of a problem for understanding trees as it is for understanding consciousness?

It seems, again, to come down to a difference between experience and explanation. I can never experience your subjectivity, but why would that mean I can't explain how it comes about?

The reason is that if we are standing in front of a tree we can point to its features and we will necessarily agree.

The difficulty will be to explain why mind or consciousness seems intuitively to be the way it seems, and how could we ever demonstrate whether or not that "seeming" is veridical or not?

But doesn't it apply to any attempt at an objective viewpoint, not to viewing consciousness especially?

It's not a matter of strictly rational, i.e. non-empirical, theories being true or false, but of their being able to be demonstrated to be true or false.

The only way the veracity of philosophical arguments is demonstrable is through their logical consistency and their ability to persuade. But they can't necessarily be adjuticated empirically. Case in point is 'interpretations of quantum physics'. They are not able to be settled with reference to the empirical facts of the matter.

If my subjectivity is indeed not the same thing as yours (other than numerically), explain why not. What might cause such an odd circumstance to arise, given that we're both human beings who understand each other quite well, when it comes to consciousness-talk?

But . . . couldn't we raise all the same questions about any phenomenon? The trees seem a certain way to us; but are they really that way?

The question would be "persuasive to whom?".

And how all things in that context seem to me may not be how they seem to you?even though there will likely be commonalities due to the fact that we are both human.

Because part of the problem with experience is that it’s so close to us that we don’t even see it. And it’s only in contemplative practice that you really have to deal with it.

We are outside of or apart from the subjects of the natural sciences. As Frank says, 'billiard balls' - and a whole bunch more, up to and including space telescopes - all of these are matters of objective fact. Less so for the social sciences and psychology.

we're thinking about something that can't be treated in an objective manner, because we're not outside or apart from what we're thinking about.

whether or not it is conceivable that there could be a completely satisfying explanation as to how the brain produces consciousness (if it does).

we say we know how consciousness seems, and give accounts of that, but how can we tell whether language itself is somehow distorting the picture via reification? How would consciousness seem to us if we were prelinguistic beings? That's obviously a rhetorical question.

Maybe this is a good place to remind ourselves that there are other ways of "observing consciousness" than doing phenomenology. Deep meditation is also a type of experience that pares down subjectivity to some sort of essence that is surely prelinguistic. So I don't think your question is merely rhetorical. It's very hard to answer, though! My cat knows the answer, but is unable to tell me.
8 hours ago

. . . you (or Frank) are pointing to this continuum, as it moves from hard science to social science to, perhaps, philosophy through phenomenology. The provocative question is, Can you justify drawing a line where you do, at "matters of objective fact"?

We have the concept 'objective' and it generally denotes whatever actually is independent of human perception, thought and judgement

Mathematics may be somehow inherent in nature, to be sure.

For me, the real problem is the rational-based insistence on there being "One Truth" for all,

Water still boils at 100c at sea level. COVID vaccination is effective.

the idea of universal objectivity had been undermined by physics itself. The problem that quantum physics threw up was precisely that it threw into question the clear separstion of observer from observed.

No, I'm not at all sure. I see mathematics along Husserlian lines as necessary structures of intentional consciousness. So neither 'in' the mind nor 'in' the world. That's the rub.

OK -- how does one draw the line? At what point does the involvement of the observer undermine objectivity? And when that line is crossed, what is the "proper description" for truth?

If mathematics is not an inherent aspect of the mind nor of the world, or of the interactions between mind and world, then from whence does it come?

Husserl sees mathematics as absolutely necessary, ideal truth that is constituted by the universal structures of intentional consciousness,

I still recommend The Blind Spot.

I don't think we are one "hive mind" at all?look at the great differences between cultures, and the polarizations within particular cultures.

and I don't think we are locked in our own little solipsistic worlds.

I even think it is possible that we share some kind of collective unconscious, as Jung suggested,

I see Nature as endlessly creative and diverse.

I’m implying there is a uniformity beneath the surface. If we look at biology we can start to see the uniformity.

I’m implying there is a uniformity beneath the surface. If we look at biology we can start to see the uniformity. If we list the organs in the body we will find that they are present in most animals without exception.

I don’t like to get bogged down in discussions about DNA, but in essence all DNA is the same, it’s only the sequence that differs, the encoding. This encoding determines everything about the variation in the body of the being in question.

I’m only suggesting this in viewing the one being (our biosphere as one being), as a whole, this being lives in a solipsistic world in it’s interactions with the neumenon of the world. All individual animals and plants are living in different aspects of that whole experience. It is solipsistic in the sense that it is an isolated arena, that of a planet in space (the sun does exert some influence).

Quite, but not just unconsciousness, but a common arena of activity. A common landscape, scale, temporal manifold. Take two people sitting in a restaurant eating pasta. They may have different hair clothes sauce on their food. But so much of what is going on is a shared experience and circumstance, one which may well require an underlying unity of being for it to happen.

I've lost track of what we were disagreeing about, or whether we were disagreeing at all.

The problem, I think, comes when we ask which of these points of view (if any) reflect how the world really is. Is there any way to make the case that some points of view are ontologically privileged? -- that is, that they describe the world more accurately than their competitors?

If you say "There are no fundamental notions," you have nonetheless made an important statement about what is and isn't fundamental.

As to the Wheeler diagram, it says nothing about whether the ways in which the world can be divided up are more or less in accordance with the actual structure of the world.

Individually we inhabit the inner world of our own experience?yet that experience is always already mediated by our biology, our language, our culture, our upbringing with all its joys and traumas. Our consciousness is not by any means the entirety of our psyche.

that our usual construals of how the world is are useful because they're true, not vice versa -- but the problem is, truth isn't enough.

I gave one example, to view all life as one being, as a starting point, there are many more.

I think that shared experience requires an actual world, which is in various ways perceived by all.

he critiques Galilean science (in his Crisis of the Modern Sciences) for over-valuing the abstract and objective, at the expense of the subject to whom mathematics is meaningful.

a new approach, as opposed to the orthodox materialism, reductionism, dualism, versus monism etc etc.

The question in the first sentence presupposes that there is some way we can know how the world really is. But there isn't. Or rather, how the world really is depends on your point of view.

If you say "There are no fundamental notions," you have nonetheless made an important statement about what is and isn't fundamental.
— J
I haven't said that there are no fundamental notions. In some cases, there clearly are. In other, there don't seem to me. Much turns on what you mean by fundamental.

that our usual construals of how the world is are useful because they're true, not vice versa -- but the problem is, truth isn't enough.
— J
No, truth isn't enough. But the truths we recognize reflect our interests and our way of life. That's the something more you are looking for.

Individually we inhabit the inner world of our own experience?yet that experience is always already mediated by our biology, our language, our culture, our upbringing with all its joys and traumas. Our consciousness is not by any means the entirety of our psyche. — Janus

No, we don't. We inhabit the world in which we live. Inner experience is what reveals that world to us.

The View from Nowhere, 24-5:Only a dogmatic verificationist would deny the possibility of forming objective concepts that reach beyond our current capacity to apply them. The aim of reaching a conception of the world which does not put us at the center in any way requires the formation of such concepts. We are supported in such an aim by a kind of intellectual optimism: the belief that we possess an open-ended capacity for understanding what we have not yet conceived, and that it can be called into operation by detaching from our present understanding and trying to reach a higher-order view which explains it as part of the world. . . .

It is the same with the mind. To accept the general idea of a perspective without limiting it to the forms with which one is familiar, subjectively or otherwise, is the precondition of seeking ways to conceive of particular types of experience that do not depend on the ability either to have those experiences or to imagine them subjectively. It should be possible to investigate in this way the quality-structure of some sense we do not have, for example, by observing creatures who do have it – even though the understanding we can reach is only partial.

But if we could do that, we should also be able to apply the same general idea to ourselves, and thus to analyze our experiences in ways that can be understood without having had such experiences. That would constitute a kind of objective standpoint toward our own minds.

We need to look carefully at what Frank means when he talks about “experience.” He never quite gives a precise definition, but consider this: “Scientific investigations . . . occur only in the field of our experience. . . Experience is present at every step,” including the abstract: We experience models and theories and ideas just as we experience sense perceptions.

The Blind Spot, p9: At the heart of science lies something we do not see that makes science possible, just as the blind spot lies at the heart of our visual field and makes seeing possible. In the visual blind spot sits the optic nerve; in the scientific blind spot sits direct experience—that by which anything appears, shows up, or becomes available to us. It is a precondition of observation, investigation, exploration, measurement, and justification. Things appear and become available thanks to our bodies and their feeling and perceiving capacities. Direct experience is bodily experience.

P11:This happens when we get so caught up in the ascending spiral of abstraction and idealization that we lose sight of the concrete, bodily experiences that anchor the abstractions and remain necessary for them to be meaningful. The advance and success of science convinced us to downplay experience and give pride of place to mathematical physics. From the perspective of that scientific worldview, the abstract, mathematically expressed concepts of space, time, and motion in physics are truly fundamental, whereas our concrete bodily experiences are derivative, and indeed are often relegated to the status of an illusion, a phantom of the computations happening in our brains.

I have no real argument with what Frank says about the God’s-eye view and “unvarnished reality.” I only point out that this isn’t what we mean when we talk about objectivity.

We should note that Nagel qualifies this in an important way. “Something will inevitably be lost,” he says – namely, what it is like to have the subjective experience. “No objective conception of the mental world can include it all.” But do we ask the objective viewpoint to include everything, or only (only!) to understand everything?

It doesn’t require a brain to know what it is like, or to have experiences.

I have no real argument with what Frank says about the God’s-eye view and “unvarnished reality.” I only point out that this isn’t what we mean when we talk about objectivity.
— J

Who is this "we?"

“Objectivist ontology became king as scientists grew accustomed to assuming that the creations of their mathematical physics could be treated as timeless laws held in the “mind of God” and viewable from a perfectly objective, perfectly perspectiveless perspective—a “view from nowhere.” Thus, when quantum mechanics appeared from the same experimental workshop that had created the triumph of classical physics, many scientists believed their job was to defend the ontological heights and equate reality with the abstract formalism." So, no, I don't believe their interpretation is at odds with Nagel's, in fact Nagel is cited repeatedly in the text. I think they're converging on a similar point.

I think the question presupposes not so much that there is some way, but that the question can be meaningfully asked, and is important.

If my point of view is such that aliens have secretly replaced my family, that is not how the world really is.

For Sider, what's fundamental is structure, grounding.

we're supposed to conclude that the only reason the latter truth is more important than the former is because it reflects our interests and our way of life.

So for me it is meaningless to say that our experience gives us no true picture of the real. It doesn't give us a complete picture, but that is a different consideration.

Presupposing that the question can be meaningfully asked is not the same as knowing how to answer it. Perhaps you are thinking that we can work out what will count as an answer and go on from there. It may be possible, but it doesn't exclude the possibility that it cannot be answered because nothing would count as an answer. On the other hand we can answer lots of questions about the world and, for me, these count as telling us how the world really is. What is puzzling is why you think those answers do not count.

The problem, I think, comes when we ask which of these points of view (if any) reflect how the world really is.

That's not quite what I mean by a point of view.

So for me it is meaningless to say that our experience gives us no true picture of the real. It doesn't give us a complete picture, but that is a different consideration.
— Janus
I can buy that.

Structure and grounding are not the same thing.

The "if any" was meant to acknowledge your point: No answers may be forthcoming, and that could be for (at least) two reasons: We can't find the answer, or the question is badly put because it implies that "how the world really is" is meaningful when in fact it isn't. I'm not sure I know how we would "work out what will count as an answer," exactly, though I rather like putting it that way because it's a reminder that there's probably no way to simply discover the answer.

I know, but I deliberately chose an outrageous example so I can illustrate the idea that "point of view" is uncomfortably ambiguous, though it gets invoked constantly in these discussions. As you say, my deluded self has "most likely . . . adopted a way of interpreting the information that you have, so let's allow that it is a point of view." But is a point of view merely a perspective, any perspective? How is what I do when I take a deluded point of view different from what any non-insane, objective, scientifically respectable point of view does? I think it's a lot different, myself, but why? What makes objectivity different from "just what I think"?

Sider doesn't mean grounding in any physical sense. Rather, it's a question of what must be metaphysically fundamental -- what concepts give rise to, or secure, other concepts. Jonathan Schaffer's excellent essay, "On What Grounds What," gives a clear picture of these issues, influenced by both Sider and Aristotle.

To conclude: metaphysics as I understand it is about what grounds what. It is about the structure of the world. It is about what is fundamental, and what derives from it.

So for me it is meaningless to say that our experience gives us no true picture of the real. It doesn't give us a complete picture, but that is a different consideration.
— Janus
I can buy that.
— Ludwig V

Me too. As Nagel says, how the world appears to us is part of what is real.

“Objectivist ontology became king as scientists grew accustomed to assuming that the creations of their mathematical physics could be treated as timeless laws held in the “mind of God” and viewable from a perfectly objective, perfectly perspectiveless perspective—a “view from nowhere.” Thus, when quantum mechanics appeared from the same experimental workshop that had created the triumph of classical physics, many scientists believed their job was to defend the ontological heights and equate reality with the abstract formalism." So, no, I don't believe their interpretation is at odds with Nagel's, in fact Nagel is cited repeatedly in the text. I think they're converging on a similar point.
— Wayfarer

Here my question is about your "they" (though I may just be misreading you). Do you mean Frank and Gleiser, or the scientists referred to in the quote? I think you mean F&G, in which case I'd ask you to expand on this.

Our purpose in this book is to expose the Blind Spot and offer some direction that might serve as alternatives to its incomplete and limited vision of science. Scientific knowledge isn’t a window onto a disembodied, God’s-eye perspective. It doesn’t grant us access to a perfectly knowable, timeless objective reality, a “view from nowhere,” in philosopher Thomas Nagel’s well-known phrase.

(Frank) says things like “Science has no answer to this question” and “Science is silent on this question” as if we should then conclude than ignorance and silence are the end of the story.

consider that in certain intense states of absorption – during meditation, dance or highly skilled performances – the subject-object structure can drop away, and we are left with a sense of sheer felt presence. How is such phenomenal presence possible in a physical world? Science is silent on this question.

Experiences have a subjective character; they occur in the first person. Why should a given sort of physical system have the feeling of being a subject? Science has no answer to this question.

Abstract: The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology
The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (German: Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie) is the last major work of the philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and is widely considered his most influential and accessible text.

Written in the mid-1930s, the book diagnoses a profound intellectual and cultural crisis in Europe and proposes his transcendental phenomenology as the necessary solution.

Core Arguments and Concepts
Husserl's diagnosis centers on the development of modern science, particularly the natural sciences, since the time of Galileo Galilei.

The Crisis of Meaning: The primary crisis is not a technical one within the sciences (he acknowledges their success), but a radical life-crisis of European humanity. The modern positive sciences—by prioritizing a purely "objective" and quantifiable view—have alienated humanity from the very questions of meaning, value, and ultimate purpose that are essential for a genuine human existence.

"In the distress of our lives, this science has nothing to tell us. The very questions it excludes on principle are precisely those that burn most intensely in our unhappy age..."

Critique of Galilean Science and Objectivism

Husserl argues that Galileo introduced a "mathematization of nature" by replacing the perceived, qualitative world with an idealized, quantitative world (geometry and physics).

This mathematical world, originally a method for understanding nature, has been mistakenly taken for reality itself. He calls this historical process a "concealment" of the ultimate source of scientific meaning.

This led to Objectivism and Positivism, worldviews that reduce all knowledge to what can be observed and measured, neglecting the subjective human subject who does the measuring.

The Life-World (or Lebenswelt)

Husserl introduces the life-world as the pre-given, familiar world of everyday experience that is the unquestioned foundation and source of meaning for all scientific concepts and objective knowledge.

The formalized, mathematical world of science is a substructure built upon this intuitive, pre-scientific life-world. The crisis stems from forgetting this foundational relationship. Science has become "unmoored" from its experiential and subjective roots.

Transcendental Phenomenology as the Solution

Husserl asserts that the only way to overcome the crisis is through a radical return to the founding source of all meaning: Transcendental Phenomenology.

Through the phenomenological epoch? (or "bracketing"), phenomenology seeks to investigate the functioning subjectivity—the conscious, meaning-giving activities of the human being—that constitutes the world, including the world of science.

This revival of a "universal philosophy" aims to be a rigorous, self-reflecting science that grounds all other sciences and provides an ultimate answer to the questions of human existence and rationality.

In order to understand the experience, one has to be the being experiencing it.

And by being, I’m not talking of the mind*, I’m talking of a living creature.

[The tree] is there, is reacting to, is growing through all these events and circumstances. These are events being experienced by a living being.

This is what is in question, I think. Nagel, in the passage I quoted in response to @Wayfarer, doesn't think this follows. And I don't see why it must, though no one would deny that we learn more about an experience if we're the ones having it.

Or at least they may be. Unless we stipulate a certain meaning for "experience" which we're not entitled to ("everything that happens to an entity is an experience"), I don't think we can know whether a tree has them.

An organism feels.

"Real" is being used outside or beyond the structure that it usually carries with it.
But sometimes there does seem to be a meaning to it.

I don't think that "metaphysically fundamental" helps much. I'm trying to suggest we should pay attention to different kinds of case.

So here we go - three different metaphors in two lines

the other category being whatever is amenable to experience, which is thought of as being real for us.

That passage you quoted above from Thomas Nagel's 'View from Nowhere' is from his chapter on Mind, and the difficulty of framing an objective view of consciousness, given its first-person nature.

This is not 'science has reached a dead end', or that 'silence is the end of the story'. The point is polemical: to illustrate how these fundamental elements of experience are outside the scope of science.

do you see the connection?

I probably wouldn't want to go out on a limb

I once watched a documentary on a child with CIP (congenital insensitivity to pain).

You're stipulating that subjective experience can never be made into such an object, and I'm saying that it probably can be -- that we shouldn't leap from our current (primitive) understanding of the concepts of "subjective" and "objective" to conclude that our concepts are not only adequate, but force a philosophical conclusion.

I'm not at all convinced that such a definition really captures the essence of scientific inquiry.

Your use of 'primitive', even with scare quotes, implies that this, too, will somehow be unravelled by the inexorable march of science. But there's a logical contradiction which you're not seeing.

What would be an alternative to Frank's 'dated historical account'?

Logic tells us nothing about the world; it only tells us what terms can be sensibly used together, given their definitions. Sure, if "subjective" and "objective" can only mean what you say they mean, then they can't be used in certain ways to say certain things without contradiction. But I'm questioning that use as too narrow. Specifically, I'm suggesting that understanding a number-theoretical statement, for instance, is not a subjective experience in the same way that eating a chocolate is. In such a case, the apparent bipolarity of subjective and objective starts to break down, it seems to me. This is a deep problem in how to understand the role of rationality (or call it hermeneutics, perhaps) in human experience. I think the possibility remains open that we can understand subjectivity without requiring that everyone have the same subjective experience, or that we somehow simultaneously inhabit objectivity and subjectivity, as defined in this way.

The subject–object distinction is therefore not just a quirk of how narrowly we define certain words; it is assumed by logic itself. It was implicit throughout much of traditional philosophy, but made explicit in phenomenology in particular.

And yes, we can “understand subjectivity.” But we can only ever be one subject; the only instance of subjectivity we directly know is our own, and that by being it, not by knowing it objectively.

As for Frank’ book, it is a philosophy of science book. It isn’t aimed at Kuhn, Feyerabend, or Polanyi—or likely even at readers who take those figures seriously. Its target is metaphysical realism, which presumably those you are speaking too don't hold to.

Logic may well be formal and content-neutral, but it does not operate in a metaphysical vacuum.

Logic tells us nothing about the world;

As said in the Brihadaranyaka Upani?ad '“You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the thinker of thinking. That which is the Self is not grasped as an object; it is the ground of all grasping.”

And we can even put a highly skeptical slant on "real for us" and insist that this is a kind of bastard child of true Reality, consisting of illusions and "perspectives," without changing Nagel's point. Illusions actually happen; if we see something illusory and believe it is (deeply) Real, this is an experience we have. It has to be explained, just as much as anything else, if we want to give a complete account of the world we encounter. Of course, when we start parsing "real" in a way that requires a capital R, we start to confuse ourselves.

To say that meaning does not come from being is little different than saying that meaning does not exist. Contrariwise, anyone who leads a meaningful life would of course reject such a "law."

That we have the illusion is not itself an illusion.

I doubt whether a complete account of the world we encounter is possible

life is being, but it is not merely being in the sense of sheer mere existence.

I kind of do too, but it feels important to hold it up as a desideratum. Even unreachable goals can be motivating, and express something aspirational about the overall human project of knowledge.

"Life is meaningless" is surely a mood everyone has felt at some time. How can we fall into such a mood? (other than reading Sartre's Nausea :smile: ). Usually by noticing, often with horror, that the values we hold, and organize our lives around, cannot be discovered in the world in the same way we discover what Heidegger called (in Manheim's translation) "essents" -- rocks and birds and math problems and everything else that has being but not being-there-for-us (Dasein, more or less). But as you say, living as a human is more than that, or at least so some of us believe.

I tried reading Nausea once—I wasn't able to get far with it.

For me, to live fully is to live a life of intense feeling, with the intellectual concerns informed by, not separate to, that life.

Michel Bitbol: According to phenomenology, consciousness is no thing or property that may exist or not exist. “Consciousness” is the misleading name we give to the precondition for any ascription of existence or inexistence. What makes this remark obvious for phenomenologists and almost incomprehensible for physicalists, is that phenomenologists are settled in the first-person standpoint, whereas physicalist researchers explore everything from a third-person standpoint. From a first-person standpoint, anything that exists (thing or property) is given as a phenomenal content of consciousness. Therefore, consciousness de facto comes before any ascription of existence.

If it's a process, then it isn't some "misleading name we give to the precondition for any ascription of existence or inexistence."

from a third-person standpoint, nothing else than objects of perception and handling is to be taken seriously. Now, the behavioral or neurobiological correlates of consciousness are possible objects of perception and handling. They can be said to exist (if a subject is alive and awake) or not to exist (in other cases). Then, from this standpoint, saying that the neural correlate of consciousness (often taken as its “neural basis”) may exist or not exist, amounts to saying that consciousness itself may exist or not exist in the same sense.

Other than the fact of one's own existence, what else can one infer?

If it's a process, then it isn't some "misleading name we give to the precondition for any ascription of existence or inexistence."
— Relativist

Bitbol says it's 'misleading' precisely because it is reifying to designate 'consciousness' as an object of any kind, even an 'objective process'. To 'reify' is to 'make into a thing', when consicousness is not a thing or an object of any kind.

He's saying, before we can say anything about 'what exists', we must first be conscious. Or, put another way, consciousness is that in which and for which the experienced world arises. It is the pre-condition for any knowledge whatever.

saying that the neural correlate of consciousness (often taken as its “neural basis”) may exist or not exist, amounts to saying that consciousness itself may exist or not exist in the same sense.

Phenomenology and the existentialism that grew out of it, are not concerned with scientific objectivism, but with lived existence and meaning, as providing the context within which the objective sciences need to be interpreted.

This seems trivially true

This seems trivially true
— Relativist

Not when consciousness is treated as an object (per Materialist Theory of Mind) :brow:

It’s not about falsifying the third person perspective, but pointing out its implicit limitations

Other than the fact of one's own existence, what else can one infer? (by deduction, induction, or abduction)

Materialist theory of mind does not entail reifying the process of consciousness- considering it a thing.

if you cannot tell the semantic difference between an illusion and reality when discussing them, I don't think the problem is the terms. They are almost always unambiguous.

Materialist theory of mind does not entail reifying the process of consciousness- considering it a thing.
— Relativist

That is exactly what this does. and when I posted it, you agreed with it.

I agree that consciousness is neither a thing nor a property: it is a process.

I do not insist that every aspect of the natural world is discoverable through science. It may very well be that there are aspects of mental activity that are partly grounded in components of world that are otherwise undiscoverable. This is worst case, but it is more plausible than non-physical alternatives.

Your response is to concede that consciousness may indeed imply ‘something non-physical’ ...

....but this also misses the crucial point of phenomenology. This that consciousness in never mething we are outside of or apart from. Until that basic fact of existence is understood we’ll continue to talk past one another.

Yes, almost always. ....using them.

I've recently had a Medium essay published in Philosophy Today, which you can access here, if you're interested. It's a brief intro to this philosopher, Michel Bitbol.

That’s the point physicalism doesn’t touch. It doesn’t matter how much complexity you add or how programmable the processes may be. A functional specification is not the same thing as the reality of existence — and existence is the philosopher’s concern, not the engineer’s abstraction.

Until that is accounted for, saying physicalism “best explains all the facts” simply assumes what is in question.

And as a software guy, you must recognise the impossibility of writing a true functional specification for the unconscious and preconscious dimensions of mind — without which consciousness would not be what it is.

If the processes can be programmed, then an artificial "mind" could actually be built that had 1st person experiences.

What makes you think the background mental processing couldn't be programmed? It's algorthimically complex, involving multiple parallel paths, and perhaps some self-modifying programs. But in principle, it Seems straightforward. .As I said, feelings are the only thing problematic.

Good essay!

So, we don't do consciousness; consciousness does us

As I said, feelings are the only thing problematic.

one has nonetheless said something metaphysically fundamental! -- indeed, something of great importance.

And yes, we can “understand subjectivity.” But we can only ever be one subject; the only instance of subjectivity we directly know is our own, and that by being it, not by knowing it objectively.

According to phenomenology, consciousness is no thing or property that may exist or not exist. “Consciousness” is the misleading name we give to the precondition for any ascription of existence or inexistence. What makes this remark obvious for phenomenologists and almost incomprehensible for physicalists, is that phenomenologists are settled in the first-person standpoint, whereas physicalist researchers explore everything from a third-person standpoint.

The expression 'the primacy of consciousness' doesn't really imply that consciousness is causal. It's more that before anything can be given, there must be a subject to whom it is disclosed.

"Life is meaningless" is surely a mood everyone has felt at some time. How can we fall into such a mood? (other than reading Sartre's Nausea :smile: ). Usually by noticing, often with horror, that the values we hold, and organize our lives around, cannot be discovered in the world in the same way we discover what Heidegger called (in Manheim's translation) "essents" -- rocks and birds and math problems and everything else that has being but not being-there-for-us (Dasein, more or less). But as you say, living as a human is more than that, or at least so some of us believe.

Right, Heidegger captures that mood nicely in his idea of Vorhandenheit translated as 'present-at-hand" in its contrast with Zuhandenheit, translated as 'ready-to-hand. When we are dealing seamlessly with the world the ready to hand becomes transparent, and the meaning of things is found in their use as "affordances". The hammer and nails "disappear" when we are in that 'flow' state, and it's when something goes wrong and we suddenly become aware of the hammer as just a brute object, a bare existent, without meaning other than to be analyzed into its components, that we fall into a state of "rootlessness" (my word, not Heidegger's) wherein things become meaningless objects.

What makes you think the background mental processing couldn't be programmed? It's algorthimically complex, involving multiple parallel paths, and perhaps some self-modifying programs. But in principle, it Seems straightforward. .As I said, feelings are the only thing problematic.

it makes a lot more sense to me to think of consciousness and its (intentional) objects as co-arising.

It may very well be that there are aspects of mental activity that are partly grounded in components of world that are otherwise undiscoverable. This is worst case, but it is more plausible than non-physical alternatives.

If a component is physical, why would it be undiscoverable?

It is a methodological decision to represent our mental processes on the model of the information technology that we already understand. Nothing wrong with that. But it means that feelings can't be represented. They require, it seems to me, a different methodology.

You say 'feelings are the only thing problematic' as if that's a minor footnote, but feelings - qualia, first-person experience - is the whole point at issue! So, why keep saying I'm the one 'missing the point', when this is the point?

I accept physicalism as inference to best explanation - it accounts for all known facts, more parsimoniously than alternatives, with the fewest ad hoc assumptions ... You [@Wayfarer] have neither falsified physicalism nor proposed a theory that is arguably a better explanation, so you have given me no reason to change my view.

you have given me no reason to change my view.

That said the one thing I wonder about with your saying that an artificial mind could be built that has first person experiences coupled with your saying that feelings are the only problematics is whether it would be possible to have first person experiences sans feelings.

To be discoverable, there needs to be some measurable influence on known things. So there could be particles, or properties, that have no measureable influence on particles or waves we can detect. String theory may true, but there seems to be no means of verifying that. If it IS true. there could be any number of vibrational states of strings that have no direct measurable affect on anything else.

The related question that comes to mind is whether you think consciousness is possible absent feelings and whether you equate consciousness with first person experience. Is it possible to have feelings without a sensate body?

No, and I fully expect that nothing ever will. It’s not the kind of view which is amendable to falsification, as it is a metaphysical belief.

You will notice, incidentally, that I do not advance a ‘theory of mind’.

The being would have experiences...

And after all these months of conversations, I'm still at a loss to understand what you think physicalism explains, other than in its role as a methodological assumption in science.

a natural (evolutionary) basis of morality, the nature of abstractions (including mathematics), a theory of truth.

I only brought these up to answer your question.

And I only wanted to make it clear that I don't think you have. But, sure, let's take them up elsewhere.

what you think physicalism explains, other than in its role as a methodological assumption in science.

But if there is no detectable effect, why suspect there is something undetectable present?

Reminder: I do not insist that every aspect of the natural world is discoverable through science. It may very well be that there are aspects of mental activity that are partly grounded in components of world that are otherwise undiscoverable. This is worst case, but it is more plausible than non-physical alternatives.

I'm very interested in this. Can you explain? If a component is physical, why would it be undiscoverable?

I agree with this admission and your position on philosophical zombies. It does leave a rather large gap for “non-physical alternatives” to creep in though.
I tend to steer clear of the division between physical and non physical, because I don’t see why there is necessarily such a distinction. The so called non physical mind and physically existing things, though appearing entirely separate, may be part of the same external manifold that we are not aware of, which may be undiscoverable, but in which the two are grounded.

I further narrow it down to the thesis that everything that exists has a common ontological structure: a particular with intrinsic properties and extrinsic (relational) properties to other existents. This implies everything is the same kind of thing, which I label, "physical".

Similarly, physicalism is successful at accounting for almost everything in the natural world - so it seems more reasonable to assume there's something we're missing than to dispense with the overall theory.

I tend to steer clear of the division between physical and non physical, because I don’t see why there is necessarily such a distinction. The so called non physical mind and physically existing things, though appearing entirely separate, may be part of the same external manifold that we are not aware of, which may be undiscoverable, but in which the two are grounded.

I've said before, quantum physics demolishes such a Newtonian conception of reality. At the fundamental level, the properties of sub-atomic primitives are indeterminate until measure. But of course, that can be swept aside, because 'physicalism doesn't depend on physics'. It's more a kind of 'language game'.

I start with natural: That which exists (has existed, or will exist) starting with oneself, everything that is causally connected to ourselves through laws of nature, and anything not causally connected (such as alternate universes) that is inferred to exist, to have existed, or that will exist, through analysis of the universe. Naturalism= the thesis that the natural world comprises the totality of existence).

I further narrow it down to the thesis that everything that exists has a common ontological structure: a particular with intrinsic properties and extrinsic (relational) properties to other existents. This implies everything is the same kind of thing, which I label, "physical".

Otoh, they may be entirely separate.

a particular with intrinsic properties and extrinsic (relational) properties to other existents.

At exactly one point in your path, a distance relation of 5km emerged

This is the problem, or so they say. That if they are entirely separate, how do they happen to come together? I like you don’t see it as so much of a problem, but people who subscribe to the distinction between idealism and materialism see a yawning chasm between the two.

The point at issue is what exists prior to the act of measurement. Prior to measurement there’s no determinate object with intrinsic properties.

I would think it's equally difficult to explain how one ground could manifest in (at least) two different ways that appear entirely separate.

I would use the word material rather than physical. That there is a spectrum of material including subtle (mental) materials. With physical material at the more dense, or concrete end of the spectrum. I go further in that I regard within the domain of subtle materials, a transcendent super subtle material for which mind (which is on the spectrum) is the correlate of physical material as seen at the bottom of the spectrum and the super subtle material is a higher, or transcendent mind.

Many people who are leaders in relevant fields - people like Anil Seth, Antonio Damasio, Peter Tse, Brian Greene, Donald Hoffman, and David Eagleman - most of whom think physicalism must be the answer, say we don't have a theory, and don't even have any idea what such a theory would look like.

As you noted, naturalism is more open-ended. Materialism is less so, and physicalism is most restrictive. More restrictive= a more parsimonious ontology, which is why I go with it.

I can relate to the idea that consciousness is everywhere, but not necessarily that physical material is conscious

I regard it as an artificial construct.