The Mind-Created World
The aim of this essay is to make the case for a type of philosophical idealism, which posits mind as foundational to the nature of existence. Idealism is usually distinguished from physicalism — the view that the physical is fundamental — and the related philosophical naturalism, the view that only natural laws and forces, as depicted in the natural sciences, account for the universe. Physicalism and naturalism are the assumed consensus of modern culture, very much the product of the European Enlightenment with its emphasis on pragmatic science and instrumental reason. Accordingly this essay will go against the grain of the mainstream consensus and even against what many will presume to be common sense. However I hope to present an argument that shows that common sense and this formulation of philosophical idealism are not necessarily in conflict.
Adopting a predominantly perspectival approach, I will concentrate less on arguments about the nature of the constituents of objective reality, and focus instead on understanding the mental processes that shape our judgment of what they comprise. In so doing I will draw on phenomenology as well as perspectives from non-dualist philosophy — an approach that will hopefully be become clear in the subsequent sections.
All in the Mind?
In philosophy it is customary to address objections after making your case, but I will mention two of the most frequent objections to idealism at the outset. First is the criticism that ‘idealism says that the world is all in the mind’ — the implication being that, were there no mind to be aware of an object, then it would cease to exist. Even very eminent philosophers have (mis)understood idealism in this way: that things pass into and and out of existence depending on whether they’re being perceived or not. G.E. Moore, for example, once said that idealism must entail that, when the passengers are all seated on the train, the wheels would go out of existence for their not being perceived.
The second objection is against the notion that the mind, or ‘mind-stuff’, is literally a type of constituent out of which things are made, in the same way that statues are constituted by marble, or yachts of wood. The form of idealism I am advocating doesn’t posit that there is any ‘mind-stuff’ existing as a constituent in that sense. The constitution of material objects is a matter for scientific disciplines (although I’m well aware that the ultimate nature of these constituents remains an open question in theoretical physics).
At this stage I will only note these objections, as to counter them now would be premature, but I hope it will become clear in what follows that these objections are misplaced.
A Thought Experiment
Let’s start with a simple thought-experiment, to help bring the issues into focus.
[i]Picture a tranquil mountain meadow. Butterflies flit back and forth amongst the buttercups and daisies, and off in the distance, a snow-capped mountain peak provides a picturesque backdrop. The melodious clunk of the cow-bells, the chirping of crickets, and the calling of birds provide the soundtrack to the vista, with not a human to be seen.
Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving such a scence from every possible point within it, and also around it. Then also subtract from all these perspectives, any sense of temporal continuity — any sense of memory of the moment just past, and expectation of the one about to come. Having done that, describe the same scene.
“Impossible!” you object. “How can I imagine any such thing?! It is really nothing at all, it is an impossibility, a jumble of stimuli, if anything — this is what you are asking me to imagine! It is completely unintelligible.”[/i]
But that is my point. By this means I am making clear the sense in which perspective is essential for any judgement about what exists — even if what we’re discussing is understood to exist in the absence of an observer, be that an alpine meadow, or the Universe prior to the evolution of h. sapiens. The mind brings an order to any such imaginary scene, even while you attempt to describe it or picture it as it appears to exist independently of the observer.
These are the grounds on which I am appealing to the insights of philosophical idealism. But I am not arguing that it means that ‘the world is all in the mind’. It’s rather that, whatever judgements are made about the world, the mind provides the framework within which such judgements are meaningful. So though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye — the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective. What their existence might be outside of any perspective is meaningless and unintelligible, as a matter of both fact and principle.
Hence there is no need for me to deny that the Universe is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind. But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis. Whatever experience we have or knowledge we possess, it always occurs to a subject — a subject which only ever appears as us, as subject, not to us, as object.
A corollary of this is that ‘existence’ is a compound or complex idea. To think about the existence of a particular thing in polar terms — that it either exists or does not exist — is a simplistic view of what existence entails. This is why the criticism of idealism that ‘particular things must go in and out of existence depending on whether they’re perceived’ is mistaken. It is based on a fallacious idea of what it means for something to exist. The idea that things ‘go out of existence’ when not perceived, is simply their ‘imagined non-existence’. In reality, the supposed ‘unperceived object’ neither exists nor does not exist. Nothing whatever can be said about it.
So How Does Mind ‘Create Reality’?
So this is the sense that I’m arguing for the fundamental role that the mind plays in creating reality.
Let me address an obvious objection. ‘Surely “the world” is what is there all along, what is there anyway, regardless of whether you perceive it or not! Science has shown that h. sapiens only evolved in the last hundred thousand years or so, and we know Planet Earth is billions of years older than that! So how can you say that the mind ‘‘creates the world”’?
As already stated, I am not disputing the scientific account, but attempting to reveal an underlying assumption that gives rise to a distorted view of what this means. What I’m calling attention to is the tendency to take for granted the reality of the world as it appears to us, without taking into account the role the mind plays in its constitution. This oversight imbues the phenomenal world — the world as it appears to us — with a kind of inherent reality that it doesn’t possess. This in turn leads to the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion for truth.
By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brain receives, organises and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves. And although the unified nature of our experience of this ‘world-picture’ seems simple and even self-evident, neuroscience has yet to understand or explain how the disparate elements of experience , memory, expectation and judgement, all come together to form a unified whole — even though this is plainly what we experience.
By investing the objective domain with a mind-independent status, as if it exists independently of any mind, we absolutize it. We designate it as truly existent, irrespective of and outside any knowledge of it. This gives rise to a kind of cognitive disorientation which underlies many current philosophical conundrums. And that is the subject of the remainder of this essay.
Adopting a predominantly perspectival approach, I will concentrate less on arguments about the nature of the constituents of objective reality, and focus instead on understanding the mental processes that shape our judgment of what they comprise. In so doing I will draw on phenomenology as well as perspectives from non-dualist philosophy — an approach that will hopefully be become clear in the subsequent sections.
All in the Mind?
In philosophy it is customary to address objections after making your case, but I will mention two of the most frequent objections to idealism at the outset. First is the criticism that ‘idealism says that the world is all in the mind’ — the implication being that, were there no mind to be aware of an object, then it would cease to exist. Even very eminent philosophers have (mis)understood idealism in this way: that things pass into and and out of existence depending on whether they’re being perceived or not. G.E. Moore, for example, once said that idealism must entail that, when the passengers are all seated on the train, the wheels would go out of existence for their not being perceived.
The second objection is against the notion that the mind, or ‘mind-stuff’, is literally a type of constituent out of which things are made, in the same way that statues are constituted by marble, or yachts of wood. The form of idealism I am advocating doesn’t posit that there is any ‘mind-stuff’ existing as a constituent in that sense. The constitution of material objects is a matter for scientific disciplines (although I’m well aware that the ultimate nature of these constituents remains an open question in theoretical physics).
At this stage I will only note these objections, as to counter them now would be premature, but I hope it will become clear in what follows that these objections are misplaced.
A Thought Experiment
Let’s start with a simple thought-experiment, to help bring the issues into focus.
[i]Picture a tranquil mountain meadow. Butterflies flit back and forth amongst the buttercups and daisies, and off in the distance, a snow-capped mountain peak provides a picturesque backdrop. The melodious clunk of the cow-bells, the chirping of crickets, and the calling of birds provide the soundtrack to the vista, with not a human to be seen.
Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving such a scence from every possible point within it, and also around it. Then also subtract from all these perspectives, any sense of temporal continuity — any sense of memory of the moment just past, and expectation of the one about to come. Having done that, describe the same scene.
“Impossible!” you object. “How can I imagine any such thing?! It is really nothing at all, it is an impossibility, a jumble of stimuli, if anything — this is what you are asking me to imagine! It is completely unintelligible.”[/i]
But that is my point. By this means I am making clear the sense in which perspective is essential for any judgement about what exists — even if what we’re discussing is understood to exist in the absence of an observer, be that an alpine meadow, or the Universe prior to the evolution of h. sapiens. The mind brings an order to any such imaginary scene, even while you attempt to describe it or picture it as it appears to exist independently of the observer.
These are the grounds on which I am appealing to the insights of philosophical idealism. But I am not arguing that it means that ‘the world is all in the mind’. It’s rather that, whatever judgements are made about the world, the mind provides the framework within which such judgements are meaningful. So though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye — the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective. What their existence might be outside of any perspective is meaningless and unintelligible, as a matter of both fact and principle.
Hence there is no need for me to deny that the Universe is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind. But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis. Whatever experience we have or knowledge we possess, it always occurs to a subject — a subject which only ever appears as us, as subject, not to us, as object.
A corollary of this is that ‘existence’ is a compound or complex idea. To think about the existence of a particular thing in polar terms — that it either exists or does not exist — is a simplistic view of what existence entails. This is why the criticism of idealism that ‘particular things must go in and out of existence depending on whether they’re perceived’ is mistaken. It is based on a fallacious idea of what it means for something to exist. The idea that things ‘go out of existence’ when not perceived, is simply their ‘imagined non-existence’. In reality, the supposed ‘unperceived object’ neither exists nor does not exist. Nothing whatever can be said about it.
So How Does Mind ‘Create Reality’?
So this is the sense that I’m arguing for the fundamental role that the mind plays in creating reality.
Let me address an obvious objection. ‘Surely “the world” is what is there all along, what is there anyway, regardless of whether you perceive it or not! Science has shown that h. sapiens only evolved in the last hundred thousand years or so, and we know Planet Earth is billions of years older than that! So how can you say that the mind ‘‘creates the world”’?
As already stated, I am not disputing the scientific account, but attempting to reveal an underlying assumption that gives rise to a distorted view of what this means. What I’m calling attention to is the tendency to take for granted the reality of the world as it appears to us, without taking into account the role the mind plays in its constitution. This oversight imbues the phenomenal world — the world as it appears to us — with a kind of inherent reality that it doesn’t possess. This in turn leads to the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion for truth.
By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brain receives, organises and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves. And although the unified nature of our experience of this ‘world-picture’ seems simple and even self-evident, neuroscience has yet to understand or explain how the disparate elements of experience , memory, expectation and judgement, all come together to form a unified whole — even though this is plainly what we experience.
By investing the objective domain with a mind-independent status, as if it exists independently of any mind, we absolutize it. We designate it as truly existent, irrespective of and outside any knowledge of it. This gives rise to a kind of cognitive disorientation which underlies many current philosophical conundrums. And that is the subject of the remainder of this essay.
Comments (2162)
You wrote
Quoting Wayfarer
Thinking that whatever we say about reality is conditioned by our perspective doesn’t make you a postmodern. You are still assuming very well that reality exists independently of our mind, even if it is impossible to us to think about it without interfering in this thought with our mind.
Your exposition contains an ambiguous language, but actually there are clear signs that you are far from exposing to radical criticism the very ideas of existence, reality, being.
Pinter has the same ambiguity in the passage you quoted:
“nothing can be said about its objects except that they exist”.
The additional note “except that they exist” destroys the whole argumentation, so that the whole reasoning is nothing at the end, it is still just an old metaphysical philosophy that tries to be a bit more clever, but actually is just hidden behind a mask that pretends to take into account the existence of perspectives.
If you truly want to take perspectives into account, you should consider that the whole idea of reality imagined by perspectives is itself a perspective. Talking about perspectives is itself a perspective. As a consequence, the very concept of “perspective” has to be considered completely unreliable; this, obviously, doesn’t make metaphysics valid again, because metaphysics has already been demolished by considering perspectives.
As a consequence, once we demolished metaphysics by considering perspectives, and then we demolished perspectives by considering that they must apply to themselves, we need to find different routes for philosophy, to see how to proceed after that. Surely we should avoid all those masked ways of bringing metaphysics back to life (like this one I commented on, for example: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/840414).
Quoting Wayfarer
This is the key for me. You said something similar here some months back and it helped me to understand your perspective on idealism - a much more straight forward and, dare I say it, naturalistic account. I can certainly see an argument for the world arising or co-arising as a dynamic interplay of subject and object.
I can see your point here but then we would also probably need to say that your perspective that it's a perspective is itself a perspective... and I fear we can keep doing this until we become a spinning top of infinite recursion.
I completely agree, that’s why I said that, after our work, we need to keep in mind that the very concept of perspective is completely unreliable, because, after all, it remains a hidden way of saying that there is an objective reality, from which perspective tries to be different.
We cannot free ourselves from perspectives, because we cannot free ourselves from our brain, we cannot think without using our brain, and I know that this is already a perspective.
I even think that Socrate’s knowing that he didn’t know nothing is already knowing too much, it is actually a claim of knowing really a lot.
After that, I think we are driven to aknowledge that language forces us to make statements that, as such, are far from being correct, aware of perspectives, humble. But attention to language shouldn’t make us go to analytical philosophy. I think that analytical philosophy is another masked metaphysical philosophy, because it takes language as a hard point, a hard basis to inquire into our reasoning.
Once we realize that we are prisoners of our brains (the experiment of brain in a vat is not a mental experiment, it is just our condition: the brain is the vat of itself, from which it cannot escape), I think the best we can do is to go to our humanity, psichology, emotions, literature, myths. Not in an obscurantist mentality, but exactly after being enriched by the research we have made about metaphysics, perspectives, criticism and self-criticism.
After all, the fear of the infinite recursion you mentioned is a consequence of carrying on by applying a mental methodology based on wanting to understand, to control, to master what is happening in our reasoning. Now we know that we cannot get any ultimate mastering, so I think it is better to stop trying to build new metaphysics and, rather, go to humanity, humbleness, weakness.
I don’t know if perspective is a concept at all; it’s more that perspective provides a necessary ground for [i]any[/I] concept. Certainly in non-dualism there is awareness of states of ‘contentless consciousness’ (nirvikalpa samadhi) but not having realized such states then yes, I am still a dualist. It’s the human condition, I’m afraid. And as such I have to use reasoned argument to point to that which is beyond it. That is all philosophy is good for, as far as I’m concerned.
There’s an understanding in non-dualism, that any form of teaching is like the stick used to get a fire going. When it’s going, the stick is thrown in with it. I think that’s what you’re driving at and thank you for it :pray:
Thanks. I would hope my view is compatible with what is starting to manifest as ‘extended’ or ‘transcendent’ naturalism - a style of naturalism that acknowledges the irreducibility of the first-person perspective. In that sense naturalism itself is evolving.
Interesting. Are you saying that you can't have perspectives without an objective reality from which perspectives are derived? I've never given it much thought, but I am unsure if this is necessarily the case. I will need to think it over. Can I get back to you in 20 years? Perhaps the word perspective is inadequate and just the best we can do to try and convey a set of relationships.
Quoting Angelo Cannata
Yes, the comments sometimes sounds like false modesty.
Quoting Angelo Cannata
Perhaps. My answer to this has often been that these sorts of questions are probably unsolvable by me and in the end will do nothing to help other people, so best I just get on with my day job...
I think @Wayfarer's idea of extended naturalism does offer potential insights into how we co-create the reality we experience and how it might benefit us to realise the tentative nature of many of our positions.
Thanks very much for the effort of creating this essay and for sharing it here with us. :smile: :flower:
(and for making it accessible without a Medium.com membership… but I really must join soon).
Question / invitation for expanding on the essay:
If I’m understanding the gist, your essay centers on idealism / physicalism and the
noumenal / phenomenal (beyond the mind / perspectival).
(As if that’s not already enough to juggle and discuss lol… )
Building upon what you have written, how would you compare (or integrate?) the Buddhist doctrine of the Two Truths? (whichever version of the doctrine you may prefer)
(Two Truths Wikipedia article and SEP entry)
Thanks again!
I watched the "is reality real?" vid in your notes, and the arguments there were all towards indirect realism, which posits a Kantian objective reality to which we do not have access except via 'constructive' senses. What I was hoping for, but the above comment seems to deny me, is an inversion of that, such that the constructed sensed world is the real, of which the 'objective world is a mere abstraction:— that just because we are participants in the unfolding of the world, we have direct access to it, and the objective world is an impoverished world that 'works' but does not 'care'.
As a philosophical naturalist I'm unaware of any "style of naturalism" wherein "first-person perspective" is reducible to ... just as e.g. living organisms are not reducible to their constituent phenomenal subsystems (e.g. biochemistry, biophysics, wavefunction, etc) because organisms are emergent complex phenomena. 'Ontological reductionism" is a mere caricature of methodological reductionism and thereby a rhetorical objection to scientism.. Also, though naturalism is presupposed by natural science, naturalism itself is not natural science. This so-called "extended or transcendental naturalism", Wayfarer, sounds like another quasi-Kantian solution is search of a problem – tilting at windmills. :sparkle:
:chin: Maybe I should read the OP ...
If anything exists in a universe with no minds, then non-mental stuff exists in that universe.
Still, even though it is a constant presence in our perspective, we barely notice our noses and rarely talk about them, especially when describing to others what we see. Van Gogh’s nose never shows up in his Café de nuit, for example. Why? Far from generating a unified world-picture, the mind tends to ignore the reality. Perspective is inextricably bound to the body, an object, constituted not only by its relations, but by its being, something any account of mind is forever lacking.
What I think we are really ignorant about, is many aspects of the world absent us, which are not covered by physics, which is, although fundamental, far from exhaustive.
Kant's comments of "things in themselves" covers one aspect of it, but there are several. All in all, a high quality post. :up:
Excellent point, I'll take that on board.
Quoting 0 thru 9
Thanks for positive feedback! I've always found the 'two truths' doctrine compelling, since I first encountered it in T R V Murti The Central Philosophy of Buddhism. One of the footnotes to the Medium essay can be found in the Wikipedia link you provided:
[quote=The Buddha, Kacc?yanagotta Sutta]By and large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, “non-existence” with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, “existence” with reference to the world does not occur to one.’[/quote]
That is what I'm drawing on for much of the essay, as you've correctly intuited.
:pray:
What I find to be the crucial aspect of understanding the essential nature of "perspective", is to consider the temporal perspective of the human experience of being at the present, now. Suggestions as to how long "now" is from the human perspective, range from a couple hundred milliseconds to a couple of seconds, depending on the purpose of the estimate. In any case, if this perspective was radically different, like a few picoseconds on one extreme, or a few billion years to the other extreme, then the way that we perceive the universe would be completely different.
So the issue is not simply a matter of how mental processes shape the "reality" which we know, but how the very basic living processes of the living being shape this "reality" . The living processes are organized so as to perceive the universe from what is probably best described as a "mid-way" temporal perspective. We do not perceive extremely fast occurrences, nor do we perceive extremely slow processes, we rely on logic to figure these out. The reliability of our models of the very fast aspects of reality, and the very slow aspects of reality, are dependent on the soundness of our logic.
The "reality" which we know and respect is produced from empirical observation, sense information, and this is the reality of the mid-way temporal perspective. The senses provide us with the reality of the mid-way temporal perspective. But even things within this mid-way reality are affected by the aspects of reality which are outside of it, in the extremes, so these influences are invisible to us and therefore do not enter into our representation of reality. This makes our reality, the one produced from our mid-way temporal perspective, not very accurate as a true representation, because we cannot account for these influences.
We can somewhat account for such influences, and to a relatively high degree of accuracy in specific cases. Without our ability to choreograph ballets of bits, on a timescale much smaller than we can consciously perceive, we wouldn't be communicating on TPF.
Sure... judgment about what exists always comes via perspective. It does not follow from that that everything that ever existed does as well.
Some parts of reality... sure.
What preceded us... never. Impossible.
Much of it anyway...
One of the thought-experiments I sometimes consider is imagine having the perspective of a mountain (were a mountain to have senses). As the lifespan of a mountain is hundreds of millions of years, you wouldn't even notice humans and animals, as their appearances and dissappearances would be so ephemeral so as to be beneath your threshold of awareness. Rivers, you'd notice, because they'd stay around long enough to actually carve into you. But people and animals would be ephemera. At the other end of the scale, from the perspective of micro-organisms, humans and animals would be like solar systems or entire worlds.
Anthropomorphism.
Oh yes I agree, we can "account" for some such influences, that's how we know they are somewhat real. But look at the way in which that is currently done, through statistics and probabilities, not through understanding. So our representation of reality does not show this level of causation at all, only the probable effects of it, derived through statistical analysis. This is very similar to the way that classical theologians understood God. We know that God exists through an analysis of His effects on the "reality" which we know, as created through our sense organs and minds. But all we know is His effects, and we do not know God Himself as the cause of these effects.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's a good example. I like to make a comparison between an atom with its orbiting electrons, and the solar system with its orbiting planets. Our temporal experience of the present is such that the electrons appear to orbit the nucleus so fast, that their locations just appear as a cloud of probabilities. In other words we do not have the required "present" to properly locate them. However, we are capable of locating the planets relative to the sun, using empirical data, because the present we experience allows us to do this.
But even to correctly locate the sun and planets required that we dismiss much empirical data (the appearance of these bodies orbiting the earth) as misleading and deceptive. This allowed that the application of logic could produce a more true model. From this we derived a basic understanding of "gravity", as an invisible force of causation which acts over a huge expanse of space.
Now, if our temporal experience of the present was an extremely long period of time, millions or billions of years, the planets would orbit the sun so fast from this perspective, just like the electrons orbiting the nucleus of the atom, so that we could not properly locate the planets, and we'd have to employ probabilities as to where they might be at a given "moment" (a moment from that perspective would consist of numerous years).
What I think we can take away from this, is that it makes no sense at all to think about reality without a perspective, the supposed independent reality. The true nature of time makes it impossible that "reality" as we conceive of it could be independent from a perspective. If, in a thought experiment, we attempt to remove the temporal perspective of the present, then the entire temporal duration of the reality which we are trying to conceptualize must exist 'at the same time'. We'd have no principle whereby we could speak of the state of things at this time, or the state of things at that time, because this or that time is completely perspectival. And since things are actively moving and changing, reality becomes completely unintelligible if we try to talk about the state of things all the time.
First, the idea of a "mind created world". The issue is that you have to explain what you mean, because culturally, this word 'create' in the phrase is seen as meaning that the mind literally creates the world. Of course you're not claiming that. But if you have to clarify the phrase, perhaps a new phrase would work better? For example, a "mind modeled world" We don't really "create" the world, we model it. The only creation is the model, not the world itself. The mistake is thinking our models ARE the world. They are merely the way we understand it.
You'll get a lot less pushback and people will be able to understand what you're saying without you needing to counter an initial normative pushback. The "model" is the "ideal" of idealism. So where does this leave "the thing that is modeled"? A very simple cultural word that needs no clarification is, "the physical". Now I know you have an emotional reaction to this, but you are already evolving out of the white picket fence of philosophical terminology. Terminology is merely a model. It is an invention of some guy somewhere, that can have cultural or personal attachment beyond what the model is trying to convey. Like it or not, "the physical" is a culturally relevant term which can reach a wide audience and quickly conveys what you want to. Like you refined idealism to fit into our underlying sensibilities about the world, so we can do with physicalism.
So humor me for a minute. The ideal is our model of the physical, or the real. We cannot understand the physical without the ideal. And I believe when this is conveyed to others clearly, almost everyone comes to agree with the underlying concept, even the physicalists, whether they use the same words or not to convey it. The real question is how we marry the ideal and the real. Because currently your definition of idealism is an accurate descriptor that "we model the world". But it does not tell us which models of the world are better than others.
Just as you tweaked and clarified that idealism does not mean we are a solipsistic existence, do you not find it charitable to allow physicalism to be " a model that the physical is the fundamental upon which we apply our models", while naturalism to be "a model that only natural laws and forces, as depicted in the natural sciences, are ideals we can objectively match to the real"? The debate can be less about debating specific semantics and "gotchas" about broad general theories which have been messily cobbled together from multiple philosophers over centuries, and instead using the underlying cultural and general understanding of those words to tackle the truly important underlying concept, "A methodology that allows us as accurate of a match between the ideal and real as possible".
If you are interested, I would love to hear your input on such a discussion: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14044/knowledge-and-induction-within-your-self-context/p1 You have the intelligence and background to give this a serious discussion, and you may find the epistemological approach I use overlaps much of what you are trying to convey.
I can't speak for Wayfarer, but as an idealist, my own thoughts on that are idealism inevitably leads to god for just that sort of reason.
Perhaps that is the reason why we don't know anything about God, because he is hiding in the idealist's mind. :D
Thank you for the courteous response. At back of your critique is the assumption that ‘the real world’ is what is internalised or modelled by the brain or the mind. The real world exists independently of our model of it, which can be better or worse, depending on how knowledgeable we are or the quality of the signals we receive.
But the problem is, how do you distinguish the model from the world? How can you, on the one hand, look at 'the model', and, on the other 'the real world'? That already assumes a perspective outside the model - that you're able to compare one with the other. But if your experience-of-the-world IS the model, and you're inside it, then how do you step outside it to compare it with the world itself?
In science, you develop a hypothesis, then you test against it. Your experimental results and observations will tend to confirm or overturn it. That's philosophy of science 101. But the question we're considering is a question of a different order, because it concerns the nature of experience itself, not a specific question about a particular subject. That's what distinguishes it as a philosophical question, not a scientific one.
There's an anecdote from the realm of quantum physics. It is re-told by Werner Heisenberg in his book Physics and Beyond and concerns a visit to Copenhagen by members of the Vienna Circle who were addressed by Neils Bohr. At the end of the lecture he asked if there were any questions, and was nonplussed to recieve only polite applause. He was dismayed by this, and said that if the audience was not shocked by quantum physics, then they could not have understood it. And what I'm suggesting is a similarly radical. It should be considered shocking. But it's also suggested by a great deal of current science. (Ironic that science ends up torpedoeing materialism, but there it is.)
Quoting Corvus
That's the question of all philosophy, and I'm not claiming any kind of omniscience or ultimate answers. The main point of 'the mind-created world' is against the assumed consensus that the mind is the result of a material, physical or mindless process. This attitude is deeply embedded in modern culture, the 'evolutionary-materialist' view of the mind. This is the view that living beings are essentially physical and that the mind, therefore, is simply the output of physical processes that can be understood solely through evolutionary biology and through the understanding neural and biological processes. This attitude is grounded in the primacy of the objective sciences and the view that scientific analysis is the arbiter of what is real. It is generally empiricist in attitude, tending towards varieties of positivism.
So the mind-created world is pointing out the priority of conscious experience as the primary datum of reality. In so doing, I'm aligning with the mainstream of idealist philosophy both Eastern and Western, also drawing on phenomenology and existentialism. I'm arguing that even the so-called 'hard sciences' have an irreducibly subjective aspect or component, which, for practical purposes, is screened out or ignored, but which, in reality is essential to any kind of science.
An essential point is that the accepted materialist consensus creates a kind of false consciousness - it generates a false idea of the nature of being, which is very easy to swallow, because it is the mainstream consensus. But it is changing very rapidly, in part because of much greater insight and sophistication within science itself.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'extreme idealism', but give these modern editions of Berkeley a squiz. He's surprisingly persuasive.
If you say, Esse est percipi, then it is an idealism. But if you say you create the world in your mind, then I see it as an "extreme idealism". :)
Isn't the created world in your mind more prone to be illusive than the perceived world?
The title of the OP says "The Mind-Created World" :chin: :roll:
I think you're missing the point. There is no such thing as the perceived world. A world, or the world, is something created by the mind. As such it doesn't make any sense to talk about "the perceived world". To assume that what is out there as the object of perception is even remotely similar to the world which is what is created within the mind, is to make a big mistake. So when you start off by calling it "the perceived world" you are already on the road of misunderstanding.
Anyway, this is a very interesting topic, and I would like to investigate deeper for the further discussions.
My idea about the world is Evolutionary nature rather than either Physicalism or Idealism. I will think, build my points on that idea, and return to compare with your views.
:up: Indeed the essay is tagged 'Philosophy of Mind'. (Note that I myself never dispute the empirical facts of (for example) evolution, but will often call into question the supposed implications.)
There are imagined world, perceived world and the world itself. If you are an idealist, you would be believing the perceived world as the real world? 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.
Ouch. Philosophical idealism is saying something like that, but it has to be worded carefully, lest it fall into mere fictionalism or fantasy. I'm not denying the reality of the sensory domain, but drawing attention to the role of the mind/brain in weaving it into a coherent whole.
creatus"
:100: :up:
I think you have this backward. What the ancients, like Plato, demonstrated is that the senses deceive, and we ought to trust the mind with logic, over the senses, as capable of producing a more reliable and accurate "world". The evidence of this reality is that the senses show us the sun rising and setting, when logic has demonstrated that in reality the earth is spinning. And modern science has demonstrated that substance in general is not at all like it appears to us through sensation.
So if you propose a separation between the perceived world (world created by sensation), and a mind created world, the perceived world is demonstrably less accurate.
A very important question. The answer is that we have at some point in our lives, attempted to apply our model of reality to reality, and failed. At its most simple, its the contradiction of reality to our beliefs. The fact that contradictions exist to our model, show us that there is a model, or viewpoint of the world that we have, and something else that we have to model around. For it doesn't matter if I believe that a eating a rotten apple is healthy, the reality of illness will follow. If it were the case that there was nothing underlying to model on, then there would never be any contradictions to the models we create.
The solution then is to create models that are not contradicted by the "the world itself" or "reality'. If you can create as the foundation of your model, something which cannot be contradicted by reality, then you can use that as a base to build a structure of identities and applications that gives us the best models possible with which to apply to reality. Of course, none of those models can ever claim anything more than that they are not contradicted by reality, and cannot point to the "thing in itself" specifically apart from the model. This is because this is the way we function and know. To say we can know something outside of the very means we use to have knowledge, is impossible.
Quoting Wayfarer
Correct. I give the full answer to this question in the OP I linked. It all starts with coming to the realization that people can discretely experience, and what people can discretely experience is known. Demonstrating how this is known, I then show how we can apply this discrete experience to reality to see if our application can stand without contradiction. I think you'll really like it Wayfarer.
Quoting Philosophim
As I acknowledged, the process of creating models and testing them is already well-known - it's the scientific method. In such cases, you do have an hypothesis or theoretical model which accounts for some aspect of the whole, and you frame an explanatory hypothesis which does or doesn't not account for the observed or experimental facts. Your example of reaction to a bad apple is a simple illustration. In this way we progressively refine our models, hopefully converging on a more and more general and truthful understanding. On a higher level, it's the kind of process described in Structure of Scientific Revolutions. But I don't think that is what I'm driving at.
Quoting Philosophim
That's actually closer to the point. One of the sources I draw on is Mah?y?na Buddhist philosophy. There is a word in that tradition that describes 'the ability to discern reality' or to 'see things as they truly are' (yath?bh?ta?). But this kind of insight is also understood to be unusual - it is not possessed by ordinary people (in which category I include myself.) But the key point I take to be insight into the nature of knowing and of existence. It is different to scientific knowledge (although not incompatible with it) because it is existential - it is concerned with questions of meaning and value right at the outset.
The principle at stake is scientific but philosophical as I say at the outset:
Quoting Wayfarer
So it's probably best to try articulate the differences between us based on this argument - what you agree or disagree with about that, and why I might put up an idealist argument against it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Hate to butt in but it wasn't logic that demonstrated it, so much as the empirical science of Kepler and Galileo et al. And it wasn't until scientists broke with the Grand Tradition represented by Aristotelian science, that they were able to discover this (and it was a hell of a fight when they did, as you may recall.)
It's a fact that the term 'idealism' is itself a product of the modern period - first came into use with Leibniz, I think. Plato would not have known the word. We can retrospectively assess Platonism as idealist but it needs careful interpretation.
First of all, thank you for starting this thread and writing the OP as you have done. I was trying to get comments in this thread https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14673/is-maths-embedded-in-the-universe-/p2
because of the reality sans observer that was brought up in yet another thread. But it seems no one wanted to respond to that problem.
As I have said previously, and before I even read your essay, it is a much different reality because now there's no more privileged vantage point from which everything is seen or experience. But of course someone here, and in other threads, had raised the problem of "we can't or shouldn't even be discussing such problem because we are the observers!"
And to that I say, we come up with a hypothesis. With hypothesis, we enjoy the freedom of the imagination -- we're not making a conclusion yet, but we're exploring the what-if. Like the quantum physics -- I hope they have not made that final analysis.
To me, how would the world be without the sentient observers? The world on a coordinate plane, a flat two-dimensional reality.
Quoting Wayfarer
With this I disagree. I object to the cognitive disorientation and I object to the following comment as well:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What does that even mean?
With our sense-perception, we can't help but view the world the way we do. Only the silly observers would not use the mind, the common sense, and logic to think about the world. How does one perceive without logic?
Descartes, for one, never claimed that humans are being deceived. He brought it up as a thought experiment. (You can correct me here if you like).
Of course. And where would we be without such taking for granted?
Can you imagine yourself functioning as a human without such taking for granted?
With the proverbial "heart". It seems to be perfectly possible to live a good life without any self-reflection or philosophical contemplation. You just "follow your heart".
You don't, you follow your guru.
And I don't mean to be uselessly confrontational. It's that you're introducing conceptualizations from a philosophical-spiritual tradition in which formally joining a lineage of teachers and submitting to one in particular is essential. You're trying to do on your own, individualistically what was never intended to be done that way (even as it is often advertised as such). The condition for the "Eastern" way of "knowing things for yourself" is to submit to a lineage.
So if you block out and disable all your senses, then what knowledge of the world would you get?
Can you list 3 ways in which it might benefit us, in real, daily-job terms?
For many people, "realizing the tentative nature of many of one's positions" amounts to plain old self-doubt and lack of confidence. Which are, of course, generally, bad and undesirable.
Look, I'm not disagreeing, I'm the first to point out the complex nature of what is called "experience." It's just that in day-to-day terms, such insights appear to be more burdensome than they are useful.
In Theravada Buddhism, they even say that the existence of an enlightened being (that is, one who, among other things, "sees how things really are") is too weak to support itself (ie. too weak to earn a living etc.), and that if a lay person attains enlightenment, they have to ordain as a monastic or die within days.
I doubt it. I have yet to see how philosophy of this kind is of use in my daily life - except as a general belief that I might have larger models of speculative reality to play with when I have spare time. And I suspect that one of the consolations of philosophy is that it's often the conceptual version of getting a new toy. Does this suggest decadence or futility? I'm not one to say. I think others take the pursuit more seriously.
As I have said elsewhere - if we are living in a simulation, or if idealism (however this is understood) is true, I don't think it makes any difference to how I go about my business in life.
At a deeper more optimistic level, I think it is quite enough to arrive at a point where you are aware that potentially all of your assumptions and values, your world are constructed and not an immutable, transcendent reality. It might well help us to be less dogmatic in our thinking and actions.
This quote does resonate. And it leaves me with the helpful perspective that I am not going to solve any of the big questions of philosophy - the nature of reality, what is consciousness, is moral realism true, etc. These questions are too difficult to unpack (certainly for the non-specialist) and there's reason to think that we are all caught up in traps of language, perception and cognition which may well be difficult or impossible to escape from. But I am happy to hear the arguments against this.
(1) In order for Mind to "create the world", Mind must be unitary and transcend – be independent of – the world;
and (2) by independent what is implied is alien to individual minds which are immanent to – entangled with, inseparable from – the world;
and (3), though the world populated by individual minds (subjects) exists, only Mind is real – exists even when the world of individual minds (subjects) does not exist (i.e. before the world was created and after the world dissipates);
and (4), because Mind transcends the world, individual minds (subjects) in the world cannot have corroborable evidence of Mind – including that the world is/was created by Mind ...
... therefore (5) Mind functions only as a creator(god)-of-the-gaps placeholder, or implicit appeal to ignorance, such that the thesis "Mind creates the world" amounts to nothing but an unparsimonious just-so story.
So tell me, Wayfarer, what I get wrong here and/or why my objection fails.
addendum to
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/841677 :eyes:
NB: Maybe someone has already pointed this out, but the definitions of "physicalism" and "naturalism" in the OP do not correspond, IMO, to how most physicalists and naturalists use the terms.
You're welcome and thank you.
Quoting L'éléphant
Well, he kinda did. At the beginning of his meditations, he said something along the lines that he had hitherto held many false opinions purely because he'd swallowed the accepted wisdom. This is why he had to go back to square one, as it were, and put aside everything he thought he had known, starting with the self-evident 'cogito ergo sum'.
Quoting baker
I've never experienced any material benefit from my study of the subject. And I envy those who do - I'm aware of freelance writers and academics who've made a career out of these subjects. There are plenty who would tell me I've wasted a lot of my life chasing rainbows. I hope they're not right, but then, look at the icon I've picked. I might have succeeded at it, had the circumstances been different, but as it is, whatever I do here and on Medium is about it.
But I will say that I have experienced a definite shift in my overall orientation and equanamity in life. It's not as my younger self would have hoped a kind of be-all and end-all state but it's still something.
I said earlier on in this thread, that I often feel that what is taken as normality in our culture is actually a kind of false consciousness. I looked into that saying, 'false consciousness', it originated with Marx, about workers who falsely allow themselves to be lulled into a sense of security by identifying with their work, although I think it has also been adopted by existentialism. So a big part of what I've learned through this discipline is to be less bogus (or more 'fair dinkum' in the local vernacular), so as not to be so immersed in the false consciousness of materialist culture.
Thanks for your feedback!
First point - when you say 'the world' here you refer to 'the totality of experience', right? It's not as if any of us 'experience the world' as ' experiencing the entire world'. 'The world' is really shorthand for the sum total of sensory experience, apperception, feeling, knowing and so forth
A point that has bearing on this is the subjective unity of consciousness. When one experiences a noise and, say, a pain, one is not conscious of the noise and then, separately, of the pain. One is conscious of the noise and pain together, as aspects of a single moment of being. That, I think, is at the basis of Kant's 'transcendental unity of apperception', the faculty which draws together and synthesises all the disparate elements of experience into a unified whole. Kant's "transcendental unity of apperception" refers to that unifying self-awareness that underlies all experience. All our representations (sensations, perceptions, concepts, etc.) must be brought together and unified by a single self-awareness. This isn't simply the empirical consciousness of any particular experience (e.g., seeing a tree, feeling pain, thinking about an abstract idea), but a more fundamental, a priori consciousness that makes any coherent experience possible in the first place.
The unity of apperception is "transcendental" because it's a precondition for our knowledge of objects. Without this unifying self-awareness, we'd have a jumble of unrelated perceptions and not the coherent experience of an objective world. In essence, for us to recognize diverse representations as belonging to one and the same object, there must be a unity in the consciousness of these representations. (But Kant couldn’t say, and we can’t say, what that is, as it’s not anything objectively perceptible
see this paper about the 'neural binding problem' which is intimately associated with the 'subjective unity of perception'.)
So, yes, so this is an argument that the mind is both unitary and transcendental.
Quoting 180 Proof
You really think so? Even in The Phaedo, there is a section on disentangling the mind - actually the soul - from the world, from outward stimuli, from entanglements. This is where philosophy is said to be 'practising for death'. That is the meaning of detachment, of purity of heart. There are volumes of literature on this theme from across different cultures and historical periods.
Quoting 180 Proof
I haven't asserted that 'the mind exists' when 'the world of subjects does not exist'. What I said was 'The idea that things ‘go out of existence’ when not perceived, is simply their ‘imagined non-existence’. In reality, the supposed ‘unperceived object’ neither exists nor does not exist. Nothing whatever can be said about it.' This is why it's not necessary for me to assert the kind of God that Berkeley appeals to, in order to account for the world in the absence of observers. It is more in line with Buddhist philosophy (hence the quotation from the Buddhist texts in this earlier post.)
'Corrobarable evidence' of mind is not required as, in line with Descartes' 'cogito ergo sum', the reality of first-person consciousness is apodictic, cannot plausibly be denied.
Well, it is a bit confrontational. First you don't know that I don't recognize a guru. Secondly, I don't see any purpose to be served if I were to incorporate such an affiliation in this essay or in my further comments on the subject. Would I 'appeal to the authority of the Guru' in order to ground the argument? I frequently acknowledge that I draw on Buddhist philosophy, and I will sometimes say that I also have a Buddhist practice, and try to observe the appropriate demeanour. But the context is that we're living in is a secular, pluralist, modern culture, not in ancient culture, and we need to be able to absorb these ideas without overt reliance on a lineage in order to validate whatever it is we write or say. I would like to make a case that stands on its own merits, in philosophical terms.
//oh, and I’ll say something else. One of the books that had foundational influence on me was Alan Watts The Book: On the Taboo against Knowing Who you Are, when I was aged about 20. I don’t know how well it reads now - but I think his intuition of the kind of knowledge he was speaking of being ‘taboo’ is right on the mark. And I wonder if in saying what you’re saying, you’d rather see it observed.
Thanks! :smile: :up:
Of course there is empirical evidence involved, but it is the application of logic to the discrepancies found in the empirical evidence, which produces the new theories. Empirical evidence shows the sun and all the planets appearing to orbit the earth. However, there were discrepancies in the observations like retrograde motions, which for the longest time could not be figured out.
Even mapping the planets as perfect circular orbits around the sun,(the idea passed on through Aristotle) did not render the correct results as Copernicus showed. That was the stumbling point of the ancient Greek scientists, they assumed the orbits to be eternal therefore they must be perfect circles. It was a simplistic principle which enabled much science, (very similar to today's "symmetries"), but a principle which is fundamentally wrong, because such "ideals" are not consistent with reality.
Aristotle pointed to the problem with this idea of eternal circular orbits. Copernicus laid out the model, perfect circular orbits, and the discrepancies between it and observations were clearly exposed. But further application of logic produced Kepler's elliptical orbits.
Quoting L'éléphant
The problem is that the senses often give us confusing and misleading information, i.e. they deceive us. For example, it looks to me, like there is nothing between me and the far wall of the room, but I know there is air in between. Logic has figured out that air is a substance even though it is unseen.
We do not see air, but we can feel the wind, and see its effects. So sight in this instance gives us confusing and misleading information. The mind acts to synthesize the information received from the various senses, and in doing this it must resolve such issues of misleading and confusing information.
Quoting Corvus
I was not the one proposing the separation between mind produced world and sense produced world. To me, the world created by the mind, and the world created by sense perception are one and the same world. But we need to be aware of the cases where the senses mislead us. And I think your proposal to separate these two is not warranted. So the problem you present here with your question, is just an indication that your proposal is unacceptable.
Aren't the senses part of your mind? Are the senses separate entities from the mind operating themselves disconnected from the mind? You say you were not proposing it, but it sounds like that is the point you are insisting on. I was not proposing anything, but saying what the traditional idealist was saying about the world and perception.
I suppose it would depend on one's job. For a guru, preacher, or used car salesman it might be detrimental to recognize the tentative nature of one's beliefs. For a scientist or engineer it can be extremely valuable to be willing and able to question one's assumptions.
I think they are different. The world created by your minds is totally different from the perceived one. For example, the world depicted by an artist such as painters, novelists, poets would be the world created by mind.
Your musings are valid imo. It reminds me of the old adage "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound".
For me the answer "it causes vibration, but only makes a sound when an ear listens to it" is apt here. As for me I understand things to exist independent of minds (as you said), but there is a dimension to reality that can only be framed within the context of an observer (sound/noise vs simple vibrations).
"Last Thursdayism" strangely comes to mind here also. And it took me a moment to understand why my subsconscious was offering this association.
It has to do I guess with the capacity for precision, detailed and extensive memory that only complex conscious creatures like ourselves possess.
Without the temporality offered by the vast memory that the human mind exemplifies, Existence would merely be the blink of an eye. Began and finished in an instant.
So it seems the details: the minute-to-minute existence that we experience, is part due to our ability to record events and chronology as they happen at a certain pace, in a given "frame-rate" of the passage of time.
So indeed, the mind creates reality; "our reality" but not "thee" reality where time and space are less sure, as we are things that occupy a time frame, and a dimension of space that dictates how we perceive reality.
So perhaps many of the conundrums if human logic and philosophic contradiction whittle down to those very assumptions about our limited/restricted and predefined tempospatial perception
Interesting essay. Thanks for sharing.
(Caveat - so far I have only read the portion of the essay contained in your OP.)
Quoting Wayfarer
I must confess that the way you are using 'Idealism' is somewhat foreign to me. I am trying to understand the general thrust of your position, and specifically the way in which it contradicts physicalism and naturalism.
Would I be correct if I said that the crux is the idea that
On my view there is clearly a cleavage between the scientific paradigm and post-Kantian philosophy, and it does revolve around this question of realism, but I tend to see more problems with the post-Kantian approach than with the scientific approach. Granted, there are problems with both, as both seem to provide only a partial account. In any case, why think it is the scientific-physicalist-naturalist half that is especially problematic?
(It's curious and encouraging to me how strongly this forum focuses on metaphysics. I haven't seen that on other philosophy forums.)
Ironically, even on a philosophy webpage --- presumably a forum for ideas about ideas --- many posters seem to instinctively argue against any form of meta-physics -- especially Idealism -- on the basis of priority of the five senses -- common to most animals -- over our unique human rational faculty. Consequently, they bow only to Physical Science --- with its artificial sensory enhancements --- instead of Meta-Physical Philosophy --- and its cultural reasoning enhancements (e.g. Logic) --- to support their sense-able beliefs.
That's partly paradoxical because the Common-Sense Perspective led most humans to believe in a flat earth and an earth-centered cosmos. Among the sensible ancients though, a few Greek philosophers used un-common-sense (abstract reasoning) to realize that our un-aided senses are not capable of seeing the world "in the round", so to speak. So they used the mental imagery of mathematics to rise above their limited physical plane. Nevertheless, it's hard to argue against Common Sense, because it is literally sense-able, and people tend to implicitly "believe their eyes". It seems that abstract philosophy was developed specifically to work around our inherent materialistic biases. Which is what Kant warned about with his sense-transcending "ding an sich" proposal.
On the other hand, some people are inclined to believe in unseen things that appeal to their Feelings. That's because hormonal feelings are the motivators of actions, and of attractions. But those sentiments are also a form of inwardly-focused Common Sense. Hence, people typically believe what they feel. And it's that latter notion of common-sense that hard-nosed Rationalists strenuously reject. That's why your rational approach to Idealism must skirt the feeling element, because it incites knee-jerk negative feelings in dogmatic Realists. Yet even the sixth sense of Reason is questionable, if it has no material evidence to support it. In the realm of Ideas & Reasons though, philosophers tend to lean on immaterial analogies and imaginary metaphors for props.
A recent scientific metaphor along these lines was Hoffman's Interface Theory of Perception*1. That proposal was described in a book entitled The Case Against Reality. It postulated that natural evolution created big-brained animals with the latent ability to "see" what is not before their eyes, by means of imagination. Thereby, viewing a "mind created world". Even some small-brained birds seem to imagine other minds*2. So, it's not a super-natural power. Some of the non-things seen in the Mind's Eye are symbols & icons & gestalts. The latter are imaginary whole systems composed of bits & pieces of sensory perception. Although he makes a good case for Ideality, Hoffman's notion that our physical eyes see only superficial "appearances", has not been well-received among Philosophical physicalists. Was cognitive psychologist Hoffman presenting evidence in favor of Ideality, as an evolutionary offspring of Reality? :smile:
*1. The Interface Theory of Perception :
For the perceptions of H. sapiens, space-time is the desktop and physical objects are the icons. Our perceptions of space-time and objects have been shaped by natural selection to hide the truth and guide adaptive behaviors. Perception is an adaptive interface.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26384988/
*2. Ravens can imagine other minds :
Ravens display a human ability to imagine how others are thinking, a study has shown
https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/ravens-can-imagine-how-others-are-thinking.601117
Thanks! My thoughts also.
Quoting Leontiskos
To put it in blunt vernacular terms, it is the assessment of life in general, and human life in particular, as being basically the product of mindless laws and forces. Bertrand Russell's 'man is but the outcome of the accidental collocation of atoms'. Jaques Monod's 'Chance and Necessity'. The instrumentalisation of reason. As you can see, I'm not seeking a theistic alternative but questioning it along more Berkeleyian lines (although, unlike Berkeley, I am a Platonic realist, as laid out in another essay, The Ligatures of Reason.)
Quoting Gnomon
We had a long thread on Hoffman recently. The question I always have for Hoffman is how science escapes the apparently illusory nature of perception. I think his book, The Case Against Reality, is misnamed - it should be called The Case Against Empirical Realism. Because then it provides an escape hatch for rational insight.
:up:
Incorrect. By the world I'm referring to 'the totality of facts' (re: TLP, 1.1-1.21).
Then why not instead title the thread
"The transcendental mind-created common experience of the world"?
If X is true by definition (i.e. apodictic), then X is merely abstract and not concrete, or factual. Given ubiquitious and continuous (i.e. embodied) multi-modal stimuli from environmental imbedding, sufficiently complex, functioning, brains generate recursively narrative, phenomenal self models (PSM)¹ via tangled hierarchical (SL)² processing of which "first-person consciousness" consists. That these processes are also voluntarily as well as involuntarily interruptable, Wayfarer, demonstrates that the "reality (that) cannot be plausibly denied" is primarily virtual. :sparkle:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_model#Overview_of_the_PSM [1]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loop [2]
Indeed. ‘Mind-created’, one might say.
I disagree. The one that uses the heart also uses the intellect.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, this is a misrepresentation of metaphysics such as Descartes's meditation. It's not the senses that mislead you, it's the thought that ideas come out of nothing. No one is deceiving us. The world out there does not deceive.
Quoting Wayfarer
No. Read below:
He is arguing for causation! You are not the cause of your own ideas of the world -- meaning, you did not just "imagine" falsely that there are things out there that make you see colors, trees, and sky. There really are colors, trees, and sky.
Galileo's distinction of 'primary and secondary qualities' of matter refers to the distinction between the attributes measurable by instruments (mass, volume, etc) with the 'affections' such as color, taste and smell existing only in the mind of 'the animal' (i.e. observing organism).
From the SEP entry on Primary and Secondary Qualities in Early Modern Philosophy:
Compare this with Thomas Nagel's summary of the origin of the modern mind-body problem:
[quote=Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36]The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatio-temporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. [/quote]
So, when you ask, under this model, where in the world is the mind, the answer is obviously that it is within the observer. But also, as a corollary, it is nowhere to be found amongst those attributes which are taken to constitute the real objects of scientific analysis. So the mind is nowhere! In those terms, it is unreal or non-existent! All we can do is try to account for the way in which the primary objects of scientific analysis ( comprising matter-energy) must have combined in such a way as to account for the mind (which is of course subject to the 'facing up to the problem of consciousness' argument.) So this is where the axiom of 'the reality of mind-independent objects' has its origin, and it is precisely that which has been called into doubt by the 'observer problem' in quantum physics,
The point of my argument is that reality as experienced is obviously constituted in large part by the mind, which synthesises all of the data, including scientific data, and combines it into the unitified state of experience which is the referent of the term 'being'. It really isn't mysterious, but it's not objective. And, goes the reasoning, if it's not objective, then its not amenable to scientific method, so it can't be considered to be real in its own right. It has to be reducible to what can be explained by science. Hence:
Eliminative materialism (Dennett, Churchlands etc) claims that mind is illusory (notwithstanding the obvious self-contradiction that an illusion can only occur to a mind);
Panpsychism (Philip Goff et al) wants to imbue matter with mind, so as to maintain physicalism by giving it mental attributes.
Dualism of various kinds posits two separate kinds of substance, namely material and mental, although the whole notion of 'mental substance' seems oxymoronic.
I'm supporting a kind of hybrid of Kastrup's style of analytical idealism combined with enactive and phenomenological aspects.
Quoting L'éléphant
That passage is taken from Meditations on First Philosophy, in the context of one of his proofs of the existence of God. It is associated with Descartes' 'ontological proof', that because we can conceive of a perfect being, then such a being must perforce be real. The passage I had in mind was the later one where he calls received wisdom into doubt:
which is the passage immediately preceeding his famous Cogito.
Look at it this way, if you have a lot of ideas in your mind, one of them is the existence of god, and others are the existence of other humans, and rocks, and things, how are you going to argue that your idea of god is objective? By making a statement that god is external to you.
Interesting in puzzling ways.
SO let's go back to your meadow. I stand facing you. A butterfly flutters between us. You say "See the butterfly flutter from left to right!" I reply "Beautiful! But it went from right to left!"
"Ah," says you, "and from this we see that what is happening in this world is true or false only with reference to the perspective of some observer! For you, it is true that the butterfly went right to left, but for me it is that the butterfly flew left to right!"
But me being Banno, you know I'm going to disagree. "How can something be true for one of us and not for the other?" I ask, scratching my nose. You carefully explain again how truth, the way things are, is dependent on perspective, and that as a result mind is integral to the whole of reality; how we cannot have the "view from nowhere" required for truth to be independent of some point of view.
"Oh." says I. Then I sit quietly for a while, arms folded, staring at the ground, while you glory in the vista.
"If we swapped places, it would be you who says that the butterfly flew right to left, while I would say it flew left to right"
"Yes", you explain patiently, "The truth is dependent on one's perspective, so if we swap perspectives, we swap truths".
"But we agree that the butterfly was flying away from the river and toward the mountain", I finally offer.
"S'pose so", says you, in the hope of shutting me up.
So on we traipse, over the foothills, through the pass to the valley beyond the mountain; all the while, butterflies flitting past us, heading in the same direction.
Over a cup of coffee, I return to the topic. "Yesterday, the butterflies were going towards the mountain. Now, they are going away from the mountain. And yet they are going in the same direction. How can that be?"
"Well," you patiently begin, "both the butterflies and we are heading East, towards the rising sun. Yesterday the mountain was before us, and now it is behind us".
"Oh. So yesterday the butterfly was heading East, and today it is still heading East, and this is a way of saying which way the butterfly is heading?"
"Yes", you agree, thinking to yourself that next time you might choose a different companion.
"Yesterday we disagreed that the butterfly was heading left to right or right to left, and that this was because we each have a different perspective. But even though we had different perspectives, we agreed that for you it was left to right, while for me it was right to left - that if we swapped places, we would also swap perspectives. We agreed that the butterfly was heading towards the mountain. And now, even though the butterfly is heading away from the mountain, we agree that it is heading East. Is that right?" I puzzle.
"Yes!", your disinterest starting to show.
"So hasn't it been the case that the Butterfly was always heading East, regardless of our perspective? Isn't this a way of describing the situation that removes the need to give the perspective of the observer? And if that is so, then perspective is not an attribute of the world, but of how we say things about the world. We can rephrase things in ways that do not depend on where we are standing...."
Taking a breath, I continue "We started with butterflies moving left and right, but found ourselves disagreeing; then we said the butterflies were flying towards the mountain, but after we crossed the pass found that they are flying away from the mountain. Then we said that they are flying East. Each time, our view became broader, and where we were standing became less important. Sure, I can't talk about taking a point of view from nowhere, but it makes sense to try to talk about things in such a way that it doesn't matter were I am standing. Not a point of view from nowhere, but a point of view from anywhere. We can set out some truths in such a general way that we can agree, and it doesn't matter where we are standing. And if we do that, our personal perspective becomes irrelevant."
How do you respond?
But don't forget, the hypothetical thought-experiment was:
[i]Picture a tranquil mountain meadow. Butterflies flit back and forth amongst the buttercups and daisies, and off in the distance, a snow-capped mountain peak provides a picturesque backdrop. The melodious clunk of the cow-bells, the chirping of crickets, and the calling of birds provide the soundtrack to the vista, with not a human to be seen.
Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving such a scence from every possible point within it, and also around it. Then also subtract from all these perspectives, any sense of temporal continuity — any sense of memory of the moment just past, and expectation of the one about to come. Having done that, describe the same scene.[/i]
To which my hypothetical antagonist replies 'impossible, can't be done!' So had either one of us or both of us been there, then the thought-experiment would have been obviated (because the perspective would have been supplied). I suppose to make the same point rather tritely, had neither of us been there, then we would have no idea of whether a butterfly had, in fact, fluttered by.
So the point of the hypothetical is not that there are different perspectives, but that there must always be a perspective, even if we're contemplating a meadow (or anything else) unseen by human eye. I re-inforce the point a little further along, where I said:
Actually, I had many of the objections you have previously raised in mind when I wrote that.
"Yes, we know we have a perspective, that our view may be different from that of someone else, so we can take this into account; we can change how we talk about the butterflies and the meadow and the mountains in such a way that we agree as to what is the case; that you, I and Maria von Trap over there see things differently, and yet overwhelmingly we agree, the butterflies are flying East..."
"...so there is something more here than just perspective. Something explains this agreement. Sure, there are minds that make the sentences, and sing the songs, but there is more than just mind here".
"The simplest way to explain the smell of Poppies is to suppose that there are indeed poppies."
I start feeling around for a hatchet...
But you will be completely at a loss to say what that 'something' is. (Whilst you're reaching for your hatchet, I sense the impending feeling of futility that invariably accompanies our exchanges.)
"Of course I can say what it is - it's mountains and poppies and butterflies... we agree on this. The thing is, you started this walk by yourself, and forgot about other people. That's the trouble with idealists - they are all of them closet solipsists."
This last bit causes me to fall into silence, wondering how a solipsist could find themselves in a wardrobe...
Could I perhaps suggesting reading some more of the essay? There is rather more to it than meadows.
"But you've set me another puzzle: the cutlery might not be where I think I left it. I might turn out to be mistaken about it's location. That'd be a puzzle for someone who understood the word as being created by the mind. If mind creates the world, how could the world ever be different to what the mind supposes - how could one ever be wrong about how things are? In order to be mistaken, there must be a difference between how things are and how one thinks they are - but how could that happen, if everything is in the mind..."
I frown.
Why are there Californian Poppies in the Alps?
Thomas Nagel reviews biography of J L Austin
Plus a very long interview with someone by the name of Aaron Preston, with discussion of the shortcomings of analytic philosophy, at least some of which made sense to me.
We are all born ignorant, and we are all going to die only somewhat less ignorant.
But that was funny.
You use "the world out there does not deceive" to justify "it's not the senses that mislead you". But you have provided no premise to connect those two.
Do you agree with the following? The mind creates an idea of "the world out there". And it uses information received from the senses. The various different senses often provide the mind with inconsistent and even conflicting information. Therefore we can conclude that the senses can, and do, mislead the mind in its creation of an idea of "the world out there".
I've given this statement further consideration. The idealism presented by Plato (though it was not explicitly called "idealism") was the ontology held by the Pythagoreans. They believed that the cosmos was made up of ideals, as represented by mathematics and geometry. The Pythagoreans put forward the idea of eternal circular motions, an ideal, to represent the motions of the heavenly bodies, each being itself a sort of perfect unity, One. Further, it was assumed that each perfect circle was related to each other through a system of ratios, like musical notes are related through principles of division.
In interpreting Plato, I believe it is very important to understand that Plato was actually very skeptical and critical of the ontology of Pythagorean idealism, but these ideas were highly respected in the philosophical (scientific?) community, so Plato had to tread carefully. The issue is the relationship between the perfect and eternal Ideals (circular motions), which as observable (orbits of the heavenly bodies), must have a real connection with the mundane. (In modern terms this is the interaction problem). This relationship was understood within the precepts of idealism, as the theory of participation, demonstrated in principle in The Symposium. By the time Plato wrote dialogues like The Parmenides, The Sophist, and The Timaeus, he had greatly developed the logical problems with the theory of participation.
What Plato exposed is the need to assume an intermediary, a medium between the Ideas which are conceived as eternal, perfect ideals, and the real existence of particular things. The medium was called "matter", and proposed in The Timaeus as a sort of receptacle which would receive the ideal form. The particular thing could only participate in the Ideal Form (as per the theory of participation) through the intermediary "matter"; and the matter of the particular thing would be the reason for individual differences and deficiencies. "Participation" therefore was compromised as matter would necessarily come between.
The introduction of "matter", and its essential nature, as logically necessary to account for the interaction problem, greatly enhanced Aristotle's capacity to attack Pythagorean Idealism. He showed for example, in On the Heavens, how a supposedly "eternal circular motion" must consist of a material body which is moving, and therefore could not truly be "eternal". This completely collapsed Pythagorean idealism because it became clear that the cosmos was not composed of perfect, eternal Ideals, but was actually composed of material objects engaged in motions which were somewhat other than they were being represented through the perfect ideals of mathematics and geometry.
I believe we ought to recognize two very distinct sorts of relations between the ideals of mathematics and the reality of material objects. This distinction is based in a distinction of two sorts of material objects, natural and artificial. In the case of artificial material objects, we can produce such objects which very closely resemble the ideals of the mathematics which produces them. In the case of natural objects however, we use the same mathematical ideals to represent them, but there is great discrepancy, or difference between the ideal representation, and what actually exists naturally. The problem here is that since we can create artificial things, in a lab or in a factory, which very closely resemble the mathematical ideals which produce them, we tend to conclude that the mathematical ideals which are being employed are very accurate representations of what exists in nature. This conclusion of course, is the product of disrespect for the difference between artificial things and natural things. Recognition of this difference I believe is very important to understanding the activities of high energy physics and the production of so-called "elementary particles" in laboratories.
I think it depends on one's particular starting point. For me, it's the default to think of perception as an active, volitional process, my default is perspectivism*. I take for granted that my opinions are constructed and subject to change. But these defaults are actually hindrances in daily life, and I wish I could be (more) dogmatic.
(*This probably comes from having to function in several languages from an early age and from having to function as a mediator between people. It's not based on a study of philosophy.)
To me, it's self-evident.
Then how do you overcome the problem of solipsism?
How does Buddhism overcome the problem of solipsism?
Well, you don't start off your posts by paying humble obeisances to a guru. :wink:
My reference to following a guru is about bringing to the forefront one's membership in a particular epistemic community, as opposed to assuming one can be beyond such membership and somehow talk about things "as they really are", as if from a view from nowhere; or as if one's view/perspective would be only one's own, idiosyncratic, solipsistic even.
I contend that it is not possible to make a case this way. Because perspective and membership in an epistemic community are inevitable.
I once googled "how to be a genuine fake". That was how I formulated my inquiry! And Google gave me Watts' book! I was quite disappointed by it, though.
*tsk tsk*
Paticcasamuppada explains what you're getting at in this topic, including @180 Proof's objections and the problem of solipsism. It's just that going with paticcasamuppada makes you a member of a Buddhist epistemic community, at the exclusion of memberships in other epistemic communities.
Bitbol provides a counter to this argument:
Quoting 180 Proof
Like most materialists*1, 's Reality is limited to the reports of his physical senses. That blinkered worldview is good enough for most animals. But it omits the distinguishing feature of rational animals : the ability to infer abstractly what is not seen concretely*2*3. That mental function begins with observed premises and calculates conclusions that must also be logically true . . . . but not necessarily real in the here & now.
On a more positive note, Banno's poetic imagery, and yours, is materialistic. Yet the metaphors of poppies & butterflies are not referring to physical objects, but to human ideas & feelings : "the elusive butterfly of love" is not an insect. I wonder if an idea/feeling-rejecting materialist takes the symbolism literally. :smile:
*1. I don't know how Banno would characterize his personal worldview, because his posts are usually so succinct that the cosmology behind the pretty words is left to the imagination. That's fine for poetry, where the reader is expected to read-into the "text" his/her own meanings & feelings. But, for prosaic philosophy, it omits the essence of wisdom, to use words precisely, not just concisely. When is a poppy not a flower?*4 :smile:
*2. Inference in Arguments :
In logic, an inference is a process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true.
https://www.thoughtco.com/inference-logic-term-1691165
*3. Raven reasoning :
It's the strongest evidence yet that ravens have a “theory of mind” – that they can attribute mental states such as knowledge to others.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2076025-ravens-fear-of-unseen-snoopers-hints-they-have-theory-of-mind/
*4. Red poppy flowers represent consolation, remembrance and death. Likewise, the poppy is a common symbol that has been used to represent everything from peace to death and even simply sleep.
I don't see how it applies. The form of idealist philosophy that I'm advocating does not say that 'the world only exists in your mind'. I'm referring to the mind - yours, mine, the mind that we as a species and culture share. The mind is not an objective reality, it's not a material thing - yet we can't plausibly deny it! That's the elephant in the room, the fly in the ointment, for naturalism.
Besides, I don't think that Buddhist philosophy has a problem with solipsism, because the basis of solipsism is that 'consciousness is mine alone'. What Buddhist would say that?
Quoting baker
That is the scandalous biography of Watts - I'm well aware of it and was dissappointed to read it at the time. In the end I decided it doesn't detract from the salience of his writings - Supreme Identity, Beyond Theology and Way of Zen have considerable merits in my view. What he said had to be said and I'm grateful that he said it.
Quoting baker
Like I said, you want to uphold the taboo! Push it behind the curtain, declare it out of bounds.
Look at the quote in the next post - that more or less re-states everything the essay says. (By the way, thankyou Josh, that passage really hits the nail on the head.)
Quoting baker
Just for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the terminology, paticcasamuppada is the 'chain of dependent origination' of Buddhism. It is true, as I say in the OP, that I'm drawing on non-dualist perspectives as well as phenomenology and idealism, and also that my overall approach is very much Buddhist. But I disagree that this 'excludes the argument from other epistemic communities'. As I said, we inhabit a pluralistic secular culture which ought not to make such arbitrary exclusions, and I believe the Buddhist perspective (which is really not a perspective!) is uniquely suited to the 'crisis of the Western sciences'. As did Francisco Varela, mentioned by Josh, who co-authored the ground-breaking book The Embodied Mind. It too incorporated many principles from Buddhism - for example:
[quote=The Embodied Mind, p61]The tension between the ongoing sense of self in ordinary experience and the failure to find that self in reflection is of central importance in Buddhism-the origin of human suffering is just this tendency to grasp onto and build a sense of self, an ego, where there is none. As meditators catch glimpses of impermanence, selflessness, and suffering (known as the three marks of existence) and some inkling that the pervasiveness of suffering (known as the First Noble Truth) may have its origin in their own self-grasping (known as the Second Noble Truth), they may develop some real motivation and urgency to persevere in their investigation of mind. They try to develop a strong and stable insight and inquisitiveness into the moment to moment arising of mind. They are encouraged to investigate: How does this moment arise? What are its conditions? What is the nature of "my" reactivity to it? Where does the experience of "1" occur?[/quote]
I think that 'the taboo' exists, that it 'ought not to be spoken' because this kind of analysis is associated with religious philosophy or at least with a kind of deep introspection. Which is why I keep referring back to Thomas Nagel's important essay, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. He's a non-religious academic philosopher who has had that insight. That is the underlying dynamic, in a 'don't mention the war' kind of way.
Quoting Gnomon
I wouldn't personalise it in that way. It's more the shortcoming of modern philosophy, generally. That's what we're both critiquing, although from rather different points of view.
Are we to imagine perceiving the scene form no point of view (an obviously incoherent request) or from "every possible point within it, and also around it"?
There could be no perception without memory or expectation, so nothing to describe.
If there are butterflies flitting about, there is no possible point of view of them from which they would not be flittering about.
So, I am struggling to see the point of this thought-exercise.
Try reading it in context.
How rude.
I just googled "Buddhism existence of self" and the first thing that came up was:
The Buddha, the first eliminativist?
(That, incidentally, is a very sophisticated review.)
The 'no-self doctrine' would correspond to eliminativism. That is rejected in Buddhism as being nihilistic. The 'self doctrine' is the idea that 'I will be reborn in perpetuity'. Both these are rejected in Middle Way philosophy as 'extremes'.
Take a look at this verse from the early Buddhist texts. It's quite short. The point being that, when asked 'Is there a self?', the Buddha declines to answer (usually given as 'maintains a noble silence'.) That is one of the sources of Middle Way philosophy. Another is this one:
I know it's a hard idea to get your head around! It was the subject of the post-grad thesis I did in Buddhist Studies 11 years ago, I still only got to a rudimentary understanding of it.
And that's a problem with both idealism and materialism, each supposing that it alone has priority.
Something that @Wayfarer sometimes agrees with, when pushed.
Right. It's often given as the materialism or 'the object view' of Hume et al, vs the idealism or subject view of Berkeley et al. This is sometimes depicted as a kind of Hegelian dialectic, whereby first one, then the other, are held up as being fundamental, which plays out over centuries.
But I think that Kant's transcendental idealism evades this dichotomy, because Kant acknowledges the harmonious co-existence of both empirical realism and transcendental idealism.
Quoting Wayfarer
All just ways of thinking about things. How can we count any of them as being the real thing?
Yeah, but then to the never-ending joy of philosophy neophytes, unhelpfully mentions the thing-in-itself.
Quoting Janus
Coke?
What do you mean, real? :kiss:
It might be, if I hadn't read a lot of Suzuki and such, 40 years ago.
And I'm cool with that. A lot of strife is caused by people wondering, hey, what *is* that? What is he talking about? If it's so mysterious, it must be something really important!
[quote=Emrys Westacott]Kant's introduced the concept of the “thing in itself” to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of it and unstructured by our cognitive constitution. The concept was harshly criticized in his own time and has been lambasted by generations of critics since. A standard objection to the notion is that Kant has no business positing it given his insistence that we can only know what lies within the limits of possible experience. But a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the “thing in itself” as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. Through both of these functions it serves to keep us humble.[/quote]
Excellent, that's what I started with too. I'll always have a special place in my heart for old D T.
No, psilocybin. :hearts:
By "real" I mean how could we know whether some conceptual schema or other corresponds to what is independent of human experience and understanding, or how any conceptual schema could do so?
Yes, I'm assured that Kant's use was innocent, by @Mww and others. But what came next made it into a dog's breakfast, only cleaned up by Russell and Moore. Your innocent use of "Idealism" might give some solace to those who like to eat out of a bowl on the floor. Case in point:
Quoting Janus
It doesn't surprise me that you misunderstood what I was saying, though.
You mean, physics?
I'm guessing not. I don't think there is a way to understand your question, Janus.
Is this the same as saying - if there is a reality outside of physics and how we understand our world, we are unable to access this and therefore can say nothing meaningful about it? (I wasn't thinking of Kant's noumena but I guess it amounts to the same point)
Yes, there is no coherent answer to the question about how things are independently of human experience, although it is possible to imagine that things could be some way impossible for us to imagine.
So, no I'm not talking about physics, since it deals with things as they appear; that is things which are not independent of human experience.
I guess the only place to look for reality independent of human experience might be in the putative claims of mysticism or higher awareness? I guess inevitably this is the elephant in the room for threads like this and most discussions of idealism.
That's a good question. I think there is a sense in which physics is just one way that things appear to us, and also a sense in which it is taken to be the most fundamental way; the way from which all others ways are made possible, or to which all other ways can be reduced, ontologically at least, if not explanatorily.
I think the faith in mystical revelation relies on the idea that, as real beings, we are capable of intuitive insight into the nature of things. However, this insight cannot be explained or explicated, but only alluded to. I don't see how there could be any way to demonstrate such a claim, although I must admit I lean somewhat towards believing it myself.
Oh, you mean when Moore discovered he had hands?
I do understand that German idealism kind of collapsed under the weight of its own verbiage. I nevertheless see it as the last gasp of the real Western philosophical tradition.
Also, it's where showing (and doing) take over from saying.
Quoting Janus
Cool. But at times you seem to look for an answer to those questions. It puzzles me, rendering some of my replies snooty. A bad habit of mine.
Yeah, that lecture, but I think his point was to show the audience that he had hands, and thereby that there is stuff in the world.
No worries, mate. I think Kant said that human beings, due to the nature of reason, will inevitably try to answer these "ultimate" questions that form the basis of metaphysics as traditionally conceived, and I acknowledge that I do find the impulse in myself, but I am utterly convinced that no answer is possible...go figure.
Going off now on a psychological tangent, the other thing is that I think that underlying these 'materialism vs idealism' debates is very often a concern that things should be a certain way, in accordance with what various people want to be the case. So, there are affective concerns at work behind the scenes, otherwise these questions would not be so compelling, having, as they do little to no practical significance for our everyday lives. It seems that some folk on both sides of the debate see these questions as representing a battle between the forces of good and evil, or at least enlightenment and endarkenment, that will determine the fate of humankind. Personally, I don't hold to that idea, I think it is too simplistic.
I will take issue with this. The basic thrust of the OP is to point out that in the 'experience of the world', the objective domain is not simply and unambiguously given. It points out the way our mind/brain construes the nature of the external world. As I've said, there is no need for me to deny that the Universe is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind. But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis. Whatever experience we have or knowledge we possess, it always occurs to a subject — a subject which only ever appears as us, as subject, not to us, as object.
As I say in the OP, there is a sense in which nothing can be said about the world outside any knowledge or experience of it - but that does not prohibit analytical reflection on the question of the role of the mind or brain in the construction of our experience of the world. It needs to be understood what the argument is against. It is against the common presumption that 'the world makes mind' - that the mind is a product of or output of what are presumed to be the (purely) physical processes that purportedly drive evolution (a.k.a. 'evolutionary materialism). The default view of naturalism is that 'the subject' is, at once, simply the consequence of these purported causes, and also outside the domain of what can be known (whence 'eliminativism'). Phenomenology and other forms of (mainly European) philosophy are highlighting that, whereas your Anglo-American analytical philosophers on the whole would rather not. That's the only reason why you say 'we cannot talk'.....
(By the way, googling for the source of the quote that Josh provided above, I happened upon this pdf from the erudite and charming Michel Bitbol, a French - therefore continental! - philosopher of science - Is Consciousness Primary?)
This can easily be misconstrued to be claiming that mind is in some absolute sense ontologically fundamental, rather than it being taken to be simply pointing out that what we mean by "the world" is 'the world as it appears to, and is understood by, us".
Or to put it another way the only reality we can imagine and talk about is a relational reality. but it doesn't follow that without humans nothing would exist. That is merely an imaginable possibility, as is the possibility that things have an utterly mind-independent existence, even if we obviously cannot imagine how that existence is.
Quoting Wayfarer
Nothing could please me more. This seems to be pivotal:
Quoting Wayfarer
There's your primacy of consciousness.
The demand is that either everything is physical, and mind somehow emerges therefrom; or that everything is mind, and the physical little more than a pattern. What puzzles me is why we feel obligated to phrase the discussion in these terms; why the juxtaposition?
(That juxtaposition, it seems, underpins the Bitbol paper you cite.)
Just my two cents but scientific naturalism doesn't allow for something akin to panpsychism.
Its purely relational equivalent of pansemiosis is all pattern and no qualities.
The next problem is that of emergence. Things like downward causation seem like an illegal move, a sui generis.
All emergent properties are known by an observational setting. How the observation itself comes out of emergence seems an odd difference from other kinds of emergence.
The homunculus fallacy allows people to posit hidden dualisms.
Theories of illusion don't even get at the problem itself, just renames it.
I’m careful to explain that I’m not claiming that things go into and out of existence depending on whether they’re being perceived, but that, absent an observer, whatever exists is unintelligible and meaningless as a matter of fact and principle. Again, that even if you imagine an empty universe, you still introduce an implicit perspective. I said, of course there are unseen objects and empty rooms with nobody in them, but that is something one observer (myself) is saying to another (you).
Quoting Banno
Physicalism is monistic - it says that there is nothing other than matter-energy. (And I have wondered whether that in its modern form is because it descended from monotheism - 'the jealous god dies hard'.)
Note I said at the outset that I’m not proposing mind as a literal constituent, that things are ‘made from mind’ as yachts from wood or statues from marble. So saying 'everything is mind' is not necessarily isomorphic to saying that 'everything is matter (or matter-energy)'. I think that's the distinction between 'epistemic' and 'ontological' idealism - that mind is the condition by which we know anything at all, which is not quite the same as saying that everything is mind, if you can see the distinction.
As for the juxtaposition - I do believe that there is a real conflict going on, a contest between the materialist attitude and its challengers. That that is what is behind the 'culture wars'.
You remember the brouhaha when Thomas Nagel published Mind and Cosmos?
Quoting Banno
You asked, I answered why the juxtoposition. I am explaining the juxtoposition.. meaning, presumably why we can't (seemingly) have both.
Very clear. When there is no observer at a site then none of the derived features of the site brought into play by a human mind exist.
Drop the mic. Everything is solved.
If we instead said that physics talks about matter and energy and stuff like that, we wouldn't be surprised to find that physics tells us little about jealousy and democracy and stuff like that. A different area of study, with different concerns. Folk who claim love is nothing but oxytocin don't have much of a grasp of love.
I'm not seeing that you did provide any such answer. Sorry. Thanks for trying.
I believe I did.
I will add, though, that for many purposes, it can be presumed that events will run their course as if it makes no difference whether or not there is an observer. That was what was meant by the 'mind-indepedence' of the objects of physics and chemistry, and it was very much presumed by the mechanistic model of the Universe - set in motion by the deist God of Newton, forever to run on its pre-determined course according to mechanical laws.
But that was all called into question by the 1920's discoveries of quantum physics, where the act of observation suddently became relevant to the observed experimental outcome. That is why Einstein felt compelled to ask the question (rather plaintively, I feel) 'Do you really believe the moon isn't there when nobody looks?'
So I wouldn't downplay the implications of 'mind-dependence' or its contrary.
Quoting Banno
I'm attempting a philosophical critique of why it doesn't.
Sure. That doesn't mean that the conflict is about anything substantive - so to speak.
Quoting Wayfarer
So do we agree that the cup, unobserved in the cupboard, still has a handle? I'm going to take it that we do, that the cup in the cupboard is not the sort of thing that you are talking about as "absent an observer".
Then what is it that is "unintelligible"? Aren't you just saying that saying something requires a sayer? That thinking requires a thinker? Sure, why not.
But you seem to think you are saying something else, in between that the unobserved cup has a handle and that thinking implies a thinker. And here I'm at a loss.
Which cup? Presumably you have one in mind.
Good. I like Mary Midgley's suggestion that they are simply different topics. But I also like Davidson's idea that what's true in one topic, if it can be translated into another, must be true there as well.
Now there's a genuine philosophical puzzle.
I would have to have one in mind.
Quoting Banno
Her 'Evolution as a Religion' is a favourite.
Evolutionary Overreach: Midgley suggests that some scientists and science popularizers overreach by making broad philosophical or moral claims based on evolutionary theory. They treat evolution not just as a biological theory but as a complete worldview or ideology.
"Just-so" Stories: Midgley critiques certain evolutionary explanations, especially in the realm of sociobiology, as being akin to Rudyard Kipling's "just-so" stories – speculative narratives that seem more about confirming existing biases than rigorous scientific explanations.
Science vs. Religion: One of the book's main themes is that the discourse around evolution is heavily influenced by an unnecessary and damaging conflict between science and religion. This conflict is perpetuated by figures on both sides who treat science and religion as mutually exclusive domains.
Moral and Philosophical Implications: Midgley asserts that the implications of evolutionary theory have been overstretched by some proponents to make broad moral or philosophical claims, often with nihilistic or deterministic overtones.
Critique of Reductionism: A recurrent theme in Midgley's work, including this book, is her criticism of reductionism – the idea that complex phenomena can be completely understood in terms of their simplest components. She argues that while reductionist methods are useful in many scientific contexts, they are not suited for understanding human nature and morality.
Scientism as Religion: Midgley suggests that the dogmatic belief in a purely scientific worldview, often at the expense of other forms of knowledge or understanding, can become a kind of secular religion in itself.
Complexity of Life: Midgley emphasizes that life, particularly human life, is complex and cannot be boiled down to simple deterministic laws or principles.
Just my cup of tea.
Sure.
Yet there is *my* mind, *your* mind, and some minds are superior to other minds. This is my focus.
I would describe myself as an idealist, but with a concern for the practical everyday implications of idealism.
I was asking how Buddhism overcomes the problem of solipsism. Every epistemic theory worth its salt has to overcome the problem of solipsism somehow, otherwise it falls into it.
No. I'm saying that you're trying to do too much with words, that you're trying to do with words even things that can only be done with deeds. (I'll keep bringing this up for a concise formulation.)
Sure. But there is still "my lived experience" vs. "your lived experience" and the question of which is the right one, or at least superior.
We somehow need to account for epistemic individuality as well as epistemic commonality and epistemic normativity.
And I contend that you're trying to do with words what can only be accomplished with physical actions.
How is it not a perspective? (Because of your commitment to to it?)
I don’t really accept that. This is a philosophy forum, and the medium of discourse is writing.
But you hold that the things said, and said here, have an application beyond this forum, do you not?
More about trying to do with words even things that can only be done with deeds: The very act of joining a lineage, of accepting someone as one's teacher (with all the vows taken, all the bows, prostrations, money given, time spent, the other people witnessing it) has a real cognitive/epistemic effect on and for the person.
This effect can not be replicated merely by thinking about such sumbmission to a teacher, or reading about it.
It's like the difference between actually going to the bank and taking out a loan, signing documents and becoming subject to all the legal and criminal ramifications of having done so, vs. merely thinking about taking out a loan. Or the difference between actually eating an apple and merely thinking about doing so.
It seems that you're trying to get the benefits from Buddhism without really signing up for it. (If you really signed up for it, you wouldn't post here anymore, among other things.)
I got a notification of mention, by Banno, but I wasn’t even aware of this thread. Dunno how that happens, but anyway…..
Interesting thesis, and well-spoken.
This assumption that there are things which we cannot talk about is unequivocally defeatist. That shows a very similar attitude to the judgement that there are aspects of reality which are fundamentally unintelligible. Succinctly, it is unphilosophical, and when it's allowed to fester it becomes anti-philosophical.
Quoting Banno
Those with the philosophical mindset, the wonder and desire to know, will inquire as to why it is the case that physics tells us little if anything at all, about things like jealousy and love.
It's one thing to recognize the reality of fundamental differences in the various aspects of reality, and the need to employ completely distinct disciplinary methods to acquire an understanding of these very different aspects, but some of us want to know why such differences are very real.
Quoting Wayfarer
Banno appears to have the attitude that this is something which cannot be talked about, so shut up because you're proving me wrong by talking about it.
Those who include scientific inquiry within the philosophical mindset are apt to recognize that the immense complexity of the brain very well explains the fact that physics tells us little about things like jealousy and love.
Well, not really. Physics, with one of its principal subjects being the relations of one thing to another, motions, is actually designed for understanding complexity. So all you are saying is that physics is not sufficient for the task which it is designed for, understanding complexity, because there is a complexity which is too immense for its capacity.
Saying that there is a physical complexity which physics cannot understand, when physics was designed to understand physical complexities, is like saying that despite the fact that the natural numbers are designed to be able to count anything, by being designated as infinite, there is a number which is greater than the capacity of the natural numbers to count. It's simply defeatist.
Instead of addressing the issue, which is the reason why, and proceed toward a real solution, it is to accept defeat.
One can do something close to that. It's called a map. From the map, if it is a contour map, one can construct elevations along a sightline and thus reconstruct the perspective at any point in any direction.
I therefore conclude that perspective is not personal (as @Banno points out if we swap places, we swap perspectives), but a feature of topography.
[quote=Spike Milligan]Everybody has to be somewhere![/quote]
The trick, as always, is not to confuse the map, where one is not, even when there is a label saying "you are here", with the territory where one has to be, with or without a decent map. In general, theoretical physics is in the business of map-making, whereas engineering alters the landscape. New telescope produces new perspective, produces new physics.
It seems that your history of trying to keep scientific understanding from entering your "fortress" has left you with so many misconceptions that it doesn't seem like a very good use of my time to try to disabuse you of those misconceptions. However, feel free to explain who designed physics and quote their explanation of what they designed physics for.
This is an interesting point. How can it be extrapolated? That a person's psychological, social, economical situation is also a type of topography? So that we can say, for example, that someone is a drug addict because of their psychological, social, economical topography (and that any person who would be placed in such a topography would also become s drug addict)?
Quoting Wayfarer
One of the important features of the paper is that it isn’t trying to posit consciousness as an ineffable, inner sanctum. On the contrary, Bitbol emphasizes the irreducibly intersubjective nature of experience.
Well, I would like to suggest that social and psychological situations along with social constructs are all real, but I don't have that map to hand, if there is one. Humans are territory rather than map, is more my point, whereas physics is map.
:pray:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
:lol:
Quoting baker
That's not at all what you said. What you said was
Quoting baker
Which is patronising, and also irrelevant. The argument I'm putting forward has similarities to that of Berkeley, who had never heard of Buddhism, and other idealist philosophers including Schopenhauer (who had, but who was completely independent of it and Kastrup (who is a current philosopher.) The OP doesn't mention the Buddha, and the full version of the essay does only once in a footnote. As I said, this is a philosophy forum, and mine is a philosophical argument, convergences with Buddhist philosophy notwithstanding.
Quoting unenlightened
Quite. I recall an interesting article I read somewhere on how quantum physics and relativity required the invention of many novel forms of mathematics which were required by concepts that had never previously been considered. And I've mentioned many times the immense philosophical fallout from the advent of quantum theory in the 1920's, which is ongoing.
Quoting Joshs
I didn't think I was trying to do that (a criticism, by the way, that echoes Buddhism's criticism of Vedanta). I will add, I learned of Michel Bitbol from this forum (from @Pierre-Normand) and have found his work fascinating and enriching.
By the way, as I mentioned Bernardo Kastrup above, here is an interview with him that provides an effective intro for those who aren't familiar. Worth the read, in my opinion.
As you should know I agree that whatever is real beyond human experience and understanding cannot be imagined. Nonetheless, we cannot but imagine that things must somehow be real independently of the human; I think that is an existential fact about human existence, and its importance lies in it making us recognize that, at bottom, life is really an ineluctable mystery, and how that opens up the field for all the riches of the human speculative imagination. As rich as the imagination is, though, I think it should be borne in mind that whatever we imagine should not be taken too seriously as it can never be definitive.
I am in agreement. Seems this kind of leaves us with the phenomenal world as our only domain for fruitful exploration. Which for me, as someone who probably qualifies as scientist in orientation, leaves us with science as the primary (but not sole) source of reliable information about the world we inhabit. I remain however, somewhat fascinated with phenomenology and process of human interaction with the world and co-creation (if that is the right word) of our reality.
:up: I think the human imagination is a domain for fruitful exploration, but not for definitive knowledge of anything other than just what is imaginable. I, like you, am science oriented in that I think the only really definitive knowledge comes from observation. Phenomenology, including introspection, I would say gives us knowledge of how things appear to us to be, but I don't have any confidence that it can tell us how things really are. Here I have principally the nature of consciousness in mind, and maybe we can never know what its nature is as it cannot be directly observed.
I tend to think our world is pre-cognitively co-constructed by the bodymind/ environment and that we are constitutionally blind to that process. We and the world, the whole shebang, emerge out of the other side of that process, so to speak,
Just to re-iterate the point of the argument: I am not disputing the scientific (i.e. naturalist) account but attempting to reveal an underlying assumption that gives rise to a distorted view of what this means. What I’m calling attention to is the tendency to take for granted the reality of the world as it appears to us, without taking into account the role the mind plays in its constitution. This oversight imbues the phenomenal world — the world as it appears to us — with a kind of inherent reality that it doesn’t possess. This in turn leads to the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion for truth. (That, I contend, is the major source of 'scientism' and a major weakness of naturalism, generally.)
By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brain receives, organises and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves.' That part of the argument is supported with passages from Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order, not a philosophy text as such, but a cognitive science book.
From this, what I'm saying is that philosophical reflection or analysis reveals the way in which the mind creates - or construes! - the nature of reality. That is where insight, self-knowledge, becomes a factor.
You frequently put this up as a kind of maxim, but one of the over-arching themes of philosophy since ancient times has been the possibility of self-knowledge. The fact that this seems such a remote or perplexing idea might be as much a consequence of the shortcomings of our way of looking at the question, as of the question itself.
So this:
Quoting Wayfarer
seems to be you relying on the objective relaity of the empirical scientific understanding of the brain to support a claim that empirical investigations cannot show us what is real because they
Quoting Wayfarer
which seem to be a performative contradiction.
Quoting Wayfarer
For the very reasons which you have adduced, I am not as confident as you are that what might be called self-knowledge is anything more than an appearance- it just tells us how things seem to us with no guarantee that it reflects any reality beyond human experience.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well, I see those "shortcomings" as inherent limitations of human knowledge and understanding. Obviously, I am more of a skeptic than you are.
Agree. And it's a point well made. I think this kind of thread is rich in potential triggers for all sorts of other related discussions.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm aware of this view (Know Thyself, Delphic maxims, etc) but I've not seen philosophy as playing an extensive role in self-knowledge. The self-knowledge (insight) I am aware of (and I doubt people much acquire it except through experience) is generally acquired through the process of living or through therapy/counselling/meaningful interventions/dialogue from/with others.
Can you give me a couple of examples of self-knowledge arrived at through philosophy?
I understand that is your belief, but not that it is definitive.
Quoting Tom Storm
I certainly won't hold myself up as one. But I have the idea that this is what philosophy in the pre-modern sense used to mean. You know - Pierre Hadot and philosophy as a way of life, how ancient philosophy used to be practiced rather than just being an academic pursuit. I had a kind of intuition of that, and I'm interesting in pursuing it although in today's world, it's something like forensic pathology. It is really difficult to tell if I'm actually learning something or progressing or whether I'm chasing rainbows (hence the icon.)
:up: It's a very interesting question for us all here. I think terms like 'self-knowledge' are used imprecisely by many of us and self-knowledge is automatically assumed to be a virtue we don't really question. I think what we do here mainly is engage in disputes over contesting epistemologies, often slogged out through metaphysical presuppositions. I don't see where self-knowledge comes into it much except perhaps in understanding the limitations of our own positions and knowledge.
Unless solipsism obtains, mind is dependent on (ergo, inseparable from) More/Other-than-mind, no? and that "experience" consists of phenomenal traces (or outputs) of the 'entangled, or reflexive, interactivity' of mind with More/Other-than-mind? and therefore mind interprets "experience as world" which is wholly subjective, or imaginary – an 'online hallucination' that is nothing but mere folk knowledge (i.e. parochial heuristics / biases) aka "common sense" to the degree "common sense" is n o t bias-filtered/error-corrected by hypothetico-deductive testing (i.e. science and/or sound arguments)?
So what is 'mind'? AFAIK, basically mind is a recursive (strange looping, phenomenal self-modeling) aspect of More/Other-than-mind – a nonmental activity (process ... anatman), not an entity (ghost-in-the-machine ... X-of-the-gaps), that is functionally blind to its self-recursivity the way, for instance, an eye is transparent to itself and absent from its own field of vision.
Of course, I am happy to admit that, since I don't think anything is definitive except observation, and that only within the context of observation.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree that philosophy can be a practice in the sense that Hadot outlines in Philosophy as a Way of Life, but the methodology of such philosophy is not speculation and critique, but acceptance of a body of cardinal ideas, or systems, which are to serve as guidelines for practice, for "spiritual exercises". I don't believe such exercises yield any definitive knowledge in the propositional sense, but of course, like any practice, they develop certain "know-hows".
But I have said this to you many times, and you are probably tired of hearing it, since it doesn't accord with your own beliefs apparently.
Imagination and observation can’t be disentangled in the way you think they can. It is not as though what we imagine is locked in some secret inner sphere we call subjective consciousness. That’s an old fashioned way of thinking about subjectivity which just perpetuates a dualistic thinking (imagination is non-observational subjectivity, scientific observation is oriented toward contact with a real, objective world). This way of thinking is utterly unable to explain how leading edge philosophical ideas thoughout history have anticipated , by decades or more, the results of the sciences. Observation indeed.
Quoting Janus
This intersubjective construction of objectivity is what phenomenology is about , not ‘introspection ’, which is a common misunderstanding of its method.
I haven't said or suggested that imagination and observation can be disentangled. That said imagining abstruse metaphysical possibilities and observing everyday phenomena are very different activities.
I also have not denied that speculative ideas can sometimes anticipate what is later observed to be the case.
Quoting Joshs
This I don't agree with, since I think the construction of objectivity is a pre-cognitive and hence inscrutable process. For me phenomenology consists in reflection on experience in order to clarify how things seem to us. And the only possibility of anything definitive in that comes with intersubjective assent in the form of "yes, that is how it seems to me also". What other kind of demonstration do you think could be possible in that context?
The problem though is that not all aspects of a human perspective can be reconstructed in the way you describe. And a human perspective, as @wonderer1 pointed out, is very complex. So the fact that one, or even a number of aspects of a perspective can be reconstructed, does not produce the conclusion that a human perspective can be reconstructed. That's a composition fallacy.
Quite simply, swapping places does not imply swapping perspectives, because the unique particularities of the being brings a lot to the perspective. If swapping perspectives was just a matter of swapping places, you could take a dog's perspective, or a cat's perspective, by taking that creature's place. But this is all wrong. And that is why "walking in someone else's shoes" is a matter of understanding the other person, not a matter of swapping physical positions.
Think about alternative terms for mind - psyche or geist, for instance (or the Sanskrit 'citta'). Is it not conceivable that the first stirrings of life, the very simplest organisms, are also the manifestation of mind? Which then over the course of aeons evolves into self-aware forms including rational sentient beings such as ourselves? So which comes first, viewed that way? Did the primitive proto-organic chemistry suddenly and miraculously develop into a chain reaction capable of homeostasis and evolution, thereby giving rise to mind? Or does a latent tendency in the Cosmos towards self-awareness manifest where circumstances are favourable? If that sounds like vitalism, I am not proposing that 'life' or 'mind' is an actual essence or substance in any objective sense. Think of it as a metaphorical expression which is nevertheless suggestive. And it maps well against the ancient maxim of 'man as microcosm' (from hermetic philosophy). In any case, it is a plausible model for preserving the ontological priority of mind (as disinct from relegating it to 'the product of' mindless processes.)
Quoting 180 Proof
Well, as said above, I agree that mind is not anything objectively real. 'Anatman' is a term in Buddhism, usually used adjectivally, i.e. 'all phenomena (dharmas) are anatta (not self)' - which does not deny that there are subjects of experience, although it is often misinterpreted to mean that. The meaning is to recognise that phenomenal objects are not the self (in addition to being transient (anicca) and unsatisfying (dukkha)).
As for the eye being 'absent from its own field of vision', that is exactly the metaphor behind The Blind Spot of Science article which you have previously dismissed (and which incidentally is being published in book form next March.)
Quoting Janus
I agree with that, and I don't recall your having put it that way. That is what I think was the distinction between 'theoria' and 'praxis' in ancient philosophy, was it not? And the kind of 'unitive vision' that it was thought to culminate in was a blend of 'knowing how' and 'knowing that'. It's often said that philosophy lost its way by becoming totally absorbed in intellectual abstractions, whereas traditional philosophy (and Buddhist praxis) is very much grounded in bodily awareness (which is a basic feature of enactivism and embodied philosophy).
I've got to do an advertisement for a book, again - a little-known book, hardly commented on, which is why I mention it - De-fragmenting Modernity, Paul Tyson (a UQ academic):
He traces the historical development of this 'fragmentation' quite plausibly, in my view. It's germane to the ideas in this thread. That re-integration or holistic vision is what I think philosophy ought to be striving for.
:roll: Any "manifestation of" that which "is not objectively real" is, of course, "conceivable". But are we just fantasizing, Wayf, or are we philosophizing?
:up:
Cool. Cuz I can’t make heads or tails out of self-knowledge.
It does surprise me that you don't recall me framing it that way before, because I am sure I have more than a few times. But anyway, no matter; and I have to say I still don't see the possibility of a definitive "unitive vision" that could be shown to be based on anything other than faith.
I mean, I don't reject the possibility that intuition might give us insight into the nature of reality, I just reject the possibility that it can be demonstrated to be able to do so or demonstrated to be doing so in any particular case, and that is why I say it remains a matter of faith.
That said, I lean towards the idea that intuition might sometimes give us insight into the nature of reality, and I acknowledge that to the extent that I believe that I am believing something which cannot be tested. Even scientific theories can never be proven to be true.
It's not just me then... :wink:
Quoting Janus
And I often wonder how having an insight into the nature of reality matters? What happens then... chop wood, carry water?
Sometimes it seems to me that the quest to gain glimpses of transcendence is more about self-aggrandizement or a kind of metaphysical tourism.
I don't think it really does matter in any practical sense, since such insight cannot be definitive. However, the insight might be conceptually creative and rich, inspiring creative ideas and activities, heightened affect and altered consciousness. I value such things in themselves, because I see them as enriching experiences.
I agree with you about chasing enlightenment being very often a cult of the self and a kind of "tourism". I've seen quite a bit of that in my travels.
As stated at the outset, the OP is an argument against the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion of what is real. Accordingly, 'objectively existent' is not the sole criterion for what is real. There are kinds of things, like abstract objects such as numbers and logical principles, which are real but not necessarily objectively existent. There are a priori truths which are not necessarily objective, in that their veracity can be judged without recourse to external experience. More to the point, as you yourself said, the mind itself is not something that can be known objectively, in that it's never the object of cognition (except metaphorically). So when we try to consider what it is, or how it originated, then perhaps the best we can manage is suggestive metaphor. That doesn't necessarily fall to mere fantasy (unless you want to be completely positivistic about it.)
I don't deny that there is an entire vast domain which can be encompassed by the term 'objectively existent' although, as has been pointed out a few times already, this can also be understood as being 'inter-subjectively real'.
Speaking of 'anatman' - the Sanskrit term ??nyat?, meaning 'emptiness', is grounded in the awareness that objects of cognition have no intrinsic being (svabhava, literally 'own being'.) 'Realising emptiness' is the path of understand how the mind misconstrues objects of cognition as being inherently existent. I think the Buddhist expression 'realising emptiness' has a lot to do with seeing through the way in which the mind manufactures meanings about objects which they don't really possess. But it takes a pretty severe inner discipline to pursue that.
Quoting Janus
I would have hoped that a Philosophy Forum might be a place to discuss such endeavours, although there are always quite a few tourist members.
Quoting Mww
It's always struck me as one of the fundamental elements of philosophy, paradoxical and difficult though it might seem.
Right, well isn't that what we've been doing? I don't deny that the kinds of philosophical practices such as the stoics, the epicureans, and the neo-Platonists pursued could be possible and even transformative today, but that is not what we are doing here. Here we are speculating and critiquing, the very activities which apparently had no place in such spiritual practices.
I'm not sure what you mean by "objectively existent" or "objectivity". Please clarify what makes this "criterion" problematic.
Also, do you reject what I (briefly) say on the thread "What is real?" ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/839360
Not so much problematic as limited, not universal. Isn't to limit the scope of truth to what is objective a form of verificationism? As I already said, there are a priori truths, mathematical proofs, and so on which are not objective (meaning 'inherent in the object'), or rather, true in a way that is not necessarily objective in the strict sense. Objectivity is something to be valued - I'm not a relativist - but at the same time, it's not absolute, or rather, its scope is limited. For instance, Newtonian mechanics affords pretty well absolute objectivity when it comes to the laws of motion, but when you get to quantum mechanics, you encounter the whole issue of 'interpretation of the meaning of the theory' which is no longer an objective matter, even if the predictions it makes are extremely accurate.
What I was trying to get at is that I'm aware of the problem of conceiving life in terms of the 'elan vital'. That is very much like the imaginary ghost in the machine as you said. But, I said, If that sounds like vitalism, I am not proposing that 'life' or 'mind' is a substance in any objective sense - it is ill-conceived to consider mind as something objectively real, but it is AS IF there is a something like mind or life that animates the material form of creatures. But to say it is objectively existent is a reification. We can only be aware of it, because it is constitutive of our being, NOT because it is a knowable object or substance. That's what I'm working on trying to clarify.
Quoting 180 Proof
There's not enough detail to really say.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/842850 ^^
Well, fair enough, but what I was attempting to respond to
Quoting 180 Proof
is hardly a model of clarity itself, you must admit.
Quoting Banno
I get what Wayf is trying to say here, but there 'is' not a [metaphysical] subject except as a perspectival form of being. Husserl's discussion of spatial objects is helpful here. What we tend to mean by a cup is that familiar object viewed perspectively through human eyes. I can never see all of it at once. I can see it from this place or that, in this lighting or that. Our embodied experience has always been and seeming must always continue to be 'perspectival.'
We don't know what we could even mean by the cup 'apart from human cognition'. Or rather such a statement is paradoxical, aimed of course precisely at the same human cognition which is supposed to contemplate the mystically Real cup its own absence.
The 'objective' cup is something like the cup from a (virtual, postulated) 'average' human perspective.
Yes, you are quite right. Even the map-reading is not simple; the information is there in the contours, but working out what can be seen from where is complex. Similarly, one can know something of a persons's economic position, social and psychological condition and perhaps work out to some extent their psycho-social 'perspective'. And if one understands a dog's sensibilities, the same applies. That you bring up such particularities shows that you can do so to some extent, and shows, again, that they are features of the world.
I think this is what the thread is suggesting; that the objective world is an abstract theoretical construct, and to arrive at the real, one has 'to put' back the subjectivity that has been discounted.
I basically agree. We can only speak with confidence from our actual, embodied experience. We know nothing about a world from no perspective at all. We know the world for sapience. Some have postulated a to-me-paradoxical urstuff, admittedly not without their reasons.
But others postulate too much on the side of the subject. It's the world that is given perspectively, not some private dream. Though dreamers and dreams are also given. Still, language is more social than individual, so we intend always the same world, and that includes the toothaches of others, which figure like prime numbers and pretzels in the same kind of justifications of claims and deeds.
A very nicely presented argument which I think is substantially wrong. I hope you don’t mind if I boil things down…
The following analogical argument is obviously wrong (or is it?):
You cannot look at a landscape except from a point of view.
Therefore the landscape is constituted by (or created by) your point of view.
So the question is either: what is the crucial difference in the case of empirical reality in general (as opposed to a landscape) that turns the argument into a good one; or what are the missing premises?
:up:
The subjectivist camp is right that the world is always given perspectively, but they don't squeeze enough juice from the fact that it's the world, our world that is so given. Logic is ours not mine. We always intend the one and only 'landscape.'
My mind didn't create our world, but maybe my mind, understood as this world entire but from a point of view, has a genuine if merely supporting ontological role.
:up:
In other words, the scientific image is (of course, in retrospect?) just a useful image. It's a map that deserves respect, but it's bonkers ontologically -- if taken as some kind of self-supporting independently-meaningful Thing.
I hear you, but we replace one fallible belief with another. I do think you nailed the practical sense of 'reality.' But I don't think you've made a case for the truly independent object (the one from no perspective.)
That was given as an illustrative analogy, not as the main point of the argument. Note also I that I say that a perspective is required for any judgement as to what exists. There can be no answer to the question 'does [the object] exist irrespective of any judgement?' as that question requires that the questioner already has [the object] in mind, in order to frame the question. You may plausibly accept that [the object] continues to exist in the absence of any perspective, but that remains conjecture, even if plausible.
But the main part of the argument occurs further on, where I say 'there is no need for me to deny that the Universe ('the object') is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind. But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis ¹. Whatever experience we have or knowledge we possess, it always occurs to a subject — a subject which only ever appears as us, as subject, not to us, as object.'
[1] This insight is central to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Kant has been described as the ‘godfather of modern cognitive science’ for his insights into the workings of the mind.
Well, yes. I explicitly used it in the same way.
Otherwise, I don’t see how you’ve addressed my question.
Indeed. That is how language, mathematics, and all forms of communication are effective - they are part of a 'shared mindscape', so to speak, that have agreed references that we all understand. Or rather, that all those of our cultural type understand. (Because, as Wittgenstein says, even if a lion could speak, we would not understanding him.)
But this is also why my approach is not solipsistic. When I say the world is 'mind-made' I don't mean made only by my mind, but is constituted by the shared reality of humankind, which is an irreducibly mental foundation.
What I said was that 'empirical reality in general is not solely constituted by objects and their relations but has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis' - thereby pointing out a lack or absence in the empirical account, namely, the inextricably mental. Doesn't that address your question?
I’m not sure. On the face of it it’s more or less repeating the analogical argument with empirical reality substituted for the landscape. Also, isn’t there a tension—it could be worse than just a tension, I’m not sure—between the claim that the mental aspect of empirical reality is not revealed empirically, and your appeal to cognitive science? Kant’s transcendental subject is a kind of vanishing point, not a real mind.
'It might be thought that a neuroscientific approach to the nature of the mind will be inclined towards just the kind of physicalist naturalism that this essay has set out to criticize. But, and perhaps ironically, that is not necessarily so. Many neuroscientists stress that the world we perceive is not an exact replication of external stimuli, but rather is actively constructed by the brain in a dynamic and interleaved process from one moment to the next. Every act of perception involves the processes of filtering, amplifying, and interpretation of sensory data — physical, environmental, somatic — and in the case of h. sapiens, refracted through language and reason. These are the constituents of our mental life which constitute our world. The world is, as phenomenologists like to put it, a lebenswelt, a world of lived meanings.'
Quoting Jamal
In my taxonomical schema, real but not phenomenally existent.
Incidentally, that above passage has a footnote reference in the original to this video:
I love that Richard Dawkins appears as Witness for the Defense (of objectivity) :-)
Paradox resolved. Self-knowledge is a transcendental paralogism, a logical misstep of pure reason, re: knowledge of self treats that to which knowledge belongs, as object the knowledge is about. (B411)
————
Quoting Tom Storm
Reason: the source of both wondrous insight and debilitating confusion.
[quote=Russell]
When a crowd of people all observe a rocket bursting, they will ignore whatever there is reason to think peculiar and personal in their experience, and will not realize without an effort that there is any
private element in what they see. But they can, if necessary, become aware of these elements. One part of the crowd sees the rocket on the right, one on the left, and so on. Thus when each person's perception is studied in its fullness, and not in the abstract form which is most convenient for conveying information about the outside world, the perception becomes a datum for psychology. But although every physical datum is derived from a system of psychological data, the converse is not the case. Sensations resulting from a stimulus within the body will naturally not be felt by other people ; if I have a stomach-ache I am in no degree surprised to find that others are not similarly afflicted.
[/quote]
I agree w/ Russell (and Husserl) that we tend to look right thru our own looking. The personal and typically irrelevant how is forgotten in the worldly what. It takes work to really see our own seeing, because such seeing of seeing is even potentially counterpractical.
I think we agree here. This is Geist, spirit, form of life, culture, the they, one, the who of everyday dasein.
Our views aren't that far apart probably. I don't think you are being solipsistic, by the way. And the timebinding human species is the best candidate for a transcendental ego. But consider that this species is part of what it finds in the world. So I'd call it a sine qua non. And what is awareness of...if not the world ? The 'mental,' grasped most profoundly, is precisely the very being of its of 'objects.'
'I' am the there itself. But this is not the psychological 'I' or the person with a credit score. It's vanishingly pure witness, which no longer deserves anthropomorphic trappings, having been recognized as [the perspectival character of ] being itself.
I tend to agree with the spirit of what you are saying in this thread, but I think this metaphysical subject must be dissolved,
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/#TranEgoDiscInte
This is close to Heidegger's being-in-the-world. The 'I' is the world, but this world exists in the style of a sentient citizen's chasing of a streetcar.
I agree with this, and I think the issue is the question of how we can arrive at a "correct way" to put back the subjectivity. If we define "correct way" as the way that follows the conventions, and these conventions are the ones which are consistent with the abstract theoretical construct, then any application of the "correct way" will not put back the subjectivity, as desired, because it will just create a new aspect of the same old "objective world". To "put back the subjectivity" requires including the features of subjectivity which are outside the boundaries of convention.
The interesting aspect of this type of thread, is that there is a significant number of hard realists who flatly refuse to acknowledge this need to put back the subjectivity, as required to have an honest approach to reality. Since these people think that "the real" can be arrived at simply by following the conventions, they are in great agreement with each other, and you'll see them on these threads, slapping each other on the back, giving thumbs up and high fives etc.. On the other hand, those who apprehend and agree with this need, "to put back the subjectivity" as a requirement for an approach to "the real", can never agree with each other as to how this ought to be done. This is because the very thing that they are arguing for, the need to respect the concrete base of subjectivity, as very real, and a very essential and true part of reality, is also the very same thing which manifests as the differences between us, which make agreement between us into a very difficult matter.
So we are broken into two groups. The first group agrees with each other, and commits to an ontology which denies the significance or importance of perspectival difference. The "objective world" is the one we understand through certain conventions of abstract theoretical thought, and those who see "the world" in a different way are by definition "wrong", therefore we can exclude them, and their absurd perspectives, as irrelevant to our objective reality. This first group has explicit terms of agreement supported by the conventions of language, so there is great conformity and unity amongst them. The second group, which supports the real, essential, and significant nature of difference, is pushed further and further away from the first, by the first, so that the first can apply terms of mental illness and things like that, to the second, as required to support the illusion of the reality of their "objective world" construct.
Now the second group, by the very nature of what they are arguing for, lacks unity. Because of this lack of unity, they will always be "wrong", and even my act of classing them together as one group is wrong. They are better characterized as wayward individuals lacking what is required for categorization. And even if some of them find points of agreement, that small group will still be in the minority compared to the first group, and therefore wrong. This ought to serve as a demonstration of how the first group is always "correct", but correct by their own theoretical constructs of what is true and real, and not "correct" by the true reality of honest subjectivity.
Here's an evolutionary example which may or may not be helpful to some. Imagine a species appears on earth, and flourishes greatly, to the point where it overruns and inhabits every space of the entire plane. The species does not understand the toxicity of its own waste, such that its own annihilation from the effects of its own waste becomes imminent. At this point individuals come into existence amidst the toxicity of "the species", demonstrating various differences, perhaps mutations caused by the toxic elements of the waste. Each individual separates from "the species" in its own way, with an instinctual form of knowledge, knowing that the species is toxic and that there is a need to separate from it. Not one of these individuals is "normal" by the conventions of "the species", and not one of them has the characteristics required to be called a new species. Each one is a monstrosity or deformity relative to "the species" They are all within some intermediate condition not covered by the norms of our "objective world" so they are simply mutations. However, these differences are essential and necessary for the continuation of all the features of that life form, which have been progressively building for millions of years, producing the necessary conditions for its extreme flourishment, and this would all be completely lost if the species proceeded to annihilate itself prior to the individuals establishing something new.
Quoting plaque flag
This is very good evidence of the problem I discuss above. In reality, the assumption of "the world" is only supported by the truth of "our world". And "our world" implies an inter-subjectivity, of agreements and conventions. So long as agreement holds, there is such a thing as "the world". But as more and more people see faults and defects in "our world", and those who cling to "our world" refuse to address these faults because they automatically reject those people as simply "wrong", insignificant and irrelevant, the foundation of "our world" gets shakier and shakier as the concrete which supports it, is that very agreement which is not being properly maintained.
[quote=Husserl]
Is phenomenological research solipsistic research? Does it restrict the research to the individual I and, more precisely, to the area of its individual psychic phenomena? It is anything but this. Solus ipse — that would mean I alone exist or I disengage everything remaining of the world, excepting only myself and my psychic states and acts.
On the contrary, as a phenomenologist, I disengage myself just as I disengage everyone else and the entire world, and no less my psychic states and acts, which, as my states and acts, are precisely nature. One may say that the nonsensical epistemology of solipsism emerges when, being ignorant of the radical principle of the phenomenological reduction, yet similarly intent on suspending all transcendence, one confuses the psychological and the psychologistic immanence with the genuine phenomenological immanence.
[/quote]
I disengage myself just as I disengage everyone else and the entire world, and no less my psychic states and acts, which, as my states and acts, are precisely nature.
I read this as: the ego, which might be postulated as constituting, is at least also one more thing in the world, so that it would have to be self-constituting. It seems cleaner to me to indeed grant the lived body the status of a sine qua non...but to hesitate to speak of the priority of mentality. The lifeworld is 'given' as a rushing river, as a symphony. I can't see without a brain, but I also need eyes. But then I also need something in the world to see. And perception is conceptual (Sellars was mentioned above), so I need a linguistic conceptual community too. This without-which-nothing or condition-for-the-possibility approach memorably appears in The Fire Sermon.
[quote=Fire Sermon]
The mind is burning, ideas are burning, mind-consciousness is burning, mind-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with mind-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion.
[/quote]
I can sum up by suggesting that it's enough to challenge the intelligibility of the 'pure' object. We probably don't want to put ourselves in the vulnerable position of proposing a pure subject.
What do you mean by "put back the subjectivity"?
I always thought the maxim 'know thyself' was simply about seeing through your own delusions and false hopes. It doesn't necessarily pre-suppose a 'real self' that needs to be known, except maybe as a figure of speech. Self knowledge as an important aspect of wisdom and maturity.
Quoting plaque flag
Those are the 'three poisons' of Buddhism, represented iconographically as the pig (greed) snake (hate) and rooster (stupidity/delusion) chasing each other around an endless circle (sa?s?ra).
These are said to be the chief motivators of the 'deluded worlding', replaced in the wise by their opposites, namely:
amoha (non-delusion) or paññ? (wisdom)
alobha (non-attachment) or d?na (generosity)
adve?a (non-hatred) or mett? (loving-kindness)
Cool. Nice to see a definition. I also think that this self-knowledge is being aware of and being able to manage flaws or patterns in one's thinking and behavior. It seems to be a synonym for a type of self-improvement. This does not necessarily track back to philosophy from what I can see. Although @Joshs made an interesting point about the arrogance of not seeing one's own unexamined and unprovable presuppositions. We are often keen to share our values with others without the benefit of having scrupulously examined those values.
I think it belongs to the therapeutic aspect of philosophy. Did you ever have that 70's perennial The Road Less Travelled? Very much along those lines. (Actually the Wiki entry on 'Know Thyself' is really not too bad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself)
I think cultural differences are overblown and that Wittgenstein's comment about not being able to understand the lion is ridiculous. What language is the lion speaking? If the lion speaks our language of course we can understand it. If the lion speaks an unfamiliar language of course we cannot understand it.
Quoting Wayfarer
As far as we know humankind does not have a collective mind. So, it depends on what you mean by "mind". It also depends on what you mean by "world". The everyday world is, as I often say, a collective, in the sense of conventional, representation; it is not something any of us actually experience. It's like the world of fashion or the world of business.
So, the everyday world is convention-created, I would say, rather than mind-created; there are collective conventions, but there does not seem to be any collective mind.
The actual world, that within which we exist pre-cognitively speaking and by which we are pre-cognitively affected does not depend on the human for its existence, or at least all the evidence suggests that it does not. It's perhaps not impossible that it is mind-created, but how could we ever know? And if we cannot ever know, then how could it ever matter?
That said, even though the question is unanswerable, I think the fact that we can ask it matters, even though the question itself, per se, is useless to us.
That notion of self-knowledge is unproblematic—it is a matter of developing awareness of what is being felt, thought and done and how those feelings, thoughts and doings are affecting personal happiness and health, one's own and others'.
It was actually @unenlightened's phrase. It was meant to express what the op was about. The issue is that to get a true representation of reality we must include the subjective aspect, which is an essential part of any such representation. So in other words "objective reality" is a sort of falsity because it is an attempt to remove the subjective aspect, which cannot possibly be done. Therefore, in creating a representation of reality we need to "put back the subjectivity" which the misguided attempt to produce an objective reality has removed. This I believe is the point of the op, we cannot produce a true "objective reality" because subjectivity is an essential aspect of any representation of reality.
Quoting Janus
I don't think that this is very accurate. Conventions do not create anything, they are passive, inactive, and minds, which are active, may follow them like rules. It is minds which create rather than conventions.
That's a pretty good definition. It does (to me) slot into a psychological zone as much as, if not more than, a philosophical one.
I can also see how an enhanced awareness of epistemology might lead one away from, let's say, Islamic fundamentalism and into a more nuanced, allegorical read of the Koran. This could make you a better person - more aware of and accepting of other ways of living and the benefits of diversity and non-dogmatic, less judgmental modes of living. Or something like this.
"The world" as abstract theoretical construct exists, and it is mind created.
Nice piece. It's a clear framing of a problem that is at the heart of modern "popular metaphysics." I find myself agreeing with what I took to be the main thesis here:
But I agree with the thesis for some different reasons I will touch on.
I agree that reality is not "straightforwardly objective," but more because of general confusion over what the term "objective," means. It seems to me like there is a strong tendency to conflate the "objective world," with something like Kant's noumenal realm. Thus, you might see a claim that the "objective world is reality-in-itself." This, paired with the positivist idea that "objectivity becomes equivalent to truth at the limit," unhelpfully muddles a number of concepts that are better left separate.
"Objectivity" only makes sense if there is the possibility of subjectivity. If there are no experiencing subjects, then there is no objectivity. If objectivity is not defined within the context of the possibility of something not being objective, then it is a term that applies equally to absolutely everything, making it entirely contentless. Truth is similar in this respect. What is the content of saying anything is "true," if "false" is not a possibility?
"Objective" is not a synonym for "real," "true," "noumenal," or "in-itself," and a close examination of how the concept has historically been used will demonstrate this, conflations notwithstanding. Objectivity is what we hope to arrive at when we try to eliminate the (relevant) biases of any particular point of view. But the "objective view," is still a view; it is not what we arrive at when we have no point of view (as you point out, this makes no sense). When we want an objective view of a phenomena we try to observe it in many different ways, using instruments, creating clever experiments, trying to overcome biases. If the objective view we were after was "what phenomena are like without a mind," scientists could just shoot up anesthesia and achieve something to that effect.
Objectivity also doesn't equate to truth either. Subjective experiences are part of reality and smoothing them out to create a more objective view is itself an alteration of our view of reality. The truth of the horrors of the Holocaust wouldn't best be described by a phase space map of all the particles in Europe for instance.
Further, these conflations are a problem regardless of whether one embraces idealism, physicalism, or dualism. I'd argue that it only seems to be a particular problem of physicalism because popular versions of physicalism seem to be particularly prone to falling into this bloated definition of "objectivity as truth," and as "the world as seen from everywhere and nowhere."
That all said, I think an objective view of existence is quite possible (views can be more or less objective of course). The mistake is simply to assume the objectivity makes any sense divorced from the concept of mind.
I'm not totally sure what is meant here. Are minds not objects that have relations, or is it only the individual's mind that is not an object to itself?
I might disagree if I am understanding you correctly here. While I tend to want to view the universe as one unified process, it does seem like some subsections of that process are far more directly involved in causing minds to emerge than others. That said, I agree that there is an inextricably mental aspect to all experiences of the world. This aspect is implicit in their existence as experiences.
However, it doesn't seem like everything that is experienced is necessarily all that closely related to the emergence of the mind doing the experiencing. Obviously, there is a relation, else how are the things experienced? But the relation between a person and a bag of drugs on a table versus a person and a bag of drugs they've just ingested is quite different because in the latter case the drugs are now much more deeply involved in the processes from which mind emerges. I suppose the thing that is missed in the prevailing view that you are commenting on is that even the drugs on the counter are part of the process that results in mind. Just because we can abstract the functions of a central nervous system from a specific environment does not mean it will function without an environment.
But this is where I might disagree: everything we experience is causally connected to mind, by definition. However, it seems possible to me that there might be distant processes that are far enough away from any minds that the goings on within them are quite irrelevant to any experiences. But I would still say its possible for these processes to exist. Now these processes are, of course, part of the larger, universal process that minds do experience, so their "separation" from processes that involve mind is an abstraction, subjective. But because this separation can be tied to causality, it isn't arbitrary, and seems as "real" a separation as any of our "natural kinds." It's in this sense that I would say "mind independent things" can be said to exist, although this independence isn't absolute.
I'm not sure of this. It seems we can observe our own mental processes, making ourselves, or parts of ourselves, an "object of analysis." But mental life itself is a process, so I like to think of it more as sub processes looping around on a larger stream of process, sort of a fractal recurrance of the way in which mind itself is a process looping around in the wider universal process. And group minds might be thought of as another such "looping."
Right. Moreover, people often fail to realize how our discrete characterization of things into "objects" is itself the result of the mind. Empirically, the universe looks like a single process. There are no truly isolated systems. The "objects" we understand well appear to actually just be long-term stabilities in process.
To use your train example, the passengers absolutely would observe the wheels disappearing if they did disappear when everyone stops looking. They would feel their train derail and go skidding across the ground, which presumably people can see out the windows. The universe is interconnected. We don't have to directly observe things to have them be relevant to our observations. I have never directly observed two atoms fusing, but I see starlight almost every night, I've read plenty of books mentioning astrology, the history of the world I live in is shaped by people with political power making momentous decisions based on the movement of stars, etc. Thus, fusion, even that occurring many light years away, hundreds of millennia ago, is still something I observe the effects of. To paraphrase Bonaventure, 'an effect is a sign of its cause." Distant instances of fusion explicitly effect our experiences every time we even remember seeing stars. If you recognize how intricately connected cause and the process of local becoming is, it becomes silly to talk of things we know to exist "not being observed and so disappearing."
This is also a good example . We don't need to be able to observe photons in fiber optic cables to "observe" them. We would observe them doing their work or not doing it when we go to refresh our browser and it either loads or gives us an error.
I also don't know if I would agree with the "idealism" route though. Lately, I've been trying to figure out if there is even a distinction between "physicalism" and "idealism" once one steps outside of the box of substance metaphysics. If we accept that there is only "one sort of stuff," then process does all of the explanatory lifting, substance nothing, since it is uniform. Things being "physical" or "mental" substance becomes irrelevant. Nor does it seem like creating a distinction between "physical" and "mental" processes will add any sort of extra explanation if the two types flow into one another.
This does not mean the battle of the big 'isms is a "pseudo problem." But there is a posterior problem of determining if stability or change is fundamental. If change/process is fundamental, which I think appears more likely, then these old distinctions lose the purpose they were created for. If the universe is truly one unified process, and the universe clearly has minds, then it is trivial that there are no absolutely mind independent entities just as there are no truly isolated systems. "Mind creating nature" versus "nature creating mind" becomes simply an error of projecting artificial distinctions onto a unified causal process (although this doesn't negate the relevance of many philosophically interesting issues related cognitive science).
There is still the hypothetical question of: "Could a different universal process have come into being, such that it produced no minds," but this seems to be a different question. This isn't physicalism versus idealism, but rather the "problem of first cause," which remains for either ism.
:up:
Great article. Well done sir.
Two things.
Is this not assuming the subject/object dichotomy? I have a feeling you’re quite beyond that, but this paragraph left me unsure.
Secondly, a lot of this sounds like Kant, who you reference and credit as developing this “central insight.” Can you flush out a little more how what you’re saying differs from him?
Yes, that makes sense to me.
I'd say there are as many conceptions of "the world" as there are people. The basic idea "the world" is culturally learned, it is now a convention, and who knows who it was that first articulated it?
Sounds like you are probably talking about almost all of the universe, at least with reference to human experience.
Have you ever looked into Mach's The Analysis of Sensations ?
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/mach.htm
Did you read The Different Drum?
I think this gels with what you are saying.
[quote=Peirce]
Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic views, but the progress of investigation carries them by a force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion. This activity of thought by which we are carried, not where we wish, but to a fore-ordained goal, is like the operation of destiny. No modification of the point of view taken, no selection of other facts for study, no natural bent of mind even, can enable a man to escape the predestinate opinion. This great hope is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality.
But it may be said that this view is directly opposed to the abstract definition which we have given of reality, inasmuch as it makes the characters of the real depend on what is ultimately thought about them. But the answer to this is that, on the one hand, reality is independent, not necessarily of thought in general, but only of what you or I or any finite number of men may think about it; and that, on the other hand, though the object of the final opinion depends on what that opinion is, yet what that opinion is does not depend on what you or I or any man thinks. Our perversity and that of others may indefinitely postpone the settlement of opinion; it might even conceivably cause an arbitrary proposition to be universally accepted as long as the human race should last. Yet even that would not change the nature of the belief, which alone could be the result of investigation carried sufficiently far; and if, after the extinction of our race, another should arise with faculties and disposition for investigation, that true opinion must be the one which they would ultimately come to.
[/quote]
The truth (or rather its best surrogate) is belief which is objective and bias-transcending as possible. The world exists meaningly [only ] 'for' an articulate (and therefore social) creature. C. S. Peirce calls it the 'settlement of opinion,' which I think of in terms of the evolution of perspective. Wittgenstein wants to [help us] 'see the world aright' (properly, correctly.)
The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality.
The real is the world as [linguistically] grasped by the ideal point-of-view, which is also a point-at-infinity, a goal on the horizon. So the 'mental' (meaning, culture, science, rationality, normativity, spirit) is indeed fundamental and irreducible here.
First, thanks for the positive feedback. :pray: You've covered a lot in your comments, I will do my best to respond.
I take the term 'objective' at face value, that is, 'inherent in the object'. Seems to me that estimation of objectivity as the main criterion for truth parallels the emergence of science, which really is kind of obvious. Remember Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos is all there is'? By that he means, I think, the Cosmos qua object of science. So the overestimation of objectivity in questions of philosophy amounts to a bias of sorts (per Kierkegaard 'Concluding Non-scientific Postscript'.) At any rate, as far as today's popular wisdom is concerned, as the domain of the transcendent is generally discounted, objectivity is presumptively the only remaining criteria. I don't hold to relativism, I think objectivity is extremely important in many domains but that there are vital questions the answer to which may not necessarily be sought in solely objective terms. So anything to be considered real has to be 'out there somewhere', existing in time and space. (This shows up in debates of platonic realism.) The ways-of-thought that accomodate the transcendent realm have by and large been abandoned in secular philosophy.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Well, true enough, but let's not forget Samuel Johnson's 'argument from the stone' - when he kicked a stone to purportedly demonstrate the falsehood of Berkeley's arguments for immaterialism. Even though it has been pointed out ad nauseum that Berkeley doesn't deny the apparent reality of stones, but only their existence independently of the perception of them, the 'argument from the stone', or similar are frequently used against idealism. I know there are many here who can't see how idealism doesn't imply things going in and out of existence depending on whether they're perceived or not, which is why I made a point of mentioning it.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm inclined to say that the mind is never an object, although that usually provokes a lot of criticism. I've long been persuaded by a specific idea from Indian philosophy, namely, that the 'eye cannot see itself, the hand cannot grasp itself. The 'inextricably mental' aspect is simply 'the act of seeing'. Perhaps I might quote a translation of the passage in question. This is from a dialogue in the Upani?ads where a sage answers questions about the nature of ?tman (the Self).
Quoting Brihadaranyaka Upani?ad
I'm not advocating 'belief in ?tman' but as I say in the OP, it's a matter of perspective - the mind is never something we can get outside of or apart from. But I understand that this is difficult perspectival shift to make. It's something very like a gestalt shift. It might have been owed in part to my long-standing practise of zazen, Buddhist meditation, by which means insight arises into the world-making activities of the mind. This point is also central to the 'argument from the blind spot of science' that I often mention - no coincidence that Adam Frank, one of the authors, is a long time Zen practitioner.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But notice that as soon as you invoke them or gesture towards them, then already 'mind' is involved. All such conjectures are variations on the sound of the unseen falling tree.
Quoting Mikie
First, thank you for the positive feedback.
The subject-object relationship is a fact of life, even in simple life-forms. Individualism tends towards a kind of atomised individuality, we're all separated selves and everything is interpreted through the subject-object dichotomy. What I'm proposing is aimed at transcending that divided way of being by getting insight into it and the role of the mind in engendering it.
As for Kant, I always feel as though my understanding of him is incomplete - there's so much more to know about him. I first encountered Kant through a mid-20th century book The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, T R V Murti, which has extensive comparisions between Buddhist philosophy (specifically Madhyamaka or 'middle-way) and Kant, Hegel, Hume, Bradley and others. According to Murti, the parallels between Kant and Buddhist philosophy are especially striking. It was one of those books which was formative for me, because it enabled me to understand Kant on a kind of experiential level at the same time I had a conversion experience to Buddhism.
Quoting wonderer1
No, that one passed me by. I did read part of his follow-up, People of the Lie, but I didn't like it nearly as much as the first.
Thanks for those passages, as you say, these questions have occupied many a philosopher. I do see some parallels there.
Simply that there is a prevalent view that physics is all there is, and that this is mistaken. When something is called "subjective" or "a social construct", it is usually dismissive to some extent, and sometimes completely. Organisms respond, rather than merely react to the environment. For example, yeast cells need water, sugar, oxygen and various salts to reproduce but in the absence of oxygen they adapt by turning the sugar into alcohol instead of CO2, and in the absence of water they go into a sort of hibernation.
There is a selective response to the environment even at the simplest level, that becomes more complex in plants that respond to seasons and climate. It is impossible to understand what is happening without recourse to the fact that the cell treats itself as a separate whole in its responses. It is already the subject of its actions. Note that nothing has been said yet about awareness or experience; theses are other levels of complexity that can only be built upon an organisms pre-existing and more fundamental subjectivity. We can say, fairly uncontroversially, that yeast needs sugar, where we cannot say that granite needs anything at all, and that which has needs of its own is a subject, and its needs are subjective. The philosopher's need to understand is built upon this, and so the notion of the objective world can only be a lifeless fragment.
Very well said. That's the sense in which otherness is fundamental to any kind of life-form. Because it essentially recognises in some basic way the distinction of self from other. 'Alterity is the basic condition of existence'.
I like to read this in terms of the famous ontological difference, in terms of being itself not being an entity ---though of course the concept of being itself is indeed an entity.
Central to Heidegger's philosophy is the difference between being as such and specific entities.[48][49] He calls this the "ontological difference", and accuses the Western tradition in philosophy of being forgetful of this distinction, which has led to misunderstanding "being as such" as a distinct entity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heideggerian_terminology
I mention & quote Wittgenstein again (emphasis mine), because his presentation is so concentrated.
https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php?title=Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(tree-like_view)
Note the connection of language and solipsism. My belief is the structure of the world itself, but from my perspective. I am this world-from-a-perspective. My beliefs about the world are not 'inside' me. They are simply [ the 'conceptual aspect' of] the world itself --- as it is given to a 'me' that vanishes or melts into this perspectively given world, as its form.
I understand that the lived body looks to be a sine qua non of experience of the world, so it's tempting to make mind fundamental, but I think 'being' is the deepest term, and that the deepest term ought to be radically 'empty' or 'neutral' and before all division.
I cannot follow your use of "objective" here. You define it as "inherent in the object". But according to the article of the op, the human mind has no access to what is "inherent in the object". As per Kant, the mind only has access to how the object appears to it, through the medium of sensation and intuition. But then you go on to discuss the objectivity of science, as if "the objectivity of science" is a valid concept by that definition, which it is not. Science cannot provide for us "objectivity" by that definition, what is inherent within the object, due to the problem elucidated by Kant.
So you have demonstrated an inconsistent use of "objective" which needs to be sorted out. Either we adhere to your definition, and recognize that it is beyond the capacity of science to actually be "objective", and say that this is just an ideal which science strives for (an "objective" used as 'goal'), like a guiding light which will never actually be reached, or we must look to a different, a compromised definition of "objective".
The latter appear to be what most participants in this thread opt for. They would prefer to define "objective" as "consistent with convention". But this definition is extremely problematic. First, and principally, it removes the necessity of "the object" from "objectivity", by basing "objectivity" in a sort of inter-subjective agreement. This means that "objective" is defined by what is agreeable rather than by "inherent within the object". This effectively circumvents the necessity of correspondence with observations, "truth" in that sense, as an essential feature of objectivity, by replacing "within the object" with what is agreeable. That actually allows for other, chiefly pragmatic, principles to take priority over "truth" as the defining feature of "objective". And when pragmaticism takes hold of "objective", the definition is more closely aligned with "the goal" than with "inheres within the object".
A shallow objection to this involves handing the seer a mirror, but I think that something like being is intended, and that seeing is a metaphor for being. Presumably the dead don't see (have no world), so it's not absurd to reach for eyes and ears as a metaphor. Yet we obviously we see the eyes of others seeing, and our own in the mirror, so the intention must be metaphorical.
[quote=Wittgenstein]
It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.
...
The experience that we need in order to understand logic is not that something or other is the state of things, but that something is: that, however, is not experience.
To say 'I wonder at such and such being the case' has only sense if I can imagine it not to be the case. In this sense one can wonder at the existence of, say, a house when one sees it and has not visited it for a long time and has imagined that it had been pulled down in the meantime. But it is nonsense to say that I wonder at the existence of the world, because I cannot imagine it not existing. I could of course wonder at the world round me being as it is. If for instance I had this experience while looking into the blue sky, I could wonder at the sky being blue as opposed to the case when it's clouded. But that's not what I mean. I am wondering at the sky being whatever it is. One might be tempted to say that what I am wondering at is a tautology, namely at the sky being blue or not blue. But then it's just nonsense to say that one is wondering at a tautology.
[/quote]
…..which, of course, presupposes knowing what they are, by the subject, or self, effected by them.
Anyway, just a thought, probably best left aside out of respect for the OP.
I believe this is a very important point which needs much more respect than it is commonly given. When there is a multitude of possibilities present, what some call "potential", and something "selects" from that multitude of possibilities, or simple potential, then we need to account for the reality of this selection process. The type of words we currently employ to refer to such selections are consistent with the concept of free will, words like "choice", and "judgement".
So this is a good example of that boundary some refer to, as the area of that which we cannot speak of, or where words fail us. If we talk about simple organisms, like the single celled amoeba making judgements, we get ridiculed. This in clearly nonconventional, simple organism do not make "judgements", by conventional use of the term. But if this is not form of "judgement", then on what principles are we going to attempt to understand this "selective response"?
Sure, but they might be very different from the abstract idea of "very causally disconnected stuff in deep space," that I have. Since everything is ultimately connected, the separation is one of degree, but it's still useful to distinguish between the stars whose light we see and processes that are much more proximate to the emergence of mind, which seems to have a "nexus" of sorts in bodies.
I agree with this to a certain degree. We're blind to much of our cognitive processes, and far more blind than we tend to think. But I don't know if it makes sense to abstract "that which experiences," from experience in this way, and further to claim that this experiencing entity is a unity, rather than a collection of composite entities. It seems more to me like the unity of "that which experiences," is an illusion created by the same blindness that makes it impossible for mind to ever become fully object to itself.
That said, I think ?tman/Prakriti is a better division than Western "objective/subjective" in general.
Although it comes from a more eliminativist bent, I always found the philosopher/novelist R. Scott Bakker's "Blind Brain Theory," and "Heuristic Neglect Theory," pretty good on this sort of thing. https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/essay-archive/the-last-magic-show-a-blind-brain-theory-of-the-appearance-of-consciousness/
Plus, it seems necessary that this blindness must exist. If we had a meta eye that somehow recorded and represented to us everything that goes on in generating our experience of sight then we would still be blind to the activities of the 'meta eye,' and so not understand everything under-girding our experiences. We would need a 'meta meta eye,' for full cognizance of the meta eye, and then a meta meta meta eye, and so on. I think this inability for any one entity to fully fathom the ways in which it is cause while also being a source of effect is bound inextricably to basic elements of reality, the way being has a semiotic element, such that effects are signs of causes and only exist as such signs when they interact with a third system (Rovelli's Helgoland discusses this).
So my disagreement comes more from the idea of mind as being necessarily unified. Mind seems to be able to become, to some degree, object to itself only because the mind isn't an indivisible whole. It emerges from many overlapping levels of communication such that large, "conscious systems," (e.g. whole hemispheres of the brain) are to some degree "other" to each other. But this is a relation that seems to go all the way down to the most fundamental level. "That which experiences," seeming unified seems to be more an issue of how, if one looks into a mirror, one can see what is behind them, but not that which lies behind the mirror.
While it's true that we "can't get around the mind," it seems equally true that we both "can't get to (most of) the mind," and that we "can't get around the world," although we can abstract and retreat from it. It's in this that I worry about straight forward relations, such as "the mind creates the world." This is true, but the world appears to create mind as well," and the separation of the two seems to be, causally at least, more one of degree rather than kind.
Something I only discovered in the writing is that subjectivity is necessarily prior to awareness rather than the result thereof. It is of course a judgement by the organism in relation to itself as to whether a substance in the environment is beneficial or harmful to ingest. I don't know if others have looked at this, but it does seem to turn some thinking about awareness and consciousness rather on its head.
I take consciousness to be the awareness of awareness, and perhaps awareness is the judgement of judgement, and judgement is the first responsive action, and the first judgement is the distinguishing of the organism from the environment by the organism itself. (If anyone has been following my thread on the Laws of Form, they will probably notice its influence.)
Indeed. I think it might be a mistake to think perspective emerges at life in the first place. The idea of a totally distinct "semiotic cut," occurring at the creation of life seems problematic for a number of reasons, not least of which is that the definition of life is incredibly fuzzy. This was the weakest part of Deacon's "Incomplete Nature," for me. The dividing line between autocatalysis and the emergence of autogens seems very hazy. It's not the type of progression that seems to lend itself to the distinct emergence of some totally new thing.
Further, perspective matters in very basic interactions. Scott Mueller uses the example of simply enzymes in his "Asymmetry the Foundation of Information." The enzyme will do its thing, interacting with a chemical the same way, regardless of whether the reagent in question contains isotopes for some of its particular atoms. The process is blind to the difference between isotopes. Such differences are, for this interpretant, a "difference that doesn't make a difference."
Mueller further uses the example of a detective trying to figure out if two diamonds have been switched. The diamonds are identical in every way except for one having a higher share of isotopes. For the detective, using all the regular tools of the jewel trade, the two diamonds are completely indiscernible.
Thus, perspective matters even in the most basic interactions. Entropy is another good example. Some differences make a difference in some contexts but not others. Information as difference is obviously context dependent, as when words are written in white font on an identical white background and fail to convey information.
Carlo Rovelli plays with a similar ideas with his relational quantum mechanics, although I think his model runs into problems if we take objects as fundamental rather than process. If the universe is a collection of substances, then we have a hard time explaining why some properties of objects should "snap into place" during some interactions but not others. This is similar to the problems some people have with idealism. "If things only exist as connected to mind, how do we explain properties coming into and going out of being." I don't know if this is a problem for process. It'd be like asking for (4 * 2) * 6^2, "where does the four go once we've moved on to doing 8 * 36?"
How intentionality and mental life emerges is a great mystery. But how perspective emerges seems less so. It's seems like it might be more something that is so fundamental that it is easy to miss, the way a fish doesn't notice the water in the ocean. IMO, it's been a mistake for people to conflate the "aboutness," of first person experience with the "aboutness," of how a computer interprets code instructions, or how a human organization (which presumably doesn't have its own qualia) interprets signals (e.g. international relations, how does "Iran" view the transit of US warships off its shores, etc.)
The last example is probably the best here. We don't think corporations and states have their own mental life, but they do seem able to posses knowledge and priorities that differ from the sum of their members' knowledge and desires (e.g. when the US security apparatus "didn't know what it knew" re: 9/11, but later uncovered this through intentional reflection). And the existence of such knowledge/priorities entails perspective and a form of aboutness, even though the first person "aboutness" appears to be absent.
Absolutely. At one point, all of the universe was contained in one point, so it's unclear if there can be anything that fails to causally affect our experiences. That said, processes seem like they should be able to be more or less central to the emergence of mind, so the separation is one of degree.
Oh yeah, I like a great deal of what I heard from Mach. That said, I dislike the fact that he was among the progenitors of the big trend in philosophy to claim that "anyone who disagrees with me is saying things that are meaningless, and thus no response is possible." Claims of perfectly intelligible sentences being "meaningless" is a pet peeve of mine lol.
Yeah, it's a real problem. If I tried to trace its etiology, it seems to be tied to the drive to deflate truth and turn logic into a sterile study of "closed systems," that resulted from findings in the early 20th century. Faced with having to give up certainty, bivalence, or both, or having to make logic into an almost magical language cut of from the world that floats outside, "out there," we have tended to go with the latter. IMO, this is a mistake. And its funny that this choice was made despite the triumphs of naturalism and scientism, since it directly contravenes core pillars of the former.
---
On this wider topic, I'll have to return to finish Pinkhard's "Hegel's Naturalism," at some point. I recall thinking it showed some pretty good solutions to this whole bundle of problems.
Well I agree with that, and already said so.
Quoting unenlightened
And when perspective is extended as metaphor to include psychological dispositions and expertise and limitations of the senses, and social limits, these can each be located case by case.
But you seem to conflate subjectivity with mental life as perspective. What I am saying is that subjectivity is prior to mental life of even the most primitive sort. I am I suppose heading towards that problematic definition of life — as being its own subject - that which is self-defining. The yeast cell responds differentially to the environment in a way that constitutes and gives significance to its own boundary for its own continuation. Sugar in; carbon dioxide out.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is an interesting one. Institutions are made of living beings, but might have archival memories. But it is a repetition at the human level of colonial organisms like siphonophorae and complex insect colonies such as ants and bees. In such cases there are aspects behaviour that are individual, and aspects that are functions of the larger 'social organism'.
Are the contents of experience just what we experience? How can we describe an experience to someone who hasn't had it? Generally, when we try, when we try to explain sight for instance, we just end up explaining the things we see, colors etc., not the experience of seeing itself.
So is experience just a transparent window into the world? But if everything else interacts with the world the way it does because of its properties, then it seems a little strange that experience would lack any properties and be so transparent. Yet if experience does have properties, then it seems we should be able to divide it up, at least through abstraction, and talk about how the parts relate to the world.
And this gets to the issue of "indirect realism," as well. I personally am no big fan of indirect realism because it seems to suppose some sort of humonculous that "sees" the representations. But if its representation all the way down, then indirect realism turns out to be just the same sort of interaction as realism.
Transparency in phenomenology, while at first glance closer to direct realism, seems to me to have some similarities with indirect realism in that it supposed a unified whole, perhaps without properties, to which experience is "presented." And this sort of thinking seems to make it easy to fall into circles asking about what things are maps and what things are territories.
:up:
I like the concepts of sapience and sentience. I'd say there's a un-self-thematizing consciousness in sentience, and that something fancier appears with sapience. Judgement is linguistic, and, within a community, one is held accountable for one's judgements. Definitely getting into Brandom / Sellars territory here.
I think so lately, and for me it feels like a great clarification. Lots of ways to say it, but one way is : consciousness is precisely the being of the world from or for a perspective. This chucks indirect realism out the window. My toothaches and daydreams are in your world, but language always intends our world. My 'private' thoughts are just locked away in a dark closet which is nevertheless very much within the inferential space of the community.
Nice essay and presentation.
I think though that it is somewhat burdened with concepts, -isms and philosophical views. E.g. if one accepts idealism and physicalism (or materialism) as the two main philosophical and opposing views of the world, even if one states that they are not necessary in conflict, one is restricted in either of these systems or frameworks of thought and cannot have an independent view, which may touch one or the other system but is not confined in or even dependent on either.
Let's take your question How Does Mind ‘Create Reality’?
You take it as granted that reality is created by the mind. Is this maintained by idealism, e.g. Plato's idealism or is it your own view? In the first case you are confined in that view system or framework. In the second case your thought is free from such a restriction.
Now, what about the widely accepted philosophical view that reality is created by consciousness? (BTW, I'm surprised that consciousness is totally absent in your description of the topic.) It seems that you ignore it or at least not accept it yourself. Yet, it is a view that can only belong to idealism, since in physicalism it is believed that the nature of consciousness is physical and more specifically it is created by the brain.
So, based also on what follows, it is clear that you are presenting your own view about the creation of reality, although you seem to favor idealism.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is clearly a physicalist/materialist view. It belongs to Science and its materialist view of the world.
But in idealism it is maintained that reality is created by the mind or consciousness.
So, there's already a conflict between your pro idealism and what you are describing.
There wouldn't be any if you were not talking about idealism and physicalism. It could stand perfectly alone, as an independent, personal view, independent of the two philosophical systems.
I have too my personal view on how reality is created, which is independent of any philosophical system. If it were, it wouldn't be my own reality! :smile:
I hope I made my point clear.
There are other things in your description that I would like to comment on, but this is already a lot. :smile:
Quoting Wayfarer
Okay, thanks for that explanation! I missed a few days and this thread seems to have gotten away from me, so maybe what I am saying has already been covered. In any case...
So for Nagel the 17th century brought the idea,
Yet your 'perspectivalism' seems to be a quasi-rejection of mind-independent objects, and that strikes me as an overcorrection, like falling off the other side of the horse instead of regaining balance. It's a bit like moving from the extreme of nominalism to the extreme of Platonic idealism. Of course rejecting mind-independent objects will avoid Nagel's conclusion, but it will do more than that!
It seems to me that the 17th century spatio-temporal error is a variety of scientism, and in particular a reduction of external reality to that which is measurable (and able to be manipulated). Notably, though, it is not an error to accept the existence of mind-independent objects. That was being done long before the 17th century. So I'm wondering if we need a smaller scalpel to excise a smaller portion of the 17th century's presuppositions.
It’s a conceptualization. I don’t think of myself as a subject or the world as an object when a I’m cooking dinner. I don’t see how any microorganisms are seeing the world that way either.
But I think I’m digressing from your main point, so I’ll leave it at that.
I don't say 'the mind has no access to what is inherent in the object'. Plainly if my shower is too hot, I won't get in it, if my meal is cold, I won't eat it. They are objective judgements. As I say at the outset, I'm not disputing scientific judgements, but calling into question what they're taken to imply. It is especially pernicious when humans and other sentient beings are treated as objects, as if the objective analyses provided by evolutionary biology and the other sciences have the final say on human nature. Beings are subjects of experience, and as such their true nature is beyond the purview of the objective sciences.
Quoting plaque flag
Quite! Some aspects of Heidegger have seeped through to me, although I've never bitten the bullet of doing the readings. I have been accused in the past of engaging in ‘onto-theology’. One thing I did read about Heidegger is the anecdote of a colleague of his finding him reading D T Suzuki, and admitting, ‘If I understand this man correctly, it is just what I’ve been trying to say’ or something along those lines. Not that he would ever endorse the adoption of Buddhism as a matter of practice.
Quoting Leontiskos
Oh, I don’t know. If you read on to the section about Pinter’s book Mind and the Cosmic Order, he says there are quite valid scientific grounds for his proposals, which I hope my arguments conform with.
I’m not saying that everything is a matter of perspective, but that no judgement about what exists can be made outside a perspective. If you try and imagine what exists outside perspective, then you’re already positing an intentional object.
Quoting Mikie
There’s no need to, but I think the distinction between self and other is nevertheless basic to consciousness, isn’t it?
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Thanks for your feedback!
That’s because for my purposes I’m treating ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’ as synonyms. They’re not always synonyms, for instance in some medical or psychological contexts, but for my purposes. And yes, I have framed the question in terms of idealism and materialism, as I see that as the underlying dynamic that is playing out in the debates. There are many varieties of each of course.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Not at all! I think many elements within science itself are actually starting to diverge from a materialist view of the world. I actually address that objection in the extended version of the essay. Both neuroscience and physics have tended to call into question the modern understanding of realism.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
We need to understand the ‘mind-making’ process on a practical level - actually grasp how the mind is doing that. Otherwise, you do really have ‘the hand trying to grasp itself’!
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
‘The content of consciousness is consciousness’ ~ J Krishnamurti.
Right, but it seems that you would then go on to draw a further conclusion, "...and therefore there are no mind-independent objects," and that is where things get tricky.
For example, I agree with Locke that shape is a "primary quality," and disagree with Pinter. Yet Locke and Pinter are in agreement that color is a "secondary quality." The first point is that there really is a distinction to be had between primary and secondary qualities.
The second point, regarding shape, is that if a boulder rolls over a small crack it will continue rolling, but if it rolls into a "large crack" (a canyon) then it will fall, decreasing in altitude. This will occur whether or not a mind witnesses it, and this is because shape is a "primary quality." A boulder and a crack need not be perceived by a mind to possess shape.
At the tail-end of this is the idea that intentional objects can represent real properties, and this is called Realism. It's also the thing that scientists take for granted. So if one extreme says that only the spatio-temporal exists, and another extreme says that there are no mind-independent objects (or that the mind is not capable of knowing mind-independent realities), then I want to navigate the middle path and avoid both extremes.
I feel as though your response is made on the basis of a step after the suppositions that inform mine. You’re saying that given that objects exist - boulders, canyons, and so on - then we can say….
Whereas the thrust of the argument I’m offering is solely to call attention to the role that the mind plays in any and all judgements about supposedly external objects. I’m not saying that, outside our perception, things don’t exist but that any judgement of existence or non-existence is just that - a judgement.
As for realism, the point about modern realism is that assumes the reality of mind-independent empirical objects.That’s where the problem lies, as empirical objects are by their nature necessarily contingent. Scholastic realism on the other hand presumes the mind-independent reality of the Forms - these are independent of particular minds, but can only be grasped by a mind. That is where I’m coming to in my analysis.
Whatever is out there, strictly speaking, cannot be called "objects" - there no good neutral word for it that comes to mind, unfortunately.
So, let's take the neutral "thing" or "stuff", whatever it out-there is, in part, responsible for how we take these objects to be, they stimulate us into reacting as-if, external objects existed.
But in principle, they are not necessary. But in practice they are.
I think you are committed to the idea, or something like it. For example, "By investing the objective domain with a mind-independent status, as if it exists independently of any mind, we absolutize it. We designate it as truly existent, irrespective of and outside any knowledge of it." I am not using the word 'object' in any specialized sense. You could replace it with 'thing' if you like.
Quoting Wayfarer
I am claiming, "This will occur whether or not a mind witnesses it, [and therefore shape is mind-independent]."
Quoting Wayfarer
But is my claim about the boulder meaningless and unintelligible outside of any perspective? Does not the idea that a boulder has a shape transcend perspective?
And how does the existence of the universe prior to the evolution of life rely on an implicit perspective? If the universe's existence at that time relied on a perspective, then whose perspective was it relying upon? I would say that the proposition, "The universe exists," relies on a mind, but the existence of the universe does not rely on a mind.* Thus the universe truly exists in a mind-independent way, even though the true proposition, "The universe exists," would not exist without minds. The common meaning of 'existence' does not connote minds or perception.
This is why that additional conclusion, "...and therefore there are no mind-independent objects," is tricky. It is equivocal, having various different meanings.
Opposing various forms of idealism, I would claim that reality exists and minds are able to know it. This is not to say that all knowledge is objective, but lots of it is.
* Presupposing naturalism for the moment.
It’s the natural thing to do!
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes and no respectively. Is ‘shape’ meaningful outside any reference to visual perception? We see shapes because it is essential to navigating the environment - Pinter shows this is true even for insects.
So again, here's the argument in question:
Quoting Leontiskos
So you are saying that boulders will only treat cracks differently than canyons when a mind is involved?
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, because boulders fall into canyons and do not fall into cracks on account of their shape. Thus shape is meaningful, irrespective of visual perception.
It’s safe to assume not, but then it is an empirical matter isn’t it? But then I am at pains to say that I have no need to call empirical facts into question.
Well, it's not a directly empirical matter, because it could never be directly empirically studied. But if we can have knowledge about the mind-independent world, then we can have knowledge about this. As you say, "It's safe to assume not."
It's often helpful to place the two things side by side and assess our certainty:
I'd say we have a great deal more certainty of (1) than (2), and you seem to agree.
Quoting Wayfarer
We are conceiving of a crack as something much smaller than a boulder and a canyon as something much larger than a boulder. I don't think the definitions are problematic.
As I said in the OP ‘there is no need for me to deny that the Universe (or: any object) is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind. But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect…’
…which is introduced as soon as you make any hypothetical object the subject of a proposition.
Sure, 100%. I’m not claiming that ‘the world is only in your mind’. If you look at the cognitive scientists who appear in the BigThink video I posted ‘Is Reality Real?’ all of them start by saying, of course there is a world out there. It’s just that we don’t see it as it truly is (but, the Kantian philosopher would say, only as it appears to us.)
Being able to discern delusions and false hopes is not a tall order, is it? It’s obvious that a lot of people don’t do that, or aren’t capable of it. But I associate the saying ‘know thyself’ with Socrates (although of course the Delphic maxim preceded him), and his quest for understanding piety, justice, goodness, and so on, seems to me to clearly require a deep kind of self-awareness, doesn’t it? (A digression perhaps but a worthy one.)
Hi, Leontiskos ! Though I'd jump in here.
The boulder's shape is independent, in some sense, from this or that individual human perspective. So it transcends the limitations of my eyesight or yours. But it seems to me that what we could even mean by 'shape' depends on an experience that has always been embodied and perspectival.
Has anyone ever experienced a spatial object a-perspectively ?
I was going to also add, that measurements of space and distance are also implicitly perspectival. You could, theoretically, conceive of the distance between two points from a cosmic perspective, against which it is infinitesimally small, and a subatomic perspective, against which it is infinitesimally large. As it happens, all of the units of measurement we utilise, such as years or hours, for time, and meters or parsecs, for space, ultimately derive from the human scale - a year being, for instance, the time taken for the earth to orbit the sun, and so on. Given those parameters, of course it is true that measures hold good independently of any mind, but there was a mind involved in making the measurement at the outset.
I think J. S. Mill has a nice take. Objects are only independent in the sense that they are 'permanent possibilities of sensation.' So the world is not a video game where the couch disappears when we leave the room. Instead we understand couches in the first place in terms of how humans tend to experience them. I can wander into the living room and plop down with a book. And the couch doesn't vanish when I die (I inherited it, after all.)
Speaking as someone who embraces perspectivism and correlationism, I'd would not call the world 'mind-created' or basically mental. But I would insist that the lifeworld is a kind of unbreakable unity, and that embodied perspectival creatures like us don't have a strong grip on the idea of independent objects -- except for one that boils down to 'permanent possibilities of sensation.'
'To be is to be < potentially > perceivable. ' And this, in my view, is more of a semantic claim.
I like to think of maps as little pieces of reality that have some of the same structure as bigger pieces of reality.
I think we can (and do, without always noticing it) put all entities in the same inferential nexus. So it's all real, but various things exist differently (prime numbers don't exist like petunias.)
[quote = B ]
It is indeed an opinion STRANGELY prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But...what are the fore-mentioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? and what do we PERCEIVE BESIDES OUR OWN IDEAS OR SENSATIONS? and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived?
[/quote]
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4723/pg4723-images.html
Berkeley should not, in my view, have said that we perceive our own own ideas and sensations. What he [ should have ] meant is that we understand such things as they tend to be perceived. And any 'idealist' must address the permanence of mountains, for instance, which outlast generations.
[quote = B ]
Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz., that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their BEING (ESSE) is to be perceived or known...
[/quote]
He goes on to drag in God, and he problematically takes spirits in the same naive way his opponents take independent objects. @Leontiskos mentions overcorrection. I think Berkeley overcorrects. The 'pure' subjectivity of the spirit is the 'same' error as the 'pure' aperspectival object on the other side.
[/quote]
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4723/pg4723-images.html
What is given is a daily embodied experience of the usual objects in the familiar lifeworld. Someone like Berkeley could have merely challenged the semantic emptiness of talk of the pure object.
[quote=link]
The philosophy of perception that elaborates the idea that, in the words of J. S. Mill, ‘objects are the permanent possibilities of sensation’. To inhabit a world of independent, external objects is, on this view, to be the subject of actual and possible orderly experiences. Espoused by Russell, the view issued in a programme of translating talk about physical objects and their locations into talk about possible experiences (see logical construction). The attempt is widely supposed to have failed, and the priority the approach gives to experience has been much criticized.
[/quote]
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100322668
As William James and Ernst Mach saw, such pure 'experience' is no longer experience consciousness or awareness at all but just the neutral being of a world given perspectively. This neutral stuff is of course organized into 'appearance' and 'reality' with respect to practical goals.
We find a version of this in Kant.
[quote=Kant]
That there may be inhabitants in the moon, although no one has ever observed them, must certainly be admitted; but this assertion means only, that we may in the possible progress of experience discover them at some future time. For that which stands in connection with a perception according to the laws of the progress of experience is real. They are therefore really existent, if they stand in empirical connection with my actual or real consciousness, although they are not in themselves real, that is, apart from the progress of experience.
[/quote]
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4280/pg4280-images.html#chap77
I know, some philosophers do that. But it is certainly wrong. These two things are ralated but they are of a different kind and nature, so it's a bad habit to equate them, even for just descrption purposes.
(I know that I'm quite strict with vocabulary but this is because I believe that esp. in philosophy we should use terms and concepts with caution, otherwise misunderstanding or lack of undestanding or even confusion can occur. But even if one needs to equate two terms, one should note that, as you did in your reply here.)
Quoting Wayfarer
I see that you refer to neuroscience. Indeed, from what I know, there are a few neurobiologists who admit e.g. that consciousness is not a product of the brain and accept the hard problem of conscioussnes. Thankgod. But the vast majority of scientists stick on the brain. This is their world. They can't work outside the material world.
So, my comment was based on seeing that you are using too the brain to describe the mind and reality.
Mind and brain are related but they are of a different kind and nature. Like consciousness and mind.
Their hierarchy and relation (connection) is:Consciousness <-> mind <-> brain. (I can describe how this works but not here.)
I can't see how you understand this as consistent with your definition of "objective" as "inherent in the object". Clearly any judgement similar to the ones mentioned, "hot" and "cold", are proper to the subject, and so these judgements are not "inherent in the object".
It seems like you are not distinguishing between the judgement itself, and what the judgement is about. Yes, the judgement is about an object, and it may be a judgement about what inheres within the object, but the judgement is not inherent in the object, and therefore cannot be "objective" by the definition you provided.
I believe that this is a very significant and important point to respect because it is the justification for, as the reason for, the idealist/phenomenologist assertion that even an "object" is a creation of the perceptual system of the living being. We sense the existence of "objects" surrounding us, as constitutive of our environment, but even this act of perception, by which things are perceived as objects, is a sort of judgement made by the sensing being, the subject. Therefore even the judgement of "object" which is an inherent part of the perceptual system, the very act of perceiving, which presents "objects" to the mind of the conscious subject, and which inclines us to take the existence of "objects" for granted, is itself a subjective judgement.
This is what Manuel points to:
Quoting Manuel
When we understand as fact, that apprehending the environment as consisting of distinct entities, unities, which we call "objects", is common to all human beings, and also most likely the case for many different types of animals, we need to respect that there must be a reason for this. So we might accept as reality, that there is something about the mind independent "stuff", which makes it appear to us, and influences us to accept as a fundamental ontological principle, that there is "objects" out there.
Humans are naturally endowed with a relational intellect, for which the capacity, as function, for discernment is integrated necessarily, but in doing so, in enacting, as operation, the functional capacity, re: being able to discern, there must already be that which serves as ideal against which the content under discernment is complementary. Herein, then, against being able to discern delusion there stands extant truth; against being able to discern false hope there stands practical reason**.
(**sidebar: practical reason justified under the assumption “false hope” is an illegitimate cognition, insofar as the attainment of its object is considered given but under false pretenses, which practical reason would expose. The common euphemistic proof being….you can’t get blood out of a turnip)
So it is that these ideals against which discernment directs itself, are purely subjective conditions, dependent only on the aesthetic judgement of he who holds them. Reduce it yet another step, and it happens that even if the subject in the act of discerning isn’t immediately aware of the ideal against which he is relating the particular occasion, there must be one, for otherwise he wouldn’t be in the relational situation in the first place, he being satisfied with whatever happens to have been the status quo. And here is the appropriateness of the Socratic, “know thyself”, and the systemic Enlightenment sapere aude, wherein being able to discern, and, having the capacity for discernment, while two very different functional parameters, insofar as the former presupposes the latter but is not necessarily a manifestation of it, in which it occurs that the subject actually does comprehend a delusion for what it is, and does recognize a hope as having an unattainable object.
So…..before the digression becomes uninteresting, or perhaps any more uninteresting, yes, being able to discern can be a tall order, iff the subject has no immediate awareness….no immediate knowledge a priori…..of the ideals against which his reason directs its functional capacity. On the other hand, Everdayman, who only under the most extreme occasions asks himself to consider any of this, has to think ever-more to determine the ideals against which he is relating his internal controversy, and is apt to just leave it at….as is wont to say…..damned if I know, but it sure don’t feel right.
Being able to discern shouldn’t be a tall order, because we come naturally equipped to deal with it. Speculative metaphysics describes why it nevertheless sometimes is, and, what to do about it using that equipment. But descriptions themselves don’t fix stuff, so now we have clinical psychology. (Sigh)
Yes, ontological principle which makes us postulate "external objects".
It becomes very murky very quickly.
But you seem to be holding to two conflicting principles. Either the mind can know mind-independent reality as it is in itself, or it cannot. If it cannot, then there is always a reason to deny the existence of external objects a la post-Kantian philosophy (thus modern philosophy is intrinsically bound up with solipsism). If it can, then reality does not have an inextricably mental aspect a la western science.
It seems to me that the scientists got tired of the post-Kantians and their solipsism (or quasi-solipsism). The philosophers were preoccupied with trying to figure out whether the external world exists, and the scientists decided to ignore them and build cars so that we could travel from city to city. I'm sympathetic to the scientists, and I'm not very impressed with post-Kantian philosophy. I'm not convinced that any philosophy that takes Hume or Kant's starting point has ever worked, or ever will work, even if that starting error is mitigated as far as possible.
Suppose there were an argument about a piece of glass. One person says that anything perceived through the glass has "an inextricably glassy aspect." Another person disagrees, holding that this piece of glass is perfectly translucent. As far as I can tell, that's analogous to the argument over the intellect between Realists and Anti-Realists. If the former person is right, then nothing viewed through the glass can be seen as it is in itself. If the latter person is right, then things viewed through glass need not have a glassy aspect.
(Note that the analogy limps: glass is material, and therefore inherently imperfect. Hence the classical realist's claim that the intellect is immaterial.)
Quoting Wayfarer
This is the same problem from a different angle. Units of measurement are arbitrary, but this does not prevent comparison of finite objects.
But this need not be inherently human-biased. The point about shape, with boulders and cracks, has to do with the relative size of mind-independent objects, and these relative sizes will hold good whether or not they are measured. It must be so if boulders treat cracks differently than canyons whether or not a mind is involved.
Hello, @plaque flag,
Quoting plaque flag
Yes, we learn about shape through experience. My earlier comment may be worth quoting, "Opposing various forms of idealism, I would claim that reality exists and minds are able to know it. This is not to say that all knowledge is objective, but lots of it is" ().
Quoting plaque flag
Okay. Can you give a quick overview of what you mean by perspectivism and correlationism? I have seen these words used in different ways. Generally speaking, I am inclined to lump you, Wayfarer, and Mill together. :razz: It seems like you are all saying that reality cannot be known as it is in itself. Or in Wayfarer's words, "Reality has an inextricably mental aspect."
- Yes, I think Berkeley misses the mark, although I am speaking from the perspective of secondary texts. Really, I think modern philosophy tends to be <shades of grey> with respect to this topic, with the possible exception of Husserl and certain figures in his school.
Here is a concise text from Aquinas that @Wayfarer may also want to read. It situates my view and gives an initial outline of the problem:
Quoting Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, Question 75, Article 2
(The point is not that the power of the intellect is entirely unrelated to the body, but rather that it has an operation which is apart from the body.)
Note that modern philosophers would presumably just disagree with Aquinas that "by means of the intellect man can have knowledge of all corporeal things," but if his point is granted then I believe his conclusion follows, and scientists are liable to grant his point (especially to the degree that they are ignorant of modern philosophy).
Another, related more to Hume but highlighting a relevant danger:
Quoting Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, Question 85, Article 2
A good introductory resource for classical realism is the first issue of Reality, especially the introduction and initial essays (link).
This quote nails it for me.
Correlationism consists in disqualifying the claim that it is possible to consider the realms of subjectivity and objectivity independently of one another. Not only does it become necessary to insist that we never grasp an object ‘in itself’, in isolation from its relation to the subject, but it also becomes necessary to maintain that we can never grasp a subject that would not always-already be related to an object.
To me it's important to lean toward neutrality rather than subjectivity. Consciousness is the [only] being of the world itself. The world is world-for, and the subject is world-from-a-point-of-view. Wittgenstein whittles it down nicely in the TLP. See <5.6>.
I am my world. (The microcosm.) The thinking, presenting subject; there is no such thing. If I wrote a book "The world as I found it", I should also have therein to report on my body and say which members obey my will and which do not, etc. This then would be a method of isolating the subject or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject: that is to say, of it alone in this book mention could not be made. The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world.
I would myself tweak that last line. The subject is the [from-a-perspective] being of the world. Ontological cubism.
In my view, this is not so much a positive theory as a challenging of the intelligibility of a certain kind of talk. Permanent possibilities of perception turn out, in my view, to be pretty much all most people can mean by some independent world. Or what else do/can they have in mind ? A round square ? A mystified X ? Kant writes about the possibility of beings on the moon, and he correctly interprets claims of their existence in terms of the possibility at least of experiencing them. In the same way, the mountains that might outlast our species are, seems to me, understood as the mountains-for-our-species, as what they are , in theory, 'not.'
I agree with Aquinas. I count myself a direct (perspectival, phenomenological) realist. We see things themselves, not our images of them. But, following Husserl, we can see them with more or less clarity. And we see them from a perspective. Language generally intends the social-common object. This alone is a strong argument for direct realism. The stuff we argue about it is in our world. Don't know if this'll interest you, but I argue for a kind of minimal foundationalism here. We share a world and a language and various norms for discussion and inquiry to even adopt the role of philosopher in the first place.
I also consider thought to be plenty real. I'd even say that possibility exists in a fairly strong sense. A certain kind of scientistic materialism basically filters out about 90% of that which is and calls a remainder Real. This is practically and sometimes maybe even ethically justified. (A pluralistic, free-ish culture has reason to put various entities safely 'all in one's mind' and leisure and personal space.)
The point to this analogy, better known as the tinted glass analogy, is that to settle this question it must be determined whether or not the glass adds a "glassy aspect" to the perception. If the glass is supposed to represent the human body, through which our perceptions of the world are made, then it is impossible to remove the glass to make a glass-free comparison. Therefore the only way to proceed is to produce a thorough understanding of the glass itself, to be able to determine whether or not it adds a "glassy aspect".
Because of this, the only way that we can achieve with certainty any understanding of the external world, is to first produce a thorough understanding of the perceiving body. That is to say that we cannot know with certainty, the nature of the supposed independent world without first knowing with certainty the nature of the perceiving body.
Quoting Leontiskos
I come to a slightly different conclusion. It has become evident to me that the human intellect cannot have knowledge of all corporeal things. That is where the problems of quantum physics have led us, there are corporeal things which we as human beings, will never be able to understand. The reason why the human intellect cannot have knowledge of all corporeal things is that as Aristotle indicates, the human intellect is dependent on a corporeal thing, the human body, and this in conjunction with the premise given by Aquinas, that to know all corporeal things requires that the intellect be free from corporeal influence, produces the conclusion that the human intellect cannot know all corporeal things.
The point now, is that the human intellect, as an intellect, is deficient in the sense that it can never know all corporeal things. It is deficient because it is dependent on a corporeal body. Aquinas also argues this point when he discusses man's ability to obtain the knowledge of God. The same problem arises in that a man's intellect cannot properly know God while the man's soul is united to a body.
One ought to consider the reason why one might be dismayed about the implications that humans might in fact be objects only, nothing besides, and that he cannot muster any other reason beyond superstition to value human beings qua human beings. Without some angel in the shell we are nothing but meaty robots, or an animal not much different than all others—just an object, like a stone.
There are a lot of difference between objects, and as likenesses go, "like a stone" leaves a bit out.
I think I understand what you're seeing as a conflict. You think that what I'm saying must necessarily entail that 'the unobserved object doesn't exist'. But what I wrote was 'to think about the existence of a particular thing in polar terms — that it either exists or does not exist — is a simplistic view of what existence entails. This is why the criticism of idealism that ‘particular things must go in and out of existence depending on whether they’re perceived’ is mistaken. It is based on a fallacious idea of what it means for something to exist. The idea that things ‘go out of existence’ when not perceived, is really their ‘imagined non-existence’ - your imagining that they don't exist. In reality, the supposed ‘unperceived object’ neither exists nor does not exist. Nothing whatever can be said about it.'
In the Medium version there is a supporting footnote:
‘By and large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, “non-existence” with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, “existence” with reference to the world does not occur to one.’ ~ The Buddha, Kacc?yanagotta Sutta.
Quoting Leontiskos
Hume and Kant are chalk and cheese.
I think that physics has validated Kant's attitude in many respects. Many of Bohr's aphorisms seem to support it: 'It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature.' Likewise from Heisenberg 'What we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.' Then you have Wheeler’s model of the participatory universe, suggesting that the universe is incomplete without the participation of observers—essentially, that our observations help to bring the universe into existence (see the quotation from cosmologist Andrei Linde in this thread.)
Quoting Leontiskos
As I've said, I don't take issue with the objective facts (and besides, where to draw the line? What is 'lots'?). The question is one of interpretation.
Quoting Leontiskos
All due respect, it is not analogous, but is a misreading. I do understand that Kant's 'ding an sich' has been ferociously criticized (including by Schopenhauer) but I've previously referred to my prefered reading:
[quote=Emrys Westacott, The Continuing Relevance of Immanuel Kant;https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/11/the-continuing-relevance-of-immanuel-kant.html]Kant's introduced the concept of the “thing in itself” to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of it and unstructured by our cognitive constitution. The concept was harshly criticized in his own time and has been lambasted by generations of critics since. A standard objection to the notion is that Kant has no business positing it given his insistence that we can only know what lies within the limits of possible experience. But a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the “thing in itself” as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. Through both of these functions it serves to keep us humble.[/quote]
Quoting Leontiskos
And as I say, all such statements still carry an implicit perspective. As soon as you posit such a hypothetical you have created as what phenomenology calls 'the intentional object'*. This exists as a possibility within your mind. Then empirical investigation may confirm or disconfirm that posit.
I'm very interested in pursuing the discussion about Aquinas, but it's a separate topic, and one that I'm preparing further material on. A preview on Medium, The Ligatures of Reason (defending Platonic realism).
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* The intentional object is not necessarily a real or actual object in the external world. Instead, it refers to the content or the "what" of a conscious act.
Which in the Christian world, would amount to the faculty of conscience, grounded in faith in the Divine Word, which provides the criteria against which to make such judgements. But, of course, Kant was preparing the ground for a post-Christian world and trying to sieve universal principles of morality out of the wreckage of the collapsed Medieval Synthesis. Anyway, as we both agree, a diversion to this particular topic, perhaps more suited to a thread on Ethics. Thank you as always for your insightful contributions.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is objective to all intents and purposes (i.e. empirically) but also ultimately requires that there is a subject who judges (transcendentally ideal).
:up: :up:
Yes, we are self-reflexive (i.e. strange looping phenomenal-self-modeling) objects in which this self-reflexivity is completely transparent making each of us the "subject" of a narrative delusion (i.e. ideality, or supernatura) that s/he is not an object, or is ontologically separate from objects (i.e. reality, or natura).
addendum to
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/842295
Thereby absolving us of all responsibility as moral agents.
Apparently.
Why do you say that? The idea of moral responsibility is inevitable for self-reflective social animals. To the degree that someone cannot be responsible to others, then to that degree he or she is not really fit for society.
In whose eyes?
Would it be possible to imagine something that you have never seen or experienced in your life before, or places that you have never visited in real life? If it is possible, how does the imagination suppose to work for such cases?
Imagination is an infinitely resourceful faculty. On the other hand, people do sometimes say they have encountered something, or something has happened to them, which was 'unimagineable' - 'I never imagined that would happen!'
Not "unimaginable", but unimagined; if they can say what happened to them, then it could not have been unimaginable.
Consider impenetrability, the proper essence of physicalism, it can neither be reduced to 1. the matter of experience (sensation) or 2. the concept of impenetrability in our minds, instead impenetrability is synthetic of both 1, and 2, that is, you need some entity which thinks abstractions for there to be a substance which unifies the plurality of sensations.
Touch a stone and you will know right there and then that the feeling that something is impenetrable in/of it can not be reduced to the plurality of the matter of the experience (sensation: touch), yet since all you have (in the totality of your being) is either a. experience or b. abstraction it can not precede the experience, EVEN if the concept itself of impenetrability is a priori.
If certain a priori concepts were allowed in addition to those abstracted from experience it would still need to be justified why impenetrability were one of these concepts and why it (in that constitution, as an a priori concept) applies synthetically to the world of sensation, since the neutral position is always that a given concept is acquired from repeated experience (whether direct or disjunctive) of the thing it depicts or describes. Though as I said in the latter half of the former paragraph, even if the concept applies synthetically to the experience and preceded the consciousness of the experience (a priori) it would still be no evidence for why the experience itself should apply to the stone in its independence.
Idealism is just a rejection of the independence of impenetrability, space, time and emergent phenomena, yet often proposed by people who thinks they have asserted anything what so ever of their own, by imagining that the "mind" could be a substance when the very essence which depicts it hinges on being dual to something different from itself, something different from mind.
:chin:
I suppose you're familiar with the 'argument from the stone', which is based on Samuel Johnson's response to one of Bishop Berkeley's lectures?
It is not "objective" when the intent and purpose is to maintain consistency with the definition you provided, "inheres within the object". What you are saying is that the judgement, "it is cold", or "it is hot", is objective, so that the objectivity is a property of the judgement, not a property of the object. Therefore this use of "objectivity" is not consistent with your definition. The objectivity is something which inheres within the judgement, not within the object.
No, I most certainly do not think that, nor does the view that "the mind cannot know mind-independent reality as it is in itself" necessarily entail that anything does not exist.
I said, "If it cannot, then there is always a reason to deny the existence of external objects a la post-Kantian philosophy (thus modern philosophy is intrinsically bound up with solipsism)." What I meant was that it is possible to deny the existence of extramental objects, but not that it is necessary. I do not think it's a coincidence that solipsism is such a common problem in modern philosophy.
Quoting Wayfarer
Batman and Robin. :wink:
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't think so, but some more than others. We would have to examine these in detail to give them a fair hearing.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well say why in your own words. I give simple examples so that they can be easily interacted with. In my opinion folks too often advert to abstruse quotes from philosophers rather than speaking plainly in their own words.
But regarding your quote from Westacott, it seems premised on your initial idea that I think Kant must dispense with the noumenal altogether, which I do not. I think the glass example should have illustrated that, for surely there is no reason why the person who says that everything viewed through the glass has a glassy aspect is necessarily committed to the position which says that the viewed objects do not exist.
Quoting Wayfarer
Haven't we already agreed <that it is likely false> that "boulders will only treat cracks differently than canyons when a mind is involved"? And if so, then is the claim that although boulders will act in the way described even if no minds exist, nevertheless the statement that this is so carries an "implicit perspective"? Because there is some categorical commitment to perspectives?
A statement is the affirmation of a proposition, and propositions require minds, but reality does not require propositions. Whether or not there are propositions and minds, boulders will treat cracks differently than canyons. At some point the perspectivalism becomes either strained or tautological. You could think of my argument about boulders as an argument against perspectivalism.
I want to say that the perspectivalism can only avoid tautology if "perspective" is defined as something beyond "proposition-esque." If all propositions are by definition perspectival then I should think we are lost in tautological thinking. We will at least need a middle term or an argument to connect them.
Quoting Wayfarer
And everything hangs on the nature of that intentional object, which is like the <glass>. For example, you seem to want to claim that every intentional object "carries an implicit perspective." What sort of argument would be required for such a categorical claim?
Presumably the next step is to define 'perspective' and give an argument for why every intentional object must be perspectival.
Quoting Wayfarer
Alright, sounds good. I don't know how much longer can sustain this pace, but even if I have to abandon ship I think we've made some headway. :halo:
How would you differentiate a case where there is a mind involved, from a case where there is not?
I think the easiest way is to follow your lead and talk about a pre-human age. Or a post-human age. Or if one thinks non-human animals possess knowledge, then a pre-animal age, etc.
But I don't see that as a valid analogy for what Kant's idealism says. Kant's view is that we never know [the object] as it is in itself (ding an sich). Instead, we only know [the object] as it appears to us (the phenomena, meaning appearance), and this appearance is inextricably a product of the inherent structures of the mind (the primary intuitions of space and time and the categories of understanding). That is always the case for empirical (or sensory) knowledge. So the mind is not just a passive recipient of sensory data; it actively shapes and structures our experience. It is, I would aver, an agent.
The analogy's issue is that Kant doesn't merely claim the "glass" (our cognitive faculties) is translucent. Instead, Kant argues that our cognitive faculties play an active role in constituting our experience, not merely transmitting it. It's as if the glass doesn't just let us see the world but actively shapes, organizes, and structures what we see based on its inherent properties. So it's better compared to spectacles, which focus light so we can recognise what we're looking at. If your natural vision was poor, then without them you can't see anything but blurs.
That can be extended to argue that Kant's critical project was actually to learn to look AT your spectacles, not just THROUGH them - to turn our attention away from objects of knowledge and direct it towards the conditions that make knowledge possible ('knowing about knowing'). Instead of merely accepting our experiences at apparent value, Kant investigates the faculties and structures that underlie experience.
Quoting Leontiskos
I did explicitly discuss that under the second heading.
I sense we're talking past each other here, so I'm happy to leave it at that, unless you have more issues you'd like to discuss.
Your argument is well-made, but I actually disagree. I actually have a thread drafted on why epistemology is always posterior to metaphysics, but I don't know if it will ever see the light of day.
The extremely truncated argument is that it comes down to which of the two is more known: 1) That we know things (as they are), or 2) That there is a glassy perspective. Whichever is less-known must be funneled through that which is more-known, and the modern assumption is that (2) is more-known and that we must therefore begin with epistemology. I don't think that will work. Will I ever get around to addressing this more fully in its own thread? I don't know. :sweat:
(Another argument is that if our understanding is 'flawed', then our understanding of our understanding will also be 'flawed'. We can't fix (or necessarily perceive) the flaw in our understanding by reflexively applying our understanding to our understanding. Any uncertainty deriving from the faculty of the intellect will color both internal and external objects.)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well for Aristotle and Aquinas the intellect is immaterial for precisely the reason you are outlining. But on the other hand, matter qua matter (or qua singular) is not intelligible on Aristotelianism, but only matter qua property (or qua universal). So Aristotle would not be surprised that something like the quantum realm begins to approach unintelligibility.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't begrudge you your conclusion, because it is a reasonable inference. Yet recall that for Aquinas we will know God "perfectly" (as perfectly as we can) not only in the intermediate state, but also in the resurrected state. And in the resurrected state we will have a body of some kind.
Thank you for your thoughtful and cogent post.
Quoting Wayfarer
Exactly right! I grant everything you say, and it does not invalidate my analogy, it accentuates it! Recall that the central issue here is whether we can know mind-independent reality as it is in itself. The first person in my analogy represents those who say that we cannot, whereas the second represents those who say that we can. I don't think anything you've noted about Kant moves him away from that first group, does it? The "glassy aspect" is merely representative of that which conveys reality in a way other than it is in itself; a "distortion," so to speak.
(Yes there are active aspects to the intellect, and I grant that that is another way the analogy limps, but this too does not move Kant out of the first group.)
Quoting Wayfarer
Right, that's why I spoke about "following your lead."
Quoting Wayfarer
I think we're close to a good stopping point. :up:
Let's consider the case of bona fide COVID vaccines vs quack cures such as hydroxychloroquine. Scientific studies show that the former are effective and the latter not. That is because of the inherent properties of the real vaccines, which the quack cures do not possess.
On the other hand, there's the interesting case of placebo cures. It is abundantly documented that placebos will often effect a cure even absent any actual medical ingredient in the tablet. In that case subjective factors, namely, the subject's confidence in the efficacy of cure, has objective consequences, namely, healing or cure.
So none of this open and shut. As the closing quote says in the essay ''Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned.’
Even so, there are many things, like medicines, that are shown to be effective by objective measures. It's important to acknowledge that, lest you slide into out-and-out relativism.
Quoting Leontiskos
It doesn't, but that is not the point. Surely the point is how to adjuticate which is correct? Kantian, or empirical realist? If you're supporting the latter, then the case has to be made as to why that is correct, and the Kantian view wrong.
Probably, depending on what you mean by 'empirical realist'.
Quoting Wayfarer
I haven't said much about adjudication (apart from those quotes from Aquinas). I have only been trying to frame the question, which the image about the glass was supposed to effect. If the question has been framed correctly, then the position you're staking out is an anti-realist position, as is Kant's. Do we agree on this?
I've been wrestling against your alternative framing, where apparently Hume is a kind of anti-realist but Kant is not, nor is your OP.* Or else, that your perspectivalism is devised to resist a scientism which derives from the 17th century.
So the crux is apparently that scientism is realist, and can be resisted by the anti-realism of your OP, but I would prefer resisting scientism by way of an alternative realism.
* For my part I would only say that Hume holds to a stronger anti-realism than Kant.
I would not agree that Kant thinks our cognitions distort reality. I think he would agree that what we perceive is real; the way I see the tree, for example, is just the real way the tree appears to a human percipient. So, our perceived appearances of the tree are real, not illusory or distorted in any way, but they are not the whole story of the tree. It can appear differently to different kinds of percipients, different animals.
The way the tree appears to us is a function of what it is in itself, in conjunction with what we are in ourselves, but being an appearance, it is perspectival, whereas what it is as unperceived cannot be perspectival. The tree can only appear from some perspective or other, but it does not follow that it can only exist from some perspective or other. It also does not follow that we can only exist from some perspective or other, even though it is true that we can only understand our existence from some perspective or other..
Then have a look at Mind and the Cosmic Order, by Charles Pinter. Chapter 1 abstract is:
Note the similarity with my ‘meadow’ analogy.
So that's the sense in which I'm 'anti-realist' - it's because I recognise that what we take to be inherently real is, let’s say, a representation that has been re-constituted by our cognitive system. According to Arthur Schopenhauer, in the opening paragraph of WWI, recognising this is ‘the beginning of wisdom’. And I think it’s validated by cognitive science, although they may of course have a completely different view of the philosophical implications.
But Pinter's featureless [s]stuff[/s] here is empty of content. This is close to Hobbes' view, who took only matter in motion to be real (independent).
[quote = Leviathan, close to the beginning]
The cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense, either immediatly, as in the Tast and Touch; or mediately, as in Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling: which pressure, by the mediation of Nerves, and other strings, and membranes of the body, continued inwards to the Brain, and Heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart, to deliver it self: which endeavour because Outward, seemeth to be some matter without. And this Seeming, or Fancy, is that which men call sense; and consisteth, as to the Eye, in a Light, or Colour Figured; To the Eare, in a Sound; To the Nostrill, in an Odour; To the Tongue and Palat, in a Savour; and to the rest of the body, in Heat, Cold, Hardnesse, Softnesse, and such other qualities, as we discern by Feeling. All which qualities called Sensible, are in the object that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversly. Neither in us that are pressed, are they anything els, but divers motions; (for motion, produceth nothing but motion.) But their apparence to us is Fancy, the same waking, that dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the Eye, makes us fancy a light; and pressing the Eare, produceth a dinne; so do the bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though unobserved action, For if those Colours, and Sounds, were in the Bodies, or Objects that cause them, they could not bee severed from them, as by glasses, and in Ecchoes by reflection, wee see they are; where we know the thing we see, is in one place; the apparence, in another. And though at some certain distance, the reall, and very object seem invested with the fancy it begets in us; Yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another. So that Sense in all cases, is nothing els but originall fancy, caused (as I have said) by the pressure, that is, by the motion, of externall things upon our Eyes, Eares, and other organs thereunto ordained.
[/quote]
What is 'original fancy' ? How has Hobbes and has ilk got around human cognition ? Matter in motion seems very much based on visual and tactile perception. Kant was 'right' in some sense to put everything on the side of the subject, right up to the Hegelian edge.
:up:
I think your 'rejection approach' is good. The word 'idealism' will be difficult or impossible to rescue, but I like Hegel's understanding thereof:
The proposition that the finite is ideal [ideell] constitutes idealism. The idealism of philosophy consists in nothing else than in recognizing that the finite has no veritable being. Every philosophy is essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the question then is only how far this principle is actually carried out.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hl/hlbeing.htm
Another way to put this is that the lifeworld (the whole of experience) is a kind of unbreakable unity, a continuous flow. We can analyze it, but plucking out an object and a subject, for instance, is engaging in something like useful fiction. The subject (as you seem to point out) is part of a dyad, and part of 'experience.' But if the subject is not absolute or fundamental, it's not even 'experience' anymore but just what is.
:up:
Perhaps you can share any thought you might have on Spinoza's perspectivism, and connections to Wittgenstein's 'I am my world.' https://iep.utm.edu/spino-ep/#SH2b
[quote=link]
He retains his substance monism by affirming the existence of the great variety of ways humans, and moreover all beings, can have knowledge as being so many ways God expresses himself. If all ways of knowing are ways God is known, then God himself, insofar as he is absolutely self-causal and self-expressive, would have to thereby know himself through and as all the different ways he is known. Therefore, from the perspective of God, God knows himself in an infinity of ways, while we, in our everyday existence and from our finite perspective, are just so many of these infinite ways God can both inadequately and adequately know all of reality as himself.
[/quote]
https://iep.utm.edu/spino-ep/#SH2b
I tend to understand this in terms of the 'subjects' being 'views' on a single Nature --- being Nature-from-an-embodied-in-Nature-perspective. Nature is 'painted' ( lit up, revealed ) by 'subjectivity' as if God was a cubist.
Subjectivity is light as the being or possibility of color, or something like that.
Of course! That's the point!
[quote=Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 93). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition]In a universe without an observer having a purpose, you cannot have facts. As you may judge from this, a fact is something far more complex than it appears to be at first sight. In order for a fact to exist, it must be preceded by a segmentation of the world into separate things, and requires a brain that is able to extract it from the background in which it is immersed*. Moreover, this brain must have the power to conceive in Gestalts, because in order to perceive its outlines and extract it, a fact must be seen whole, together with some of its context.
A fact does not exist if it has not been articulated, that is, if it does not exist explicitly as a verbal entity sufficiently detailed that it can be made to correspond (approximately) to something in the external world. Facts don’t exist in the absence of their statement (because a statement cuts the fact out of the background), and the statement cannot exist apart from an agent with a purpose. When an intentional agent sets out to carve a specific object from the background world, he has a Gestalt concept of the object—and from the latter, he acts to carve the object out. Thus, a fact cannot exist in a universe without living observers.
A fact does not hold in the universe if it has not been explicitly formulated. That should be obvious, because a fact is specific. In other words, statements-of-fact are produced by living observers, and thereby come into existence as a result of being constructed. It is only after they have been constructed (in words or symbols) that facts come to exist. Commonsense wisdom holds the opposite view: It holds that facts exist in the universe regardless of whether anyone notices them, and irrespective of whether they have been articulated in words. You may now judge for yourself if that is true.[/quote]
Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 93). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.
*That is what I mean by 'existence being complex'. It's a manifold, not an off/on phenomenon.
So, facts come into being with us. Not 'the universe', but there is no meaningful sense of existence in the universe prior to this act of formulation (as naturalism never tires of telling us).
But you seem (to me) to be flitting from position to position. Either it makes sense to talk about some object apart from all subjectivity or it doesn't. Kant seemed to feel the need to glue on an empty concept, to get distance from Berkeley. But I think he should have just embraced the perspectivism implicit in most of his thinking.
Plenty of materialists (like Hobbes) are indirect realists. If you are (now) only saying that appearance is not reality, then how is that different from the usual dualistic scientism ? 'The table is really [latest physics theory stuff]. ' Or 'love is really just [brain chemistry].'
But physics stuff (I think we agree) is only meaningful within a lifeworld like ours. It makes no sense to say the world is really [some mere aspect or fragment of that world. ]
Quoting Wayfarer
I sometimes think our views are pretty close, but your insistence on the pure subject seems to require a pure object (the ever-hidden-from-us world-in-itself.) @Leontiskos joked that he couldn't tell our positions apart (including J.S. Mill), but there is a difference. I think I'm defendning a nondual monist perspectivism, while you are defending some kind of still-dualist twist on Kant. But I may not understand you (and our views are naturally evolving as we talk and think.)
Here's a key point:
Permanent possibilities of perception turn out, in my view, to be pretty much all most people can and do mean by some [ mind- ] independent world.
What we mean when we say the mountain was here before us as a species is something like : if we could somehow visit with a time machine, we'd see the same old mountain. Kant discusses the possibility of beings on the moon in CPR, and notes that asserting their existence involves implicitly asserting the possibility of perceiving those beings. So experience is the foundation of sense. FWIW, this seems very close to Husserl's view. And phenomenology can be viewed as primarily negative and critical, as Wittgensteinian 'critique of language,' pointing out (like Kant) our tendency to talk in round squares and light without darkness.
[quote = Locke]
11. How Bodies produce Ideas in us.
The next thing to be considered is, how bodies operate one upon another; and that is manifestly by impulse, and nothing else. It being impossible to conceive that body should operate on WHAT IT DOES NOT TOUCH (which is all one as to imagine it can operate where it is not), or when it does touch, operate any other way than by motion.
12. By motions, external, and in our organism.
If then external objects be not united to our minds when they produce ideas therein; and yet we perceive these ORIGINAL qualities in such of them as singly fall under our senses, it is evident that some motion must be thence continued by our nerves, or animal spirits, by some parts of our bodies, to the brains or the seat of sensation, there to produce in our minds the particular ideas we have of them. And since the extension, figure, number, and motion of bodies of an observable bigness, may be perceived at a distance by the sight, it is evident some singly imperceptible bodies must come from them; to the eyes, and thereby convey to the brain some motion; which produces these ideas which we have of them in us.
...
15. Ideas of primary Qualities are Resemblances; of secondary, not.
From whence I think it easy to draw this observation,—that the ideas of primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them, and their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves, but the ideas produced in us by these secondary qualities have no resemblance of them at all. There is nothing like our ideas, existing in the bodies themselves. They are, in the bodies we denominate from them, only a power to produce those sensations in us: and what is sweet, blue, or warm in idea, is but the certain bulk, figure, and motion of the insensible parts, in the bodies themselves, which we call so.
[/quote]
This is how the physical study of primary qualities escapes being a mere study of appearance. Reality in its fullness is filtered for purity. The gray result is stripped of color and value. What's left Newtonian machinery abandoned by Deism's demiurge -- blobs of stuff that bump into one another in the void.
I agree that epistemology is always posterior to metaphysics, so perhaps you have drawn the wrong conclusion from my argument. In your glass analogy, metaphysics would be the discipline by which we understand the glass, which is "being" in general, and of which perspective is a feature. This would lay the grounds for epistemology.
Quoting Leontiskos
The problem though, which I tried to describe, is that we need principles by which we can make the judgement, 1) or 2), and these are metaphysical principles, derived from the philosophy of being. If we premise either 1) or 2), we proceed with an epistemology accordingly, but whatever is your argument for choosing one over the other is a metaphysical argument.
Quoting Leontiskos
You say that we cannot "fix" the flaw by understanding our understanding, but this is exactly what we do in practise, to improve ourselves, we repair flaws in our understanding. That understanding of understanding would be an analysis of our methods, procedures and techniques. The method is the means, the goal is the end. The analysis reveals the relation between means and ends.
Initially, the end shapes the means, such that the means are designed to produce the end. However, the means can then be characterized as becoming habits, and the propensity to follow habits produces a special relationship between the agent and the end, whereby the specific end which the means are designed for is "locked in" as the desired end. In habituation the relevance, importance, or even necessity of the end, is completely neglected because satisfaction is guaranteed by the means. In this way, (habituation), the means now determine the ends by crippling our capacity to freely choose our goals. We act in the habitual way, we are satisfied, therefore we do not question the ends and the forms of satisfaction which the habits provide for us.
Notice though, that I referred to a special type of goal, the ideal, as perfection. I said that it was the ideal, perfection as a goal, which cannot be obtained by the human intellect. So the goal then is not to "fix" the understanding, but to improve upon it, in relation to the ideal, which is perfection. This is a big difference, because "fix" implies to put the system in an unchanging state of best operation, while leaving the system open to improvement implies something completely different. So the ideal, the perfect condition, as a goal, takes a position higher than any possible real condition, allowing that the goals, or ends, do not become fixed by habituation, in the manner described above. This allows that the goals or ends which our methods of understanding conform to, can always be reassessed, in relation to an ideal which will always stand higher than the end which the means currently provide for, and the ends will not get "locked in" by a habit which was once good, but is now bad, due to changing circumstances.
Quoting Leontiskos
I agree, "matter" is posited by Aristotle for the purpose of accounting for that feature of reality which we cannot grasp, the part of reality which appears as unintelligible. This is derived from Plato's Timaeus. The "form" of a thing, being the universal for Plato, what the thing is, must necessarily be prior to the existence of the thing as the determining factor of what type of thing the thing will be, when the thing comes into existence. But each corporeal thing, each particular, or individual (primary substance in Aristotle's terms), is unique and peculiar as represented by the law of identity. So the reality of those "accidents" which make the individual unique and peculiar, must be accounted for. The "accidents" are fundamentally unintelligible to us, or else they could be accounted for by our understanding of the "form" of the thing. So the accidents are what escape our grasp, our apprehension of the thing, and "matter" is assigned as that which is responsible for this unintelligibility.
Quoting Leontiskos
I disagree that Aquinas believed we would "have a body of some kind" in the resurrected state. But of course there would be ambiguity providing different interpretations on this matter because Aquinas often had to stretch his ontology to appear consistent with Church dogma. Paul had insisted on personal resurrection, which would imply a material body to account for individuality. Aquinas also held that each spiritual incorporeal being, each angel, had providence over a corporeal body, so "will have a body of some kind" could also be interpreted as an incorporeal being having providence over a body.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think you are stretching the meaning of "inherent properties" here. When you say that the vaccines are effective because of the inherent properties of these vaccines, that is only half the story. The other half is the inherent properties of the virus itself. Now we might say that the vaccines are effective because there is a relationship between the inherent properties of the vaccine, in relation to the inherent properties of the virus.
However, notice that this is just a sort of assumption we make, that if two things react, there is a relationship between their "inherent properties". But it doesn't require that we know anything about their so-called inherent properties, nor does it even require that we really know what "inherent property" refers to. In reality, "inherent property" just stands to signify what we do not know. The two react, and you as the narrator do not know why or how, so you simply employ that place holder, "inherent properties" to talk about what you do not know. The scientists would not use that place holder, they would talk about mRNA and proteins, immune system, etc., because they have more knowledge about this than us.
The scientific studies show that the vaccines are effective, and the quack cures are not. They also show a whole lot about the interaction between the vaccines and the virus. But notice that the human immune system is the medium between these two, the arena or theatre where this interaction plays out. And in reality the human immune system is the principal role player here. This means that my proposal above, that there is a special relation between the inherent properties of the vaccine and the inherent properties of the virus, is completely wrong, because it totally neglects the agency of the immune system. And so we have an open door for the placebo effect and such things. Therefore it appears like it is this procedure, of using terms like "inherent properties" to cover over what is unknown, and create an illusion of knowledge which is really detrimental and misleading.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is very good and well-written. But ultimately it comes down to a question of what is implied by "re-presentation" here. Notice the difference of intent implied by the difference between "representation" and "re-presentation". The former implies correspondence, the latter implies a presentation with intent. This marks the difference between holding truth as your guiding principle (ideal), and having pragmatics as your guide. Notice that pragmaticism removes the need for an ideal, perfection. If it serves the purpose at hand, it is good, and there is no need, or inspiration, to better it. But when we are looking for "truth", it becomes an ideal perfection, so the inspiration to improve is ever present, regardless of whether we think the absolute will ever be obtained.
This is precisely what we are disagreeing on. The disagreement is somewhat subtle, so at times I am characterizing it in a somewhat imprecise way to get it to pop out. For example, my imprecision seems to have led you, at some points, to think that I impute to you a belief that external reality does not exist at all. But <again>, I am not saying that. The disagreement is over whether we can know external reality as it is in itself.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is precisely what I argued against, beginning <here>. In that post I explicitly disagreed with Pinter's claim that objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, and you agreed with my argument. We agreed that unobserved boulders have shape. Or rather, so as not to put words in your mouth, you said, "It's safe to assume."
I agree with @plaque flag here:
Quoting plaque flag
Compare:
Quoting Leontiskos
Note that I am not saying that every mind always knows mind-independent reality as it is in itself. Only that the mind can so know it.
I'm sort of planning an exit strategy so that I can take some time away, and for that reason I'm trying not to initiate a lot of new dialogues. For example, with Wayfarer I have teased at the idea of adjudication, but it would be imprudent for me to go there in full, given my increasing time constraints. So maybe what I will do is just try to situate my view vis-a-vis your own. In general I am unsure about your first unanswered reply (), but I agree with most of your second ().
So for example, in your second unanswered reply you say that, "We see things themselves, not our images of them," but in your first you say that all we can mean by an independent world is "permanent possibilities of perception." I am then led to wonder whether that possibility of perception, when engaged, effects an actualization of perception, such that we are really encountering a perception/image rather than the thing itself. For me the possibility of perception is derivative on the thing that exists in itself. The thing is more than a possibility of perception, even though we always know by means of perception. ...But then given what you say <here> I think we might be on the same page, and I may just be splitting hairs.
Let me go out on a limb and try to characterize our difference, which is probably negligible for the purposes of this thread. I want to say that you are a "direct realist" with an immanent anthropology, whereas I am a "direct realist" with a transcendent anthropology. I am thinking in particular of your claim that, "the subject is world-from-a-point-of-view" (). I want to say that the soul ultimately transcends and encompasses the world, and is not metaphysically co-extensive with it. So the subject is the world from a point of view, but it is at the same time more than that. It is not only world-from-a-point-of-view. Do we even disagree on that? (I am also willing to toy with the idea that intellect is able to obtain a universal or rather quasi-universal point of view, which is I think what much of philosophy and science is interested in.)
Granted, that's a rather tiny difference, so maybe it's not even worth raising. Maybe it will create more problems than it's worth. :sweat:
And the scare quotes were precisely for you, because of how you responded to my comment in a different thread:
Quoting Leontiskos
There you fixated on contamination and distortion, ignoring conditioning. Anti-Realists certainly hold that reality is conditioned by the human subject. Imputation of or fixation on distortion tends to beg the question, but it is ultimately pertinent given that we are considering the possibility of knowing reality as it is in itself. Thus it is a distortion in relation to that counterfactual possibility.
I like the idea with topography, but it's not clear how morality and normativity can be worked out with it.
I'm just not sure if the bolded part follows here. It seems more like the reverse conclusion should be true.
If:
1. The mind cannot know mind independent reality.
2. Mind independent reality exists.
Then it seems to follow that the unknowable mind independent reality, the noumena, are a part of the world that is not inextricably tied up in mind.
Whereas this isn't a problem if mind independent reality can be known. If mind independent reality can be known, than at least in some way, it isn't mind independent. The mind can access it.
And nature itself doesn't seem to be discrete from itself. There are no "totally isolated systems," and it seems likely that there are no unique "substances," without beginning or end, just one substance (this is the goal of unification anyhow). This being the case, divisions within nature are simply abstractions. They are based on real differences in nature, which we have knowledge of, but in an important way the universe is one undivided process. But if that's the case, and if mind is in the universe, then it is indeed impossible to extricate mind from the world in an important way.
Obviously, there are ways in which we can extricate mind from (parts of) the world, as when we say "that rock is not conscious." But this is a separation via abstraction, which doesn't seem like it should "cause" any real ontological separation. It's just like how our ability to separate the sweetness of honey from the honey doesn't entail that honey isn't sweet. In the rock example, the rock is part of a unified process that includes mind. Further, since mind knows of the rock, clearly the rock is actually involved in mind in some way
So all of the universe is involved in the process of mind to some degree in that mind would not be here if the universe was not. We are cognizant of "the whole universe," when we have these discussions, another relation. And the universe would have different properties if mind wasn't possible, since clearly it has properties vis-á-vis its interactions with mind.
Husserl's notion of the transcendence of the object is helpful here. Sartre opens B&N with it (does a great job). The spatial object is never finally or completely given. I'm quite happy to understand the object as some kind of ideal unity of its possible 'adumbrations.'
Reality is 'horizonal.' I speak too easily of the being of the world when it's better perhaps to stress its fluid endless becoming. I'd say I have a kind of continuous blanket ontology, with all things inferentially linked. Brandom's inferentialism was a recent, powerful influence on me, which allowed me to see how all objects are glued together in one nexus of rationality -- a single network of entities that appear interdependently for their very sense in our reason-giving sociality.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Good, then we agree. I was mistaken. :up:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, we fix flaws in concrete acts of understanding, but not foundational flaws in the faculty of understanding (the intellect).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
True.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sure. My point was only that if one accepts the premise that the faculty of the intellect itself is inherently incapable of knowing reality as it is in itself, then no amount of self-reflection or epistemological work will change that fact. I think we are in agreement.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Right. Sorry that I don't have enough time to go into these sorts of topics.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well he at least says that we will have a resurrected body in the third part of the Summa Theologiae, questions 53-56, as well as in questions 75-86 of the supplement of that work.
:up:
A guy once broke up with me and he stated as his reason, and I quote, "I question the wisdom of continuing a relationship with someone who barely knows herself".
Somehow, "self-knowledge" tends to be about thinking of yourself the way someone else wants you to think of yourself.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes. And to control the masses, of course.
We fool you.
Okay, sure. I have no truck with this sort of phenomenological approach. Makes sense to me.
Quoting plaque flag
:up:
How does Bitbol account for the possible power differential in such debates?
For example, a teacher and a student may have a debate in class, but because of the power differential between them, the student will tailor her input to the debate for fear of getting a poor grade (or worse). As such, the debate is automatically slanted in favor of the teacher.
The same pattern repeats all over in other settings.
Quoting Joshs
Great point!
How does phenomenology explain the existence of disagreement between people? And how does it propose that disagreement be resolved?
Earlier in the thread I gestured towards a possible equivocation on "mind-independent reality," but here it is occurring explicitly. Note that if you define "mind-independent reality" in this way, then my hypothesis that "the mind can know mind-independent reality" would be incoherent.
So to be clear, when I am talking about knowing mind-independent reality, I am talking about knowing things whose existence is distinct and unrelated to mind. Your claim that
It's about more than merely affective concerns: It's about normativity.
The traditional focus on objectivity can also be seen as an effort to establish normativity. Epistemic normativity, psychological normativity, and especially moral normativity.
Allowing for subjectivity and perspectivism (as in: individualism) in any way undermines the very notion of an objective, binding system of moral claims about what is right and about what is wrong.
Under this, subjectivity is acceptable only in a trivial sense: "it's in an individual brain that all these processes happen".
For me the world includes promises and daydreams and prime numbers, as well as protons and pumpkins. The lifeworld with all of its cultural structure is fundamental. It's only within this world (famously sketched by Heidegger) that physics or biology can make sense in the first place, though people (absurdly in my view) think they can put the cart before the horse. To me a map is some little piece of reality that 'mirrors' some structure or aspect of a larger piece. There is no 'deep' appearence-reality distinction but only various practical discriminations -- the kind of thing Mach talks about, such as the boundaries of the ego being merely practical. I mention this in case you thought I reduced the subject to a limited kind of worldly being.
I think we agree on this. I see intellectual progress as movement in perspective space, which is also [largely ] character space. We become the universal person, but perhaps Jungian individuation is helpful here too, and we also develop unique gifts, complementing the gifts of others. I think maybe both processes run side by side. As we find ourselves a fitting role in the world, including the mirror, we are less afraid or resentful of the gifts of others. We learn to open up to others' perspectives, to identity with the process of learning rather than the result, with a way of being rather than a claim on ideological turf. So yeah I agree. The goal is toward that point at infinity, the impossibly adequate grasp. Horizon again. And Husserl and Merleau-Ponty also talked about being perpetual beginners, always going back to the fundamental experiences and questions, in love with philosophy.
I would have thought that reality as it is in itself cannot be known in principle, because reality as it is in itself is defined by its not being reality as it appears to us. It's an imaginable conceptual distinction. On this definition it follows that anything we know is not reality as it is in itself.
But I don't consider reality as it appears to us to be any less real than reality as it is in itself. Reality as it appears to us is a function of reality as it is in itself, because reality as it appears to us is on account of the effect the environment has on us precognitively.
In the lived moment we are blind to that process; the best we can do is observe and analyze the environment and our physiologies as they appear to be. So, I'm saying that appearances are real, as real as what gives rise to them, and more real for us, given that we can only think of the in itself, we cannot know how it is.
:up:
Nice to hear ! It's not as easy as one might like it to be to feel understand on an internet forum.
I think this is so by design, because otherwise, any kind of normativity is impossible. And without normativity, society and culture are impossible.
Quoting Wayfarer
How do you propose to build a system of morality based on the above idea?
As also his depiction of 'the natural attitude', which I see as the basis the objections thus far:
[quote=Key Ideas in Phenomenology; https://www.saybrook.edu/unbound/phenomenology/]From a phenomenological perspective, in everyday life, we see the objects of our experience such as physical objects, other people, and even ideas as simply real and straightforwardly existent. In other words, they are “just there.” We don’t question their existence; we view them as facts.
When we leave our house in the morning, we take the objects we see around us as simply real, factual things—this tree, neighboring buildings, cars, etc. This attitude or perspective, which is usually unrecognized as a perspective, Edmund Husserl terms the “natural attitude” or the “natural theoretical attitude.”
When Husserl uses the word “natural” to describe this attitude, he doesn’t mean that it is “good” (or bad), he means simply that this way of seeing reflects an “everyday” or “ordinary” way of being-in-the-world. When I see the world within this natural attitude, I am solely aware of what is factually present to me. My surrounding world, viewed naturally, is the familiar world, the domain of my everyday life. Why is this a problem?
From a phenomenological perspective, this naturalizing attitude conceals a profound naïveté. Husserl claimed that “being” can never be collapsed entirely into being in the empirical world: any instance of actual being, he argued, is necessarily encountered upon a horizon that encompasses facticity but is larger than facticity. Indeed, the very sense of facts of consciousness as such, from a phenomenological perspective, depends on a wider horizon of consciousness that usually remains unexamined.[/quote]
Quoting Leontiskos
'No features', is the expression Charles Pinter uses - shape being one. Features correspond to functions of the animal sensorium, but this thesis is developed over several chapters, and not one I can summarise in a few words.
I acknowledge at the outset that the universe pre-exists us: 'though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye — the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective.'
I think it's the idea of 'an implicit perspective' that you're calling into question.
So let's apply this to a practical example:
When the critics of Trump and his followers make claims about them, they (ie. the critics) believe that they are making claims about how things really are.
How do you comment?
I don't see it that way. Why do we, as societies, desire normativity? I'd say it is because we care about social harmony. We don't need to establish normativity when it comes to bare perception; the commonality is there for us, it is not something engineered by us. Psychological normativity and moral normativity are pragmatic concerns; a society functions better and people are happier if there is harmony.
I've been talking about perception not politics.
So when people talk about politics, they don't have perception?
But the results of perception are normativized. There is a clear pressure in society to see things in a particular way and to believe that this is "how they really are", and to further believe that when one sees things that way, one "sees them as they really are".
Not so. It is specific feature of modern and post-industrial culture with its emphasis on scientific instrumentalism. In earlier cultures, the 'is/ought' gap had not yet appeared, because it was presumed that what one ought to do, and what is the case, are connected: 'In the Indian context it would have been axiomatic that liberation comes from discerning how things actually are, the true nature of things. That seeing things how they are has soteriological benefits would have been expected, and is just another way of articulating the ‘is’ and ‘ought’ dimension of Indian Dharma. The ‘ought’ (pragmatic benefit) is never cut adrift from the ‘is’ (cognitive factual truth).'
Quoting baker
Many pre-modern moral systems never doubted it - the idea that the universe comprises dumb stuff directed solely by physical forces is a very recent one. (It has always been around, but had never before become dominant.)
Oh, I assumed he would do something like that - define 'shape' as a sensory phenomenon. I think it only sidesteps the issue, begging the pertinent question and discarding the colloquial meaning of the word 'shape'. So of course if we define 'shape' to be a sensory phenomenon, then the boulder cannot have shape by definition. But I think we want to move beyond this sort of tautological approach.
Note that my point about the boulder cuts through this redefinition. The boulder must have shape in the colloquial sense, and therefore we have knowledge of the boulder as it is in itself.
Quoting Wayfarer
The point that I have been trying to stress is that it is not a difference of whether there is an implicit perspective, or propositions, or "glass", but rather what the nature of those rational entities is. I think all parties agree that there are such things. The disagreement is always over their precise nature. One groups says that the rational entity prevents us from knowing reality as it is in itself; the other group says that it does not. For the classical realist the extramental world can be known in itself precisely through the rational, perspective-grounded mind.
But I'm thinking this might be a good stopping point, especially because @plaque flag can carry it forward.
An inquisitive one.
It's a blind spot frequently encountered in philosophical discussions. In philosophy, there's a taboo against using a philosopher's philosophy against him, and a taboo against using some philosophical claim on the spot, testing it in vivo, as it were.
It's rather ironic. For example, some philosopher complains about how some people are treating other people (and other beings as objects), yet this same philosopher is treating them the same way, as an object.
The problem there is that you're trying to assume a perspective outside both, in order to arrive at which one of the two is correct. And I don't think that can be done, in this case. (Oh, and Plaque Flag and I go back at least 10 years now. He's a very interesting contributor, although somewhat prone to digression ;-) )
You're muddying the waters :rage:
How do you know we in fact see the same things?
What if we are merely conforming, to the point of sometimes even pretending that we see the same thing? As in, "Do you see this black snow?" -- "Yes, I see this black snow."
The normativity I'm talking about is about what we *say* that we think is real. (And of course, if one says something often enough, one is bound to believe it, even if one originally didn't believe it.)
As for the conceptual image that your dog has of what you call a tree: it possibly isn't the same as yours.
Quoting Banno
*1. Naive Realism :
In social psychology, naïve realism is the human tendency to believe that we see the world around us objectively, and that people who disagree with us must be uninformed, irrational, or biased.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology)
Note --- Is it possible that both "naive realists" and "philosophical idealists" are biased (by faith) toward a hypothetical "true" view, that neither can directly access? The key to the Truth door here is that Wayfarer's more sophisticated Idealism openly admits that its perfect Ideal World*3 is an unattainable goal that we can strive toward but never reach. Even the "extinguishment" of the grasping mind (as in Nirvana) would leave us without the means for knowing what lies on the other side of the closed door.
*2. Anti-realism :
In anti-realism, the truth of a statement rests on its demonstrability through internal logic mechanisms, such as the context principle or intuitionistic logic, in direct opposition to the realist notion that the truth of a statement rests on its correspondence to an external, independent reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-realism
Note --- As Kant and other philosophers have noted, humans know only their own subjective model of reality, that they have created from sense impressions derived from a local & personal perspective, not from a god-like view of "an external independent reality". Consequently, naive realism is based on faith in a non-human objective model of the totality of reality.
*3. Nirvana fallacy
The nirvana fallacy is the informal fallacy of comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives.
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Nirvana_fallacy
Note --- I'm not accusing Wayfarer of this fallacy. Just noting that perfect Truth/Wisdom/Reality is unrealistic & idealistic. But that does not stop philosophers from seeking the unreachable Ideal. Wisdom lies in realizing your own limits --- what's impossible. :smile:
The Impossible Dream (The Quest)
Song by Mitch Leigh
[i]To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go…[/i]
Talk about upholding taboos!
"Philosophical insights can and should be applied to mountain meadows, butterflies, dogs, teapots, but not to hot topics like the criticism of Trumpistas."
I think you're capable of highly insightful and incisive contributions but right now you're just firing off random questions, dragging Trump in for mention, for instance.
That makes two of us :brow:
Quoting Gnomon
Steady on, old chap. 'Buddha' means 'one who knows'.
My edit: "For the classical realist the extramental world can be known in itself precisely through the rational, perspective-grounded mind."
S(b) can be known. It is known via a contingent and finite perspective. Therefore contingent and finite perspectives do not prevent us from knowing reality in itself.
...So I don't want to reject the idea of a perspective, I just don't think it entails what you think it entails.
Quoting Wayfarer
But does not any decision in favor of one or the other imply an ability to adjudicate, and therefore imply access to an "outside perspective"? I don't think there is any difference between my position and yours, on this score.
Quoting Wayfarer
Ah, okay. I often tend to the opposite problem: saying too little. :smile:
It seems obvious. When I'm working with another carpenter and I ask her to pass me the saw, she does not pass me the router. When I throw the ball for my dog he sees it as a ball to be chased, not a food bowl to be eaten from. No social coordination at all would be possible if humans and animals did not see the same things in their environments.
*sigh*
Philosopher, know thyself!
I brought up Trump precisely because he's such a hot topic, to see if you can apply your insights from this thread when it comes to talking about something other than meadows and butterflies.
And there you go, patronizing me again.
Sure, there are some obvious instances of people "seeing the same things".
Is Pluto a planet or not? When you look at Pluto, you might see a planet, but someone else doesn't. How so?
Quoting baker
When you and I see Pluto, whether through a telescope (that we also both see) or on a TV ( a TV that we both see) or a photo in a magazine (a magazine that we both see) we presumably see the same image or object, but we might disagree about what category to assign it to.
But you're simply appealing to some fact or other. That a particular thing has a particular shape. But as already stated, 'In a universe without an observer having a purpose, you cannot have facts. ...a fact is something far more complex than it appears to be at first sight. In order for a fact to exist, it must be preceded by a segmentation of the world into separate things, and requires a brain that is able to extract it from the background in which it is immersed. Moreover, this brain must have the power to conceive in Gestalts, because in order to perceive its outlines and extract it, a fact must be seen whole, together with some of its context.' You can't argue from outside that framework, as you're trying to do. As I said before, we need to take off our spectacles and look at them, and it's a difficult thing to do.
Quoting baker
I'm attempting to moderate a thread by keeping it on track. There's a very long multi-year thread about DJT, let's keep comments about him in that thread.
:up:
And in previous systems, the equivalent was the tyrannical socio-economic system in which most people were considered expendable and often treated accordingly.
Take away the robes and other thaumaturgical veneer and you get the same discourse that we have today, that has always existed.
In the old days, people were considered subjects of a deity and of monarchs and landlords. Nowadays, we are considered subjects of well, whoever happens to be in the position of power. But we never cease to be subjects to someone or something.
The nature of the discourse has not changed: there is a hierarchy between people, there is a power differential between people, and resources are scarce, and we shape our input in accordance with this knowledge It's only the externals that change (and those are the ones you're focusing on).
A religious/spiritual person will tell you that you "need to see things as they really are".
A psychologist will tell you that you "need to see things as they really are".
A politician will tell you that you "need to see things as they really are".
And somehow, "things as they really are" is always what those in position with more power than yourself say that they are.
But to the man in robes, *you* are the dumb stuff!!
It is on track. I'm not discussing Trump. I'm discussing how philosophers, too, have taboos, which is ironically relevant, given the topic.
This is how I view it: Philosophers like Pinter or Hume come up with theories, often abstruse, and then they interpret reality based on their theory instead of allowing reality to correct or even disprove their theory. (It's quite common for philosophers to fall in love with their own theories.) Thus Pinter's argument:
The answer and reversal is always as follows:
I think we actually agree on (2), and if (2) holds then facts exist, (3) holds, etc.
Whether the modus ponens or the modus tollens holds depends on whether [abstruse theory] or [boulders do have shape] is better-known, and it seems obvious to me that the latter is better-known, and that the former must therefore be discarded or revised. While this is a simplification, it at the same time represents a standard pattern for anti-realist systems. (This is another topic I have an unpublished thread-draft for.)
Now often philosophers will just disagree for all eternity on such issues, but the curious thing in our case is that we actually agree with respect to (2), and this signals a tension in your own thinking.
Sure.
But saying, for example, that someone "inoculated people against reality" is already an interpretation of his act, not the act itself. Of course, then there are those who will say it's not so, that it's not merely an interpretation.
Yeah…hence the closing comment I made to Wayfarer, re: the intrusion of clinical psychology.
No such thing as self-knowledge. It’s a catch-phrase meant to indicate one has an intelligence that gets along with itself more than not. Actually, brought up an excellent point regarding conscience, integrating well with intelligence, which gives….a catch-phrase meant to indicate one has an intelligence and a conscience that get along with each other more than not.
If Trump lies, some may interpret it as him speaking truth. Nonetheless it seems plausible to think there is a fact of the matter as to whether he lied. When it comes to whether Trump's vision for the US and the world is a good one or not, then we might be harder pressed to justify claiming there is a fact of the matter about that, even though it might seem obvious that his vision is bogus.
Charles Pinter is not a philosopher - he's a mathematician with a long interest in neural modelling; all of his previous books were on algebra. And as I said, I can't do justice to all the material in his book with a few extracts. But his basic idea, and that of the neuro-scientists in the Big Think video that I posted, is not that difficult to state: that the brain/mind receives input from the environment and then constructs its world on that basis. This complex neural construction is what constitutes reality for us. These scientists do not deny that there is an external reality, but show that this is only one aspect of the totality of experience. This is why the neuroscience of cognition has something in common with Kant's philosophy (although they will also differ in important respects). Your arguments against, I'm afraid, really are just re-statements of Samuel Johnson's 'appeal to the stone' - even down to your choice of representative object!
----
Actually, a rather poignant note - I have just found that Charles Pinter died, aged 91, in July 2023. After reading his book, I emailed him via his website (now apparently taken down) and received this reply, in June 2022:
I did indeed write an Amazon review, which can be found here. (There is also a review by one Barry N. Bishop who indignantly rejects Pinter's idealism. It is and always will be a perennial dispute. The review above mine, by McIntyre, is a good synopsis.)
Sorry, I don't see the connection. Spinoza is talking about reflective reasoning from (parallax-like) both the perspective of eternity and the perspective of time. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, is talking about the constitutive meta/cognitive constraints of logic-grammar. I suppose for both thinkers the "I" is impersonal (ergo universal? ontological?) ...
That sounds like a linguistic use of "imagine" (meaning he never expected that would happen). But I was meaning "imagination" as a creative visual faculty. Doesn't this faculty have central connection to the OP? - The Mind Created World ? If not, which faculty of the mind does the creating the world process?
If you mean, how does the mind (or brain) create or construct the world - isn't that pretty much what the whole brain is involved in? There are many things the brain does beneath the threshhold of conscious awareness - particularly the brain-stem and autonomic systems in the brain. We're not aware of growth, metabolism, and many other functions, not to mention the sub-conscious activities of the mind. The processing involved in conscious attention is only one part of what the brain does.
This leads to a particular set of functions that I think is philosophically interesting. That is the ability of the brain to maintain the 'subjective unity of experience'. We are self-aware as a unified whole - perception of shape, colour and movement appear to us as a unified whole (or gestalt) even though the sub-systems of the brain which process these are separate. Neuroscience hasn't identified the particular brain system that provides for this unification. It's called the 'neural binding problem' and is recognised as a scientific validation of the hard problem of consciousness (note the reference to Chalmers below):
[quote=The Neural Binding Problem(s);https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3538094/#Sec3title]There is now overwhelming biological and behavioral evidence that the brain contains no stable, high-resolution, full field representation of a visual scene, even though that is what we subjectively experience (Martinez-Conde et al. 2008). The structure of the primate visual system has been mapped in detail (Kaas and Collins 2003) and there is no area that could encode this detailed information. The subjective experience is thus inconsistent with the neural circuitry. Closely related problems include change- (Simons and Rensink 2005) and inattentional-blindness (Mack 2003), and the subjective unity of perception arising from activity in many separate brain areas (Fries 2009; Engel and Singer 2001).
Traditionally, the NBP (neural binding problem) concerns instantaneous perception and does not consider integration over saccades. But in both cases the hard problem is explaining why we experience the world the way we do. As is well known, current science has nothing to say about subjective (phenomenal) experience and this discrepancy between science and experience is also called the “explanatory gap” and “the hard problem” (Chalmers 1996). There is continuing effort to elucidate the neural correlates of conscious experience; these often invoke some version of temporal synchrony as discussed above.
There is a plausible functional story for the stable world illusion. First of all, we do have a (top-down) sense of the space around us that we cannot currently see, based on memory and other sense data—primarily hearing, touch, and smell. Also, since we are heavily visual, it is adaptive to use vision as broadly as possible. Our illusion of a full field, high resolution image depends on peripheral vision—to see this, just block part of your peripheral field with one hand. Immediately, you lose the illusion that you are seeing the blocked sector. When we also consider change blindness, a simple and plausible story emerges. Our visual system (somehow) relies on the fact that the periphery is very sensitive to change. As long as no change is detected it is safe to assume that nothing is significantly altered in the parts of the visual field not currently attended.
But this functional story tells nothing about the neural mechanisms that support this magic. What we do know is that there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene (Kaas and Collins 2003). That is, enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience. So, this version of the NBP really is a scientific mystery at this time. [/quote]
Quoting baker
Husserl puts the emphasis on empathetically understanding the other from within their one perspective.
“The human being lets “himself” be influenced not only by particular other humans (actual or imagined) but also by social objectivities that he feels and apprehends as effective objectivities in their own right, as influencing powers. He is afraid of “the government” and carries out what it commands. He views such and such individuals, for instance, the police officer, etc., as representatives of the government only; he fears the person who is an official representative. The customs, the church, etc., he feels as powers, too. Seen from the objective perspective of the historian and sociologist, human beings are real and, among them, such and such interconnected relations exist, such and such social objectivities exist, etc. And the task is to describe this in general, concrete and, where possible, in comparative terms, to describe the factual connection, to delineate universal class-concepts and rules, etc., just as in any morphology.
If the community of humankind is to be described historically in concreto in its becoming and in its dependence on other communities (for even the social objectivities have their “causality”), then the objective of an understanding of the inner connections requires that one immerse oneself so deeply in the consciousness of the respective individual human beings, so as to be able to exactly relive their motivations. One must immerse oneself so deeply that one brings to “givenness” their interpretations, supposed experiences, their superstitious fantasies, by means of which they let themselves be “influenced,” let themselves be guided, attracted, or repelled. The “real connections” consist in this: Under given circumstances such and such notions, etc., were (“understandably”) evoked in human beings, whereby such and such reactions were motivated in them, which in turn determined the course of their development.” (Basic Problems of Phenomenology)
I understand that, but if he is writing a book on the mind-world relation then in my opinion he is a philosopher. Being a mathematician does not prevent one from being a philosopher. In fact there is a giant overlap between these two fields, so much so that Aristotle complains in his Metaphysics that mathematician-philosophers were creating confusion, scientism-style.
Quoting Wayfarer
That sounds a lot like a Humean model. Impressions -> construction
But I will remember his name for future reference.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have never heard of him, but this is of course a rather bad misrepresentation of my position. Do you truly think a modus tollens argument is an "argumentum ad lapidem"? Premise (2) is not, "Your argument is false." It is a proposition that contradicts your thesis and one that we have both agreed to. Quite different, I'm afraid.
(The crux is not a dogmatic insistence that your argument must be false. The crux is the fact that you have attached yourself to a theory which entails that boulders do not have shape, combined with the fact that we both agree that boulders do have shape. Given that I have not read Pinter at length, this need not be detrimental to your project. But it should be taken into consideration, as a commonsensical critique of the theory. If you look at it from my perspective, there are about a million different theories on offer, and so I am going to start by considering those that account for the fact that boulders have shape. If those turn out to be unworkable, then I will move on to consider the others.)
Lots of us have read lots of things. The trick when it comes to dialogue is to be able to synthesize, state theories in your own words, and interact in an organic way with diverging worldviews. It's quite difficult, but I think this was a good conversation in which good progress was made (at the very least in understanding one another's views). Thanks for that. Until next time.
Quoting Wayfarer
Enactivists disagree with Chalmers belief that we dont have a way to explain the unification of consciousness or subjective experience empirically. For instance, Evan Thompson sees affectivity as the unifying glue.
Gotcha. I see what you mean. I agree, most people don't think of "mind independent reality" the way I put it. I brought it up that way though because I'm not sure if "mind independence," can usefully be defined any other way without recourse to dualism.
If the supposition is that "mind independent entities " are those whose existence is not causally dependent on minds interacting with them, then this seems like a type of "mind independence" objective idealists acknowledge as well. There are exceptions, but generally the idealist claim isn't that perceiving or thinking about objects causes them to exist.
Can we have "mind independent existence," in a stronger sense? Maybe. But if it's something like "all the properties and effects of mind independent objects exist without reference to mind," that just seems wrong to me. It would seem to require some sort of implicit dualism where things' interactions with mind, and the properties instantiated in those interactions, are somehow unreal or "less real" properties.
But what is a definition of "mind independent existence," that goes further than "thinking of things doesn't cause their existence," but also accounts for the reality of the fact that all the objects we know about do,trivially, interact with mind?
This, I am stumped on. Generally definitions I am familiar with run along the lines of: "objects have all the properties they have independent of mind. These properties cause all phenomena. We can know about the objects because of their phenomenal effects. However, phenomena have no effect on objects' properties (i.e. their "mind independence")." This reminds me a bit of Neoplatonism's downward causality, only inverted such that Nous is below Psyche and Psyche is determined by and beneath the material world.
My objection is that it seems to me like the influence between the supposedly "mind independent" objects and phenomenal experience is a two way street. E.g., you don't like how your wall looks so you paint it, people think mountains are pretty so they photograph them, etc. The two causally flow into each other without distinction, which is what monist naturalism seems to suggest should happen.
Any division seems artificial to me,conflating a epistemic distinction with an ontological one. To the extent I have a problem with indirect realism, it's the fact that it tends to lead to this sort of soft dualism and hidden humonculi who are there to view the "representations" of the world.
I believe that foundational flaws are flaws of the ends rather flaws of the means which are methodological flaws or flaws of technique, according to this difference which I described in my last post. Methodological flaws (flaws of the means) are epistemological, while flaws of the ends are metaphysical flaws. This is why pragmaticism is a form of epistemology and it provides no acceptable metaphysical approach. It can provide no real principles for judging ends and determining foundational flaws (flaws of the ends).
So I believe that we actually can address foundational flaws in the faculty of understanding itself (the intellect), through metaphysics. And, I believe that change in these foundational elements (ends) is a form of evolution which is evidenced by the history of metaphysics and theology. Evolution is very real and the intellectual limitations of one species are not the same as those of another, so we need to be able to account for the reality of real substantial changes to the faculty of understanding (the intellect).
Quoting Leontiskos
As stated above, we are not in agreement here. One thing I tried to explain in the last post, is the point of |the ideal", as the highest possible perfection which is not ever actually obtainable. If we set an obtainable goal, then our efforts to better ourselves cease when that goal is reached. Therefore if we want to forever better ourselves, we need to set a goal of perfection, the ideal, unobtainable goal.
So when it is said "that the faculty of the intellect itself is inherently incapable of knowing reality as it is in itself", what is meant, is that there is an ideal, perfect knowledge of reality (God's knowledge for example), which we recognize that we will never achieve. However, this does not preclude the possibility of greatly improving our knowledge of reality. So it's not like we can never know anything about the independent reality, because clearly we make all sorts of statements, and pretend to know all sorts of things about the supposed independent reality, and many of these things are acceptable as true knowledge. However, such knowledge will always be fallible, and never of the sort of perfect certainty which some epistemologists who exclude fallibility from knowledge would request. Therefore it's only by excluding fallibility from knowledge, and forcing that requirement of perfect certainty, that "knowing" gets defined in such a way which produces the conclusion that we cannot "know" anything about the external reality.
Accordingly, we can accept the premise that "knowing reality", in this sort of perfect sense of "knowing" which excludes fallibility, this ideal knowledge, is impossible for the human intellect. But this need not stimy our attempts to produce such perfect knowledge through good metaphysics. To conclude then, I, as a human being, recognize that I will never obtain this ideal knowledge, but I do not exclude the possibility of another being reaching that level, so I will do what I can to help in that effort.
I replied <once>, but let me revisit my <initial post> since I don't think I will end up writing the thread on this topic any time soon. I find that the misrepresentation of this important idea is significant enough to warrant a response and clarification.
The following is a paradigm case of a bad argument, and it is the sort of thing that Hume falls into. It evinces a failure to even understand what argument is:
P: [Unlikely theory]
Q: [Numerous things we hold with a great deal of certitude]
The problem here is that argument, by its very nature, proceeds from premises that are more certain and more known, to conclusions that are less certain and less known. So in many ways this does not even rise to the level of an argument. It begins with a dubious premise and proceeds to an absurd conclusion, when instead it should reverse course and draw a salutary reductio. Argument is always a tug-of-war between different certitudes and different degrees of knowledge, and this example fails to understand that fact. It fails to understand that, in order for it to function as a real argument, P must be more certain than Q, when in fact the opposite is true.
But then what does this have to do with Pinter? The point is that—concrete certitudes aside—P and Q are inversely correlated, and whichever possesses less certitude will be eliminated in the conclusion of the argument. Hence, as should be obvious, theories which contradict a great many strongly-justified beliefs are implausible theories. If Pinter's theory does this, then it is implausible. If it does not, then it need not be.
The point at issue is that one cannot simply <present a theory as a justification for excluding facts>. The facts must be allowed to have their say. It is perfectly conceivable that the facts will make mincemeat of the theory, and that the rational course of action will be to accept the facts and reject the theory. Of course it may also be as @Wayfarer says, and we may have to give up the facts. But we surely do not want to be uncritical about the way in which facts and theory (among so many other things) play tug-of-war. Just because a theory excludes certain facts does not mean that the philosopher no longer has to reckon with those facts.
...so I apologize that my initial post may have been somewhat brusque and annoying, but it is certainly not the so-called "argumentum ad lapidem." Hopefully this post shows why.
Quoting Leontiskos
The reason that I compared it to Johnson's 'argument from the stone', is because the argument is predicated on the assertion that 'boulders obviously do have shape', meaning that the [abstruse theory] is required to deny an apparently obvious fact. That's the sense in which this argument is like 'the appeal to the stone', the difference being, instead of kicking the stone, you simply gesture towards it. But it is basically the same argument, with the difference that instead of appealing to the stone's hardness, you're appealing to its shape. The reason it is said not to be an effective response, is that it does not counter the claim that what we experience as an external shape is actually an idea or sensation generated in our sensory-intellectual system. What Berkeley actually denied was the existence of material substance that exists independently of being perceived. In other words, he didn't deny the existence of the rock as an idea or perception in our minds. He denied the existence of the rock as an independent material entity outside of our perception. (For Berkeley, a rock "exists" insofar as it is perceived by a mind. If no one is perceiving the rock, God, who perceives everything always, ensures its continuous existence by constantly perceiving it.)
Quoting Leontiskos
As noted previously, it is the nature of 'facts' that is one of the points at issue (if not the main point!) But part of Pinter's case is that there are no facts in the absence of the observer (as detailed in this earlier post.) That is the point at issue.
Oh, and yes, I grant that, and also that I'm obviously putting forward his argument as a philosophical argument.
A proposition that we have agreed upon is not a proposition that is being asserted/imposed (link):
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Wayfarer
But it does address that. If what we experience as an external shape is actually no more than an idea or sensation, then we would have no reason to believe that boulders would treat canyons differently than cracks. Yet you assented to the proposition that boulders do treat canyons differently than cracks (even when no minds are involved), precisely because you believe that shape is in fact more than an idea or sensation. The argument which supplies (2) counters precisely that claim.
I haven't waded through Pinter's system and pinpointed the exact junctures where he goes wrong, but we have agreed on (2), and this implies that he is wrong on that point. Maybe that's less than could be hoped for, but it is something. It's a work in progress.
But the whole reason we've reached this somewhat difficult point in the dialogue is because your intellectual honesty allowed you to affirm two things that you believe to be true, and yet which happen to contradict one another. That's great, and it's why I started the conversation in the first place. I would have skipped the thread if I didn't think the author was capable of this. There's nothing at all wrong with laboring through tensions or contradictions, and I would be remiss for pressing you too hard on the point.* No fruit comes without the aporia, and no one can tell how you will eventually go about resolving it. But I wish you luck in it.
* Really, I just think <this idea> is important to understand, and so I didn't want to let it get trammeled under foot or downplayed. "Systems" loom large in modern philosophy, and receive undue weight. I have not published my thread on that topic because folks tend to be suspicious that what is at play is nothing more than a debater's trick (as you were). Nothing could be further from the truth, but I haven't worked out how to make it more persuasive for publishing.
In my view, there's a very deep and profound underlying reason behind this conundrum. I think it has to do with the fact that in earlier times, as the world was seen as an expression of the Divine Will, then humans understood the world in a more personalistic way - there wasn't the same sense of separateness and 'otherness'.
One of the key quotes I often hail back to is the 'Cartesian anxiety' which 'refers to the notion that, since René Descartes posited his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other" (From Richard J Bernstein Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis, 1983).
Thomist philosophy did not suffer from this 'anxiety' because it had preserved the sense of the 'union of knower and known' from Aristotelian philosophy. But remember, this union was on the immaterial plane, the union of the intellect with the Forms of particulars. With the nominalist/empiricist revolution of late medieval and early modern periods, and the abandonment of scholastic realism, objects came to be regarded as being inherently existent, when, from the earlier point of view, they have no real being of their own.
That's the longer thesis that I'm working towards.
I would point with to Descartes, as I think that distinction is what underlies the "objective domain" cited by the OP.
So when <talking about> the mind knowing mind-independent reality as it is in itself, 'mind-independent reality' designates things like boulders, trees, mountains, walls, paint, etc. It doesn't really matter if the distinction is artificial, so long as an appreciable number of designata are understood by the term, and able to be spoken about. I don't see that the thread has foundered on this distinction in any way. It seems like everyone knows what is being spoken about. To be precise, though, the most obvious and most primary complement would be private, mind-generated realities, such as thoughts, opinions, Descartes' recognition that he is a thinking thing, etc.
---
- :up:
One of the themes I'm studying in Aristotelian-Thomist (A-T) philosophy, is of the way that the intellect (nous) knows the forms or intelligible principles of things. I will probably start a thread on this topic, but here is a passage in a text on Thomist psychology that I find highly persuasive.
To hark back to your 'boulder' example - I suspect that, if we peruse the texts on classical epistemology, we won't find any passages that concern the reality or otherwise of boulders. I would further suspect that this is because 'a boulder' is simply the accidental form of the idea 'stone', the essential characteristics of which are impenetrability, heaviness, and so on. But the nature of stones has not been something of much discussion, I don't think. It reminds me of the question in The Parmenides as to whether 'hair, mud and dirt' have forms.
As I mentioned above, one of the hallmarks of modern philosophy is that objects come to be regarded as being inherently existent, when, from the pre-modern point of view, they have no real being of their own. As Meister Eckhardt said, 'beings are mere nothings'.
I put this to ChatGPT4. You might be interested in perusing the dialogue.
I think maybe you are conflating perspectivism (at least as I defend it) with indirect realism. Perspectivism is not the view that we each get our own TV-screen which merely represents some differing and otherwise obscure Reality. Instead we are ourselves (as 'pure witness' behind the psychological subject) 'are' perspectives, which is to say the very being of the world itself, with the world understood to have no other kind of being. As we look down on that city in the valley, it exists only as the-valley-for, never from no perspective at all.
:up:
Thanks, I am trying to follow a thread, including its running through Leibniz's The Monadology, and I was curious if it runs through Spinoza's work too. We all 'face' and 'intend' the [ same ] world, but this world is given to or through individual 'faces ' ('subjects.') I take the TLP to identify the 'pure subject' with exactly the being of the world --a triumph over dualism and the reification of awareness as some other kind of elusive material.
Maybe this is what you meant by 'ontological' [subject.] The limits of my language are the limits of my world because my 'belief' is the meaningstructure of the world, not something 'in' me.
Saying that we are perspectives implies that the idea that "we are perspectives" has a meaning only inside the perspective of those who say it. This is equivalent to say that it is meaningless, because its meaning is entirely limited inside itself, entirely determined by itself.
Respectfully, I don't think you have responded really to my point. Indirect realism, which seems to be your position, is (I think) even the dominant view.
You wrote:
By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brain receives, organises and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves. ... By investing the objective domain with a mind-independent status, as if it exists independently of any mind, we absolutize it.
I think you are also half-suggesting that the brain creates itself, if you really understand it to create the world. On the whole, I think you are more likely presenting indirect realism. Some kind of elusive urstuff is Really Out There --- as in Kant, who does not want to be mistaken for an idealist.
[quote=Kant]
Idealism consists in the assertion, that there are none but thinking beings, all other things, which we think are perceived in intuition, being nothing but representations in the thinking beings, to which no object external to them corresponds in fact. Whereas I say, that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, i.e., the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses...Can this be termed idealism? It is the very contrary.
[/quote]
Here's indirect realism, which sounds very close to Kant.
Indirect realism is broadly equivalent to the scientific view of perception that subjects do not experience the external world as it really is, but perceive it through the lens of a conceptual framework.[3] Furthermore, indirect realism is a core tenet of the cognitivism paradigm in psychology and cognitive science. While there is superficial overlap, the indirect model is unlike the standpoint of idealism, which holds that only ideas are real, but there are no mind-independent objects.[4]
My own perspectivism (not really mine) is closer to idealism in a certain sense, but it reduces the subject to world rather than the other way around. (Like James or Mach, etc.)
I guess I'm asking you to clarify whether you are basically an indirect realist. Hence my quotes of Hobbes and Locke who are themselves close to Kant.
Perhaps instead, as per Bourdieu, 'my habitus' (or Merleau-Ponty 'my flesh' ... Nietzsche 'my body').
If you spy on your neighbor by peeping in through one window, and I peep in through another, are we not both peeping in on the same neighbor ?
If I believe that the Jones is guilty, while you believe he is innocent, aren't we both believing about the same Jones ?
I think (?) you are assuming some kind of dualism, as each of us is stuck in a solipsistic bubble of world-dream. I'm saying there 'is' not 'ontological' subject, or rather that such a subject is the being of the world, which is given like a cubist painting.
This may be a wild misreading, but, following Mach, are you [also] hinting at the fusion of my flesh and the world ? In a certain sense, I 'am' [also] my coffee cup. The boundaries of the ego are practically-conventionally determined.
But I can't deny that the flesh in another sense is both seeing and seen, and it's 'me' in the sense of its intimate relationship with my 'will.' [ Merleau-Ponty is a great mention. Only in the last year did I finally pay attention to such a great philosopher. ]
:up:
We end up with a boy in the bubble, who can't be sure there's a world out there.
[quote= Aquinas]The separation of form from matter requires two stages if the idea is to be elaborated: first, the sensitive stage, wherein the external and internal senses operate upon the material object, accepting its form without matter, but not without the appendages of matter; second the intellectual stage, wherein agent intellect operates upon the phantasmal datum, divesting the form of every character that marks and identifies it as a particular something.
[/quote]
This translates in my mind into a description of the scientific method. The sensitive stage becomes the gathering of data and experimentation, and the intellectual stage is theorising and hypothesis forming.
[quote= Thompson]“Douglas F. Watt (1998) describes affect as ‘a prototype “whole brain event”', but we could go further and say that affect is a prototypical whole-organism event.[/quote]
"Affect" looks to be functioning here as the objectification of subjectivity. and I think it can help me in this context to clarify what I see as an important distinction between subjectivity and perspective.
Perspective seems to correspond to the form of the rock; the rock has a form, and that gives rise to any subject necessarily having a particular perspective on the rock. Whereas the 'affect' of an organism is the internally generated sense of its own being. The yeast cell defines itself and delimits itself as sugar in, CO2 or Alcohol out.
A subject locates itself as an entity, and its perspective arises from its location. But such a definition of self is necessarily permeable and incomplete. It's affect is its response to its environment as well as its response to itself. ( I am a farmer, teacher, philosopher, scientist an interactor of some sort with the environment...)
So when one starts to speak of colonial species and social species, there is potential for conflicted identification as between the cell and the colony; the conflict we experience as morality. Bees are the original suicide bombers, and greater love hath no bee, than to lay down his life for his hive. Is the hive the environment of the individual bee, or is the beekeeper or the bear the environment of the hive?
It becomes apparent to the environmentalist that the distinction that forms the subject is as real and as vague as the distinction of a weather system. the subject is a temporary vortex that is always part of a larger system to which it is accountable, and into which it dissolves. Forms arise and dissolve and all things must pass.
As the cognitive scientists say, in that video presentation I mentioned, of course there is an external world, but we don't see it as it is.
The reason I don't call that, or my view of that, indirect realism, is because that posits two things - one, the real world, and two, the representation or image of it. But we can't ever compare 'the real world' with 'the representation of it'.
The Mind and Cosmic Order intro again - 'Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxies—but all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation. This is the way the early universe was before the emergence of life—and the way the present universe is outside the view of any observer.'
My argument is simpy that the mind or brain assimilates sensory and rational information and from this constructs what we understand as 'the world'. I'm not denying that there is a world apart from the mind, but saying that whatever we think or say about that purported world absent any mind is meaningless. I'm struggling to understand what about this is controversial or confusing, it seems very straightforward to me.
Quoting plaque flag
In the second edition of the CPR, Kant took pains to distinguish himself from Berkeley, because critics accused him of being like Berkeley, whom Kant described as a 'problematic idealist' on account of Berkeley saying that a world outside himself is dubious or impossible to know. But Kant described himself as transcendental idealist, and differentiated that from what he described as 'problematical idealism'. You can find details here.
Quoting Angelo Cannata
Time comprises the duration between instances, space the distance between points, right? So, how can those have objective reality without an observing mind that perceives the relation between given instances and specific points? It seems to me that as all of these require the connection of points in space and instances in time, that it is only a mind that can ascertain these relations, as without there being a scale or perspective, what is nearer and further or smaller and larger, sooner or later, an immense period of time, or a minute period?
As Kant puts it at the beginning of his critique:
He concludes 'Space does not represent any property of objects as things in themselves, nor does it represent them in their relations to each other'.
I take it from this, and please correct me if I am wrong, that Kant denies to space and time a purely objective reality; that, in other words, space and time have an inextricably subjective ground. Hence perspective can't really be avoided.
Quoting unenlightened
Except that scientific method eschews the notion of there being intelligible forms, per se.
I don't think it does. Equations are forms; Classificatory systems are forms. They use another language is all.
That's an idea that I'm pursuing; that what Plato called 'forms' are really more like 'intellectual principles' and the like. But still, science generally, since Galileo, has strongly rejected anything sounding like Aristotelian matter-form dualism, and there's nothing corresponding to the Scholastic idea of the 'rational soul' in scientific theory. It's grounded in naturalism, and the existence of 'soul' is rejected as a matter of definition.
This is maybe the grand issue of German Idealism, so maybe it's not so surprising that it's controversial. Kant's own followers questioned the pointlessness of this X that nothing could be said about. But I think the confusion can be partially laid at your door.
You open with: 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.
But you offer some kind of Kantian indirect realism, which if fine, of course --- it's a respectable position. And maybe the point was to ease the non-philosophical causal reader into Kantianism in an unintimidating way. Again, no complaint. But maybe saying mind is 'foundational' to existence is a little misleading ? As many philosophers have noted, that X is ambiguous and questionable.
:up:
I'd say it's bad scientistic metaphysicians [ who may sometimes also be physicists ] who tend to imagine these 'forms' as something somehow 'extra-mental' that is hidden 'behind' appearance/experience.
But Kant doesn't call himself, and is not referred to, as an indirect realist. Kant's position is known as transcendental idealism.
Quoting plaque flag
What I'm arguing against is the commonly-held view that mind is a product of physical causes. That is the general view of evolutionary naturalism, is it not? I hold to a view that the mind transcends physical causes. But I'm also not wishing to appeal to theism.
I've read Kant's outraged responses to his early critics. He was truly pissed. I've quoted them here even, years ago. But I don't think Berkeley's point is that we can't know things outside of our individual selves. I think his point is that a-perspectival, a-sensual, a-experiential reality does not compute. Like talk of triangles with 17 sides.
You can of course link me to secondary sources, but I was quoting primary sources to begin with. From the book he wrote after receiving that criticism, when he tried to force himself to be clearer.
[i]Long before Locke's time, but assuredly since him, it has been generally assumed and granted without detriment to the actual existence of external things, that many of their predicates may be said to belong not to the things in themselves, but to their appearances, and to have no proper existence outside our representation. Heat, color, and taste, for instance, are of this kind. Now, if I go farther, and for weighty reasons rank as mere appearances the remaining qualities of bodies also, which are called primary, such as extension, place, and in general space, with all that which belongs to it (impenetrability or materiality, space, etc.)—no one in the least can adduce the reason of its being inadmissible. As little as the man who admits colors not to be properties of the object in itself, but only as modifications of the sense of sight, should on that account be called an idealist, so little can my system be named idealistic, merely because I find that more, nay,
All the properties which constitute the intuition of a body belong merely to its appearance.
The existence of the thing that appears is thereby not destroyed, as in genuine idealism, but it is only shown, that we cannot possibly know it by the senses as it is in itself.
...
I leave to things as we obtain them by the senses their actuality, and only limit our sensuous intuition of these things to this, that they represent in no respect, not even in the pure intuitions of space and of time, anything more than mere appearance of those things, but never their constitution in themselves
[/i]
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52821/52821-h/52821-h.htm
[quote=CPR, A369]I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. To this idealism is opposed transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensiblity). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding.[/quote]
Having distinguished between transcendental idealism and transcendental realism, Kant then goes on to introduce the concept of empirical realism:
[quote=A370] The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance– which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing –matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are call external, not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another, but that space itself is in us. [/quote]
"The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility" - you will observe that this is the view almost universally defended by others in this debate.
To the extent I have a problem with indirect realism, is reconciled by distinguishing the operation of the cognitive system, in and of itself, on its own accord, from talking about the constituent parts that enable its function. The talking about it is that which creates the very Cartesian theater alledged to subsist in it. It is absurd to suppose reason has a partner, or intuition has a twin.
Consider time. At one point the subject thinks, feels, knows….whatever. It is at another time he reconsiders the content of former time, and whether sufficiently identical to it or not, it is still the same system belonging to the same subject in operation for both times. For any times, in fact.
From here, it follows the soft dualism in question doesn’t reside within the system, but dualism proper is the condition resident between the system in which representations are the effects, and that which is given to it, by which representations are caused. There is no “view”; there is merely relation.
I suspect….I’d like to think…..the extent to which you have a problem with indirect realism, isn’t so great.
I don't think the phrase 'indirect realism' was invented yet. But let's just look.
The indirect realist agrees that the coffee cup exists independently of me. However, through perception I do not directly engage with this cup; there is a perceptual intermediary that comes between it and me. Ordinarily I see myself via an image in a mirror, or a football match via an image on the TV screen. The indirect realist claim is that all perception is mediated in something like this way. When looking at an everyday object it is not that object that we directly see, but rather, a perceptual intermediary. This intermediary has been given various names, depending on the particular version of indirect realism in question, including “sense datum, ” “sensum,” “idea,” “sensibilium,” “percept” and “appearance.
https://iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/#H2
Here's Kant:
[i]All the properties which constitute the intuition of a body belong merely to its appearance.
The existence of the thing that appears is thereby not destroyed, as in genuine idealism, but it is only shown, that we cannot possibly know it by the senses as it is in itself.
...
I leave to things as we obtain them by the senses their actuality, and only limit our sensuous intuition of these things to this, that they represent in no respect, not even in the pure intuitions of space and of time, anything more than mere appearance of those things, but never their constitution in themselves.[/i]
Kant is truly more radical than Hobbes or Locke. For even matter in motion is mere appearance. The deep Stuff of the world is (in the quotes I've presented so far) completely hidden and mysterious.
For Kant, we only have [math] f(X) [/math], never [math] X [/math], where [math]f[/math] is our cognitive 'filter.' But [math] X [/math] serves no purpose here. I think Kant is misled by an analogy, thinking he can talk sensibly not only beyond individual human perspectives but beyond the human perspective altogether.
It's not my term. It's just standard philosophical terminology. You can of course stick to Kant's terminology. But that's beside the point, is it not ?
Sure we can. We just can't achieve a perfect match between our representation of the world and the full detail of the way the world is. Every day, billions of people are comparing their representations of the world with reality. Some manage to increase the accuracy of their representations.
that's more or less what I'm arguing in the OP.
I don't agree with 'indirect realism' because it posits two separate things - the reality and its representation. As if we could compare them.
Of course you can compare a photograph or a painting with the actual subject that it's supposed to represent, but that is not at issue.
I think Husserl also handles this nicely. We can always get a better and more complete look at something. We have the 'transcendent' (inexhaustible) object which we are never done learning about. We never see even a desk lamp from every possible angle in every possible lighting.
That 'truth' of the object is how it is for an ideal looking-at-it, roughly speaking. But this include accumulating concepts, relating objects to one another, the whole of science even.
But aren't you explicitly positing two things ? The representing and the represented ?
When you made that remark, I had copied in a section of Pinter's text, which, incidentally, was introduced by him referring to Wittgenstein's dictum that 'the world is the totality of facts', to wit:
[quote=Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 93). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition]In a universe without an observer having a purpose, you cannot have facts. As you may judge from this, a fact is something far more complex than it appears to be at first sight. In order for a fact to exist, it must be preceded by a segmentation of the world into separate things, and requires a brain that is able to extract it from the background in which it is immersed*. Moreover, this brain must have the power to conceive in Gestalts, because in order to perceive its outlines and extract it, a fact must be seen whole, together with some of its context.
A fact does not exist if it has not been articulated, that is, if it does not exist explicitly as a verbal entity sufficiently detailed that it can be made to correspond (approximately) to something in the external world. Facts don’t exist in the absence of their statement (because a statement cuts the fact out of the background), and the statement cannot exist apart from an agent with a purpose. When an intentional agent sets out to carve a specific object from the background world, he has a Gestalt concept of the object—and from the latter, he acts to carve the object out. Thus, a fact cannot exist in a universe without living observers.
A fact does not hold in the universe if it has not been explicitly formulated. That should be obvious, because a fact is specific. In other words, statements-of-fact are produced by living observers, and thereby come into existence as a result of being constructed. It is only after they have been constructed (in words or symbols) that facts come to exist. Commonsense wisdom holds the opposite view: It holds that facts exist in the universe regardless of whether anyone notices them, and irrespective of whether they have been articulated in words. You may now judge for yourself if that is true.[/quote]
What do you make of this?
I'm a correlationist (or something like that), so I think you aren't being radical enough.
Quoting plaque flag
No. If the world as it is in itself is unknown to us, then it's not a thing. It neither exists nor does not exist.
Yes, commonsense tends to forget or not notice the transparent subject, which I equate with the very being of the world. So people tend to think that the world exists in an aperspectival way somehow. But I don't think we can really make sense of that. We understand 'matter' or its surrogate in terms of possible perception, possible experience. Experience is always a fusion of subject and object, to put it roughly, though it's more like a nondual stream that divides only upon reflection. I agree with Husserl that a certain kind of scientific realism is absurd, despite its popularity.
Well, that's what I meant from the outset.
Perhaps your view is changing as the discussion proceeds. But here you said :
Quoting Wayfarer
So you have a brain which presumably 'really' exists (a brain-in-itself, made of ur-stuff) taking more of this ur-stuff and creating ordinary experience. If the brain is itself mere appearance, then of course the brain-created world no longer makes sense.
Kant wrote that the hidden reality is nothing like appearance, not even spatially or temporally. But by abandoning primary qualities in this way, he abandons the brain and the sense organs. So he pushes Hobbes and Locke to a point of mystic and glorious absurdity.
It's only because of our ordinary experience with sense organs that we came up with the idea of appearance and perspective.
There's no way of being sure that we are both believing about the same Jones.
My own take is that language is fundamentally social, more social than individual. 'Language speaks the subject.'
Basically like this :
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/
Moreover, critical rational discussion presupposes a shared language and a shared world. Rational norms are implicitly self-transcending.
So one can be mad, of course, truly fretting that one is trapped in a bubble, but one cannot argue seriously for the impossibility of the conditions of an argument being meaningful.
The brain doesn't appear at all. Not unless you're someone who is studying brains.
I agree, but we should be careful not to turn perspectives into objective realities. This mistake can be avoided by considering that, by talking about perspectives, we, as a consequence, need to apply the relativity of everything to the idea of perspectives as well, so that, at the end, we need to admit that, ultimately, we don't know what we are talking about.
?
This doesn't seem relevant. Of course our brains are protected by our skulls and our flesh.
Words are words. The issue is deciding when we are just using words or the words are using us.
I think you are making a good point about the fragility of relativism.
But one can say (with me) that we only ever have belief without also saying that all beliefs are equally worthy. We can accept our fallibility without being helplessly lost in doubt. In fact, we always do take all sorts of 'truths' for granted. Peirce is great on the 'settling' of belief. Inquiry is activated by the wobble of this or that piece of our 'belief machinery' --- which mostly runs quietly in the darkness. It's because we don't question the meaning of most of our words than we can question (in those words) the meaning of this or that one. And so on.
I think I should stress that I don't deny the necessity of an individual working brain for though. The point is that we are cultural beings, and that the hardware of the brain is necessary but not sufficient for us to be fully human. The hardware (wetware) is a thin client, a sine qua non.
To think rationally is to think according to norms. Following Brandom's inferentialism, I'd say that meaning is essentially normative/social. I do not at all deny the importance and possibility of acts of individual creativity. Such innovations sometimes spread throughout the culture, and there is no culture at all without actual living bodies. Spirit (culture) is a modification of 'nature.' It's all built on/from living flesh and its environment.
This is why I insist that the lifeworld is always already 'significant' or linguistically-structured. Sort of what Wittgenstein was about in the TLP. How do propositions mean ? The world is all that is case. What does it mean to call P true ? I say that belief is simply the structure of the world given perspectively. But we can have 'signitive intentions,' guesses that a box contains X rather than Y. So our counterfactuals picture the meaningful lifeworld, not some hidden ur-stuff. And 'seeing is believing' means that a 'fulfilled intention' is an extremely strong pressure on our belief (on the articulable meaningform of 'our-world-for-me.') Though we can always retrospectively decide that we hallucinated, or must have been dreaming.
No brain has ever been a phenomenon to the subject to which it belongs. The only brain that will ever appear to me, is someone else’s, and even if I intuit it as such, I will still never apprehend its internal machinations.
To be more precise, Berkeley described how the existence of matter is an unnecessary assumption. He provided very good arguments, and demonstrated how "matter" is just a concept employed by us to account for the inferred temporal continuity of bodies, objects. This supposed temporal continuity (which is inferred from observations) makes an object identifiable at different times as the same object, supporting Aristotle's law of identity. The inferred continuous existence of the same object which is derived from observations of sameness (similarity) at different times, is commonly justified as caused by, or the result of the "matter" which inheres within the object.
Notice that I used "inheres within the object", because this is what I explained is a place holder for the unknown. So "matter" is just a place holder for the unknown. The real cause of the temporal continuity of sameness, which people attribute to "the matter" of the object is unknown.
So Berkeley demonstrates that "matter" as a concept of something which exists independently of human minds is no more justified, nor even better than the concept of "the Mind of God". Each of these two concepts serves to account for the temporal continuity of sameness of objects, in its own way, with its own history, but in reality each is just a different place holder for the unknown; each having its own connotations and extensions. Analysis of the connotations, extensions and history of usage is how we find out that each involves a different perspective toward the unknown.
Quoting Wayfarer
That the boulder truly does not have a shape is supported by Einsteinian relativity, as shape is dependent on the frame of reference. This is understood under the concept of length contraction which is related to time dilation.
Haven't you said this from your own perspective?
You are mistaking the appearance of shape from different reference frames with each other.
It is similar to saying a pencil isn't straight because when dropped into a glass of water the pencil appears bent.
No it is not "appearance" only. That is the whole point of relativity theory, it is what is really the case if e adhere to relativity theory. Just like the simultaneity of two events is actually different depending on frame of reference, and the passage of time is actually different (time dilation) depending on the frame of reference, the shape of the object is actually different (length contraction) depending on the frame of reference. When it is the case that from two distinct frames of reference, the shape of the object is different, we cannot say that one is the real, or true shape. That is the whole point of relativity theory in general.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
To further understand this difference, it manifests as the difference between transcendent and immanent in the understanding of divinity, as well as the difference between local and non-local in quantum mechanics.
Simply put, the difference is in the way that we understand temporal continuity in relation to spatial existence. If temporal continuity is proper, and unique to each point in space, then each point has its own inherent maintenance as immanence, but if temporal continuity is universal, and the temporal continuity of all points everywhere, is related, this is transcendence.
Yes. But, respectfully, so what ? What do you expect ? A voice from the whirlwind ? But even that'd just be God's perspective, no ?
[1] Belief is the conceptual 'dimension' of the-world-from-a-perspective.
[2] This claim is itself a belief : in other words, the structure of our world as I see it.
[3] You may see the world differently, but the right string of words from me might change the way you see this same world.
If I give testimony, then it's indeed me giving testimony. I'll leave it for a certain stripe of mystic to believe in some naked reality, some grasp of Truth that is more than relatively settled belief. We can always change our minds, on some issues more plausibly than others. As I see it, you are maybe floating the usual bubble theory, paradoxically asserting that our world can't be talked about. The true sceptic is a madman or reduced to silence. Those who bring insight or even criticism take the shared world, shared language, and shared rational norms for granted (this equiprimordial pseudo-trinity is really one.)
I don't pretend to infallibility, and I hold to my right to change my mind in the future. As I see it, we tend to discuss our shared world from our differing perspectives. By doing so, we synthesize what we tend to call more adequate or 'objective' perspectives. I'm a big fan of Popper and his talk of letting our theories do our dying for us. His 'basic statements 'are also useful here. The tower of science rises from a swamp. No statement is beyond falsification or revision, but we take some as sure enough for now.
The newbie calculus student sees the same real numbers as the Fields Medal analyst, but not at all with the same depth or adequacy. They intend the same worldly object, the real number system (a cultural object), just as the child and the neurosurgeon can intend the same brain. Note that if inquiry is the settling of belief, which involves the resolution of a tension, it's no surprise that we understand our newly settled state as an improvement (as us moving closer to the 'truth.') But there's nothing magical in this word 'truth.' I call beliefs I share 'true.' In other words, I call descriptions of the world as I see it 'true.'
Have you ever done the math?
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/691825/will-you-see-distance-contraction-inside-the-space-ship-at-near-light-speed
Might I rest assured you’re familiar with the so-called “dual aspect’ vs “dual object” theory, regarding transcendental philosophy, or theories of perception in general? If you are, and hold with the dual object scenario, which seems to be the case, re: “…posits two separate things…”, then your objection to indirect realism may be valid. But for he who holds with the dual aspect scenario, in which there are not two separate things, but merely two methods for examining the one thing**, the objection can be overruled.
So saying, transcendental theory, as epistemologically grounded as it is, makes explicit there are not two separate things, the real and the representation of the real, a seemingly ontological consideration to be sure, insofar as the representation is not a thing in the same sense as the thing which appears, is. This denominates representation to a speculative procedural constituent, logically concluded or rationally presupposed, rather than empirically given. It also makes the determination as to necessity vs contingency a mitigating condition in itself, the logic being necessary, the empirical, contingent.
And, while I agree we do not compare them, per se, the real against the representation, there are judgements which follow in due course. It is the judgements on the synthesis of representations, or, which is the same thing, our cognitions, that are compared, and those by reason for their mutual consistency, and to which Nature informs of the correctness, either of the one in particular, or of the one over the other in a series.
(** two methods: thought, and experience)
Is there another reason you do not agree with indirect realism? Or is it simply that I’m misconstruing what you meant by it?
Kant touch this.
:cool:
Right, and this definition of objective is what I most took issue with in my original response. I think it's lumping multiple ideas together that are better separated.
It seems fine as a pragmatic distinction to me as well. Like I said, I think such a distinction is fairly widely recognized. What I was asking was: is there a definition of mind independence that goes beyond merely a rejection of subjective idealism-- i.e. a definition that can challenge objective idealism --- while remaining monist, coherent, and consistent?
Personally, I'm not aware of such a definition that avoids falling into dualism. But if there isn't such a definition, then it's unclear to me exactly what objective idealists are arguing against or what their critics are arguing for.
As you point out, in obvious ways, some entities seem mind independent (rocks versus the mental image of a rock). In other obvious ways, nothing we know is mind independent (trivially true). In general, neither objective idealism nor its physicalist converse challenge these intuitive distinctions, which leads me to question what sort of definition would put what is at stake into clear terms? "Objectivity" here is, IMO, a red herring, neither here nor there, since it is best defined in terms of perspective and subjectivity.
Plus, the obvious cases bleed into less obvious ones. Is the United States of America mind-independent? Communism? Species? Color? It seems fairly obvious that these can all be described objectively to some degree. For example, there is an objective fact about the color of stop lights. But color being "mind independent" seems to spark more debate.
See below for more detail on why I think such a definition of mind-independence will be hard to come up with.
That's certainly an important part of the history. But the problem seems to have accelerated first with Kant's notion of the noumena and again with positivist attempts to argue that "objectivity becomes equivalent to truth at the limit." This is then combined with the larger issue of "objectivity" becoming conflated with "noumenal," "mind-independent," or "real."
Per you're earlier response:
This seems to be a definition of objectivity that requires too many metaphysical assumptions for me. That it might be popular just suggests to me that the definition is part of the problem. It seems to me that it requires:
1. That objects are ontologically more fundamental than properties. I.e., that objects are not defined by their properties. If objects [I]were[/I] defined by their properties, we'd have to explain on what grounds we can eliminate objects' properties vis-á-vis mind from consideration when it comes to "defining" an object. This is the case if we want to achieve a conception of "mind independence," anyhow. If objects are defined by their properties, then mind independent objects and those interacting with mind would be [I]different objects[/I], a sort of Kantian dualism of the sort Kant made efforts to avoid (arguably unsuccessfully).
2. It seems to require that objects hold the properties they do intrinsically. If objects have the properties they do in virtue of interactions with other objects, then any conception of "mind-independence" would need to explain how interactions with mind are not the type of extrinsic relations/properties that come to define an object. Same problems as #1 re dualism.
3. It seems to require a substance metaphysics since objects need to be more fundamental than their attributes. Objects must be somehow "contained" from the rest of the world, such that we have objects, plural, and not a single object.
I think there are ways around #1 and #2. Metaphysics has the idea of "bare substratum," pure haecceities or "objectness" that properties can attach to. But even advocates of substratum have approached it with reticence, and the need for such a view, to my mind, is simply evidence against objects being ontologically basic in the first place.
Of course, you could take most of the above as simply a good argument against any strong mind-independence, which you seem to be arguing for. That's fair. But there does seem to be an intuitive way in which external objects are mind-independent and I'd like to find a way to define that relation too. Further, if "objectivity" gets thrown into this issue, I feel like it puts us in the less defensible position of having to attack the "objectivity of the world," rather than simply arguing that objectivity is not what is at stake when defining "mind-independence."
If we instead define objectivity in terms of views being more or less objective/subjective, not loading the term up with ontological implications, it seems like we can separate the desire to speak of an achievable "objective view of the world," from whole issue of Kantian-style dualism.
For sure. My reticence re indirect realism doesn't equate to support for most formulations of direct realism. It's more a dissatisfaction with current theories of perception. Not that I have a good alternative; it's always easier to critique.
I do, however, tend towards the "direct," in some key ways. Hegel's intuition that, when we come to think differently about something, we change that thing, seems apt to me. The most obvious cases are those involving institutions. As history progresses, we come to view entities differently. "Communism," today doesn't mean what "communism" meant in 1848 when the Manifesto was published. The entity has changed with our conception of it. The very fact of our coming to see the entity in different ways changes the entity. The same is true with "chivalry," "Christianity," "the Second Amendment," etc.
But those entities can obviously also be described objectively in many ways. Hegel's insight is that this sort of change also applies to seemingly more "concrete," entities as well. When we discover more about water, lead, foxes, bacteria, etc. their relations with the world also change because our conception of them is one such relation. Thus, if objects are described relationally, then they change as the history of consciousness unfolds. And in this sense, the relation between perception / thought and entities seems quite direct.
If we say that only our "representations" of entities change throughout cognitive history, I fear we end up in dualism. How does this apply to things like "economic recessions?" Obviously, our representation is part of what that sort of entity is. But then recessions also have global causal powers; they enact a lot of physical effects for mere "representation," effects that can be objectively studied. A hard line between mental objects that change as conceptions of them change and objects-in-themselves who only have their representations changed seems doomed to end up very blurry. Thus, I find it better to talk about concreteness, and just accept that any "representation" is itself a direct relation between mind and the object being represented.
And this is, IMO, the presupposition that is the weak link. I don't agree with everything Hegel says about Kant, but I do agree with the position that the presupposition that perceptions are of objects in Kant is the stumbling block therein. This is given dogmatically, and I tend to agree with Hegel that it can't be taken for granted since it essentially begs the question on the issue of representation vis-a-vis reality. The point isn't that thoughts/perceptions cannot be of objects; it's that we can't start with that as a given. Recovering the objects of sensation without assuming them resolves the dualism (if you buy the story Hegel is selling anyhow).
So does "gnomon". :joke:
A gnomon (/?no??m?n, -m?n/; from Ancient Greek ?????? (gn?m?n) 'one that knows or examines')
Quoting unenlightened
The enactivists look at subject-object, organism-environment this way:
The organism interprets its world, but not by representing it, not by attempting to match an internal model with an external reality. Instead, perception is grounded in sensory-motor interactions with the world. We know by doing, not by representing. Organisms know their world by building a niche out of it and interacting with this niche. Whatever aspects of that world are irrelevant to the goals and purposes that are defined by organism-niche interaction are invisible to that creature. So all living systems, through their activity within their niche, continually define their world via what matters, is significant and relevant to their continued functioning. The organism ceases to be an organism as soon as it loses this goal-oriented integrity and unity of functioning. Affect in its most basic form is simply this normative, goal-oriented organizational a priori. To perceive a rock as an object with properties such as weight, size and shape is to first construct such idealizations as identically persisting object number, magnitude, extension and measure. In other words, mathematics, logic and empirical science are human-created environmental niches that guide the way we interact with our world. They are affective value systems, through which we normatively determine correctness or incorrectness, truth and falsity in relation to all the features of rocks and other value objects experienced from within our constructed niche.
I would be a strong supporter of something like this theory if it were about a process. 'Minding', perhaps.
I know academe studies 'philosophy of mind' but 'mind' is a very English-language concept. Even our neighbours' French and German struggle to translate 'mind'. It's a thing that isn't a thing, an all-encompassing entity that yet has no 'stuff' in it. To me it feels to be in the way, like a homunculus.
Maybe 'minding' isn't right either but (a) it's a process, and I feel that much of what you write about is about process; (b) it relates to 'thinking' without imprisoning that thinking in a particular pseudo-place, allowing the body as well as the brain to get a look-in, indeed perhaps allowing the process to be free-floating in a Hegelian way as plaque flag references; (c) it's got an element of attention or caring in it, 'Yes I do mind', a touch of Heidegger's 'sorge' if we're prepared to mention the old Nazi - and for me that helps, we're talking about creatures who go about the world and aren't necessarily sitting back in their armchairs, puffing on their pipes, reflecting on great Matters, they are rather coping in the here and now with what matters to them, inventing ideas to explain what happens as they move around, improvising, improving, bouncing ideas off each other.
On this account of course there is no 'real' to penetrate to or to accept is forever out of reach, because there need be no ontology, like Collingwood's metaphysics. Epistemology might be all there is :)
All very interesting, but I am more interested in how the boundary is formed; the 'dash' between organism and environment. You say, "the organism interprets..." and one assumes therefrom that the environment does not interpret. So there is an action before the act of interpretation, which is the act of self identification, that has to happen for there to be a separate world to interpret.
Quoting unenlightened
Most of our living is social, and our cultural environment is reciprocally interpretive. In the agential realism of Karen Barad and Joseph Rouse the non-human environment also interprets. Not everything for them has to lead back to a perceiving subject. They are perfectly happy to imagine a world without humans or animals in which each aspect of it interacts with other aspects in an agential way. That is, material interaction always takes place within configurations of mutual affecting that lend to all phenomena an intrinsically interpretive character.
Concerning the idea of organismic self-identification, on the one hand, one would have to say that the ‘self’ of the organism is not something locked within the borders of the physical body or brain, but is instead the ongoing and continually changing patterns of activity produced by brain-body-world reciprocal interaction. On the other hand, the organism part of this body-world interaction is characterized by a certain operational closure or asymmetry with respect to the world. Merleau-Ponty describes this ‘boundary’ as a ‘flesh’ of the world or chiasm, a kind of reciprocal exchange. One would have to imagine a self which continually comes to itself from the world, reinventing itself through this exposure and yet maintaining a certain integrity or style of being through these changes.
D’accord. The analytic dudes got ahold of it, sent it off into the metaphysical puckerbrush.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
As do I, re: perception. Every perception is directly real, from which follows every sensation given from any one of them, is directly real.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Ehhhhh…I’m a staunch, dyed-in-the-wool, card-carryin’ dualist, so my position is we can’t really end up where we always were to begin with.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yeah, but that’s a qualitative judgement describing a subject that holds those representations. Just as the representations change in correspondence to the conception of the entity, usually via experience, so too will the subject’s judgement change in correspondence to his representations. Blurry may then, if not become clear, then at least become different, in which case, what was formally i.e., a recession, becomes merely (a-HEM) a historically precedented temporary downward trend.
But I get your point.
No, that's a pretty good analysis. Bernardo Kastrup will say that 'tears' are the 'external appearance' of sadness, but that they are not, in themselves, the actual feeling of sadness. They are how my sadness appears to another, whereas I experience it first person. I suppose that is dual-aspect monism isn't it?
Quoting Mww
:lol:
Nice to see you back, and well said! :clap:
In passing it is worth noting that the current understanding of matter is represented by 'the standard model of particle physics.' And where do models exist, if not in minds? Hence, Richard Conn Henry's The Mental Universe and Bernard D'Espagnat, What we call Reality is Just a State of Mind.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Do you have any representatives of objective idealism in mind? Perhaps this snippet from the Wikipedia entry might provide grist for the mill:
[quote=Wikipedia;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_idealism#:~:text=Objective%20idealism%20starts]Objective idealism starts with Plato’s theory of forms, which mantains that objectively existing but non-material "ideas" give form to reality, thus shaping its basic building blocks.
....
The philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce defined his own version of objective idealism as follows:
The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws (Peirce, CP 6.25).
By "objective idealism", Peirce meant that material objects such as organisms have evolved out of mind, that is, out of feelings ("such as pain, blue, cheerfulness") that are immediately present to consciousness.[8] Contrary to Hegel, who identified mind with conceptual thinking or reason, Peirce identified it with feeling, and he claimed that at the origins of the world there was "a chaos of unpersonalized feelings", i.e., feelings that were not located in any individual subject.[8] Therefore, in the 1890s Peirce's philosophy referred to itself as objective idealism because it held that the mind comes first and the world is essentially mind (idealism) and the mind is independent of individuals (objectivism)[/quote]
Peirce's vision is congenial to my way of thought. What you see with the appearance of the first organisms is also the appearance of subjective awareness albeit in rudimentary form.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I acknowledge that mine was an idiosyncratic definition, that 'inherent in the object' is not, in fact, the definition of 'objectivity'. But I still maintain that there are more and less objective ways of understanding. I referred above to the efficacy of the scientifically-developed COVID vaccines opposed to quack cures like hydrochloroquine - the scientifically-developed medicines are objectively more effective. I don't see how that can be disputed.
The philosophical issue I see with 'mind-independence' is this: Natural science might be perfectly justified in attempting to attain the hypothetical 'view from nowhere', that is, an understanding free of subjective, cultural, personal and other forms of bias. That is what I would designate 'methodological naturalism'. However, to make of that a metaphysical axiom - that science really sees 'the world' as it is and would be in the absence of any observer - is another matter entirely. In doing this, empiricism attempts to assign an absolute value to the objects of perception which are necessarily contingent. So trying to assign 'mind-independence' to the sensory domain is a performative contradiction, as any perception of it is necessarily contingent upon the senses and intellect (per Kant).
It's worth recalling that, in the classical tradition, objects of perception were regarded as being near to non-existent - they are ephemeral fleeting instances of the Forms. According to Afikan Spir, neoKantian philosopher, 'the empirical world has an illusory character, because phenomena are ever-changing, and empirical reality is unknowable.' Which, again, seems to find plenty of justification in the current state of physics!
Quoting Wikipedia
That notion seems to go beyond your notion of a local Mind-Created World, to an ideal Mind that is literally out-of-this-world. Does Peirce define his postulated "The Mind" in more detail? How does "The Mind" compare to your creative "minds"? :smile:
You are appealing to a narrow concept of existence here.
How so ?
To be sure, I'm using a fairly concrete analogy there (taken from L) , but I embrace the existence of all kinds of mental entities, mathematical entities, etc. Truly I think I have an especially inclusive sense of existence, limited only by possible experience -- hardly a stringent criterion for someone who tries to speak as a philosopher.
You haven't provided an argument. The fact is that depending on the frame of reference, measurement of the same thing will be different, and not any one of the measurements can be said to be the objectively real or true measurement That a frame of reference can be produced which represents the object as "at rest", and this frame is said to provide the object's "proper length" is irrelevant, because that designation is completely arbitrary. By the precepts of relativity theory no object is truly, or really at rest, so "proper length" makes no assumption about a true or real length of the object.
And you haven't answered the question.
It's not called relativity for nothing. Yet it isn't hard to determine that a lot of thing are at rest with respect to my initertial reference frame and I can discuss the shape of many such things as they are in my inertial reference frame. If I, for some reason, need to calculate how they might look from a different inertial reference frame I could do so. It's not a big deal.
Anyway, why would I bother providing an argument to someone who wants to argue about something he doesn't understand? I don't see the point in doing so.
But the question is whether those things have a real or true shape, independent from a frame of reference. That you can provide a measurement, and a representation of the shape of many objects, from a specific frame of reference indicates nothing about whether they have a shape independent from a frame of reference.
Quoting wonderer1
Well, it seems like you took objection to something I said, not vise versa. So if you cannot provide an argument to support your objection, then please be still. But I really wish you would provide such an argument, so I could find out why you think as you do, concerning this matter.
But you won't find out why I think as I do, until you study special relativity well enough to know what you are talking about. So get back to me if that happens.
This echoes the measurement issue in quantum mechanics - it's not until you make a measurement, or specify an outcome, that the object of analysis comes into existence. That is the thing that realists can't handle, so they invented the many-worlds interpretation just to avoid it.
:cool: :up:
I claim that we can only talk sensibly about something at least possibly experienceable by us. I'm saying connected to our experience, not fully and finally or even mostly given, for even everyday objects are 'transcendent' in the Husserlian sense: they suggest an infinity of possible adumbrations. Note that I think a person can be alone with an experience --- be the only person who sees or knows an entity.
If you think one has to do the math to understand special relativity, you clearly haven't read Einstein's book. This is a ridiculous conversation. But you're making it fun for me, so carry on please.
Thanks for the Peircean position on "ideal minds". My personal approach is more like that of the Greek philosophers, who posited "unknowable" entities --- such as Logos, First Cause & Form --- and assigned functional real-world roles to them. Apparently, the Buddha also posited at least one hypothetical unknowable entity -- Nirvana -- and assigned a functional role to that imaginary state of mind : cessation of Duhkha (suffering). :smile:
Nirvana Unattainable? : hence unknowable (except possibly by dis-embodied spirits)
Nirvana is unattainable because you can't be completely desireless because you will still want to reach Nirvana and become Enlightened.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/1b8v0v/nirvana_unattainable/
What is nirvana? :
Nirvana is a Sanskrit word for the goal of the Buddhist path: enlightenment ... impossible to describe.
https://tricycle.org › Home › Level 1
Note --- Nirvana : extinguishment, non-being, un-knowable (in the normal sense). I suppose that, in theory, a ghost could know the "peace that passes all understanding". (Philippians 4:7)
Scholastic Realism is a type of moderate realism. As such, it falls between platonism and nominalism on the issue of universals. Universals, strictly speaking, only exist in minds, but they are founded on real relations of similarity in the world.
https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Scholastic-Perspectives-Philosophical-Scholarship/dp/0820442704
Note --- Sounds similar to my own notion of ideal Universals : unknowable by the senses, but imaginable by the rational mind.
For sure. :up: I think I have that book stashed away somewhere.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well, a boulder does not have a substantial form because it is a composite object, but the substances that compose it do have substantial form. But this is beside the question of whether extramental physical objects have shape, and there's really no disagreement on this in the Aristotelian tradition.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't think this is right at all, but when you investigate the topic we can look at it. Earlier I mentioned this topic:
Quoting Leontiskos
I think that in trying to avoid Scientism you may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Quoting Wayfarer
Eckhart is not going to be a good representative, here. He knows Aristotle and Thomas well, but he was also much more Platonic than they were, and in any case this probably comes from a sermon, and is conveying a spiritual point.
Quoting Wayfarer
Funny thing is, ChatGPT gets this right, particularly in its first two responses to you. That is what he meant. I have actually read a lot of Eckhart. But in examining your question you should look at philosophical treatises, not sermons. Eckhart isn't going to treat such a foundational question.
I actually think your view is bread-and-butter nominalism. From the paper I cited earlier ():
Quoting Reality: The Philosophy of Realism | Introduction, p. 3
Quoting Reality: The Philosophy of Realism | Introduction, p. 10
(Pinter seems to be a nominalist; he seems to be following in the footsteps of modern philosophy, which is thoroughly nominalist. Note that Scientism is closer to Realism than Nominalism.)
I think this is a matter of logic; to be this or that no observer would seem to be required. To be distinguished as this or that an observer is required. Something has first to be this or that in order to be able to be distinguished as being this or that.
I don't see it that way at all. Again, it is a matter of logic. "Fact" is an ambiguous word in that it can be taken to signify a statement of an actuality or simply an actuality; so the encyclopedia is a compendium of facts in the first sense, but not in the second.
If 'fact' can signify either 'actuality' or 'statement of actuality' then it follows that on the first definition facts can exist without being observed, but on the second definition they obviously need to an observer who can, at least in principle, state them.
I don't think citing QM helps your case, because it trades on one interpretation of the so-called "observer problem", by interpreting "observer" to mean "conscious observer". In any case QM seems to show that all things consist in different and unique configurations of energy, and there seems to be no reason that configurations of energy should not exist absent observers, or that what pertains to the microphysical world regarding its counter-intuitive behavior should be translatable to the macrophysical world.
Quoting plaque flag
Of course, I agree that we can talk sensibly only about what we are familiar with. And I agree that everyday objects are transcendental, where that term is taken to signify that our experience of them cannot, even in principle, exhaust their natures or apprehend them in their wholeness.
As you say there are perhaps an infinite number of possible "adumbrations" of any object. But it does not follow that these transcendental objects which appear to us do not exist, or that they are not more than the totality of their possible adumbrations.
The first thread I created on the forum that was predecessor to this one was an exploration and defense of platonic realism. I say that universals are 'the ligatures of reason' - that they are what enable abstract judgement. I'm intending to start another thread on that so I won't go into too much detail.
Quoting Leontiskos
I felt the salient part of the response was this:
[quote=ChatGPT]Modern empirical philosophy grants particulars a kind of primary status. These particulars are real, and our task is to observe, measure, and understand them. The inherent reality of these objects is, in many ways, taken for granted.
Eckhart’s view, on the other hand, suggests that the inherent reality of particulars is derived and secondary. They are "mere nothings" compared to the greater, all-encompassing reality of God.[/quote]
For Aquinas, all material particulars owe their existence to God. He posits that not only did God create the world, but God also continually conserves it in existence. Without God's sustaining power, material things would revert to nothingness. Accordingly, in Aquinas, the ontological status of material particulars is contingent, dependent on God's creative and conserving act. My argument is that materialism grants material objects inherent existence, sans any 'creating and conserving act' of God. Is that not so? Furthermore, that with empiricism, objects are accorded a kind of absolute status that they would not be granted in A-T philosophy. That is what materialism means. (By the way, I recall in our first conversation, I referred to Jacques Maritain's essay, the Cultural Impact of Empiricism. I look to that for understanding of and support for my view of universals.)
Quoting Leontiskos
I believe the exact opposite. It was the rejection of universals first by nominalists such as William of Ockham that was the predecessor to later empiricism. I've put the argument for the reality of universals many times on this forum. There's an academic paper by a scholar called Joshua Hocshchild, who writes from within the Catholic Intellectual tradition, called 'What's Wrong with Ockham: Reassessing the Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West' (available on academia). He quotes Richard Weaver's book Ideas have Consequences, which is also about the rejection of universals and the decline of metaphysics, who says:
I see the decline of the belief in universals as the immediate precursor to materialism in the modern period. This is because it results in the inability to conceive of different modes of existence, such as the reality of intelligible objects. A compelling case is made for this in the 2009 book Theological Origins of Modernity, by Michael Allen Gillespie.
As for Charles Pinter and realism v nominalism, the subject doesn't come up at all. But I am inclined towards the view that what he views as 'gestalts' - fundamental cognitive wholes - might have a relationship with the Forms or Ideas. It is something I'm intending to explore.
Finally, after 20 odd pages of discussion, you still seem to think idealism is saying that 'without an observer reality does not exist'. I do not say that.
Quoting Janus
Disagree. A fact, as the argument states, is specific.
Your response does not contradict what I said. States of affairs or actualities are specific, and so are statements about them. If the actualities were not specific, then no specific statements about them could be made.
You speak about the word "fact" as though only one true definition pertains to it (the one that serves your argument, of course). I think it is a matter of usages, and the usages are patently equivocal. To put it another way 'fact' is an ambiguous term.
Quoting Wayfarer
I know this wasn't addressed to me, but I think it raises a pertinent issue. If the in-itself nature of things cannot be known, we cannot with certainty say whether they exist in themselves or do not. From the fact that we cannot be sure whether they exist or not, it does not logically follow that they neither exist nor do not exist.
As I understand it Kant posits things in themselves because of the absurdity that would be involved in saying that something appears, but that there is nothing that appears. If there is something that appears, then it follows logically that the something that appears exists. So, I say that what we can say about the in-itself is governed only by logic, since we cannot know the in-itself nature of things, and it seems absurd to say that there could be something non-existent whose in-itself nature cannot be known.
This is all true... but in my opinion it's an undue mixing of theology with philosophy. It's also tricky because not all modern philosophers reject divine conservation, nor do they need to. The realism/nominalism debate concerns the status of our knowledge, and this is rather different than a debate about divine conservation and so-called "existential inertia." Also, when we get into the acts of secondary causes, the classical view of divine concurrentism is going to explicitly stop short of Occasionalism, and the point here is that for the classical theist position there is a real way in which things have being in themselves, even though this is ultimately referred to God.
I mean, you could try to make a genealogical argument that a shift from classical theism to naturalism resulted in Scientism, but the curious thing is that Aristotle manages to avoid Scientism without introducing explicitly theistic premises into his Physics or Metaphysics.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure, but empiricism and Scientism are not the same thing. Would you not say that Scientism accepts that the objects of scientific study have being in themselves, and are knowable in themselves, and that this is the crux of the realist/nominalist debate?
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree, and I agree that that aspect of Scientism (inability to conceive...) does flow out from nominalism.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well, at this point I have disavowed that view so many times that I am just going to challenge you to produce quotes or evidence for your conclusion. Existence is a related issue, so it cannot be discounted out of hand, but it is not the issue I have been focusing on, for it is not the issue that divides us.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree that it flows from Ockham, but Hocschild's project here is very specialized. I tend to think he is either lost in the weeds or splitting hairs (or else attending to a more minute problem than that which concerns us). But note that he is rejecting the received view, which he sets out:
Quoting Joshua Hochschild, What’s Wrong with Ockham?
Philosophers can and will continue to argue at length about what exactly Aquinas or Ockham believed, but the terms 'Realism' and 'Nominalism' have a definite meaning in the philosophical lexicon, and challenging that meaning on the basis of a close reading of Ockham doesn't strike me as a productive avenue. Everyone recognizes that the dichotomy is a simplification of the views of particular thinkers.*
But note that, if we take Hocschild at his word about the received view, then Pinter is a nominalist with respect to the universal of shape.
* The complicated question, which we are not honing in on, has to do with the manner in which a universal is said to be mind-independent. The accurate predication of a universal constitutes a truth, and people (like Hocschild, but I would have to read him further to know for sure) often conclude that because truth is mind-dependent for Aquinas, therefore he was a nominalist. This fails to hone in on the precise distinction. A universal like shape is only known by minds, but it truly exists in things. Even if there were no minds, it would still exist, but it would not be known to exist. (Note that I am speaking of the existence of the universal (shape), not the substance of which it is predicated.)
(Out for a few days)
It seems to me odd that @Wayfarer will say that universals have mind-independent existence, but he will not admit that ordinary objects do. As I see it universals, or generalities, are only possible on account of the observed differences between, and commonalties shared by, objects.
Of course, it is the observer that formulates these observed differences and commonalities as generalities and specificities, but it would seem implausible to think that these are created ex nihilo or arbitrarily by the observer; it seems more plausible, to me at least, to think that the observed differences and commonalities are real attributes of the objects and do not depend for their existence on being observed, even though they obviously do depend on the observer for being apprehended and distinguished.
Quite blustery, but demonstration of more accurate understanding of Special Relativity is what I was hoping to see. So like I said, if you can provide that, get back to me.
Apologies if I am misunderstanding your criticism. (I've had another try at it below).
Hochschild does not hold that Aquinas was nominalist, not at all, but I'm afraid trying to condense his depiction in a forum post would not be possible. There is a passage in his essay that I often refer to, because it helped me to understand what is at issue:
[quote=Joshua Hochschild]Thomists and other critics of Ockham have tended to present traditional realism, with its forms or natures, as the solution to the modern problem of knowledge. It seems to me that it does not quite get to the heart of the matter. A genuine realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.
In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom. [/quote]
That makes a great deal of sense to me. Formal and final causes provide the raison d'etre of things, in their absence, there is a broad streak of irrationality in modern culture.
----RECAP----
I've backtracked through the dialogue to better respond to your criticism, as you're a serious thinker and I would like to believe I've responded adequately.
Quoting Leontiskos
You're saying it's pre-existent, and its discovered by us, which is an empirical fact. I'm not denying the empirical fact. When you say this, you have, on the one hand, the object, and on the other, ideas and sensations which are different to the object, as they occur within the mind. You're differentiating them - there is a pre-existent shape, and here, the ideas and sensations are in your mind.
Quoting Leontiskos
We do not have to give up facts, but to recognise the role of the observer.
Quoting Leontiskos
I agreed a matter of empirical fact, boulders do have shapes, but the substance of the OP is the role of the observing mind in providing the framework within which empirical facts exist and are meaningful.
Quoting Leontiskos
It is indeed. I'm arguing that there is a subjective element in all knowledge, without which knowledge is impossible, but which is not in itself apparent in experience. This is why disagreement is possible. I also have the understanding that as imperfect finite beings knowledge is always limited. But I do not discount revelation or spiritual enlightenment and the possibility of true knowledge.
Quoting Leontiskos
That is what I'm arguing. I know that it is an empirical fact that there are untold, countless things that I will never know or have any contact with - heck, I don't know most of the people in my street - but that is not the point at issue.
Quoting Janus
My point is perhaps best understood as semantic. Let P be claim that objects exist as more than their possible adumbrations (in a wide metaphorical sense of adumbration, which might include the inexhaustibility of the concept of a prime number.) Now what is P supposed to mean ?
In my view, the point is to see that the object is not hidden behind or within itself. It's just we are temporal beings, grasping the objects over time, seeing this aspect and then perhaps that one.
Quoting Janus
I think he makes that point too somewhere (I tried to find it), but perhaps its best to understand him as the radicalization of a tradition.
[quote = Kant]
Long before Locke's time, but assuredly since him, it has been generally assumed and granted without detriment to the actual existence of external things, that many of their predicates may be said to belong not to the things in themselves, but to their appearances, and to have no proper existence outside our representation. Heat, color, and taste, for instance, are of this kind. Now, if I go farther, and for weighty reasons rank as mere appearances the remaining qualities of bodies also, which are called primary, such as extension, place, and in general space, with all that which belongs to it (impenetrability or materiality, space, etc.)—no one in the least can adduce the reason of its being inadmissible.
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Kant's final claim is recklessly wrong. If space and time are only on the side of appearance, we no longer have a reason trust the naive vision of a world mediated by sense organs in the first place. Crack open your Descartes, and you'll find a detailed analysis of vision and other surprisingly sophisticated discussions of the nervous system. Locke and Hobbes also acknowledged spatial and temporal reality of the brain that they needed, after all, to tell the rest of their story, the one about it 'painting' a 'gray' world of primary qualities with lovely secondary qualities, like color, sound, value, significance.
Kant makes all of that appearance, leaving nothing behind but a pointless shadow, because he thinks the grammar requires it, and because he's afraid of being seen as Berkeley --- probably because he's more absurd than Berkeley, though apparently more theologically sophisticated.
Whereas I think he's right. As I've said throughout, how can there be time without duration, space without distance, and either of those without perspective? The mind provides the perspective and scale within which time and space are meaningful. That's also shown up in cosmology.
Also an extract from Schopenhauer’s Philosophy by Bryan Magee.
The previous chapters in this book concern the way in which the brain unconsciously constructs its perception of the world from the elements of physical stimuli and the interaction of autonomic and conscious faculties. The following extract is from end of Chap 4 – beginning of Chap 5.
[Quote=Schopenhauer’s Philosophy, Bryan Magee] It was …Locke who first identified the characteristics which could not be 'thought away' from the objects of our experience ‚ characteristics without which objects as such were literally inconceivable. This was an achievement of genius. But it was not until philosophy's Copernican revolution (i.e. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason) that the true philosophical explanation of it became possible. And this was not, as Locke had thought, that the primary qualities are the irreducibly minimal attributes necessary to material objects existing independently of experience, in a space and time which are also independent of experience, but that they are constructive principles in terms of which the mind creates the percepts of conscious experience out of raw material supplied to it (of necessity prior to perception, and therefore not perceived) by the senses.
Schopenhauer was the first person to put forward 'a thorough proof of the intellectual nature of perception [made possible] in consequence of the Kantian doctrine', and was also the first person to marry this philosophical account to its corresponding physical account. (Here there’s a brief account of how Kant’s work has shown up in biology, cognitive science and even linguistics.)
Schopenhauer's reformulation of Kant's theory of perception brings out implications of it which Kant touched on without giving them anything like the consideration their importance demanded…. The first of these is that if all the characteristics we are able to ascribe to phenomena are subject-dependent then there can be no object in any sense that we are capable of attaching to the word without the existence of a subject. Anyone who supposes that if all the perceiving subjects were removed from the world then the objects, as we have any conception of them, could continue in existence all by themselves has radically failed to understand what objects are.
Kant did see this, but only intermittently‚ in the gaps, as it were, between assuming the existence of the noumenon 'out there' as the invisible sustainer of the object. He expressed it once in a passage which, because so blindingly clear and yet so isolated, sticks out disconcertingly from his work: 'If I take away the thinking subject, the whole material world must vanish, as this world is nothing but the phenomenal appearance in the sensibility of our own subject, and is a species of this subject's representations.' …
Another objection would run: 'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to what Kant has just been quoted as saying, that is impossible.'
Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was twofold. First, the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room. The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.
This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood, so that these statements appear faulty in ways in which, properly understood, they are not.
Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.
This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices.
Schopenhauer's second refutation of the objection under consideration is as follows. Since all imaginable characteristics of objects depend on the modes in which they are apprehended by perceiving subjects, then without at least tacitly assumed presuppositions relating to the latter no sense can be given to terms purporting to denote the former‚ in short, it is impossible to talk about material objects at all, and therefore even so much as to assert their existence, without the use of words the conditions of whose intelligibility derive from the experience of perceiving subjects. [/quote]
I hope you all find this quote from Sartre, basically the opening of Being and Nothingness, relevant (tho maybe all will have a different use or reaction).
I claim that all we can mean when we talk of the existence of this puppy is caught up in actual and possible experience, but I further claim that this experience is really just the being of the world, which 'just happens' to reliably organize itself around sentient and sapient flesh, 'into' which it flows.
[quote]
The thing is given in experiences, and yet, it is not given; that is to say, the experience of it is givenness through presentations, through “appearings.” Each particular experience and similarly each connected, eventually closed sequence of experiences gives the experienced object in an essentially incomplete appearing, which is one-sided, many-sided, yet not all-sided, in accordance with everything that the thing “is.” Complete experience is something infinite. To require a complete experience of an object through an eventually closed act or, what amounts to the same thing, an eventually closed sequence of perceptions, which would intend the thing in a complete, definitive, and conclusive way is an absurdity; it is to require something which the essence of experience excludes.
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Note the acknowledgment that 'to appear' supposes in essence somebody to whom to appear'. That is the 'transcendental subject' (which incidentally is not phenomenally existent).
My view on that is that it's a mistake (partially of Kant's making) to suppose that the world 'as it is in itself', the 'ding an sich' or 'the noumenal' is something that exists outside of or apart from phenomena and then to proceed to wonder what this 'real world' might be. As for the last four sentences, I don't agree with them at all. Other than that, I don't see much here in conflict with the OP, nor in the following Husserl quote.
If you follow me and understand 'mind' as just the being of the world, then maybe I'll agree with you, for I think space and time are as real as anything can be. But if you insist on tying mind down to the brain, then you seem to be attributing the creation of time and space to a spatial and temporal object (this same brain.) You are basically (at least implicitly) making time and space a dream, as if dreams can have meaning apart from ordinary temporal spatial worldly experience. Do you see the issue ? Kant casts into doubt all of our basic, ordinary understanding.
In our case, as physical beings, the brain is the vehicle of the mind, is it not? I'm talking about 'the brain' as an object - as already noted somewhere upthread. And time is not 'the being of the world' - read the Andrei Linde passage again. He says, that absent an observer, there is no time. (Linde is a mainstream scientist by the way.)
Kant calls into question the 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect'. That is why it produces such hostile reactions - it challenges our view of reality.
I don't think you are seeing the issue. Kant's radicality makes the brain itself a mere piece of appearance, not to be trusted. He saws off the branch he's sitting on. Hoffman does the same thing. But it's such an exciting story.
To me you seem to be misunderstanding the idea that objects are not necessarily merely the sum of their attributes. We only know of objects, the attributes that are accessible to our human cognition. The same goes for other species. But there may be completely unknowable dimensions of objects.
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I have always thought that Kant is wrong about space and time: if there can be things in themselves, then why not space and time in themselves? Kant has no warrant to claim that space and time exist only in perceptual appearances, any more than he would to claim (which I think he doesn't) that objects only exist in perceptual appearances.
For me the distinction between primary and secondary qualities still stands.
I wish people would carry on discussions in their own words instead of posting walls of text which are quotations from supposed authorities. The argument from authority is a weak form of doing philosophy in my view; we need to learn to think for ourselves. (That said, I'm obviously not condemning reading other philosophers, but surely if we have mastered their arguments, we can present them in our own words).
He doesn't have to anything to say about the brain, in his day the physiology of the brain was pretty well completely unknown, but he does no such thing. Please take some time to read through the passages that I posted just before the one from Sartre.
That may apply to some objections to Kant, but it's very much beside the point here. I've explicitly challenged scientific realism, embraced correlationism, gone the whole Hegelian hog.
I understand the temptation to say there may be completely unknowable dimensions of objects, but I'm asking what kind of meaning can be given to such a claim. It's not only unfalsifiable, it's impossible to parse at all. In my view, any attempt to give such a claim meaning will involve connecting it to possible experience.
I did that in the OP. I provide the passage about Schopenhauer's philosophy by way of showing points of agreement with at least one historic philosopher.
I do understand what you are getting at. I think it's a reasonable concern. We already know, using our reasoning, that some animals have better or different than senses than we do. I grant that point. And I'd say that the sentience of those creatures 'is' also the being of the world. But those creatures exist for us, and we speak of them and not their representations or surrogates. But we experience them, from or through our human perspective. And they experience us.
Perhaps we'll even agree if you see that my perspective metaphor is just that ---inspired by the visual situation but suggesting more. To see the object in a different way (from a difference place or nervous system) is still to see the object and not some mediating image.
Quoting Wayfarer
What matters (to me at least) is open discussion and cogent arguments, though, and points of agreement with historic philosophers (authorities) are worthless without cogent arguments presented in our own words and accompanied by a willingness to hear them critiqued and being prepared to sustain engagement as long as is required to either arrive at agreement or agreement to disagree.
Yes, of course we experience everything through our human perspective. We are trying to work out what is best and most plausible to say about things from within that context. Regarding that I don't say that we know anything beyond what we can experience, but we can conjecture beyond that and argue for what seems most plausible to say.
I acknowledge that there will inevitably be disagreement and no way of definitively establishing the truth, since we all have our own groundless and perhaps affectively motivated starting presuppositions, so I don't expect us to all end up on the same page.
I would hope that this process might show all of us where our attachments to particular ideas (confirmation biases) lie, and that we are capable of letting go of what we might want to be the case, if we can come to see just what those biases are.
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This is an important point of disagreement, I think. I would agree that the sentience of creatures is the being of the world, but I don't count it as the whole being of the world.
What I mean by such realism (the kind I reject) is the postulation of 'aperspectival stuff' being primary in some sense, existing in contrast to ( and prior to ) mind or consciousness.
I think you can find a good version of this in Hobbes.
[quote=Hobbes]
The cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense, either immediatly, as in the Tast and Touch; or mediately, as in Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling: which pressure, by the mediation of Nerves, and other strings, and membranes of the body, continued inwards to the Brain, and Heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart, to deliver it self: which endeavour because Outward, seemeth to be some matter without. And this Seeming, or Fancy, is that which men call sense; and consisteth, as to the Eye, in a Light, or Colour Figured; To the Eare, in a Sound; To the Nostrill, in an Odour; To the Tongue and Palat, in a Savour; and to the rest of the body, in Heat, Cold, Hardnesse, Softnesse, and such other qualities, as we discern by Feeling. All which qualities called Sensible, are in the object that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversly. Neither in us that are pressed, are they anything els, but divers motions; (for motion, produceth nothing but motion.) But their apparence to us is Fancy, the same waking, that dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the Eye, makes us fancy a light; and pressing the Eare, produceth a dinne; so do the bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though unobserved action, For if those Colours, and Sounds, were in the Bodies, or Objects that cause them, they could not bee severed from them, as by glasses, and in Ecchoes by reflection, wee see they are; where we know the thing we see, is in one place; the apparence, in another. And though at some certain distance, the reall, and very object seem invested with the fancy it begets in us; Yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another. So that Sense in all cases, is nothing els but originall fancy, caused (as I have said) by the pressure, that is, by the motion, of externall things upon our Eyes, Eares, and other organs thereunto ordained.
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For Hobbes, matter is 'out there' in motion whether or not anyone is 'rubbed' by it so that sensation and fancy result. Dualism, right ?
You might think that I'm a dualist, but the whole point for me is a monist clarification, which is already right there in the TLP. I am my world. The deepest subjectivity is being itself. Ontological cubism. So-called consciousness is just the being of the world given 'perspectively ' ( the being of the world is arranged around sentient flesh as a kind of origin of a perspectival coordinate system .) [It's like a cubist painting, hinted at in Leibniz and that passage about the bridge. The bridge only exists from various perspectives. ]
I'm well familiar with those positions. Where we disagree is that I don't see perspective as being relevant to existence, except within the context of perception. So, saying that stuff cannot exist without a perspective, to my way of thinking, conflates existence with cognition. I see no reason to do that, and it just seems logically and conceptually wrong.
I don't think science needs to say that we know anything more of things than how they appear to us, while acknowledging that appearances do not exhaust the being of things, and that conjecturing about that being is not science but metaphysics, a realm where strict decidability is not to be expected.
I demonstrated a very accurate understanding. But you requested math, which is not necessary for an accurate understanding of the principles involved. Therefore you demonstrated an inaccurate understanding, thinking that math was a requirement. And still you refuse to state your argument. Please state your argument.
I don't think I can be accused of dodging. I write a lot of responses.
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That's pretty well what I'm also rejecting.
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:up: But the way I have worded the OP, I'm trying to avoid the implication of non-perceived objects ceasing to exist, so as to avoid the necessity of positing a 'Divine Intellect' which maintains them in existence (per Berkeley).
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I've always thought that the designation of humans as 'beings' carries that implication.
All of our 'experience' of the world features it surrounding our sentient flesh. But we tend to look right through our own looking. Russell writes of a crowd seeing an event and then hardly noticing that they saw the event from this or that position, unless that position happens to be relevant. We are such practical, linguistic creatures, then we [ tend ] to 'look right through.' And physical science is a supreme achievement in this direction. But this immense convenience tempts us into paradox.
We pretend that we can mean more by 'physical object' than something like a permanent possibility of perception. I think that the nearest mountain will survive me (of course), but what that means is that I expect others to be able to perceive that mountain, after I'm gone, pretty much they way I did, when I was still around. Part of the experience of such objects is a sense of their being-experiencable-by-others.
I see no reason to do that, and it just seems logically and conceptually wrong.
FWIW, I realize it's a bold position, but 'just seems' is only a report of an initial reaction. It doesn't show how the position is wrong.
Except for the blind spot of science, which ironically is a product of that same tendency not to be aware of our own seeing. Isn't that the main point of Husserl's critique of naturalism?
Well I think my own view (and Husserl's) is very close to a certain side of Kant --- that part in the CPR where he writes about beings on the moon.
But what is the thing-in-itself if not a transformation of the traditional atoms-and-void into something darker and more elusive ? Something radically aperspectival ? Even time and space are made part of the curtain that hides Reality from us. A gulf or moat that is declared eternally uncrossable in principle. Anti-experiential, anti-perspectival. Basically non-sense in the sense of anti-sense or pure negation of experience.
I quote Locke and Hobbes to show that Kant is very much part of a sequence, pushing things to the limit, until Fichte and Hegel went all the way, returning to a now sophisticated (direct) realism. Objects do not hide behind themselves. The subject and the object are one.
I think this is solved with J S Mill's permanent possibilities of perception. It's a semantic twist, really. The point is that what we mean by the existence of the independent object is that it's there if we look for it, etc. If X, then Y. The bullet can kill me even if I don't want it to. If I die, my children can still live in this house. And so on. Possible and actual experience. What else is such 'existence' supposed to mean ? And what about ancestral objects ? If I had a time machine, I could look at the dinosaurs. That sort of thing, even if I can't have a time machine. Sort of like science being at least in principle testable, even if there's not currently enough energy for an experiment. I'd say reality is at least in principle experiencable (which we might speak of as present experience in terms of actuality and possibility.)
When I read (for instance) Husserl's Ideas II (which is thought to have inspired Heidegger in a pretty direct way), it made me remember the way I understood life when I was younger. The vivid sensuality of youth makes it hard to forget embodiment and perspective. But we are trained into an undeniably practically powerful tradition of taking objects radically independently.
This is so much the case that we talk of the hard problem of consciousness. We somehow find it obvious that [today's version of ] atoms-&-void can exist unproblematically prior-to-us and independently in some fundamental way.
This is despite the fact that all of our experience features our own sentient flesh continually at the center of the world. Of course I see the bodies of others as objects in the world, but the deepest part of the other, the true radical otherness of the other, is that they are also the very being of the world, the same world from another point of view. Interpentrating worldstreamings. The body of the other is a kind of avatar or vessel for some strange perspectival worlding of the world. Very strange and yet so familiar. Many many quasi-copies of the world with no original.
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This is in line with my view, and J S Mill's and Berkeley's, I think. Objects 'are' possible and actual experiences.
I tend to agree, but there's a reason I avoid the word 'consciousness.' I really think the way to go here is a kind of monism. It's not that consciousness is one of two necessary ingredients, the other being proto-stuff (thing-in-itself batter.) No. I say so-called consciousness is being pure and simple. The 'pure witness' is no longer more subject than object, even if we find it at the center of an empirical subject, which is to say intensely entangled with sentient flesh. We have something non-dual that's intimately associated with an empirical subject. And world-streaming is care-structured, hence the naturalness of 'transcendental ego' talk. But this will tempt us to stop short of identifying being and consciousness.
I was right with you up until 'physical science'. I want to back up to this point, as it's central to my concerns.
There is an Aeon essay, The Blind Spot of Science is the Neglect of Lived Experience, which I started a thread about here some time back.
That of course is the main point made by phenomenology. They go on
Which is exactly what I was trying to get at with:
[quote=Wayfarer]What I’m calling attention to is the tendency to take for granted the reality of the world as it appears to us, without taking into account the role the mind plays in its constitution. This oversight imbues the phenomenal world — the world as it appears to us — with a kind of inherent reality that it doesn’t possess. This in turn leads to the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion for truth.[/quote]
(Incidentally, that Aeon essay, by Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson, is to be published as a book in March next year.)
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Well, that's a relief! I'll take my wins wherever I can get 'em ;-)
Let me clarify. 'Looking right through' is genuine practical achievement, even while being an ontological disaster. I mean we literally train to ignore what phenomenology therefore has to excavate. So that 'what is ontically closest is ontologically farthest.' Too intimate, like water we swim in, clothes we wear. We forget that our body just always happens to be there, right at the center of the world that flows around us.
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Again from Eastern philosophy, you will doubtless recall the Zen koan, made into a song, 'first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.' That also is about the transition from naive realism (first there is..) to critical philosophy (then there is no...), and the 'return' to seeing 'things as they truly are' (then there is...)
I tend to blame a sort of hitchhiking bad metaphysics rather than science itself. Good clean science just creatively postulates and confirms patterns in experience. And shuts its mouth about anything beyond. Mach was a first rate philosopher, for instance, not just a scientist, and William James was all kinds of things, including a serious psychologist. Note that Mach studied psychophysics. He wrote a beautiful little book about space, very protophenomenological, influencing Einstein of course.
I wouldn't be surprised if the East had it first, tho I'd check the Christian mystics for a premodern grasp?
FWIW, I think what Wittgenstein was getting at (and I'm defending) is some version of tat tvam asi. My own take might be dry and secular, relatively speaking, but I really think there's a discursive approach here. One can reason to the conclusion.
As I mentioned earlier, if consciousness is really just the being of the world, then the eye not seeing itself is the fact that being is not itself an entity (the 'ontological difference.') There's something like the actual 'thereness' of things and also our weird articulation of this fact, invoking the concept of being which is of course an entity.
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I haven't explicitly accused you of dodging. That said, I do have the impression that you are prone to withdraw when the going gets tough.
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I said why I thought it is wrong; it conflates existence with cognition, and I don't think that conflation is helpful. Also, it is not a general feature of philosophy to prove that positions are wrong. So, I'm not here to convince you, just to tell what I think and why I think it, and to hear others' accounts and comment on how I might agree or disagree with them.
It might be a matter of deciding what challenges are worth responding to. There are plenty of times in these debates where people are talking past one another.
Of course, I acknowledge you have no obligation to respond, and I don't really mind. There are some commonalities between our ways of thinking but there are also significant divergences. I'm one who likes to thrash these things out, but if you don't want to, that's OK too.
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Quoting Janus
:up: :up: Universals / generalities are abstracted from concrete particulars.
Quoting Wayfarer
"The world" for me (dream)? for us (culture)? for all (nature)? :chin:
Yes, "meaningless" logico-mathematical (i.e. view from everywhere, or subject/pov-invariant) rather than "meaningful" linguistic-narrative (i.e. view from being there, or a relative / perspectival point-of-view).
NB: subject/pov-invariant is, of course, synonymous with "absent any mind".
Anyway, 'unknown unknowns' are "meaningless" and yet ineluctably encompassing, even constraining, of "whatever we think or say ... absent any mind" or not. What you call "meaningless", sir, seems to me the most meaningful thing we (philosophers & poets) can think or say about the world. :fire:
It's that you (idealists) metaphysically prioritize meaning (i.e. mind (e.g. ideals, idols) over – in denial of – more/other-than-meaning (i.e. more/other-than-mind (e.g. practices)). I'm afraid this puts the proverbial cart before the horse ...
Quoting Wayfarer
IMO, not for philosophy in general or metaphysics specifically. Naturalism simply excludes, or coarse-grains, super-natural concepts or entities from arguments and models.
So you're an epiphenomenalist? Bodies are, in effect, mind-less automatons (deluded that they are more than that)? Or is it your position, Wayfarer, that "physical causes" are mere illusions, and that all events are intentional?
'Animism' instead? :eyes:
Absolutely. Concur 100%. You’ve considered a certain authority’s philosophy as wrong in at least a particular instance, which makes explicit you’ve thought in opposition to it.
Quoting Janus
So….he was mistaken in that he didn’t attribute real existence to space and time? Or, you think he should have? The theory holds that things-in-themselves possess real existence, and are the origin-in-kind of that which appears to sensibility. From which follows that to attribute the same conditions to, e.g., space, originating from space-in-itself, we should be able to represent the constituency of it, which is merely the arrangement of its matter according to form residing a priori in intuition (A20/B34), which is what is done with any other sensation. But the matter of space, according the antecedent conception of it, can be nothing other than an infinite aggregate of greater or lesser spaces, from which follows there is no determinable object possible to intuit at all. In common parlance, no phenomenal representation is at all possible for that which has infinite composition, but equally without any substance whatsoever. And here arises the requisite concreteness of that which appears, insofar as without it, we are presented with “…. For, otherwise, we should require to affirm the existence of an appearance, without something that appears—which would be absurd.…” (Bxxvii)
On the other hand…..there’s always an other hand…..the thing-in-itself is never that which appears, or is always that which could never appear, and, space is never that which appears, and, never could be, so perhaps they are a sort of in-themselves after all.
All that being said, and speaking without recourse to relevant authority, how do you think space-in-itself to be conceivable? How was Kant wrong with respect to his treatment of it?
(Sigh)
Overlooked, or outright dismissed, is our brief exchange on pg. 14, re: brain/appearance.
Pretty common knowledge the brain has no nerve endings as pain receptors, hence we cannot feel our own brain. Hardly likely we’ll ever smell it or taste it, and seeing as how there’s something drastically wrong if it ever makes a sound we can hear, and the implication we’ll actually see it carries some serious consequences as well, it becomes absurd to then suppose our own brain, in which resides all our mental goings-on, can be an appearance to our own sensibility.
The brain sitting on the bench? Sure, there can be a valid phenomenal representation of that. And the comment expressing Locke’s qualities? Of which Kant deems it reasonable to admit the totality, concerns “actual existence of external things”, which…..DUH!!!!…..cannot be my own brain.
What’s really cool, is the converse. The brain on the bench can be an appearance without contradiction, but it cannot contain my thoughts without being one.
Kant didn’t saw off his own branch. He made it so you can take it home and make a killer table out of it, when his peers and successors burn down the tree.
You may be surprised like I was to see how much the brain already figures in Descartes, and therefore, presumably, in Kant.
[quote = Descartes]
...the mind does not immediately receive the impression from all the parts of the body, but only from the brain, or perhaps even from one small part of it...
...when I feel pain in the foot, the science of physics teaches me that this sensation is experienced by means of the nerves dispersed over the foot, which, extending like cords from it to the brain, when they are contracted in the foot, contract at the same time the inmost parts of the brain in which they have their origin, and excite in these parts a certain motion appointed by nature to cause in the mind a sensation of pain, as if existing in the foot; but as these nerves must pass through the tibia, the leg, the loins, the back, and neck, in order to reach the brain, it may happen that although their extremities in the foot are not affected, but only certain of their parts that pass through the loins or neck, the same movements, nevertheless, are excited in the brain by this motion as would have been caused there by a hurt received in the foot, and hence the mind will necessarily feel pain in the foot, just as if it had been hurt; and the same is true of all the other perceptions of our senses...
...as each of the movements that are made in the part of the brain by which the mind is immediately affected, impresses it with but a single sensation, the most likely supposition in the circumstances is, that this movement causes the mind to experience, among all the sensations which it is capable of impressing upon it; that one which is the best fitted, and generally the most useful for the preservation of the human body when it is in full health...
...when the nerves of the foot are violently or more than usually shaken, the motion passing through the medulla of the spine to the innermost parts of the brain affords a sign to the mind on which it experiences a sensation, viz, of pain, as if it were in the foot, by which the mind is admonished and excited to do its utmost to remove the cause of it as dangerous and hurtful to the foot...
[/quote]
http://www.classicallibrary.org/descartes/meditations/9.htm
[quote = TLP]
The world and life are one.
I am my world. (The microcosm.)
The thinking, presenting subject; there is no such thing.
If I wrote a book "The world as I found it", I should also have therein to report on my body and say which members obey my will and which do not, etc. This then would be a method of isolating the subject or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject: that is to say, of it alone in this book mention could not be made.
The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world.
Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be noted?
You say that this case is altogether like that of the eye and the field of sight. But you do not really see the eye.
And from nothing in the field of sight can it be concluded that it is seen from an eye.
Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure realism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.
There is therefore really a sense in which in philosophy we can talk of a non-psychological I.
The I occurs in philosophy through the fact that the "world is my world".
The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit—not a part of the world.
[/quote]
https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php?title=Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#5
A highlight:
Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure realism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.
There is only world, but physics and ontology look to this or that aspect. of it, ignoring the rest, which can result in the confusion of making some of it a kind of unreal appearance.
[quote=Kant]
Possible experience can alone give reality to our conceptions; without it a conception is merely an idea, without truth or relation to an object. Hence a possible empirical conception must be the standard by which we are to judge whether an idea is anything more than an idea and fiction of thought, or whether it relates to an object in the world.
[/quote]
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4280/pg4280-images.html#chap78
[chapter 78]
This 'good' side of Kant can be 'read against' his 'bad' side. And that's of course what happened with Fichte and Hegel and others, who followed this 'empirical directive' (Braver).
More in that direction:
[quote=Kant]
Transcendental idealism allows that the objects of external intuition—as intuited in space, and all changes in time—as represented by the internal sense, are real. For, as space is the form of that intuition which we call external, and, without objects in space, no empirical representation could be given us, we can and ought to regard extended bodies in it as real. The case is the same with representations in time. But time and space, with all phenomena therein, are not in themselves things. They are nothing but representations and cannot exist out of and apart from the mind.
[/quote]
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4280/pg4280-images.html#chap78
A little farther down than the first quote...
Here's some outright correlationism in Kant, a little further down:
[quote=Kant]
The objects of experience then are not things in themselves, but are given only in experience, and have no existence apart from and independently of experience. That there may be inhabitants in the moon, although no one has ever observed them, must certainly be admitted; but this assertion means only, that we may in the possible progress of experience discover them at some future time. For that which stands in connection with a perception according to the laws of the progress of experience is real. They are therefore really existent, if they stand in empirical connection with my actual or real consciousness, although they are not in themselves real, that is, apart from the progress of experience.
[/quote]
To me the point is that objects get their meaning in or from actual and possible experience. But indirect realism is the wrong way to understand this, for this conflates the psychological or empirical ego with the deeper 'nondual' transcendental ego which is no longer more subject than object. This is where Wittgenstein in the TLP and Mach in The Analysis of Sensations and James in Does Consciousness Exist? are all helpful.
Note that Kant allows for what Husserl calls an empty or signitive intention. Well before Kant's time, people could form the idea of lunar inhabitants. And this fantasy or idea was itself real as such an idea. The 'picture theory' is relevant here, and it's a good analogy for signitive and potentially fulfilled intentions.
We might understand Kant and Husserl to be doing 'critique of language,' sorting intentions into buckets which include the square root of blue or round squares on the one hand and that which makes sense as potential experience on the other. J. S. Mill's phenomenalism is best understood in terms of elaborating what we mean by physical or worldly object.
We understand the couch to tend to wait there in the living room for us. Any human being will see it and be able to sit on it. But my daydream, indeed existing in the same world ( because it plays a role in justifications) is not similarly [ ''directly' ] accessible to everyone. So we have [only ] practical reasons for sorting entities into the generically available extended kind and the differentially accessed unextended kind. But all of these entities exist in the same conversational-practical nexus -- in the same 'rationalist' 'flat' (one layer) ontology. All entities (toothaches and tarantulas) have their meaning in a unified flow of [s]experience[/s] interpenetrative arranged-around-sentient-beings worldstreamings.
I like to think about the encompassing as the darkness that surrounds a campfire. Or the dark woods that surround a torch on the trail. I've been walking through the woods at night lately with just a little Catapult Mini, which throws a tight beam, so I can get a look a the doe at twenty yards whose glowing eyes call my attention to her. I found myself next to five of these beauties on a trail just recently, and in the silence before dawn.
Anyway, I perceive (interpret) this surrounding darkness as a deep blanket of threatening-promising possibility. I hear a rustle in the leaves 'as' a kind of blur of maybe. On the level of feeling, I love this fringe or frontier. Exploration is a (the?) reason to be born (a post facto justification maybe.) The 'meaningless' is, in this sense, the creative nothing or the birth of meaning. Any ontology has to tell the truth about the 'Horizon', of becoming. Being is 'really' an endless becoming.
Here's a beautiful sentiment:
[quote=Haldane]
Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.
[/quote]
My objection, despite my embrace of the sentiment, is that this is a logical absurdity, a bad check. It's like that joke about twelve-tone music being 'better than it sounds.' The emotional value of such an impossible Frontier (what people like about the Kantian X ) is obvious to me, but any pointing beyond all possible experience reads like mystified paradox to me -- which may have genuine motivational value but still lacks content otherwise.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/mill-the-collected-works-of-john-stuart-mill-volume-ix-william-hamiltons-philosophy
It's a nice thing to point out. At any given moment we have only a small piece of the world before us. But this tiny piece is fringed or enclosed within a vast sense of the possible. I could walk downstairs and make some coffee (tho really I shouldn't). I could google X and go down that rabbit hole.
Some might say that possibility is a mere illusion, but I'd just say that 'actuality' is a favored kind of being, typically for practical reasons. I can't spend the idea of one hundred dollars, or the one hundred dollars that only might be there.
The sensations, though the original foundation of the whole, come to be looked upon as a sort of accident depending on us, and the possibilities as much more real than the actual sensations, nay, as the very realities of which these are only the representations, appearances, or effects. When this state of mind has been arrived at, then, and from that time forward, we are never conscious of a present sensation without instantaneously referring it to some one of the groups of possibilities into which a sensation of that particular description enters; and if we do not yet know to what group to refer it, we at least feel an irresistible conviction that it must belong to some group or other; i.e. that its presence proves the existence, here and now, of a great number and variety of possibilities of sensation, without which it would not have been. The whole set of sensations as possible, form a permanent background to any one or more of them that are, at a given moment, actual; and the possibilities are conceived as standing to the actual sensations in the relation of a cause to its effects, or of canvas to the figures painted on it, or of a root to the trunk, leaves, and flowers, or of a substratum to that which is spread over it, or, in transcendental language, of Matter to Form.
When this point has been reached, the Permanent Possibilities in question have assumed such unlikeness of aspect, and such difference of apparent relation to us, from any sensations, that it would be contrary to all we know of the constitution of human nature that they should not be conceived as, and believed to be, at least as different from sensations as sensations are from one another. Their groundwork in sensation is forgotten, and they are supposed to be something intrinsically distinct from it.
We can withdraw ourselves from any of our (external) sensations, or we can be withdrawn from them by some other agency. But though the sensations cease, the possibilities remain in existence; they are independent of our will, our presence, and everything which belongs to us. We find, too, that they belong as much to other human or sentient beings as to ourselves. We find other people grounding their expectations and conduct upon the same permanent possibilities on which we ground ours. But we do not find them experiencing the same actual sensations. Other people do not have our sensations exactly when and as we have them: but they have our possibilities of sensation; whatever indicates a present possibility of sensations to ourselves, indicates a present possibility of similar sensations to them, except so far as their organs of sensation may vary from the type of ours. This puts the final seal to our conception of the groups of possibilities as the fundamental reality in Nature. The permanent possibilities are common to us and to our fellow-creatures; the actual sensations are not. That which other people become aware of when, and on the same grounds, as I do, seems more real to me than that which they do not know of unless I tell them. The world of Possible Sensations succeeding one another according to laws, is as much in other beings as it is in me; it has therefore an existence outside me; it is an External World.
[/quote]
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/mill-the-collected-works-of-john-stuart-mill-volume-ix-william-hamiltons-philosophy
I think there are two views that tend to be conflated that should be distinguished.
The first view features every ego in a sort of bubble of dreamstuff, some of which may [merely] represent a outer, 'real' world. This is what I find in varieties of indirect realism. Appearance is given with a kind of incorrigible, absolute intimacy. But one can never be sure whether it refers beyond itself.
The second view is perspectivism (ontological cubism, neutral monism, etc.) The 'transcendental' ego (the metaphysical and not the empirical subject) is the being of the-world-from-a-perspective. This means that the world is arranged spatially around the flesh associated with that metaphysical [s]subject.[/s] As Mach would put it, there are decisive and especially prominent functional relationships between the elements constituting this special flesh (including 'inside' its 'mind') and the elements understood to constitute everything else.
[quote = Mach]
As soon as we have perceived that the supposed unities " body " and " ego " are only makeshifts, designed for provisional orientation and for definite practical ends (so that we may take hold of bodies, protect ourselves against pain, and so forth), we find ourselves obliged, in many more advanced scientific investigations, to abandon them as insufficient and inappropriate. The antithesis between ego and world, between sensation (appearance) and thing, then vanishes, and we have simply to deal with the connexion of the elements a b c . . . A B C . . . K L M . . ., of which this antithesis was only a partially appropriate and imperfect expression. This connexion is nothing more or less than the combination of the above-mentioned elements with other similar elements (time and space). Science has simply to accept this connexion, and to get its bearings in it, without at once wanting to explain its existence.
[/quote]
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/mach.htm
To me this is a beautiful breakthrough to a kind of phenomenological field of neutral elements, prior to mind and matter that emerge later. We go back to an idealized state-before-differentiation.
Matter, then, may be defined, a Permanent Possibility of Sensation. If I am asked, whether I believe in matter, I ask whether the questioner accepts this definition of it. If he does, I believe in matter: and so do all Berkeleians. In any other sense than this, I do not. But I affirm with confidence, that this conception of Matter includes the whole meaning attached to it by the common world, apart from philosophical, and sometimes from theological, theories. The reliance of mankind on the real existence of visible and tangible objects, means reliance on the reality and permanence of Possibilities of visual and tactual sensations, when no such sensations are actually experienced. We are warranted in believing that this is the meaning of Matter in the minds of many of its most esteemed metaphysical champions, though they themselves would not admit as much: for example, of Reid, Stewart, and Brown. For these three philosophers alleged that all mankind, including Berkeley and Hume, really believed in Matter, inasmuch as unless they did, they would not have turned aside to save themselves from running against a post. Now all which this manœuvre really proved is, that they believed in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation. We have therefore the unintentional sanction of these three eminent defenders of the existence of matter, for affirming, that to believe in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation is believing in Matter. It is hardly necessary, after such authorities, to mention Dr. Johnson,
or any one else who resorts to the argumentum baculinum of knocking a stick against the ground. Sir W. Hamilton, a far subtler thinker than any of these, never reasons in this manner. He never supposes that a disbeliever in what he means by Matter, ought in consistency to act in any different mode from those who believe in it. He knew that the belief on which all the practical consequences depend, is the belief in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation, and that if nobody believed in a material universe in any other sense, life would go on exactly as it now does. He, however, did believe in more than this, but, I think, only because it had never occurred to him that mere Possibilities of Sensation could, to our artificialized consciousness, present the character of objectivity which, as we have now shown, they not only can, but unless the known laws of the human mind were suspended, must necessarily, present.
Perhaps it may be objected, that the very possibility of framing such a notion of Matter as Sir W. Hamilton’s—the capacity in the human mind of imagining an external world which is anything more than what the Psychological Theory makes it—amounts to a disproof of the theory. If (it may be said) we had no revelation in consciousness, of a world which is not in some way or other identified with sensation, we should be unable to have the notion of such a world. If the only ideas we had of external objects were ideas of our sensations, supplemented by an acquired notion of permanent possibilities of sensation, we must (it is thought) be incapable of conceiving, and therefore still more incapable of fancying that we perceive, things which are not sensations at all. It being evident however that some philosophers believe this, and it being maintainable that the mass of mankind do so, the existence of a perdurable basis of sensations, distinct from sensations themselves, is proved, it might be said, by the possibility of believing it.
Let me first restate what I apprehend the belief to be. We believe that we perceive a something closely related to all our sensations, but different from those which we are feeling at any particular minute; and distinguished from sensations altogether, by being permanent and always the same, while these are fugitive, variable, and alternately displace one another. But these attributes of the object of perception are properties belonging to all the possibilities of sensation which experience guarantees. The belief in such permanent possibilities seems to me to include all that is essential or characteristic in the belief in substance. I believe that Calcutta exists, though I do not perceive it, and that it would still exist if every percipient inhabitant were suddenly to leave the place, or be struck dead. But when I analyse the belief, all I find in it is, that were these events to take place, the Permanent Possibility of Sensation which I call Calcutta would still remain; that if I were suddenly transported to the banks of the Hoogly, I should still have the sensations which, if now present, would lead me to affirm that Calcutta exists here and now. We may infer, therefore, that both philosophers and the world at large, when they think of matter, conceive it really as a Permanent Possibility of Sensation. But the majority of philosophers fancy that it is something more; and the world at large, though they have really, as I conceive, nothing in their minds but a Permanent Possibility of Sensation, would, if asked the question, undoubtedly agree with the philosophers: and though this is sufficiently explained by the tendency of the human mind to infer difference of things from difference of names, I acknowledge the obligation of showing how it can be possible to believe in an existence transcending all possibilities of sensation, unless on the hypothesis that such an existence actually is, and that we actually perceive it.
The explanation, however, is not difficult. It is an admitted fact, that we are capable of all conceptions which can be formed by generalizing from the observed laws of our sensations. Whatever relation we find to exist between any one of our sensations and something different from it, that same relation we have no difficulty in conceiving to exist between the sum of all our sensations and something different from them. The differences which our consciousness recognises between one sensation and another, give us the general notion of difference, and inseparably associate with every sensation we have, the feeling of its being different from other things: and when once this association has been formed, we can no longer conceive anything, without being able, and even being compelled, to form also the conception of something different from it. This familiarity with the idea of something different from each thing we know, makes it natural and easy to form the notion of something different from all things that we know, collectively as well as individually. It is true we can form no conception of what such a thing can be; our notion of it is merely negative; but the idea of a substance, apart from its relation to the impressions which we conceive it as making on our senses, is a merely negative one. There is thus no psychological obstacle to our forming the notion of a something which is neither a sensation nor a possibility of sensation, even if our consciousness does not testify to it; and nothing is more likely than that the Permanent Possibilities of sensation, to which our consciousness does testify, should be confounded in our minds with this imaginary conception. All experience attests the strength of the tendency to mistake mental abstractions, even negative ones, for substantive realities; and the Permanent Possibilities of sensation which experience guarantees, are so extremely unlike in many of their properties to actual sensations, that since we are capable of imagining something which transcends sensation, there is a great natural probability that we should suppose these to be it.
[/quote]
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/mill-the-collected-works-of-john-stuart-mill-volume-ix-william-hamiltons-philosophy
There's so much insight pack in these passages that I'm surprised that Mill is not more talked about. It was Husserl's appreciated of the some of the English philosophers that got me looking into Mill and Berkeley. With Mill, so far, there's no theological baggage to step around.
All experience attests the strength of the tendency to mistake mental abstractions, even negative ones, for substantive realities.
I think Mill hits the nail on the head on this issue of the I-know-not-what that's supposed to be more than possible or actual experience : some kind of [ aperspectival ] Substance that's hidden forever behind or within whatever actually appears. It seems cleaner to understand reality itself as horizonal or transcendent, which is to say never finally given but also not hiding behind itself.
As far as I can tell, this isn't of much practical importance. But for those who find themselves wanting clarity and coherence with respect to fundamental concepts, it might feel like progress.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/mill-the-collected-works-of-john-stuart-mill-volume-ix-william-hamiltons-philosophy
He then tackles the concern that understanding the self as what I'd call a worldstreaming implies solipsism.
He somewhat follows Husserl and suggests that we have good reasons to infer or suppose that others are worldstreams too, though we don't have direct access to this streaming. And in the age of high tech and AI, we may eventually be faced with genuine perplexity. Does this thing feel? Does this thing see ? Note that (for me) we can't 'prove' that other humans are 'really' there, but most of us fortunately don't wrestle with living, genuine doubt.
You'll probably disagree with me (we all have different ways of thinking about these things, apparently) but I see space and time as being for us, just as objects are, appearances. I think I can see spatial extension, and feel duration, just as I see and feel objects. So, for me the status of space and time is no different regarding the "in-itself" than is the case with things.
I think there is a real cosmos, which existed long before there was consciousness of any kind, and I think it always has been undergoing constant change, that it is extensive and always has been. I see time as change and duration, and space as extension, and I see no reason not to think those are real attributes of the cosmos, which do not rely for their existence on appearing to cognitive beings,
I realize that a cosmos without cognitive beings is in a sense "blind", it appears to nothing and no one, and in that sense, we might say that it is virtually non-existent, but I think that view is anthropocentric. Something does not need to be seen in order to be visible.
So, I interpret Kant's idea of in-itself as signifying that we know only what appears to us, which is not to say we know nothing of consciousness-independent real things, but that the reality of those things is not exhausted by how they appear to us and other cognitive beings.
I think many of these disagreements come down to preferred ways of talking, and underlying the apparent differences produced by different locutions there may be more agreement than there often appears to be. It is remarkable how important these metaphysical speculations seem to be to folk. I enjoy it as a creative exercise of the imagination.
Exactly as I see it also.
I quoted from that in my MA thesis in Buddhist Studies. As I've said before, the self is never an object, yet the reality of the subject of experience ('what it is like to be....') is apodictic, cogito ergo sum. Where in the world is the metaphysical subject to be noted? Why, that would be 'nowhere', yet otherwise there is no world.
The OP is pretty well an exercise in understanding how this can be true. (A successful one, I would like to think.)
Quoting plaque flag
I once wrote a rather contemplative piece on the old forum, about how meditation is like learning to see in the dark. The analogy was that conscious thought brings everything into the pool of light around the campfire, but there's an awareness that outside that area there is a landscape and other creatures moving about that we're only dimly aware of and feel threatened by. The idea being that moving away from the pool of light and letting your eyes adjust to the moonlight, so you can see the contours of the landscape.
Quoting plaque flag
Pinter's book, Mind and the Cosmic Order, starts with the British Empiricists, and their insistence that knowledge comes solely from sense experience. But he moves on to Kant who showed that there must be innate faculties :yikes: which organize and categorise sense-data, otherwise we would not be able to make sense of sense.
[quote=Scrapbook Entry, from an archived version of the Wikipedia entry on Philosophy of Mathematics]John Stuart Mill asserted that all knowledge comes to us from observation through the senses. This applies not only to matters of fact, but also to "relations of ideas," as Hume called them: the structures of logic which interpret, organize and abstract observations.
Against this, Kant argued that the structures of logic which organize, interpret and abstract observations were innate to mind and were true and valid a priori ('innateness' being anathema to the empiricists Hume and Mill).
Mill, on the contrary, said that we believe them (i.e. mathematical proofs) to be true because we have enough individual instances of their truth to generalize: in his words, "From instances we have observed, we feel warranted in concluding that what we found true in those instances holds in all similar ones, past, present and future, however numerous they may be".
Although the psychological or epistemological specifics given by Mill through which we build our logical apparatus may not be completely warranted, his explanation still inadevertantly manages to demonstrate that there is no way around Kant’s a priori logic. To restate Mill's original idea: “Indeed, the very principles of logical deduction are true because we observe that using them leads to true conclusions” - which is itself a deductive proposition!
For most mathematicians the empiricist principle that 'all knowledge comes from the senses' contradicts a more basic principle: that mathematical propositions are true independent of the physical world. Everything about a mathematical proposition is independent of what appears to be the physical world. It all takes place in the mind drawn from the infallible principles of deductive logic. It is not influenced by exterior inputs from the physical world, distorted by having to pass through the tentative, contingent universe of the senses. It is internal to thought, as it were.[/quote]
(I'll also add in passing that traditional philosophy sees a relationship between the domain of the apriori and the invariance of scientific laws and regularities - another principle called into question in modern philosophy.)
'What it is like to be' is an interpretation of something prior to mind or non-mind. That's the way I'd go here. What interprets then ? If mind is not fundamental ? I'd go with some kind of emergent 'panlogical' timebinding. There is a subject, but it's cultural and emergent and self-positing. Spirit is a modification of nature. I don't pretend to explain this emergence. I prioritize [merely] articulating the given ---only a blurry-muddy-tentative foundation for further plausible speculation.
Acknowledged. And added some stuff.
Quoting Wayfarer
I really like the bolded part of the Kant quote, but I find it in tension with the first part. The objects are given only in experience and don't exist otherwise. So what in the world (but of course not in the world, which is exactly the problem) is left over ?
It'd be very un-Kantian to make those faculties more than structures or possibilities of experience. I have not the least objection to psychological entities like memory, but I'd say these faculties are mere postulations for explaining a structure in the experience that is first and foremost just there.
Heidegger does his own Kantian thing in articulating the care-structure of this world-streaming being-there. An evolutionary psychologist might postulate how expectation in the context of memory maximizes the average number of offspring. Which is fine. But the existence of that care structure (existence as that enworlded care structure) is primary. Explanations are secondary and tentative. This to me is part of phenomenological bracketing. Let's articulate what's there first, before we jump into theorizing.
On the contrary - doesn't C S Peirce say that 'matter is effete mind'?
Quoting plaque flag
Which, now that I reflect further, suggests 'that of which we cannot speak....'
Quoting plaque flag
According to IEP, Kant adopted Aristotle's categories, with some slight modifications.
They do indeed 'structure' experience, but they're not derived from experience. That's what makes them 'transcendental'.
I agree that Mill was guilty of psychologism on the issue of logic. But this doesn't establish some kind of metaphysical machinery hidden in the Self. Indeed, I'm more inclined to take a Hegel-Heidegger path here and emphasize that the self (as normative-ethical-linguistic locus of freedom-responsibility ) is largely and even mostly a social entity, a performance of and participation of norms, including logical-semantic norms. We performing such norms right now, as we try to articulate and explain those very norms within a framework of adversarial cooperation.
As far as I can tell, Kantian logical machinery wouldn't work anyway. How can a 'machine' (a mere faculty) give us a normative 'output' ? Unless you are invoking some kind of mystical supernatural 'biology,' it's not clear how this wouldn't be more psychologism. 'We are programmed to be logical.' Normativity seems pretty irreducible. Invoking faculties doesn't seem to help us here, for is that not equivalent to evolutionary biology, except in an opposite 'theological biology' flavor ?
I grant that we could also read the thing backwards, with nature as a 'segment' of spirit. We create the scientific image from within an encompassing lifeworld. It depends on whether we are reasoning 'outwards' from where we always already are (the enabling assumptions of ontology) or trying to tell a plausible story of how we ended up here.
To me it's implausible for us to deny that we inherit centuries of development, and our best biological stories extend this to millions of years.
Oh, I certainly do, but there’s no damage done by it. Different strokes and all that, right?
Is it a precept or some kind of general rule of phenomenology that space and time are appearances in the same way as objects? Say, as in Kant for instance, appearance mandates sensation relating specifically to it, what sensation could we expect of space from its appearance? Or is it that the precept or rule doesn’t demand sensation from appearance?
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Quoting Janus
As do I, and grant the rest of that paragraph, given your perspective.
Lemme ask you this: there is in the text the condition that space is allowed “empirical reality in regard to all possible external experience”. Would you accept that his empirical reality is your appearance?
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Quoting Janus
Yeah, could be. But you know me….I shun language predication like the plague: rather kill it than put up with it. But you’re right, insofar as there must be something that grounds disagreements, so I vote for disparity in subjective presuppositions. How one thinks about stuff depends exclusively on where he starts with it.
Ancestral objects are a totally reasonable concern, but I think they've already been covered by Mill's theory of possible experience. The meaning of an ancestral statement ('there used to be these giant lizards') is something like: if we had a time machine, we could go back and see those famous dinosaurs. Now some physical theories (11 dimensional, etc.) are impossible to even imagine, and I'd class them with what Kojeve calls 'the silence of algorithm.' The meaning of those theories only comes into focus with predictions that are finally 'within' the sensibility of the lifeworld. Note that chatbots use a mathematics of millions and even billions of 'dimensions.'
Something like Hegelian semantic holism is central here. No finite or radically disconnect entity has genuine being, because it'd literally be nonsense. Sense is structural-relational. That sort of thing. To explain a cat you need to explain a mouse. Single concepts (a language with only one) don't make sense (Sellars/Brandom).
But all apriori knowledge is fished out of experience in the first place. Patterns in experience are noticed, articulated, and then [now consciously] relied upon. Even the early geometers had to 'see' or notice certain patterns in the first place, till they finally organized an axiomatic theory for the efficient communication of this insight to others.
https://math.unm.edu/~rhersh/geometry.pdf
I loved Pinter's book on abstract algebra, and such algebra is a great example of abstraction. Group theory ignores absolutely everything about a system except its satisfaction of a few simple axioms. This allows for a rich theory that applies to all possible groups at once, even those not yet invented or discovered. But this theory still exists in the world as an intellectual tradition. It uses symbols to support a thinking which is basically immaterial. (I'm not a formalist. Math gives insight.) The theory is also temporal-historical. No mathematician can hold it all in their intuition at once. He or she can review the forgotten proof/justification of a theorem. Can reason (and often does) in terms of Assuming P, then ...
I don't know how seriously we should take 'physical world' if we've already granted that the being of the world is essentially perspectival --that physicality is derivative and conventional --- understood in terms of possible and actual experience.
It's not a precept or rule of phenomenology as far as I am aware, it's just my own take. I realize of course that space and time are not sense objects as trees, smells and sounds are, but I stll think that we see extension and feel duration.
That aside, if the things as they are in themselves is unknowable I think we then have no warrant for claiming that it is not spatiotemporal. Of course, it would presumably not be spatiotemporal in the same way as appearances are, but it seems plausible to think that it must be such as to give rise to the spatiotemporal things, and I don't find the idea that that is entirely down to the mind convincing.
All that said I acknowledge that the mind or consciousness could possibly be ontologically foundational, I just tend to lean the other way.
Quoting Mww
Yes, I find that idea acceptable. But if we want to go beyond phenomenalism and speculate as to what could give rise to that empirical reality, then I think we find ourselves entirely in the realm where the individual sense of plausibility rules.
Quoting Mww
And I think I share (at least some of) your concerns about OLP. I could just as easily have said "preferred ways of thinking" as I have little doubt that our preferred ways of talking reflect that.
There's nothing mechanical about reason. Reason is the relation of ideas. And the reason why it seems 'metaphysical' is because, as we already established, you look with it, not at it. We can't know it, because it is what is knowing. That's what 'the eye can't see itself' means. Not understanding that is behind innummerable confusions about the nature of logic and mathematics.
Re geometery - I read a compelling account that the foundations of geometery were laid by the requirement to mark out parcels of land-holdings on the ancient Nile delta for each planting season, after the annual floods had re-arranged the landscape. Makes perfect sense to me. But that still doesn't explain the faculty of being able to count and calculate. As I understand it, Husserl grounds arithmetic in the act of counting. (I have the idea that this actually dovetails with Aquinas' idea of 'being as a verb'. So arithmetic, even though it comprises 'unchanging truths' on the one hand, is also inherently dynamic, in that grasping it is an activity of the intellect.)
Quoting plaque flag
I'm having great experiences with ChatGPT4 - it's just amazing for bouncing ideas off and generating other ideas. I call it, not 'artificial' intelligence, but 'augmented' intelligence.
Quoting plaque flag
Right! I had noticed Pinter's books on abstract algebra, although not being a mathematician, they probably wouldn't mean much to me. But do look at the abstract of his Mind and the Cosmic Order, I'm sure you'd like it.
Quoting plaque flag
Even though this quotation is about geometry and astronomy (as algebra hadn't yet been invented), it still rings true to me:
Quoting Republic 527d
I'll agree with you partially here, on Heideggarian terms. Our fundamental form of being is a kind of 'subrational' understanding or knowhow or skill. And we live in language like a water lives in fish (I'm keeping this accidental reversal in, because it's fun.) We rely upon this blind skill in order to even begin to articulate our own ability to articulate. Our minds are an especially 'transcendent' object in the Husserlian sense ---the most complicated, manifold, and 'horizonal' of familiar entities.
:up:
Have you ever seen rectangles of dots used to prove the commutative law ? Very persuasive. For me math is more visual than temporal, though it's grasped in time. Peirce thought of it in terms of diagrams. I think he was right, but that might be my visual bias talking. Others might 'see' the same mathematical objects differently. As long as people agree on their nature, it'd be hard to know. Sort of like the red-green reversal issue.
Indeed, and it's like being thrown into a kind of driving or sleepwalking. We are thrown into doing things the Right way. One eats with a fork, says please and thank you, doesn't walk outside without pants on. One circumspectively takes a couch as something for sitting on. And, as we've discussed, one looks right through the way that objects are given to their practical relevance. In our culture, one learns that the human is a rational animal in the system of nature, and not of course (how silly ! ) the very site of being. Also religion is a Private Matter. I don't object to this last one, but I notice it. I'm aware that it emerged after centuries of something else.
I like Heidegger's phrase which is translated as 'falling immersion.' Our tendency is to fall back into the cultural default, which is not all bad, because plenty of conventions are justified.
except for when we don't, which seems to happen an awful lot.
Sure, we are a wicked bunch, and there's an entire tradition with a right way for talking about that.
I've been reading some mathematical biology stuff, and it all makes a sick kind of sense. It's almost tautological that the world is snafu, given certain plausible assumptions and mathematical theorems. Life 'is' exploitation in a certain sense, with altruism 'forming' the inside of a larger organism (my group against yours.) I'm following the mess in Israel, and it's the same old history is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake.
Yes, the accounts from Israel are absolutely shattering and heart-breaking, aside from being absolutely bloody terrifying, although there is a separate thread on that (although I'm refraining from general comments, it will only add to the hubbub.)
Hume’s dilemma, and a logical snafu: it is impossible to both structure, and be derived from that which is structured. Build a house with boards, and the house gives you the boards? Say wha..!?!?
I jest, but the principle holds.
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Quoting Janus
I might argue that point. Ya know….we cannot think a thing then think we have thought otherwise, but we can think a thing and talk about it as if we thought of it otherwise. You cannot fake your thoughts but you can fake your language regarding your thoughts.
Quoting Janus
Cool.
I agree that Heidegger was influenced, etc., though I personally have no trouble yanking 'falling immersion' and many other concepts into a secular/'universal' context. I can't speak for others, but I'm interested in the work as a body of potential insight which can be personally sifted and tested. Part of the attraction of phenomenology is its deeply anti-authority check-for-yourself spirit. It's also largely descriptive, simply pointing out what's typically overlooked, eschewing fancy uncertain constructions.
One of my concerns about hidden-in-principle stuff in the self is that it leads us back into dualism. If to be is to be [potentially ] perceived or experienced, then nothing is [ absolutely ] hidden. If the world exists perspectively for 'transcendental' subjects which are ultimately nondual, then the deep structure of the subject must exists as manifest, both in the structure of the worldstreaming and then in the conceptual layer of this streaming as part of an intellectual culture that unveils it. The 'self in itself' which is 'infinitely' hidden ruins the whole nondual project, it seems to me.
I do acknowledge the obvious reality and intensity of memory and fantasy. And obviously we have the concept of both faculties, but I'd say the meaning of such faculties is ultimately in actual memories and fantasies that we've learned to classify. The lifeworld is always already culturally structured, and that includes interpretations of 'inner' states (and our sense of them as inner as opposed to outer, mine and not ours.)
But it only does that when you begin to speculate 'what could that be?' By positing it as something, then you're introducing a division or rupture. Obviously this is a very deep subject, but it came up in the MA thesis I did in 2012 on Anatta (no-self) in Buddhism. The first excerpt is from the Buddha referring to the states of jhana (meditative absorption). Then there's a Q&A between a monk and a senior monk on what this means.
[quote=Pahanaya Sutta, SN 35.24]The intellect is to be abandoned. Ideas are to be abandoned. Consciousness at the intellect is to be abandoned. Contact at the intellect is to be abandoned. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the intellect — experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain — that too is to be abandoned.[/quote]
Does this say, then, that beyond the ‘six sense gates’ and the activities of thought-formations and discriminative consciousness, there is nothing, the absence of any kind of life, mind, or intelligence? Complete non-being, as many of the early European interpreters were inclined to say. This question is put to Ven Sariputta (Sariputta is the figure in the Buddhist texts most associated with higher wisdom):
Quoting Kotthita Sutta, AN 4.174
The phrase ‘objectifies non-objectification’ (vada? appapañca? papañceti) is key here. As Thanissaro Bikkhu (translator) notes in his commentary, ‘the root of the classifications and perceptions of objectification is the thought, "I am the thinker." This thought forms the motivation for the questions that Ven. Maha Kotthita is presenting here.’ The very action of thinking ‘creates the thinker’, rather than vice versa. In effect, the questioner is asking, ‘is this something I can experience?’ So the question is subtly ego-centric.
The way this translates to me, is in the form of a strictly apophatic approach: knowing that you don't know. That is different to wondering what it might be, if you can see what I mean. That was the approach of a particular Korean Son (Zen) teacher, Seungsahn, who's teaching method was 'only don't know!'
Of course, it's easy to say such things (particularly for me as I'm overly loquacious) but actually realising it requires considerable dedication. That is the practical application (praxis).
:up:
In other words ( ? ) , language speaks the subject. A convention of selfhood emerges, a very early piece of intellectual technology. This conceptual-cultural self is real enough, just not (in my view) absolute.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/johann-fichte/#Foun
I'd say our skill with the word 'I' is part of that thrown falling immersion or they-self that we only can even begin to investigate after the fact of our enculturation. I'm a master of use before I even begin really to theorize about that use.
Personally, I think those six elements are a plausible decomposition of all possible experience/reality in the abstract. So I'd answer no. Intellection includes the structure of the rest (and its own self-referential, arbitrarily complex internal structure.)
As long as you include Kant in your criticism, I hear you. I do appreciate the relative clarity of English philosophers like J. S. Mill and Hume and so on. Descartes is excellent on this point too. But that's a bit of a secondary issue. I agree with ol' Popper that the source of an idea don't matter. It stands or falls on its own. One of Heidegger's problems was his reluctance to embrace this idea of the independence of the fruit from the soil. And how can we drag in Buddhism (and so on) without the assumption that such a transplant is meaningful ? So, respectfully, I'm not tempted to reject ideas on the basis of their circumstantial embedding context. Though obviously, like anyone, I'm less likely to bother figuring out what someone is saying if the package isn't promising.
More generally on the issue of charisma, authority, and other related source issues, I invoke a mathematical metaphor. I care more about the 'theorems' than the 'mathematicians,' but as a 'mathematician' I have a secondary interest in other players of the game. Indeed, a big part of reality is this cooperative adversarial structure of the [self-positing] Conversation that comes to understand itself. Theology constructs the God it seeks in that very seeking. (?)
I've often said, and sorry if I'm repeating myself, that I first encountered Kant in The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, T R V Murti, a book that became very much part of my spiritual formation. Murti compares Kant with Madhyamaka (the middle-way of N?g?rjuna) and details many convergences between them. This book has since been deprecated by more current academics on the grounds that Murti (an Indian, Oxford-educated scholar) was too 'eurocentric' in his approach but one of my thesis supervisors endorsed it. As to how to incorporate Buddhism in such a way that it's meaningful, I won't pretend that is an easy question.
I would have thought the "preferred" would take care of that...but perhaps not with everyone given human diversity.
Bateson is a really original thinker, and goes some way, I think, towards resolving the difficulties being expressed here.
Oh. My fault then. Sometimes I get too analytical. Preferred implies intentionality, but there’s only one way to think, within the confines of the legislation intrinsic to the three logical laws, which eliminates a preferred way of thinking. What is thought about may or may not be a conscious choice, but we can’t choose what to think of what we end up thinking about.
Yes! :100:
But doing such just maintains the status quo. If one puts oneself into another's shoes, one can always understand them, always perceive them as reasonable. How does that solve anything?
Who is "us"? Mankind as a whole, any particular person, or a particular person (but not some other person)?
I think there is a big reason why someone says
"This is a good book"
and not
"I like this book".
In the first instance, they are making a claim about the inherent, immanent quality of a book and implying that they are qualified to see things "as they really are" (while not everyone has such qualification).
In the latter case, they are stating a personal preference without assuming objectivity.
To wit: I once said to someone that Henry James' "Portrait of a Lady" was one of my favorite books. He replied, "You're wrong, because this is actually a very boring book."
From this, it's clear he took for granted that there is an objective reality, that a book has a particular immanent value, and that he knows "how things really are" while I don't. Other conversations with him supported this.
The differences in locutions are not superficial.
Quoting baker
I would have thought it should be obvious that I was referring to the way things generally appear to humans; you know, things like 'trees have leaves', 'water flows downhill,', 'clear skies are blue' and countless other well-established commonalities of appearances.
Quoting baker
I think what you say here has no relevance to what it aims to respond to. In any case, the person who told you're wrong to like Portrait of a Lady was speaking idiotically; it's uncontroversial that there is no accounting for taste, no possibility of establishing objective aesthetic criteria. Anyway all you report saying was that you liked it and not claiming that it is a great work. That said, if canonicity is at all to be thought to be a reliable guide to quality, the book is widely regarded as a classic.
Which is impossible when one of the participants is a moderator, putting his moderator foot down.
Close enough. When I see “way of thinking”, I interpret “way” as “method”.
[quote = The Blue Book ]
The idea is that the same object may be before his eyes and mine, but that I can't stick my head into his (or my mind into his, which comes to the same) so that the real and immediate object of his vision becomes the real and immediate object of my vision, too. By “I don't know what he sees” we really mean “I don't know what he looks at”, where “what he looks at” is hidden and he can't show it to me; it is before his mind's eye. Therefore, in order to get rid of this puzzle, examine the grammatical difference between the statements “I don't know what he sees” and “I don't know what he looks at”, as they are actually used in our language.
Sometimes the most satisfying expression of our solipsism seems to be this: “When anything is seen (really seen), it is always I who see it”.
What should strike us about this expression is the phrase “always I”. Always who? – For, queer enough, I don't mean: “always L.W.”
...
What tempted me to say “it is always I who see when anything is seen”, I could also have yielded to by saying: “when ever anything is seen, it is this which is seen”, accompanying the word “this” by a gesture embracing my visual field (but not meaning by “this” the particular objects which I happen to see at the moment). One might say, “I am pointing at the visual field as such, not at anything in it”. And this only serves to bring out the senselessness of the former expression.
Let us then discard the “always” in our expression. Then I can still express my solipsism by saying, “Only what I see (or: see now) is really seen”. And here I am tempted to say: “Although by the word “I” I don't mean L.W., it will do if the others understand “I” to mean L.W. if just now I am in fact L.W.”. I could also express my claim by saying: “I am the vessel of life”; but mark, it is essential that everyone to whom I say this should be unable to understand me. It is essential that the other should not be able to understand “what I really mean”, though in practice he might do what I wish by conceding to me an exceptional position in his notation. But I wish it to be logically impossible that he should understand me, that is to say, it should be meaningless, |(Ts-309,109) not false, to say that he understands me. Thus my expression is one of the many which is used on various occasions by philosophers and supposed to convey something to the person who says it, though essentially incapable of conveying anything to anyone else.
[/quote]
https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php?title=Blue_Book
In my view, much rides on our approach to this issue. 'I' see the same object from my perspective. But 'perspective' must be generalized and metaphorical here, because I also include colorblindness and myopia. Indeed, my entire system of beliefs and training meet 'my version' of (or rather are my perspective on) the same object --- same because [our ] language always intends our object in the world.
*****
We might review why we are tempted toward a 'solipsistic' or 'idealistic' position in the first place. Our nose is always in the picture. Our body is always at the center of worldly experience. The '[s]camera[/s]' (the there itself) follows this hungry and fearful body around. What I believe is just how the world is, while I believe it to be that way. If I'm in true uncertainty, the world itself flickers threateningly. The limits of my language are the limits of 'my' world (the world from my perspective.) I will say, in retrospect, that certain dimensions in were invisible or unnoticed by a younger me. I didn't know then there were transfinite numbers or phenomenologists.
I'm trying to make a case for the centrality of of the issue of subjectivity. I'm not saying we we agree on the details, but we seem to agree on the importance of the issue.
[quote=The Notebooks]
What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world!
I want to report how I found the world.
What others in the world have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience of the world.
I have to judge the world, to measure things.
[/quote]
https://archive.org/stream/notebooks191419100witt/notebooks191419100witt_djvu.txt
I have to judge the world. The normative-responsible claim-making mask-choosing ego (not the transcendental [s]ego[/s]) is itself already in a quasi-isolated situation, especially in more individualistic societies. I have a vivid 'direct experience' of my little corner of the world, but in a high-tech society, I take so much on trust. I am a good progressive, maybe, who 'trusts the science' --- though this may boil down to trusting a consensus I don't know how to check directly.
What others in the world have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience of the world. The world is 'given to' highly motivated creatures who mostly notice and remember what keeps their body warm and fed. Traditions of history or physics construct a picture of the world without our noses in the foreground. Hence the achievement of forgetting subjectivity, of seeing around one's little household ways and gods. Some updated version of matter moving in void is taken as the truly real.
The status of the color and meaning and culture that we somehow paint on this bottom layer is typically left obscure. Consciousness is a mere paintjob, not being itself. But this suggests our being 'trapped' in the paintjob, and that 'atoms and void' are still merely representation, a kind of instrumental fiction. True reality is forever Out There, though it must exist because we've presupposed mediation, the paintjob, indirect realism. We did this because: nerves, brains, fuctional relationships between bodies and the reports from their mouths. Because we took common sense to be real and trustworthy enough to build the rest of a weird ontology upon --- one throwing into doubt its own foundation.
The key representatives of objective idealism I can think of are Hegel and Plato. Both vary from one another, but both accept that rocks, trees, chairs, etc. are plenty real in some sense. They are "mind-independent" in terms of not being causally generated by minds and their properties are not created by the mind either.
However, both have an understanding of entities as being more or less real. Things are more real when they are more self-determining and more necessary, less contingent on things outside themselves for being. So, a rock, is far less real than the idea of a triangle because an individual rock is essentially a bundle of effects. A rock isn't self generating or rationally necessary in any sense. Thus, we get an idea of a higher level of reality where ideas, which are more self-determining and necessary exist "above" individual instances of objects.
This view rejects a mechanistic view of reality. If anything, the "view of science" as a view that uses logical principles, self-determining reason, and active self-discovery, and which progresses dialectically, is more real than what that view purports itself to "be about." Which is why for both, the type of project that science is, a "going beyond of the given," is of paramount importance, even if the metaphysical claims attached to the project are denigrated.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.174.than.html
Note the media metaphor here, which is all too natural for us. The gates of the eyes, gates of the ears, for the world flow 'in.' And it does in some sense, for the subject is a kind of infinitesimal central vortex, seemingly the body 'for which' it all happens or exists. But this witness is only the verbal-bodily cultural-conventional ego, and this still-worldly ego is an object existing among others ---though crucially 'entangled' somehow with the 'site of being ' --- world-from-perspective.
The perception, "I am the thinker" lies at the root of these classifications in that it reads into the immediate present a set of distinctions — I/not-I; being/not-being; thinker/thought; identity/non-identity — that then can proliferate into mental and physical conflict. The conceit inherent in this perception thus forms a fetter on the mind. To become unbound, one must learn to examine these distinctions — which we all take for granted — to see that they are simply assumptions that are not inherent in experience,
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.4.14.than.html
Hume dissolved the self. Mach and Heidegger do so in their own ways. I hope it's not too eurocentric to hope for some kind of universal human insight here, which is a product of a universal-enough human logic.
Quoting Mww
So, you it seems are focusing on the method, and I'm focusing on the foundational presuppositions that support the method. The other thought that occurred to me was that not all ways of thinking are methodical.
:up:
Some of my best work related thinking has ocurred when I'm not thinking about the topic, and possibly even while I was sleeping. It's commonly been the case, that when I'm in the shower getting ready for work, that I've recognized a way to understand or deal with some problem - an understanding that I hadn't had before I got in the shower.
There have been many comparisons between Hume’s so-called ‘bundle theory of self’ and Buddhist no-self teachings. But obviously the context and intentions of Hume’s philosophy and Buddhism are worlds apart. (Although there’s an interesting, if overly long, essay in The Atlantic, about the possibility that Hume encountered Buddhist teachings in the French town of Le Clerche we he lived whilst composing The Treatise.)
With respect to the ‘six sense gates’, that is from abhidharma, Buddhist philosophical psychology. It’s a very sophisticated system and very hard condense, although it’s noteworthy that it’s often mentioned by Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana in their research into embodied cognition. Its convergences with phenomenology have also been subject to a lot of comment.
Quoting wonderer1
An interesting book by a 60s-70s author whose name is rapidly receding in the past: ‘The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe is a 1959 book by Arthur Koestler. It traces the history of Western cosmology from ancient Mesopotamia to Isaac Newton. He suggests that discoveries in science arise through a process akin to sleepwalking. Not that they arise by chance, but rather that scientists are neither fully aware of what guides their research, nor are they fully aware of the implications of what they discover.’ It’s full of serendipitous discoveries and scientists making astonishing, accidental discoveries whilst in pursuit of something else altogether. And accounts of discoveries like you mention, where insights arise unexpectedly when going about their daily lives.
From an excellent blog post on idealism and non-duality, the following solution is given:
(I think this is the same point I try to make with the argument that ‘the mind’ is not simply the individual mind, your mind or mind, but the mind, which however is never an object of consciousness.)
The view I've been arguing for is this: there is no 'deep' subject in the first place but only the-world-from-a-perspective.
There are of course empirical-psychological subjects/persons, but crucially these are just entities in the world. My brain is an object in the world, but my 'consciousness' is part of the being of the world. '[First-person] consciousness' just is is. --- just exactly the world's being.
Quite right, although as often pointed out, the term ‘idealism’ was not current in Plato’s time and would not be coined until the 1700’s. But there’s another contemporary defender of absolute idealism, Sebastian Rodl, professor of philosophy at Leipzig University. From the jacket copy of Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: an Introduction to Absolute Idealism ‘ Self-Consciousness and Objectivity undermines a foundational dogma of contemporary philosophy: that knowledge, in order to be objective, must be knowledge of something that is as it is, independent of being known to be so. Sebastian Rodl revives the thought--as ancient as philosophy but largely forgotten today--that knowledge, precisely on account of being objective, is self-knowledge: knowledge knowing itself.’
Why ‘the world’s’ being? Could you elaborate on that?
:up:
I think this is the same idea. Consciousness in the radical sense (first person sense) is just nondual being.
Sure. Thinking is intrinsically social, and we always use a shared language to intend objects in our shared world. [To deny this claim is a performative contradiction. ] We also discuss all of reality in the same inferential nexus. So my toothache or daydream may come up in a explanation of why I was late for work. A molecule may explain a hallucination. And so on. Our world includes toothaches , promises, prime numbers, and memories. Even this or that entity is in a little pocket of the world like someone's empirical-psychological ego. It's all in the same nexus of rationality. The truth is the whole. No finite-disconnect entity is even intelligible, for one defines or explains it only in terms of other entities. Hence Brandom's so-called 'neorationalism.' And of course Hegel's idealism defined as holism.
I think this is close to what Leibniz was getting at. Each of us is a kind of copy of the world. But the world has no original. It only exists perspectively. But that's not so much an empirical claim but an appeal to what we can even mean by worldly objects, which gets us back to J S Mill.
https://plato-philosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/The-Monadology-1714-by-Gottfried-Wilhelm-LEIBNIZ-1646-1716.pdf
This same town becomes numerous in aspects. The town stands for the world, which exists only perspectively, in billions of related but differing 'copies' and yet is glued together by our empathy and language. We build the scientific image and so on. We have Heidegger's 'one,' which is a taken-for-granted collective habit of interpretation and practical skill. So we look right through perspectival being itself.
I took a look at the Wikipedia page for the book, and I didn't get a very flattering impression. The title didn't sound like something which someone well informed about the thought processes of scientists would chose. There is a lot of work involved in developing intuitive faculties that can solve problems 'in the background'.
Looking into the background of Koestler himself, I didn't see any reason to think he was someone with relevant expertise.
I don't think I'll be looking into it further, but thanks for bringing it to my attention.
:up:
This is exactly what I'm also saying. The empirical subject is in the world. The transcendental 'subject' is so pure-transparent-diaphanous ( a mere 'nothingness') that we finally grasp it as being plain and simple. The outside vanishes with the inside. We can call the stream 'transcendental consciousness' or 'pure experience,' but these subject-biased terms are a bit misleading.
https://critique-of-pure-interest.blogspot.com/2021/02/non-duality-and-problems-of-western_12.html
Quoting Wayfarer
True, I agree with that.
Quoting Wayfarer
Okay, thanks. 'Wish I had more time at the moment. :blush:
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, right.
Quoting Wayfarer
It seems that you have a stark premise that empirical facts exist. But the question is whether the thrust of the OP and of Pinter's thought is compatible with that premise. They may be irreconcilable. For example, it may be that shape is an "empirical fact" and Pinter's theory does not allow for shape (as a fact), in which case Pinter's theory would be at odds with that sort of "empirical fact."
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, but we all agree to that. The question, to put it bluntly, is whether the glass distorts. Or conditions, if you prefer.
Yes, good point. I agree.
, - Interesting, thank you.
Quoting plaque flag
Right.
- Good quotes. I wish you had given the sources.
- This is what I don't really agree with.
Thanks too for the various quotes on page 18.
I've said a number of times, I'm not questioning empirical facts. This is also Kant's attitude, as he was at the same time an empirical realist and a transcendental idealist. Kant acknowledges that in our everyday experience, we interact with a world of objects that apparently exist independently of our perceptions. This is what he refers to as empirical realism. In other words, Kant recognizes that we can reasonably assume the existence of a mind-independent external world. We perceive objects, interact with them, and make empirical claims about their properties. (Shouldn't forget Kant also lectured in scientific subjects and his theory of nebular formation, modified by LaPlace, is still considered mainstream.)
At the same time, the principles of transcendental idealism concerns the nature of empirical knowledge itself (which is why it's called 'critical'). Empirical knowledge is shaped and structured by the inherent categories and concepts of the human mind. These mental structures, including space, time, causality, and the categories like substance and quantity, are not inherent properties of the external world but rather conditions for the possibility of experience. (This is where Kant's philosophy dovetails with the cognitive science approach. There's a scholar named Andrew Brook who has written extensively about Kant and cognitive science, including contributing some of the SEP articles on Kant. Wiki entry.)
Kant argues that while the external world exists independently of our perceptions, we can never know it as it is in itself. Instead, we can only know the world as it appears to us - as phenomena mediated through our mental categories and senses. This is the much-debated distinction of phenomenal and noumena, appearance and reality, as depicted in Kant.
Contrasted with that, the common sense view, and maybe even the view of scientific realism, is what Kant would have designated transcendental realism. Transcendental realism is a term used to describe a philosophical perspective that asserts the existence of a reality independent of the mind, which appears to be the testimony of common sense, as the world plainly precedes our own existence. But in so doing it over-values our sensory and intellectual faculties - it's at once hubristic and naive.
Quoting Leontiskos
Again the analogy is misleading. It's not as if you have one party, that sees with eyes, and another, that sees without them, so you can compare the two. The question would be better put 'do the eyes distort?' - to which the response is, in their absence there is no capacity to see. It's not as if there is a choice.
Your first paragraph contradicts your second, and this is what I anticipated when I said, "They may be irreconcilable." You say that you are not questioning empirical facts, and then you immediately go on to question empirical facts. Or you redefine them. You have been doing the same thing at a more concrete level with regard to shape.
Quoting Wayfarer
<Right>, but the question, again, is what it means to see; what is the nature of the glass. The disagreement has always been over "whether we can know external reality as it is in itself."
But it doesn't. It simply states that empiricism is not the sole arbiter of what it true. There's no contradiction.
Quoting Leontiskos
Remember that in this analogy, 'glass' represents 'the act of knowing'. The nature of knowledge is what is at issue.
Thanks ! And sorry about leaving out the sources. Here they are:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm
You mean this : Objects 'are' possible and actual experiences ?
For me the point is to examine with real seriousness what we mean by 'physical object.' I always see the spatial object as a kind of continuous series of adumbrations from various perspectives. To be sure, I don't experience the object as a mere projection. Instead the wolrd pours in. I live in the system of possibilities that is only analyzed theoretically, brought to attention to phenomenology, for instance.
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Perspectivism
The microcosm here is the idea that boulders possess a mind-independent quality of shape (link), and you specifically called this an "empirical matter" (link). Presumably such is an empirical fact.
But then—and this occurs at the more general level as well—this empirical fact gets redefined to be a sensory phenomenon (link), and that is how we continually fall away from the point at issue, which is "whether we can know external reality as it is in itself." Thus you seem to simultaneously admit and deny the empirical fact that the boulder has shape in itself. In fact we fall away from the point at issue so consistently, that my task becomes merely designating the thesis at issue.
Thanks. Once this criticism occurred to me (I was inspired by Nietzsche*), the absurdity of Kant's system (as a whole, but not in all its details) became obvious. Indirect realism is, without realizing it, dependent upon direct realism.
[quote=Nietzsche]
Others say even that the external world is the work of our organs? But then our body, as a part of this external world, would be the work of our organs! But then our organs themselves would be the work of our organs!
[/quote]
https://gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-h.htm
This is the quote I can't agree with:
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Quoting plaque flag
Right.
Quoting plaque flag
Exactly! And thus if indirect realism's critique of direct realism is thoroughgoing (as Kant's tends to be), then it saws off the branch on which it sits (as you already noted). That's the part that is always hard to see for the first time.
When we find any object, we will generally find that it has qualities and attributes such as shape, which pre-date our discovery of it. But at the same time, shape is an attribute of our sensory apprehension of the object. Whether it has shape outside that, or whether it has inherent attributes outside our sensory apprehension of it, is unknowable as a matter of principle, as we have to bring it to mind or present it to the senses, to discuss it. Shapes, spatial relationships, duration, position, and all of the manifold which makes such judgements possible, are brought to the picture by the observing mind.
Then you are simply remiss in claiming that the object has a quality of shape that "pre-dates our discovery of it." The same contradiction is present.
There's a long interview with Linde in the Closer to Truth series, where he explains this in more detail, in his rather charmingly Russian-accented English. (Linde is one of the main authors of the inflationary universe theory, as well as the theory of eternal inflation and inflationary multiverse. )
I can't say what Magee meant, of course, but I embraced this quote from my own [confessedly weird ] 'perspectival phenomenalist' position. What I can mean by 'broom' is (as I see it) limited by my experience. To be sure, this experience is always 'fringed' or 'horizonal.'
I can chisel ESSE EST PERCIPI on a mountainside somewhere. Then somehow all of the species dies, and that inscription remains. But I understand its so remaining in terms of possible experience. If someone had survived, they might have found it and read it. If aliens arrive, they may be able to decode it. So for me the point is semantic. The neorationalism inspired by Brandom starts to sneak in here.
An agent is rational in Brandom’s preferred sense just in case she draws inferences in a way that is evaluable according to the inferential role of the concepts involved in those inferences, where the inferential role of a concept is specified in terms of the conditions under which an agent would be entitled to apply, or prohibited from applying, that concept, together with what else an agent would be entitled or committed to by the appropriate application of the concept. This articulation of the content of concepts in terms of the inferential role of those concepts, and the specification of those roles in terms of proprieties of inference, is combined with a distinctive brand of pragmatism. Instead of the content of a concept providing an independent guide or rule that governs which inferences are appropriate, it is the actual practices of inferring carried out in a community of agents who assess themselves and each other for the propriety of their inferences that explains the content of the concepts.
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/reason-in-philosophy-animating-ideas/
Note that inferential role semantics is a flavor of structuralism, which is famously the salt to phenomenology's pepper, the peanutbutter to its jelly. A concept (to some degree) has its meaning in the role it plays in which inferences are allowed and disallowed. Meaning is fundamentally normative, systematic, and social, and concepts all function in sets. FWIW, it's this deep sociality of langauge that glues all the 'monads'/perspectives together. We intend [ discuss ] the same objects in the same world, however differently we perceive them.
It may be hard to see because radical indirect realism is so sexy. I watched a Donald Hoffman Ted talk, and it was gripping. I knew it was fallacious and confused, but I still enjoyed it. I felt the pull of the sci-fi. I could be one of the those in on the Secret, while others were lost in the shadow play on the cave wall.
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- Okay, thanks, that helps some. The "inferential role" idea adds a great deal. Sorry for the short responses. I am trying not to get trapped in this thread again. :sweat:
It'd be great to get your thoughts on this aging OP, but no pressure.
You'd need to be in the same street to do that ;-)
Let me know if my paraphrase is acceptable ?
The object itself (better phrase for my money than the object-in-itself) and not some representation of it is known. Others may see the object itself from the other side of the room, and they will therefore see it differently, but they also see the object itself, not a representation.
I think we agree on:
Mediation is unnecessary here. Perspective is the better way to approach the varying of the object's givenness. The complicated machinery of vision is a often-mentioned red herring, in my view. The intended object is always out there in the world. 'I see the object' exists in Sellars' 'space of reasons.'
BECAUSE the rational intellect knows the forms of things. Google 'the union of knower and known'. Most of the top results are either Islamic or Thomist. Why? Because they preserve Aristotle's 'active intellect', with the remnant of the Plato's forms (modified by Aristotle), which in turn were inherited from the dialogue with Parmenides. THAT is what becomes lost in the transition to modernity, where instead 'the object' is endowed with 'mind-independent' status as the criterion of what is real. That is what I'm arguing against.
Here is the general outline of a position I hold which to me presents an intermediary view:
On one hand, the rock cannot hold a shape in the complete, or else absolute, absence of sentience—for no distance nor duration whatsoever can obtain in the absence two or more cooccurring (and interacting) sentient beings. This position—which I presume can be argued via a Kantian worldview—acknowledges the idealistic aspects of reality.
However:
Given the just mentioned cooccurrence (and interaction) of two or more distinct transcendental egos, there then will necessarily occur distance and duration which equally applies to all cooccurring transcendental egos in the cosmos that in any way interact or else hold the potential to interact—for, devoid of any such equally applicable reality, no interaction would be possible. This distance (i.e., space) and duration (i.e., time) which is thus equally applicable to all cooccurring transcendental egos in the cosmos will then necessitate some form of shape(s) within the cosmos which is not contingent on any one mind or any one set of minds but, instead, is strictly contingent on the totality of all cooccurring minds (this as per the first clause provided above). The shapes which occur in the cosmos and are equally applicable to all individual minds (e.g., an actual, physical rock as contrasted to some mind’s particular imagination of a rock) will then occur in manners wholly unbiased to any one mind in particular—for they are equally applicalbe to all minds in the cosmos—and will thereby be objective in at least this sense of the word: a complete impartiality of being or occurrence. This overall proposition then readily allows for empirical facts in the world to obtain; such as the empirical fact of a physical rock’s particular shape remaining constant regardless of the sentient beings which might happen to interact with it and of their particular faculties of (empirical) perception.
This objective reality as just outlined would then remain relatively constant (yet in flux rather than being perfectly static) where sentient beings to be perpetually birthed into the cosmos and to perpetually pass away (or else disappear) from it, this as can be observed to in fact happen. The rock’s shape predates us as individuals and as a particular cohort—yet nevertheless, in this roughly sketched model, remains fully contingent on the occurrence of all individualized transcendental egos that interact or hold the potential to interact in the cosmos (which as a physical, objective given, is a contemporaneous result of there being numerous transcendental egos that in some way directly or indirectly affect each other—this being a type of formal causation of the former by the latter.)
The point of this post is to illustrate that philosophical idealism and empirical facts can coherently coexist—i.e., that there is no necessary contradiction between them.
:up:
My approach to this is to stubbornly demand some actual meaning from physical theories. The 'silence of algorithm' (often math that just has no definite interpretation or only an absurd-counterintuitive interpretation) is finally brought down to earth and the lifeworld and genuine meaning through the [ understandable ] measurements it 'compresses' [ see algorithmic information theory ] and predicts. Then there's the associated technology, which we experience in the usual, familiar way.
As far as I can tell, some people experience the math involved as mystical hieroglyphics, like the streaming green source code in The Matrix. I think Tegmark is like this, but such thinking has left the empirical scientific spirit behind. It's bad metaphysics drunk on its close association with good physics.
I think you are agreeing with John Stuart Mill, that objects are permanent possibilities [and actualities, of course ] of sensation.
How so, if you don't mind my asking ?
Yes, quite right. :up: And that it occurs is known most surely—more surely than any epistemological theory that might undercut it (hence my post <on the topic>). Of course you have also raised the additional point that indirect realism tends to presuppose direct realism.
Courtesy a link provided by @Janus, I've just acquired Jane McDonnell, The Pythagorean
World: Why Mathematics Is Unreasonably Effective In Physics - a very recent title, McDonnell being a recent grad of Monash Uni in Melbourne. This is her PhD thesis in book form. Seems to present a kind of Pythagorean idealism, although I've barely started reading it yet.
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- I think we disagree on what anti-Scientism requires, but I will look forward to your thread on this topic.
This is still the way I would put it:
Quoting Leontiskos
Questions I might ask: Is color real (are there really colorful things) ? Is sound real ? Are feelings of love real ? That we humans got good a measuring things and finding mathematical patterns in those measurements is undeniable. But why do certain thinkers pretend/claim that the visceral-embodied measurement process is unreal ? It's all real. The numbers too, but not only the numbers.
As I noted, briefly, I think there's a lot in Aristotlelian-Thomist philosophy - which surprises me, as I'm not Catholic, and it's usually associated with the Catholic faith. I have learned there's a school of thought called Transcendental Thomism, associated with Rahner and other mainly European Catholic philosophers. I'm interested in that.
No, it's quite fine (although I'll have to take a break shortly). As my initial post on this thread intended to explain, this within a system wherein the objective world and all objective things therein are formally causal products of a necessary co-occurrence of two or more transcendental egos which interact or hold the potential to interact. These transcendental egos - as per Kant - hold within them (for lack of better phrasing) space and time (and causation) as categories requisite to experiencing anything empirical whatsoever. For them to actively interact, an equally applicable space and time will need to apply to all momentarily interacting agents. Whatever is equally shared between all co-occurring transcendental egos in the cosmos will then be impartially, i.e. objectively, occurrent in the cosmos.
The physical rock's spatial, temporal, and causal attributes are examples of what is equally applicable to all co-occurring transcendent egos in the cosmos (complexities of spacetime curvature aside). So the rock as objective thing remains constant regardless of perspective which apprehends it empirically, be the perspective human or otherwise. Two humans will then see it at the same time from different angles but yet agree on the properties of its shape.
Apologies if this doesn't make better sense of what I previously wrote.
As you know, since Day 1 on the forum, I've been pursuing the question of the question of the reality of number (and abstract objects generally). My view is that they're real, but they're not phenomenally existent; they're inherent in the way the mind categorises, predicts and organises its cognitions. And as 'the world' and 'experience' are not ultimately divided (per non-dualism) then this is why mathematics is uncannily predictictive. That, I think, is the thrust of McDonnell's book.
I've tried to read up on Tegmark but have been dismayed to learn that despite his commitment to what he calls 'pythagoreanism', he still remains wedded to a scientifically materialist philosophy. 'It’s fair to say that Tegmark, a physicist by training, is not a biological sentimentalist. He is a materialist who views the world and the universe beyond as being made up of varying arrangements of particles that enable differing levels of activity. He draws no meaningful or moral distinction between a biological, mortal intelligence and that of an intelligent, self-perpetuating machine' ~ The Guardian.
As always, 'the philosophy of a subject who forgets himself'.
Yes, there are many different schools of Thomism. My teachers tended to be in the Laval/River Forest school, or else the analytic Thomism school. Transcendental Thomism is more conciliatory towards modern thought:
Quoting Edward Feser, The Thomistic Tradition, Part I
Sure, but I thought it was obvious that I wasn't just adopting Leibniz's entire theory. I've been trying to follow the evolution of perspectivism in Western philosophy, and Leibniz and Berkeley are important, but they come with the expected theological baggage of their time, which I don't need of course.
For me there is no world-in-itself: some weird collection of asperspectival stuff. Hence ontological cubism. A world shattered into perspectives on that world. This isn't an empirical claim. It's a semantic claim. People can't even say what they mean by it. Or so I claim.
But our best physical theories are great at transforming coordinate systems, till maybe we forget that measurements are finally done by embodied perspectival beings --that physical theories refer, finally, to actual and possible human experience. [Or they aren't science anymore but mysticism written in difficult mathematics, which isn't that hard to do really.]
Sure. And they also exist culturally, viscerally, just as the rest of our mentality does. As a student of math, I'd be lost with pencil and paper (I've been working on math when stepping away from here, a construction of the real numbers.) Much of mathematical thinking is externalized, embodied. And more generally reduce pure subjectivity to pure being itself. The psychological subject is part of the world, and we can articulate all kinds of causal relationships between it an its environment --do the usual psychology.
To me it's not math itself but theories in that syntax that are predictive. Math allows for precise measurement and precise prediction. It also allows for more and more complex models, with more and more impressive inferences allowing us to move from general theory to a prediction in this or that specified context.
The world just happens to be orderly, it seems to me. Maybe the anthropic principle is worth something here. Without order to exploit, there could be no life. (?)
The book begins:
Quoting The Democracy of Objects, Chapter 1, by Levi R. Bryant
(link to chapter)
(Tagging @schopenhauer1 on account of the reference to Graham Harman)
I'll let their ghosts debate that issue with you, since neither system is my own. Wittgenstein basically states my own current position in the TLP and early notebooks. Mach gives a powerful, more detailed presentation. James is also there in Does Consciousness Exist ? None of them hammered home the implied perspectivism, though, which gives me something useful to do.
:)
I appreciate you checking it out. I'd be happy to clarify my weird prose, of course.
I can't speak for all correlationists, but I take speculative realism to be an empty promise, grounded in nostalgia. The investigation of being (ontology) is something like grasping its essence in concepts. So it's weird to talk about grasping forever-ungraspable being. And of course our 'talk' is a contamination of this 'being.' So what now ? The speculative realists tend to present themselves as tough-minded types, but I feel like I'm the genuine positivist in such a context, up against mathematical mystics whose attachment to physics is supposed to obscure the mysticism.
My point was only that the importance of their systems (given that we accept for the sake of argument that they are important beyond merely their place in the canon) principally relies on what you want to discard. Even just their importance as members of the canon relies on their system being accepted as a whole.
Just to clarify, you mean @Wayfarer ? I don't know if he embraces the term. But, for the record, we can do without the subject before we can do without the world. [The empirical subject is part of the world, albeit a central part.] [The world is just 'Being' --- how it is, all that is the case in all its sensuousness, etc. ]
The problem of hallucination, right ? I can decide that what 'seemed like' an X was 'really' a Y. But I can changed 'my mind' yet again. One 'appearance' 'corrects' another. Belief is the intelligible structure of the world given perspectively. There is no stuff out there beyond all perspectives. Not in my system. Wouldn't have it. [Smile] So the world-for-me itself flickers and smokes with possibility and uncertainty. Despite our practical and shrewd repression of this aspect of the world.
To quote early Notebook boy Wittgenstein, 'p is true' just means 'p.' Which means that the world is like this rather than that [the world for me, but I have to remind myself of that sometimes.] We can learn a detachment or distance from our beliefs, so that we call them 'beliefs' and not just (like a fanatic) the obvious truth. [I mention this because my theory of belief and deflation of Truth is important for my perspectivism.]
derivative on the thing that exists in itself
Can you unfold this ? My bias is that you won't find more than what Mill described, but perhaps you'll surprise me.
To me that's a bold claim which I very much dispute. I take an opposite Hegelian view. The timebinding [ scientific ] philosophical Conversation is the actual protagonist, and relatively ephemeral personalities become relevant if they catch up with it enough to help it along.
Your thinking, applied to physics, would reduce Newton to dust -- as if we weren't basically still Newtonians. To be sure, we aren't pure Newtonians anymore.
(1) We 'can only ever speak' of being as something we are speaking about. This tautology is supposed to be offensive. But one could also tease when it's presented as a profundity.
(2) The 'for us' can be reduced to pure perspectival being, as in Wittgenstein. The world 'just happens' to gather around sentient flesh. But this can be thought of as merely contingently true. It takes effort, but one can (and I think Husserl did) imagine a pure bodiless worldstream. But there will be an implicit 'eye' implied by the visual space (a perspectival space) , even if no eye is actually posited, for that's the kind of space we can talk sensibly about.
On further reflection, it occurs to me that an Aquinas would not endorse the notion of a 'mind-independent object'. Why? Because in his philosophical theology, particulars derive their being from God - that they are created and maintained in existence by the divine intellect. Not only does God grant existence initially (through creation), but He also continuously sustains all things in existence. Without the continuous causal activity of God, things would cease to exist. In this way, God is not just a distant first cause; He is intimately involved in maintaining the existence of all particulars (cf Jean Gebser, 'The Ever-Present Origin'.) And whilst the 'divine intellect' might be an unfathomable mystery to us mortals, it is still a mind, rather than an impersonal physical force such as energy.
This is what I clumsily referred to with the earlier reference to Eckhardt, that being the gist of his aphorism, 'creatures [i.e. created things] are mere nothings'. They have no intrinsic reality outside the Divine Intellect which sustains us and all things in existence.
Quoting Wayfarer
In this thread when we have been speaking about "mind-independent objects," 'mind' is taken to refer to the human mind. To speak about God's mind is a rather different thing, and now you seem to be flirting with full-fledged Idealism. I think you are working above your pay-grade at this point. :wink:
But there are sparks of truth in such an idea. For the classical theist human knowledge is a re-cognition of God's own thought, and the fact that we are made in God's image explains why we can know God's creation. This is one of the reasons why science (the study of mind-independent reality) is thought to have grown up so readily in theistic contexts. At the same time, your conclusion about the ontology of creation goes much further than classical theism would admit. It essentially moves towards a pantheism that undermines natural science for want of a determinate object of study.
Almost certainly, but then I am trying to follow a thread through a labyrinth. And thank you. :pray:
I think you're reifying an imagined entity.
Quoting plaque flag
That's untrue and irrelevant, for three reasons: first I was talking about philosophy, not physics, second, I don't think Newton's mechanics are obsolete, just not as accurate as Einstein's and third I was speaking about the relevance of thinkers as being relative to their whole systems of thought. How do you think Newton's mechanics would fare if you removed its lynchpins? The point was simply that both Leibniz' and Berkeley's metaphysics fall apart if you remove God.
Quoting Wayfarer
And here is another case in point. God is central to scholastic metaphysics as well. Although that said, on a different point, Wayfarer, how do you (or Aquinas) know God holds things in existence via his "intellect"? Could it not be his desire or will? And a further point is that even in this scenario things are human-mind independent. God, if he exists, could presumably create a whole world with no humans in it. The Catholics accept the current cosmological paradigm, according to which the cosmos existed for far, far longer without humans than it has with them.
Edit: I see @Leontiskos beat me to the point concerning human mind-independence.
Aquinas has a quote that goes something like this, "Do not wish to jump immediately from the streams to the sea, because one has to go through easier things to the more difficult."
It's from somewhere in his Compendium of Theology, and I think it's good advice. Granted, it's also fun to try to eat the whole meal in one bite. :grin:
I tried that and I nearly choked. not my idea of fun. :wink:
In classical philosophy and scholasticism, particularly within the Thomistic and Neo-Platonic traditions, there is indeed a view that the human intellect (nous) is a reflection or an image of the Divine Intellect. That shows up in the doctrine of the rational soul and also in the role of intellect in hylomorphic dualism. I don't know if they ever entertained the idea of other solar systems (actually wasn't that somerthing that Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for? Unlike Mah?y?na Buddhism, which acknowledges 'a myriad of life-bearing orbs'.)
Quoting Janus
Indeed. The inventor of big bang cosmology was Georges LeMaitre, a Catholic priest. I've often told that anecdote that Pope Pius wished to use LeMaitre's argument to press the case for 'creation ex nihilo', but that LeMaitre was embarrased by this conflation of the scientific accounts with religious cosmology and asked the Pope's science advisor to intervene, which he did. I loved that story on a couple of grounds - first, LeMaitre's utter commitment to scientific impartiality, while still maintaining his faith, and seeing no conflict between them; second, that he got the Pope to agree not to do something.
Quoting Leontiskos
I understand your concern. But my philosophical quest started with an eclectic approach - very much in the spirit of the 1960's. I read, for example, quite a few of Alan Watts books, also Thomas Merton, and other eclectics. Heck, I first learned the name 'Jacques Maritain' through a book I bought at Adyar Bookshop (one of many!) God, Zen and the Intuition of Being. All of those kinds of sources quote Aquinas and Plotinus and pseudo-dionysius, and others of that ilk. Later in life, I came to recognise the lack in my own education, never having been schooled in 'the Classics' but some elements of classical philosophy have really come alive for me. Yes, it's syncretist, and definitely unorthodox but there is a thread.
That's fair. There are definitely different ways to go about it, and it sounds like you have some good sources to work from.
Actually that wasn't the point.
That was my point and I was quite explicit about it. Go back and read again...or not...suit yourself...
[quote = Hegel]
The bodily forms of those great minds who are the heroes of this history, the temporal existence and outward lives of the philosophers, are, indeed, no more, but their works and thoughts have not followed suit, for they neither conceived nor dreamt of the rational import of their works. Philosophy is not somnambulism, but is developed consciousness; and what these heroes have done is to bring that which is implicitly rational out of the depths of Mind, where it is found at first as substance only, or as inwardly existent, into the light of day, and to advance it into consciousness and knowledge. This forms a continuous awakening. Such work is not only deposited in the temple of Memory as forms of times gone by, but is just as present and as living now as at the time of its production. ... The conquests made by Thought when constituted into Thought form the very Being of Mind. Such knowledge is thus not learning merely, or a knowledge of what is dead, buried and corrupt: the history of Philosophy has not to do with what is gone, but with the living present.
...
Since the progress of development is equivalent to further determination, and this means further immersion in, and a fuller grasp of the Idea itself-that the latest, most modern and newest philosophy is the most developed, richest and deepest. In that philosophy everything which at first seems to be past and gone must be preserved and retained, and it must itself be a mirror of the whole history. The original philosophy is the most abstract, because it is the original and has not as yet made any movement forward; the last, which proceeds from this forward and impelling influence, is the most concrete. This, as may at once be remarked, is no mere pride in the philosophy of our time, because it is in the nature of the whole process that the more developed philosophy of a later time is really the result of the previous operations of the thinking mind; and that it, pressed forwards and onwards from the earlier standpoints, has not grown up on its own account or in a state of isolation.
[/quote]
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpintroa.htm#A1a
Of course Heidegger has his own, often-gloomier version of this. Key point is that we are thrown into an inheritance, which we eventually pass on, having hopefully made a worthy improvement, correction, or addition. Our cultural world is especially 'mind'-created.
I claim that this evolving ontology articulates the world, manifesting an ideal perspective. A little personification will probably be alright, especially given that our implicit goal (those of us who are serious, anyway) is to achieve this ideal perspective (move toward it at least.)
It was intended as a defense of idealism from the outset.
Splendid Hegel quote. Just the kind of thing that Marx inverted.
Towards the end of his argument, he says:
It all goes back to disagreement, and what to do about it, how to think about it.
Given that people often say "This isn't real, it's all in your mind", there's clearly more to it.
I've been following this theme of disagreement throughout this thread, but with little success, apparently.
It's precisely disagreement, on various levels, that points in the direction that the mental is all we have to work with. Not that the mental is all there is. But that it is all we have to work with.
And traditionally, and in general, the way many people try to overcome disagreement (and to win verbal disputes) is to posit the existence of an external world of which they claim or imply to have special knowledge, and that anyone who doesn't think the way they do is wrong, bad, evil, or in some other way defective.
Traditional literary theory disagrees with you.
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Since that went over well, I'll add some of Heidegger's updating of the software (of the software's self-articulation.) [I add a little emphasis here and there.]
I got this nice quote from @Joshs:
[quote=Gendlin]
The past is not an earlier position but the now implicitly functioning past....the past functions to "interpret" the present,...the past is changed by so functioning.
[/quote]
For what it's worth, William James quotes psychologists that were aware of this already in his time. We meet the present as our entire past. Since I am mostly the 'generic human soul' of my generation (the 'who of everyday dasein' or 'the anyone'), much of this past is not personal but cultural. This includes inferential norms, which we experience as binding, as the condition for the possibility of a genuine psychology, and so never reducible to psychological contingency.
...
For you and anyone else, I commend Julian Young's Heidegger's Later Philosophy for its beautiful clarity. All killer, no filler. It agrees with Braver's take in A Thing of This World. It's a spiritual take but not a mystical take. It's all conceptually tight (to me a plus).
I think Mill's whole construal of "possibilities of sensation" is a non-starter:
This is subtly off. A substance is not a possibility of sensation. That is an accidental characteristic of a substance, not its definition. That characteristic is crucial to human epistemology, but that doesn't make it the definition. Further, no one actually thinks about objects in such a way. Objects are things that we encounter through our senses, not possibilities of sensation. This is the same reversal of metaphysics and epistemology that occurs so often in modern philosophy.
Quoting plaque flag
Mill is close to talking about a representation (sensation) rather than the object itself. He is defining the object in terms of sensation-representation.
In fact this sort of move is what strikes me as odd about so much of modern and contemporary philosophy. Again and again, a proper accident is mistaken for an essential property, and the error is always grounded in a shift towards the epistemic subject. The forlorn formal cause sneaks in through the back door, unnoticed and not critically attended to. In this case Mill has an epistemological problem before him, and as a consequence he ends up defining objects in terms of epistemology. ...So I suppose I am beginning to understand Kit Fine's modus operandi (link).
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I'm thinking of using Rashomon and As I Lay Dying as explications of the nondual perspectivist position. Both narratives give us the-world-for-characters. We never get the External Aperspectival World, and I've been claiming that such a thing is a round square, a seductive empty phrase, for we all get the world only as such characters. The world we know is the-world-for-characters. But we dream of stuff that floats without a nose in the picture, because it's a useful dream, however incorrect in some other important sense.
Related issue. We only have belief, never truth. Or rather 'true' is a compliment we pay to claims we believe. It's no magic sauce. Young Wittgenstein was (impressively) already clear on this, somehow seeing right through the usual superstition, perhaps because he was perspectivist. { He didn't call himself that, but I'll defend a nondual perspectivist interpretation of key passages from the TLP. }
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Of course. But most people aren't philosophers.
I see it in the way you see Kant, albeit much more subtle and less pronounced:
Quoting plaque flag
The non-sequitur is that, just because we know objects through sensation, it does not follow that objects just are possibilities of sensation.
I'd say you'd have to look into his 'deconstruction' of the self too. To be clear, I don't take Mill or anyone really as an authority. But Mill gets something right. It's what I was getting at with what I quoted above.
[i]The essential partiality of our view of things, he argued, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time, does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be co-present with us and with other things than through such "Abschattungen" (profiles, adumbrations).
The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background—to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world.[/i]
In case it helps, I intensely agree with early Heidegger (famous KNS1919 lecture) that we get a meaningful world directly. We get tables and wigs and cats, not planes of color, etc. And this lifeworld is also profoundly cultural and historical, so I see a picture of Shakespeare and grasp the cultural significance immediately (though of course I can always look more closely, and so on ---for all is horizonal).
So I utterly reject crude sense-data understandings of the given. The lifeworld is the given. So the point for me is not sensation (though sense organs are involved) but perspective. The object is always situated in a field of vision, and we understand it in the first place as something that could be looked at.
As I've said, the issue is semantic. People sometimes worry about whether P is warranted. But they forget to check whether P is meaningful. Respectfully, you still haven't met my challenge, unless I haven't got to that part yet.
How do you understand the existence of physical objects ?
Also, I have always thought this would be an interesting study in itself. What does it mean for a philosopher to redefine a commonly used term? For instance, what does it mean when Mill comes along and redefines objects as possibilities of sensation? Is this not equivocation?
Presumably what he is trying to do is convince the world that an object is not what they suppose it to be, but this is too seldom explicit. My favorite philosophers are very careful to avoid this sort of redefinition.
Explication (unfolding) is not redefinition.
An "unfolding" which contradicts the previous notion is redefinition.
Come on though, that's presumption, as you say. Uncharitable. And Mill is dead. So please just try to understand me, and then defeat my position.
What previous definition ? People mostly use words like tools with pre-theoretical skill. We are concept-mongering practical primates. It's the worldly foolishness of philosophy and all that. Making it explicit is hard work. And most people just don't need such clarity.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phprefac.htm
My own philosophical work is largely motivated by a sense that people don't know very well what they are talking about in the first place. And I don't think such ambiguity is ever completely reducible. Obviously inferences are important, but meaningless or insufficiently determinate conclusions are worthless.
I am explaining why I disagree with Mill. I don't know how closely you follow him.
Quoting plaque flag
The challenge of how to understand the existence of physical objects in a way that differs from Mill?
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This seems pretty close to Mill. I think what we understand in the first place is a thing, and secondarily that the thing has perceptible properties, and then later that the thing likely has non-perceptible properties.
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I think someone like Mill is saying, "Objects are this and not that. Your pre-theoretical view was mistaken." I don't think he is saying that "this" unfolds from "that", such that both are secure.
That's just a rephrasing, it seems to me.
Sure, we start in the world of things, not as philosophers. Then we learn to analyze, account for the subjects and objects. But I object to 'non-perceptible properties.' What's that supposed to mean ? Science finds patterns in perceptions. Or so I claim.
Right, and that's why I said it is subtle. I don't think anyone on the forum has grasped the point Kit Fine is making in that thread, largely because it is foreign to contemporary philosophy.
I would have to think about how to make it more apparent.
The point is an explication of the pre-theoretical view.
Note that most of the objects in the world are not currently perceived (by this or that single person). And I've never seen the Eiffel Tower, but I think I could see it, given certain conditions.
I don't think philosophers who try to reverse engineer the natural order of knowing end up being coherent.
Quoting plaque flag
Yes, I realize that. A power is an easy example. An apple tree has the power to produce fruit. It possesses this power, we can know this through inference, and nevertheless the power is not perceptible.
That power is possibility. I perceive an apple tree, and I understand the possibility of [ a future experience of ] fruit, given certain conditions. If I nurture the tree, if it's not cut down, then I can hope to enjoy fruit.
I could just say 'fruit' instead of 'experience of fruit' if I wasn't reacting against what I'd call the metaphysical fantasy of aperspectival reality.
Mill's point holds of every physical object. It is a proper accident. But it's not what objects are. Objects are not defined in terms of perception. From the book you cited in your other thread:
Quoting The Democracy of Objects, Chapter 1, by Levi R. Bryant
(link to book)
I can't recall the context, but I reject the speculative realists. I sometimes quote their presentations of correlationism, though, for it's one of 'em that gave me the handy term in the first place. But there's a huge gap between Kantian indirect realism and my own Mach/James inspired nondualism. So the speculative realists haven't clarified their opponent.
I don't think objects are very well defined. I think all people end up meaning...being able to find words for...is possibilities of perception. I haven't heard any good alternative yet.
Then perhaps this is the starting point for where we differ, which is probably rather subtle. I don't actually know very much about this view you are reacting against, but I am of course wary of defining objects in terms of perception.
Quoting plaque flag
I think my single sentence about the common opinion has ended up being a distraction.
Let's forget it then.
As you should be. The theory is interesting because it challenges some vague but strong sense of there being more to physical being than our actual and possible experience. It just 'sounds wrong.' But what then does one mean beyond such possible perceptions ? And ultimately beyond experience itself ?
To be sure, indirect realism needs some kind of Stuff Out There, because they have a Subject In Here. But Mach and James don't. It's all one stream (or, strangely, many perspectival streams of the 'same' world.)
It seems to me that people are generally smarter than they seem, and that what might look like ignorance is actually an act.
Given our fast-paced conversation, I would submit that an object is something like an existent thing (a wholeness or unity). Unperceived or even imperceptible objects are therefore possible.
For example, maybe someone believes in an imperceptible ghost or spirit that nevertheless possesses causal powers to influence the world which we are able to perceive. On my view this putative ghost is an object. For Mill it cannot be, having no possibility of sensation. (The notion at play here is object-as-causal-agent.)
This is exactly right, and it raises the point that Mill's definition of objects is parasitic in a problematic way. Usually when we talk about the possibility of perceiving, we are talking about the possibility of perceiving some object. Defining "object" as a possibility of perception thus throws this into confusion.* It would be like saying that there is the power-to-produce-apple-fruit apart from any tree or substance/substratum. Thus it is quite different to talk about objects as things perceived rather than as possibilities of perception. Talk of "[permanent] possibilities of sensation" elicits the question as to why these possibilities are permanent (or semi-permanent).
Your <quote from Hobbes> is a propos. It is precisely the object that impresses itself upon the sense organ. To talk about sensation apart from an object sensed is a very different approach to the senses and perception.
* On Mill's account the substantial and 'synthetic' claim that, "There is a possibility of sensing such-and-such an object," is reduced to the vacuous and 'analytic' claim that, "There is a possibility of sensing such-and-such a possibility of sensation."
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I think you've found a weak part in Mill's account. At the very least, he did not go into detail about the experienced unity of the object, what Husserl calls its transcendence. Mill is still too much caught in sense-data empiricism of his time.
[quote=Mill]
the very idea of anything out of ourselves is derived solely from the knowledge experience gives us of the Permanent Possibilities. Our sensations we carry with us wherever we go, and they never exist where we are not; but when we change our place we do not carry away with us the Permanent Possibilities of Sensation: they remain until we return, or arise and cease under conditions with which our presence has in general nothing to do. And more than all—they are, and will be after we have ceased to feel, Permanent Possibilities of sensation to other beings than ourselves.
[/quote]
But he dissolves the sensing self in a way that foreshadows Mach. The only way to have a world in common and no ['substantial' -- trans-cultural ] selves and no [ 'deep' ] matter is (as far as I can tell) perspectival worldstreaming --- first person 'consciousness' as [nondual, perspectival ] being itself. With the experiencer goes experience, with only being left behind, the simple it-is-there-ness of a radical plurality of entities.
[quote=Mill]
We have no conception of Mind itself, as distinguished from its conscious manifestations. We neither know nor can imagine it, except as represented by the succession of manifold feelings which metaphysicians call by the name of States or Modifications of Mind. It is nevertheless true that our notion of Mind, as well as of Matter, is the notion of a permanent something, contrasted with the perpetual flux of the sensations and other feelings or mental states which we refer to it; a something which we figure as remaining the same, while the particular feelings through which it reveals its existence, change.
[/quote]
In case it's helpful for understanding my POV, I endorse this:
The Ego is the specific object that intentional consciousness is directed upon when performing reflection—an object that consciousness “posits and grasps […] in the same act” (Sartre 1936a [1957: 41; 2004: 5]), and that is constituted in and by the act of reflection (Sartre 1936a [1957: 80–1; 2004: 20]). Instead of a transcendental subject, the Ego must consequently be understood as a transcendent object similar to any other object, with the only difference that it is given to us through a particular kind of experience, i.e., reflection. The Ego, Sartre argues, “is outside, in the world. It is a being of the world, like the Ego of another” (Sartre 1936a [1957: 31; 2004: 1]).
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/#TranEgoDiscInte
The discursive subject described by Brandom is a locus of responsibility. Our bodies are trained into becoming this kind of entity, a responsible who rather than a mere what. But I place this discursive subject in the world as our most fundamental tradition --- a crucial piece of technology, for we are cyborgs, vampires even, in the way we bind time. One is one around here. There is exactly one responsible agent-soul in your/my flesh. The rest is madness or sci-fi.
But to me this is still a worldly entity, an unreliable narrator completely enmeshed in a concept-structured lifeworld-from-perspective. The story is not separable from the narrator, as if somehow written in another language which is no language at all. 'Deeper' than this discursive subject is the 'pure witness' which is no longer a witness really but just the fact that the world happens to gather around the flesh that therefore seems to host it. And this world includes feelings and fantasies as well as fountains and fawns.
As Mach put it, we find functional relationships all the time between 'inner' and 'outer' things. This is the point of my Flat Ontology thread. It's all in a single causal-inferential nexus. I think this is Hegel's point, when he said no finite [ disconnected ! ] thing has genuine being. Things 'are' (to overstate it) their relationships with other things.
***
What Hobbes doesn't address is that those sense organs exist for other sense organs. So the being of matter in motion apart from all such organs is left indeterminate, hence Mill's attempted clarification, etc.
I still think possibilities of experience works in say Husserl or Sartre, but what catches my eye here is that elicited question. Now it is of course a good question, but, with my phenomenological cap on, I prioritize [merely ] clarifying the given, making it explicit. As Husserl put it, phenomenology is the genuine positivism (the point being its honesty about direct experience including prime numbers and 'transcendent' trombones --- and the horizonal lifeworld in general.-- as opposed to blind adherence to a sensedata tradition, etc.)
For context, I personally think there 'must' always be brute fact. At the end of any ascending chain of explanations there is 'just because.' If God did it, then why is God such as to want to do that ? If some physics formula is hyped as the final word, then why is the final word like that and not otherwise ? I agree with Wittgenstein that only impossibility is logical possibility, but that's a pseudo-proposition, a tautology if one understands it, perhaps an implicit definition of logical.
I think Mill was primarily just trying to make sense of matter, not limit all existence to sensation, but I'm not sure. This is an excellent issue in any case. Husserl tackles a related issue in his investigation of the meaning of the invisible entities of physics. For him, there's no problem though, because he acknowledges the reality of ideas. But it's crucial that such ideas are just part of the lifeworld. A table is not 'really' atoms or quarks. It is also atoms or quarks. The real table is not some gray shiny source code hidden 'behind' the one we sit at. We just 'look' at the table not only with our eyes but also with our entire mind and culture. Heidegger's historical-I is valuable here.
Note that your ghost, as entity in the conversation, already has some experiential content, and most ghosts will end up having a further role in the inferential nexus. 'The rain god is angry. So the rain will not come. But we will offer up a sacrifice.'
I think I addressed your object-as-causal-agent already [ Brandom's discursive/normative subject ] , tho I'd say object-as-responsible-agent. Such an agent is essentially temporal, a 'creature capable of making promises,' and held responsible for a coherent narrative, etc.
Yes, I think it's just natural human diversity. Can you imagine living in a society where everyone agreed about everything?
Quoting baker
The salient point about disagreement is that things, human experience, can be framed in various ways. Why should we expect there to be just one true way of framing things?
Quoting baker
Right, I said there is no way to demonstrate that there are objective aesthetic criteria, I didn't say that no one could think there were such.
https://ia903000.us.archive.org/33/items/ApolloHumanRightsBooks/36102337-17775771-Heidegger-Towards-the-Definition-of-Philosophy.pdf
You'll note at the end there a preview of what might be called existential or genuine or experiential space and time, which was also studied by Mach and James.
This is a related passage. The 'environmental' is developed throughout many lectures after this one before B&T arrives. Just noticing the environmental is hard for some of us brought up in a theoretical tradition that reality is 'really' [just/only] [the latest theoretical posit.]
This beautiful passage is also worth quoting:
But philosophy can progress only through an absolute sinking into life as such, for phenomenology is never concluded, only preliminary, it always sinks itself into the preliminary. The science of absolute honesty has no pretensions. It contains no chatter but only evident steps; theories do not struggle with one another here, but only genuine with ungenuine insights. The genuine insights, however, can only be arrived at through honest and uncompromising sinking into the genuineness of life as such, in the final event only through the genuineness of personal life as such.
Thanks for your responses and your quotes from Mill. They have helped clarify things. We seem to be pretty close, even though it would be possible to quibble over this or that. I am going to step away from this thread due to a shortage of time. I will keep an eye out for Brandom's work. Your quotes from Sartre have also been interesting. I wasn't aware of his "non-continental" work, so to speak.
Disagreement is fine, as long as it is about trivial things. It's not fine once your job or your freedom is on the line.
I'm not disagreeing. But my worry is that such an outlook makes a person unfit for living in the world where people typically take for granted that there is an external aperspectival world (and that they have intimate knowledge of this world).
One can dismiss all those "Well, that's just your opinion but not the truth" only for so long until getting in trouble with other people.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Leontiskos
I actually stumbled upon something that fills the historical gap. The sort of Occasionalism you are tending towards does have a premodern patrimony, but such an idea gained more momentum in the Islamic world than the Christian world:
Quoting Alfred J. Freddoso, Causality and Ontotheology: Thomistic Reflections on Hume, Kant, and their Empiricist Progeny
So although Hume came after Aquinas, in his own day Aquinas (and others) rejected the Occasionalism that Hume was reviving. This is not unrelated to the point that got Benedict XVI (Ratzinger) into so much trouble in his Regensburg Address.
Freddoso writes a fair bit on this topic (link).
I also found some correspondence in Leibniz' 'monadology'.
Quoting 3 Concepts from Leibniz
Okay thanks, that's interesting. You're right that Buddhism is a rather different question. I think Yog?c?ra could subscribe to something approximating Occasionalism with it's alternative notion of Sunyata, but the stricter Madhyamaka progeny could certainly not do so, nor the Theravada stream.
The question
Quoting Joshs
Introduces a passage from Husserl:
[quote=Husserl, Ideas II] Now, however, we must not fail to clarify expressly the
fundamental and essential distinction between transcendental phenomenological idealism versus that idealism against which realism battles as against its forsworn opponent. Above all: phenomenological idealism does not deny the actual existence of the real world (in the first place, that means nature), as if it maintained that the world were mere semblance, to which natural thinking and the positive sciences would be subject, though unwittingly. Its sole task and accomplishment is to clarify the sense of this world, precisely the sense in which everyone accepts it - and rightly so - as actually existing. That the world exists, that it is given as existing universe in uninterrupted experience which is constantly fusing into universal concordance, is entirely beyond doubt. But it is quite another matter to understand this indubitability which sustains life and positive science and to clarify the ground of its legitimacy.
In this regard, it is a fundamental of philosophy, according to the expositions in the text of the Ideas, that the continual progression of experience in this form of universal concordance is a mere presumption, even if a legitimately valid one, and that consequently the non-existence of the world ever remains thinkable, notwithstanding the fact that it was previously, and now still is, actually given in concordant experience. The result of the phenomenological sense-clarification of the mode of being of the real world, and of any conceivable real world at all, is that only the being of transcendental subjectivity has the sense of absolute being, that only it is "irrelative" (i.e., relative only to itself), whereas the real world indeed is but has an essential relativity to transcendental subjectivity, due,namely, to the fact that it can have its sense as being only as an intentional sense-formation of transcendental subjectivity. Natural life, and its natural world, finds, precisely herein, its limits (but is not for that reason subject to some kind of illusion) in that, living on in its "naturality," it has no motive to pass over into the transcendental attitude, to execute, therefore, by means of the phenomenological reduction, transcendental self-reflection. [/quote]
Here I illustrate some convergences between Mind-Created World and Husserl's 'phenomenological idealism':
He distinguishes subjective and phenomenological idealism:
As do I:
[quote=The Mind-Created World]...there is no need for me to deny that the Universe is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind. [/quote]
Then he introduces the transcendental subject:
Which corresponds with:
[quote=The Mind-Created World] But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis.[/quote]
The 'inextricably mental aspect' I am referring to is the transcendental subject.
My first impression is that for Husserl the empirical is the product of an intersubjective constituting process, which itself is built out of the constituting processes of individual subjectivities. So to say that something is empirically true is to refer to a relative product, which could be otherwise, of the concordant experience in conscious subjectivity. The reality of the Universe as independent of minds must also be considered a conclusion that is relative and could be otherwise. Put differently, the mind-independence of the external world is itself a product of a mind-dependent constituting process. Mind-independent empirical nature for Husserl is this relative product of constitution, a mere hypothesis.
Quoting Wayfarer
That could have come directly from the lecture by Swami Sarvapriyananda in the other thread, 'The Indisputable Self'.
Hello, I come from the topic that talks about quantum physics and consciousness. I find what is said in the OP very interesting. My position is the following:
I would say that an impossibility of perception is not an impossibility of the perceived object. Think, for example, of a triangle. Think about the Pythagorean theorem which tells us something about a type of triangles. Now let's think about two people who have knowledge about that theorem and both people accept its universal truth. If the perspective adds something extra, this something extra cannot be the same for the two different perceptions and perspectives that each person has. And here comes the question: what does perspective add in each case? Does it add anything that would affect the theorem in its objective sense, to be different in each case?
Well, in both cases it doesn't add anything that we can say is a property of this type of triangle. With this example we can deduce that the objective properties of things, the being of things, is not reducible to subjective experience, whether understood as perspective. A judgment, therefore, if it hopes to be true, must exceed the order of perception and perspective.
Interesting question. But is the Pythagorean theorem subject to perspectives? In other words, how would an individual perspective or opinion be relevant to the Pythagorean theorem?
But there are many other kinds of matters where perspective might be relevant. Consider complex historical questions for example. There might be levels of complexity which a particular individual is familiar with and which result in their ability to arrive at a superior analysis of the subject.
Quoting JuanZu
I don't think I've claimed in the OP that the objective properties of things are reducible to subjective experience. What I'm claiming is that experience even of apparently mind-independent things has an irreducibly subjective ground.
As for the 'being' of things, it is an open question as to what kinds of entities are beings. I take it that organisms are beings in a way that inanimate things are not, although that is a different topic to this thread.
The Pythagorean theorem makes the two perpendicular lines of a square as in commensurable. This is known as the fact that the square root of two is irrational. Because of this irrationality we cannot conceive of "this type of triangle" as a real object, with real "objective properties". There is inherent within this supposed object, "this type of triangle", a fundamental irrationality.
You seem to have a restricted concept of a “real object.” It is also not clear to me how you deny that the Pythagorean theorem tells us anything [I]about [/I] right triangles. "Something about X" means that we are pointing out a property of X. In this case, an equality between the parts that constitute the object called "Right Triangle".
But doesn't the historian present himself in a clearly theoretical attitude? I mean, the historian tries to affirm something about some historical moment. Is it not a fortiori an intention of truthfulness? The historian carries out a judgment, which jumps squarely into the field of transcendental validation with a claim of superiority over other views and perspectives. He aspires to universality and the neutralization of his perspective as opinion (doxa) and finally establish an impersonal statement about a state of things.
I did not deny that the Pythagorean theorem tells us anything about right angle triangles. What I clearly said is that it demonstrates to us is that this type of triangle is not a real object. If you do not agree with the reasons I gave for this conclusion, then you could have simply said so.
Quoting JuanZu
The problem is that there is no such equality between the parts, hence the irrational ratio between the two legs. This irrational ratio is known as the square root of two. If the proposition states that the two legs are equal then the straight distance between the two defined points, known as the hypotenuse, is an indefinite distance, unmeasurable. It is said to be irrational. This indicates that in actuality there is an incommensurability between the two legs which are assumed to be equal, such that they cannot actually be equal. The proposition that they are equal, forces the logical conclusion that the hypotenuse is indefinite, irrational, therefore the proposition that they could be equal must be rejected as illogical.
But isn't that just for the case where the length of each leg is 1?
On the other hand, I would like to know what you mean by "Real Object."
That is the proposed equality. When the two legs are proposed as equal, the problem of incommensurability arises. Therefore I propose that we ought to conclude that they cannot actually be equal.
Quoting JuanZu
Let's say that a real object is something which has a description which is logically consistent. If a logical problem in the description of the object, such as contradiction, is evident, then the described object cannot be a real object. So the logical problem with the right angled object is the incommensurability of the two sides, as explained above. This logical inconsistency indicates that the object described cannot be a real object.
We find a very similar problem with "the circle". The square and the circle are two very distinct ways of representing two dimensional "objects", two straight lines at an angle, or a curved line. Both have a very similar logical problem. There is also another similar problem which arises from the distinction between a one dimensional line, and a zero dimensional point. What I propose is that what we ought to conclude is that the "dimensional" representation of objects is logically flawed, and therefore does not accurately represent "real objects".
Now I understand. In that case the equality would be rather an approximation between the value of the sum of the square of the legs and the value of the hypotenuse that connects them. As an asymptotic approximation, if it is valid to say so. This value of the square root of the sum of the squares of the legs would be closer –closer than anything– to X, with X being an irrational number.
On the other hand, you call a real object one that is logically consistent. I, however, regarding the case, would speak of a qualitative incompatibility in the objective nature of the right triangle as an object. Adding the term "Real" or "not real" would not make much sense once we consider it this way.
In my opinion you have this inverted. The value of the square root of the sum of the legs is something indeterminate, a number which cannot be expressed. We might signify this with X, but X then signifies a value which is impossible to determine, and therefore impossible to express numerically. That's probably why pi is called "pi" rather than expressed as a number. It cannot be expressed as a number. The irrational number is our attempt to express this value, which is close to what is signified by X, but not X.
Quoting JuanZu
It was not a matter of adding the word "real", it was a matter of describing what makes an object real what constitutes "realness", or "objectiveness". The issue was how do we get from stated properties, to the conclusion that the thing with those properties has real, objective existence. My proposal was that to be a real object the stated properties must be logically consistent. So the "qualitative incompatibility" you speak of would exclude the "objective nature" of the triangle, leaving it as something other than a real object.
Expressible... It is expressible. But in an anexact and generalized way. It is not a value that confuses or leads to ambiguity [If I want to determinate the value of the hypotenuse given the value of two legs, I obtain an specific value and not a random one [I]every time[/I] ]. It is not just any value and can be located on the real line. In Cartesian terms it is "clear and distinct." This X, however, is objective, since it is properly deduced from the relationship between two parts of a right triangle.
In my opinion the term "Real" has no place in the discussion because a thing like that, a thing like a triangle simply "gives itself" and presents itself to us as an object of study, without being able to be reduced to a psychological act. To say that there is an incommensurability in its being does not add to or take away anything from the fact that it is presented and given to our knowledge and has effects on it. That is why it is objective, since an internal relationship can be established, whether one of incommensurability, which tells us what a triangle like this –[I] is[/I].
When it is disputed that a hypotenuse has a "real length", it is when geometric postulates are used to interpret Euclidean space in relation to a fixed Vector-space basis. The irrational points of a Euclidean space aren't extensionally interpretable unless the basis of the underlying vector-space is rotated so as to transform those irrational points to rational values, which also leads to previously rational-valued points to become irrational. So the problem of incommensurability is really about the fact that it isn't possible to represent all points finitely at the same time, which implies that Euclidean Space cannot serve as a constructive logical foundation for geometry.
The obvious alternative is to follow Alfred North Whitehead in 1919-1920, and abandon classical Euclidean topology for a 'point-free topology' that refers only to extensionally interpretable "blobs", namely open-sets that have a definite non-zero volume, whose intersections approximate pointedness . Then it might be possible to extensionally interpret all such "blobs" in relation to a fixed basis of topological description in a more constructive fashion, meaning that extensional ambiguity is handled directly on the logical level of syntax, as opposed to on the semantic level of theory interpretation.
This is what i disagree with. I think that any instance of the conception of a triangle actually does reduce to a purely psychological act. If you assume that it "presents itself" to us, you need to ask how it does this. Then you see that it is a matter of learning, the concept must be learned, and learning is a psychological act.
So, you might ask where did it first come from. There cannot be an infinite regress in time, of human beings teaching each other the concept, it must have come from somewhere in the first place. This is easily understood as a matter of creative genius. As is evident in all axioms of mathematics, they are clearly thought up by human beings, created by them. With modern math, we see a clear history of who created what, the history is very well documented. In ancient conceptions such as the right angle, the documentation is not there, but there is no reason to think that the process was any different in principle.
Quoting JuanZu
This claim of "objective" is unjustified. That the triangle is "presented and given to our knowledge" is supported only by the evidence of learning. And inter-subjectivity does not objectify. Furthermore, there obviously cannot be an infinite regress of learning. This is why Plato investigated the theory of recollection in The Meno. But this theory has its own problems, which Aristotle expounded on. Aristotle's solution was that the geometrical constructions only exist potentially, prior to being actualized by the mind of the geometer. But something which exists only potentially cannot be an "object", and potential cannot be said to be "objective".
Well, you can't. Since we are talking about an internal relationship that is deduced from elements of an object that differs in its identity from the mind. That is, in order to reduce it to a psychological act you would have to express the internal relationship in terms of a relationship of psychic elements. For example, if we assume that the psyche is nothing more than synaptic processes between neurons, your claim would have to be represented in the form: "this synapse is the relationship of equality between two elements, and it is also an incommensurability." Which is obviously doomed to failure.
It is for this reason that you cannot reduce knowledge to a creation of human genius, even if it has no other origin than humanity. Because knowledge is something like the relationship with something objective. In no case can it justify the objectivity of knowledge based on the particular psychological movements of, in this case, Pythagoras. You may say, “but logic is the condition of objectivity” Well, what you say about geometry (its reduction to psychological acts) you say a fortiori about logic.
What I say about geometry I say a fortiori about knowledge and knowledge as language. For example, you and I possess the meaning of a right triangle (or the identity principle of logic); If the meaning is nothing more than psychological acts... how can you say that it is the same meaning in each case if they are two different psychic phenomena? The particularity of each case denies its universal formulation, and is not able to justify why it is the same meaning and is repeated in different minds, different languages, different cultures, etc.
Very interesting post, although I don't have enough mathematics background to follow all of the details. Could you provide a link to a 'Blobs for Dummies' article?
Quoting JuanZu
Husserl analyzed the origin of geometry in terms of a historical genesis, imaging the proto-geometer as someone who needed to strive toward more and more abstractive forms out of practical needs.
What makes geometric idealities identically transmissible form person to person and culture to culture is their rootedness in the construction of numeration, in which we abstract away everything meaningful about a collection of objects except their identity as an empty unit, for the purposes of iterating the ‘same thing different time’. This empty enumeration at the heart of geometric idealities makes the latter ideal rather than real.
I have always found especially interesting that step to the limit that characterizes Husserl in the discovery of essences. Said step to the limit consists of showing how when crossing it the thing stops being what it is to be something else. For example, Husserl tells us about how, taking the limit of predicates, we cannot conceive a color without extension. Something like this would happen with geometric essences. Isn't the limit something that is imposed on us from the things themselves? (I.E. imagine a perfect triangle-square) We cannot impose that limit on ourselves at will, it is shown as something foreign to our will.
I do not reduce the psyche to synaptic processes, so I do not see how this reply is relevant at all. You have in no way addressed the points I made.
Quoting JuanZu
Furthermore, as I indicated, you have in no way justified your claim of objectivity in knowledge. And now you simply repeat your unjustified assertion that knowledge is "objective", and use this unsound premise to support your insistence that knowledge cannot be an artificial creation.
Quoting JuanZu
I do not claim that you and I ever associate the very same meaning with the same words. In fact, I think the evidence that different people associate different meaning with the same words is overwhelming, and ought not even need to be discussed. Simply hand two people the same sentence, or the same word, and ask them to write a very inclusive statement as to what it means to them, and compare the reports. You will see that even with very simple concepts like "circle", "square", or "triangle", they will produce a variance. The only time the reports will be the same is if the two people have memorized the same definition. But then they would just write a different interpretation of that same definition anyway. Two people referring to the same definition is the result of learning, which I addressed in the last post, and you seem to have completely ignored for some reason.
Quoting JuanZu
The point is that this idea, that "it is the same meaning and is repeated in different minds" is simply false. Each mind relates to the same words in ways exclusive, and unique to that mind. We might say that it is "essentially the same", but we cannot ignore the accidentals which actually make it not the same.
Maybe you think it's not relevant because you're not understanding it very well. For example, if you don't talk about neuronal synapses, you can talk instead about cognitive processes, or psychological acts. So what I have said about neural processes a fortiori is said of any theory that attempts to reduce (reductionism) one field to another.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I did. As I have exposed an internal relationship between the elements of a closed field, in this case geometry. And not only that but also its ideality has been exposed (repetition in different cultures, different subjects, different psychological acts, etc. Or can u say that geometry theorems are different through different cultures? ). Then we have a field where an infinity, so to speak, of internal relations that is established from some constitutive elements. Just as we could compose the field of quantum physics from elementary particles.
Now, you will say "but geometry does not represent anything and is something created." Quantum physics is also something created, logic is too. But of course the fact that it is something created does not prevent it from being something objective (even if we follow ur argument no one can say that a computer or a sintetic chemical element is non-objective just because it's artificial) . Physics has its means of objective validation in technological operation and mathematic consistency (a field bigger of terms, relations, operations, etc) , while geometry has its validation in the internal relationships that are discovered through iterative operations) and demonstrated accurately in most cases.
Ur argument, if I understand correctly, is based on a sense of objectivity as representation wich grounds it. That is, as the correspondence between the theory and a referent wich is provided by the sensory system. But if we abandon that idea of ??objectivity as representation we also abandon what you say about geometry as something non-objective. And let me tell you: We have to abandon your sense of objectivity as a representation or as a necessary link between theory and an empirical reference that must correspond to. In the case of geometry it can be said that it is its own reference, and to the extent that we discover its internal relationships we discover things, regardless of the fact that it has no other origin than Humanity.
U can call this "objetive constructivism".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is not false. You are pointing out particular accidents to say that we are not referring to the same thing. But obviously in the act of communication an identity and repetition must take place so that there is a minimum of understanding, this is the meaning. If you say to a Greek and an Egyptian to give you 5 units of that fruit and not 4, they will probably both give you the 5 units; Well, this fact is not a simple coincidence and must be explained. But obviously we cannot explain the same from what is different. We cannot explain, for example, why the Egyptian and the Greek acted in the same way based on the sound differences that each one heard, on their culture wich they belong, on their language, etc.
I still don't know what you are trying to say JuanZu. My point was that one is prior to the other, as the cause of the other. Minds are prior to ideas as the cause of ideas. Since ideas and minds are subjects of the very same field, there is no attempt to reduce one field to another here, and your supposed "a fortiori" assertion is irrelevant. You seem to be wanting to claim that ideas are prior to minds, so please address the arguments I've made, instead of attempting to change the subject and using that very change of subject as the basis for your claim of a fortiori.
Quoting JuanZu
Geometry is not a "closed field", there is no such thing as intelligible objects which exist in total isolation from others. So geometrical terms get defined by a wider field of mathematics, and concepts of spatial dimension. This issue is often addressed by philosophers, such as Wittgenstein in On Certainty, because it appears like it may produce an infinite regress of meaning, leaving no concepts truly justified as "ideal", in the sense of perfect, absolute certitude.
Quoting JuanZu
Yes, geometrical ideas have been very different in different cultures. All you need to do to find this out, is read someone like Plato, where it is described how the different geometrical concepts were derived from different parts of the world, Egypt and Babylonia for example, and from there the ideas spread to other parts of the world like Greece, and what is now Italy, where they were assimilated through the process of working out differences, inconsistencies and incompatibilities.
A more modern, and also very clear example, can be found in numerical systems. Currently we use what is known as "Arabic Numerals". This numeral system came to supplant the use of "Roman Numerals" in the western world. It is not the case that these two are simply different names for the same conceptual system, because these two conceptual structures were completely different, as is plainly evident from the absence of the zero in the Roman Numerals. I admit that this example is not specifically "geometry" but it is related, and it gives very clear evidence of how highly logical theorems very clearly vary through different cultures.
Quoting JuanZu
Why are you arguing against yourself now? You used "objectivity" as evidence that ideas are discovered, presented or given to us, rather than created by us. Now you claim "the fact that it is something created does not prevent it from being something objective", so you've just undermined your entire argument.
Quoting JuanZu
Remember JZ, you introduced "objectivity". I'm happy to go ahead without that term, as something irrelevant, but your claim was that being "objective" implies that concepts are not created, but discovered. You said that the reason why a right triangle is "objective" is because it gives itself to us, or presents itself to us as this type of an object. So you are very clearly saying that being "objective" is what implies, or justifies your claim that the right triangle is a discovered (natural) object rather than a created (artificial) object.
Quoting JuanZu
That is what you said.
Quoting JuanZu
With respect to the identity of an object, each accidental of that object must be accounted for, or else two distinct objects, with different accidentals would have the same identity, and therefore be the very same object. Therefore in any instances when the accidentals differ, as not being the same in each of the instances, we must conclude that the two objects are distinct objects and not the same object. This is derived from the law of identity.
Quoting JuanZu
In the case of the constitution of a real spatial object via the synthesis of perspectival adumbrations, passage to the limit never succeeds in fulfilling the idea of the object as a unitary identity. We strive for this fulfillment through our continued interest in the object , but the self-identical object always remains transcendent to what we actually experience. In the case of a geometric ideality like a straight line or circle, passage to the limit assures an exactitude because mathematical shapes are free idealities, whereas real spatial objects are bound idealities.
Mathematical idealization is free, unbound (within the strict limits of its own repetition); no contextual effects intervene such as was the case in the attempt to constitute a real spatialobject. Contextual change implies change in meaning, and a mathematical ideality can be manipulated without being animated, in an active and actual manner, with the attention and intention of signification. Such an ideality can be repeated indefinitely without alteration (passage to the limit), because its meaning is empty. In the case of a bound ideality, what repeats itself as self-identical returns to itself as `the same' subtly differently each time; the immediate effects of contextual change ensure that alteration is intrinsic to the repetition of an intentional meaning. Put differently, we impose the real unity of a spatial object via intention acts, but can never fulfill this intention. We likewise impose the ideal unity of an identically repeatable geometric shape through intentional acts. But in this case we succeed in fulfilling its exact and universal reproducibility because it is an empty , unbounded iteration.
Well, I precisely maintain that they are different fields, not only in terms of validation but in their terms, their relationships and operations. But you are assuming it is the same field (psychological acts) by simply repeating it, ignoring all the evidence I have presented to you and in no way refuting it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
you are saying that it is not a closed field but without giving any justification or argument. I, on the other hand, have given "evidence" that you have not even tried to refute: The internal relations between terms of the same type, their semantic difference with respect to the field that you believe is the same. For example, we have hypotenuse and legs, both are straight, both are two-dimensional, etc. I ask you to make an effort to argue more and spread fewer categorical statements.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And yet you continue to refer to both cases as "numerals". You have not yet understood that you cannot speak of the different as the same. That is, if you speak of two cases (Greeks and Arabs) as species of the same phenomenon (numbers) , you are only arguing against yourself. I say again, you do not explain the same thing by what is different.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is no contradiction. In fact, if I can alternate between creating and discovering it is because it is in a certain way undecidable. On the one hand it has human genesis; On the other hand, it has a structure in which terms establish and maintain autonomous relationships that are no longer reduced to human creativity (for example, the Pythagorean theorem).
What you see as a contradiction between creating and discovering is actually a difference between the pair of concepts called "genesis" and "structure." That is, the first geometer may have imagined a line, the first line in the world; However, this line was already the object of a length, and the object of union with other lines that formed a triangle. But then the lines autonomously maintain a relationship with each other, which, depending on the measurement or value of their length, is equivalent to this or that other value. The key here is autonomy and the internal relationship between a set of elements. This relationship between elements can no longer be thought of as a psychological act of the imagination. Why? Because these relationships are said of the elements and not of the imagination. That is why geometry is objective, created and discovered at the same time.Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Here I repeat the argument that I have presented in relation to your example of numbers.
So you're argument amounts to "I stipulate that these fields are different", and you think that this validates your perspective. That's called begging the question.
Quoting JuanZu
You've presented exactly zero evidence, only some blabbering about relationships between fictitious imaginary elements. On the other hand I've presented the example of learning, the problem with infinite regress if concepts are only learned, Plato's proposal of "recollection", the problem with this, and Aristotle's resolution to that problem.
Quoting JuanZu
I explained why no field is a closed field. You don't seem to know how to read Juan. Or do you prefer just to ignore evidence which does not support what you believe?
Quoting JuanZu
Yes, two very different instances of the same type of phenomenon. This implies a difference between the two specified things, and in no way implies that the two are the same thing. However, two different things may be of the same type, so your objection "that you cannot speak of the different as the same" is ridiculous. Two different things cannot be the same, yet they can and often are, said to be the same type. So, very commonly we speak of the different as the same, so long as we maintain the distinction between particular and universal, and recognize that "the same type" does not mean "the same individual".
Quoting JuanZu
What I saw as contradiction was that you said a right triangle is "objective" because it "gives itself" and presents itself to us. This was the alternative to my claim that the right triangle was created by us. Later, you said "But of course the fact that it is something created does not prevent it from being something objective."
Therefore we need to conclude that whether or not the right triangle is objective, is irrelevant to whether or not it "gives", "presents itself" to us, or whether it has been created by us. And all this talk about objectivity is just a ruse.
Quoting JuanZu
So your argument here is worthless. The "autonomy and the internal relationship between a set of elements" is no more likely if the triangle is natural than if it is created.
Furthermore, what you say about "the first line in the world", that " this line was already the object of a length, and the object of union with other lines that formed a triangle", is clearly false. If it is the first line in the world, it is contradictory to say that it is already a union with other lines, making a triangle. This would imply that it is not the first line, but that it coexisted with other lines. But this is impossible, because you described it as the first line in the world, created by the first geometer.
Quoting JuanZu
The argument which amounts to an ignorance of the difference between 'being the same thing', and 'being of the same type'?
In this regard, Husserl spoke that in iterative moments there must be a sedimentation in which the meaning is recorded to be "revived" by intentionality in different moments and places. Aren't these sediments language, writing, archiving, for example? An ideal object, to be ideal, must be available for the subject. In a certain sense consigned, registered, etc. These sedimentations, such as language, writing, archiving, computing, etc., are not precisely " "empty" until a living intention animates them? And yet they are necessary conditions for meaning to appear in iteration: in an interlocutor, in another culture, in another time, etc.
Not at all. I start from the assumption that we are talking about the same field, in order to take that assumption to the limit where it can be demonstrated that they are actually two fields that are irreducible to each other.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Among the evidence is the impossibility of carrying out a process with the same results based on certain terms and operations. The terms and operations of psychology and geometry are radically different. The terms and operations carried out in geometry reveal internal relationships that you cannot discover by exchanging these terms for others in psychology.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You didn't . The only thing you said is that geometry objects are not isolated objects. But that's assuming you can delimit the field of geometry from every other field, which is not the case, I assume you can't do that. On the other hand, I have exposed the incommensurability between one field (geometry) and another (psychology). Relative to the field of psychology the field of geometry is closed in the sense that none of its terms, operations and relationships can determine the nature of the field of geometry.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
They are the same insofar as they are numbers, they are different insofar as they are different types of numbers. Have you ever read about being as equivocity, as univocity and as analogy? Well, it seems that you speak from equivocity (all things are different and none can be the same in any sense), but contradicting yourself by using the same numerical system sign. "Things are different in one sense, but in another sense They are the same". Thus, there is evidently no contradiction. Things can be the same as genres, bus distinct as species.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
A geometric object is presented to us and given to us even though it is a human creation. But it is given to us as a set of internal relationships and meanings that transcends the acts of its creation. It is in this sense that it gives itself: Depending on its autonomy, a property of the object that emerges from relationships between the parts of that object that are discovered beyond our will. That is, when we talk about a property of triangles we are talking something about triangles, not something about imaginative acts. It is something that comes up from the thing, not from us. Thats why it presents itself.
We can say that it is something created and discovered for the reasons I have given (genesis and structure). A straight line could perhaps have been imagined once, or imagined by three different people at different times, or simply be an imaginary act repeated three times. That doesn't matter (and it's important that it doesn't matter), the important thing is when those lines entered into a relationship and crossed forming a triangle (three angles appeared). Something like a leg and a hypotenuse appeared and relationships emerged between these elements, regardless of how the lines were created.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Univocality, equivocality and analogy.
Thank you. I'll give a try to present that self-intro.
The field we are working in here is philosophy. We are discussing the reality, and objectivity of geometrical objects, that is philosophy. You have assumed that we are discussing two distinct fields, geometry and psychology, and this forms the premise for your argument which proves that these are distinct fields. That is called begging the question.
I really do not see how your other premise, "the impossibility of carrying out a process with the same results based on certain terms and operations" is at all relevant, or even how it is meant to be interpreted. Therefore you need a much better explanation of what you are talking about before this phrase can be admitted as "evidence".
Quoting JuanZu
Obviously you did not understand me, so I will repeat with explanation. I said: "geometrical terms get defined by a wider field of mathematics, and concepts of spatial dimension. This issue is often addressed by philosophers, such as Wittgenstein in On Certainty, because it appears like it may produce an infinite regress of meaning, leaving no concepts truly justified as "ideal", in the sense of perfect, absolute certitude."
To explain in a simpler way for you, all terms and conceptions get defined and understood by a wider context. There is obviously no assumption here that geometry is "delimited", as what is expressed is exactly opposite to that. I am saying that no concepts are actually "delimited", and this has been an issue for philosophers. Wittgenstein said in the Philosophical Investigations for example, that concepts have no inherent boundaries, though a person may create a boundary for a specific purpose.
This I assume would be the case when we define a term for the purpose of a logical operation, as a premise. The issue I am telling you about, is that the understanding, or interpreting of this definition takes us outside the boundaries which the definition is meant to create. So, for example, if we define "right triangle" as a triangle with one right angle, then to understand these terms, "triangle", and "right angle", we must go to a wider context. We can define "triangle" as a plane figure with three sides and three angles, and we may define "right angle" as the angle produced when two lines cross each other and have equal angles on all sides. To understand or interpret these definitions we need to go to a wider context. We need to define "plane figure", "sides", "angles", "lines".
As you can see, at each step of defining the terms, then defining the terms of the definition, and then defining the terms which define the defining terms, we move into a wider and wider context, with an increase in terms to be defined, and an increase in the possibility of ambiguity and misunderstanding. It appears to many philosophers that this need to continually place the terms into a wider and wider context, in one's attempt to understand, would lead to an infinite regress rendering true understanding as impossible.
Quoting JuanZu
This is exactly why what you are arguing is self-contradictory. First you say geometry cannot be delimited. This means that this proposed "field", geometry has no fixed boundaries. Then you argue that there is incommensurability between this proposed field, geometry, and another proposed field, psychology, and so you conclude that the two fields must be closed. Your conclusion contradicts your premise.
Do you apprehend the blatant contradiction? On the one hand you assume, 'geometry is not delimited. Then from here you say, 'but there is incommensurability between the terms of geometry and the terms of psychology'. So you conclude, 'relative to psychology, geometry is closed'. But this is obviously a fallacious conclusion. You do not have the premise required, which would state that there cannot be incommensurability within the same field. Furthermore, we have all sorts of evidence of incommensurability existing within the same field, which proves that such a premise would be false.
For example, within the field of mathematics there is incommensurability between real numbers and imaginary numbers. The use of imaginary numbers produces all sorts of complexities within the field, making the above mentioned concept of "plane" extremely difficult and complex. The use of imaginary numbers creates the need for a completely different definition of "plane".
Now, we can justly inquire whether the use of imaginary numbers is better described as a mathematical operation, or a psychological operation. We can look at this usage from at least two perspectives, what imaginary numbers actually provide for us within the field of mathematics, and also from the perspective of the psychology behind the desire to create such a thing as imaginary numbers. If there is incompatibility between these two, as you seem to assume, then we can conclude that imaginary numbers do not fulfil the purpose they were intended for.
Quoting JuanZu
OK, now the point is that there is incommensurability between the different types of numbering systems. And, this incommensurability exists within the same field. Therefore your conclusion that fields are closed to each other when there is incommensurability between them, is unsound. Furthermore, your argument that geometry and psychology are distinct fields is also unsound. And, we can conclude that your presumption that these two names are representative of two distinct fields is nothing but a prejudice which is presented a premise for a fallacious argument, due to the fallacy of assuming the conclusion, begging the question.
Quoting JuanZu
Did you not read where I explained the difference between "being the same thing", and "being of the same type". I'm really starting to think that you do not even bother to read half of what I post JZ.
Quoting JuanZu
Now you're finally saying something which appears possibly reasonable, which warrants a thorough investigation. You say that geometrical objects are created, but their meanings transcend their creation. Is that correct, and what exactly do you mean by "meanings that transcends the acts of its creation"?
Let's look at "meaning" to begin with, in its most simple and ordinary sense. When someone uses words, we say that the meaning is what is meant by the author, what the author intended with the words. Do you agree with that? If so, how would you say that "meaning" in this sense, "transcends" the act of creation, which is the act of the author thinking up, and giving physical existence to the conglomeration of words? Would you say that "transcends" is used here in the same way that we might say that one's intention "transcends" one's intentional acts?
If so, then we have your expression of "internal relations and meanings" as transcending the intentional act. But I defined "meaning" as what is given by the act itself, what is meant by the act. It appears wrong to say that meaning could transcend the act, because meaning seems to be intrinsically tied to the act. How could there be any meaning when the act which gives meaning is non-existent? We might be better off to say that "intention" transcends the act, and meaning is what is created by the intentional act, but intention is defined by terms which lead us in a different direction. It is defined by "purpose".
Let's say the "purpose" of the intentional act, or act of creation, transcends the act. And "purpose" implies a completely different type of "relations", which are not spatial relations at all, like what geometry works with. The relations implied by "purpose" is a hierarchy of values and priorities in relation to goals or ends. So, would you agree with me, that if there is a sort of "relations" or even if we might call it "meanings" which transcends the act of creation, these relations are "value" relations, which are distinct from spatial relations, being based in "priority". We might see that mathematics also is based in a type "value" system, and "priority" is paramount in the concept of order which is very important to mathematics.
Quoting JuanZu
Let's look directly at what I've identified as the relations which could possibly transcend the human, artificial act of creation, "priority", "order", and "value". If "order" transcends the acts which create mathematical axioms, is it possible, in mathematics, to have a set with no order, or no elements? Wouldn't such an axiom be necessarily false, therefore needing to be rejected as ontological wrong. However, mathematics does employ such axioms. Therefore it appears impossible, because of falsity, to argue that "priority|, "order", and "value" transcend the axioms of mathematics, because these axioms define what those things are.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, here you are talking about reducing the concept of a triangle to a pure psychological act. And this is where my refutation comes in. The processes that lead to the discovery of an essential relationship in a right triangle cannot be determined as psychological operations, since the difference between the terms and operations of both fields is necessary. You would have to make this reduction and explain it. But I know you won't do it, because it can't be done. Any attempt at something like that would only establish association relationships between elements. But association does not mean identity, much less identity in operations and relationships.
It doesn't matter if you want to include the larger geometry context where you can define primitive notions such as line or point. My point has been developed on that reduction that you have pointed out from psychology. If you want to do meta-theory or meta-geometry from the field of logic, that's fine with me. Better for this point, since logic is precisely a field that also transcends the psychological act.
The field of geometry is closed in relation to the field of psychology. You are not reading, you are assuming things and creating straw men. Saying that the field of geometry is closed with respect to that of psychology is only a necessary argument for the debate. That is, certainly the field of geometry is closed to a psychological approval that attempts to found and determine it.
The incommensurability between both fields is especially present in the methodological order: Association is not equivalent to identity or equality. At any point in the reduction that you propose, but do not justify or explain, it will happen that you will fall into a question-begging where the object you want to reduce (the terms of geometry) will need to only establish associations with terms (those of psychology). ) semantically different.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You have said that they are incommensurable, but that incommensurability, as you treat it, if we follow your strange reasoning, since it evokes an absolute difference, you cannot speak of two numerical systems. You would have to talk about a numerical system and something else that can no longer be a numerical system. That is why you fall into a performative contradiction, because you are involuntarily assuming the same within what you try to express as different.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I read it and refuted it. Showing how your argument leads to the misunderstanding that would not allow us to talk about two types of anything. Well, I contrasted analogy with equivocation: that a thing be identical and different at the same time.
When I talk about "meaning" I am not referring to something that happens in language, or something from authors with intentions and purposes, or anything like that. I am talking about the sense of, for example, an internal relationship between the elements of an object called a triangle. They occur from the object itself and have a meaning that is contrary to our intentionality, in the sense that it affects us from the outside, so to speak. The meaning here is that of the thing itself, that which belongs to its being.
Otherwise the rest of your answer is based on introducing notions such as intentional acts (voluntary, with a purpose, with priorities and scales of value). But introducing these notions is wrong, in the sense that they are far from being able to describe the non-intentional and non-voluntary aspect that belongs to the thing that occurs as an internal relationship between elements of something like a triangle. Except for the notion of "order" which is referred to formalization of set theory then also transcends the psychological act. But I suspect that what you understand by order is rather referring to the human act of ordering things.
What I am saying is that there is no such difference, it is all psychological. You are merely insisting on a difference to support your ontological position. All the geometrical terms, points, lines, angles, etc., what you call the "elements", along with the relations between them, refer to things imagined by the mind. And things imagined by the mind are studied in the field of psychology. There, I have made the reduction and explained it.
Now, the onus is on you to support your claimed "difference". You refer to "the discovery of an essential relationship in a right triangle", but this makes no sense to me. Any supposed "essential relation" can be shown to be made up, fabricated, created by a mind, and that is why this act (as an act of the imagination), is reducible to being a psychological act. It is not an act of discovering something. An act of discovery could not be described as purely psychological, because there would be something independent of the mind, which would be what is "discovered".
There are two "essential" aspects of the right triangle. One is the right angle, which I described as two lines crossing with equal angles on all four sides, and this is completely imaginary. The other is the triangle, which I described as a plane figure with three sides and three angles. A "plane figure" is completely imagined, and not discovered, therefore this essential aspect is also reducible to being purely psychological. The relation between these two essential aspects, which is to put these two together, and create a right triangle is also a constructive act of the imagination, and therefore psychological. It is all imaginary, psychology, there is nothing here which is discovered.
Quoting JuanZu
You are only providing more evidence that you are simply begging the question with your claim: " the field of geometry is closed with respect to that of psychology is only a necessary argument for the debate."
What you appear to be saying, is that this premise is not made "necessary" by any real evidence, it is just necessary for your argued position. However, as I explained, it is the only way that you can support your conclusion, by starting with a premise which leads necessarily to that conclusion. Begging the question.
Quoting JuanZu
As I clearly explained, and gave very good examples to support what I said, incommensurability does not imply closure and a separation into two fields closed to each other. There is often incommensurability within the very same field.
Quoting JuanZu
This very poor logic. There is no "absolute difference" implied, even though I cannot say that I understand what that would actually mean. As I explained already, two things of the same type can be called by the same name. Two different dogs are both called "dogs". Two different numerical systems can both be called "numerical systems". And, the two incommensurable numerical systems can exist within the same field, mathematics. Your claim that only one could be called a numerical system, and the other would have to be called something else, is nonsensical and clearly illogical, as being not supported by any premise which would produce that conclusion.
And if you stated the required premise you would see how unsound it is. The premise would be "two incommensurable things cannot be of the same type". But, here we have two incommensurable numbering systems, things of the same type, which are also incommensurable. The required premise is obviously false.
Quoting JuanZu
Well, if you do not agree that two different things can be said to be the same type, then I believe this discussion is pointless. And I really do not see how you conclude that this would make it impossible to speak of two different types.
I think you need to show your arguments more clearly JZ. State your premises clearly and show the logic which leads to your conclusion. Simply making assertions that your conclusions are logical doesn't cut it. Look, you concluded that my way of looking at things would mean that there could not be two different numerical systems, without showing any premises or logical procedure which produces that conclusion. In a very similar way, you now claim that what i said leads to the conclusion that we cannot speak of two different types. Where are your premises, and logical procedure which produces these absurd conclusions?
Quoting JuanZu
This is all psychology, as explained above. The supposed "elements", lines and angles, along with the internal relations, are completely imaginary. These are all created by the imagination, and so is your supposed "object itself", a product of the mind. Your proposed "thing itself", the right triangle, along with whatever meaning is supposed to be associated with it, since it is all, in its entirety, a product of the imagination itself, is to be understood through psychology.
Regrettably in this case I have to agree with your opponent. That is the error of psychologism. Geometric shapes and numbers are not mind-dependent in that sense at all, even though they can only be perceived by the mind. As Bertrand Russell remarked of universals 'universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts.'
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I imagine you're a steam train or a walrus, so it must be true, right? How could it not be, my imagination cannot err.
Yes, I already knew that you held this opinion. You like to portray the issue as a debate between nominalism and realism, and through that approach I've tried to get you to change your mind numerous times.
The principal issue which Plato pointed to, Aristotle elucidated, and Aquinas expounded on, developing clear principles to deal with, is that we need to maintain a real separation between "Forms" which exist independently from the human mind, and "ideas" which exist within the human mind, and are therefore dependent on it. A careful understanding of Plato and Aristotle will see this separation revealed in the usage of "idea" prevalent in Plato, and the distinct term "form" which Plato introduced, and became prevalent in Aristotle. (https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/77950/how-when-and-why-platos-ideas-were-changed-to-forms-in-english-translation). This separation is the only conceivable way that we can account for the reality of error in human ideas, and human knowledge in general.
Without the separation, we'd have to say that some human ideas are true, independent Forms, with eternal truth, while other human ideas are fallible. Then we would need some principles to distinguish which human ideas are properly independent Forms, and which are fallible human opinions.
So, we can proceed by examining the evidence available to us, which appears to us as the existence of human ideas, just like Plato did. Then we find through Plato's guidance, that there is no real identifiable difference between the very subjective ideas such as "love", "friendship", "beauty", "just", and the supposedly more objective ideas like "chair", "bed", and even the mathematical axioms. The difference between the two is the strength of the human conventions which 'fix' the meaning of the terms in what appears to be unchanging, eternal forms. We can also see that this strength, or fortification of the human idea through convention, is supported by usefulness.
This evidence, derived from the extensive and very thorough investigation and analysis into the true nature of human ideas is what leads to nominalism. But that is not the end of the story because now the fortitude of human conventions, along with the moral virtue and ethics which support these conventions, becomes the central issue. What the investigation and analysis of human ideas revealed to Plato, is that human ideas precede in time, the artificial things which the human beings bring into existence, in the sense of being causal. This is the formula which is applied in production, and this causal role he associated with "the good", what Aristotle termed as "final cause". The priority of the ideas is revealed in the cave allegory as what causes the shadows which most people think are the real things. You'll see in The Republic, that the carpenter works with an idea which is the formula for "bed" and this is supposed to be a representation of the divine Idea of "Bed". But the formula, as the idea in the carpenter's mind, is not actually the same as the divine "Idea", the perfection of the "ideal", which following Aristotle became known as the independent "Form", it is only as near to the ideal as the carpenter's human (less than perfect) mind will provide for.
Now we have the principles for the separation between the divine, separate Forms, and the human ideas, which are supposed to be a representation of the divine, but are really just the best that the individual human being's capacities will provide for through the means of the fortitude of human conventions. This separation is pursued by Plato in books like The Timaeus, and Aristotle in his Metaphysics, and the ensuing efforts of Neo-Platonists and Christian theologians.
I'm sorry but that is absolutely false. Even empirical evidence refutes it. For example, as children we do not imagine something like a "triangle" but rather we find it in books or in the virtuality of a screen. Only later can we imagine it with the help of memory and imagination. Remember it outside of a certain context. And even better is that we identify both things (what is brought from memory and what we find in a classroom) as the same.
Now, the reduction you are trying to make is done incorrectly. That is not a reduction, it is an association between elements. But there is no approach in which the terms, operations and relations of geometry are equivalent or can be replaced by other terms, other operations and other relations. That is why you can never start from psychological elements (assuming that something like that exists) to deduce the Pythagorean theorem, or the theory of relativity, which in this case would be the same thing.
Let me teach you something: When you say that something IS psychological and is reducible to the psychological, you are determining an identity, that is, you must necessarily determine it semantically as well, and go from that identity to a reduction that results in a replacement of terms, then of operations and then of relationships (since geometry is constituted, like any science, by these things). So assuming you have the terms of psychology you have to carry out a replacement, as long as you are talking about BEING X. If the reduction is understood as an identification then it is an eliminativism.
Now, you haven't been able to carry out this reduction and identification at the same time. That's why the only legitimate thing you can say is that there is an association between elements of psychology and elements of geometry. But we must remember that association is not equivalent to either identification or reduction
The principal point of my argument is that you should developed or presented a real reduction. But you didn't and just constantly repeat that something is psychological because geometry is something created by humans. That kind of statements need to be well explained and demonstrated. But that's not your case.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not at all. That the field of geometry is closed to the field of psychology means that the geometric thing is not reduced to nor can it be identified with the geometric thing. Again, the relationships that are discovered, the semantics that are implicit, operations, terms, etc.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not all incommensurabilities act in the same way. Furthermore, we can take your example of the incommensurability between a leg and the hypotenuse. Well, when you say that both are incommensurable, you are saying that they are different natures, one is rational and the other must be irrational. Well, in the same sense it is said about geometry and psychology: they are things of different natures.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ask yourself why in both cases you call them "dogs." If you want to stay in a rational discourse you have to say that they are the same in one sense, but also different in another.
In fact that is precisely what I said. Things can be said to be the same in one sense and different in another. Now, when you choose equivocation you restrict your right to call two things the same way. Whether we're talking about dogs or number systems. I'm just taking your statements to the absurd (as they are more categorical statements than arguments, in my opinion).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, I think I've refuted those claims.
I would say that they are not even just imagined. That is, they have a historical appearance, through writing and through language. You find a triangle in a book or on a computer. In fact, I would say that they are more perfect in both cases than in the imagination. But the most important thing is that if someone says that the contents of geometry can be reduced to psychology, that person must carry out that reduction and show it (for example, just as we can reduce Newtonian physics to relativistic physics). That case has not occurred. And I think I have explained why any attempt is doomed to failure.
I already went through this. I called it "learning". But if every idea of "triangle" comes from learning, this produces the infinite regress I described. So we know as historical evidence indicates, that there must be a beginning to humans producing triangles in their minds. Plato tried to escape the infinite regress by characterizing learning as recollection. Please don't ask me to circle back and repeat what I've already explained, this gets us no where.
Quoting JuanZu
I don't see why you request that the terms be "replaced". That seems irrelevant. But if you insist, we could replace "triangle" with the Spanish "triangolo", or some other language. And operations differ as well, as the French do long division in a way different from the English. But, as I said, I really do not see the relevance. We could all use the same words, and the same operations, and all this would indicate is consistency in the teaching methods. It still does not demonstrate that the ideas are not humanly created in the beginning, that they are not artificial but discovered.
Quoting JuanZu
I gave you my method of reduction, the ideas of geometry are completely imaginary therefore the subject of psychology, as psychology deals with imaginary ideas which come to the mind. You have not at all justified your claim that replacement of terms is required so I'll treat it as a ruse, until you justify this claimed need.
Quoting JuanZu
As I said, "psychology" deals with things of the mind like ideas, and this includes geometrical ideas. I don't see that you have refuted this in anyway. Here's a passage from the Wikipedia entry on "psychology".
[quote=Wikipedia: psychology] Psychology is the study of mind and behavior.[1] Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both conscious and unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feelings, and motives. Psychology is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences.[/quote]
It seems like our disagreement concerns what "psychology" refers to, not what "geometry" refers to.
Quoting JuanZu
I'm really not able to follow you at all JZ. What do you mean by "the geometric thing is not reduced to nor can it be identified with the geometric thing". Are you saying that contrary to the law of identity, a thing is other than itself?
Quoting JuanZu
If you refuse to even consider the role of intention in your representation of meaning and ideas, I don't see how this discussion could progress in an meaningful way.
Yes, but the judgement that that they may have an existence outside of any perspective is neither demonstrably false nor unintelligible. You seem to be trading on the obvious truism that all our judgements are mind-dependent to draw the unwarranted conclusion that all existence must be mind-dependent. Existence and judgement are thus unjustifiably conflated
Every judgement concerning what exists is indeed dependent on our intellectual and sensory faculties. I believe this is in line with Kant's philosophy, as is the OP on the whole.
I would assume that Wayfarer wouldn’t deny existence outside of perspective. But as an exercise, try to imagine constructing a sentence describing such existence. To begin with, the subject-object grammar of language must be bracketed off, including any properties or attributes (location in space and time, size, weight, color, shape, etc) ascribed to said existence. Perhaps rather than unintelligible, one could say such existence would be profoundly devoid of meaning, given that the meaning of describable objects is tied to their use for us as prescribed by some sort of grammar.
Would you agree with the following?
Yes, quite right. :up:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
And for the New Materialist knowing the world is interacting with it and interacting with it is changing it.
I've been pretty careful about that point. The way I've put it is that any meaningful judgement about existence assumes a perspective, but that doesn't say that in the absence of perspective, nothing exists. Rather it is that both existence and non-existence are conceptual in nature. ON that particular point I appeal to Buddhist philosophy.
[quote=The Buddha]By and large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "non-existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one.[/quote]
I would not agree with that; the questions "what things 'in themselves' may be like" and "how could we know that things exist": are two different questions. We know things exist for us because we sense them, but we cannot know what things in themselves are like even though we know what they are like for us. So, we know how things appear to us and we have good reason to think things exist apart from our perceptions of them, because other animals, judging from their behaviors, sense things in much the same ways we do. We naturally come to the concept of "thingness", but this is a linguistically mediated concept. We can be fairly certain that things stand out for other animals as gestalts, but we cannot know if there is any prelinguistic conception of "thingness" as opposed to merely "a sense of things".
So, I see Nietzsche's statement as being too anthropocentric.
I don't agree with this, because we can impute mere existence without claiming, or being required, to know what the nature of that existence is.
Here I will transpose the conversation to Buddhist philosophy, although there are alternatives. But in Buddhist philosophy, there is a term for 'seeing things as they truly are', which is one of the attributes of the Buddha. One of the canonical early texts says, 'there is, monks, an unborn, uncreated, unmade. Were there not an unborn, uncreated, unmade, there would be no release from the created, the born, the made' (i.e. 'the conditioned'). There are parallels in Christian mysticism, 'wisdom uncreate', in the writings of Meister Eckhardt and some other sources, drawing from Platonism.
But I think this domain of discourse is pretty well ring-fenced off in contemporary dialogue, because of its seemingly religious connotations. I think, maybe, Heidegger attempted to approach it, in his oblique way, although I'm not too conversant with it. But it is the one subject where the dialogue with non-dual philosophy (Zen and Advaita) at least provides a kind of vocabulary.
and Happy New Year :party: :sparkle: :clap:
I can't see any distinction between this idea of a collective consciousness and the idea of "mind at large". What would you say is the difference?
Crappy Newt's Ear!
That 'mind at large' suggests an objective reality. That is the reification involved. A subtle but important point, discussed extensively in Buddhist scholastic philosophy and in debates with the Brahmins.
Oh, and Happy New Year to you, although it's already an old year, I copped a traffic radar booking on Day One. :fear: complete with double points.
What do you mean by "objective reality"? A mind at large in the 'God' or 'universal mind' sense is not an object, but if we want to say it is real, then we are positing it as an actuality, no?
Bad luck about the traffic fine...it appears that traffic radars have no conception of "happy new year".
That particular essay is attempting to stay within the guidelines of Madhyamaka philosophy - 'middle way'. When asked if the self exists or does not, the Buddha does not reply, but maintains a noble silence.
Yes, I understand that, but such silence does not constitute a philosophical position. That said, bear in mind that I am no advocate of holding philosophical positions, but the subject of the thread was as to what is the best argument for physicalism, and I stated that physicalism, understood as the idea that there are mind-independent existents, seems to me the most plausible inference to explain the world we experience.
I don't see a cogent distinction between the idea of an 'Alaya' or 'storehouse' consciousness and the notions of a universal or collective consciousness, deity or God; they all seem to me to be variations of the same theme with few differences between them that make a difference. The only difference that makes a significant difference seems to me to be the idea of a personal God.
Quoting Wayfarer
Too many times when science is challenged, it is on the basis that it is inadequate in some way – that religious faith, for example, is needed to shore up the shortcoming of science to explain how the universe works.
But the inability of neuroscience to explain what we all experience in our respective consciousnesses (e.g., perceptions, pain) is not a shortcoming; it’s simply not the domain of neuroscience. Similarly, the fact that gravity does not rake leaves is not a shortcoming of gravity. Leaf-raking is not relevant to the concept of gravitation.
On the other hand, neuroscience does play a role in our conscious experience. As I’ve written in another Forum discussion, I am unable to project my (conscious) feeling of pain onto a screen for you to experience – even though I am able to project an MRI scan of my brain onto a screen, showing you certain neurological biomarkers that correspond to my feeling of pain. Although I can (scientifically) describe and explain my pain, I am unable to provide you with the experience of my pain. So neuroscience plays a role in all this – just not the only role.
Your thought-experiment was brilliant.
Quoting Wayfarer
The blend of imagination, science and philosophy is both thought-provoking and great fun!
Meaningless to us, whose every thought is conditioned by our perspective. We are perceptive and limited creatures with central nervous systems, and as you point out perspective is deeply woven into the fabric of our understanding. But just because we cannot truly think beyond perspective, isn't it injudicious to thereby conclude that reality itself is incoherent outside of perspective?
What does 'coherent' mean?
Coherent
1. (of an argument, theory, or policy) logical and consistent - "they failed to develop a coherent economic strategy" Similar: logical, reasoned, reasonable, well reasoned, rational, sound, cogent, consistent, well organized, systematic, orderly, methodical, clear, lucid, articulate, relevant, intelligible, comprehensible, joined-up Opposite: incoherent, muddled,
2. forming a unified whole, "the arts could be systematized into one coherent body of knowledge"
Absent a perspective, how could there be coherence? As I said at the outset, we can imagine an empty cosmos, but that imaginative depiction still relies on an implicit perspective, or else there is nothing nearer or further, larger or smaller. The mind brings that order to any such depiction.
I also refer to a recent book I've mentioned a number of times, Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles C. Pinter (Routledge Feb 2021). Pinter, a mathematician who had an interest in cognitive science, shows in great detail how it is the mind that operates in terms of gestalts (meaningful wholes) and brings the order we perceive to the universe:
[quote=Introduction;https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-50083-2_1]Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation. This is the way the early universe was before the emergence of life—and the way the present universe is outside the view of any observer.[/quote]
Are you conflating a frame of reference with a mental perspective? Nothing can be nearer or further, larger or smaller, independent of a frame of reference. But a frame of reference is not a mind, even though a mind can furnish one.
A boulder and a stump is not inherently nearer or further. But if I drive a stake in the ground, the boulder might then be nearer to it than the stump. Similarly, the stake might be taller than the boulder and shorter than the stump. But a stake is not a mind, merely a frame of reference.
It is clear that appearance is something created by minds. But shape? I struggle with that. Shapes unlike colors have properties that are mind-independent. Bowling balls roll by virtue of their shape, whether or not a mind is there to observe it.
Isn't positing 'a frame of reference' without their being a mind to conceive it, merely speculation?
It's difficult to convey Pinter's argument in a few sentences. But further on in the text, he notes:
[quote=Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles Pinter] We are misled by common sense to assume that we see in Gestalts because the world itself is constituted of whole objects. In actual fact, the manner in which physical objects are related to one another and come together rests on an entirely different principle, called the Addition of Simples, which is explained above. The reason events of the world appear holistic to animals is that animals perceive them in Gestalts. The atoms of a teacup do not collude together to form a teacup: The object is a teacup because it is constituted that way from a perspective outside of itself. In a similar way, a photograph consists of a large number of tiny dots of different colors, called pixels. The little dots do not conspire together to give rise to Grandma’s portrait. The portrait comes to exist in visual awareness when the whole of it is seen from an external perspective. The existence of an object as an individual whole is always something external to the object, not inherent in the object itself.[/quote]
In respect of the 'addition of simples'
I've had a few debates about this point with others here, and I agree it's a difficult point to convey. But what I think it means is that what we attribute to the world, as being the intrinsic property of objects, is actually an artefact of perception which is constructed from the (unconscious) tendency of the mind to construe objects as meaningful wholes. So what is thought to be 'inherent in the object' such as its perceived roundness, does not exist on the level of the primitive constituents of that object as described by science, but is imputed to it by the observer. And the reason that is difficult to see, is because we are accustomed to looking through that perspective, whereas here we're being asked to look at it. That's why I say at the outset of Mind Created World that the approach is mainly perspectival - that it requires a perspective shift (indeed, something very like a gestalt shift).
My essay ends with a quote (thanks to @Joshs for bringing it to attention):
[quote= Husserl’s Legacy: Phenomenology, Metaphysics, and Transcendental Philosophy, Dan Zahavi]Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned [/quote]
Speculation? I don't see how. It takes a mind to mark something as a frame of reference. But it takes a mind to formulate a proposition at all. Does that imply that the truth of all proposition are mind dependent? In what sense would "the Earth is further from the sun than Venus" no longer be true when sentient life is gone?
How is it then possible for the picture to inform? Suppose I have never seen Grandma, and the portrait includes the hairy mole on her cheek. Now I know it is there. If there is no mind independent feature of the picture as a whole, how can it tell me something that was not previously in my mind?
Similarly I had know foreknowledge that you would reply to me exactly as you did. Now I know your reply. Does that knowledge come from me alone, merely my personal interpolation, when in truth the words on my screen are just assemblages of pixels?
Quoting Wayfarer
This division between "simples"/primitive constituents, and "Gestalts", seems to be doing exactly what this quote says is impossible:
For my part, I don't see why the roundness of the bowling ball should not be included among the " primitive constituents of that object as described by science". The roundness determines its Newtonian behavior, after all.
A frame of reference is clearly an artificial creation. From Wikipedia: "In physics and astronomy, a frame of reference (or reference frame) is an abstract coordinate system whose origin, orientation, and scale are specified by a set of reference points?geometric points whose position is identified both mathematically (with numerical coordinate values) and physically (signaled by conventional markers).[1]"
How do you think that something other than a mind could mark a frame of reference?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In the sentence "the Earth is further from the sun than Venus" , the sun is the frame of reference in which the relation "further" operates. It takes a mind to formulate any proposition; in this one, the Sun is marked as a frame of reference, without which "further" would be meaningless. But does the proposition hold independently of minds, or not?
That is one example of an empirical fact. As I said in the OP I don't deny empirical facts. What I'm criticizing is the attempt to absolutize them as self-existent in the absence of any mind. The nature of the universe absent any mind....well, what can be said?
Kant, to whose philosophy I refer, was an empirical scientist as well as philosopher. His theory of nebular formation, modified by Laplace, is still considered scientifically respectable, even if superseded in many ways by subsequent discoveries.
In relation to empirical science, Kant believed that our scientific knowledge is valid within the realm of phenomena. He acknowledged the importance and validity of empirical science in understanding the natural world, as it deals with how things appear to us through our senses and rational faculties. His own work in the field of physical geography and the nebular hypothesis reflects this belief in the value of empirical investigation.
Kant’s philosophy essentially proposes a framework in which empirical science can coexist with transcendental idealism. Empirical science investigates and explains the world of phenomena, which is the world as structured by our sensory and cognitive faculties. On the other hand, transcendental idealism addresses the fundamental nature of these faculties themselves and the limits of what we can know, as well as the sense in which what we know is moulded or constructed by our knowing of it. ‘Things conform to thoughts, not thoughts to things’ as it is sometimes said.
Likewise it’s important to understand that what I propose in the OP is not in conflict with empirical science.
Quoting hypericin
The mathematical description of a sphere in three-dimensional space is given by:
x[sup]2[/sup]+y[sup]2[/sup]+z[sup]2[/sup]=r [sup]2[/sup]
Here x, y and z are the coordinates of any point on the surface of the sphere, and r is the radius of the sphere. This equation ensures that every point on the surface of the sphere is exactly r units away from the origin.
What about that equation ‘looks spherical?’ Rhetorical question of course but makes the point that a sphere can be perfectly described by an equation as can all of the primitive elements described by mathematical sciences without ‘looking like’ anything. Its appearance as spherical is imputed by the observing mind - which is not to deny that it is spherical, but to recognise the constructive contribution of the observer.
But what this conceals or overlooks is that objectivity is a methodological axiom which is then taken for a metaphysical principle. That is the point at which it becomes metaphysical, as distinct from methodological, naturalism. Methodological naturalism can be, in fact should be, circumspect with regards to metaphysical questions, of which ‘the role of the mind in the construal of experience’ is an example par excellence. But due to the generally dismissive attitude of modern culture to such questions, they are subjected to the Procrustean bed of empirical judgement, even though they transcend the bounds of empirical experience. This is what the OP is drawing attention to.
I'm not as forgiving as Wayfarer on this issue. The simple answer is no. No proposition cannot be said to "hold" independently of minds. Each proposition needs to be interpreted for meaning, and a judgement made concerning the truth or falsity of what is meant, in order to determine whether or not it holds.
It appears to me, like you have made that judgement concerning the stated proposition, and you conclude that the proposition is true. You also appear to believe that the proposition will continue to be true into the future, indefinitely, if at some time in the future there would be no minds to interpret it. I see two distinct epistemological problems here.
First, there is the matter of your judgement that the proposition is true. How can we know the correctness of this judgement? Even if all currently living human minds agree with you, a new way of understanding the reality of the solar system might demonstrate that this judgement of the proposition as true, was based in a form of misunderstanding. This is what happened when the geocentric model was replaced by the heliocentric. We really have no idea of how our understanding of spatial-temporal relations may change in the future. And, problems like quantum uncertainty, entanglement, wave-particle duality, wave-function collapse, and spatial expansion, demonstrate very clearly that change to this understanding is inevitable. Remember what happened to Pluto, it was a planet and now it's not.
The second problem is the issue of the indefinite continuation of sameness into the future, as time passes. This problem Hume elucidated in his discussion of causation and inductive reasoning. Things have continued through time, in the past, to exist in a very specific way, and this supports the supposed continuation of the truth of your proposition, into the future. However, we do not know or understand the true nature of passing time, so we cannot make the proposition required to support the claim that your proposition "the Earth is further from the sun than Venus" will continue to be true indefinitely into the future, even if it is true now. What we know is that the future is full of possibility and we only apprehend an extremely small portion of the magnitude of that possibility. Because the future is full of possibility and we only apprehend a very small portion of it, we ought not expect that true or false can be attributed to any statements about future conditions. This was covered by Aristotle when he discussed the conditions under which the law of excluded middle must be forfeited.
Could you please elaborate on the relationship between the two parts of the sentence? I am interested in hearing why.
[quote= Helen Yetter-Chappell] reality is a vast unity of conscious experiences, that binds together experiences as of every object from every perspective: a “tapestry” woven out of experiential “threads”.[/quote]
Chapter 11 is on Buddhist Idealism, which I've not started yet, but which is another influence on this OP.
//ps Meh. Read that Yetter-Chappell chapter, not *that* impressed by it. But it's good to know there are young up-and-coming academics defending idealism.//
By "solipsism" I understand – ontologically, not epistemologically – that only one mind exists and that all else are merely thoughts, ideas or dreams in that one mind. Thus, for the (ontological) solipsist, there is not any "non-mind" for her mind to be "dependent on". No doubt, however, this is not the case.
I see now.
Quoting Wayfarer
Is this not just indirect realism? We agree that appearance is mind-created. Here we also seem to agree that the appearance is a perspective on mind-independent reality.
But contrast with:
Quoting Wayfarer
Why is the equation describing the sphere mind independent, but the equations describing planetary orbits somehow dependent on there being minds?
Quoting Wayfarer
Sometimes I feel you vacillate between a kind of (weak?) idealism and indirect realism. An indirect realist would also emphasize the ‘the role of the mind in the construal of experience’, while acknowledging external reality. You do as well. Is the difference between your position and indirect realism just a difference in emphasis? An emphasis on the mind's role, and a deemphasis on the determining role of external reality?
Is that ‘indirect realism’?
To my understanding, yes actually.
Without minds, "Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now", but "Objects ... have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds."
That without mind, matter is not scattered about in space in any way at all.
Or maybe in your version, that reality is so bound up with subjectivity that there is nothing we can say about the matter?
Either way, these don't seem to correspond to the Pinter quote, which you nevertheless cite as an exemplar of your position. Hence my feeling that you vacillate.
So, you're saying that according to idealism, if there were no mind, then matter would not exist? (Sorry for being picky but really want to clarify this point.)
I think that is one version, which I call "strong". Which is not your version, as I pointed out.
In any case, thanks for you comments, appreciated.
Very possibly
Quoting Wayfarer
:up:
Indeed i took a spot of advice and listened to five hours of Kastrup late last week. Id say my attitude is the same.
Quoting Wayfarer
:roll: :monkey:
There's a supporting quotation for this point in the original essay that the OP links to, from the Pali Buddhist texts.
[quote=The Buddha, Kacc?yanagotta Sutta]‘By and large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, “non-existence” with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, “existence” with reference to the world does not occur to one.’[/quote]
IN that respect, I acknowledge my indebtedness to Buddhist philosophy, and also a book which was crucial in my early philosophical education, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, T R V Murti, which has extensive comparisons between Kant and the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) philosophy of Nagarjuna. That passage is one of the sources of Madhyamaka.
And this 'idea' is incoherent because it implies either (A) a Matryoshka doll-like infinite regress of minds-which-exist within minds-which-exist within ... ad infinitum (i.e. 'it's turtles all the way down) or (B) that "some mind" which "whatever exists for" is not ultimately "whatever exists". :sparkle: :eyes:
Well which "current science" is your non-scientific question referring to, Wayf?
I think you are giving idealism a realist interpretation, by interpreting " the mind" as a speculated theoretical object or posit, with your infinite-regress arguments resembling those used to attack indirect realism. Ironically, Berkeley's arguments against representationalist materialism were that he found it to be incoherent for reasons which are very similar to yours.
There is no "mind" posited in Berkeley's arguments for subjective idealism in the literal sense you assume, but only ideas referring to the thoughts and observations of the individual.
Nevertheless, Berkeley apparently remained uncommitted to the solipsism which many consider subjective idealism to imply, for although his arguments for idealism were based only on ideas, he was apparently open-minded with regards to the truth of the rationalist doctrines of causality and the external world. Like Malebranche and Hume, Berkeley didn't consider causality to be reducible to observations, for he understood observations in themselves to be inert, like the video frames of a movie. So if causality and externality were to exist, he argued that they must exist in some other mind that exists apart from one's ideas, namely in the mind of god, which ironically leads back to realism.
(I consider Berkeley to have shown that realism is ultimately a theological notion - the speculated existence of external reality in physicalism doesn't seem any less theological to me than Berkeley's mind of god)
What do you make of this?
Quoting Wayfarer
My understanding of Penrose, as influenced by Gödel, says that Incompleteness Theorem tells the mathematician that math proofs exemplify the consistency achievable within math-as-language morphology (math grammar), but that such internal consistency is not the whole story. Since a foundational set of axioms for a particular math will generate equations unprovable by their axioms, beyond consistent morphology, there lies the experience of understanding these changes of form by a person. Even in the face of math proofs there is judgment of computational consistency not itself computational. Generalizing from this insight, there is a consistent POV that is concerned with the aboutness of things rooted in the absence of its own aboutness.
I don’t yet, however, go so far as to totally deny all objectivity of the self. This I say because, obviously, the self is aware of itself.
Non sequitur. My critique of @Wayfarer's Buddhist idea (re: subjectivity) has nothing to do with "Berkeley's argument".
Objection, your honor, the defense is being evasive. The question was not asking about any particular genre of science, but merely about a scientific rather than philosophical position. Please direct the defense to answer the question about Ultimate Existence.
A possible answer -- though not scientific -- would be "No Ultimate Existence, only Proximate" : right here, right now. Not acceptable, because the questioner requested an empirical scientific fact to ground whatever opinion is offered. And a scientific answer would have to account for the un-resolved state of knowledge about the origin of the physical universe. It is observed to exist, but how or why did everything emerge from the unknown? Thus, addressing the creation/existence problem raised in the OP.
Aside : At this point, a scientist would probably just punt, but a philosopher would go for it on fourth down. Pardon the American hand/football metaphor. :joke:
Stipulation
Ultimate : being or happening at the beginning or end of a process
Existence : the state of being real or participating in reality.
... which is why I asked for specificity.
I've no idea what you mean, sir, by "a scientific rather than a philosophical position".
(From my member profile) Existence is a brute fact – radically contingent – so whatever exists is contingent as well. No thing is "ultimate".
So you know things exist and you don't need a mind for knowing that?
Indeed. A proper idealist wouldn't care about politics or science, but Wayfarer clearly does.
:roll:
The point is this: being a mind that is 'aware of being-a-mind-among-other-minds' (ergo finitude) presupposes 'mind-independent nonmind'. In other words, to say that 'existence is mind-dependent' entails 'the nonexistence of mind' (via infinite regress: mind dependent on mind dependent on mind dependent on ...) which is self-refuting.
Wayfarer is a property-owning householder with material possessions and family responsibilities. So I probably don't fit into your stereotyped image of what 'an idealist' must be, whatever that is.
Quoting 180 Proof
Nevertheless, there seems at least some resemblance between this, and your
Quoting 180 Proof
How does mind dependent on mind....not conform to your description of it being 'radically contingent'?
(leaving aside the fact that if everything is contingent, then it is impossible to avoid nihilism.)
As I pointed out, "mind dependent on mind dependent on ..." is incoherent, thus meaningless and doesn't "conform" to anything.
"Nihilism" in what sense?
No. Existence just is the case (constituted, but not exhausted, by "the totality of the facts" ~Witty, TLP). An infinite regress precipates from a claim that some unjustified yet noncontingent Y justifies X; however, 'existence is contingent', that is, not necessary, or is unjustifiable – literally nothing constrains existence (i.e continuing to be) from becoming nonexistence (i.e. ceasing to be) and therefore, in this sense, existence is also unbounded. By all means, Wayfarer, feel free to refute me by proposing a 'constraint on existence' that isn't also ... existence itself (ergo also not a constraint :smirk:).
And, again ...
Quoting 180 Proof
:chin:
Some philosophical sources:
• Laozi (re: yinyang)
• Epicurus (re: swirling atoms in void).
• Spinoza (re: natura naturans).
• Q. Meillassoux (re: hyperchaos).
Quoting Wayfarer
Everything we know points to mind (as an activity) being dependent on non-mind, on material existence/ existents. There are two understandings of nihilism: Nietzsche understood Christianity, and any notion of revelation, of received or imposed meaning, as being nihilistic in the sense that it nihilates the radical human capacity for creating meaning.
On the other hand, nihilism in the positive sense is simply the lack of received/ imposed meaning which grants to humanity a great freedom and creativity, The world itself, even apart from humanity, is replete with local contingent meanings, and there is no evidence for the reality of any global absolute meaning; a fact for which we ought to be most grateful, else we would be nought but slaves.
It is the fact that humanity has been mesmerized by a futile search for absolute meaning that arguably has led to the appalling neglect of this local world we share with all the other beasts and a functional sensible rational understanding of its needs.
From a perspective outside both, treating mind as an observed phenomena, which we can't actually do, as we're not outside it.
Quoting Janus
Nothing other than an expression of your own belief, or unbelief.
To say we are "inside" mind is to beg the question. We don't experience ourselves as being inside a mind, but as being inside a body which is inside the world. We don't experience our minds as being radically free or absolute but as being constrained and contingent upon our bodies, which are themselves dependent on physical resources: air, water, food, and conditions: principally gravity and light.
There are many things we cannot observe, simply because they are not observable phenomena; for example, digestion, respiration, metabolism and the precognitive interactions between body and world.
Quoting Wayfarer
If you look at the general history of human culture it is fairly clear that humanity has been labouring under the "aegis of tutelage", fixated by the idea that there must be some absolute authority or lawgiver. The horrific crimes against humanity which such absolutism has given rise to are hardly questionable. although of course it is possible to bury one's head in the sand in denial.
We are outside the minds of other people. Do you think that we can learn about the workings of other people's minds by observation of their behavior? Doesn't your statement amount to saying psychology is impossible?
Not true, Wayf. You forget language – each of us is always "outside" of each other's "mind" – thus the emergent, grammatical-symbolic commons that both facilitates and obscures our shared mentalities, or this cultural media. Yes, we cannot get "outside" of our own minds, but, as a baseline, each of us unavoidably "observes" the effects of others' minds and lives responding accordingly to their activities.
Quoting Janus
:up:
Quoting wonderer1
:up:
Quoting Janus
:100: :up:
:scream: Dionysus versus the Crucified.
:fire: Amor fati.
Cognitive science and psychology are indeed ways of studying the workings of consciousness in the third person, but philosophy of mind is a different matter. With respect to the empirical sciences, I acknowledge that
But that mental aspect is not 'out there somewhere'. I don't depict it as a 'mind-at-large' or 'divine intelligence'. It's simply how the mind orders sensations, perceptions and experience in such a way as to sythesise a coherent whole, which is 'the world'. That is what we are never 'outside of' or 'apart from'. (See It Is Never Known But It Is the Knower, Michel Bitbol, Academia)
[quote=Michel Bitbol]As soon as you think about something that is independent of thought, this something is no longer independent of thought! As soon as you try to imagine something that is independent of experience, you have an experience of it - not necessarily the sensory experience of it, but some sort of experience (imagination, concept, idea, etc.). The natural conclusion of this little thought experiment is that there is nothing completely independent of experience. But this creeping, all-pervasive presence of experience is the huge unnoticed fact of our lives. Nobody seems to care about it. Few people seem to realize that even the wildest speculations about what the universe was like during the first milliseconds after the Big Bang are still experiences. Most scientists rather argue that the Big Bang occurred as an event long before human beings existed in the universe. They can claim that, of course, but only from within the standpoint of their own present experience
Ironically, then, omnipresence of experience is tantamount to its absence. Experience is obvious; it is everywhere at this very moment. There is nothing apart from experience. Even when you think of past moments in which you do not remember having had any experience, this is still an experience, a present experience of thinking about them. But this background of immediate experience goes unnoticed because there is nothing with which to contrast it.This was well understood by Ludwig Wittgenstein, probably the most clear-headed philosopher of the twentieth century. One of my favourite quotes of Wittgenstein's is this one: "[Conscious experience] is not a something, but not a nothing either! (from Philosophical Investigations)[/quote]
The perceptive reader will notice the resonance with Advaita Vedanta, and indeed Bitbol acknowledges this with a reference at the beginning of the talk.
Of course this is true, and also true of digestion, respiration, metabolism, abstraction, conceptualization, visualization and other bodily processes.
While still the human breaths the spectral homunculus looms forever...
Quoting wonderer1
There are approaches within psychology which argue that
‘mind’ is not an inside set off against an outside, but an inseparable interaction, a system of coordinations with an environment in which what constitutes the perceiving (the inside) and the perceived environment ( the outside) are defined and changed by their reciprocal interaction. Because as individuals embodied and embedded in the world we are already outside ourselves in this way, there is no radical distinction between perceiving ourselves ( we come back to ourselves from the world) and perceiving others.
Mind is thus treated no differently than organism , which has no true ‘inside’ given they it is nothing but a system of interactions with an environment it defines on the basis of its normative way of functioning. But neither is there a true ‘outside’. So this modifies Wayfarer’s idealism somewhat into a play better the ideal and the real in which neither side has priority.
This play is undoubtedly characteristic of the ways in which we conceive of human perception, experience and judgement. Do you want to suggest that it has an actuality beyond that?
It has nothing to do with "stereotypes", but with considering the (practical) implications of an idealist stance.
It seems your stance would be more correctly described as psychological and ethical normativism, rather than an idealism.
From some two years ago:
Quoting Wayfarer
Have you looked into it?
For a puthujjana the world exists.
Wayfarer said:
Quoting Wayfarer
You're ignoring the bolded part.
Simply put, in order for there to be knowledge that something exists, a mind is needed. Knowledge of existence is a mental thing.
Quoting 180 Proof
And a mind is needed to make such a declaration.
This is a very common axiomatic claim.
What do you mean here by "normative"?
I ignore mere assertions (bolded or not) which lack argument or evidence to warrant them.
That seems ass-backwards to me, baker. "A mind" presupposes existence whether or not a "declaration" is made – whether or not it's "known something exists".
Thats's because you _take for granted_ that
"Everything we know points to mind (as an activity) being dependent on non-mind, on material existence/ existents."
You work with _axioms_, but ignore/deny doing so.
Quoting Janus
Yes. Every aspect of the world interacts with every other such that no laws , rules or fixities constrain it. Instead, interactions produce new interactions which produce new interactions. The cosmos is in the business of reinventing its past constantly. The ideality of this continual self-creation does not depend on the mind of a human subject. We are simply a participant in it, but a participant who can rapidly reinvent worlds. The fact that there are no laws constraining future possibilities on the basis of a fixed in place history does not mean change and becoming means chaos and arbitrariness. On the contrary, we live in natural and social circumstances of relative stability and familiarity. One does not need a universe of already fixed properties in order to be able to anticipate new events.
This is indeed a very common belief about how we exist, especially in Western cultures. It's how we are often taught to think of ourselves and to take such thinking for granted.
As if your're not fixated by this same idea that there must be some absolute authority or lawgiver; it's just that your particular idea of this absolute authority or lawgiver is different than some other people's.
Not having such an idea would probably make one insane.
It's not an axiomatic claim but an inference to what seems to me to be the best explanation.
Quoting baker
No, not simply a common belief, but a reflection on how we (or at least I) actually experience things.
Quoting baker
I'm not fixated on the idea of an absolute authority or lawgiver, I'm simply commenting on what is uncontroversially the case regarding the atrocities that have been committed in the name of absolute authority.
Not having such an idea of absolute authority might make you insane—I can't comment on that except to say you should speak only for yourself or others who have confirmed your bias in reference to themselves.
If you are denying that we observe countless regularities and invariances in the world then I think you have your eyes firmly shut. If that is not what you are saying, then I have no idea what it is you do want to say.
I hold a somewhat similar view, however I'd say there is a lack of nuance to the following:
Quoting Joshs
I wouldn't use the adjective "radical", but there certainly are distinctions between our perceptions of ourselves and our perception of others. Furthermore, understanding the bigger scientific picture, allows us to recognize and take such distinctions into account in a more informed way.
Sticking specifically to perception, the way we hear own voices is typically through bone conduction. Similarly, the way we see ourselves is typically mirror imaged. Now of course these days we can take out our phones and record ourselves on video, and to a degree mitigate those differences between first and third person perception, but there are all sorts of such distinctions to be recognized.
Quoting Janus
I think what you mean by 'substantial' and 'substantive' is 'tangible' and/or 'measurable'. Those are the empirical criteria for what is considered to exist.
There are many things that could be said, but as the question originated in a thread about Descartes, it might be noted at the outset that the idea of 'substance' and 'substantial' in philosophy is not an empirical one. Rather it originates with Aristotelian/Platonic metaphysics, wherein 'substance' was 'a thing whose existence is independent of that of all other things, or a thing from which or out of which other things are made or in which other things inhere' (Brittanica. It is, of course, true, that the classical idea of substance has fallen out of favour except for with adherents of Thomism and perhaps other modern forms of hylomorphism, for which see this daunting index.)
That said, I think that the traditional notion of substance became associated with, or displaced by, the objects of physics, as a part of the 'Scientific Revolution'. After all, the hallmark of the 'new science' was (1) the identification of the 'primary attributes' of matter as the principle subject-matter of physics and (2) the supposedly universal scope of the new physics (i.e. Galilean-Newtonian) to all such objects of analysis. This leads to the paradigm that I also quoted in the thread from which this query originated:
[quote=Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36]The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. (Mind and Cosmos, Pp35-36)[/quote]
I am proposing in this OP, that this amounts to more than just a theoretical paradigm - it's also a worldview, and one which is essentially the default view of secular, scientifically-informed culture. I also claim that an implicit assumption of this worldview is the 'subject-object' relationship - it takes for granted or assumes our status as intelligent subjects existing in a world of objects (and other subjects). Within that paradigm, 'objectivity' is the criterion for what is real or existent; what is 'objectively true' is what 'exists when you stop believing in it', as Philip K. Dick put it.
Here, this point is relevant:
Quoting Ludwig V
With which I agree. I take his main point to be a reference to the well-known 'observer problem' in quantum physics, which has undermined the whole idea of the 'mind-independent reality' of the objects of quantum physics, although I don't want to go into the whole 'interpretations of physics' tangle.
So what I was arguing in the other thread is that a consequence of Cartesian dualism is to depict mind (res cogitans) as something that exists within this subject-object paradigm, which is the scientific paradigm, and which is the only one we know or are confident of. The question becomes, how do you demonstrate or prove the existence of such a 'thinking thing'? Why, you can't! It's a specious concept. So what are we left with? The other half of Descartes' duality, namely, res extensia, extended matter, which Modern Science has proven so extraordinarily adept at analyzing and manipulating. (This is the sense in which I agree with Ryle's categorisation of Descartes' error as a category mistake, although I don't accept his remedy.)
Mind is not something that exists in this paradigm, except for as a product of the brain, an epiphenomenon, or an emergent attribute of what really does exist - which is the physical. That I see as the common-sense, mainstream view (which eliminativism takes to the most extreme, but also most consistent, position.)
This is why the argument in the OP says that an alternative to this view is a perspectival shift, a different way of seeing, which also turns out to be a different way of being. I'm pretty much in agreement with Bernardo Kastrup's analytical idealism in that regard, but it's really important to understand that this doesn't mean establishing that mind is something objectively existent.
And by 1788 we get Legrange's Analytical Mechanics boasting that it has no diagrams, only algebraic equations, because these involve less of the human sensory system in the understanding of mechanics and so are more objective. Ontic structural realism, things just being the math that describes them, seems like the terminus point for this trend.
I recall hearing a story about John Wheeler posing a question about "what do you get when you write down all the laws of physics, all the most beautiful equations we've discovered?"
"A bunch of chalk on a blackboard, not a universe."
Which I guess was his lead in for pitching "if from bit," and the participatory universe idea. The idea of the first concept being that you need some real ontological difference, not just math, to explain the world.
True - but that said, it is remarkable that the equations of general relativity can be captured on a single piece of paper. I don't think Thomas Nagel (or myself) wants to deprecate the astonishing reach of mathematical physics, so much as to point to what it assumes, and what it leaves out. Mind you, Wheeler's 'participatory universe' is one of the ways that these kinds of reflections became apparent from within science itself.
In the other thread I said this, which I think answers your question:
I wouldn't say they are "empirical criteria for what is considered to exist" so much as they are words denoting what is directly empirically available to us, that it is what it thus available to us and that the notions of real, actual, substantial and tangible denote this availability. How can we apply a term like 'real' to something which is not observable, at least in its physical or perceptible manifestations?
So, for example, mental activity (considered as being something distinct from neural activity) is not directly observable. but its; physical effects and correlates may be. So, I see no problem with saying that mental activity is physical, even though it is not a directly observable object of the senses. If we want to say that mental activity is non-physical or immaterial, I think we should first be able to answer the question as to what we could even mean by immaterial (beyond the obvious "not an object of the senses").
To say that mental activity is not physical, and hence does not exist, and yet is somehow real seems incoherent to me, because it seems impossible to explain what could be meant by that. In what sense could it be thought to be real if it truly is non-physical or immaterial?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I could be mistaken but my understanding of the term "ontic structural realism" is more in line with saying that what is real are the relations that are described by the math, not that those relations just are the math.
If those relations are energetic (which it seems all but the most abstract or merely conceptual relations must be) then the real can still be understood to be substantial, since energy is measurable.
I'm sorry I have ignored this for so long. It got swept away in all the other stuff that's going on.
Start with the 17th century:-
That's all fine. I'm not sure whether they realized that they were just kicking the can down the road. Mathematics can't explain colour and sound, so we'll classify them as subjective - just like the God of the gaps. OK. The tactic worked - in spades. The problem is that colours and sounds got lumped in together with hallucinations and dreams, beauty and goodness; and no-one troubled to analyze all this and draw proper distinctions. So now we are facing a "hard problem" that appears to have no solution. The framework that establishes the problem has to go.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, it was. But there's another aspect to this. When the physicists banished colour and sound from their theories, they forgot, or chose to ignore, the fact that their experiments and observations were conducted in the ordinary world in which colours and sounds are inextricably part of what we observe (and the point that Berkeley makes, that colour and shape (space) are inextricably linked.) If colours and sounds are not objective how can the science which proves them be objective? (Sense-data/ideas won't do the job. Ordinary common sense experience of independently existing objects in the objective world is essential.)
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't quite understand this; surely Descartes had no idea about the existence of his own mind? But there is something in what you say. We do tend to leave ourselves with no alternative but to "reduce" everything to physics (except the observer, of course). But when you define matter and mind in relation to each other, you cannot abolish mind without reviewing and reshaping matter.
(I'm resisting the temptation to chase your remark about Ryle. But I'm afraid it will prove too much for my head to contain.)
Quoting Wayfarer
I think the subject-object format has deeper roots than 17th century science. It is embedded in language (or at least the languages we are familiar with) but it is more than just a grammatical quirk; it affects everything we think. What we tend to forget is that every object can also be a subject, so that there is no logical gap, or gap of any sort, between the two. Most of the time, this is not particularly problematic. But it does get confusing when self-reference creeps in. That's why things get so hard when the observer becomes the observed.
Related to this is the idea of a point of view. A point of view is not included in the field of view, but defines the scope of what can be seen. It is an abstract concept - a location in space - which can be occupied by any observer (though not by all at the same time).It has geometrical existence, but not physical existence. It can be used in all sorts of metaphorical ways, many of which are helpful.
None of this connects to the subjective/objective distinction in the pejorative sense that "there is no disputing about tastes". It may connect to conceptual developments in the 17th and 18th centuries - the concept of the individual and so forth - but it doesn't connect in any way that makes sense to me to anything I've discussed so far.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quite likely. But there will be continuity as well.
I don't have much to add to this long-running discussion of Mental vs Physical priority. So, I'll just post a few thoughts stimulated by the OP.
BTW, my personal "perspectival shift" resulted, not from heart-felt religious motives, or rational philosophical arguments, or "hard" scientific evidence, but from the mundane paradigm shift of 20th century quantum theory. It was not a sudden "voice of god" conviction, but a gradual dawning of realization of the essential role of Sentience & Reason in our worldviews. Not to create a physical world from scratch, but to create a metaphysical model of the world that we sense (feel) and make-sense of (comprehend).
Some seem to think that Idealism means that Reality is imaginary, or that Subjective views are solipsistic, hence suspect. Yet my BothAnd perspective is wide-angle enough to see some truth in all of the above. Materialism is our common-sense perception of reality, but Idealism extends our sixth-sense of Reason, to construct a metaphysical conception of what lies beyond our enhanced physical senses, in the near-infinite Cosmic ceiling above, and the infinitesimal Sub-atomic foundation of reality. :smile:
The following is not a numbered argument, but merely foot-notes to establish a trail of my personal understanding. Quotes are from the Mind-Created World OP :
1. "The second objection is against the notion that the mind, or ‘mind-stuff’, is literally a type of constituent out of which things are made,"
Note --- In my information-based worldview, Mind-stuff is not a material substance, but more like a causal force --- the power to transform --- in the sense of E=MC^2, where causal Energy is equated with massy Matter, by means of logical Mathematics. There are no aggregating atoms of Energy, only a continuous trend of change in both Space and Time.
2. "To think about the existence of a particular thing in polar terms — that it either exists or does not exist — is a simplistic view of what existence entails. This is why the criticism of idealism that ‘particular things must go in and out of existence depending on whether they’re perceived’ is mistaken."
Note --- Instead of a bi-polar view, my personal perspective is intended to be stereoscopic, wherein opposing views are merged & blended into a single model of Reality, inclusive of both Mind and Matter. The iffy existence of Ideal vs Real makes Being seem to be contingent on polar perspectives. That may sound like Limbo, neither saved nor unsaved, but undecided. Or like quantum Uncertainty, a state of subjective knowledge that is neither true nor false : indeterminacy.
But to me, it seems more like a Holistic state in which the parts are dissolved (like salt) into the oceanic system. Quantum Entanglement can be viewed as a Holistic state, in which the inter-twined component parts are unknowable (Uncertain) as separate entities. So, the "existence" --- that reality goes in and out of --- is also a state of knowledge (known/unknown), from the perspective of the observer. As postulated by Berkeley, only an omniscient observer would know all possible states of "existence" (being).
3. "Let me address an obvious objection. ‘Surely “the world” is what is there all along, what is there anyway, regardless of whether you perceive it or not!"
Note --- According to Plato & Aristotle, "what is there all along" is Eternity, not ever-changing Space-Time. The Eternal realm is self-existent, not dependent on observers, whether subjective or objective. But the Contingent world, as demonstrated in Quantum experiments, is somewhat dependent on the perspective of the observer. For example, Einstein's Theory of Relativity divided reality into Special (particular) and General (universal). Only an omniscient view from outside of the material world could encompass all states of Being, in & out of space-time. Apparently, Einstein was trying to simulate a universal divine perspective, to "know the mind of god", as Hawking put it.
4. "This in turn leads to the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion for truth."
Note --- Science aspires to absolute Objectivity. But, in practice, only calculates the mean values of multiple subjective views. That computed average is supposed to cancel-out all extreme views, as well as personal emotional commitments, such as religious faith. Let's not deceive ourselves that physical Science actually achieves its noble aspiration of Absolute Objectivity, by eliminating personal biases, emotions, and false beliefs. It is still groping to meld isolated observations (experiments) into a singular summary of Truth. When physical science expands into philosophical territory, by studying Psychology and Sociology, the shortcomings of its matter-based methods become apparent.
5. "By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brain receives, organises and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves."
Note --- The individual human mind "creates" an imaginary model of reality. The scientific method merges multiple particular models into a collective consensus of verified Facts and acceptable Generalizations. Yet, even the consensual model continues to evolve over time, in evolutionary paradigm shifts. So, like chasing Infinity, we can only strive to come Closer to Truth. We don't create Truth, we learn it as best we can.
6. "By investing the objective domain with a mind-independent status, as if it exists independently of any mind, we absolutize it."
Note --- To "absolutize" is to generalize and universalize the various partial understandings of independent minds. The current generally-accepted scientific/philosophical model, a political consensus of many opinions, may be our best approximation to absolute Truth, at that point in time. So, a synergetic hypothesis of Reality may be as close to a "mind independent" worldview as possible. Yet, as philosophers, our job is to refine our received reality-model, to weed-out any remaining blind-spots, such as the various conventions & presumptions (-isms) that remain in circulation. Materialistic Scientism is one such metaphysical belief system, imagined as the final arbiter of physical Truth.
How so? Subjects are invariably sentient beings are they not? Tables and chairs and billiard balls are objects, but how are they subjects of experience? Isn’t saying that a version of panpsychism?
Quoting Ludwig V
Precisely!
Quoting Ludwig V
What I meant was that Descartes, in dividing the two substances, material and mental, placed them side-by-side, as it were. And whilst any of us can see and interact with material substance, the existence of ‘res cogitans’ is conjectural, and the proposed ‘interaction’ between the two ‘substances’ problematic. It sets the stage for the elimination of the mental, which is basically what subsequently developed, most directly expressed by ‘eliminativism’.
This criticism is not novel to me, by the way. As I mentioned in another thread, it’s also related to what Husserl said about Descartes, even while crediting him as the founder of transcendental philosophy.
Quoting Gnomon
Notice the duality you introduce between model and world.
The realization that prompted this essay is basically that of the primacy of experience - but unlike much empiricist philosophy, without bifurcating the domain of experience into subjective and objective. You and I have both read Charles Pinter’s book Mind and the Cosmic Order which I think supports a similar view.
I'm sorry. A misunderstanding. I thought your reference to the subject/object relationship was to subject and object in the general, grammatical sense. But, of course, I should have remembered that logic describes this in the more general format of subject/predicate. However, tables etc can be subject - of pictures, investigations, conversations, etc. They can also, in ordinary language, do things like blocking fire exits, squashing fruit, supporting vases, etc. Equally, a human being can stand in the object-place in a sentence, being looked at, rather than looking, being pushed, rather than pushing and in general being objectified. Self-awareness seems to screw this model up, but given how this all works, I don't see why one shouldn't simply say that self-awareness involves objectifying oneself, imagining one is looking at oneself.
Quoting Wayfarer
I thought the point of the cogito that was that is the one thing that we cannot doubt, and classical epistemology regards self-knowledge (which was always of the mind) was the only thing, apart from logic, of which we could be certain and which was therefore the foundation of epistemology.
From your original post:-
Quoting Wayfarer
That's certainly true, but a point of view is an abstract, context-dependent concept, not at all the same as a conscious person. However, "I" is more like "a point of view" in that it has no content, being constructed in the same sort of way as a point of view.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, that is quite right. But "exists" doesn't really tolerate half-way houses, so we have to talk of modes of existence or maybe categories, which gives a pluralist world, which is much more appropriate than monist, dualist or any other set number.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't believe our world-view is unified, except possibly in the world-views of philosophers. On the contrary, it is the lack of unity that enables us to distinguish reality from perception.
"Generating" a world view is much more appropriate than "creating" it. Think of a VR kit that can give you a picture of the world around you as it is or a fantasy world. "Creating" the fantasy world is perfectly appropriate, but not "creating" the real world. "generating" is much better.
For practical purposes, I will admit to being a subject/object dualist. But for philosophical reasons, I am a substance monist : Causation/Information is fundamental, not Consciousness/Mind, nor Particulate Matter. However, since I am not a card-carrying Idealist, I don't identify Self with God/Universe/World-Mind. And I don't feel a visceral union of Self-Awareness with Primal Consciousness. So, I can't imagine that I am the all-powerful Creator of the complex & contradictory world that I experience via my physical senses. Instead, I merely accept that my split-brain (two hemispheres, two-eyes) somehow merges separate Information Processors into the single stereoscopic perspective of a physical/mental Self.
Kastrup argues that the human mind can split into two or more "alters". But I have no personal experience with that kind of "dissociation". So, I just have to take his word for it. I have never meditated to be point of dissolution of self into the cosmos. And never took psychedelic drugs to depress my self-identifying frontal lobes into an oceanic cosmic Self. Moreover, my religious upbringing was decidedly dualistic. But, I can understand rationally that the world we perceive is actually a concept : an internal imaginary model, constructed from minuscule bits of incoming information. So, Monism & Holism are intellectual notions, not visceral feelings.
As I noted in my previous post, I came to my current Holistic/Monistic worldview from a layman's grasp of 20th century science --- especially the nebulous foundations of physical reality on the subatomic level ; and the equally-hazy open-ended origin-story of the Big Bang. I have no formal training in metaphysical Philosophy. And I never personally knew a Buddhist practitioner, or Hindu guru, or New Age hippie. Consequently, I remain an outsider from those perspectives. So, I hope you will forgive me for clinging to my innate & cultural dualistic worldview, even as I experiment with holistic ideas as a philosophical dabbler. :smile:
Thanks for the clarification, but still not quite the point I'm seeking to make. Tables, or any objects, can be subjects of a sentence, or subjects of an investigation, or subjects in a catalog. But they are not subjects of experience. So there's there's an equivocation of the word 'subject' at work there. To be a subject of discussion is not necessarily to be a subject of experience.
Humans may indeed be objectified, or treated as objects, and even legitimately so, by, for example, demographers or statisticians or epidemiologists. Or, I suppose, a gunman, if the subject in question is a combatant or an intended victim. But we generally recognise that humans are subjects of experience by use of the honorific 'you' or personal pronouns, 'he or she', rather than 'it' (and leaving aside all of the politically-correct gender neutrality business.) I say that this is because we recognise humans as beings, and we recognise, at least tacitly, a distinction between beings and objects or beings and things.
Quoting Ludwig V
On the contrary, I take the subjective unity of experience as apodictically certain as Descartes' cogito ergo sum. When I feel a pain, or an emotion, or a sight, I don't learn this at second-hand from organs of perception of sensation. Although I agree with Buddhism that no soveriegn unchangeable self can be identified, nevertheless I accept the basic tenets of Kant's transcendental unity of apperception. Also, I think the argument can be made that something like a 'principle of unity' can be discerned in Aristotle's description of the soul - again, like my criticism of Descartes, not a 'ghost' or 'ethereal spirit' but the organising principle of De Anima (granted I've never done the studies of De Anima to back that up, but it seems to be presented in many of the secondary sources.)
The thing I find with your posts is that you're such a long way down the path of your own syncretic combination of ideas, that I often feel we talk past each other. I see merit in some of what you say, and agree with you in the rejection of mainstream physicalism and in other ways. But then I also see that you interpret many of the things we both read in ways very different from my own. There's nothing I need to 'forgive' on that account, although there are some aspects which I think - how to say - could be refined. (Although doubless that is also true for me, which is what we're doing here, I hope.)
These are all pretty subversive ideas from a western cultural viewpoint. Not for nothing was Timothy Leary's first book called The Politics of Ecstacy, which I read around the time of the corresponding psychedelic experiences. But I can assure you the experience of 'the unitive vision' is a real thing (a great Aussie psychedilc rock song from those years was called The Real Thing). Not that I would ever encourage consumption of hallucinogens.)
In any case, Kastrup's dissociated alters theory, despite its eye-rolling reception, has a philosophical basis, rather similar to a popularised version of Advaita Vedanta (and I listened to a dialogue between him and the resident minister at Vedanta Society of New York, Swami Sarvapriyananda.) Recall that Kastrup is obliged to say that if matter is not the fundamental reality, then that role must be assigned to mind - not my mind, or yours, but to what he describes as 'mind-at-large'. And on that note, one of my Medium essays is a friendly critique of that concept.
I don't doubt that the Cosmic Unity or Oceanic*1 experience seems real. But I remain skeptical of the philosophical/religious doctrines associated with that feeling. From a more materialistic perspective, the perceptual/conceptual distinction between Self & Other has been experimentally traced to the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC)*2 . . . . among other brain modules. Presumably, when the operations of that module are depressed by neurotoxins (e.g. alcohol), the person may begin to act "intoxicated". Which, in some cultures, has been identified as a sign of spiritual possession (inspiration). Perhaps, due to the "out of the mouths of babes" effect*2{note}.
Since I have never been intoxicated with chemical or heavenly "spirits", I have no experience with the associated "unitive vision". So, I have to take the word of others (e.g. enraptured mystics) for what it's like to become One with God. I also have no idea about how deep meditation could produce a similar physical effect. But it might be a self-fulfilling prophecy (non-self state), or a form of self-induced depression of PFC. Some Buddhist monks have claimed to be able to control various sub-conscious bodily function via deep meditation.
Therefore, while I take your word for the "reality" of the Unitary way of viewing/experiencing the Cosmic Self, for me it remains an instance of Chalmers' "what it's like" problem of consciousness/awareness. :nerd:
PS___In the final chapter of Kastrup's Science Ideated, he distinguishes between traditional Reason, and "True Logic" as a means to discriminate "between reality and deception". I suppose that means my feeble philosophical attempts to make sense of the world, according to the conventional rules of reasoning, are in vain. He criticizes Western Reason for its lack of a role for the "divine". So, he concludes : "to serve the divine requires 'a deeply religious attitude' ". In my personal experience, that attitude was labeled "Faith". Unfortunately, my sojourn with Western religious Piety makes it seem to be a case of Self-Deception. Is an attitude of open-minded Creedence necessary to experience "the Unitive Vision"? Again, I apologize for slipping back into old dualistic habits of thought. It seems that, for me, Self is the sole reality, and Other is merely a plausible hypothesis. :cool:
*1. Oceanic Feeling :
"the phrase "oceanic feeling" to refer to "a sensation of 'eternity'", a feeling of "being one with the external world as a whole", inspired by the example of Ramakrishna, among other mystics." ___Wikipedia
*2. Which part of the brain is most associated with our self concept?
Neuroscientists have believed that three brain regions are critical for self-awareness: the insular cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the medial prefrontal cortex.
https://now.uiowa.edu/news/2012/08/roots-human-self-awareness
Note --- The Prefrontal Cortex provides the so-called "Executive Function" of the body. This is supposed to be "Self/Soul", who is in control of all conscious bodily functions. When that function is disrupted by toxins, or even internal neurotransmitters, it may begin to malfunction. That's why a person intoxicated from alcohol, begins to act like a young irresponsible child, and may eventually lose its grip on some semi-conscious functions, such as bladder control.
So "conscious subject" is full of hidden implications, the principle one being the physicalist idea that the person's actions, and perceptual apprehension of the world in general, are simply a response, or reaction to the world, as the person is subjected to one's environment. That is the determinist perspective, which commonly inheres within the notion of "subject". This is the alternative to representing the person and the person's perceptual apparatus as acting agent.
We were talking about Bernardo Kastrup's 'dissociated alters'. Kastrup's analytical idealism suggests that the ground of existence is experiential, rather than material, and that the universe is ultimately a single, universal mind. As discussed previously, there are convergences between that and schools of ancient Greek (nous in neoplatonism) and the Brahman of Vedanta (not to mention more recent schools of idealist philosophy). The model of the self as a "dissociated alter" originates from this. In this understanding, individuals are like "alters" (a term borrowed from dissociative identity disorder in psychology) of this larger consciousness. These alters are local 'dissociated' centers of awareness within a broader field of universal consciousness.
Kastrup uses this framework to account for individual subjectivity, as well as mental disorders, and even paranormal occurrences. He argues that what we consider our individual minds are in reality dissociated segments of a larger consciousness that encompasses all reality. This perspective places individual human experiences within a larger, interconnected framework of consciousness that transcends individual boundaries. It also provides an interpretive model whereby insight into the universal nature of consciousness provides the means of liberation from or transcendence of the limited ego-centred mind, which might be compared to what Richard M. Bucke called 'cosmic consciousness' in his 1901 book of that name.
Quoting Gnomon
The expression 'the unitive vision' is a catch-all for various diverse expressions of divine union or theosis in different cultures. As a matter of interest, the expression of an 'oceanic feeling' which you mention is associated with Freud's attempt to interpret mysticism, which however was vitiated by his overall 'scientism'.
Maybe the reason you associate that with credence and religious faith, is a consequence of the long association (or subordination!) of these ideas with ecclesiastical authority and downtown religion. (I recall a remark by British philosophical theologian Dean Inge, that were Christ to return, there would be some Christians who would be the first to crucify him again.) The case can be made that these ideas were coralled into the confines of religion as a means of social control in the first place (although that would be a massive thesis requiring voluminous argument). But I would venture that the influence of dogmatic religion in your earlier life has prejudiced you against these ideas, so that you tend to view them through those spectacles.
The key point is that popular religion cannot traffic in high-falluting ideas of cosmic consciousness and the unitive vision. 'Believe and be saved' is much nearer the mark. While I'm coming around to the understanding that those who really do practice charity, empathy, self-control and agap? really may be 'saved', I'm in complete agreement that much of what goes on in the name of religion is ignorance personified.
Quoting Gnomon
This is quite well-documented, actually - and not only Buddhist monks, but yogis, generally. But those skills, that level of self-discipline, are practical impossibilities for most of us, they have been developed in seclusion under strict regimens and high levels of discipline. There's a lot of popular mythology about these kinds of yogic skills but its fruits are incredibly hard-won. (Hence the popularity of popular religion!)
Incidentally, here is a rather good presentation from Bernardo Kastrup, about ten years ago, differentiating his analytical idealism from panpsychism, among other matters. Again my understanding of idealist philosophy is very much convergent with what he says.
Nice summary of Kastrup.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is a good point and wherever anyone says this I think, yep that's true. Unfortunately in reducing spirituality to such a simplistic or 'dumbed down' terms (the Magical Mr God) I wonder how useful/meaningful it is. It seems awfully easy to turn this into a tool of oppression and Calvinist-style retribution.
Quoting Wayfarer
Which would include most secularists, I'd imagine. David Bentley Hart makes the point that universalism was central to the early Christian tradition. We are all 'saved', regardless.
I'm not sure what 'saved' means however, once you articulate this in more sophisticated spiritual terms. Liberated? Moksha? Any thoughts? Saved seems so binary and one suspects a more nuanced vocabulary is required.
I don't know for certain, but I'm sure that 'saved' does mean something. (That's what puts me on the religious side of the ledger. I had a kind of anamnesis of my own aged about 13, although such realisations are generally impossible to convey to others.) What does it mean? I still hark back to Alan Watts' title 'the Supreme Identity' even while acknowledging Watts' shortcomings. The idea that the being realises his/her true nature as something beyond death. (There's a Princeton philosopher who wrote a book on this, Surviving Death, Mark Johnston, which I personally couldn't relate to, but it's written in the mode of analytic philosophy to appeal to that audience.)
Here's one point. The Indian traditions have a much more expansive outlook. Hinduism can accomodate Christianity more easily than vice versa, as Jesus is seen as an avatar, without detracting from His divine nature. That is anathema to doctrinal Christianity, but figures such as the Venerable Bede Griffith presented a kind of integral path synthesising Vedanta and his native Christian faith. (I saw Father Bede lecture in Sydney towards the end of his very long life.) I suppose the kind of view I'm advocating is universalist, although I don't want to fall into a kind of one-size-fits-all syncretism. But related to that is the religious cosmology common to both Hinduism and Buddhism, of the eternal caravan of rebirth (sa?s?ra) and liberation from it (mok?a, Nirv??a). Once aware of that, the linear cosmology of traditional Christianity seems more difficult to entertain, although the longer I live, the less certain I become.
That's a plausible hypothesis, and somewhat similar to my own emerging worldview, both of which are unprovable in any objective sense, and moot for any except philosophical purposes. My personal philosophical thesis is "grounded" mostly on modern scientific discoveries, instead of traditional/cultural religious doctrines. It concludes that the "ground" of physical existence is Causal, not Material, nor Experiential. As far as we can tell, 99.999% of the universe, until recently, lacked subjective Experience. Instead, most inter-communication involved exchanges of Energy, without personal meaning. Parallel to my own critique of Materialism, I can agree with Kastrup in his skeptical analysis of Panpsychism : it "implies universal consciousness, and fails to explain our own personal subjectivities". My own view is closer to Platonic Idealism, which postulated an eternal source of Abstract Forms with the Potential for both embodied Material things and Mental ideas. But he avoided anthro-morphing that unknown & unknowable abyss of Possibility, along with the myriad religious rules that arise from human interpretations of divine Will.
I too have toyed with the notion of a "Universal Mind". But, lacking direct revelation, I don't know if that Form Source is aware of anything in our world. What human science tells us is that Sentience eventually emerged, after eons of insentience. For all I know, the Source could be more like a mindless Multiverse with eternal Causal/Creative powers. Everything my biblical source-of-information told me about the Eternal Universal Deity of the Hebrews came from human philosopher/prophets, using their observation & imagination to make sense of the ever-changing material world with spooky invisible causal forces labeled "spirits". Today, we call those forces "energy", but its only scientific property is causation of material change. Unlike the biblical Holy Spirit, Energy is assumed to be random and insentient. And, except for a historical tendency toward complexity & consciousness, I have no evidence to prove otherwise.
I can understand Kastrup's analogy of "dissociated alters", but I find that abstract notion difficult to convert into an empirical "fact" of reality. Likewise, I am probably better informed than most westerners about eastern philosophy, but I'm not persuaded that the religions based on that grounding are any closer to ultimate Truth than the Judeo-Christian religions ; which are splitting like atoms into nit-picking sub-atomic interpretations of interpretations of what is and what must be. Therefore, I must remain agnostic about philosophical Universals (e.g. Divine Deities) rationalized from a few specific bits of information. :nerd:
Quoting Wayfarer
Due to years of reflection on my own back-to-the-bible decentralized priestless written-scripture-based Protestant religion, I can admit to being post-judiced against some of its essential ideas, ironically based on faith in the Roman Catholic Bible, but not its pope & priests. In Science Ideated, I was going along with Kastrup's "cunning" arguments against competing philosophical & religious belief systems. But then, the last chapter, in defense of Analytical Idealism, began to sound a lot like a faith-based religion. Jesus warned his disciples about Spiritual Blindness, and admonished them to be "wise as serpents". Now, Kastrup describes how we may break-out of the western "illusion" by means of "cunning wisdom". He says : "true logic must come disguised as reason". This notion of Parmenidean True Logic is distinguished from the presumably False Logic of Aristotle, which defined the reasoning process for western Science. Years ago, I abandoned Faith Wisdom in favor of Evidential Reason. Now he wants me to go back, to take a leap of faith into eastern wisdom???
Having dismissed the scientific worldview as illusory, he quotes Kingsley : "to serve the divine, requires 'a deeply religious attitude, the sense that it's all for the sake of something far greater than ourselves". Strangely, that "something" else is just as mysterious as the invisible immaterial deity of the ancient Hebrews, who seldom spoke publicly to ordinary men, but always through a human mouthpiece. Yet, he quotes Kingsley as advocating "a kind of cunning wisdom that can be used to trick, enchant, or persuade". Sounds like Donald Trump to me. Then, Kastrup suggests a ploy "to use pure, strict, sharp reasoning to undermine reason itself". To replace Greek reason with Hindu devotion or Buddhist hyper-subjectivity? That's when alarm bells go-off in the once-burnt mind of someone prejudiced-by-personal-experience against Faith ; not against Divinity per se, but in skepticism toward the cunning spokesmen for an absentee deity. For now, I prefer to remain Agnostic, and to let the unknown Creator speak to me through the public evidence of the knowable Creation. :halo:
Quoting Gnomon
:rage:
Sorry, if I came on a bit strong in that previous post. All through Kastrup's book, I was nodding in agreement, since it sounded like rational philosophical arguments against non-idealist worldviews. But, in the last chapter, his arguments began to sound irrational and polemical. Kastrup himself introduced "cunning" religious arguments, intended to "undermine reason" and to "trick, enchant or persuade" unbelievers. That's the kind of argumentation that I identify with religious and political campaigns. However, I didn't have to characterize the chapter as a "religious argument", because Kastrup did it for me : "to serve the divine, requires 'a deeply religious attitude".
In that final chapter, Kastrup seems to be advocating, not just philosophical Idealism, but also religious mysticism. He was more specific about his ineffable experience of "the Other" in a previous book : The Idea of the World. As a child, my own religious experience was mostly toward the passionless rational end of the spectrum. So, I have always looked at mysticism as an outsider. I once attended a "holy roller" service with my parents, and experienced (objectively) individuals who would stand up, gesticulate, and speak in tongues (not human dialects, but angel language). That was about as close to mysticism as I came, during my impressionable years.
Years later, curiosity motivated me to deliberately investigate the "other side" of religion. I learned a lot from Evelyn Underhill's (1911) Mysticism : The Development of Humankind's Spiritual Consciousness. I suppose her background was Catholic theology, because she seemed highly educated and fluent in Latin. Like Kastrup, she was also skeptical of fake spiritualism : "Mysticism has been misunderstood . . . . has been claimed as an excuse for every kind of occultism, for dilute transcendentalism, religious or aesthetic sentimentality, and bad metaphysics." In her first chapter, she discusses various alternative worldviews. After dismissing Realism/Materialism, she says "the second great conception of being --- Idealism --- has arrived by a process of elimination at a tentative answer to this question." The question was "whence comes the persistent instinct which --- receiving no encouragement from sense experience --- apprehends and desires this unknown unity, this all-inclusive Absolute, as the only possible satisfaction of its thirst for truth."
Lacking a talent for ecstasy, I have attempted to quench my own thirst for truth by using Western philosophical methods. Which Kastrup is also very familiar with, but uses its own logic to "undermine" its rational conclusions. Throughout the years, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions have used rational arguments to justify their institutional power over the hearts & minds of men. So, they have attempted to suppress the mystical "instinct" of those who prefer to go directly to the source of all authority : the "absolute". Hence, esoteric religious trends have always been marginalized by the mainstream institutions. Yet, I have unintentionally minoritized myself, by straying from the Doctrinal mainstream, without reaching the opposite shore of Spiritualism.
Although accuses me of being a New Age mystic,my personal non-religious philosophical worldview is a sort of blend of Realism & Idealism, with no mystical aspects. I assume that there is a physical world out there sending signals to my senses. But I am aware that my internal model of that world is a figment of my own imagination and reason. Is it possible that The Absolute is also a figment? :cool:
Actually I do have that book. I had started it, but I was irritated by the fact that many of the chapters are simply re-published essays from his blog site and other places. It is overly polemical in many places, and I am finding that reading too much of Kastrup is tiresome even though I’m basically in agreement with him. Agree that chapter on Peter Kingsley was weak (Kingsley’s book ‘Reality’ is on my shelf awaiting attention but it has not, as it were, drawn me in.)
Quoting Gnomon
Underhill is described as ‘anglo-Catholic’. There’s a stream within English Anglicanism which incorporates many elements of Catholic mysticism. Dean Inge was another.
Quoting Gnomon
Only when we talk about it. ‘The way that can be named is not the real way’.
//
At bottom the kind of idealism I’m advocating, if indeed idealism is what it is, is based on the realisation that the observer is inextricably foundational to reality. Whereas all our scientific knowledge is objective in nature - which not a flaw or a fault by any stretch but it has existential implications which are themselves not objective in nature. I think existentialist philosophers also recognise that, but then the whole issue becomes entangled with their cumbersome literature and varieties of opinion. But it is from that objective point-of-view that the Universe appears as a collection of objects obeying physical forces, as the subject has been deliberately excluded from it at the outset. And then that initial move, that starting position, is forgotten and neglected, and becomes baked in to our worldview, as if it is an ultimate fact. It’s like being confined to a locked compound, throwing the key over the wall and then declaring there’s no way out.
When discussing the ‘unitive vision’ I found an article from Father Richard Rohr. He’s a Franciscan friar who spoke at the Science and Non-duality Conference. So he’s quite radical and hip in his approach, a lot of Catholics complain about him but I believe he’s been judged orthodox by Catholic authorities. In any case, this snippet:
[quote=Centre for Action and Contemplation; https://cac.org/daily-meditations/unitive-seeing-2016-12-12/] Living and thinking autonomously, separately, or cut off from the Vine (John 15:1-5) or Source is what Paul means by being foolish and unspiritual (1 Corinthians 1:20-2:16). Living in union is what I like to call “knowing by participation.” Spiritual things can only be known from the inside, never as an object outside ourselves, or we utterly distort the perception. We must know subject to subject (I-Thou), not subject to object (I-it).
Separateness and objectification is unfortunately the chosen stance of the small self. From this place we have a hard time thinking paradoxically or living in unity. Instead, we more readily take one side or the other in order to feel secure. The ego frames everything in a binary, dualistic way: for me or against me, totally right or totally wrong. That is the best the small egotistical self can do, but it is not anywhere close to adequate for God’s purposes. It might be an early level of dualistic comparison or intelligence, but it is never wisdom or spiritual intelligence, which is invariably nondual.[/quote]
But then, atheists will roll their eyes and say ‘that’s just religion’ - which is objectively true, but also completely beside the point. It is about transformation to a different way of being, a different cognitive mode. And what we understand and describe as religion often, in fact usually, completely fails to understand and convey that understanding, and then becomes part of the problem.
As it happens, Rohr often rolls his eyes and says 'that's just religion' too.
Although my personal philosophical worldview assumes, as an unprovable axiom, an original universal First Cause of some kind, I don't go so far as to label that unknown Source as "The Absolute". And I am not aware of any personal benefit from Worshiping, or attempting to "unite" with that cosmic principle. I guess that's because I am lacking the political & religious gene for submissive behavior in the presence of great power. For me, The Unknown is intellectually compelling (a mystery to be solved), but not emotionally attractive (a mystical force to be worshiped or appropriated).
I am in sympathy with highbrow & holistic Eastern philosophy in general, but not with its popular & emotional religious forms. I don't tremble in contemplation of the mighty Absolute's power to strike me down as an unbeliever. So, my dispassionate demeanor is more appropriate for Stoicism than for Mysticism. I am not cowed into quaking awe at the concept that I am an insignificant insect in the eyes of the all-seeing Almighty. So popular rule-based Religion, and less popular euphoria-based Spiritualism, do not appeal to me. Also, mystical & arcane Kabbalah-type "secret wisdom" is not the powerful lure for me that it is for some seekers. Is there any hope for me, as an aspirant of mundane Socratic wisdom? Do I need to be "transformed" in order to escape the modern/western hell-bound herd? :nerd:
PS___Other than an antagonistic attitude toward human Reason, mystical religious practices seem to have little in common. Some use deep awareness meditation, some hallucinogenic drugs, and some physical Yoga or whirling dances to achieve union with the Divine. I am at a loss in all of those avenues.
:chin:
What, in this passage, suggests something like that?
Quoting Centre for Action and Contemplation
I was not referring to "this passage" but to "the deeply religious attitude" in general. I don't think Kastrup is promoting any particular traditional religion in his books, but merely the philosophical worldview of Analytical Idealism. However, his last chapter uses quotes from Peter Kingsley to illustrate some of the concepts he's trying to convey in order to "break down" our rational defenses. Kingsley is described as a Sufi mystic, which emerged from within the rule-bound Islamic religious traditions. The primary belief of Sufism is that "unification with Allah" is the most important goal of an individual's life. That sounds like extremely "submissive" behavior to me, turning egoistic self-conscious rational humans into egoless mechanical robot/slaves. Is that an unfair assessment? Would I be wise to transform into a "whirling dervish"? Would I then "know the mind of God"?
Kastrup's final chapter is focused primarily on breaking down the rational defenses of the self-centered Western mind. And it uses some of the same mind-bending "tricks" that Roman Catholic theology employs to make counter-intuitive notions, like a unitary/triune deity, seem plausible to the mortal mind ; as-if viewed from a higher perspective. He deprecates Greek Logic & reasoning in favor of what he calls "true logic" --- what I might call "religious reasoning". But the path to that divine perspective seems to require --- like all "true" religions --- a leap of blind faith : "true logic must come disguised as reason ; it must entail embracing the illusion fully". He seems to be suggesting that we voluntarily blind our rational minds in order to allow a divine "illusion" to dispel a mundane mirage. As Kastrup puts it, with no sign of irony : "transcending reason through reason".
Kastrup says that "it's critical that we first bring down our defenses . . . . because the intellect is the bouncer of the heart". Yes, but the skeptical intellect is also the shield against BS. My early religious training also insisted on lowering our shields in order to allow a higher Truth to penetrate the hardened heart. Once our intellectual defenses are down, we are prepared to accept whatever irrational religious doctrine is poured into our open un-defended heads. And that is why, as I reached the "age of reason", I chose to keep my mind open, but "not so open that your brains fall out".
In the sub-chapter labeled Beyond Idealism, he describes the Western worldview as a "hoax". In place of that fake-reality, he describes the True Reality of oneness with God-Mind : "everything is one, whole, motionless". Ironically, Einstein posited a similar mathematical Singularity-universe in his eternal timeless placeless "Block Universe" thought experiment ; perhaps to illustrate the concept of Relativity by contrast to Absoluteness. As an as-if metaphor, he didn't expect us to take it as a physical Reality, but only as metaphysical Ideality --- something to think about, not to lay hands on. Kastrup goes on to assert that "it is true that reality is constructed out of belief". But that's all the more reason we should be very careful about what we believe.
He goes on to explain that, from the perspective of Idealism, "the only way for things to feel real is if consciousness tricks itself into believing that its own imagination is an external phenomenon. Consciousness's prime directive is to trick itself, for if it doesn't, nothing is left but a void". So, he seems to be saying that we must learn to distrust our own senses, our only physical contact with external reality, in order to get in touch with what Kant called the unknowable ding an sich. I suppose that's the essence of pure Idealism. Which may be why my own worldview is an impure amalgamation of pragmatic Realism and intellectual Idealism. Can I have my Ideality and eat the cake too? :wink:
None of which has much to do with blind faith, has it? Bernardo Kastrup has completed two doctorates and written a dozen books, containing a great deal of rational argumentation. He debates against all comers, religious, non-religious, scientists, philosophers.
He also makes the point of disagreeing with Kingsley' contention that Western culture has irredemiably failed (although also noting that this claim itself might be a gambit); he's not going all in on Kingsley.
Quoting Gnomon
Right! And then immediately says that in isolation, this is bound to be misinterpreted and dismissed.
The full quotation is:
[quote=Science Ideated]For instance, it is true that reality is constructed out of belief; pure belief, nothing else; if there is no belief, there is nothing. But if one is to make this statement and leave it at that, one is bound to be misinterpreted and dismissed. For we will fall and die if we jump off a building, even if we believe we can fly; the world doesn’t seem at all acquiescent to our beliefs. The point here, however, isn’t that reality is constituted by personal, egoic beliefs; the foundational beliefs in question aren’t accessible through introspection; they underly not only a person, not only a species, not only all living beings, but everything. They aren’t our beliefs, but the beliefs that bring us into being in the first place.[/quote]
But to try and contextualise what I see as a basic issue in this conversation: there's a piece of terminology I encountered in a scholarly article in Buddhist Studies, and which is also found in phenomenology - namely, 'egological'. It's not the same as 'egocentric', which is a personality disorder. Rather it pertains to the way the ego constitutes experience of the objective world into a coherent, subjective stream of consciousness related to the ego or self; it characterises what Husserl calls 'the natural attitude'. Husserl explores how conscious acts are related to the ego, which is not an object in the world but a central point of reference for all experience and meaning. But the usual state is unawareness, or taken-for-grantedness, of the ego's role in the way we construe the world. That is very closely related to this whole discussion. The Buddhist Studies article I mentioned is about the legendarily paradoxical Buddhist text, the Diamond Sutra, and says, in part:
[quote=The Logic of the Diamond Sutra;https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09552360020011277]...the material object, the object of external sensory perception and the object of mind are all egologically constituted, where I understand the term egological to mean an oppositional, discriminatory attitude issuing from the ego-consciousness of the subject that is driven by an unconscious desire. ...We will conclude, then, that because of this egological constitution, the `seizing’ and `attachment’ to the object of cognition occur. It is this egological constitution that the Sutra admonishes to negate and avoid, i.e. it encourages us to go beyond the egological constitution of internal and external objects which `foolish, ordinary people’ habitually `seize’ upon in their everyday standpoint.[/quote]
What Kastrup, and Kingsley, and such arcane texts as the Diamond Sutra are pointing to, is the necessity to transcend the mentality which invests the objective domain with an inherent reality which it doesn't possess. That is not at all easy (and something in which I don't claim any accomplishment whatever, save the insight that it is something real that I don't know.) And, of course, ego will resist, as it is subversive.
Quoting Gnomon
"egoless mechanical robot/slaves" would indeed be an unfair assessment. Would it be wise for you to engage with Sufism? Probably not, given your background. I only know anything of Sufism through readings, and am unlikely to ever encounter a Sufi master - but I don't hold it in such negative esteem; also noting that Sufism has often been a persecuted minority within Islam, as the mystical elements of religions have often been outcast by the majority.
The way I read it, Kastrup is not saying to 'mistrust our own senses', but to recognise, as I say in the OP, the way in which the mind creates (or generates, or manifests) the world, which is then accorded an intrinsic reality which it doesn't possess (thereby overlooking the role of the subject in the process). This has been subject of comment by many more notable scholars than myself: that the Western mindset has defined itself in such a way that there's no place in it for the Western mind! Which is pretty much what Kastrup is arguing. The fact that you can only interpret any of this as 'religious dogma' seems to me, and pardon me for saying, a consequence of the views you bring to it. (The long shadow of Reformed Theology, I would hazard. )
This is going too far. It is true that the way we perceive the world is conditioned by the ways in which our sentient bodies and brains are constituted. The suggestion that the mind creates the world, rather than merely interprets it seems absurd and wrong.
This is not to say it is not a logical possibility, but just that all our experience speaks against it. It is a logical possibility, a mere logical possibility with nothing cogent to support it as far as i can tell. Why should we believe something simply on the basis that it an imaginable possibility? That we should believe things just because they seem intuitively right to us is exactly the mindset of conspiracy theorists.
Quoting Wayfarer
And I maintain that this is basically in conformity with Kant's philosophy, insofar as Kant maintained that empirical realism and transcendental idealism are not in conflict (per these excerpts.)
So, do you believe that if there were no minds in existence there would be no reality or actuality? I don't think Kant believed that— I think he would say the in itself would nonetheless be.
As I understand the reason that empirical reality and transcendental ideality are compatible is because the transcendental can never be more than ideal, that is can never be more than ideas, for us.
The very idea that the empirical is real, and thus more than merely mental or ideal, speaks against the notion that reality is mind-constructed, rather than merely brain/body-interpreted.
Quoting Wayfarer
If by that you mean ‘the transcendental’ is only ever a product of the mind, then I believe that is mistaken. It is better characterized as that which must be the case in order for us to think and reason as we do.
Well, accept it or not, he does actually say it:
Quoting Critique of Pure Reason, A383
Bryan Magee says:
[quote=Schopenhauer's Philosophy, p107]The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper. This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood, so that these statements appear faulty in ways in which, properly understood, they are not. ...We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy.[/quote]
The primary problem with this statement is your use of "interprets". What is present to the mind, is just a representation which is created by the mind. The thing represented is supposed to be "the independent world". But the relationship between a representation and the thing represented cannot be called an "interpretation". An "interpretation" would be an explanation of the representation, which may attempt to describe that relation between the representation and the thing represented. But we cannot truthfully say that the relation between the conscious representation and the supposed independent world is anything like an interpretation.
Furthermore, if we proceed to a deeper level in our analysis, and attempt a true interpretation of that relation between the representation and the thing represented, we find a secondary problem. If we look at what is actually represented by the conscious mind, when it creates its representation which is supposed to be a representation of the independent world, we see that what is represented is just the information which the subconscious part of the mind, along with the sense organs and neurological system, provide to it. Now we have a distinction between the conscious part of the mind which creates what we know as the representation, and subconscious part (the neurological system), which creates the raw material which is being represented by the conscious representation.
Therefore it is really correct, and not at all absurd or wrong, to say that the mind creates the world, even though this may seem extremely counter intuitive to you. The conscious mind creates a representation of "the independent world", but what is actually represented here is just something created by the subconscious part of the mind. The analysis I provided above shows that the conscious mind creates something which is a representation of what is supposed to be "the independent world". However, what that representation really represents is the information provided to it by the subconscious part of the mind, and this part of the mind produces that information through the various acts of sensation. So what is really represented by the conscious mind's representation, which is claimed to be "the independent world", is just something created by the subconscious part of the mind.
I read that as making the point, since the empirical world appears to us, that without us it would not appear (that is it would not appear to us but it would to other animals). It is not to say that that which appears to us, as distinct from its appearances to us, would not exist without us.
To "interpret" is to bring out, or explain the meaning of. To "represent" is to stand for, signify, or correspond to. In no sense are the two the same thing. As I explained, one can interpret a representation, but a representation is not an interpretation. This is because representation is meaning without the requirement of understanding, whereas interpretation requires understanding.
So, in relation to your prior statement, we can only interpret meaning, which we find in the representation of the world. We never actually interpret the supposed independent world, only the representation of it. Therefore the world which we interpret is just an artificial representation, a creation. And when we analyze the representation process, we find that the representation is always a representation of a further representation, in what appears to imply an infinite regress. This is why skepticism cannot be ruled out.
Our interpetations are constrained by the nature of the world including ourselves, so it's not right to say that we create the world.
How do you make that consistent with what you said earlier:
Quoting Janus
If, "already interpreted" is a prerequisite of there being such a thing as "the world", and minds do the job of interpreting, how would you dismiss the proposition that the mind also creates the world, being prior in time to the world? Since a mind is already necessarily prior to the world to perform that interpretation which is already done in order for there to be such a thing as the world, it seems very likely, rather than absurd, that a mind also creates the world.
Quoting Janus
If the world is always already interpreted, then an interpretation is prior in time to the world. Why would you think that the interpretation which is prior in time to the existence of the world, would be constrained by the world? As is the case with cause and effect, the posterior is constrained by the prior, not vise versa.
The bodymind interprets what is given to it precognitively. It doesn't create what is given, at least I find it most plausible to think that it doesn't. There are two senses of 'world' here.
You're missing the point. The act, which is called "interpretation", "to interpret", requires a relationship of representation of some sort. This is commonly understood as the relationship between sign and what is signified by the sign. It could also be understood as information and what the information says. To "interpret" is to bring out the meaning which is apprehended as being inherent within this relationship between sign and signified. So any act of "interpretation" requires these two aspects, with this relationship. For simplicity we could say these two are signs and what is signified, representation, and what is represented, or, the information and what the information says, or means.
So if the body/mind "interprets what is given to it", then what is given to it is the signs, information, or representation. But we still must consider the separation between the representation given to the body/mind and what is represented by that representation, or, the separation between the information given, and what the information says, signs and what is signified.
In the act of interpretation, "what is represented", or, "what the information says", is something created by the mind of the interpreter. The interpreter looks at the representation or information, and produces (creates) what is thought to be the meaning of it. "What is represented", "what the information says", "what is signified by the signs", is a creation of the interpreting mind.
Therefore, if "the bodymind interprets what is given to it precognitively", as you say, and what is given to it is a representation, sign, or information (as implied by the concept "interpret"), then what is represented by that information which is given to the mind precognitively, is something created by the mind in this act of interpretation. And so, if "what is given to it precognitively" is determined to be a representation of "the world", or information about "the world", then the world as what is determined as being represented, through the act of interpretation, is something created by the mind which interprets the representation, signs, or information.
The "blind faith" was snuck into the book only in the final chapter, after many chapters of "rational argumentation" against commonsense Materialism, and even Kingsley's version of Idealism. So, how am I to interpret "transcending reason through reason" except as a "rational" choice to close the eyes to "objective" Reality, and take a leap of faith into extrasensory subjective Ideality*1? :smile:
*1. Eyes of Faith, not Reason :
He has said "He who has eyes to see, let him see, and he who has ears to hear, let him hear." This whole concept of the Lord coming to make someone blind or giving sight to those who cannot see is hard to visualize (no pun intended).
https://www.dneoca.org/articles/eyestosee0794.html
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm aware that Kastrup's language could be "misinterpreted" by those who are alien to egoless Eastern maya-based*2 worldviews. But my own personal experience, with mostly Western religions, taught me to be on-guard against those who use Maya/illusion concepts to undermine confidence in my personal reasoning abilities. Christianity uses the image of deceiving Satan for the same effect : to make believers dependent on "seers" & "prophets" for their knowledge of paradoxical Truth. So, my problem is not prejudice against Kastrup's idiosyncratic Idealism, but of the necessity for making his esoteric ideas fit into my own personally experienced model of reality, that has outgrown some Western religious beliefs, by means of philosophical reasoning. Even as I try to keep an open mind to unfamilar ideas, I remain unable to access those hearsay "foundational beliefs . . . . underlying everything". :cool:
*2.What does Maya mean spiritually?
Maya originally denoted the magic power with which a god can make human beings believe in what turns out to be an illusion. By extension, it later came to mean the powerful force that creates the cosmic illusion that the phenomenal world is real.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/maya-Indian-philosophy
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. I am aware that my "ego's role" in construing the world is an obstacle to the Buddhist goal of "non self" (i.e. perfect objectivity or God's view of the world). I suppose, if "god" wanted us mortals to "become like God" (Genesis 3:5), then s/he wouldn't allow Satan/serpent/Maya to deceive us with the apple of Egoism. Does it make sense to sacrifice the Self (soul) in service to an anonymous/imaginary Cosmic Concept? To me --- in view of recorded human history of religious warfare*3 --- it seems like a choice between self-control and other-control. {image below} :gasp:
*3. Divine Dharma & Karma Yoga :
To set the stage, the Bhagavad Gita begins with Arjuna and his family about to go to war with one another. Not wanting to shed his families' blood, Arjuna refuses to fight. Ironically, this is where the god Krishna steps in and tries to convince Arjuna it is his duty to kill his rebellious kinsmen.
https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-bhagavad-gitas-story-of-arjuna-krishna-the-three-paths-to-salvation.html
Quoting Wayfarer
"Everyday standpoint = common sense?? If so, I suppose I am one of those "foolish ordinary people" who put their trust in personal reasoning, in order to defend against exhortations to take some sacred ideas on ego-blinded faith*4. Most doctrinal religions encourage their "ordinary people" to submerge their egos into a faith community, a single-minded union of believers : "being in full accord and of one mind" (Philippians 2:2). I'm OK with unbiased-universal-perspective as a philosophical concept, but not OK with religious exhortation to extinguish the ego. I'm wary of becoming a remote-controlled robot, subject to centralized orders from high command {image below]. Do Islamic terrorists submerge their egos, and sacrifice their bodies, in order to serve their omnipresent-but-invisible Allah? :chin:
*4. Eye of Faith reveals unseeable Allah :
"Well, HE is invisible for those who do not believe in HIS existence."
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Allah-is-invisible-If-yes-then-why-did-he-ask-the-polytheists-to-show-their-Gods-knowing-that-Gods-are-invisible-How-can-non-Muslims-subscribe-to-Islam-when-its-God-say-such-meaningless-things-Or-is
Quoting Wayfarer
My hybrid matter/mind-based philosophical worldview accepts the subjectivity of its own "reality" model. But my BothAnd bridge-between-worldviews allows me to imagine that hypothetical divine objective perspective, even as --- in the absence of divine revelation --- I make-do with my innate subjective view of the outside world. I can accept the natural world of the senses as the "inherent reality", while labeling the metaphysical model of that world as an as-if ivory-tower artificial reality : i.e. Ideality. One "reality" has physical Properties (possessions), while the other has metaphysical Qualities (attributes). Like Infinity, we can aspire to perfect Objectivity, but our attempts, on an asymptotic curve, miss the ultimate goal :nerd:
Quoting Wayfarer
How would you fairly assess the ego-less faith of Islamic terrorists (as one example among many of faith-motivated extremists)? Would it be more appropriate for me to "engage" with a Christian Mysticism that is closer to my own background? The peaceful Quakers (or Islamic Sufis), for example. They "believe that all people are capable of directly experiencing the divine nature of the universe". But they don't seem to be violent or robotic to me. Perhaps because their individualized experiences of divinity are not easily translated into centralized directives. "Spirit led" is a nice theory, but dogmaless Ego interpretations tend to keep them quiescent, instead of aggressive, in practice. Their unorthodox religions were persecuted in the early years, but their institutional passivity eventually allowed them to co-exist with non-mystical Christians, who had more threatening fish to fry. Do these egoless exceptions to the ego-driven rule fit into your Mind-Created World picture? Would I be advised to join them in their direct access to Divine Mind? :chin:
Quoting Wayfarer
Again, you imply implacable prejudice against doctrinal religion due to its restraints on ego-serving Reason. It's true that my religious upbringing involved minimal mystical elements, but it also had no official creed, so each believer was expected to interpret difficulties in the received scriptures according to his own "reasoning". Like the Quakers, it had few doctrinal rules, apart from the admittedly ambiguous New Testament record of early Christian beliefs. Hence, we didn't have any creedal or papal justification for burning infidels at the stake.
In retrospect, it seemed almost like non-dogmatic Buddhism*5, due to its "rational, individualistic, and democratic “spirituality”. So, my individualistic interpretations ("views") of Christian traditions were tolerated, as long as I didn't make an issue of it. My label of "religious dogma" was intended only in the sense that most sects have a few basic rules (doctrines) that establish their position in the plethora of religious interpretations "views" of their belief community. I have no animus against practical rules (doctrines) for governing religious communities. I do, however, have a skeptical philosophical attitude toward unquestioning Blind Faith as a condition of membership. :smile:
*5. Buddhist Doctrine (dogma) :
Buddhists believe that the human life is one of suffering, and that meditation, spiritual and physical labor, and good behavior are the ways to achieve enlightenment, or nirvana.
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/buddhism/
Note --- Compare Zen Calvinism
EGOLESS CENTRALLY-CONTROLLED ROBOT ARMY OF GOD
Quoting Janus
:100: :up:
The Gnomon quote is how I understand the phrase "a mind-created world". But the Wayfarer quote seems to imply that my individual ego-driven Soul/Self/Mind does create, not a separate simplistic subjective model-world, but the actual all-inclusive complex objective world of physical bodies and metaphysical minds, from the whole cloth of unlimited imagination. That would be a good trick for a god {image below}, but could a very limited mind like mine pull it off? The duality is a distinction between one man's imagination, and the one real world of space-time, or perhaps a Cosmic Mind's Maya illusion.
Kant's Transcendental Idealism*1 seems to imply an unbridgeable (dualistic) gulf between imperfect & incomplete (i.e. evolving) physical Reality, and a perfect & unchanging metaphysical Platonic Ideality. The human ego produces an imaginary (ideal) world model, limited in scope & detail by our inborn or learned assumptions and associations*2. At least, that's how I interpret his notion of a transcendent ideal world*1. Other than divine magic, does your concept of a Mind-Created World agree with Kant, or a more radical sense of "created"? :smile:
PS___The NETFLIX movie Freud's Last Session, provides a fictional encounter between Sigmund Freud, a famous atheist, and C.S. Lewis, a former atheist who converted to a personal (non-Catholic) faith in "Mere Christianity"*3. Their gentlemanly give & take discussion reminded me of our dialogues, even though I am not an angry Atheist, and you are not a non-denominational Christian.
*1. Kant's Mind-Created World :
Kant's transcendental conditions of knowledge portray the mind not as creating the physical world, but as necessarily structuring our knowledge of objects with a set of unconscious assumptions; yet our pre-conscious (pre-mental) encounter with an assumed spatio-temporal, causal nexus is entirely physical.
https://philarchive.org/archive/PALKPS-4
Note --- Are those "unconscious assumptions" the prejudices you see in my dualistic worldview?
The "causal nexus" may be another term for my own EnFormAction hypothesis.
*2. Kant’s Perspectival Solution to the Mind-Body Problem :
[i]Kant’s Critical philosophy solves Descartes’ mind-body problem, replacing the [b]dual-
ism[/b] of the “physical influx” theory he defended in his early career. Kant’s solution, like
all Critical theories, is “perspectival,” acknowledging deep truth in both opposing
extremes. Minds are not separate from bodies, but a manifestation of them, each
viewed from a different perspective. Kant’s transcendental conditions of knowledge
portray the mind [b]not as creating the physical world, but as necessarily structuring our
knowledge of objects with a set of unconscious assumptions[/b]; yet our pre-conscious
(pre-mental) encounter with an assumed spatio-temporal, causal nexus is entirely
physical. Hence, today’s “eliminative materialism” and “folk psychology” are both
ways of considering this age-old issue, neither being an exclusive explanation. A
Kantian solution to this version of the mind-body problem is: eliminative materialism
is good science; but only folk psychologists can consistently be eliminative material-
ists. Indeed, the mind-body problem exemplifies a feature of all cultural situations:
[b]dialogue between opposing perspectives is required for understanding as such
to arise[/b].[/i]
https://philarchive.org/archive/PALKPS-4
Note --- The "perspectival" solution to opposing worldviews may be similar to my own BothAnd methodology.
*3. The Most Reluctant Convert :
His faith changed his direction from “self-scrutiny” to “self-forgetfulness.”
https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/the-most-reluctant-convert/
Note --- Could "self-forgetfulness" be a form of non-self egolessness?
Vishnu Dreaming Worlds into Existence
The first footnote in the Medium version of the essay refers to Kant, as does the first quotation from the Charles Pinter book Mind and the Cosmic Order, which I understand you're familiar with. I would hope overall not to stray too far out of the bounds set by Kant.
Of course it is true that Kant is extremely difficult to read and comprehend and I don't claim to have a comprehensive understanding of his writings, only of some of the salient points of the CPR. I first encountered him through a book called The Central Philosophy of Buddhism by T R V Murti. Murti was a mid-twentieth century Indian scholar - he had very much a kind of cosmopolitan Oxford outlook. This book is nowadays criticized for its perceived eurocentrism and tendentiousness. However when I did my MA in Buddhist Studies ten years ago, my thesis supervisor endorsed it. It was central to my spiritual formation, such as it is. (An example can be found here.)
The book comprises an analysis of the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) philosophy of N?g?rjuna who is a principle figure in the development of Mah?y?na Buddhism. Throughout the book Murti compares Madhyamaka with Kant, Hegel, F H Bradley and David Hume, as well as other forms of Indian philosophy, specifically Advaita. Murti claims that N?g?rjuna's dialectic, the M?lamadhyamakak?rik? (MMK) is 'the central philosophy of Buddhism' centered around the Buddhist principle of ??nyat?. This is misleadingly often presented as 'nothingness' and the MMK as nihilistic, both by friends and foes of the religion, although it is not actually that. It arises, he says, from the inexorable conflicts within reason itself - hence the comparisons with Kant, in particular, a detailed comparison of Kant's antinomies of reason, and Buddha's 'unanswerable questions' (avy?k?ta). The origins of the madhyamaka can be traced back to those passages in the early Buddhist texts where the Buddha declines to answer whether there is a self or not, and other such questions, both affirmation and negation being incorrect responses (and the Buddha's lack of response being customarily described as a 'noble silence', see for example Ananda Sutta).
Like phenomenology, Buddhism is grounded very much in 'observation of what is' - paying very close attention to the nature of experience (which is really what 'mindfulness' means, aside from its pop-cultural references). It discourages metaphysical speculation, although that ought not to be interpreted as a kind of early naturalism or positivism. It is a religion although it is based on a completely different belief system to the Biblical religions. But because it's a religion, we generally fall back on the cultural religious tropes we've become accustomed to in order to understand it (and I'm aware of that tendency in myself.) But I'm trying to stay within the bounds of philosophical discourse in all of the above.
I've never attempted to read Kant's "difficult" works, so I only know the Wikipedia version. But I have read Pinter's Mind and the Cosmic Order. Both of those explanations of the Mind/World relationship are easier for me to identify-with than the Hindu/Buddhist texts. In my blog book review*1, I found Pinter's western-oriented analysis of the Real vs Ideal question to be mostly compatible with my own.
For example, in order to make sense of the Buddha's "??nyat?", I would have to picture its "emptiness" in terms of the void or nothingness (absence of matter) that presumably preceded the Big Bang of modern Western cosmology. In my own worldview, I imagine the logically necessary First Cause as existing eternally in an un-real im-material meta-physical state of Nothingness, that we westerners call "Potential". Perhaps, when my Ego is "extinguished" in death/nirvana, my self/soul will return to the void/sunya from whence it came. It's just speculation, but, for a Materialist, even that secularized de-personalized implication of matterless existence might be as unrealistic as any religious heaven.
The Nothing vs Something notion of Shunyata is itself a dualism. But then, the only way to eliminate Dualism in philosophy is to avoid rational analysis of whole systems into more digestible parts : e.g. M?lamadhyamakak?rik? vs 'Root Verses on the Middle Way'. For most of us, the first step toward understanding is to differentiate This-from-That, or Real-from-Ideal. Besides, without analytical Reason, we would have nothing to talk about, and this forum would have to communicate directly and wordlessly via mind-reading. :smile:
*1. Creative Mind and Cosmic Order :
The traditional opposing philosophical positions on the Mind vs Matter controversy are Idealism & Realism. But Pinter offers a sort of middle position that is similar in some ways to my own worldview of Enformationism.
http://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page10.html
That is how it is nearly always (mis)interpreted. Your interpreting it as 'nothing as opposed to something', or the 'cosmic void'. It's not that, but don't feel as though you're alone in seeing it that way, it is an almost universal misunderstanding.
But for an introduction to its meaning in practice see this short article, What Is Emptiness?:
[quote=Thanissaro Bhikkhu]Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there’s anything lying behind them.[/quote]
Please note, and without any pejorative intent on my part, the contrast with your imaginings of what might happen in the event of death, or what existed before the singularity. It's not found in imaginings or projections (hence the discouragement of speculative metaphysics!)
My take on 'emptiness' is that it is the seeing through of automatic projections - thought-patterns - associated with objects, situations and experiences. These manifest as identification- this is me! I am that! This is mine! together with the associated feelings of pride and shame, gain and loss, and so on. Obvious examples would be pride of ownership, status, the esteem of others, and the like. Recall Buddhism was a renunciate religion, and though we obviously aren't and probably won't ever be actual renunciates, that helps to understand the rationale and background.
'Emptiness' is 'realising what is' once all of those associations and attachments are in abeyance and they no longer hold sway over the passions. Notice the resemblance to Stoicism and other schools of pre-modern philosophy. The habitual tendencies and projections we have are sa?sk?ra, 'thought-formations': 'a complex concept, with no single-word English translation, that fuses "object and subject" as interdependent parts of each human's consciousness and epistemological process. It connotes "impression, disposition, conditioning, forming, perfecting in one's mind, influencing one's sensory and conceptual faculty" as well as any "preparation, sacrament" that "impresses, disposes, influences or conditions" how one thinks, conceives or feels.' (Wiki)
:up: Good review of Pinter's book. Again, I hope nothing here is incompatible with that.
Apparently, the Buddha's "emptiness" is supposed to be taken metaphorically instead of literally. The Bhikkhu quote describes it as a "mode of perception", which I would interpret as an attitude of "open-mindedness". And which, as described in the link below, should be essential for the practice of philosophy. But religious Faith would seem to be the antithesis : to hold stubbornly to "one's favored beliefs". Long ago, I gave-up my childhood faith, and have not found any ready-made off the shelf belief system to replace it.
That's why, over many years, I have been reviewing a variety of alternative religious, scientific, & philosophical beliefs, as I gradually construct a customized bespoke physical/metaphysical worldview of my own. I try to keep an open mind*1, but retain the truth-filter of skepticism*2 to weed-out any true-believer BS. Since I have never experienced anything Mystical or Magical, I am not predisposed to accept paranormal or transcendental beliefs that require a prejudicial "eye of faith".
The C.S. Lewis quote in my post above noted that "His faith changed his direction from 'self-scrutiny' {introspection?} to 'self-forgetfulness' {dissociation?}". {my brackets} Hence, as an adult he was transformed from dour Irish Anglican upbringing, to death-dispirited Atheist, to liberal non-denominational Theist. Does that sound like a case of "emptiness" or "open-mindedness" or "no self" to you? Obviously, he created a new personal worldview, but did his mind create a new world, in the sense of the OP? :smile:
*1. Open-mindedness is the willingness to search actively for evidence against one's favored beliefs, plans, or goals, and to weigh such evidence fairly when it is available.
https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/newsletters/authentichappinesscoaching/open-mindedness
*2. Skepticism is derived from the word skepsis, which means inquiry, examination, or investigation of a perception. More specifically, scientific skepticism refers to a method of systematic doubt used to objectively examine a premise, usually on the basis of empirical evidence, wherever possible. It is about cultivating critical habits of mind to weigh evidence. Scientific skepticism is a balance between being open to new ideas and being skeptical of claims that lack supporting evidence.
https://www.intelligentspeculation.com/blog/skepticism-not-cynicism-for-a-world-dependent-on-intellectual-inquirynbsp
Emptiness, the most misunderstood word in Buddhism?
The first meaning of emptiness is called "emptiness of essence," which means that phenomena [that we experience] have no inherent nature by themselves." The second is called "emptiness in the context of Buddha Nature," which sees emptiness as endowed with qualities of awakened mind like wisdom, bliss, compassion,
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/emptiness-most-misunderstood-word-in-buddhism_b_2769189
Not exactly. It's more concerned with paying close attention to the nature of experience. As I said above:
Quoting Wayfarer
That is not really 'open-mindedness' in an 'anything goes' sense.
As far as scepticism is concerned, there's a proposed link between a school of ancient Greek scepticism founded by Pyrrho of Elis and Buddhist philosophy. The theory is that Pyrrho travelled to Bactrian India (likely the Swat Valley straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan) which was then a Buddhist cultural center, and sat with the Buddhists. From this, he got his 'suspension of judgement', which resembles the Buddhist 'nirodha', or 'cessation'. That is the origin of scepticism, but it's nothing like today's armchair scepticism, which challenges claims to any kind of knowledge. Again it's more concerned with awareness of the disturbing patterns of thought and emotion rather than establishing a dogmatic truth claim. (Rather an interesting blog post on that can be read here.)
Quoting Gnomon
Need to be careful about what the meaning of 'creating' is in this context. An observation I have read is that the etymology of 'world' is an old Dutch term 'werold' meaning 'time of man' (ref), meaning that the connection with humanity is intrinsic to it. Whereas it is natural nowadays, with our modern awareness of the vastness of time and space, to see ourselves as transitory phenomena, 'mere blips' as the saying has it. But what the OP is pointing out, is that the vastness of time and space is unintelligible in the absence of perspective, and perspective can only be brought to bear by an observer. That's the central conflict I'm pointing out. (It's also a realisation that has dawned on physicists.)
//
There's another difficult point I want to make. The above connection between Buddhism and scepticism seems counter-intuitive - Buddhism is a religion, so how can be it also sceptical? This apparent conflict stems from a largely Western interpretation of what religion entails. In the West, particularly in post-Enlightenment contexts, religion is mainly associated strictly with codified beliefs and doctrines, something in turn heavily influenced by the doctrinal nature of Christianity (and especially protestant Christianity with the emphasis on salvation by faith alone). This differs markedly from religions like Buddhism, where practice, experience, and a phenomenological approach to understanding mind and reality are central, rather than the adherence to orthodox beliefs. The idea that skepticism is antithetical to religion is born out of a culturally-condition view of religion. Buddhism exemplifies how a religious framework can coexist with, or even promote, a skeptical approach to understanding nature (see the Kalama Sutta). It does not commit to a dogmatic worldview but instead encourages inquiry and direct personal experience as paths to enlightenment. This is, of course, why it is often said that Buddhism is not a religion but a philosophy, although that is also not quite true, as it's ultimate aim is liberation from worldly existence, which is clearly a religious one.
This highlights how deep-seated cultural assumptions can influence the interpretations of non-Western philosophies and religion. But it's also inevitable, to some extent, because of the role of belief in faith is often viewed as both a gift and a response to God's grace. It involves an assent to the doctrines taught by the church and a trust in God's promises. This framework can lead to an understanding of religion as essentially a belief-based system, where the right belief is the key to spiritual fulfillment and salvation. In contrast Buddhism place a greater emphasis on practices such as meditation, moral living, and the direct experience of insights about the nature of reality. Significant that the first item on the Buddhist Eightfold Path is 'right view' (samma dhitthi) rather than 'right belief' (orthodoxy). That's not to say that faith is not also important in Buddhism, as it is, but it is also counter-balanced by an existential perspective which is often missing in dogmatic religions.
I've heard it said that Zen Buddhism is a "practice" not a religion. But it is a "practice" with specific beliefs and group requirements or expectations. Years ago, at a hippie-like alternative church deep in the US "bible belt", I experimented with Alpha-Theta meditation, which omitted the associated Hindu/Buddhist beliefs, and focused solely on reaching a "deep, meditative, hypnotic-like state". An EEG machine was used to verify the brain-wave status during meditation.
Was that too quick & technical to qualify as a "practice"? Anyway, I enjoyed the waking-sleep relaxation, but never achieved any remarkable insights or feelings. I guess I didn't practice enough, but EEG readings are not the kind of feedback that would keep me coming back. Repetitive Practice requires emotional commitment to some personal goal, and belief that the goal is achievable. Probably, my intellectual curiosity was not sufficient for devoting my life to the practice of "wasting time". :smile:
Buddhism is variously understood as a religion, a philosophy, or a set of beliefs and practices based on the teachings of the Buddha,
https://tricycle.org/beginners/
"As the old joke goes, a tourist asked a New Yorker how do you get to Carnegie Hall. And the answer was: Practice! Practice! Practice!"
Buddhist Metaphysics :
Although mainstream Buddhism is a “form of mystical idealism”, the author says that it’s actually “a heady mixture of four quite distinct and contrasting metaphysical systems” : Common-sense Realism ; Theistic Spirituality ; Phenomenalism ; and Mystical Idealism.
https://bothandblog7.enformationism.info/page21.html
Why Buddhism is Enlightening :
This book is not recommending conversion to one of the various Asian religions that evolved from the Buddha’s teachings. Instead, he sees secular Meditation as a viable technology for taking command of our lives, and for avoiding or alleviating the psychological suffering — mostly Freudian neuroses — that plague many people today.
https://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page51.html
How To Practice Stoicism :
“A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.” — N.N.Taleb
https://mindfulstoic.net/how-to-practice-stoicism-an-introduction-12-stoic-practices/
Note --- Although it's closer to my own Western worldview, I don't consciously practice Stoicism. Perhaps because I'm not aware of any personal neuroses that need to be "transformed" into more positive behaviors.
@Tom Storm @Banno
Your reading will instantly affect my state ;-)
:nerd:
[quote=Phillip Ball]What the MWI really denies is the existence of facts at all. It replaces them with an experience of pseudo-facts (we think that this happened, even though that happened too). In so doing, it eliminates any coherent notion of what we can experience, or have experienced, or are experiencing right now. We might reasonably wonder if there is any value — any meaning — in what remains, and whether the sacrifice has been worth it.
Every scientific theory (at least, I cannot think of an exception) is a formulation for explaining why things in the world are the way we perceive them to be. This assumption that a theory must recover our perceived reality is generally so obvious that it is unspoken. The theories of evolution or plate tectonics don’t have to include some element that says “you are here, observing this stuff”; we can take that for granted.
In the end, if you say everything is true (i.e. every possible outcome has happened), you have said nothing.
But the MWI refuses to grant it. Sure, it claims to explain why it looks as though “you” are here observing that the electron spin is up, not down. But actually it is not returning us to this fundamental ground truth at all. Properly conceived, it is saying that there are neither facts nor a you who observes them.
It says that our unique experience as individuals is not simply a bit imperfect, a bit unreliable and fuzzy, but is a complete illusion. If we really pursue that idea, rather than pretending that it gives us quantum siblings, we find ourselves unable to say anything about anything that can be considered a meaningful truth. We are not just suspended in language; we have denied language any agency. The MWI — if taken seriously — is unthinkable.
Its implications undermine a scientific description of the world far more seriously than do those of any of its rivals. The MWI tells you not to trust empiricism at all: Rather than imposing the observer on the scene, it destroys any credible account of what an observer can possibly be. Some Everettians insist that this is not a problem and that you should not be troubled by it. Perhaps you are not, but I am.[/quote]
As I understand it - and I think I do understand it - the entire genesis of Everett's theory was the simple question: what if the wavefunction collapse doesn't occur? What would that entail?
According to an article in Scientific American, The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett (referring to a biography of him by that name).
And what problem does this daring adventure in fantasy purportedly solve? Why, that would be the metaphysical issue implied by the so-called 'wavefunction collapse'. At the expense of avoiding the apparent 'woo factor' involved in the measurement problem, we simply declare that it doesn't. At a considerable cost.
I wonder what David Deutsche's (probably unconscious) metaphysical commitments are, such that he views anyone who questions MWI with about the same scorn Richard Dawkins saves for creationists. Of course, I know he's one of the Smartest People in the World, but still, I can't help but think that something is seriously amiss here.
Listen to the discussion in the first youtube video I posted where Deutsch makes it clear he is a scientific realist (i.e. anti-antirealist ... anti-instrumentalist). The genesis of Hugh Everett's thesis is scientifically irrelevant and I lost interest immediately with Phillip Ball's idiotic / disingenuous first sentence "What the MWI really denies is the existence of facts at all." Again:
Quoting 180 Proof
This makes perfect sense. But the following does not:
Quoting Wayfarer
This seems to contradict the bolded portion of the first quote. I could grant that a subjective perception of some aspect of reality exists only if it is perceived, but this doesn't account for your statement of [i]neither existing nor not existing".
Quoting Wayfarer
Fair point. We do need to take our subjectivity into account. But this doesn't preclude our determining some objective truths about reality. You seem to acknowledge that the universe exists. This is an objective truth, even though the words in the statement rely on minds to give them meaning.
[Quote] This oversight imbues the phenomenal world — the world as it appears to us — with a kind of inherent reality that it doesn’t possess. This in turn leads to the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion for truth.[/quote]
I don't understand this. Truth is not subjective, although there are truths about subjective things. Objective truth: "The universe exists". Truth about something subjective: "The images of the 'Pillars of Creation' produced by the Webb telescope are beautiful".
Quoting Wayfarer
I can accept this if "unseen realities"=The subjective perspective of something in the world.
Agree it's a difficult point to make. I'm saying that there is an implicit subject in every statement about what exists, including what exists in the absence of any observers. It is true that we can model the universe as if there were no observers in it on the practical or methodological level but it's not ultimately the case, because that model is mind-dependent. The universe exists for the subject - as you say, that doesn't preclude the discovery of objective facts about it, but their objectivity is not absolute or stand-alone.
You acknowldge that we can discover objective facts about the universe. Isn't "the universe exists" an objective fact?
I can buy into the notion that all of our knowledge is grounded in ourselves. We individually develop language because we interact with the world, perceiving that world in our uniquely human way. But my point is: there is an actual world that we are perceiving.
My argument for denying solipsism is related to this, so I'll describe it.
We innately believe there exists a world external to ourselves. This is a basic, non-verbal belief- it's not derived logically from other beliefs. Importantly, it is a properly basic belief because it is a consequence of the way the world actually is and of the necessity of interacting with that world for our survival. (If you've read Alvan Plantinga, this will sound familiar. He argues that belief in God is rational - if there exists a God who instilled within us a sensus divinitatus).
Even a properly basic belief could be false. It's possible solipsism is true, but that mere possibility doesn't defeat the inherent belief that we have. I also acknowledge that IF solipsism is true, our belief in the external world is irrational. But that possibility doesn't worry me in the least, because my belief in the external world is so strong - I literally have zero doubt.
This is not an argument that proves solipsism is false. Rather, it shows that belief in an external world is rational, if it is true that there is an external world that produced this innate belief of ours. It is rational to maintain a belief that has not been defeated.
So, irrespective of what anyone else may believe, I am justified in believing there to exist a world external to myself, which I am a part of. If this belief is true (as I am convinced), it is an objective fact, not a subjective fact that is only true for me. It is an objective fact even if everyone else holds a false belief in solipsism.
It seems to me, this basic objective fact, that there exists a world outside the mind, is a reasonable starting point to derive additional objective facts about the world.
I have taken pains to word the essay we're discussing in such a way as to avoid solipsism and subjectivism.
Quoting Wayfarer
To quote from Schopenhauer:
Where I take issue with physicalism is that it accords the objective world with an inherent or supposedly mind-independent reality, so that it would remain just so, regardless of whether any being perceives it or not. Within that framework, the mind is considered a consequent fact, a faculty which owes its existence to the vast prior period of material and biological evolution that preceeded it. But this is dependent on viewing the mind as an object among other objects, so it is a judgement that is implicitly made from a perspective outside of the mind. Which is, of course, an impossibility - the inherent contradiction of materialist theories of mind.
For heuristic purposes, we can behave as if the external world is mind-independent and exists just it would without us. But that is a methodolical axiom, not an existential fact. The error arises from regarding the contingent facts of scientific inquiry as possessing a form of absolute veracity which they don't have. In Husserl's terms:
[quote=Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, p144]In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense—this would be a subjective idealism, itself a consequence of a certain naturalising tendency whereby consciousness is cause and the world its effect—but rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role. For this reason, all natural science is naive about its point of departure, for Husserl (PRS 85; Hua XXV 13). Since consciousness is presupposed in all science and knowledge, then the proper approach to the study of consciousness itself must be a transcendental one—one which, in Kantian terms, focuses on the conditions for the possibility of knowledge....[/quote]
I don't follow this argument. I can see that the judgement that "all such supposedly unseen realities" exist relies on an implicit perspective. What I don't see is that the existence of whatever relies on any perspective. There is an unexplained and seemingly unwarranted leap there from judgement of existence to actual existence.
When you say "What their existence might be outside of any perspective is meaningless and unintelligible, as a matter of both fact and principle" you are treating only what that existence is ( or is not) for us. Of course something outside of any perspective is indeterminable for us. It doesn't follow that there is no existence outside of our perspectives or any perspective at all. You seem to be conflating experience and judgement with existence. We cannot say anything at all about anything that might exist beyond our possible experience and judgement including that it could not exist. All the evidence points to the fact that something did exist prior to our existence or the existence of any percipients.
Any comment or criticism of the above snippet about Husserl?
I don't see that as inconsistent with the fact that from the perspective of phenomenological inquiry what is fundamental for us is what we are and can be aware of. I don't agree with the kind of thinking that counts what is fundamental for us as being fundamental tout court. Such thinking is too human-centric for my taste. I view it as a conceit.
It is naturalism (or physicalism) that is human-centric. Why? Because of having excluded the subject from consideration of what is real and declaring the measurable attributes of objects the sole criterion for what exists, as if that has philosophical significance, independently of any perspective whatever (something that the ‘measurement problem’ has made explicit.) Phenomenology, following Kant, is intellectually humble, in that it acknowledges the role of the subject in science, thereby overturning the conceit implicit in the presumption of a ‘view from nowhere’. And I continue to refer to The Blind Spot of Science, by Thompson, Frank and Gleiser, because I think it’s an important book that makes a case very similar to that I have given in the OP. It’s not an ‘appeal to authority’, it is an acknowledgement of a similar line of argument from recognised scholars.
"Supposedly" a mind-independent reality?! Do you really doubt there exists a mind-independent reality? I read the following statement as indicating you agree there is a mind-independent reality:
Quoting Wayfarer
Which implies you agree with the "judgement" that this is the case, even if you don't make that judgement on the same basis. The question of whether or not there exists a mind-independent reality does not depend on physicalism being true.
Quoting Wayfarer
I know that, but I was explaining why I believe there is an external world: it is necessarily the case that our perceptions provide some access to this world that is at least functionally accurate.. So, even though your are rejecting solipsism, you seem overly skeptical that we can know something about the external world. I fully accept that our image of the world is rooted in our human perspective, but that fact doesn't imply our understanding is false or even suspect. I think it just means we need to take ourselves, and our perspective, into account when seeking objective facts about the world.
[quote=Schopenhaurer]Thus we see, on the one hand, the existence of the whole world necessarily dependent upon the first conscious being,[/quote]
Taken literally, I think this is absurd - it contradicts my view that there is an external world, that we have a functionally accurate image of it through our senses, and that this provides a foundation for learning objective facts about the world.
But maybe he's using "the whole world" to refer to our human concept of the world. That's a bit more palatable, but it still seems to imply we're too detached from it to discern object truths about it. If I'm correct about this, why would anyone believe this? This seems like unjustified skepticism.
Quoting Wayfarer
Why think this is not an existential fact? Why think our inherent belief in a world external to ourselves is false or completely inscrutable?
Why are you calling the facts of scientific inquiry "contingent"? Is it because they can't be rigorously proven and theories are necessarily falsifiable? That doesn't preclude getting some things right, nor of getting many or most things at least partly right. I just don't understand why one would have such a pessimistic view.
I completely agree with this statement, because "meaning" is a term that pertains specifically to conscious beings.
Dualism could be true. We could be descended from ancestors who were directly created by a God, and it doesn't change anything: there is still an external world and our senses deliver a functionally accurate understanding of it. Why doubt that? You seem to either deny it, or at least doubt it. Why? It's not dependent on physicalism.
I acknowledge that we'll never understand much about the mind through a physical analysis of brain structure. Does this quoted statement have broader implications?
Naturalism consists in the idea that the natural world is not dependent on humans for its existence. Your view, counterpointing naturalism, is that the natural world does depend on humans for its existence. It is obvious which view is human-centric.
The central idea of The Blind Spot of Science is trivially true. Of course science only exists on account of humans. I've challenged you before to explain how the human subject is to be incorporated as an integral part of the theory of astronomy, geology, chemistry, natural science or any of the non-humanistic sciences.
Of course you can never answer the challenge because its a ridiculous notion. We are already there in those subjects as the investigator, but we don't appear in the subject itself just as the eye does not appear in the visual field. Those disciplines study their respective subjects as they appear to us. How could it be otherwise?
I do, but this is qualified by declaring that the world is not ultimately or really mind-independent, insofar as any judgement about its nature presupposes, but then 'brackets out', the observer.
The error I'm calling out is the 'absolutisation' of objective judgement. There's an Aeon essay (now a book) I frequently refer to, The Blind Spot of Science. It says, in part:
[quote=The Blind Spot;https://aeon.co/essays/the-blind-spot-of-science-is-the-neglect-of-lived-experience]Behind the Blind Spot sits the belief that physical reality has absolute primacy in human knowledge, a view that can be called scientific materialism. In philosophical terms, it combines scientific objectivism (science tells us about the real, mind-independent world) and physicalism (science tells us that physical reality is all there is). Elementary particles, moments in time, genes, the brain – all these things are assumed to be fundamentally real. By contrast, experience, awareness and consciousness are taken to be secondary. The scientific task becomes about figuring out how to reduce them to something physical, such as the behaviour of neural networks, the architecture of computational systems, or some measure of information.
This framework faces two intractable problems. The first concerns scientific objectivism. We never encounter physical reality outside of our observations of it. Elementary particles, time, genes and the brain are manifest to us only through our measurements, models and manipulations. Their presence is always based on scientific investigations, which occur only in the field of our experience.
This doesn’t mean that scientific knowledge is arbitrary, or a mere projection of our own minds. On the contrary, some models and methods of investigation work much better than others, and we can test this. But these tests never give us nature as it is in itself, outside our ways of seeing and acting on things. Experience is just as fundamental to scientific knowledge as the physical reality it reveals.
The second problem concerns physicalism. According to the most reductive version of physicalism, science tells us that everything, including life, the mind and consciousness, can be reduced to the behaviour of the smallest material constituents. You’re nothing but your neurons, and your neurons are nothing but little bits of matter. Here, life and the mind are gone, and only lifeless matter exists.
To put it bluntly, the claim that there’s nothing but physical reality is either false or empty. If ‘physical reality’ means reality as physics describes it, then the assertion that only physical phenomena exist is false. Why? Because physical science – including biology and computational neuroscience – doesn’t include an account of consciousness. This is not to say that consciousness is something unnatural or supernatural. The point is that physical science doesn’t include an account of experience; but we know that experience exists, so the claim that the only things that exist are what physical science tells us is false. On the other hand, if ‘physical reality’ means reality according to some future and complete physics, then the claim that there is nothing else but physical reality is empty, because we have no idea what such a future physics will look like, especially in relation to consciousness.[/quote]
Quoting Relativist
In line with the above, it's true in one way, but not in another. The very first thing any organism has to do is establish and maintain a boundary between itself and the environment. It is a basic condition of existence. And from a common-sense (or naive realist) point of view, we're indeed all separate people and separate from the world. But this is illusory in the sense that reality itself is not something we're apart from or outside of. One of Einstein's sayings, often put on posters, captures it:
[quote=Albert Einstein, Letter of condolence sent to Robert J. Marcus on the death of a son]A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.[/quote]
Quoting Relativist
It matters for materialist theories of mind, such as D M Armstrong's and others, surely. They all proclaim the identity of brain and mind.
Again, the thrust of 'mind-created world' (and it might have been better called 'mind-constructed') is in line with cognitivism, the insight into the way the mind synthesises sensory data with inherent faculties of judgement so as to generate, construct, or create the sense of the world within which science and all else is conducted. It's not as radical as it might seem, but it is definitely a challenge for physicalism, which is the context in which we're discussing it.
My issue with dualism, in the Cartesian sense, is that it tends to reify consciousness, treat it as a spiritual 'substance', which is an oxymoronic term in my view. I think some form of revised hylomorphic dualism (matter-form dualism) is quite feasble, one of the reasons I'm impressed with Feser's 'A-T' philosophy. I'm impressed by many of his arguments about the nature and primacy of reason, such as Think, McFly, Think. But he is critical of Cartesian dualism, at least as it has come down to us, and I think the 'Cartesian divide' is the source of many of the intellectual ailments of modernity.
True - but not trivial. That is an insight I claim you will never find called out in mainstream Anglo philosophy. It challenges the point of physicalist philosophy of mind, which is to explain the nature of the subject in objective physical terms.
Even a "hard" science like geology is not understandable (even if it were possible it would be an immensely cumbersome task) in terms of quantum physics.
No, it doesn't. Hurricane behavior is not best understood in terms of particle physics, but there's no reason to doubt that it is fundamentally due to the behavior of particles.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm not defending physicalism here, I'm defending the existence of the external world and that we are able to determine some truths about it.
Quoting The Blind Spot
Do you deny that science can tell us much about the real, mind-independent world? Are elementary particles and genes pure fiction?
Is the mind your sole focus? I'm happy to discuss that further, but I need to understand your perspective of everything in the world BESIDES minds.
Quoting The Blind Spot
Why does this matter? No metaphysical account of the mind is without flaws, and none can be proven as true. A person could practice psychology without a metaphysical account of the mind. On the other hand, neurology depends mostly on the physical - but often relating it to the "magic" of behavior (both physical and mental). But even here, a metaphysical account doesn't contribute to the practice of the discipline.
No, but they're also not understandable outside the scientific context within which they were discovered.
I've said, I don't deny the reality of there being an objective world, but that on a deeper level, it is not truly mind-independent. Which is another way of saying objectivity cannot be absolute.
Quoting Relativist
As for whether you're defending physicalism, the link to this discussion was made from this post in another thread in which you claimed to be 'representing David Armstrong's metaphysics'. I see the above arguments as a challenge to Armstrong's metaphysics. As I'm opposing Armstrong's metaphysics, this is why I think it matters.
Quoting Janus
You put a lot of effort into disagreeing with something you actually don't disagree with.
This clearly shows a confusion between judgement and what is being judged. Of course judgement is mind-dependent, but there seems to be little reason to think that the Universe could be human mind-dependent given that all the evidence points to its having being around for about seven thousand times as long as humans have been. I don't think this is a hard fact to grasp, but surprisingly you seem to have much difficulty understanding (or is it perhaps accepting?) it.
If you address the actual argument, I will respond.
I think you missed "under a certain conception". Under the intuitive conception people commonly have of the mind and consciousness and the subject a physical explanation is obviously impossible. Under a physicalist notion of the subject (that is that the subject is the living body) a physical explanation may indeed be possible.
You assume that the subject cannot be physical and then criticize physicalism for not being able to explain it. Can't you see that is tendentious thinking?
[quote=Bryan Magee, Schopenhauer's Philosophy] Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ... that is impossible.'
Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was [that] the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.
The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.
This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood.
Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.[/quote]
If you think this is wrong, say why.
I think the idea of a mind-independent reality is really incoherent. Reality is something which minds create, as pointed out by the op. If you try to imagine the world as existing without any point-of-view, from no perspective at all, it becomes completely unintelligible, so it cannot be imagined. That's because "reality" as we know it, is point-of-view dependent. So the idea of a mind-independent reality really is incoherent.
I don't understand why you say that. Please elaborate.
[Quote]I've said, I don't deny the reality of there being an objective world, but that on a deeper level, it is not truly mind-independent. [/quote]
These two clauses seem to be contradictory. If there is an objective world external to ourselves, then it exists independent of our minds.
[Quote]Which is another way of saying objectivity cannot be absolute.[/quote]
It seems obvious to me that there are objective facts about the world that we know or can come to know. It is objective fact that we live on the third planet from the sun, which we orbit. How is this anything other than an absolute fact?
Quoting Wayfarer
That's fine, and we can discuss it, but do you agree it has no practical significance? That's what I meant.
I'm willing to defend Armstrong's metaphysical theory against alternatives, so I need to understand what alternative you propose. I don't claim it's necessarily true; I simply think it's the best explanation for what we know about the world -broadly. It's conceivable that everything in the world is physical, except for minds.
Is his theory of mind the only thing you object to, or do you think there are flaws that are unrelated to his account of mind?
FYI, when we get to specifics of Armstrong's theory of mind, I won't be limiting myself to Armstrong's specifics, but I will stick with physicalism in general.
In the meantime, I need to better understand your position. If you don't believe we can know truths about the world, that seems more significant than whether or not the mind can be adequately accounted for through physicalism. I don't see how you could propose a superior alternative with such a background assumption.
If you think the idea of a mind-independent reality is incoherent, then you can't believe there exists a mind-independent reality. I believe there is. Can you give me any reasons to change my mind? Understand that I acknowledge that physicalism could be wrong, but the belief in a mind-independent reality isn't dependent on physicalism being true.
If what is addressed by the term “reality” (I presume physical reality which, in a nutshell, is that actuality (or set of actualities) which affects all minds in equal manners irrespective of what individual minds might believe or else interpret, etc.) will itself be contingent on the occurrence of all minds which simultaneously exist—and, maybe needless to add, if the position of solipsism is … utterly false—then the following will necessarily hold: reality can only be independent of any one individual mind. As it is will be independent of any particular cohort of minds—just as long as this cohort is not taken to be that of “all minds that occur in the cosmos”.
Which is to say that reality will be independent of individual minds in a so-called “mind-created cosmos” (just as long as it’s not solipsistic).
That mentioned, I agree that the sometimes tacitly implied notion of physical reality being somehow metaphysically independent of the individual minds which, after all, are aspects of it—such that physical reality could be placed here and minds there without any dependency in-between—is a logical dud. A close second dud is the attempt to describe minds, and all their various aspects, as purely physical (such that, for one example, all ends one can conceive of and intend are all physical in their nature).
Quoting Relativist
Just say this quibble between you and @Wayfarer. As I've just tried to illustrate, the quibble can be resolved by differentiating "mind" as generality (which occurs wherever individual minds occur) and "mind" as one concrete instantiation of the former (such that in concrete form minds are always plural and divided from each other) ... this in the term "mind-independent". Physical reality is not mind-independent in the first sense but is mind-independent in the second sense, this in any system of (non-solipsistic) idealism wherein the world is contingent upon the occurrence of minds.
That doesn't address the issue I raised.
I believe there exists a world (AKA "reality") independent of minds. I also believe nearly everyone agrees with me. That doesn't mean we're right, of course, but I'd like you or Wayfarer to give me reasons why I should reject, or doubt, my current belief.
If you re-read what was my initial reply to MU, you'll see that I also believe there exists a world independent of individual minds, and so I too agree with you on this count - even if, as the case is, I simultaneously believe this same world is contingent on the occurrence of mind as a generality.
So I'm not sure how to further reply.
Read the op, and what I said in my last post. Only minds provide a spatial-temporal perspective, and without assuming such a perspective, all these supposed mind independent things, the world, the universe, even "reality" itself, are completely unintelligible.
Quoting javra
I really can't understand what you are saying here javra. Perhaps you could rephrase it?
The question was about elementary particles and genes. These are part of scientific models.
It is well known that the nature of the existence of former, in particular, is rather ambiguous, to say the least. Although I don't want to divert this thread too far in this direction, this is where the Copenhagen interpretation of physics is relevant. This says that physics does not reveal what nature is in itself (or herself, some would say) but as how she appears to our methods of questioning. So these 'elementary particles' are not mind-independent in that sense - which is the implication of the observer problem. They only appear to be particles when subjected to a specific kind of experimental setup. This is part of why there is a tendency towards philosophical idealism in modern physics (e.g. Henry Stapp, John Wheeler, Werner Heisenberg, Bernard D'Espagnat, Shimon Malin, can all be said to advocate for one or another form of philosophical idealism. The latter's book is called Nature Loves to Hide.)
As for genes, and whether these comprise a fundamental explanatory unit, again, the emergence of epigenetics has given rise to an understanding that genes themselves are context-dependent. That is not downplaying the significance of the discovery of genes (or quantum theory, for that matter) but the role they are both assigned by physicalism as being ontologically primary or fundamental.
Quoting Relativist
I don't know how you could come to that conclusion. We know all manner of things about the world. I'm not denying that scientific knowledge is efficacious. What I'm questioning is the metaphysics of materialism, which posits that 'Elementary particles, moments in time, genes, the brain – all these things are assumed to be fundamentally real. By contrast, experience, awareness and consciousness are taken to be secondary' (The Blind Spot). Armstrong's physicalist philosophy would maintain that exact view, would it not? That the mind is 'the product of the brain'? What else could 'materialist theory of mind mean? And I think it can be questioned, without saying that nobody knows anything about the world.
I think I can see the point you're having difficulty with (and please don't take this to be condescending.) Philosophical idealism is nearly always understood as the view that 'the world only exists in the mind'. I think that is how you're reading what I am saying, which is why you believe that for me to acknowledge the reality of objective facts will undermine idealism. But what I'm arguing is that this is a misreprentation of what is true about idealism.
To get a bit technical, it's the difference between Berkeley's idealism, and Kant's. Kant acknowledges the empirical veracity of scientific hypotheses (empirical realism). After all, he was a polymath who devised a theory of nebular formation, which, adapted by LaPlace, is still considered current. But transcendental idealism still maintains that in a fundamental sense, the mind provides the intuitions of time and space, within which all such empirical judgements are made. I know it's a really hard distinction to get. Bryan Magee says 'We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counter-intuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices.'
Quoting javra
I have read about Bernardo Kastrup's idea of 'mind at large'. At first I was sceptical of it but I've come around to it, if it is understood simply as 'some mind'. Not yours or mine, or anyone's in particular but as a genre.
Fair enough. I'll try. First, we all know in our heart of hearts that solipsism is false. Therefore, ours is not the only mind that currently occurs in the world. Given this fact, we then entertain the metaphysical reality/actuality that there can be no world in the absence of minds (in the plural).
Via one convenient though imperfect analogy: We all know that an ocean is not one single drop of water. Given this fact, we then hold the conviction that there can be no ocean in the absence of individual drops of water from which the ocean is constituted.
So the physical world is itself here taken to be determined from the constituency of a plurality of individual minds - without which there can be no physical world. In rough parallel, an ocean is taken to be determined by the constituency of a plurality of individual drops of water - without which there can be no ocean.
Then, just as the given ocean will continue to occur independently of any one individual drop of water from which it is constituted, so too will the physical world continue to occur independently of any one mind from which it is constituted.
Take all individual drops of water away and no ocean remains. Take all individual minds way and no world remains. But adding or removing one drop of water from the ocean does not alter the ocean in any meaningful way. In like enough manner, adding or removing one mind from the physical world does not alter the physical world in any meaningful way.
The ocean is then drop-of-water-independent when it comes to any one individual drop of water from which it is constituted (or even from a relatively large quantity of individual drops of water - say as can be added by a hurricane or else removed by evaporation, etc.) - this even though the same ocean is drop-of-water-dependent in the sense that no ocean can exist in the complete absence of such.
In a roundabout way, the same can then be upheld for any non-solipsistic idealism: the physical world is mind-independent when it comes to any one individual mind (or any relatively large quantity of minds) - this even thought it is mind-dependent in the sense that no physical world can exist in the complete absence of minds.
This explanation via analogy is less then ideal by my appraisal, but it does I think adequately enough illustrate the necessity that in a non-solipsistic idealism (wherein the physical is thereby dependent on the psychical) the physical world will be independent of, say, my mind or your mind ... or any other individual mind or non-global-cohort of such for that matter.
As one possible summation of this, within any non-solipsistic idealism, there will necessarily be an external world that occurs independently of me and my own mind.
The very notion of a perspective entails having a mind. We are sufficiently aware that we can recognize the fact we even have a perspective.
We obviously perceive space and time, so why doubt that this is an aspect of the actual world? The mere fact that we have a perspective does not entail that this perspective is an illusion.
What we can conclude from the assumption that solipsism is false, is that there must be something which separates one mind from another, some sort of medium. But we cannot exclude the possibility that the medium is an illusion, or mind-created, as a sort of deficiency in minds' ability for direct communication with one another.
Quoting javra
This one doesn't make sense to me. What is a "drop of water"? Why can't we say that the ocean is a single drop of water? And to me, "a drop" is an isolated quantity of water, so it makes no sense to talk about a body of water as if it is made of drops. If a number of drops put together makes an amount of water which is more than a drop, so that it cannot be called a drop, the entire amount exists without any drops within it, as a drop of water is an isolated thing. If a number of creeks coming together creates a river, it doesn't make sense to conclude that a river consists of a bunch of creeks.
Quoting javra
Sorry javra, I just cannot understand what you are saying here. This is what I get from it. If there is a complete absence of minds, then there is also the complete absence of a physical world. In that sense there is no mind-independent word. However, if there is so much as one mind (or a multitude of minds), then there must also be a mind-independent.
So how does the existence of a mind (or multitude of minds) necessitate the existence of a mind-independent world? If it is the existence of a mind, (or minds), which necessitates that world, how can it be a mind-independent world?
Quoting javra
I don't deny that there would be something outside my own mind, what I called the "medium" above. But why conceive of this as "a world", or "a universe", or even "reality", as all these refer to mind dependent things, if you want to think of the medium as mind-independent? But, since I believe in the reality of numerous minds, there is nothing to persuade me that the "medium" is not something inside another mind, therefore not mind-independent at all.
Quoting Relativist
I don't think so Relativist. Kant names these as intuitions which are the necessary conditions for the possibility of sensory perception. So from that perspective space and time are prior to perception. Another type of ontology would hold that space and time are logical abstractions, posterior to perceptions. We deduce from our perceptions, the conclusion that there must be something which we conceive of as "space", and something we conceive of as "time". But there is no indication that we actually perceive whatever it is which we call "space", or "time".
Not to dispel the question you've posed, but only to observe that the way in which it is posed the issues are lot more complex than not.
Our perception of time sometimes drastically differs from that time we commonly deem to be objective, with the latter being measured via use of objective/physical tools, by which I mean anything from sundials to clocks. As one example of this, when we are forced into an event we are bored with time will slow down (relative to objective time) and when we find ourselves engaged in an event we are enthralled by time will speed up or fly by (relative to objective time).
So our time perception is not necessarily an adequate representation of the time that occurs in the actual world.
This can then go in any number of different ways - but please note that I am not by this denying the reality of an objective time as previously addressed (which for me is another can of beans altogether (especially since I take objective time to be relativistic)). Nor am I by this then claiming that that aspect of reality we can term objective time is not of itself ultimately dependent on the co-occurrence of a plurality of minds.
And, at minimum, part of the medium you address has to be physicality, aka physical reality - that same physicality of which our brains are made up of and which when damaged disrupts the functioning of our minds. In an Eastern train of thought wherein all but either the atman or the anatman (depending on philosophical perspective) is maya and hence illusion (i.e., "a magic trick"), yes, all aspects of this medium with partitions awareness into discrete parts (e.g., me and you, etc.) can be deemed mind-created illusion - including all of physical reality. But so entertaining goes far deeper, I believe, than claiming physical reality to be on par to something one hallucinates or else can imagine at will or so forth. As individual first-person points of view we are all bound to the physicality that surrounds, and our very lives are dependent on there being a sufficient degree of conformity to it. This even if it is to be considered pure maya (i.e., pure illusion in the sense of a magic trick).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
As I've already acknowledge the analogy was imperfect and less then ideal. Still, a drop is typically understood as that amount of liquid which might remain intact and maybe fall as such from a stick which had been placed into the liquid. Place a stick into the ocean, lift it up, and one will remove drops of water from the ocean. But yes, it was and remains, again, a very rough analogy. Sorry to hear it didn't make any sense to you.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yea, the "how does a plurality of minds necessitate an objective world which is constitutionally determined by them" part is not that easy to tersely express. But importantly, if no solipsism then, necessarily, the world can only be brought about by a multitude of minds - and not by a sole mind. If there are a plurality of minds which constitute the world, then the disappearance/death of any one mind from the world will not entail the disappearance/obliteration of the world itself - for there are yet other minds from which the world remains constituted. So the world occurs in manners not dependent on any one particular mind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
To be clear, are you then saying that if the so-called "medium" of physicality in total - to include my physical body and its brain - is not something that is an aspect of my own mind it would then need to be something the occurs as an aspect of some other individual mind?
As to the initial question, (I take it that) there is an actuality, or set of actualities, which affects all observers equally irrespective of what the observes believe, perceive, imagine, want, interpret, etc. This I then term the objective world (objectivity can well mean impartial, and this set of actualities in being as just described would then be literally impartial in complete manners to all observers which are thereby subjected to experiences, i.e. to all sentient beings as subjects, aka as subjective beings).
Do you deny there being actualities which occur irrespective of what any one individual sentient being intends, believes, and so forth?
I'm guessing at the end of the day we'll end up disagreeing. but I'm still honestly curious to hear your replies so as to better understand your point of view.
The fact that models makes successful predictions demonstrates that we know something about the nature of physical reality, and that's really the basic thing I'm defending.
Quantum mechanics indeed shows that reality is not identical to that which we directly perceive, but this fact is itself a relevant truth about reality. Re: the "observer problem", don't jump to a conclusion consistent with your confirmation bias. No interpretation of QM is verifiably true, but it's a near certainty that reality actually exhibits the predictible law-like behavior that we observe.
Quoting Wayfarer
So you aren't denying that genes exist. You're pointing to the fact that there are other factors that influence growth and development. So once again, genetics does tell us something about life: more objective facts.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sorry I didn't understand, but that's how it sounded to me. Glad we could clarify that you agree scientific knowledge is efficacious- so I assume you agree that we indeed have some knowledge about the world external to minds.
But you're making an error if you think materialism requires these scientific models to be correct depictions of reality. The metaphysics does not depend on these models to correspond to reality.
Quoting Wayfarer
I completely agree with this; it makes perfect sense. My issue has been that these intuitions don't preclude discerning aspects of reality.
So, what does it depend on, then?
Absolutely! The fact that we (i.e..Einstein) developed a theory that transcends the "human perspective" of time is a testimony to our ability to transcend our own perspective, and endeavor to be objective.
Physicalism = the thesis that everything that exists is physical. It is false only if there exists something non-physical. It depends only on this being true.
But you say:
Quoting Relativist
Sure it does. But what about this requires that the fundamental constituents are actually physical? What does 'physical' mean, when the nature of the so-called fundamental particles is ambiguous, as has been discussed? It's entirely plausible that 'physical' is a concept only applicable to composite objects, but not to their fundamental constituents. After all Neils Bohr said 'Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real'. You could substitute 'physical' for 'real' in that sentence and it would still parse correctly.
And as for something non-physical, the wavefunction ? is an ideal candidate:
Quoting The Timeless Wave
Why would we have these intuitions, if they aren't consistent with reality (i.e. true within the scope of our perceptions).
[Quote]Another type of ontology would hold that space and time are logical abstractions, posterior to perceptions. We deduce from our perceptions, the conclusion that there must be something which we conceive of as "space", and something we conceive of as "time". But there is no indication that we actually perceive whatever it is which we call "space", or "time".[/quote]
Why think our abstractions about space and time are false?
Special relativity demonstrates that our perceptions of space and time aren't universally true, but it also explains how it is true within the context in which our sensory perceptions apply.
I acknowledge that our descriptions (and understandings) are grounded in our perspective, but we have the capacity to correct for that.
What one hallucinates, and what one imagines at will, are very different concepts, and ought not be classed together in this context. This is because we need to maintain some kind of division between things created by the mind which are not created consciously by will, and things willfully created. This is necessary to allow for the reality of the mind's subconscious activity in creating things like sense perceptions, images etc.. And when we allow that sense perceptions are creations of the mind, this enables us to properly understand things like dreams and hallucinations. But it also exposes the fact that what we know as "physical reality" is just a creation of the mind.
The fact that our lives are jeopardized by this force (I'll call the medium "a force" in this context) which we know as physical reality does not imply that our lives are dependent on it. Those are two different concepts. Our lives are dependent on that which gives us life, whatever it is which throws us into this situation of jeopardy, but the force which jeopardizes us is not necessarily the same as that which we are dependent on.
Because of this, it is incorrect to say "we are all bound to the physicality that surrounds". The reality of free-will indicates that this boundness is not real. It is an illusion which we have created. The illusion has been created (part of it subconsciously through evolution and instinct, and part of it consciously through education and science), because it assists us in understanding and dealing with "the force" in our actions. The important point to understand here is that this force is power, and as much as power is a force which can appear as if it restricts and binds us, it can also be harnessed and used to enhance one's freedom. But in order to use the force in this way, we need to understand it, and to understand it we represent it in the determinist model which produces the illusion that we are bound by it.
Quoting javra
This is incorrect. You are simply defining "drop" as a quantity, for the purpose of your analogy, when "drop" is really not commonly understood as a quantity. My OED has as the first definition "a small round or pear-shaped portion of liquid that hangs or falls or adheres to a surface". Notice that the shape and activity of the thing, as an individual object called "a drop", are the principal features. The quantity is secondary, and is simply stated in the relative term of "small". "Small" does not indicate any specific quantity.
Quoting javra
You are not getting the important point. The judgement of "no solipsism" may be only the creation of a mind. So we cannot produce the necessity required for your conclusion. "The world" might still just be the creation of a lonely mind, which likes to have other minds to keep it company. Once we accept that the subconscious part of the mind is engaged in creating (as evidenced in dreams and hallucinations), we cannot claim that just because the other minds are not willfully created by my conscious mind, they are not created by the mind in an absolute sense. The other minds might still be created by the subconscious part. The conclusion of "no solipsism" might be just a tactic (evolutionarily produced or something) which is allowing the mind to better deal with the force.
Quoting javra
I mentioned that as a possibility. The issue here is that we do not know, and we cannot exclude anything as impossible until we do know, because that could mislead us.
Quoting javra
This cannot be true, we can almost exclude it as impossible. We know each person to have a distinct perspective, and this necessitates the conclusion that the so-called "set of actualities") does not effect observers equally. The "distinct perspective" necessitates the conclusion of unequal effects. The equality you refer to is a creation of the mind. We create equality to understand each other.
Quoting javra
What you call "actualities" is I believe, what I called "force". The problem with your question is that the force is understood as relative to the agent, so it does not make sense to ask about its existence independent of the agent. It is only a force relative to the thing which wants to move. We can only understand it in its relation to us, because that's the only existence which it has to us. It appears to us as "a force" because of our living tendency to act, but without that tendency to act, it may be nothing at all. So what appears as "the force", the independent reality, may actually be nothing, in the purest sense of the word. That's why I say questions about an independent reality are really incoherent.
It seems uncontroversial to stipulate that the objects of our ordinary experiences are physical. It seems most reasonable to treat the component parts of physical things as also physical, all the way down to whatever is fundamental.
Quoting Wayfarer
A "wave function" is a mathematical abstraction. I see no good reason to think abstractions are ontological. So I infer that a wave function is descriptive of something that exists.
My definition of the physical: the ordinary objects of experience, and everything that is causally connected, through law-like behavior, to these ordinary objects of our experience.
Quantum systems fit this.
I may misunderstand, but it sounds also bit like you're suggesting that we should reject physicalism if physics doesn't have a complete, verifiable description of reality.
How can an external world exist independently of human minds AND be contingent upon human minds?
Being contingent upon entails a dependence, does it not?
OK, thanks for your reply. We disagree in multiple ways. But, since I don't much feel like argument at the moment, I prefer to leave it at that.
Quoting Relativist
Yes "contingent upon" entails "a dependence" but your fist question equivocates what I have been proposing. With the equivocation taking place between the notion of "all elements from a multiplicity of elements of type X" and "one (or some) element(s) from a multiplicity of elements of type X - but not all". As an added example of this:
The presence of a heap of sand will be contingent upon, and hence will depend on, the presence of a multiplicity of sand particles in general - which are structured in a particular way. But it will not of itself be contingent upon the presence of any one particular sand particle, such that the heap of sand will remain present even if individual sand particles are taken away or added to it. No one sand particle on its own produces, or else equates to, the heap of sand. And so the heap of sand will occur independently of (i.e., will occur without being contingent on) any one individual, particular sand particle that partakes of the heap of sand. Take that one sand particle away and the heap of sand remains. The heap of sand can then be said to exist independently of any one individual sand particle from which it might be composed but, simultaneously, will be dependent on the occurrence of a multiplicity of sand particles in general. One could then incrementally replace each and every particular sand particle in the given heap of sand with the heap of sand persisting to occur unaltered throughout - even though it becomes constituted by utterly different sand particles. And the larger the heap of sand is, the less any alteration in its particular sand particles will make any meaningful difference to the identity, or else properties, of the heap of sand itself.
Replace "heap of sand" with "the physical world" and "individual sand particles" with "individual minds". The same relations will hold. This can thereby lead to the logically valid affirmation that, in a non-solipsistic mind-created world, the physical world occurs independently of me and my own mind, even though it will be dependent on the occurrence of a multiplicity of minds in general.
OK, I think I understand. But as I said before:
Quoting Relativist
When I say "independent of minds", I mean that the world at large exists irrespective of the presence of any minds at all. I believe the universe is about 14B years old, and there were almost certainly no minds within it for quite a long time. Can you give me a reason to reject or doubt this belief of mine?
Reasons such as these?:
Quoting javra
Yes, I can provide them, but I don't think reasons will here much help. We are all typically attached to the notions we are habituated to hold, in this case that there was physicality long before there was any type of awareness, ergo physicalism.
My reply to this will be that of panpsychism - this in the sense that awareness pervaded the cosmos long before life evolved into it (i.e., in the sense that the physical is, was, and will remain dependent of the psychical). This conclusion for me, though, is only a deduction from the premise of a non-solipsistic [s]mind[/s] awareness-created world. And I do not claim to have any great insight into how panpsychism works - nor into any metaphysically cogent explanation for how life evolved from non-life (the physicalist explanation that "it must have" doesn't much console me either as far as metaphysical explanations go - I find it just as comforting as the explanation of "God did it").
Quoting javra
No. You expressing your judgement is not a reason for me, even with a vague allusion to some questionable assumption that it seems based on.
Quoting javra
I may agree that we're "habituated" to hold the view that there exists a mind-independent reality.
If we're a consequence of evolutionary tendencies, then we would necessarily have the implicit belief that there exists a world external to ourselves. How we then think about this (e.g. that this external world exists independently of ourselves) could be a cultural habituation. I'm willing to entertain an alternative, if there's a good enough reason.
Quoting javra
You're indicating panpaychism is a logical step beyond the "premise of a non-solipsistic mind awareness-created world." I'm just asking why should entertain that premise.
Quoting javra
If your answer is that this feels right, and/or provides you comfort, I have no objection. I'm not trying to convince you that you're wrong. I'm just seeking my own comfort- I'd like to know if there are good reasons to think I'm deluding myself with what I believe about the world.
There's a strong component of common sense realism in it, buttressed by the polemical and rhetorical skills developed by centuries of philosophical argument.
[quote=Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why this Insight Transforms Physics (p6). ]what we regard as the physical world is “physical” to us precisely in the sense that it acts in opposition to our will and constrains our actions. The aspect of the universe that resists our push and demands muscular effort on our part is what we consider to be “physical”. On the other hand, since sensation and thought don’t require overcoming any physical resistance, we consider them to be outside of material reality.[/quote]
That’s physicalism in a nutshell.
Quoting Relativist
It isn't so easily dismissed. The ontology of the wave function in quantum physics is one of the outstanding problems of philosophy of science. Realists argue that the wave function represents something real in the world, while instrumentalists may view it as merely a predictive tool without deeper ontological significance. Treating it as only an abstraction is one option but it is far from universally accepted. The point is, claiming that everything that exists is physical becomes problematic if we can’t definitively say what kind of existence the wave function has, as in quantum mechanics, the wave function is central to predicting physical phenomena. If we take its predictive power seriously, it’s hard to ignore the question of its ontological status without leaving an unresolved gap in the theory.
Quoting Relativist
As I said before, as a materialist, D M Armstrong believes that science is paradigmatic for philosophy proper. So you can't have your cake and eat it too - if physics indeed suggests that the nature of the physical eludes precise definition, then so much for appealing to science as a model for philosophy!
Quoting Relativist
Perspective is not the same as bias.
Quoting Relativist
I wouldn't put it in personal or pejorative terms, but I do believe that philosophical and/or scientific materialism is an erroneous philosophical view.
Quoting Wayfarer
But there IS this unresolved gap in our physics. We really don't know. Therefore one can't claim it's inconsistent with physicalism.
Besides this, nothing you said is a refutation of my position as to what I consider physical.
Quoting Wayfarer
It sounds like I had it right: you think physicalism should be rejected if physics doesn't have a complete, verifiable description of reality.
Armstrong's model is consistent with what we do know, so it's not falsified. A stipulation that the wave function is non-physical would technically falsify physicalism, but if the wave function behaves in a law-like manner, why make that stipulation? It would still be a coherent metaphysical model, save for using "physical" as a qualifier. That's why your objection seems forced: "let's label the wave function as non-physical (or just say it may not be physical) so we can dismiss every physicalist metaphysical theory".
Quoting Wayfarer
My position is that Armstrong's theory is not necessarily true, but it's superior to other theories in terms of explanatory scope, parsimony, and ad hoc-ness.
The fact that it's consistent with what we know about physics is a point in its favor, while the fact that there are gaps in our understanding of physics is irrelevant. It's irrelevant because a theory can only be expected to account for what we know: that's the nature of abductive reasoning. Abduction entails comparing explanatory hypotheses - and what needs to be explained are the agreed facts. Unknowns do not constitute facts that need explaining.
That physicalism should be rejected, if the thesis is that 'everything is ultimately physical' while what is physical can't be defined.
Quoting Relativist
If it hasn't been falsified by quantum physics, it's not falsifiable. So again, it appeals to science as a model of philosophical authority, but only when it suits.
I posted this comment some days ago, do you think it has any bearing on the argument?
Do you see the point of this criticism of philosophical naturalism? Because, if you don't, then I think I'll call it a day.
Hmm. Physicalism can be defined as entailing that everything which does or can occur can only be physical in its nature. (In keeping with part of @Wayfarer's latest post:) There's a question which Darwin's Bulldog, the Agnostic who first coined the term "agnostic", Thomas Huxley, once placed which is to date yet unanswered: what is "the physical" (or else that "matter" from which one obtains materialism) defined as, exactly **. Yet, in overlooking this very awkward lack of coherent reasoning in affirming the stance of physicalism:
Mind in part consists of thoughts. How are thoughts physical? One can of course state that the thoughts of a corporeal sentient being would not be in the absence of the respective corporeal body. But this does not entail that the given thoughts - say of a unicorn or of Harry Potter - are of themselves physical. I can get that that objective rock over there is physical, but how is my concept of a unicorn (which I can mold, make appear, and make disappear at will, and which might not be significantly similar to your concept of a unicorn) of itself physical?
Or, by extension, we perceive physical realities, but then - given the entailment of physicalism - how is a bona fide hallucination of itself physical? Say, for example, someone hallucinates seeing a burning bush; is the burning bush which this person sees physical?
But if not everything that does or can occur is physical, then physicalism so defined can only be false.
Then there's the definition of physicalism where everything supervenes on the physical. Which carries its own multiple philosophical problems. But I'll leave it at that for now. All this just intending food for thought. I have little interest in convincing you to reject or doubt your beliefs - and currently far more interest in properly justifying my own.
Quoting Relativist
a) If non-solipsistic idealism is true, this then entails that everything is ultimately dependent on psyche in one way or another. My own stance is that of an objective idealism wherein there occurs an objective world of physicality as effete mind that itself evolves - which, ultimately, would not be but for the occurrence of disparate psyches.
b) If we are to trust the information which the empirical sciences present us with regarding the objective world - which, in short, is an extension of our trusting our own empirical senses - then there indeed was a time when the cosmos existed in the absence of all corporeal, biological life.
If both a) non-solipsistic idealism and b) the occurrence of a world in the absence of all life are taken to be true premises, then it becomes entailed that the occurrence of psyche is not dependent on the occurrence of biological life. This while the occurrence of multiple psyches - else of psyche in general - is yet requisite for any physical world to occur (this as per (a)).
This entailment then can be labeled panpsychism (all-psyche-ism) - which, I'll argue, is a modernized rebranding of animism ("anima" being Latin and "psyche" being Greek for the same thing: in a word, "soul" - with the Latin "animus" and the Greek "nous" being used to address "mind"), from which one can obtain concepts such as that of the anima mundi, among others (hence, an anima mundi that occurred long before biological life came into being)
Quoting Relativist
:grin: I wasn't being fully literal, but, all the same, at the end of the day yes: we all seek some sort of comfort in that which we search for and end up holding onto. A different topic for a different thread, but all reasoning can be said to serve this underlying purpose. If we search for truths for example, we are discomforted by not finding them, or else by finding reason to belief that what we stringently endorse as true is in fact not true (at which time we might welcome the pain of the catharsis which grants us greater awareness via better understanding). To harshly paraphrase David Hume: reason-derived conclusions are always enslaved to the intentioning volition's drive of obtaining emotive satisfaction. In this sense, reason is then always a slave to passion. Which, in a way, can work its way back to the motif of this thread: all that occurs is ultimately dependent upon psyche. The very reasoning which psyches utilize as tools for the purpose of obtaining what is wanted included, or so I will uphold.
---------
** In fairness, T. Huxley, the staunch agnostic that he was, held the same complain against materialism that he held regarding an adequate definition of "spirit" from which one obtains the notion of "spirituality". Here's a quote from him to this effect:
I was going to suggest to @Relativist whether he'd ever encountered 'constructive empiricism', associated with Bas Van Fraasen.
[quote=AI Overview]Constructive empiricism is a philosophical view that science aims to produce theories that are empirically adequate, rather than true. It was developed by the 20th-century Canadian philosopher Bas van Fraassen and is presented most systematically in his 1980 work The Scientific Image.
Constructive empiricism differs from scientific realism, which holds that science aims to provide a literally true story of the world. Constructive empiricists believe that science aims for truth about observable aspects of the world, but not unobservable aspects. They also believe that accepting a scientific theory involves only the belief that it is empirically adequate. [/quote]
I think this is a framework which is not antagonistic to science while leaving the question of the ultimate nature of reality an open one.
Quoting javra
Thoughts are widely considered to be neural events or processes. That they do not seem to be such to the thinker is no guarantee that they are not such. There is no guarantee that physicalism is false. Nor is there a guarantee that it is true. The real issue as I see it is what does it matter? Why should we mind whether physicalism is true or false?
If you’re not, no explanation will move you.”
—Federico Fellini
Hmm, because of its implications.
There a bunch of other reasons, but as one significant gripe I have with it (here placing its inconsistencies aside), if physicalism is true, then this will easily lead to - if it does not directly entail - moral nihilism. And it certainly does away with any possibility of an objective good.
... For example: Given phisicalism, everything sentient then necessarily ends in nonbeing wherein all suffering permanently ends upon their own corporeal death (we're atheists so this for us is a good thing to uphold - lest we suffer the encroachment of that diabolical theism crowd with their concepts of an anima mundi and such). Ergo, enduring the suffering of life with as much grace as possible when things get rough is stupid - and there is no ultimate good to aspire toward, well, other than one's personal death when life gets a bit too much. The abused, the tortured, etc? They too obtain this same salvation from all suffering via their own physical death to this world ... so when one places a bullet through a child's head under the cover of war one in essence is blessing the child with eternal peace and an absolute lack of suffering. Is so murdering a child right or wrong? Within systems of physicalism, there is no one right answer - either due to moral nihilism or to moral relativism.
... Kind of thing. And I say this as one who sometimes longs for the days when I used to believe that my corporeal death to this world meant my absolute nonbeing.
There's concrete shitty stuff happening in the world right now that bothers me, at times galore. And so the issues addressed tend to matter to me, in large enough part for this very reason regarding a proper grounding for ethics. ("God does everything" also not being anywhere near any such proper grounding.)
All this written a bit tongue in cheek, but I hope it might still get the general point across.
BTW, if it doesn't matter to you (as you sort of insinuate), then why bother replying to my post to begin with?
Quoting javra
Physicalism being false does not entail non-solipsistic idealism being true. It just means idealism is logically possible. I already acknowledge it is logically possible.
Regarding your claim, you seem to be reifying an action. Engaging in thought is an activity of the brain- a behavior. It often results in the establishment of a new belief-a disposition. Having a belief makes us apt to behave certain way.
Quoting javra
Our perception of our physical surroundings establishes a complex belief (a disposition) about those surroundings, which will influence how we behave within those surroundings. An hallucination is a non-veridical belief.
Quoting javra
Sure, but physicalism can be false and idealism still be false. You've provided no reason to think it's true. I'm somewhat agnostic as to a metaphysical theory. I tentatively embrace physicalism because it explains the most and assumes the least. I could switch my allegiance if there were an alternative that bested it. You haven't given one. You would have to defeat my belief in an external, minds-independent world.
That's a bit confrontational to me. And, as I previously expressed, I'm not interested in so doing.
As to your other replies, they sidestep the questions asked without providing answers. E.g. are non-veridical beliefs of themselves physical? BTW, to the person hallucinating X, the physical reality of X will be a veridical belief ... this up until the time reasoning might intervene (it doesn't always). The movie "A Beautiful Mind" makes a good point of that, for one example.
But I'll leave it at that.
It's not confrontational. The term "defeater" is just standard epistemology. A defeater=a reason to give up a belief. It's shorthand for what I've previously asked for.
I hope you understand why it's relevant. I absolutely believe there is an external world that exists independently of minds. I can't possibly accept idealism unless I drop this belief, and that would require a defeater (not just the mere possibility it is false).
Quoting javra
I was defending physicalism, so I didn't see the need to state that it entails the claim that beliefs are physical. Indeed, establishing a belief would entail a physical change in the brain. More specifically, it is a change that will affect behavior.
[Quote]BTW, to the person hallucinating X, the physical reality of X will be a veridical belief ... this up until the time reasoning might intervene (it doesn't always). [/quote]That's not what it means. A verdical belief is one that is actually true, i.e. it corresponds to an aspect of reality. If a person believes X, then he necessarily believes X is true.
If the protagonist in the movie had hallucinations that he believed were false because his psychiatrists convinced him they were false, then the belief in their falsehood was an undercutting defeater of the (seemingly true) hallucination.
[I]...the most powerful argument in favour of scientific realism is the no-miracles argument, according to which the success of science would be miraculous if scientific theories were not at least approximately true descriptions of the world. While the underdetermination argument is often cited as giving grounds for scepticism about theories of unobservable entities, arguably the most powerful arguments against scientific realism are based on the history of radical theory change in science....
...Structural realism was introduced into current philosophy of science by John Worrall in 1989 as a way to break the impasse that results from taking both arguments seriously, and have “the best of both worlds” in the debate about scientific realism.
...
According to Worrall, we should not accept standard scientific realism, which asserts that the nature of the unobservable objects that cause the phenomena we observe is correctly described by our best theories. However, neither should we be antirealists about science. Rather, we should adopt structural realism and epistemically commit ourselves to the mathematical or structural content of our theories. Since there is (says Worrall) retention of structure across theory change, structural realism both (a) avoids the force of the pessimistic meta-induction (by not committing us to belief in the theory’s description of the furniture of the world) and (b) does not make the success of science (especially the novel predictions of mature physical theories) seem miraculous (by committing us to the claim that the theory’s structure, over and above its empirical content, describes the world).[/i]
I believe I've stayed faithful to this approach in all my replies to you.
Are you then in search for infallible proof. I've none to give ... regarding anything whatsoever.
Quoting Relativist
Yes, I know what it means.
Quoting Relativist
This is not always the case in real life applications, most especially when it comes to beliefs regarding future facts. If John believes his team will win the game then he might bet accordingly while nevertheless having a great deal of doubt regarding this same belief. Here, a person believes X without necessarily believing X is true. To claim otherwise is to try to force-feed all real life instantiations of belief into a somewhat limited understanding of the term's denotation.
Quoting Relativist
The movie was based on real events. And he wasn't convinced by psychiatrists but by inconsistencies in the hallucinatory people he was observing and interacting with (namely, they were not ageing over time as they ought to have).
The point made seems to however not have been grasped: Until inconsistencies appear, no one has reason to believe that what they observe as an aspect of the physical world is in fact a hallucination - say, for example, a cat that one sees running across one's path. Which however does not entail the necessity that the last stray cat one saw was therefore not a hallucination (... hence being a non-veridical experience and belief regarding what is real). The only means we hold for discerning what is and is not veridical is justifications, which tend to not hold when inconsistencies are present.
The question again was "are hallucinations physical?". So if a person hallucinates a stray cat running along their path, is the hallucinated cat physical?
As to perceptions being this and that in the brain, this will include all veridical perceptions just as much as it will include all non-veridical perceptions. So claiming that the hallucinated cat was caused by the brain does not resolve whether or not the hallucinated cat was physical as a hallucination per se.
I don't know if it does that. The term 'anti-realist' often gives the impression of someone who denies the reality of science or regards scientific findings as somehow illusory or insubstantial. This isn’t what van Fraassen advocates at all. Instead, he’s deeply committed to the empirical success and practical validity of science but questions whether we should interpret scientific theories as giving us a literal account of an objective, mind-independent reality. At issue is the nature of the fundamental constituents of reality and whether they are physical, as physicalism claims.
Another basic point in this context is the distinction between reality, as the aggregate or sum total of observable phenomena and the objects of scientific analysis, and being, as a description of the existence as experienced by human beings. This is where I think physicalism over-values scientific method, for which physicalism may be an effective heuristic while being descriptively accurate within its scope. But many of the questions of philosophy may not be amendable to scientific analysis. Unless you're a positivist, that doesn't make them meaningless.
Quoting Relativist
which also implies distance from physicalism.
Intuitions are not formed to be consistent with reality. According to evolutionary theory they are shaped by some sort of survival principles.
Quoting Relativist
There is much reason to think that our conceptions of space and time are false, spatial expansion, dark matter, dark energy, quantum weirdness. Anywhere that we run into difficulties understanding what is happening, when applying these abstractions, this is an indication that they are false.
Quoting Relativist
Well sure, these conceptions are true in the context of our sensory perceptions, that's how we use them, verify them, etc.. But if our sensory perceptions are not providing truth, that's a problem.
Quoting Relativist
How would you propose that we could do that? How do we verify that our sensory perceptions are giving us truth?
No.
Quoting javra
Then he doesn't have a categorical belief that his team will win. Rather, he believes it probable that his team will win.
I'm not big on that distinction. For starters, as a falliblist, upon analysis all my beliefs are graded (probabilistic or else comparable) - this even though I will typically address them in the categorical "yes/no" format. Do I believe the sun will rise again tomorrow? My answer is "Yes," this barring the odd improbable occurrence, such as of a large meteorite hitting the Earth before then in a manner that makes the Earth shatter, or some such (this such that I will hold this one graded belief with a probability assignment - say of 99.999% or thereabouts). All this then makes the distinction between categorical beliefs and graded beliefs artificial, to my own ears at least.
All the same, the initial point you made was:
Quoting Relativist
My point was that this is not always the necessary case. Graded beliefs, when so dichotomized from categorical, being beliefs all the same.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The "intuitions" in question are relevant to survival. If there is a world external to ourself, it would be necessary to have a functionally accurate view of that world. If there is not such an external world, what would explain this false intuition?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I was referring to our primitive (pre-science) abstractions of space and time. As I said, they are valid and true within the context of our direct perceptions.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, it's not. Our sensory perceptions aren't oracles that magically know truths beyond what we could possibly perceive. Further, the error has not prevented science from learning more precise truths- such as a more precise understanding of space and time.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
See my prior comment.
Sure, but then you have some loose epistemic probability in mind, and a more precise statement of your belief would identify this. So it is not strictly true that the guy believes his team will win. Rather, he believes it more likely than not that they will win, or that it is a near certainty, or some other probabilistic qualification.
If "Joe believes it more likely than not that the Columbus Spinsters will win on Saturday" then "Joe believes it is true that it is more likely than not that the Columbus Spinsters will win on Saturday". This is the "equivalence theory" in theory of truth.
I will note here my conviction that time has an inextricably subjective element, which is a specific example of the more general observation in the OP, that perspective is an irreducible element of what we perceive as external reality. There’s an interesting Aeon essay on this point, about Henri Bergson and Albert Einstein’s meeting and debate about the nature of time, n Paris, 1922:
[quote=Evan Thompson] Bergson insisted that duration proper cannot be measured. To measure something – such as volume, length, pressure, weight, speed or temperature – we need to stipulate the unit of measurement in terms of a standard. For example, the standard metre was once stipulated to be the length of a particular 100-centimetre-long platinum bar kept in Paris. It is now defined by an atomic clock measuring the length of a path of light travelling in a vacuum over an extremely short time interval. In both cases, the standard metre is a measurement of length that itself has a length. The standard unit exemplifies the property it measures.
In Time and Free Will, Bergson argued that this procedure would not work for duration. For duration to be measured by a clock, the clock itself must have duration. It must exemplify the property it is supposed to measure. To examine the measurements involved in clock time, Bergson considers an oscillating pendulum, moving back and forth. At each moment, the pendulum occupies a different position in space, like the points on a line or the moving hands on a clockface. In the case of a clock, the current state – the current time – is what we call ‘now’. Each successive ‘now’ of the clock contains nothing of the past because each moment, each unit, is separate and distinct. But this is not how we experience time. Instead, we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession. Clocks don’t measure time; we do. This is why Bergson believed that clock time presupposes lived time.[/quote]
Bergson’s critique aligns with Kant in suggesting that time is not merely a succession of isolated moments that can be objectively measured, but a continuous and subjective flow that we actively synthesize through consciousness. This synthesis is what lets us experience time as duration, not just as sequential units. It is our awareness of the duration between points in time that is itself time. There is no time outside that awareness.
By this account, Bergson is challenging Einstein’s emphasis on clock-based measurement, pointing to the irreducibility of subjective experience in understanding time’s nature. Kant’s notion of time as an a priori intuition parallels this because he saw time as essential to organizing our experiences into coherent sequences. It’s not a feature of objects themselves but rather of our way of perceiving them—a precondition that shapes experience.
This highlights how understanding “what exists” inevitably involves interpreting it through something that only a perspective can provide. In both Kant and Bergson’s views, the subjective experience of time is foundational, suggesting that any scientific or philosophical statement about existence must, knowingly or not, rely on this element of lived experience.
Using the same reasoning, then you'd claim that "it is not strictly true that I believe the sun will rise again tomorrow", this because I believe it more likely than not that it will, or that it is a near certainty, or some other probabilistic qualification. Being a fallibilist, then, I do not hold any "strictly true" beliefs. Yet, despite all this, the fact remains that I do believe the sun will once again rise tomorrow, as can be evidenced by my behaviors and preparations in relation to this belief - despite my not holding this belief to be certainty, but to instead hold a probabilistic qualification, such that it is, in technical jargon, more likely then not.
I suppose it all depends on how one qualifies belief. Still, in ordinary life, when a guy is asked, "do you believe your team will win?" or, as a different example, "do you believe she'll say 'yes'?", the guy might well honestly answer with a categorical, "Hell yea!" (rather than with a, "well, it depends") ... yet without being foolish enough to presume that this honestly held belief is in a full blown correlation to a not yet actualized future reality. But I get it, this to you would not be a "strictly true belief".
Quoting Wayfarer
:up:
It's a false dichotomy that a scientific model is either literally true, or it is merely empirically valid. Structural realism is a middle ground.
Quoting Wayfarer
Reality = everything that exists; observable reality is a subset. Empirical science is limited to the observable; theoretical physics stretches this limit by extrapolating. If there is more to existence than what science can possibly discover or extrapolate, how then can it be discovered? If there exists a God of religion, then perhaps by praying or dying, but I personally see no reason to believe such things exist.
I just don't understand why you think metaphysical physicalism overvalues the scientific method. The scientific method is an epistemological method, and it seems to me to be the best epistemological method possible for developing knowledge about the physical world. If true, that's an objective fact irrespective of whether physicalism is true. A physicalist metaphysics does no more than provide the framework that scientism lacks. What sort of facts do you suppose this omits? What alternative methodology can do better?
Quoting Wayfarer
No, it doesn't. Physicalism is consistent with, but not identical to, scientific realism.
Regarding Armstrong's theory: he explicitly stated that he believed spacetime comprises the totality of existence, that it is governed by laws of nature, and that physics is concerned with discovering what these are. As far as I can tell, he doesn't make assertions about specific laws of physics that he regards as true and real. He accommodates QM, but I don't think he explictly claims it is real. His reference to spacetime suggests he may have been a realistic about general relativity, but given his deference to physics, I can't imagine that he'd deny more exotic theories (eg a "Many Worlds" cosmological theory, that entails multiple space-times) if they became accepted physics.
Philosophical analysis requires more precision than ordinary language often delivers.
Quoting Wayfarer
Special relativity shows that time is relative to a reference frame. That a sort of subjectivity, but you seem to be suggesting it's mind-dependent. OK, but I see no reason to think so.
Quoting Wayfarer
To understand anything will necessarily entail relating it to our human perspectives. This doesn't preclude expanding our perspectives when it is demonstrably deficient.
Quoting Wayfarer
I gave you a definition.
Quoting Wayfarer
I explained that it is consistent with QM. Metaphysical theories generally are not falsiable in a scientific sense. All we can do is examine them for coherence, explanatory scope, and parsimony. It is falsified if it is incoherent or cannot possibly account for some clear fact of the world. It ought to be rejected if an alternate coherent theory provides better explanations and/or is more parsimonious.
Quoting Wayfarer
I see the point, but it depends on assumptions I find questionable:
"consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place." - what's the basis for this assertion?
"Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role."
Consciousness IS part of the world at large. If consciousness is immaterial, then the world includes this immaterial sort of thing.
"consciousness is presupposed in all science and knowledge"- consciousness is the vessel of knowledge, and understanding entails relating elements of knowledge.
You may recall Descartes’ famous meditation, cogito ergo sum. This takes the reality of the thinking subject as apodictic, i.e. cannot plausibly be denied. One of Husserl’s books is Cartesian Meditations, and I think the influence is clear.
Quoting Relativist
Which is naturalism or physicalism in a nutshell. I do understand that.
Quoting Relativist
I think we’ve gone as far as we can go. Thank you for your comments and especially for your evenness of tone.
Whatever it is that kills people would be the explanation here. It doesn't have to be "the world". We call whatever it is, that seems to be not a part of oneself, "the independent world", and we have a conception of what "the world" means, including the intuitions of space and time. If the conception of "the world" is wrong, then it is not the world which kills us but something else. That "a world external to ourselves" kills us would be false. The intuitions are false.
Quoting Relativist
What does "more precise truths" mean? Either a proposition is true or it is false, the idea that one truth is more true than another doesn't make any sense.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is the issue with Zeno's arrow paradox, which supposedly demonstrates that motion is impossible. The problem was analyzed extensively by Aristotle, as sophistry which needed to be disproven. The analysis, along with other examples, resulted in the conclusion that "becoming" is distinctly incompatible with "being", and this in part leads to the requirement of substance dualism. The other required premise is that they both are real.
Any measurement of time requires a beginning point and an end point. Determination of these points requires the assumption that there is a describable "state-of-being" at such points. The "state-of-being" is describable as how things are, at that point in time, so it is necessarily assumed that no time is passing at that point when there is a state-of-being. Therefore the "point in time" has no temporal existence or reality, it is removed from temporal existence which is existence while time is passing. If we allow that time is actually passing within a point in time, then the "state-of-being" is lost, because change will be occurring within the point in time. Consequently, precision in measurements of time will be forfeited accordingly. But in order that we have any capacity to measure time at all, it is necessary that the "state-of-being" is to some extent real.
This is what Einstein's special relativity does, it allows variance, or vagueness within the point in time, by assuming that simultaneity is relative, consequently any "state-of being" is relative. By accepting this principle we accept that it is impossible to make precise temporal measurements, because there is necessarily variance in the state-of-being at any point in time due to the relativity of simultaneity, making any proposed state-of-being perspective dependent. This means that there is no real, independent state-of-being, consequently no independent "world". The "state-of-being" is still a valid principle, making temporal measurement possible, but it is perspective (frame) dependent. When the different perspective-dependent states-of-being are compared they are reconciled by the assumption that the only real existence is activity (becoming), one motion relative to another with no absolute rest. The activity (becoming) which is occurring gets a different description dependent on the perspective.
There are ways around this problem, but they are all very complex, and conventions tend to follow Ockham's principle. As Aristotle and Plato both demonstrated, reality consists of both becoming and being, This produces the premises required to make substance dualism the logical conclusion. But understanding the nature of time, and why it imposes on us the requirement of dualism, takes more than a casual effort.
Survival also depends on what sustains us (food, water, keeping warm...), and enables us to procreate.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm referring to beliefs that are approximations and/or limited in scope. This is why I referred to "functionally accurate": sufficiently close to the truth to enable survival. It's not necessary to understand general relativity to an understanding of gravity sufficient to avoid falling off a cliff. One could have a magical view of the nature of medicinal herbs that are truly efficacious, and what matters for survival is just their efficacy.
Then I would reword it to:[i]
consciousness is precisely the reason why [s]there was a [/s]we believe there is a world there for us in the first place.
This is starting to overly deviate from the thread’s theme, but since you here invoke what philosophical analysis ought to consist of with a broad stroke … in a manner that could insinuate my own deviation from this ideal:
Sure, good philosophical analysis should strive for more precision than ordinary language provides, but to what effect?: When you say “a strictly true belief”, via the correspondence theory of truth, what you are technically specifying is “some given, some X, that strictly conforms to the reality of what a belief is” and which, thereby, is a genuine belief.
If you meant something other by the term “true” then please let me know.
So, then, ought a “strictly true belief” conform to a) the reality of a human concocted understanding of what beliefs are or b) the reality of belief as it occurs in the real world, fully including as it is expressed in ordinary language?
Seems to me that option (a) is a lousy way of doing philosophy, for it here can easily become thoroughly biased to certain human’s convictions rather than being as impartial (i.e., as objective) as possible - whereas philosophy ought to properly address in as impartial a manner as possible that which the real world consists of and, hence, in this particular case, that which was given as option (b).
In sum, what actuality/reality ought a “strictly true” belief conform to? To that actuality of certain humans’ abstractions regarding what beliefs are which exclude certain real-world applications (which can thereby be in keeping the No True Scotsman fallacy) or, otherwise, to that actuality of its various occurrences in the real world which encompasses all its applications, fully including the term's use in ordinary language? This, again, as regards proper philosophical analysis.
The approach I myself aspire toward is the latter rather then the former.
IMO, the best thing to do is to transform one's informal statements of belief into something precise, so the formalism can be applied.
Out of curiosity, how do you deem any of these generalities you mention to touch upon the philosophical analysis of what beliefs are and are not - this in manners that don't make use of the No True Scotsman fallacy?
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Here, in parallel to your anticipated answer, my own philosophical appraisal of what belief in general is as presented in more precise terms:
- To believe X = via conscious, unconscious, or both means simultaneously, to impart or else endow the attribute of reality to X; i.e., to trust that X is actual and thereby real (where trust is itself understood as confidence in or dependence on)
- A belief = an instantiation of the process of believing just specified.
To my current comprehension, this definition of belief encompasses all possible instantiation of what can be referenced by the term "belief" without overgeneralizing. For one example, in the believe-that / believe-in divide this denotation will apply to all cases: e.g., To believe that extraterrestrials have visited Earth is to endow reality to (and thereby uphold the reality of) extraterrestrials having visited Earth, whereas to not believe that extraterrestrials have visited Earth is to not endow reality to this very same claim. In contrast, to believe in, for example, John's ability to pass the test is to endow reality to the future even of John's having passed the test via his efforts. It accounts for tacit beliefs just as much as it does for explicit beliefs. And so forth.
Hence, if (any degree of) reality is imparted to X by a psyche A, then X is believed (in due measure to the degree of reality one endows it with) by A. If no (degree of) reality is imparted to X, then X is not believed by A.
As such, beliefs need not be complete or absolute but can well be partial.
Does you precise definition of belief in general fair any better?
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@Wayfarer, my bad for this diversion from the thread's theme, but I don't have the time to create a new thread with this subject matter in manners where I could significantly participate.
However, for the sake of this thread's topic, I'll further tweak the above so as to emphasize that all beliefs - and hence anything that we can in any way take to be real - will be dependent on the occurrence of psyche. The physicality of our brains included, for one example.
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Edit: For improved clarity: by "degree of reality" I in the above strictly meant a shorthand form of "degree of likelihood and, hence, of probability that something is actual and thereby real". I'll leave this correction here rather than apply it to the body of this post.
"Belief has often been represented as a state available to introspection with a certain relation to a present image or complex of images. “I believe that P” means that I have an attitude of acceptance toward P."
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines it as:
the attitude we have, roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true.
Which seems equivalent (setting aside the fact that the 2nd definition lacks a definition of "true"). You're more detailed definition is subtly different because you conclude:
Quoting javra
I think your point is that you can believe X, but not be fully committed to it or completely certain of it. This is the way the word "belief" tends to be used in common conversation. We commonly hear people expressing certainty as "I don't just believe it, I know it", implying that "belief" means something less than certain, and "knowing" = absolute certainty.
But why force this vague concept into a philosophical analysis? It seems to me you can analyze your belief (colloquial sense of the word) and rephrase it to use the more precise definition of belief and still correctly convey the attitude you have toward the proposition. That's what I did when I recast a person's (less than certain) belief in the future outcome of a game.
Am I wrong? Do you think there's something about belief (colloquial sense) that isn't translatable in this way?
By "inconsistencies" I take it you mean that physicalism is not consistent with our "normal' intuitions about the nature of mind and consciousness and the subject?
Anyway you've left those aside so are you saying that because (many or most?) people need to believe that moral laws are given by a higher (necessarily non-physical) power, physicalism in denying the existence of such a law-giver will lead to moral nihilism?
I don't think the idea of an objective moral good depends on a law-giver. I believe there are objective facts about human flourishing and suffering and social needs and social harmony which support the most basic and significant moral injunctions (usually proscriptions).
Quoting javra
What about the idea of living a good life. improving the lives of others. Do you believe that it's all pointless if there is no afterlife? It may be for you but I'm sure there are many people who don't think this way. Thinking this way is after all only a particular attitude or disposition not a reflection of objective truth.
There a rather long enough post in which I explained, to which you did not directly reply. What does philosophical analysis address? The real world or manufactured bubbles?
Quoting Relativist
Um, no, not "absolute - hence infallible - certainty". But it does mean that the belief can be justified without inconsistencies, thereby evidencing both its truth and that the knower can thereby confirm the truth of the belief.
Hell, we disagree galore on epistemology then. As I've previously stated, I'm a fallibilist. And since it's now evident that you are not, I now take it that you will uphold the possibility if not actuality of infallibility.
We differ significantly in this regard. I'll leave it at that.
No. I mean that phisicalism has internal inconsistencies of logical reasoning - mostly having to do with awareness.
The last unaddressed example I made in this thread was:
Quoting javra
Quoting Janus
No. Reread what I've stated more attentively before replying and you might see how this assumption is unwarranted. All the same, thank you for putting it in the form of a question.
Quoting Janus
Yea, ditto.
Quoting Janus
And on what is this notion of what a "good life" is itself grounded, philosophically speaking within systems of physicalism? I'm not here addressing dispositions. I'm addressing logical reasoning.
The hallucination is a neural process and hence physical. Of course it is not a physical (real) cat. I see no inconsistency there but rather a conflation between the hallucination and what is hallucinated.
Quoting javra
I read it attentively the first time and I can't see what in a non-physicalist model the objective support for morality could be other than a lawgiver or else some kind of karmic threat of having to pay for transgressions. And again, I don't see how any of that could work absent the assumption of an afterlife.
Quoting javra
It would be grounded on human flourishing and social harmony. Of course there will be inconsistency if you presume that those things are not grounded in our physical embodiedness. Absent that assumption I see no inconsistency. In other words on the physicalists assumptions there are no inconsistencies even though there may be on yours.
The philosophical analysis I was referring to was epistemology, so not directly related to "the real world or manufactured bubbles" - which is metaphysics.
Quoting javra
You're demonstrating that the colloquial use of the term "belief" leads to quibbling about what each individual means. All the more reason to use the formalisms.
Quoting javra
Do we? It sounded like you were just defending the use of a definition of belief that differs from that of standard epistemology.. I am a fallibilist: empirical beliefs can't be proven with certainty. That is a separate issue from the definition of belief that is standard in epistemology.
You sound pissed off, like when you (falsely) accused me of making a confrontational statement. I've simply tried to address things you've brought up, as honestly as I can. If my views piss you off, there's no point continuing.
How is a distinction between the perceived physical cat and the perceived non-physical cat to be made when both are equally "neural process and hence physical" as perceptions?
Quoting Janus
There is here a warrantless conflation between lawgiver and afterlife. See, for example, Buddhism. I said "no" to your assumption of there being a deity (a law-giver) which ordains an objective good.
Quoting Janus
And, within physicalism, why are these to be deemed "good"?
The hallucinated cat is not a cat at all. The perceived cat is a cat.
Quoting javra
I'm not conflating lawgiver and afterlife. I'm asking how physicalism could undermine the idea of there being consequences for immoral actions. I'm wondering how non-physicalism could support morality in any way that physicalism cannot, since that seemed to be your contention. You haven't attempted to address that question.
Quoting javra
Because they are generally important to people, and because a society with moral principles that promoted general disharmony and suffering could not last long. It would necessarily be despotic.
Epistemology is not directly related to the real world? I disagree.
Quoting Relativist
I really dislike the idea of "absolute/infallible certainty" being something that anyone can hold. You affirmed that:
Quoting Relativist
Which to me is not a position that a fallibililist can hold.
Quoting Relativist
No, not pissed off, just in a rush. I appreciate your replies, but I've learned that there are certain impasses do discussions/debates. The discussion of what fallibilism is and entails can present itself as one such. To put it differently, unequivocal fallibilism devoid of exceptions is modernized terminology for Ancient Skepticism - which is contrary to Cartesian Skepticism. A long story that doesn't seen to belong on this thread. But, in this vein, I can well affirm that, "I fallibly know that in infallibly know nothing." If that makes sense to you, great.
On what grounds if both percepts are physical in the same way via the functioning of the brain. (To better drive the point home, I'll specify that the observer of the cat is not surrounded by others - and that he observes a cat which he has no reason to presume is a hallucination even though it is.)
Quoting Janus
Via examples, the Platonic / Neoplatonic notion of the Good can only be a non-physical ideal - one that is nevertheless the ultimate reality. But please note: no law-giver created or else decreed the Good in either system of understanding. And such objective good requires an non-physicalist metaphysics. Wtih the occurrence of such an objective good then also is entailed an objective morality.
Quoting Janus
I acknowledge the sentiment, but none of this is a rational grounding for what is good. Slavery was once generally important to people, for example. Would that make slavery morally good? And on what grounds would an Orwellian 1984 not last long? Besides, why is lasting long a good to be aspired toward within physicalism?