Existence and Reality
Existence and reality are distinct realms. Existence, being the larger realm, houses reality, the smaller realm. The two realms overlap in terms of the raw physics of existence. Reality is the transformation of existence space, characterized by computable causation space with its interactions, measurements and results, into meaning space, characterized by the perishability/survivability axis of living organisms.
One of the essentials of meaning is consequence. It separates reality from existence as expressed by the difference between a change that can transformation, amplify, diminish or destroy and a change that merely terminates in an indifferent result. The absence or presence of life determines whether causation has consequences forward directed, or merely results indifferent.
On a planet sans living organisms there's a boulder atop a hill. The planet has atmosphere, so a strong wind pushes against the boulder and sets it into motion rolling down the hill. Eventually, the boulder reaches the bottom of the hill and finally comes to rest on level ground. The resting place of the boulder is a result. Imagine now another example of the same hill and gust of strong wind with the boulder rolling down the hill and smashing together with a moving car when they intersect. It's all the same logic and causation making the boulder roll down the hill. The big however is fact that driver of the car gets killed by the impact. That's not a result. That's a consequence with forward direction in memory and behavior of affected sentients. Cops show up; likewise ambulance, eventually next of kin and finally the hearse. The driver's young children won't be seeing father tonight, or any other night.
In general, I'm saying reality is an interpretation of physics by living organisms. The label for the
interpretation is reality. Physical things exist. Living organisms and their experiences vis-á-vis physics are real. Reality is therefore a scalable meaning space numerator defined in terms of its denominator, survivability/perishability.
Throughput in the reality of sentient-mediated space is change that impacts identity as transformation, amplification, loss or destruction. This type of change in reference to sentient identity persistence coalesces as meaning.
One of the essentials of meaning is consequence. It separates reality from existence as expressed by the difference between a change that can transformation, amplify, diminish or destroy and a change that merely terminates in an indifferent result. The absence or presence of life determines whether causation has consequences forward directed, or merely results indifferent.
On a planet sans living organisms there's a boulder atop a hill. The planet has atmosphere, so a strong wind pushes against the boulder and sets it into motion rolling down the hill. Eventually, the boulder reaches the bottom of the hill and finally comes to rest on level ground. The resting place of the boulder is a result. Imagine now another example of the same hill and gust of strong wind with the boulder rolling down the hill and smashing together with a moving car when they intersect. It's all the same logic and causation making the boulder roll down the hill. The big however is fact that driver of the car gets killed by the impact. That's not a result. That's a consequence with forward direction in memory and behavior of affected sentients. Cops show up; likewise ambulance, eventually next of kin and finally the hearse. The driver's young children won't be seeing father tonight, or any other night.
In general, I'm saying reality is an interpretation of physics by living organisms. The label for the
interpretation is reality. Physical things exist. Living organisms and their experiences vis-á-vis physics are real. Reality is therefore a scalable meaning space numerator defined in terms of its denominator, survivability/perishability.
Throughput in the reality of sentient-mediated space is change that impacts identity as transformation, amplification, loss or destruction. This type of change in reference to sentient identity persistence coalesces as meaning.
Comments (56)
This seems to me ontologically backwards – existence (encompassed presence (fluctuating)) presupposes reality (un-encompassed absence (vacuum)), insofar as (re: Spinoza ... Democritus-Epicurus ... Nagarjuna) the latter corresponds to necessity (~R = contradiction) and the former to contingency (~E(x) =/= contradiction). :chin:
Why can’t they be the same thing ? Non-existence of reality is impossible otherwise we would not be here to ask questions or even exist. The bigger question of course is what is existence? And why is it that rather than non-existence or nothing.
Quoting ucarr
These are interesting positions to take. Do you intend the various statements to be truth-apt? If so, how would one go about demonstrating the truth -- or falsity -- of any one of them? Or are they only meant to be internally consistent, like a puzzle that fits together?
Quoting kindred
They share common ground given that all of reality is housed within existence. This tells us that a part of existence is overlapped by sentience-mediated reality. Humans, being within the reality space, experience existence as an interpretation of physics structured by self-interest. In a world without life, a boulder rolling downhill is part of a causal chain that obeys ontological laws, but there's reversibility and there's no memory, so, no meaning. In a world with life the rolling boulder immediately means danger.
Quoting J
Yes. Since humans normally call instantiated things real, and they normally think of real things as being existent, then it matters whether or not real things and existent things are distinct. In the smaller space of sentience-based reality, existent things are not only dynamical, they’re also meaningful. In contrast, dynamical things apart from living organisms are not meaningful because they have no irreversible commitment to going forward in time under constraints that compel them to posit their presence in the face of a constant threat of destruction.
OK. My question, then, was: How would we figure out if what you (or anyone) says about real things and existent things is true?
You say, "Existence is larger than reality." Philosopher Q replies, "No, reality is larger than existence." How should the debate proceed from there? Or if you prefer to put it in Popperian terms: What could falsify either of the competing statements?
I read your statement as follows: “This seems to me ontologically backwards – existence presupposes reality, in so far as reality corresponds to necessity and existence corresponds to contingency.”
As I understand your statement, you’re not addressing my premise, the soundness of the chain of reasoning to the conclusion, nor the veracity of my conclusion. You’re only addressing my use of two words in reference to their orientation. In consequence of this, I respond with the following.
Let E=necessity, and R=contingency. We’re not presently challenging the findings of Spinoza, Democritus, Epicurus and Nagarjuna. All we’re doing is swapping names and attaching them to the same formal structure that guided their conclusions.
With this name swap effected, does my OP present a coherent chain of reasoning you can track from premise (Reality is a socially-embedded interpretation of physics.) to conclusion (Meaning is sentience dependent because its value exists in reference to the live or die fork.)?
The reason for the sign swap stems from common language usage, “What exists for humans is normally called real.” The disclosure and witnessing of things real is sentience-dependent, whereas mind-independent physics is presumably parallel to sentience. Sentience being absent from that realm, it can only name that realm’s ontology in terms of a presumed common ground: either existence or reality. If the two realms are distinct, yet share a common ground, and, moreover, sentience is evaluated emergent from existing physics, then it’s structurally sound to conclude existence houses the emergence of sentient-based reality. Thus far, we only have two words that have their meaning established by definition. We can label a two-tiered structure with any two words we like. If, however, the two tiers can be shown to be distinct beyond hierarchal position by reasoning from what we observe in the natural world, then it’s incumbent upon our understanding and the epistemic record to elaborate the additional difference.
It matters whether or not real things and existent things are distinct and, as you point out, they are distinct according to the difference between necessity and contingence. With emergence, necessity and contingence are reductively constrained in their hierarchal difference because properties of emergent systems can act in independence from their ground. This is surely the case with sentience which interprets physics with its denominator of survival that establishes the unit in reference to which physics has its value: meaning. Physics, like the numerator of a fraction, scales in reference to perishable sentience from quantum foam to cosmos.
In the smaller space of sentience-based reality, existent things are not only dynamical, they’re also meaningful. In contrast, dynamical things apart from living organisms are not meaningful because they have no irreversible commitment to going forward in time under constraints that compel them to position their presence in the face of a constant threat of destruction. Living organisms have stakes positioning their survival amidst unavoidable risks. Meaning, therefore, lives inside of a continuity of self-referential persistent identity through transformation across time. Meaning is the remembrance of things past by a vulnerable identity transforming in time. That’s history. Mind-independent reality has dynamical chains of causation and results. It’s devoid of personal history and its meaning going forward.
No.
Please read the part of this post concerning the boulder rolling down a hill. It attempts to show the big difference between a world with life, memory and stakes, and one without.
Worlds with/without life
Are you willing to share an account of why you can't track a coherent chain of reasoning from premise to conclusion?
Does a system with a sub-system nested within itself make sense to you in terms of a possible structure? This is one of the most important claims I'm putting forward: reality (by my usage) is a sub-system emergent from existence (by my usage).
Read it again: I'm disputing your ontological premise, not merely "swapped terms", in reference to Spinoza et al.
:up:
If you look into the subject in philosophy, it is a major topic in metaphysics and ontology. 'Existence and reality' are often paired with two more terms, 'being and truth', as subjects for elucidation. The relationships between all of these terms are very slippery, because, as one introduction noted, they are often used interchangeably, even by the same person, and the way they are used varies considerably from one philosopher to another.
Oxford Uniiversity runs an external course called Reality, Being and Existence: an Introduction to Metaphysics. (I once considered enrolling, although never did.) If you cast your eye down the course outline, you'll see it covers virtually the whole of philosophy.
So - cheers for at least putting up the idea for discussion. But it needs some reference points, other than just your internal reasoning and a single 'argument from analogy' for such a large topic. (This is why academic philosophers generally pick much more specialised subject matter for their speciality, as this kind of grand metaphysical project is a very difficult subject.)
What you say gives me some very helpful context: massive volume and complexity attaches to my attempt to distinguish existence and reality structurally. No doubt you're right about specialization being the best way to proceed through the thicket of conflated concepts and practices.
I wonder if you have any thoughts on the claim reality, an emanation from sentient presence indexes physics to the survivability of living organisms, and therefore, learning about the world is really learning about yourself within the world?
Reality is an un-encompassed system of built-in inter-relations. It has no outside, no inside, and no meta-physical curvature towards thermo-dynamic equilibrium. Given this structure of reality, it's possible for reality to host a nested sub-system. It is also possible that this sub-system can share common ground (existence) with reality which, within the sub-system, acts as an ontological ground for an emergent property of that ground: sentient-indexed personal meaning-bearing reality.
Show me where there's a break in this chain of reasoning rendering it unsound.
Why do you think system ? sub-system ? sub-system_emergent property that shares ontology with system and sub-system is not a chain of reasoning you can examine for coherence?
OK I'll try and give you a brief account of my thoughts on the matter.
They all begin with a simple observation. When I first joined these forums, about 15 years ago, the first question I asked was about the reality of numbers and mathematical objects. I had had this minor epiiphany: the ancients believed that numbers were 'higher' than ordinary objects, because they didn't go into or out of existence, and because they're not composed of parts. This is very traditional philosophy, but it's largely forgotten in today's culture.
I began to explore the idea that numbers, mathematical rules, logical laws, and the like, are real, in that they're not arbitrary or made up. Arithmetic is constrained by rules and necessary truths.
I've learned since that this is a form of what is called 'logical realism', although the way I interpreted it was more in line with Christian Platonism. Early in the research, I found a description of Augustine on Intelligible Objects which made sense to me.
So - those kinds of 'intellgible objects' - numbers, logical laws, and the like - are real. But they're not existent in the sense that phenomenal objects are. They're not sense-objects, but can only be grasped by reason. Which is why we, as 'rational beings' are able to grasp them, in a way that non-rational animals cannot.
(I've also learned that this is highly unfashionable and even politically incorrect. Naturalism prefers to see us as part of nature - the attempt to differentiate ourselves from other animals is seen as a throwback to Christian paternalism.)
Anyway, the upshot is that 'what is real' far exceeds 'what exists', if 'what exists' is defined in terms of phenomenal existents, i.e. things we could encounter by sense or instruments. 'What is real' includes the vast domains of mathematics, for example, only a minute fraction of which is understandable, and only a small fraction of that is instantiated in phenomenal reality.
I've learned that this kind of distinction between reality and existence is not unique to me, although I do put my own particular interpretation on it. I did once try a thread on Reality, Being and Existence, but the advice I got was to read Heidegger's metaphysics. In any case, all of this is firmly in the ballpark of metaphysics, and it's a very difficult subject.
An excellent response, Wayfarer. And there are really just three responses possible: 1) Do the hard work and study thinkers who have effectively thought through these matters. 2) Make shit up, reinvent the wheel, making every mistake along the way. 3) My response: don’t concern yourself with recondite matters, since they are close to impossible to resolve unless you have the time to read and a fecund and prodigious intellect. Since I have neither, I’m happy to leave the metaphysics to the experts and the plonkers.
I don't think this will stand up. (I'm assuming that "existence" means "everything that exists" and "reality" means "everything that is real". )
What does it mean to say that reality is smaller than existence? Are you saying that there are some things that exist, but are not real? That applies to most things that we say are unreal. A forged painting is still a painting, even if it is not a real Rembrandt; a model car plainly exists, but is not a car. And so on. That mean that you are saying that unreal things exist. Which is fine, except that it means that they are real, as well.
Then there are fictional objects like unicorns and the starship Enterprise. They do not exist, but yet are real characters in stories and exist in that sense.
I think it is a mistake to think of reality as distinct sub-domain of distinct objects. The relationship between them is more complicated than that.
Quoting ucarr
This combines the perfectly respectable philosophical issue with of finding meaning in the meaningless world of physics with your headline topic. But it suggests that existence and reality are coterminous and related to each other - not that they are separate domains of objects.
But you beg the question whether there are different kinds of existence. It is far from obvious that the only things that exist are those things recognized by physics. On the contrary, physics could not exist without mathematics, so surely we cannot say that mathematical objects don't exist. I would stand up for colours and sounds as well.
Quoting Wayfarer
I wouldn't disagree with you. But I do pause at the idea that the domains of mathematics are vast in any sense comparable to the domain of the phenomenal or the physical. These things exist as separate categories. The core meaning of space only applies to the physical. It can be applied in a metaphorical sense to other categories of existence, but not in the same sense. These things are not comparable in that way.
Quoting Ludwig V
Of course that domain is not spatially vast, as number is not extended in space. But the domain of mathematics is vast in a different way, as it is something which has been explored and expanded by generations of mathematicians since the ancient of days, and seems to be inexhaustible.
[quote=Cambridge Companion to Augustine, The Divine Nature]By focusing on objects perceptible by the mind alone and by observing their nature, in particular their eternity and immutability, Augustine came to see that certain things that clearly exist, namely, the objects of the intelligible realm, cannot be corporeal. When he cries out in the midst of his vision of the divine nature, “Is truth nothing just because it is not diffused through space, either ?nite or in?nite?” (FVP 13–14), he is acknowledging that it is the discovery of intelligible truth that ?rst frees him to comprehend incorporeal reality.[/quote]
(Although here I would prefer to say 'certain things that are clearly real'. Hence my point about the distinction between existents and reality.)
No need to be defensive. I was very clear to put in option 1.
Quoting Tom Storm
Thanks for giving my OP some of your time and attention. Such an exploration always needs to be referred to the guidelines of your three-item list.
Quoting Wayfarer
One of the difficulties of metaphysics in general is the fact that examinations of ontology require the examiner to internally model ontology, and it’s fundamentals. The problem is a problem of perspective because the examiner must try to access mind-independent reality within the presence of his own sentience, which is pervasively representational rather than fundamentally ontological.
When we look at what can exist fundamentally and what does actually instantiate fundamentally, we’re looking through the lens of our imagination, which is a complex form of representation.
Only sentients, probably only humans, talk about things being real. On a world without sentience there’s no talk of things being real. On that world events without stakes are physics. Talk of reality requires sentience and stakes; i e., risk and possible death . This establishes a clear and unmistakable difference between ontological physics and reality.
The mistake is to mark physics with the label “reality.” It’s true that existence and its physics is a much larger category than “reality” as I’m defining it. Yes, reality is a sub-system of existence, and yes, existence is necessary whereas sentience-based reality is contingent upon existence. Existence is the ground from which sentience-based reality emerges.
My partition of existence and reality moves in the easier direction of arguing that representation and imagination create a socially embedded consensus reality, which is radiant in the presence of sentience, and therefore a small subset of what exists in the universe apart from sentient beings.
:up:
I can't grok your post. Unpack it for me ... or show where the objection in my initial post goes wrong.
:up:
Quoting Ludwig V
Irreversibility drives vulnerability which drives adaptation depth. This trio drives existential depth.
This is the heart of the reason why existence and reality are distinct.
Your quoted comments are all rendered through the lens of your internal-model-making mind. Representation allows you to internalize parts of the world within your brain and its thoughts and images. As a human you're good at internal-model-making because you're vulnerable and physical forces might destroy you. That's human reality emergent from physics. Take away living organisms and vulnerability-based reality collapses.
Quoting Ludwig V
I agree with this structural description.
Quoting Ludwig V
Consider the ontological, existential and epistemic status of math. I say math is one of the fundamental ontological laws of the universe with universe defined as system. Since existence and reality share the same ontology, math applies to both. Therefore, the structures of both existence and sentient-based reality are constrained by what math language narrates.
As for the different kinds of existence, your use of the word "existence" makes it clear that when I use the word "existence," I mean all of the types of things that exist. Existence houses the total ontology. Sentient-based reality, nested within existence, houses a sub-set of ontology experienced; i e., irreversible selection going forward, intentions and, most importantly, meaning indexed to life/death. Mind-independent existence is a larger category; much of what exists is unknown to sentient experience. Sentient-based reality is therefore smaller. Only sentients can experience physics, and that experience is always referenced to sentient perishability, and that, coupled with irreversible commitments selected going forward into a time-limited future makes sentience-mediated reality meaning-bearing, whereas the existence of physics is not meaning-bearing.
My simple structure is system (existence) - sub-system (sentient-based reality). The sub-system is nested within the system. This means that both categories share the same ontology. However, sentient-based reality, which is existence experienced, doesn't intersect with much of existence beyond the earth, so it's a smaller category.
As I understand your first post, you're arguing that reality is necessary, so negation of reality is a contradiction whereas existence, being contingent (upon reality), can be negated without contradiction.
My thesis has no argument with this logic-based hierarchy that makes reality a bigger category than existence.
I'm arguing what exists without the presence of sentience is bigger than what exists in the presence of sentience, a rare emergent phenomenon. Giving the necessary category the name of existence and the contingent category the name of reality registers in my understanding as something doable. Existence is instantiated ontology unexperienced; reality is instantiated ontology experienced. This swap seems to flow naturally because on earth, in human societies, reality is based on consensus about what is experienced, not on speculation about mind-independent instantiated ontology.
Agreed, however, as epistemology (re: unknown > known) rather than as ontology (which 'knowing qua knowing' only presupposes).
I agree with you. That's what I was trying to say - with the conclusion, which seems obvious to me, that it follows that it doesn't have a clear meaning to say that one domain is bigger than another.
Quoting Wayfarer
There's a complication - but a necessary one. There are different kinds or categories of existence. (one could put the same point in another way and say that there are different kinds of object, rather than different kinds of existence. But I think that's the same point from a different perspective. The most commonly identified are - physical, mental, and abstract (cf. Popper). I would posit many more, but I'm not sure that is relevant right now - and it may just be a question of notation.
Quoting ucarr
Your problem here is that the consensus reality recognizes many things, especially physical things, as real and mind-independent even when they are not in the presence of sentience (perceived). If we can recognize things as existing and real when we perceive them, we can acknowledge them as existing independently of us and therefore as existing and real when they are not perceived. Dinosaurs, etc.
Quoting ucarr
The problem here is that the same things are real when seen in one way, but unreal when seen in a different way. Your system seems to oscillate between seeing existence and reality as consisting of different objects and seeing them as the same objects seen from different perspectives. A forged painting is not a real Rembrandt, but it is a real painting.
Quoting ucarr
Only sentients talk about things existing. So on a world withing sentients, there's not talk of things existing. To put it another way, it is true of many things that they are real and exist whether or not they are talked about.
Quoting ucarr
That doesn't mean that they are false.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting ucarr
Are you really saying that not everything that exists in reality also exists in existence, i.e. that some things exist in reality, but do not exist in existence? That looks like a self-contradiction to me.
Quoting ucarr
If sentients can experience physics, does that not make physics part of sentience-mediated reality? If physics is part of sentience-mediate reality, does that not make it meaningful? Perhaps you should be looking to find the meaning in physics, rather than meekly accepting its self-presentation as meaningless.
Quoting Ludwig V
The focal point here shows that what's not present in mind independent existence is meaning based upon memory of an irreversible past and an unstoppable progression forward towards death. This structure creates consequences that have meaning. For example, a man with heart disease becomes shipwrecked on a deserted island. His life preserving medicine went down with the ship. That's a consequence. It means he's probably going to die. Take the man out of the situation. An ship docked unmanned sinks in a storm. It was full of heart medicine. The destruction of the heart medicine is a result, not a consequence. It's part of a causal chain, it has no meaning, that is, until humans get involved.
Quoting Ludwig V
Whenever you think about an existing thing, try thinking about it within mind independent reality with no living organisms present. With this setup, you must pretend you're not looking at this lifeless world through the lens of your internal-model-building mind. Doing that, you remember there's never any sentient being looking at raw ontology from different perspectives. Doing that is native to sentients. In a mind independent world there are no perspectives.
Quoting Ludwig V
No, what you're saying now is what your mind is projecting onto that mind independent world. You have to imagine being in that world without your mind, or any other mind. Real, exist, good, bad don't have any presence outside of a mind.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Ludwig V
I'm not saying they're false. I'm saying they're part of a reality attached to how your mind (and my mind) represent the world via internal-model-building.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Ludwig V
I revised the above quote after you read it. Here's the revised statement:
Existence houses the total ontology. Sentient-based reality, nested within existence, houses a sub-set of ontology experienced; i e., irreversible selection going forward, intentions and, most importantly, meaning indexed to life/death. Mind-independent existence is a larger category; much of what exists is unknown to sentient experience. Sentient-based reality is therefore smaller. Only sentients can experience physics, and that experience is always referenced to sentient perishability, and that, coupled with irreversible commitments selected going forward into a time-limited future makes sentience-mediated reality meaning-bearing, whereas the existence of physics is not meaning-bearing.
Quoting Ludwig V
I've been saying from the start physics is part of sentience-mediated reality. The main thrust of my thesis involves me saying, "Sentience makes physics meaningful."
Agreed.
OK, I think I understand what you're saying. Let me paraphrase. There is the vast universe, which has been disclosed by scientific instruments, which is practically unthinkable in terms of size (who among us can really conceptualise thousands of light-years?) We, as sentient beings, are a small sub-set of that vast reality. It is for us that 'risk and possible death' are realities. For the vast mass of existence, there are no such 'stakes', as you put it. So that is what exists, whereas what is real, is what is real 'for us', the reality of sentient awareness to whom things matter. Hence:
Quoting ucarr
I will observe that this analysis is basically realist in attitude. You are comparing sentient consciousness to the vast expanse of apparently-insentient matter and energy that comprises most of the visible Universe. As people say, we are 'mere blips' against this vast background, the allegorical flaring of a match in the dead of night. Which is how science sees it.
Quoting ucarr
But this is just what I will call into question. First, this comparison, between the 'vast universe' and the minute phenomenon of sentient life, is made as if from a point of view outside both of them. Whereas we can never really see ourselves 'from the outside', so to speak. We're part of the picture.
Your expression 'fundamentally ontological' is important here. It is an attempt to see, to penetrate, what really exists, independently of a perspective, to see what exists as it really is, were there no observer to see it. Hence the distinction you make between 'persuasively representational' and 'fundamentally ontological', the latter being what exists independently of representation.
I think this distinction is erroneous, that we cannot see the Universe as if from outside any perspective or as if there were no sentient beings in it. The comparison you're making between existence and reality also demands a perspective - and perspective is something that only an observer can bring to the picture. We can't step outside appearance in the way you are proposing. This is the characteristic error of modernity. We are and must be part of the picture, we can't attain a perspective of ultimate objectivity or separateness.
//ps - also note that the word 'ontology' is derived from the Greek verb 'to be', and has a specific connotation on that account. Nowadays the word is used to denote the components of an information system or some other classificatory scheme, meaning 'the kinds of things that comprise that system'. But in classical use, ontology was specific to the understanding of the nature of being, which is different to the investigation of an inventory of existing things.//
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree with all of this. As you say, we sentients can't step outside of our internal-model-making minds. When I talk as if I can, I'm pretending that I can, knowing it can't. Even so, it makes sense to me to imagine on a lifeless planet, there's no good or bad, happy or sad, etc. Perishable beings ascribe values to physics. On a lifeless planet, if a boulder rolls down a hill and smashes a smaller boulder to pieces, that result is neither good or bad. If I'm standing near that small boulder and the larger one atop the hill starts rolling towards me, because I can die, I feel the approaching larger boulder to be a bad thing. Since life appears to be a rare occurrence off of earth, the category of physics without meaning is much larger than our socially embedded consensus reality.
This is what I mean when I say learning about the world is really learning about me. What do the things of this world mean to my life?
Size isn't everything :rofl:
The non sequitur here is probably making it impossible to understand what you're talking about.
"sentient-based reality" doesn't represent anything anyone recognises, I suggest.
By naming non sequitur you reference a break in a chain of reasoning. According to my understanding, it's possible for a system to host a sub-system within itself. Example: An automobile is a system. It houses an electrical system as one of its sub-systems.
You say sentient-based reality isn't recognized by anyone. Recognition is not a necessary condition for existence. Example: Einstein's Theory of Relativity. In 1905, when Einstein introduced the theory in a paper, it was not recognized because it was new thinking that required examination and evaluation before understanding. After emergence of understanding, and with circulation of the paper, familiarity and recognition of the theory's tenets began to emerge. The process was gradual over a substantial period of time.
Sentient-based reality as a sub-system can't be characterized as a non sequitur to system until it's examined, understood and evaluated as a non sequitur to system.
Sentient-based reality is perhaps an unfamiliar label, but it's applied herein to a structure of neuroscience well known: internal modeling of the world within the mind.
Sentient-based reality refers to the representation of the world within the mind in the context of observing, learning and understanding. You, like me, know things about the world through the medium of your mind and its representations of the world.
Elaborate a description of the universe and all it's known to feature, and then think about the world on earth, which is most of what humans know through their minds, and show where the break is located disconnecting universe as system from the collective mindset and reality of humanity as sub-system.
I have only two mild disagreements with this.
I agree entirely with the proposition that we cannot see the world from outside any perspective. I would put it more strongly and say that the very idea of seeing without any perspective is meaningless. But I don't see that we cannot see the world as if there were no sentient beings in it. We can make reasonable adjustments based on our ability to distinguish facts from values and what we know of what the world was like before the first sentient life appeared. The status of mathematics in such a scenario is a not clear to me. On the other hand, it is true that a philosophical (or even a scientific) understanding does need to take into account our involvement. (I realize that's a bit muddled - sorry).
Quoting ucarr
I think I understand what you are getting at. But I can't discern whether you are saying that the things that we experience as meaningful in the way you describe are the same as, or different from, the things that exist independently of such meaning. The snow falls, and exists. I experience the snow falling and feel cold and miserable. Is the first snow (existence) the same stuff as the snow I experience?(meaningful, therefore real). I think it is, but sometimes you seem to be saying it isn't.
Quoting ucarr
I'm not clear whether you are saying that my mind has any access to what exists, as distinct from what is real. I want to be able say that, given that my car exists, it is also real, and may be a good or bad car. It seems to me to be obvious that the car that figures in all those statements is the same car. But I can't see whether you agree or disagree with that.
Quoting ucarr
That's right. Presumably, you are saying that fact is represented in my internal model. I don't see how any model could ever represent that.
Quoting ucarr
Thank you so much for that clarification. Now I understand better what's going on. The label "sentient-based reality" seems harmless enough to me, though I would prefer "lived world/reality" or "phenomenal world/reality. But it does seem to me that it does not mean the same as "reality" in the philosophical use of the term (though I doubt that use of it is really coherent).
Good! My point is, it is of course true that we can see the Universe as if there were no beings in it, and also that we know that h.sapiens, our species, has an evolutionary history of around 100k years. So I'm on board with the naturalist account of the matter.
But the status of the 'as if' is what is at issue. I maintain that scientific naturalism wants to 'absolutize' it, as if it enables us to see the universe as it truly would be, without an observer. Then it points to that as having ontological primacy and claims that humans are a product of that. Which is also what the OP is saying. We do this effortlessly and easily, because it's an intrinsic part of the worldview we're born into. And that is why it has become a blind spot. (Because even to see the universe as if there were no observers in it, doesn’t see it as it really would be with no observer.)
Also, regarding the status of mathematics: perhaps you could say it is used to track variance and invariance - what changes and what stays the same in the flux of experience.
Quoting Ludwig V
The snow we experience is (presumably) the same snow that might fall on a planet without life.
Quoting Ludwig V
I think you mind has access to mind-independent things that exist, such as your car. It's also real, as distinguished from merely extant, as it would be on a lifeless planet. Your presence alongside of the car gives it meaning. You can drive it, or sell it, or die in it. All of these meanings in your mind and in your life confer meaning force onto the car.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Ludwig V
Correct. It's your internal model of the car in memory that gives it a variable meaning. The car a year ago had a slightly different meaning than it does now, especially if something important recently happened in the car. Imagine that last week you rushed to your friend's house being alerted to him collapsing into a diabetic coma because of an emergency signaling system that was set up. You get him to the hospital and his life is saved. It's the same car, but it doesn't feel like it. Your memory tracks a radical meaning change from before and after the emergency.
Well, that's clearly a hopeless project. Like putting a blindfold on someone and then asking them to describe the landscape. It's the word "truly" that does it - presenting a doubt as a possibility and then ruling it out.
Quoting Wayfarer
We have evidence which, admittedly, does not tell us everything, but does tell us something and is open to criticism. If that's not enough, then what you say amounts to refusing to play the game without offering another one.
Quoting Wayfarer
"Ontological primacy" is a bit of a mystery to me. I would only claim, what I think you agree with, that the historical story is that our planet was once without life and now is. I freely admit that our knowledge of the world depends absolutely on our existence. But I don't think that's a particularly startling claim and it is not incompatible with the historical account. What else is left to say?
Quoting ucarr
Yes. The only thing that is different is that there are no human beings to think of it in different ways. Which is a difference in the context the snow falls, not a difference in the snow.
Quoting ucarr
"Real", for you, means meaningful, which I assume means meaningful to people in general. I can, more or less, distinguish between what the car is qua mind-independent object. But I don't see a radical difference between thinking of it as a crucial part of my way of life, as a financial drain, as a pollution of the atmosphere, as a badge of my social and cultural standing and thinking of it as a mind-independent object. It's just one of the many ways I think about the car. So I'm puzzled about why you want to distinguish between that perspective and all the others. What's so special about it?
Quoting ucarr
One of the ways of identifying what it is for the car to be a mind-independent object is that the mind-independence is the same what other different perspectives I might have of it. So I think of car differently before and after. But it's the same car. Whatever perspective I may apply to it, its mind-independence does not change - and, paradoxically, that is how I think about it.
Quoting Ludwig V
Now you have asked the most important question that can be directed toward my central claim: no-meaning physics versus meaning-bearing physics. Physics in the presence of sentience acquires meaning in reference to the perishability of the sentients. Meaning, expressed generally, pools within the relationship between the vulnerable sentient and his ability to adapt to the forces of physics and the potentially lethal forces of those self-same physics. The life/death binary fills the reality space propagated by sentient presence amidst physics.
Because you're sentient and thus know yourself via internal self-modeling, and you know the prosperity/harm binary personally, you introduce valuation into the world of physics amidst sentients. As a sentient who knows himself and values the continuation of that self, and must self-bind to commitments that cannot be reversed without loss, your life is infinitely valuable, and all of physics has its value in reference to your life which sets the controlling unit of value: life.
Life establishes value because memory is essential to life. Through memory, you can track value changes in your life. You know which selections will better your life versus worsen you life. The mind-independent world has no perishability indexed memory, and it has no valuation of good or bad attached to phenomena. In a galaxy without life, a supernova happens, but meaning in reference to memory, adaptation and continuing vitality doesn't exist. In a galaxy like ours, which is life bearing, a supernova means grand-scale catastrophe.
What you label "reality" is what I would label a "world view". We each have a unique world view - different understandings of physics, including gaps in knowledge, misunderstandings, and differences in personal experience. Do you acknowledge these same differences with your (unique) use of the term, "reality"?
Quoting Relativist
I think world view and my use of reality are similar. The important difference is the amount of emphasis placed upon objectivity in the normal use of reality and also in my use of reality. As you say, a world view is personal whereas reality usually means a consensus-based belief in objective existence independent from personal perspective.
Things get interesting and become debatable when humans start discussing what's meaningful in life. This question motivates the arts: what's it like to experience: birth, graduation, love, marriage, family, growing old, adjacency to death?
My claim posits a structure that supports this question and its normal answers. Life is a denominator that establishes the unit of meaning: life. Phenomena are the numerators that scale in meaning value in relation to life. Large numerators include: birth, graduation, love, marriage, family, graduation, growing old, adjacency to death.
What is fundamental or basic. That from which phenomena arise. Thought to be physical in the physicalist worldview.
OK. I understand roughly how those terms work in ordinary contexts. One complication is that identifying what is fundamental or basic (the two are not quite the same, imo) depends on the context. The foundations of a building are not the same sort of thing as the foundations of a school or college. But I have never really understood what they are supposed to mean in the context of philosophy. For example, while it seems reasonable to say that the physical is, in some sense, the foundation of human existence, if is also reasonable to say that human beings are the foundation of what we mean by the physical. But, surely, that's not really a disagreement - it's just a rather bad pun on different meanings of "fundamental".
Quoting Wayfarer
That's one way of putting one aspect of mathematics, but I would have thought that it was more like applied mathematics than pure mathematics. Unless you mean something like that the a priori is our beacon or paradigm of stability in all the flux of experience, to the point of limiting, permanently, what we can experience(?)
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't recall that the Scholastics were particularly hot on factoring in the observer to their theories. But perhaps I'm just wrong.
But let's go back to the issue -
Quoting Wayfarer
But surely, all @ucarr is saying is that the "lived world" of human beings includes meaning and purpose. By implication, he may well believe that they are the foundation of those things. But I can't see that he is committed to saying that we are the product of existence (defined as meaningless) - though I would agree that it is not unlikely that he believes it. Perhaps he will read this and tell us.
But surely, whether and in what sense one is or isn't 'a physical being', is of the utmost import, isn't it? Setting aside religious convictions, it is a philosophical question of the first order.
Quoting Ludwig V
But the ‘participatory ontology’ of Thomism served that role. See e.g. this reference. This was also the subject of the earlier thread, Idealism in Context
Yes, I suppose to. But my first instinct is to ask myself why it is so important? What are the consequences of one view or the other? On one side, we have the howling desert of meaninglessness and loss of ethics (and indeed of any sense of importance)
Quoting Wayfarer
I'll look at the article. As for Idealism in Context, I did notice it, but was distracted by other things. I read your OP. You won't want to go through all that again, but I read the OP, and just for fun, here are some comments.
Quoting Wayfarer
He is indeed a brilliant writer. Though I think sometimes he buys his clarity at the cost of distorting the truth. He is also a past master of altering the meaning of words without telling his readers that he is doing so. What he does to "inert" seems positively egregious to me. But I may be being unfair to him.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. I can't imagine how he ever got away with such a massive begging of the question. He announces it as if it were obvious to everyone. Yet he is, later on, forced to recognize that he should have said "esse est percipi aut percipere", because it turns out that we cannot perceive our own minds or the minds of others or even God. His emendation doesn't rescue his objection to inferring to hidden entities, since he has to acknowledge that we know of the existence of other minds by "their effects", which is precisely an inference to hidden entities.
Quoting Wayfarer
The harder he tries to explain what it is that he is denying without lapsing into the nonsense that he is accused of, the less clear it is what he is denying. But this is a common problem with philosophical attempts to deny the existence of this and that. It requires a good deal of delicate juggling. Wittgenstein's private language argument suffers from the same problem - though he handles it better than Berkeley handles his problem.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. It's a wonderful irony. Nothing is lost in philosophy. Everything is just waiting for another turn in the sunlight of philosophical discourse.
Quoting Wayfarer
The odd thing is that logical positivism is as near to an idealism as makes little difference. The combination with rise in scientific realism seems very odd. Remember that logical positivism was an attempt to make the world safe for quantum physics and relativity. (I think, by the way, that the whole issue also calls into question any kind of pure idealism, because the reality revealed in the experiments contradicted what earlier theories could recognize as possible.)
I think the rise of realism is more like a rise in faith in science and is explained by the sweeping changes introduced in the late 19th century, culminating in the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. See my first comment above.
You said it.
The only reason I pointed to Idealism in Context, was in response to your statement:
Quoting Ludwig V
I'm trying to show that in a very real sense, they were doing exactly that.
The page on scholastic philosophy I pointed to quoted Thomas Aquinas, to wit:
So — the argument in Idealism in Context is that Aquinas represents a kind of 'participatory realism' - a sense of the union of the knower with the known, which is found scattered throughout the Perennial Philosophies (and not only Christian). The pre-moderns, therefore, had a sense of relatedness to the cosmic order - they were participants in it, not simply the accidental byproducts of an undirected physical process.
Then, the argument goes, the 'Scientific Revolution' introduces the idea of an impersonal, mind-independent Universe - where the separateness of knower and known, self and other, mind and world, is axiomatic. And that is more than just a philosophical argument - it is also a mode of existing.
This is what Berkeley is instinctively reacting against, by arguing that what we imagine we know of a 'mind-independent world' really amounts to Ideas that we acquire by the senses.
Anyway - as I'm now active on the new platform, I'm probably not going to be responding further here. Thanks for your comments and hopefully speak later.
Understood. I'm sure we will.
Quoting Ludwig V
The physics of existence is temporally anterior to mind, therefore it's also existentially anterior to mind.
I believe mind and its meaning are emergent from brain which, in turn, is a product of upwardly evolving complexity underwritten by evolution. Within the reality of sentient presence, mind comes into its own and shines forth its causal power over physics. Selection, irreversibility, self-binding commitments, metabolism versus entropy, possibility of loss that can't be repaired and ultimately foreknowledge of death make the decisions of humans transformative and modally impactful. None of these identity-establishing things are present in existence of physics without sentience.
Because mind authors meaning, which humans can't live without, it's natural to think it's also mind that authors our perception of being in the world. This is true. It's also true that the mind, by its process of building a model of observed world interior to the mind, alters the model form significantly from the external stimuli. I believe, notwithstanding this, that the incoming stimuli constrain the internal model building of the mind in ways that compel it to produce a reasonably faithful facsimile of mind independent world. The mind as human video card is a high fidelity translator.
Where mind goes beyond translator to author is with its construction of personal meaning by indexing the internal model in reference to its own perishability/survival axis of interpretation.
Yes, physics precedes brains in evolutionary history. But it doesn’t follow that physics is therefore more fundamental in every relevant sense. The categories you rightly emphasize — meaning, commitment, irreversibility as loss, anticipation of death — are not contained in nor entailed by physics as such. They arise only for sentient existence. Even something like the law of the excluded middle is recognisable only to a rational being, yet it is not itself a product of physical causation. And that distinction - between logical relations and physical causation - is surely central to this whole argument.
Physics, moreover, is articulated as theory within mind; it is, in that sense, an intellectual construction. The intelligibility of a “mind-independent world” is never accessed apart from cognition but is always mediated through it. Observations may constrain modelling, but the very notion of “constraint” is framed within the structures of experience.
So perhaps physics is temporally anterior to mind — but whether it is ontologically prior is another matter. And that, I think, is precisely the philosophical question still in play.
But, again, I'm now posting in the new platform - this version is due to be archived in a couple of days, so I encourage you to consider signing up over there to continue these discussions. This will be my last post here on the topic.
Nothing I said touches this topic. Odd start.
Quoting ucarr
I also said absolutely nothing about this, whatsoever. Very odd start.
Quoting ucarr
No one said it was.
Quoting ucarr
This is how you should have started. It is extremely tedious wading through lines of self-important twaddle to get to simple answers somewhere in your comments ucarr.
Quoting ucarr
This is point blank ass backwards. A novel idea is a non sequitur until it can be adequately inculcated into the system it is supposed to attach to. That is standard. I have noticed you often do the opposite of what is standard and then complain about others not getting you. Do you not think adhering to what people actually do when assessing ideas might be a good move?
Quoting ucarr
This is a non sequitur to even your description.
You seem genuinely incapable of understanding criticisms of your ideas. This has been over a year or more now in several of your threads on several different topics. You are probably hte most polite poster I've come across, bt unfortunately, the least able to have a discussion about your own ideas. I do hope that if you're coming along to the new forum this changes because I'd prefer to have someback and forth with you, instead of constantly hitting a brick wall that doesn't seem to understand what's going wrong.
Do you have some examples of mind ontologically prior to brain that you can share?
P.S. - If you respond to this, which means you'll be responding at the new website, can you please send a link to this email: [email protected]? Thanks.