Alright, so do mountains exist? And by mountains, I don't mean the rocks, dirt, snow making them up. I mean do objects called mountains exist? What's ...
I think Dummett made similar critiques of realism as well, although I think he tempered it by saying his approach might not work against all cases of ...
It simply means there is more to the world than humans. So evolution, stars, big bang, atoms, disease, animals in the deep sea, maybe alien life, etc....
Well yeah, they're realists about other minds. Which is open to the same sort of criticism of the OP. That's true, there are different kinds of realis...
I think I agree with what you stated there. Except that the world doesn't have to reflect our concepts entirely. We have gotten quite a lot wrong. I g...
Add transcendental and Berkeley's idealism to the list. Skepticism is that we simply can't know, so that would be fifth one. But I agree about solipsi...
Right, Nagel's point is we can't know therefore science (or objectivity) can't tell us everything. Block made a similar argument with androids and nat...
It almost has to be that way. I guess the color realist would argue that human brains are recreating colors out there in the world, but I'm not sure t...
True, but we use our experiences to draw the inferences that make most sense of all the empirical data, and form explanations around that. Thus we com...
Right, but then this leads to the Meillassoux critique that dinosaurs existed (not really). So we can empirically say humans evolved from earlier life...
Yes, that's how we experience vision.Which is why naive realism doesn't work without a sophisticated philosophical defense. It can't just be asserted ...
I agree, but where does nature draw the line on what is Mt. Everest and what isn't? As for the OP, how do we know it existed before we were around? I ...
That would be naive realism. The chair exists pretty much as we perceive it when we're not around to perceive it. But that obviously has problems, whi...
Wait, what? This is going to be the new 100 page idealism/realism death match. It's way too early to bow out. So are you saying Kant didn't think the ...
Right, does Kant ever say positively what exists and how it relates to the phenomena? So if time is a mental category, then what does it relate to in ...
And yet we know about deep time, and we can measure how long Everest has been around. Probably, but we also know about picoseconds and nanometers, so ...
Oh okay, Cart, horse, idealists being trampled. Mount Everest is the reference of "that". How do we know that Mt. Everest existed before we knew about...
How do we know "that" numbers exist? Morality, qualia, possible worlds? Just because you can put a that in front doesn't mean it has a real referent, ...
Agreed, but three possible objections: 1. How do we know that to be the case? 2. What if the concept of things existing independent of us (or percepti...
Well, in the context of subjective experience, humans, since we know that for ourselves. Most likely other animals, given similar enough biology and b...
We certainly have had such arguments on the old forum regarding Everest, apples and chairs. They tended to go over a 100 pages. But yes, for everyday ...
Wouldn't a realist have to make that argument? A galaxy millions of light years away or an evolutionary ancestor would exist as they are regardless of...
An issue here is focusing on individual things. So if I'm no longer observing the sun, then I can't know whether the sun still exists according to the...
There are several things to the definition. One is any experience which varies between individuals. The room feels hot to you, cold to me, and fine fo...
@"StreetlightX" But then there's the "unusual effectiveness of mathematics", particularly for physics. Also, space and time themselves might be emerge...
Yeah, I should have said indirect. But it's also the case that we don't always have that indirect knowledge. It might exist in really subtle physiolog...
Well, it's because certain properties of experience are perceiver-dependent and not in the objects themselves. The air feels cold, but that doesn't me...
I believe Nagel was saying that science uses an objective view from nowhere (perspective-less or lacking subjectivity) to create explanations. But the...
"I finally achieved Nirvana this past Sunday." "Oh yeah? What was that like?" "Truly Indescribable. Beyond words!" "Ah, I see. That explains it perfec...
They may be in reality, but brain models of neurons and neurotransmitters don't include sensation. That's just a correlation or outcome that we know e...
Simple: the colors, sounds, smells, tastes and feels aren't properties of the physical environment you interact with. Or at least not when it comes to...
He argued for that. But to what he extent he "showed" that to be true is another matter. There isn't consensus among philosophers that he was correct....
I'll put it another way. Someone could come along and argue that all we have our words and not reality. So proper philosophy would be to recognize tha...
Ahhh, so you're a meriological nihilist. That still leaves the fundamental stuff. Our alien visitors agree on the electromagnetic spectrum it seems. T...
It's accessible in the sense that we do have similar experiences as human beings, but not entirely. What's inaccessible is each of our own personal ex...
It does leave itself open to skepticism. What if we said that we directly perceive some aspects of an object, like it's shape and location, but other ...
Direct realists tend to say objects are colored, that's why we see color. Indirect realists are fine with perceivers coloring in the world. We can kno...
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